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 Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2017 12:06 pm
He hadn't seen the other Lieutenant for a few weeks now, which meant that it was about time for a rendezvous, Aurostibite had decided. He had made arrangements to meet up with him at an old abandoned factory on the edge of town, something that had used to be an ice dispenser back in the day but now stood tall and imposing and completely empty.
He was waiting now, Aurostibite leaning against a wall. The crystals were useful in communication, and teleporting was an excellent and fast way to arrive somewhere, but he'd arrived too early and now was simply wondering what would be the best way to go about this entire thing. After all, he and Jet weren't exactly friends - in fact, at the best of times, they argued consistently, but he'd agreed to help out and Aurostibite would stick to that agreement.
A gust of cold wind blew in from a shattered window, and Aurostibite lifted his chin, head cocking slightly to listen for any unusual sounds - or feel for any unwanted power signatures, but there was nothing.
Yet.
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Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2017 3:38 pm
Why Aurostibite wanted to talk to him, Jet had no idea. Maybe he was jealous that Gadolinite turned out to be, so far, an excellent recruit. He was motivated, enjoyed the power, and made sure his quotas were filled, which helped ease the tension Jet felt in order to compensate for any discrepancies.
But he agreed to the meeting, regardless. He didn’t care that Aurostibite didn’t like him. In fact, that was the very reason he’d gone to him for help in the first place, because at least that way nothing would be sugarcoated. He would be told when he was not meeting the standard expected of him, which was all he really wanted. He didn’t care to be told he was doing a good job; he just wanted to know how he could improve.
Jet arrived silently, teleporting several yards away from where he was supposed to meet up with the other General, not even surprised that the other was there first. He was never too sure what to think of Aurostibite; he was calm and collected for the most part, but he had enough of his own recruits and his extensive experience that separated him from a teenage General like himself.
“Good evening,” he greeted, his arms lifting to cross over his chest as he quietly approached. It was chilly that evening, but at least they weren’t completely exposed to the elements. “It’s been a while. Has there been something I’ve done that can be improved on or corrected that you’ve noticed?” he asked, figuring he might as well assume that this meeting was to criticize him for whatever failures Aurostibite or others thought he’d committed.
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Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:25 am
Fortunately for Jet, Aurostibite was hardly the jealous type, though it was hard to read any of this from his consistently stoic face. He felt the power signature burst into abrupt life as the other arrived, a flare of strength and Chaos that was somehow relieving, because the Order signatures were so terribly bright that it almost ached.
"Good evening," came the returned reply, Aurostibite lifting his head to meet Jet's gaze, his own expression calm and as unruffled as ever. He had forgotten how different Jet looked now, as a General, than as he had in all the years that Aurostibite had known him. There was a new brand of confidence along with the bravado; Aurostibite wondered how truthful it was.
"Not in particular," he said truthfully, because it was perfectly honest. Aurostibite came to stand before Jet, giving him a once over, his own arms folded across his chest as well. Somewhere behind him, a low, crooning sound could be heard, a cluck of a beak.
"I simply wanted to know how you were faring with your newest recruit and any others you might have gained, or anything else that might have happened recently."
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Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:09 pm
Jet frowned, glancing away from the other general so he could casually inspect the building they were meeting in, probably trying a little too hard to not look as though the question made him bristle in frustration and annoyance.
Was this some kind of evaluation? Was Aurostibite making sure he hadn’t done something he regretted, like helping Jet? He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it when people felt the need to check up on him, like they were expecting him to fail, like they didn’t think a kid could actually make it on his own. It reminded him too much of the people in their suits and fake smiles and scripted questions and conversations that visited him all too often over the course of the first year he was on his own, and only slightly less frequently in the couple years after that.
“Gadolinite has a lot of potential and has not disappointed me yet. You were right to think he was worthy to recruit,” he said, finally lifting his gaze back up to Aurostibite, his expression arranged in a way that it was devoid of most of his emotion, except he was sure that his eyes betrayed him.
He was not a child. He did not need to be looked after. He liked to think that his brother would have been proud of him; something that he avoided bringing up especially now that he was a General. In the past he might have revealed parts of his life, but no longer. It wasn’t anyone else’s business.
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Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 10:57 pm
He knew Jet well enough just from simple exposure to the other general that he was like a peacock whose feathers got ruffled every time he was annoyed. Aurostibite's expression remained calm, even as he could feel the tension rising between the two of them, shifting his feet a little.
"Good," he said, "I'm glad to hear it."
