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 Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:31 am
She watched him from the corner of the building, her petite form carefully hidden among the leaves and branches of the nearby tree.
Nea had been sorely disappointed in Obsidian's reaction to her promotion and, after an hour or so of moping, decided that it was time to get over her frustration with Khaldun by means of flaunting off her new title to him. She'd make him get over his angsting, she'd make him congratulate her, tell her how cool it was to be a Captain.
Well, at the very least, she was going to get a good giggle out of it.
It was disheartening to stop and think about just how few people she had in the world to brag about things to, so she did her best not to dwell on such realizations. Obby and Grendel never gave a rat's a**, it seemed, and with no other gal in the world to chat with (******** Linarite to hell), all Nea was really left with was Khal. Poor ******** up Khaldun. It was a wonder how she and Little Dreads got along so well, but the idea of staying mad with him just... well, there was no way she could, honestly. Throughout her history with the Negaverse, he'd been the little brother to look out for, the kid to advise, to watch blossom. She didn't want that to end, not over something stupid as her own frivolous writing abilities.
So patch things up, she would, though her methods for doing so were quite...uncouth.
The student had been making his way around the campus that evening, obviously doing surveillance of sorts. The teachers wouldn't bother Hematite, the General-King as well as herself having made that perfectly clear, so the student had the run of the campus after hours, while everyone else was sleeping.
As he neared her tree, still quite unaware that there was anything lurking within its branches, her body tensed. She waited for the perfect moment, and right as he passed beneath her, her high heels kicked off from the branch and she came sailing down towards the tall boy. In the split second she had before reaching him, she bellowed out in the lowest voice possible, "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"
The moment her hands grabbed hold of his jacket, she teleported them both into the Negaverse Headquarters, the pair of them blipping out of sight from the Barren Pines campus. They landed with a thud on the cold crystal floor of the meeting room, and Nealite could do nothing more than roll over on her back and giggle. It was exhausting, teleporting (even more so when you took someone with you) but goddamn if this wasn't the funniest thing to do as far as introducing her new powers to her younger friend.
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Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 7:20 pm
Hematite rounded the corner of the building. It wasn't really surveillance - there was nothing to survey. But it was at least quiet outside. Barren Pines had stopped being so quiet since the meningitis outbreak claimed the lives of a few students. He didn't need to lie awake and have to listen to everyone chattering in the dorms around and above him, tonight at least. It sounded like he was being responsible by wandering around in the cold and dark, but it was really just more bullshit. That wasn't to say he wasn't doing his job lately, but he was picking and choosing what he put his effort into. Some aspects were interesting him more than others, although at least for once things were interesting and relatively safe. Somehow, with that Tisiphone incident, he'd managed to meet the General-King's expectations. The illusion of effort was now a greater task than before, and the fall would be farther if it wasn't maintained. So what of that unspoken promise of power? It made his resolve waver. Normally he could come to a swift decision about what to do, but he hovered between returning to his stagnant existence below notice, and the chance - it was no guarantee, after all - to become powerful enough to defeat his enemies before they even had a chance to turn on him. He wasn't even on the fence about it any more, really. Power would protect him. But he couldn't and wouldn't turn into a machine of efficiency overnight. He breathed into his hands and rubbed them together against the cold. It was ******** freezing out here.
What Nealite had said to him in her office had bothered him, and in lieu of his usual mental distractions, he kept coming back to it. He picked it up Looking at the General-King as anything but a cold, calculating, critical b*****d, let alone a stand-in for a responsible parent-! Only Nealite could bend reality like that. She should know- she should know all the s**t they'd been put through. How did she do it? How did she not even see what was right in front of her? Cruel, oh, cruel was a bit of an understatement here. Cut him a ******** break!? How? Tell Charonite he missed a spot next time the General-King took his anger out in the form of punches and kicks? Forgive him, for communicating in a mystical language of obscenities and bodily harm to others? Nealite had no god damn idea...
