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 Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2013 12:57 pm
Patrolling seemed to have less and less of a purpose and was becoming more and more of a manic mess of botched drains and sad realizations for Zippeite.
His moods seemed to go up and down with his interactions. After training with Porsha he had been pleasant and well behaved. Briefly. It rarely lasted, though, because after these pleasant little stints immediately following successful social interaction, he withdrew.
The downs came as frequently, and when he was withdrawn, he usually let the bitterness of his trapped situation get the better of him. With no other voices to distract him, his own mind usually betrayed him, and he found himself spiraling back down into that lost hopelessness that had made him so angry in the first place.
He was just an animal trying to fight his way out with no concept of higher level thought or problem solving to his own suffering, and this usually made things worse, which cycled back through his mental faculties as frustration and anger.
As usual, he had gone out tonight with the intention of draining energy from whatever helpless victims crossed his path. He knew there were people out there in Destiny City he could overpower. People already incapacitated or easily intimidated or beaten down. He wasn't weak anymore, he wasn't helpless, and yet he always seemed to choose wrong.
Whether it was a subconscious choice to always choose people who would fight and resist or just a result of how he made poor choices when his head was clouded, tonight was the same story as the rest. The civilian was not about to be accosted by a terrorist without a struggle, which made Zippeite react with all the force necessary to detain him.
Detained usually meant a well aimed smack with his weighted staff.
Zippeite hit the larger target with his staff just below the back of his neck, and was rewarded with a satisfying, wet sounding crack from within his body as he dropped, one arm twitching as the nervous system struggled to comprehend what had just happened to the still living organism. At this point he should've cut his losses and taken the starseed, but he was put off by the way he jerked and moved even in incapacitation, so Zippy brought his staff down again.
Skin split, barriers broke, and blood and brain matter burst out across the abandoned alleyway and all over the captain's uniform.
Zippeite let out a wailing yell. Not one of remorse, but panic and anger and distress all in one. He had wasted his target, he had failed, and now he was covered in biological matter.
That was probably the worst part. Particles and fluids from a foreign body seeping into the threads of his uniform, in the air, in his nose. Bacteria, rot, and that blood would coagulate. It twisted his pet peeves and unsettled him to his very core and made him stumble out of the alley, his breathing tempered with a whimper like a frightened puppy as he frantically tried to scrap it off. But it wouldn't help, it just drove it deeper under his nails. Other people were disgusting.
He was so very frustrated with himself, a feeling that radiated and twisted in his chest and bubbled up to a red rage in his cheeks, and he didn't know how he kept getting himself into these messes.
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Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 7:47 pm
Adonis considered himself fully accustomed to energy draining, and soon considered it quite the thrill after a long and grueling day of neutering his senses through constant use of chemicals. It was strange, but he liked it - every time he powered up, the stench of bleach and ammonia lifted from his clothes. It still clung to his hair, to some extent, but at least it wasn't strong enough to sting his eyes and choke his throat.
It was strange. He'd read about wars in high school, about how death counts often reached the millions and cruelty breached all limits set by the Geneva Convention. And since this wasn't a war between nations, he figured some trite contract wouldn't subdue the atrocities exhibited by both sides, but... For a war, he thought there'd be a helluva lot more violence and bloodshed than there really was. Aside from the jobs he'd picked up, the ones he thought were linked to the eternal struggle between chaos and order, he found nary a hint of the brutality he'd learned to expect from the history books.
Then again, this wasn't exactly a textbook war, either.
Kids his age and younger roamed the streets, sprinting through buildings and atop skyscrapers as if they proved no challenge at all. He'd seen it for some time now, but he still hadn't fully understood it. The whole thing washed over him like a dream, really - one filled with the harrowing notion of just how much money he could make through untraceable murder and offering his services soon afterward. Still, the whole notion sounded far beyond his capabilities as a moral human being. It didn't stop him from draining energy though. That activity was eerily justifiable through the Negaverse's explanation. They needed energy to fight the senshi menace, and energy was a renewable resource, so what differentiated it from drilling for oil or chopping down trees for lumber?
If he could think of the war in parallels between World War II then he could understand it in a superficially logical manner. But once magical powers and teenagers in skirts came into the equation... All hope for grasping his ludicrous position in an equally unbelievable war was lost.
Often times, like tonight, he tried walking down the sidewalk in plain view of those he knew as Adrian Frost. Most of the time he received sideways glances, gasps, or accusations of terrorist activities, and no matter how he tried to diffuse the situation or wave them away, the situation only worsened. From that, he realized that the public didn't really want Adonis, not in the way it wanted Adrian, who was easily relatable and unconscionably attractive, but... Somehow Adonis was different. Maybe too attractive, he wanted to believe, but the glaring holes in his chest and head suggested otherwise.