There was a pause, the air between them thick with everything unspoken. Aurostibite's gaze narrowed ever so slightly; from behind them, another sound, the same low crooning, a click and a shuffle of feet across the pavement. He seemed hardly bothered by this, however.
"You seem upset," Aurostibite observed."Why?"
He thought he might know the answer, but it didn't hurt to ask, anyway.
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Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:28 pm
“I’m not upset,” Jet countered, probably a bit too quickly to be very convincing. Okay, definitely too quickly to be convincing, which he cursed himself for. He didn’t want to reveal his weaknesses to someone who already disliked him, but he was doing a poor job of keeping everything to himself.
He blamed his youth for it. He knew he’d been forced to grow up faster than many others, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still young. But he was not a child. He didn’t need people checking up on him, and he could manage on his own.
“There was a senshi that caused me some trouble the other night. She managed to get away. Gave me a few cuts and bruises in the process,” he revealed instead.
It wasn’t a lie, except for the fact that she’d left him alive for some reason he didn’t know, but dealing with the senshi with the tentacles and strange ability to know exactly where he was going to reappear when he teleported actually happened. It was easier to tell the truth about something than to let Aurostibite know the real problem.
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Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 1:56 pm
A black brow rose, Aurostibite clearly not taking what Jet had said to be gospel truth. But he wasn't about to push it, either, because if Jet wasn't about to talk about things, then he would just simply let things be as they were and that was that.
"Senshi tend to do that." Not a dismissive statement, nor a mocking one, but almost a sympathy, except Aurostibite was not usually a sympathetic person. This instead was merely a statement of fact, something that was ultimately a truth upon which they both agreed.
"Are you angry that she got away, or angry about something else?"
Aurostibite walked a few steps closer, and from the shadows behind him came a large creature, wings tucked against its sides, its beak clicking together. Aurostibite lifted a hand, and Behellagh came ambling to him, bumping her head against his leg.
"I'm not trying to pry, by the way," said Aurostibite, as he stroked his youma gently. "I'm merely trying to understand you."
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Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 9:08 pm
“I’m angry I wasn’t good enough to take her down,” he said, not quite a snap, but there was a certain amount of tension to his words that made it clear that he was holding himself back. Jet knew he wasn’t a good fighter. He knew he wasn’t very physically strong and relied a lot on his weapons and his speed. He couldn’t use his hands to fight for fear of them being damaged, and the piano was one of the few things he lived for.
“She knew where I would move, somehow. I haven’t seen that before when they were just – ready,” he growled to himself, his hands gripped into fists by his side as he glared down at the ground. His eyes lifted to watch the youma that approached Aurostibite, but made no comment on her. He didn’t have a youma yet, and part of him was afraid that he would somehow fail in obtaining one that would be loyal to him.
“Why would you want to understand me?” Jet frowned, his brows furrowing in confusion, suspicion. He was just a kid with a bad attitude who happened to be a General. He didn’t know what there was to try and understand about him.
Besides, Aurostibite didn’t even like him. At least from what he could understand of the other man.
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Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2017 8:28 am
Aurostibite's gaze flickered across Jet's face, a look of faint annoyance touching his features before dissipating as quickly as it had come. He couldn't say that he didn't understand the concept of not being strong enough, or not feeling strong enough; but Jet was also a General, which said a lot in and of itself.
It made him irrationally irritated. Aurostibite tamped down on it.
"It happens," he said, and then frowned, fingers smoothing over Behellagh in a consistent, familiar gesture, something that he had long been doing. "She...predicted your next move, is what you're saying? Is that a branch of her magic, perhaps?"
It was true that he did not like Jet. Not after everything that had happened, not after the gaping chasm that lay between them in terms of how they went about things. But he did not hate him, not nearly as much as Mintaka did, though her hatred was a facet of his own dislike.
Aurostibite's gaze was appraising, contemplative.
"Enemies closer and all that," he said at length, though it was a strange quip from someone who did not joke under normal circumstances. "I have a vested interested in all of the Generals of the Negaverse."
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Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 5:07 pm
Jet was busy kicking at the ground with the toe of his boot, so he didn’t see the annoyance that flickered across Aurostibite’s expression, but he didn’t need to see it to know how he was viewed. It didn’t bother him, at least not like it used to. He just wanted to grow stronger, one way or another.
“Yes,” he stressed, knowing that the other man probably didn’t believe him. “She predicted it somehow. She was the first who was able. Some can guess, but she was already ready instead of just reacting,” he tried to explain, shaking his head when asked if that was just her magic. “She had these… creepy tentacle things. They were sharp, like they had teeth or something,” he grumbled, kicking the ground once more.