Hematite looked down at his hands. He was still alive. Somehow. In a sense. She insinuated it was more than dumb luck and appearing worthless, that those factors should have worked against his survival. He'd been threatened often enough, seen firsthand that the General-King had no qualms about killing, to say the least. But he hadn't. Why? Hematite ran into a mental wall there, or a chasm, and his thoughts bent away from the nothingness back toward what he did have. He couldn't remember, never had been able to. He highly doubted the reason he'd lived this long in the Negaverse was anything so pure and simple as actual caring, like Nealite wanted to believe. But there was more to this.
He was walking absent-minded, since there was no danger on the campus he could think of. Or at least, there hadn't been. One second he was walking on crunching leaves, and the next he hit the floor of the Negaverse subspace, the shout still ringing in his ears. It all happened in the space of a couple seconds, and there was ice in his veins as a result. He'd been dragged along to the subspace many times before, generally under negative circumstances, even recently, and Charonite was always the one to do the teleporting. That was the key word: Charonite. Hematite's mind raced - he hadn't done anything wrong, or failed to do anything he'd been asked (see: forced) to do, at least in recent memory. What the hell was this about? Did someone rat him out for something?
Something rolled off of his back, and laughed. At first he gave it a look of wide-eyed panic, lifting himself off the crystal floor slightly. Hematite didn't really know what to expect, aside from the General-King, but Nealite was not even vaguely a possibility. So he stared. He'd failed to notice her change in outfit - her bright orange hair was more of an identifier than her drab gray dress. He could hardly try to look angry, he was still too confused and frightened to know what the hell had happened. A few questions and comments crossed his mind, most of them particularly crass and angry, some merely incoherent. Fighting his state of panic, he managed to get a question out. "How the hell did you do that!?"
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Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 7:03 pm
She was still giggling like a schoolgirl when he stammered out his question, and her head turned to where she could watch him, orange eyes sparkling with laughter as a grin was splayed across her face. It didn't matter that her hair had mussed itself up as she remained there, sprawled out on the crystal ground, it didn't matter that her arms and legs were freezing from the contact with the chilled crystal.
He looked scared, terrified, confused. Part of her felt bad; he had to be horrified, being dragged into the Negaworld without notice, forced onto the ground ala Charonite's style of entrance. But even if he got mad, even if he raged, insulted her, screamed... it was totally worth it.
Another giggle escaped and she flipped herself over onto her stomach and propped up her head with her hands. She wasn't worried about looking professional, not when it was just Hematite and herself around. Little Dreads could give less of a s**t how protocol was carried out, and she could use the break from seriousness.
"Did you like that?" she teased, her nose wrinkling as her grin got wider, "I thought you'd be impressed!"
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Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 1:45 pm
Hematite's eyes darted around, returning to Nealite several times to glare daggers at her, suspecting a trap of some kind. And after what had happened in Nealite's office - he'd been bad-mouthing Charonite quite readily, so it wouldn't be a surprise that Nealite had passed it all along - he jumped to a swift conclusion. This must be about the burnt scripts again, only there'd be a few military buzzwords thrown in to make it sound like it had something to do with the Negaverse enough to make dragging his sorry a** here worth anyone's time. Just great. So... was Charonite lurking nearby? He didn't appear to be. But just because he couldn't be seen didn't mean a god damn thing. Hematite had already been intercepted after battles several times without even realizing the General-King had appeared. He gave it another few seconds before he moved again, listening, even trying to filter the tell-tale smell of tobacco and ash out of the otherwise dead, sharply cold air. Nothing. This didn't make sense.
Attempting to save face, Hematite pulled himself into an upright sitting position and started brushing himself off, looking a lot like a bird trying to preen its ruffled feathers. There wasn't really anything to clean off, except a little bit of dust he'd smudged off the floor bodily upon landing. The Negaverse subspace was practically undisturbed. One hand pushed loosened dreadlocks behind his shoulders and out of his face. Nealite had to know what the ******** was going on. He gave the surroundings one last look around before staring down the fallen lieutenant.