So he walked on regardless, and sought quieter venues.
Said venues happened to include a frantic yell and the sound of hands brushing across clothing in a desperate attempt to shirk germs. It was a puzzling sight, really, one that had him cocking an eyebrow at the scene, but he approached nonetheless - for the frazzled boy exuded some kind of familiar impulse. Adonis couldn't entirely describe it, but it felt familiar at least, and familiar was nice.
Familiar was good. Familiar meant not so goddamned lost.
And as he approached, he recognized the telltale ichor splattered across his uniform. If he furrowed his brow and squinted, grey matter became readily apparent. If Adonis were the type for black humor, he would've asserted that the boy went bathing in bodies, but given his distress toward being covered in bodily fluids, Adonis kept the comment to himself. Instead he addressed the boy with an edge of concern in his voice. "Hey, you're a captain, right? Is it yours or someone else's?" He gestured toward the blood slowly coagulating across the man's uniform with genuine worry.
The last thing he wanted to watch was someone die in front of him.
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Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 8:35 pm
Zippeite wasn't sure if he was more mortified over his appearance or the way he was acting when he suddenly became aware of the corrupted senshi addressing him.
He liked to pretend he was capable of carrying some sort of authority after basically spending his formative years as a corrupted agent of Chaos, but he was still very young. And it was obnoxiously apparent, even when he pretended otherwise.
"No--" Oh god, his voice practically honked out the answer and suddenly he was fighting to keep a red tinge from surfacing on his complexion. He cleared his throat, shifted his boots on the ground with great effort not to look at them, and set his face in a stubborn frown as he regrouped for an authoritative, "No. Energy gathering gone wrong. That's all. I'm fine."
He was so very not fine, but he felt like he had to at least put on some sort of appearance of being put together and worthy of his rank in the face of one of them. Even an assimilated enemy had still been an enemy at one point. Some point. Even if not in this lifetime, he realized, since Laby had clued him in on that disturbing factoid.
His brow twitched under the strain of keeping up the facade, however. He was not good at subterfuge, even if the lie he was maintaining was regarding his own constitution while his skin crawled and goosebumped at every involuntary thought about the microbes seeping through his uniform.
"I--..." He needed to pause again. Clear his throat again. And then worry this would be the same procedure for every sentence he hoped to vocalize. But it was less embarrassing than the stutter that used to plague him.
"I'm Captain Zippeite. Who do you belong to?" They had handlers, right? This was the shred of hope he had clung to since he had previously been attacked within their own ranks. He had told a fellow captain they were good attack dogs, but someone needed to hold the leash, and he he was clearly eying Adonis suspiciously as if he was half expecting to need a choke chain.
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Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:37 pm
Adonis arched surprised brows at the man who seemed to struggle with the fundamental concept of existing. Of all the strange and hopelessly idiosyncratic individuals he'd met through his work alone, he'd never laid eyes on a soul quite so uncomfortable in his own skin. If Adonis considered it further, he'd characterize it as a need to burst out of the skin itself. And it's much too bad that as a senshi of skin himself, he had little ability to soothe the officer's apparent problems.
"How does energy gathering go wrong, dear captain?" The blonde purred with practiced charm. He'd done this dance a thousand times before - the only indication of his mounting curiosity was the index finger that strayed toward his chin almost automatically. And as Adonis approached the alley, rounded the disintegrating brick corner and placed a partially gloved hand against its cold exterior to balance himself, the sharp scent struck him almost immediately. Like iron clinging to his nasal passages, poisoning his system...
Blood.
And quite a lot of it.
Somewhat disturbed that he felt little sympathy at this point, Adonis placed his hands on sarong-clad hips and edged a sideways glance toward the captain through stray bangs. "That's a little... miserable, isn't it?" Miserable might've been an understatement, but he wasn't sure he knew enough of the English language to adequately describe the atrocious scene. In fact, he doubted anyone did. Hell, there probably wasn't a word to describe a travesty like this.
And the worst part? Adonis' initial revolt toward it stemmed from a waste of a renewable energy source. Who the hell was he becoming at this rate, and when did this utter lack of empathy crop up?
After clearing his throat, the corrupted senshi sought the captain's relatively unscathed bicep and began tugging him down the alley and past the mangled corpse. "Well, we really shouldn't stick around if we don't have to. I'm not really a fan of getting arrested for prostitution and murder." After all, being dressed that scantily was indeed a crime. The sooner they left that scene behind, the sooner he could breathe untainted air again and forget about the scent of blood lingering in the alley.
