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 Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2023 8:49 pm
Faustite had respected that she chose to choke him out. Seemed sentimental enough — that proximity to the same manacle that kept her bound beneath the Farnsworth for a time. Reaching past that reminder of the time when her feet were nearly burned to the bone, left as no more than useless, cooked flesh.
But he wasn't interested in dying. As her grip tightened, as he started to choke, as small sips of air became abortive swallows, Faustite reached for her face with his undamaged hand. He'd break his nails off in her eye sockets if that was what bought him a few more minutes of time. If that's what it took to say that he gave as good as he got and he'd tried to win more time with his boys against the White Moon menace.
He reached, but his hand met air. Cybele was already gone. On her feet. Talking to —
Faustite immediately rolled onto his side and started into intractable hacking coughs, sputtering breaths laced with spit that couldn't manage more than a faltering foot out the door before he was barking more coughs. With or without smoke, it didn't matter, he felt like the coughing would never end. Like a single cubic centimeter of air would cost him three minutes of constant coughing, but he needed it badly enough that he agreed to any price. Even as he laid like a curled shrimp, the coughs did not want to subside.
Tears obscured his vision until they rolled across the bridge of his nose and temple. Until he blinked them into his hair. He could see a little better for a time, long enough to look at who had stopped Cybele's onslaught —
And he recognized those heels, those stockinged legs. Felt that old song of excitement mix cacophonously with the stuttering rhythm of his rapidfire heart, caught in a struggle to shuttle oxygen to the rest of his body, to the flame that always begged for more.
While he knew he should be asking questions and thinking critically, his brain could only manage breathe more air and ~*~A Boy Saved Me~*~, only one of which proved useful.
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Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:44 pm
More than anything right now, Reiki wanted to be down there with Faustite, somehow possessed of magic that could heal instead of kicking people in one of their unfulfilled desires and making them ravenous for it. But—for the moment, all he could do was glance down at Faustite, and……oh. His heart ached, seeing Faustite look so small and fragile, coughing even worse than he had been during their last encounter.
For now, Reiki had to shift closer to Faustite, between him and this woman with the antler-tiara. He had to square up and face the other senshi. She looked a ******** mess—and, as someone who had been scorched by Faustite through no one’s fault but his own before, part of Reiki felt for her—and the more he looked at her, the more he felt certain that he’d done the best thing in this situation for all involved. Following her lead (somewhat), he held his own hands out in the open, fully visible for her, albeit less as a gesture of surrender and more as a way to keep distance between her and Faustite.
“Murikabushi of Hunger,” he told her, voice steady and the sort of calm that only existed in the eye of a hurricane. Projecting confidence and certainty, even though she was more powerful and no doubt more knowledgeable than than he was, even though introducing himself as “Murikabushi” felt like ten thousand rats gnawing at his bloodstream, which was itself full of really pissed off insects. “You want to fight someone from Chaos so badly? Fine. I don’t really want to fight you tonight—you’re already damaged, it wouldn’t be fair—but if you leave. now., and go get yourself healed, I’ll give you a rain-check. Come pick a fight with me sometime instead of Faustite.”
Frankly, he didn’t want to fight her even when she wasn’t injured. Without knowing anything about her and expecting that, in a dog-fight between two senshi, magic would likely get thrown around? He didn’t know how his magic would affect her, what it would make her hungry for, or what she would do with that hunger, or anything.
He just felt, based on previous experience, that a feral (probably traumatized)-seeming White Moon senshi would probably want a fight no matter what, that it wouldn’t matter as long she got to beat up a Chaos rat and feel like a big tough girl who tied her own sandals and everything. So, fine, they could do it like that if she wanted. But she was not allowed to take whatever personal problems in her own miserable life had led to this fight out on Faustite. Not when he was already such a mess and who even knew how much time he had to waste on bullshit like this.
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Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 1:06 pm
Faustite was still reduced to a smoking, sputtering lump behind her, which bought Cybele the time to focus on the freshly introduced Murikabushi of Hunger. Rolling her eyes at him seemed rude, so to keep herself from doing it, she clenched her jaw tight, and took a sharp breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. "Why would I want to fight you?" she asked, and she couldn't completely keep it from coming out as incredulous. Did her really think that she ran around, beating up anyone who she could find in a black outfit, just to say that she had? It was true that she hunted youma sometimes when she'd had a bad day, but she wasn't going to act like that with a person. Everyone got an equal chance, and it was only after they squandered it that they got to meet the Huntress. "I have nothing against you. I have nothing against your Court." She backed a few paces away from Faustite in the off chance that he would be able to summon enough energy to throw fire at her. Her midsection throbbed. She did her best to stand tall anyway. "Faustite, on the other hand, I have given more chances than he deserves, and he chose to throw all of that back in my face. I am sorry that he looks weak right now. Regardless, I can't allow him to hurt anyone else." At the same time, she wasn't sure that she could outright kill him with a member of the Dark Mirror watching. She had enough enemies. She didn't need another faction at her throat. "If you're here to bargain for his life, fine." It seemed like he might not have much life left in him, even if she didn't finish the job herself at this moment. "You can try. Punching you, though?" She shook her head. That one, she didn't accept.