"Like that- what the ******** did- do I look like I'm-" he seethed, losing his grasp on the English language the more she laughed. He fumed momentarily, crossing his arms and curving his posture by leaning himself back a bit. He didn't like being made a fool of, and this had been a pretty effective way for Nealite to do so. But then, she knew him rather better than he would have liked, making this all too easy for her. What the hell was her problem now? He'd already told her what she wanted to know, wasn't that enough for her? He didn't go drag her off to god knows where - speaking of which, how had she done that?
And how was he supposed to leave?
In the wake of that question, he struggled to get it together, but it was no easy task. His voice still had an annoyed growl to it. "Yeah. Yeah, very impressive. It's hilarious. I hope there was a really, really good reason why you had to jump on me to do that, though, because the only one I can think of right now is that you were trying to kill me."
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 3:31 am
"Oh quit trying to be so dramatic, Khal," she teased, clucking her tongue at him. She watched him rise, and her smile slightly wavered as she studied his reaction. Okay, granted, she'd expected him to be a bit put off, but perhaps she hadn't been expecting such a negative reaction. Nea was good at scheming and planning when it came to working for the Negaverse, but attempting to do things to control and sooth a teenager's anger and angst... well, she wasn't quite as experienced in that department, to say the least.
She too slowly began to rise, her body still aching slightly from the energy she'd been forced to use to bring them both to the headquarters. Doing her best to shrug it off, she dusted off her own invisible dirt and moved back to grinning at the younger boy, the smile half-forced by this point.
"Oh come on now, Little Dreads, you can get over it." She twirled, her hands falling down to point out the significant change in her attire, "I mean, after all... look! Free teleport rides, right? Well, that is, if you can get over that rotten little stint of yours and actually act like the sweet Khal I used to hang out with!"
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 4:26 am
"I'm not being dramatic," he grumbled contrarily, though he didn't seem to believe what he was saying any more than she did. He pushed off the freezing floor so that he was eventually standing as well. Hematite shifted his weight around his feet, staring up at the ceiling for a few seconds before fixating on the shorter woman.
"I'm just trying to look at this and wonder what makes you think I'm overreacting in any way at all. I guess I should be going 'Oh, that was a great joke, Nealite, teleporting me to headquarters out of ******** nowhere.'" He was getting a little too into it now, bringing out the angry hand motions. "'And hey, SHOUTING s**t IN MY EAR LIKE YOU'RE THE GENERAL-KING while you're doing it? ******** priceless, lieutenant.'"
"That Khal hadn't been double-crossed just yet," he muttered to himself. He'd always hated that nickname she used for him, too. Hematite walked around her in a half circle and back, his expression returning to confusion again, and apprehension. Whatever she was wearing, it wasn't her usual Nealite outfit. This Negaverse place played some odd tricks when anyone was teleported in, and he'd never seen anyone in this location in anything but their Negaverse uniform. Maybe she'd taken to accessorizing, or maybe this was another mission. Didn't explain the teleporting itself, but it did explain why she was standing there with a bizarre new array of... things. "The hell is that on your back, a cape? Is this some new thing like your Sailor Nea outfit? Because I am not playing your back-up again until I get a replacement weapon at the very least. Just, no ******** way."
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 4:45 am
Purple boots clicked together and one hand quickly rose up to mimic the salute Charonite had given her earlier. The grin was genuine now, pride surging through her.
"That would be Captain, sir. Captain Nealite, to be precise."
His muttering did not go unnoticed, and the grin was quick to turn into a frown. God damn it, was he still on that s**t?
"You know," she sulked, one arm slipping itself under the other as she shot a disappointed glare his way, "I have no ******** doubt that if I broke my arm and refused to get it looked at, that you would report it to Charonite or Obsidian or someone who would make sure that it got taken care of before I caused any further damage to it by being careless."