But the captain had asked another question, before Adonis sought the man's arm, and it was one he'd deliberately avoided answering until this point. Zippeite asked who he belonged to, and whether by some heinous stroke of luck or incredible oversight, Adonis didn't have a truthful name for that question. Was he supposed to belong to someone? Did Vespa have some sort of handler? Did Euclase have a mentor? He never thought to ask this question before, so he answered with one of the few officers he'd met before: "Oh, and about your earlier question... It's Serpentine."
Surely the deeply tanned captain wouldn't mind. He seemed amiable enough, despite the whip tricks that nearly deafened the blonde.
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Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 11:14 pm
Charm was usually disarming, obviously. So much of society seemed to let the charming and charismatic waltz any which way the wanted based on this strange and subjective factor.
Adonis certainly had it, but unfortunately Zippeite was not typical in his reaction to such agreeable demeanor and the broad shouldered teenager seemed to almost stiffen with every purr. Gold eyes watched with fear and paranoia, expecting and projecting facetiousness and falsehoods into his easy words. People didn't attempt to make you feel at ease for nothing, not for your benefit, he was certain.
It wasn't until they were walking and well past the corpse and the smell that still made him pinch and rub at his nose, that for all of his over alertness to tone, it was the first conscious note he seemed to make of several things an embarrassing moment in delay.
His line of sight managed to move to the senshi's hand on his arm, and his uniform.
"That-... That uniform looks about as unfortunate as the girls'," He stated blandly, recalling Nickeline's miniskirt and Acanthite's caged whatever. 'Fuku' was an unknown word to him and the ability to pick out similarities in clothing style and appearance was practically another language. Subtlties of such things had no chance, and he should've been commended for at least recognizing similar broad strokes, like how it was just occurring to him now Adonis was the first male corrupted senshi he had encountered. To his knowledge, anyway. They all had such long hair!
"Is that style a senshi thing?" He asked, but his mind was elsewhere, as well as whatever eye contact that would've been made because something else caught his attention. The holes. Acanthite kept hers covered by a scarf when they were in close proximity to stay his morbid curiosity but here, with Adonis so close to him, he stared liberally.
He sniffed again and roughly pinched his nose once more, the discomfort of the scene they left behind and his failure to exhibit some sense of moderation still tugging obnoxiously at the back of his guilty conscience. Whoever that man had been alive, whatever family was waiting for him at home, whatever job he had, whatever he was to society had no bearing to Zippeite. It never entered his mind. He was a two dimensional cut out display of rotting meat meant to serve his purpose in his own storyline and he had no human identity to the captain. He had not, in his mind, been assigned any personhood or value as anything other than a resource, and the guilt twisting in his stomach was at the thought of waste and failure in securing the proper usage of it.
And he thought he was suffering quite enough at the weight of that, if suffering was anything to call the pang of annoyance and shame being desperately pushed aside by the forefront of his thoughts that were instead hungrily focused on the strange outline of the dark void in the senshi's chest.
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Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 1:51 pm
Adonis nearly tuned out the youth's presence entirely as he fell into a more comfortable leadership role in the jumbled affair. Adonis stood as the shining beacon of direction in his own mind, guiding the wayward toward a far more accommodating and private venue in the depths of the alleyways. What remained of the man he tugged along was a nondescript bag of flesh, nothing much different from a warm cadaver, bereft of identifiable details and quips and thoughts and malformed understandings of the world beyond the two. And Adonis was entirely content to view their fresh meeting in such a positive light... until the boy opened his mouth again.
The words that eked out of his stuttering throat nearly coaxed a grimace out of the blonde, but he stayed that impulse in favor of maintaining a calm approach. Adonis knew he wasn't the one that designed his outfit, not even would he come up with such a morbid conglomeration in his dreams, but he still took offense to the 'unfortunate' comment because he wore it so well. Part of the reason the cosmic deity chose such an outfit for him was because he could turn the rather unnerving cobbling of skin and tape and heaven knows what into something more desirable to the human eye. Yet Zippeite certainly had a way with souring his mood...
Nevertheless, Adonis stubbornly maintained his amiable approach to the tanned captain. "Oh, you're talking about the uniforms for the other corrupted senshi? Azurite and Euclase and the like? Yes, they're quite similar; you have a good eye for it. I'm not sure why I ended up with something so similar to the girls, since Vespa certainly had pants and a very different uniform, more befitting of the whole military theme I'd say, but I also don't know why him and I have names so different from the rest of you..." Adonis trailed off in mild displeasure. It was obvious enough that Zippeite's attention was far more focused on other sights instead of his meager scraps of explanation toward his unique uniform. "Captain? My eyes are up here."
