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 Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2017 2:59 pm
The cold sunlight glinted furiously in his eyes, and he squinted to staunch the sudden intrusion. Struggling, he tried to piece together what precesely happened -
Elex was sitting inside, he remembered, in the study where he concentrated on english homework. Apart from an open book on grammar conventions, he poured over the Antigone play for a formal essay. Yes, these thoughts grew clear enough, as he remembered his frustrations with line and verse in an ancient manner of speech, and the plethora of meanings to be drawn from syntax and diction. Class notes lay on his left, unuused, while a highlighter sat in his right hand. Post-it stickers lounged above the book, waiting for him to apply yet another arrow to yet another passage for yet another pertinent note. The time was, he thought, six in the evening. Dinner came at six-thirty.
But dinner he would not have, he realized, as the table simply vanished. And not just the table - all of his surroundings from the far bookshelves to his father's desk space exchanged places with the crown of an old Victorian building. The shingles felt strange underfoot, and Faustite struggled to balance on the apex on such short notice. His clothes changed - he remembered not what he wore before, but knew he donned the uniform only on arrival. Surprise was not an expression he often endorsed, but could not stop himself at the immediate summon.
And then he remembered: he was scheduled for a meeting. With the Negaverse.
Interaction often escaped him, and Faustite found himself at a loss for words. Here he stood before one of the Negaverse's senshi, Chrysocolla if he remembered correctly, and he nigh missed the appointment. For Antigone, he supposed. For social obligation. For resuming a role he never fully enjoyed.
What was he to say now? He swallowed, folded his arms behind his back, then started. "I lost track of time." He knew the warnings - that the Negaverse found tenuous use in him, that his life depended on his performance. That he very nearly failed to show to a meeting. "I'm sorry."
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Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2017 3:20 pm
For all the fear Chrysocolla's rank might have created, for all the fear being summoned from his own life Faustite might have had -- she wasn't threatening in the least, really; she was short and pudgy, with deep dark circles under her eyes and a makeshift plaster over her nose, one side of her lower jaw and connecting neck bruised all plum (fading, so it must have been at least a week old from how it blended into the rest of her skin; but a severe hit, for the coloration of it). She waved, politely, and beckoned for him to sit down across from her; there was a box from Dunkin' Donuts under one arm, and she sat on her knees.
"Please don't apologize -- I lose track of time really badly, and honestly, I've had enough people yell at me for being late to meetings," Chrysocolla winced. "I don't want you to go through that too. It sucks, a lot, and it shouldn't have to happen to anyone -- especially someone who's as new as you are. Would you like to introduce yourself a little more personally than your database entry? Or, um." She fumbled for a second. "Donut? Anyways, icebreaker, I guess: I'm Sailor Chrysocolla, I'm sixteen years old, and I've been part of the Negaverse since I was fifteen." Her smile was awkward, a little trembly, but it was genuine enough.
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Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2017 2:11 pm
Faustite wasn't often lost for words - he simply chose not to use them. In this moment, however, when looking over the stocky girl with her immensely long mint green hair and the bruising blooming over half her face, the donuts in hand, the lackadaisical demeanor - he opened his mouth once, closed it, and furrowed his brow for a moment. He felt surprised, supremely surprised, given the impression that Umber left of the Negaverse as a cold, unfeeling machine. Was he wrong to think it churned bone and blood and gnashed away lives for its daily sustenance? maybe not; maybe Chrysocolla stood as one of the last inextinguishable lights among their ranks.
For there was certainly life there, in how she almost looked relaxed despite the plaster holding her nose together. In how she balanced a box of donuts on one hand. In how she invited him to introduce himself as a person over a simple mineral - even as she did the same. No, Faustite reserved the right to be surrpised here. She was surprising, and he appreciated that. Most people weren't.
The holes in her head and chest surprised him too, and while he recognized them from a vague description in the training manual, he imagined them differently. More geometric. Smaller too, perhaps. Less jagged around the edges, less dark and utterly stark against living skin. The holes they bore seeemd less like holes and more like a spreading evaporation of their being. Their long hair looked cumbersome as well - too impractical for any sort of battle. But they were the Negaverse's primary source for magic, as stars plucked from the sky and weaponized. He felt bad for her, really, and not due to any piteous images she might have evoked with such a colorful face and a box of donuts brandished like a peace treaty.
But he knew to keep his opinions to himself. "There's not much point in rehashing a name you already know. Elex Yorke is my other name. Fifteen years old, new recruit. I'll be sixteen in April, but I'm already tired of hearing the numbers - like your success can't be measured until you're legal." Maybe that was speaking too much, venturing beyond the earnest leave that Chrysocolla granted. Faustite lacked a gauge for such militarized formality himself. He approached, too, in a restless step.