It was her turn, now, to walk around the other, her eyes examining him from head to toe as she spoke, "So, using that logic, I still don't understand how I'm such the traitorous b***h by expressing my worry to, God forbid, your guardian, of all people. Khaldun, your little memory episodes are getting worse as time goes on, and there's not exactly a Negaverse Nurse or Shrink to talk this s**t over with, y'know. And ********, did you ever think that maybe, JUST MAYBE, Charonite may be able help you retrieve those memories?"
She was standing directly in front of him now, looking up as she cut him another frustrated look. "Have you thought of that, instead of sitting around bitching and moaning as you try to figure out your birthday, for God's sake?"
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 5:57 am
"Captain...?" He stared blankly, disbelievingly at her. Nealite was his superior now? Well, s**t. The teen had a poor enough grasp on the formalities outside being catty with others, and it'd take him some time to get used to addressing Nealite as a captain. Now the outfit change made sense, however odd it was. A blessing or a curse, but probably the latter. He was pissed off at her, and even as a Lieutenant she was the 'favorite' of the lot, meaning Hematite wouldn't get into any different a level of s**t for what he was saying. "What, like... a promotion? You?"
"I'm not following," he began to counter, but she didn't acknowledge it.
"Because-" Hematite made an exasperated noise. This made so much more sense when he didn't have to put it into words! He grit his teeth a bit at the mention of guardian. Maybe he couldn't leave some things alone, but neither could she, apparently. He didn't ask to be taken here in the middle of the night. He hated this place. He was trapped. That was the connotation the Negaverse subspace had in his mind - a trap. He could only ever come or go at the mercy of another. It made him subconsciously nervous, gave everything a heightened sense of urgency. He followed her movements with his eyes and head. "It's got nothing to do with the Negaverse. It's my business - he can stay out of it. He's done ******** with what you told him so far at least, so I must've managed to avoid him really well lately at Barren Pines. But I'll bet you think you 'worried' to the right person. My guardian. God damn it. If you really are concerned then don't bring him into any of this."
"And I'm fine. That last time was a fluke." His left hand brushed his left cheek absentmindedly before dropping. ******** scar. That hadn't made any sense either. "There's nothing wrong with me."
"THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANT TO KNOW!" The shout echoed slightly in the crystalline chamber. Nealite seemed to have stumbled on a brand new way to short-fuse Hematite. He didn't have much in the way of memory, but he did what he could to prevent others from finding it out. Elaborate stories and a reputation for being a pathological liar when it came to personal details had done away with the need for damage control. But, still, there were a few people who knew despite his best efforts, and before he had known enough to keep it a secret. He took in a few heavy breaths. "And even if I wanted his help, and I ******** don't, I already know I'm not going to get it. Want to know what he did the last time I asked? Do you? Because you're not really giving me enough credit here; I've been desperate before. You can pretend you're me for a minute, ok?"
The teen stepped forward, enough to put him dangerously close to the captain. Even with his skinny frame, the action he took was menacing. One hand reached up as though halfway to a standard salute in front of him, perfectly horizontal. Then he snapped it forward, the back of the hand facing away from him, toward Nealite's unprotected face. At the last second, his other hand caught it, resulting in a loud slapping sound inches away from her cheek. After letting the sound hang, both hands were slowly withdrawn and shoved into jacket pockets. There was no amusement on Hematite's face as he'd practically backhanded Nealite, just a cold and analytical stare.
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 6:27 am
She let out a cry as the hand came down, completely unaware that Hematite had no apparent intention of striking her. Nealite made no movement to defend herself, no action to strike back, lash out in return for the attempted hit, but instead stumbled backwards. This was Hematite, Little Dreads...why would he even....
"Don't do that," she whispered, her head shaking as her bottom lip came dangerously close to being chewed on in nervousness. This meeting hadn't gone anywhere close to where she'd had liked it to gone... hell, she would prefer Obsidian's taunting to this catastrophe! "You aren't like him, Khal, so why...why are you acting like this?"