In all the time Adrian spent flirting with anyone in possession of legs and a working brain, he never imagined himself using that line.
Though Adonis was miffed that Zippeite wholly ignored him in favor of some cosmic anomaly he sustained just like any other Negaverse senshi, it didn't stop him from trying to explain the merits of such holes. "I've never met anyone who could explain why I'm stuck with these, but I think they're just good for giving an excellent view of my starseed." As an added bonus, Adonis reached within the hole and usurped the gem resting benignly within its confines. The strange jewel balanced easily on his fingertips, which rendered the starseed as nothing more than a novelty toy to the blonde. As he continued to speak, he gesticulated with the jewel hovering effortlessly over his fingertips. "Got any theories, captain?"Carneli here let me taunt you with this integral thing that gives me life
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Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2014 5:22 am
Zippeite was often the epitome of ineloquence, But this rarely stopped him from talking since he had been promoted. At the very least, as a lieutenant, he accepted his shortcomings and inarticulate manner with quiet disdain and often opted for silence over humiliation.
But things were different now. He had gone up a rank, and he was certainly above a senshi, those lower, assimilated creatures the Negaverse so graciously allowed into their fold with forgiveness and shelter in spite of the continued crimes of their species. And as a result he was almost oblivious to Adonis' disdain. Or maybe he just willfully ignored it.
He had always, even before joining the Negaverse, had a severe problem with his mental fantasy of how he was certain things should be colliding with reality in unfortunate ways, and this was likely gearing up with one of those cases. Adonis, for his rank and state of being, was not allowed the privilege of thinking less of him for his shortcomings. He just literally was not allowed.
This was the thread of understanding that remained at the back of Zippy's thoughts. And at the front was that starseed and the strange, cracked hole in the flesh over where it normally resided.
It's nature was curious, and the aesthetics and whatever reason behind them were fascinating. Especially since, as he could tell, it was an anomaly possessed only by specific senshi of the Negaverse and not any of their subclasses or the White Moon in their original and natural state.
It was relevant to his interested, but he was wholly ignorant about it.
"I don't claim to know anything about extraterrestrial anatomy," He ended up stating carefully and deliberately after a long silence of uncomfortable stares.
"Although I hear it may have something to do with certain connections being broken..." He didn't fully understand the explanation he was given about the rebirth cycle, but it was interesting all the same.
"Were you ever one of them? Do you remember what it was like?" The sensation of corruption for a convert was something he only just now realized he ever wanted to know, for all he feigned disinterest. Corruption and assimilation had disgusted him at one point, he thought elimination was much cleaner, but he could warm up to it's merits.
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Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 4:13 pm
Adonis simply stared, dumbfounded.
Extraterrestrial anatomy? The blonde thought incredulously. I knew he was weird from the get-go, but is he really so oblivious that he thinks I'm from another planet?
After clearing his throat to dismiss any previous fracture in his otherwise impeccable demeanor, Adonis closed the distance between himself and his newly-acquainted officer before finally casting an arm about the shorter man's shoulders. He gestured with his free hand, though he hadn't quite gotten around to dispensing his starseed into its rightful (albeit broken) home. "Unless Pennsylvania's a different planet, Captain, I don't think you have to worry about extraterrestrial anatomy. I'm just trying to understand this whole nonsense with the extra holes, which you don't seem to have." Though he met a solid handful of officers, all welcoming in one way or another, none featured holes like the corrupted senshi did. He hadn't quite put it together yet, and the answer Zippeite provided...
Was wholly and utterly lost on the blonde. Connections? What connections? Was Zippeite insisting that Adonis lost a bet at the blackjack table and couldn't pay his dues, so the Negaverse added a couple holes to mark him as a debtor? Unable to figure it out, Adonis brushed the notion aside for later speculations.
After slipping his starseed into its typical location in his chest, Adonis drummed his fingers on the captain's shoulder once before withdrawing his arm entirely in one fluid motion. He rounded to face the dusky-skinned captain more fully, though it required him to nearly grapevine to keep the pace through the alley. Idly he wondered if he'd trip over something. "I've never been a White Moon senshi, but they like to try to woo me to their court. Seems like everyone wants me, doesn't it?" Though it demanded active restraint, Adonis avoided a tangent covering his vast and limitless merits as an asset to the Negaverse side. "So I don't know what it was like, I can only guess, but I've met someone who has.