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Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2023 2:44 pm
While they stood off like irritated cats, Faustite coughed and spit up another wad of black. Couldn't tell if it was blood or mucus, but he figured he should assume the worst by this point. Must be some part of himself dissolving into the fire, then. However much more it was going to waste of him before his starseed gave up and altered his body permanently.
That Murikabushi wanted to defend him was —
He didn't know what to make of that. Certainly Murikabushi didn't know what Faustite had done, or what Faustite had done to Cybele to provoke such a response from her. He supposed it didn't matter. Maybe Murikabushi did not see fit to hold others to their past misdeeds, whether or not they regretted them. Faustite didn't ******** know. He was in too much pain to dwell on it and come up with some insightful analysis about Murikabushi's decision-making and judgment calls in the case of flaming boys with violent histories.
Hearing Cybele backpedal in the face of a Dark Mirror Court member was itself uniquely fascinating. If he could think beyond how much his face and ribs and wrist hurt, he would be cataloguing that for later analysis, too. For now, most thoughts were naturally broken up by ow my wrist or <******** that hurts.
With Murikabushi between him and his would-be murderess, it was easy enough to keep his hand curled near his chest as he focused on untwining energy from Murikabushi. Doubtless the boy would feel it — he needed enough to teleport them both out of Cybele's bartering for the rights to kill him — but Faustite suspected he would understand if given the time and distance to explain such things. He'd been smart enough (or stupid enough) to catch on that Faustite wasn't always interested in making the worst possible decision at any given moment, after all.
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Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:27 am
Fighting back the urge to roll his eyes at Miss Cybele took a great deal of effort. Part of him felt somewhat nauseated at that fact. Given how little love he had for most things about his own Court, or for the better part of the Negaverse as an institution (as far as he knew it), Reiki should have felt more of a kinship with White Moon senshi. Should’ve been standing with senshi like Cybele, as he had fought alongside Kerberos and Fang before. In some different situation, he liked to think that he would have stood with her.
But here he was, right now, staying between Cybele and Faustite, whom Reiki knew to have an irascible, violent temper and to likely have more than enough actual Bad Things to his name. Didn’t seem likely he could have earned a General’s rank in the Negaverse without doing his fair share of harm.
Rolling his eyes at Cybele would’ve pushed Reiki further away from the White Moon. Doing this for Faustite probably consigned him even more to Chaos, to the Dark Mirror Court. Left him with a sinking feeling in his chest, the sense that even if he could have walked away from the Court, this choice might make it that much more difficult to do so, because it meant burning a potential bridge. Trying to let it exist on its own terms, that sense of sinking felt like an urgent mix of synthesizers and heavy bass, so melodramatic in its melancholy that it slipped into the realm of camp, and Neil Tennant intoning over top of it all, “At school they taught me how to be so pure in thought, and word, and deed; they didn’t quite succeed.”
……Or maybe that feeling came from the slight tremble in his knees (banished quickly enough with a deep breath, but Reiki still felt a looming threat that it could return whenever it pleased). Maybe that tremor had something to do with the rush of melodrama, sprawling all over Reiki’s feelings in an unnecessary gown of silk and lace, rose in its teeth while it moaned about every minor inconvenience like it was the end of the world. Possibly that also had something to do with the sudden lightheadedness that Reiki recognized all too well. The prelude to fainting if it didn’t go away soon, or if he didn’t get a chance to sit. Made no sense, though? Not in light of Reiki trying so hard to keep an eye on his own habits.
Not until a thought crossed his mind: What specific activity do the two Chaos factions have in common?
Draining energy.
Cybele couldn’t be doing it, and a Mirrorwraith would likely be increasingly visible by now, but Reiki didn’t see one. So, unless some other Negaverse officer was lurking in the shadows somewhere……? Most logical answer was Faustite. And maybe Reiki didn’t like it—unlike Kerberos, he had no access to his planet that, for all he knew, didn’t want him for its senshi anyway—and maybe he couldn’t shake off the thought, Thank ******** I quit doing this after the two times; it’s awful, horrible, truly frightful, even! And I’m supposed to just be okay with doing this to defenseless people? Because, what? Because Mirrorspace ******** said so?
Still, glancing down and over his shoulder, he tried to catch Faustite’s eye. Gave him an earnest look and the slightest of nods. Which, Reiki hoped, would suffice to convey the sentiment, I’m trusting you; do what you need to do; it’s okay.
In the meantime, Reiki needed to put grad school to work and bullshit until Faustite was ready.
“I mean,” he started with a shrug to advertise, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he Did Not Care. “the fight was my bargain. But if you’re not one of the practically feral White Moon senshi who thinks anyone wearing black is better off dead and functionally interchangeable? Dark Mirror, Negaverse, what does it matter when we’re all Chaos and all the same? Fine.”
Shaking out his ponytail for dramatic effect provided the additional benefit of letting Reiki catch another deep breath. He couldn’t allow himself to ******** this up by fainting. “No bartering, then. Just common sense: you want to kill Faustite. But point one, trying to kill him right now is also killing you.” By way of highlighting what he meant, Reiki gestured at the mess Faustite’s fires had made of Cybele’s front.