Her heels stopped their backward movement, wide orange eyes refusing to leave the teenager's face. One hand moved up to brush wisps of hair out of her face, the realization finally hitting her of his screaming, his threatening tone. This wasn't Khaldun at all... had she really drawn this side of him out with her words alone?
She was a Captain. She bore more power than he did now, and both of them knew it. Instead of wielding that power, though, instead of correcting him for his actions, punishing him for his disrespect... Nealite bowed. What came next was nothing short of a miracle, as far as Nealite's vocabulary went.
"I'm sorry."
The words were humbled, obviously forced out to an extent. Nea was hardly apologetic for anything, especially to individuals that were not the General-King. "I tried to do what I thought was best, and I assure you I will not bother with such again. I'm... I'm sorry, Khaldun. I know we don't see eye to eye on this, but I ask that you trust me when I say I will honor your request and will never utter another word of this to him again... at least, without your permission, of course."
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 7:42 am
Hematite had hoped it was frightening. There was no reason to actually slap Nealite to get his point across, and he wasn't that mad at her. The hand-slapping thing was a little trick, but illustrated enough about how surprised he'd been to get backhanded twice in a row. There was a sharp exhale from his nose, like an abbreviated snort of laughter. Nealite shouldn't be so upset about something as small as this. He hadn't done anything! He parroted her earlier words back at her. "Don't be so dramatic."
And then her comparison hit him like a ton of bricks and a bucket of ice-cold water.
Hematite lived with such a sharply-focused rage against Charonite that he never had a reason to turn around and take a look at himself and his own actions . True or false, fact or opinion, the idea that he might be anything like the General-King had completely knocked him off-balance. His mind raced furiously to disprove it. Charonite used people. Hematite did too, but then, everyone did, so that one hardly counted. Charonite abused people. Hematite... had just made as if to slap Nealite to get his own point across. Charonite had a terrible, short temper. Hematite realized with growing horror that his own temper was starting to become a lot more difficult to differentiate from the one he was most often subjected to. Oh, ******** the time Nealite made her next move, the teen was dumbstruck, paling, and appeared not to have much fight left in him. It was bad enough being compared to Charonite in terms of appearances! If he was giving off those kind of vibes, he'd have to be a hell of a lot more careful. That was just the last thing he wanted, ever. He wasn't anything like Charonite... he thought. He stared back at Nealite wearily. The bow was another blow to his understanding of the universe. No one ever deferred to him, but this didn't seem at a glance to be any more joking than the way she'd voiced the comparison. Every right and choice he had had been earned, whether by taking a risk or suffering a punishment. And that meant clashing with authority often, even a few within the Negaverse. Like Nealite. She... well, he rather liked the idea of finally having some respect without fighting for it, but being a new experience, it struck him as odd.
He continued to give her a weird look, preoccupied by his self-consciousness. Then he looked off to the side, down one of the many unmarked crystal corridors. After a pause, he managed to find his voice. It was much quieter than he'd been when he was being vicious or yelling before. "Good. That's... good."
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 8:08 am
Her head slowly rose, eyes curiously staring at the younger man. It was clear something had shaken him... had her words struck a different sort of chord this time? He seemed more at peace... should she say something now?
Nealite had been worried, there was no doubt. For Khaldun to grow so violent... there would be no way for him to control himself. It was difficult enough for Charonite to withhold his own temper and he was a General-King. For a Lieutenant to act like that surely was not a good sign. The idea of fighting Khaldun was right above joining the Senshi side on her mental never-to-do list, but if he drove her to that, she'd be forced to make that decision. As she'd promised, nothing would be brought up... for now. Despite her promise, the Captain had a feeling she would seek out help if things grew dire enough. Hopefully, by God, they would never get to that point.
Straightening herself up, Nea didn't hesitate to mess with her hair before reaching one hand out. Confident, firm, she kept a smile on her face, regardless of any inner turmoil currently going on within.
"So, uh...friends?"