Somehow, even though he hated it, Aurostibite always made him feel like a child. Even if the man didn’t do anything to outright refer to him as one, Jet still felt as though there was something he could never overcome with this man.
“I was following orders back then,” he said after several moments of ignoring the last thing Aurostibite said, and although he knew it was just a saying and maybe the other General didn’t mean it quite as literally, Jet added, “You’re not my enemy.” In retrospect, Aurostibite had done some pretty sketchy things regarding someone from the White Moon back then, too. He probably should have been reported.
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:38 am
He had no idea which senshi Jet was referring to. Aurostibite had never even heard of someone who could predict the moves of someone else, which made it all the more daunting, his brows furrowing together underneath the brim of his hat.
He also had never heard of anybody with creepy tentacle things. Aurostibite made a mental note to keep an eye out or anyone fitting this description, his eyes flickering towards Jet, watching the stubborn, annoyed movement of his kicks to the ground.
"That's...new," he said, after a long moment, glancing down at Behellagh, who crooned and placed her head against his leg, her wings ruffling. She really was quite a beautiful specimen of a youma, if one took the care to look at her properly. "And aggravating."
The comment about I was following orders back then took Aurostibite by surprise. He turned his head, looking back at Jet again, his expression neutral, in spite of a second flutter of irritation through his veins, an instinctive reaction.
"Perhaps you aren't," he said idly. "As for following orders, well..."
He couldn't say that he hadn't done his fair share of that. Hadn't he just yelled at Thraen in regards to following Metallia's will? Still, that felt somehow different than what Jet was referring to, Aurostibite's lips pressing together, his expression calculating.
"I prefer not to antagonize those within the Negaverse, but sometimes it's unavoidable."
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Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 9:00 pm
There was a disgruntled, scoffing noise from the back of Jet’s throat as he keep his eyes lowered from Aurostibite’s face, avoiding his gaze. He felt like a child, and he couldn’t help but feel as though the other General looked at him like one, too. He didn’t blame him, he didn’t blame anyone, but it was frustrating and annoying and bothered him more than he could say.
"Okay, well… if you’re done playing check up with me to make sure you keep your enemies close or whatever, then I guess I’ll go back to doing whatever you think I’m going to be doing," he muttered under his breath, his eyes only lifting to glance at the youma.
He had a lot to learn, but he couldn’t imagine someone like Aurostibite being friendly with him for no reason. Not that he was being all that friendly, but taking the time out of his day to meet with him definitely said something.
"Unless you were planning on cashing in on that favor I owe you," he said through gritted teeth, ignoring the heat of embarrassment in his cheeks for having to owe anyone anything. He had asked Aurostibite for help with learning how to recruit others, and he wasn’t disappointed with Gadolinite, but knowing that the man could ask him at any time weighed on him.
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Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 8:50 am
He was watching Jet, though Jet wasn't looking at him. There was a certain amount of tension in the air, crackling unpleasantly between them, though Aurostibite couldn't have said which of them was causing the majority of it. He did not see Jet as a child, not anymore - but he also did not know how he thought of him.
Mostly. It was a complicated thing.
"I'm not monitoring your every move," said Aurostibite, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "You're a General. I don't have the time nor the patience to keep tabs on every single person within the Negaverse, just the ones I have a vested interest in. You came to me for help, and I will continue to help you."
He'd almost forgotten about the favor. Aurostibite's gaze narrowed ever so slightly, but after a moment, he shook his head, and Behellagh shifted beside him, her wings rustling as she tapped claws against the ground beneath them.
"Not yet," said Aurostibite. "I'm holding onto that for later."
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Posted: Fri May 12, 2017 8:09 pm
Jet made a small noise of disbelief when Aurostibite explained that he didn’t have the time or patience to keep up with everyone. Just the ones he had a vested interest in, but not to the point that he was monitoring Jet’s every move. So there was something about him that made Aurostibite want to keep tabs on him, but not so much that it was too regular of a thing. Okay, whatever.
"Don’t wait too long," he grumbled, wanting to get whatever it was that the other General had planned for him over with. He didn’t like owing people things, especially since he’d lived most of his life with the intention of not owing anyone anything.
But Seth was a good recruit. He was pleased that Aurostibite had suggested him, had convinced him that the other man would be good for the Negaverse. And good for a recruit for Jet. He was sure that Gadolinite would have flourished with just about any General, but he was especially glad that he could say the corrupt senshi was his.
"If you don’t want anything else…" he grumbled, irritated by the almost too casual meeting, turning to walk away, from the other, wanting to give enough berth before teleporting away.
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