“If you care so much about harm reduction—which is a stance I can agree with and respect, especially because it has not been universal in my dealings with White Moon senshi?” Seemingly more common than not, but then again, maybe Reiki had just gotten lucky with (most of) the White Moon senshi he’d met. Harm reduction was not a universal motive among their ranks; plenty wanted little more than vengeance or violence they could morally and/or ethically justify to themselves because dealing it unto a Chaos Rat was Inherently Righteous Because Of Reasons.
“But how does sacrificing yourself—literally setting yourself on fire—to kill one person, regardless of what he’s done, serve that purpose? Fine, you take him off the table, but the White Moon still has to wait for you to reincarnate, and who knows how long that will take? Even if they Awaken you as a literal child, it’s gonna be a while and think of how many you could protect from harm by simply not dying. ‘For anybody who saves a single life, it is counted as if they have saved an entire world.’ Easier to save those lives if you’re alive to do so, ya think?”
Part of him suspected that Levi, Elijah, Asher, and all of his other Jewish friends would most likely quibble about his grubby little Shinto-Buddhist-Catholic hands pilfering that wisdom from Tractate Sanhedrin in the Talmud and conveniently leaving off the first part of the sentence—“For anybody who destroys a single life, it is counted as if they have destroyed an entire world”—but Reiki was trying to resolve this without Faustite getting murdered, okay? He could feel sorry about perpetuating the history of Catholics appropriating Jewish scripture later. Most importantly, when Faustite was NOT dead.
“And point second?” Speaking in a more conclusive tone, Reiki gestured at Faustite, “Look at him. Where’s the honor in killing him when he’s already dying?” …At least, it sure looked that way, with how bad Faustite had seemed last time and how much worse things seemed to have gotten since.
“And in case that argument doesn’t appeal to you, consider: if you really wanna commit to being petty about how you’re so much better than he is—” He left the pointed, shady qualifier, “allegedly,” unspoken, “—and how he threw your kindness back in your face? Then why are you giving him the satisfaction of letting him know that you would rather immolate yourself to destroy him than think about what you mean to the people who love you, what you bring to their lives by being in them, how you can help the innocents of this dumpster fire city, how many people would be devastated if you died—more so if you died for him like that—your magical planet up in space, or I don’t know? Pretty much anything else but him?”
Most likely not his best argument that he’d ever made in his life, but Reiki hadn’t even known the target audience for five whole minutes yet. As long as it kept Faustite whole and un-murdered long enough for him to do whatever he needed Reiki’s energy for, it would prove serviceable enough.
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Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:46 pm
Cybele listened politely, the way one did when faced with someone from a volatile faction that was as likely to be an enemy as a friend. It was a struggle to keep her expression neutral, because the man who he was arguing for had burned her feet to the bone and left her to die slowly, in darkness and stench, and also when a section of her skin was covered, even now, in blistering burns, but with effort, she kept her emotions to only the tiniest twitch of her lips. She could have poked holes in his argument, had she been in the mood to argue. She had no intention of dying here. With that thought, most of what he was saying unraveled around him. She had tattered clothes and burns on her skin, it was true.They were second degree, if she had to judge from the pain that was making her head spin. Skin deep. Faustite had broken bones. He would have been dead if she'd kept choking him. Even now, she could probably step over and snap his neck where he lay without damaging herself at all. He would be gone, and she would go home to Tavi and Olivia. She would see Paris again, and Claire, and all the others. She might have some scars to show for it, but nobody ever minded that. The fact that he was already dying was the only thing that it seemed she was actually paying attention to, although she was patient about the rest of it. "Fine," she said, when he was done. "If you're so committed to having him die more slowly and more painfully? To drawing out his suffering? If you're arguing so fiercely for it?" Her lips twisted, and she shook her head, the next breath coming out as a hiss. "Be my guest. It's what he deserves." She'd been going for the kill to squash all chances of recovery, but she knew she couldn't do it now without making another enemy. Instead, there was venom in her eyes as she walked backwards until they were out of sight, wincing and hissing more and more from the pain. When she was far enough, she turned and vanished into the shadows.
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Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2023 12:37 am
When Cybele had found him, she was out for blood. He knew that she must have felt the auric presence of a General before she confronted him. Between then and when she ascertained a visual on him, she could have alerted her allies. Told them to come looking for her in a few minutes if they didn't hear back. Told them to band together for an ambush on her signal.
Wouldn't be making trouble for the Dark Mirror Court if she wasn't the one that attacked them both. She was leaving, she could say. She can't control her allies anymore than Murikabushi could.
It's what Faustite would have done if he needed to save face for a faction. Thus, it was why he wasted no time burning up those energy orbs, snatching up Murikabushi's bedazzled, ribbon-wrapped shoe, and envisioning the first place to come to mind. They vanished as soon as he finished his mental framework.
His thoughts always drifted to the Farnsworth when he was around Cybele, and to their good fortune, it was familiar territory to them both. stari_maga thank you both for the rp!
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