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 5:19 pm
Hematite looked back again when Nealite spoke. Practically his entire focus right now was on clamping down on his anger, and staying absolutely calm. He was nothing like Charonite. He wouldn't be anything like Charonite. Without some sort of vengeance or suspicion to act on, he just looked extremely disoriented. There was little past for him to act on, and therefore little future to make of it.
He took a few steps forward in a curved arc, not ending up precisely in front of Nealite. He didn't know what to think of the offered hand. His eyes ran along it, but seemed to do so more in boredom or exhaustion than in outright suspicion. Nealite had teleported him here as some kind of practical joke, but she couldn't possibly be crazy enough to pull anything else on him, today at least. He'd seen genuine fear in those orange eyes. Now she was smiling. He was too tired and too worried with himself to bother to read anything into it, for once. His own hand, the same one he'd nearly backhanded her with, grasped her hand lightly handshake-style. She might have been smiling, but he still looked worried and even a bit lost in his own thoughts now. Was he looking at Nealite when his gaze was on her, or someone or something else?
'Friend' was an interesting concept, but not one that had ever applied to his life. He wouldn't even have gone so far as to call Nealite one. Was that what she had thought they were? He'd viewed her as a combination of a liability and a necessity (though there wasn't really a word for that so much as an abstract concept). Well, if 'friend' meant something to her, he'd find out. With any luck it meant 'no more surprise teleporting' in Nealite language, and he could handle that. His cold hand grasped hers. "Sure. Friends."
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Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 1:52 am
Despite however Khaldun altered his personality, he would never, ever be another Charonite. Maybe sound like him, maybe even act like him, but Nealite refused to believe the boy was capable of turning into what Charonite was. While Khal might have been raised by him, adopted and trained to Charonite's specifications, both men meant entirely different things to Nea and neither personality would cross...she refused to ever allow that to be an option in her mind. While Charonite was demanding, threatening, even cruel to a point, he was a respectable man. A man of power, control, goals in life. Khal was goalless, insecure, lost. He was a puppy in need of a caretaker, in need of someone to watch out for him. While that puppy had proven tonight that he could sure as hell bite when threatened, he still remained the confused and quiet Khal, the boy Ursula had met over a year ago and watched out for, without a second thought.
He was an anomaly in her life, but she no longer questioned it. He was just... Little Dreads. Her Little Dreads.
As he accepted her hand, his hold weak and limp, she only grinned wider. Things between them were awkward, the silence tense and painful, and Nea intended on destroying that silent moment, that strange tenseness that neither individual was used to feeling around the other. Gripping onto his hand, she jerked him forward, the student apparently unprepared to find himself thrusting forward towards the shorter woman. A small laugh escaped as she leaned up to do just as she'd seen dozens of Hillworth boys do to one another in the hallways throughout school.
She noogied him.
"Good!" came the response, in between laughs as she tried (and was horribly failing) to stand on her toes and teasingly bully the taller boy (that was the in thing to do now, right? Between buds?) "I might have to be tougher on you next time if you try that sort of thing on me again!"
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Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2009 11:21 pm
The teen felt her grip tightly, tighter than a handshake ought to be. Lost in worried thought, Hematite didn't expect Nealite's improved strength, and stumbled forward into a trap. He was, to say the least, not a fan of being dragged into the freezing crystal subspace. Its negative connotations in his memory made him brace himself for violence - she could do anything from knock his still-healing nose back out of alignment to jab him in the abdomen and knock the wind out of him, and he was in no position to stop her. He wasn't sure if trying to stop her would be a good idea, what with her outranking him now. She reached up and...
What!?