"She's a little off her rocker, but a gem of a senshi named Ate was on their side once. Strange girl. She said their goals were pretty pure, and they're not even structured like we are, but they really just wander around looking to get in our way. She wasn't too satisfied with that, compared the Negaverse to a new coat, and after that I lost her." Not that he minded. Righting his course so he could anticipate future obstructions, Adonis continued. "Haven't you ever talked to one before? If your'e curious, the best person to ask would be one of them, right?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 8:59 pm
Zippeite's face seemed to twist and contort at the sudden lack of dead air between the two of them. It hadn't been the first time he had been touched by the senshi, but it seemed to be the first time he was truly awake for it.
He did not like this closeness, and recalled a simpler time when he could just assault the twisted thing without feelings of guilt or obligation.
But there was something that made him exhale in a stilted series of huffs that seemed to work their way up to a vague semblance of smugness that twisted the corners of his mouth in just a very, very small way.
"You mean you don't know?" He taunted. "About the war in the past? With the Moon Queen? And all the destruction senshi caused ages ago? Or that you're all connected to your dead planets in space?"
No, planet was not the appropriate word for the variety of space objects for which senshi were named. It was a very unfortunate show of ignorance and hubris fitting an immature high schooler on his part that he hadn't even noticed slip through.
"You belong up there, you are all just here because you were too incompetent to keep your own societies running. What the hell do you think we're even doing? Defending our thriving rock from your invading kind."
He jerked away and raked his nose between his thumb and forefinger before he sniffed and glanced around at his surroundings, taking sincere note of them for the first time since he had been led away from his botched harvest.
"You're not even human, that's why something empowering like Chaos bores holes in you, it's not meant for you. You're just borrowing it from the people who were meant to use it, to save our home from your less enlightened relatives," He sneered.
Whether it was true or not, it was clearly meant to be derisive and degrading. Zippy was a school yard bully trying to tell you how much you sucked in the most blunt and inelegant way possible.
Ate, or at least her existence as a senshi who remembered being on the other side, interested him. But he didn't want to show interest or ask questions. He wanted to keep it close to his chest and hide the fact that Adonis might actually have useful information for him after all, even if it meant figuratively shooting himself in the foot.
And he did so by moving his arm in a half executed and awkwardly abandoned wave as he turned to depart, intending to go his separate way from the wretched creature on whom he had projected enough of his misplaced angst and disgust for the night.
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Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2014 10:37 pm
The interesting little tirade that Zippeite posed offered a host of confusing questions that had the blonde furrowing his brow toward the captain in a seamless cross between confusion and suspicion of absurdity. The captain readily struck him down repeatedly in his explanations, along with the rest of the senshi - despite their obvious differences - which might've affected him were he a lesser man. But Adonis entrenched himself in a host of obscene self-confidence, in which he wrote off the man's answers as only fitting the majority of senshi. And when the boy's curiously vociferous diatribe concluded, Adonis shifted his weight to his other hip and cocked his head just slightly to offer the man a sidelong glance.
Adonis clicked his tongue and braced himself with one hand flattened against the back of a building before he continued. "I know about all that," Adonis returned, mostly to himself. "But I'm not from the stars. If I was, I'd remember it. But I've always lived in Pennsylvania..." Trailing off, the blonde's gaze drifted down the alley, where cars passed with frequency, offering a rush of hissing air in their wake. "So who taught that stuck-up cat that I'm not even human?" What other dismal misinformation did officers operate on with corrupted senshi? That they were exactly as they were before, crown jewels of broken civilizations? That they're ripe for abuse or misdirection?
Adonis concluded that the boy was far too strange for his own good, both due to his jolting, stilted actions and his bizarre interpretation of senshi. Maybe the blonde didn't have all the answers, but he didn't need them to know that Zippeite's tirade was full of misinformation.
The blonde senshi dispersed the remainder of what irritation he held by running a hand through his hair. Afterward he started toward the mouth of the alley at a slow pace, stepping over wayward cans or discarded burger wrappers as he went, always willing to hold his breath should the pungent stench of death hit him suddenly. Zippeite practically bathed in it, and the blonde worried that murder clung to his clothes with ruthless inefficiency. Perhaps the captain wasn't bothered, but Adonis was loathe to wear that stench for any longer than he had to.
But as he ventured into the streets once more, he suddenly felt relieved. Nothing changed with that stupidly pointless talk. The world still operated just fine, alien origins or not. Now satisfied, the Skin Senshi departed toward his half-painted residence.
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