At least now he had a little more clarity of thought, more than he'd had in his state of panic earlier. After the things he'd done lately to try and really prove he was over with trusting Nealite to keep his secrets, and refusing to go along with her crazy ideas... she wasn't mad at him? She wasn't going to take things out on him or pull rank to try and stop him? That's what everyone else did every time he stuck to making his own decision. He had thought for sure this had developed into a serious mutual dislike. She'd flipped at him over the burnt scripts, forced him to sit through her lecturing and emotional pleas, but he'd had a year of experience sitting in offices getting lectured, a scenario he had developed a serious tolerance for. But a situation like this? Hematite liked to think he knew how people worked, at least well enough that pushing buttons was an easy task. Beyond that, he had to accept that he would never, ever understand Nealite, or her confusing behavior, or how she could get over betrayal so easily.
At this point Hematite extricated his hand from Nealite's, but he couldn't avoid the assault on his hair. He also didn't want to duck away so soon as to set off any temper - he knew well enough that Charonite was only made angrier if he dodged or avoided abuse. Admittedly mild in comparison to being kicked, there was still a routine now ingrained in Hematite. Why was she being nice about all of this? It didn't make sense to him. It wasn't right. The teen had completely missed whatever supportive comments she had made before in favor of magnifying every instance she'd attacked his character the last time they'd been in a room together. She'd been livid, biting. And as far as he could think, she should still be that way here. And if she wasn't, it was merely being concealed, a hidden motive, poisoning her act of goodwill in his eyes. What reason did he have to trust her now, when she was pining after Charonite, willing to tell him everything and believing it was for his own good? Her loyalties were with the General-King above all, for everything. And whatever, it was the Negaverse, even Hematite would have to grudgingly admit his life had somehow ended up in the service of the General-King as well. But there had to be a limit, even for personal secrets. Nealite had betrayed them once, and then given him her word tonight that she wouldn't do it again. Did he have any reason to trust her? Without her, there was no one else to trust, and he'd be truly alone... For most of a year his secrets, given without understanding, had been safe with Nealite, and she claimed to look out for him. None of the others in the Negaverse ranks were anywhere near trustworthy, everyone waiting to slide their knives between someone else's shoulder blades while keeping an eye out to protect their own. Did he prefer the assurance that came of cutting Nealite loose, that no one could hurt him because no one would be close enough to have a chance? Or did he miss the early days, almost a year ago, before things had become so serious? Ursula had helped him when no one else had, to re-learn the way the world worked because he'd forgotten. If she had not stepped in to help so early on, his defiant personality would lifely have been snuffed out early like a candle by the rigors of the Negaverse.
Maybe it wasn't so much where things had been as where they were going that bothered him.
When he finally figured it was safe to pull away from Nealite's attempted headlock, he did so. The boy flashed her a nervous smile that had more in common with a grimace. One last chance... he'd give her one last chance... and maybe he could break Nealite of her obsession with Charonite and everything would like be the way it used to. The man practically made his own case against himself, anyway. Hematite just wanted some predictability in his life again. He gave a lazy two-finger salute off his forehead and tried to sound convincingly good-humored. Hell, it almost sounded like he was complimenting Nealite on her promotion. There was emphasis, nontheless. "Well, Captain Nealite, I - man, do I really need to call you that? It's so stuffy."
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Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 10:26 pm
She rolled her eyes, though continued to smile as she shook her head. "I suppose I could let you get away with just calling me ma'am. Or Your Beautifulness. Or something fancy like that, if Captain is too stuffy for you."
She finally moved from her spot, her hands returning down to her side as the boy stepped back and away from her. He was still nervous; it was evident in his expression. But at least, hell, at least they seemed on somewhat better terms than before, right?
Walking forward, she passed him and headed towards the crystal table that sat in the middle of the room. Chairs were tucked in, obviously signifying the purpose of the meeting room. Instead of sitting on a chair, however, she hopped up on top of the table, kicking her feet forward as slid atop the cold surface.
"I wonder if Obby'll have to start calling me Captain," she said idly, already knowing full well that the redhead had no intentions of acknowledging her higher rank above his own. Eyes moved towards Hematite, and she slowly nodded her head. "You ready to go back, Little Dreads, or did you want to chill out here some more? Can't say Charonite won't show up, though. Who knows where he lurks these days."
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