When he reached her, relatively speaking, he chose one of the proffered donuts. "And I really like eclaires," he added as an aside. He knew not to glance at it. He knew to start eating at invitation.
"You've been around for a while." Fifteen to sixteen was a simple gesture - he could claim that much of himself in a mere two months in the Negaverse. But Chrysocolla somehow pulled him through space to this very location, powered up, and looked no worse for it. Her face suggested deep battle, and a strength seeped from her in a miasma. Experience wasn't hard to recognize from where he was standing. "And you're a lot different from Umber. How did you join the Negaverse?"
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Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2017 5:35 pm
Chrysocolla's face lit up, when Faustite took a donut and introduced himself informally; she looked like she'd expected to be told no, that this sort of thing was pointless, not militaristic as was befitting of the Negaverse. And maybe it was (it honestly was), but -- no matter how much Cinnabar tried to make it of her, Umber, Laurelite -- Chrysocolla was no soldier, even with a mineral name. She was a magical girl with a hopeful heart at the basest, and the precision came naturally to her but the rigidity did not.
(Heh. Rigidity. If she hadn't been a Senshi, she'd still be waiting for pieces of her cheekbone to fuse back together for months, maybe. Even as tenuous as it was, and she didn't want to stretch her face too much, they'd been pinned in place and left to heal - so much faster than any normal person.)
"It's nice to meet you," she smiled, and took a donut for herself - jelly-filled, first. "And I'll return the favor: my other name is Poppy Anania-Sedgwick..." Her voice kept an even-low keel; even as secluded as they were, there was the chance someone could overhear. When Faustite asked how she'd joined the Negaverse, though, Chrysocolla laughed nervously; her hands shook, for a second, before they stilled.
"It's really all kind of blurry at this point...I used to fight for the other side when I was fourteen, I think? And after I committed two murders, Umber brought me in for retraining, and I pretty much lost all my memories." She shrugged. It didn't seem to be that important to her. "But I don't remember very much from before then, so I can't tell you. Oh, um --" her eyes widened, and she patted the hole on her forehead. "You can touch, if you want; I know it's kind of weird, right? That one's just kind of like a tattoo, though, but the chest one you can see my starseed through. It's neat."
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Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2017 8:02 pm
Poppy Anania-Sedgwick. And who is Poppy Anania-Sedgwick? Where does she come from? What does she do? She fights until her nose is broken and her face is half-shattered. But that's her other persona, Chrysocolla - and Poppy Anania-Sedgwick is her biggest secret.
Faustite learned to watch for nonverbal responses since his earliest years, when guided incessantly by a life he never asked for. Looking to hands, to necks, to the line of shoulders never bothered him once. The tremor of hends never went unnoticed but he knew better than to mention a word of it. High social protocol mattered little here, among a secret militaristic organization, but he wasn't looking to cozy up to the right amount of power. No, what he witnessed here was a second of weakness, and weakness garnered trust through a modicum of dignity.
One hand remained fisted behind his back while he munched on his donut. Chocolate frosting gave way to dentition indentations while he listened to what little she could explain about herself. He knew there wasn't any way to know what it was like - to never recall who one was beyond a single year. "We have Umber in common. He was the one that caught me and pulled me into the Negaverse myself. You really don't remember anything about what it was like before? Not even fragments of memories that you might catch in liminal spaces? Aren't you curious about it?" He didn't push further, however. The curiosity burned, but he could stifle that much.
With the donut in one hand, he reached out with the other. Narrow fingers executed a quick brush against her forehead where the blackened star lingered, and he found her words quite true. His index touched delicately, alternating between normal skin and the strange hole. He detected a change in texture that a tattoo could not confer. Afterward, his hand dropped to his side while he looked to the hole in her chest, and most certainly, he saw a gem similar to that which he saw Umber steal. "That looks dangerous. Won't someone reach out and take it from you?" It's not quite like stealing your heart.
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Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2017 8:24 pm
When Faustite pressed, even if it was so little as that, Chrysocolla's knuckles went white with tension -- she put the box of donuts down beside her and let her fingers twist into the fabric of her tunic, her lips thin. She took a bite of her donut and wiped the jelly off her face, delicate, careful not to aggravate her bruising any further than it already was.
"Maybe when I was first recruited. Nothing anymore. Even the stuff I remember remembering...if I try and think about it, it's all so much smoke, I guess. Someone with purple hair...pretty much everything I know is what people told me about how I was, then. But it doesn't matter." She shrugged. "Whoever she was, she's been dead for a long time. There's no way to bring her back." Chrysocolla took a deep breath, one, two, and her shoulders settled.
"I could just reach in and take it out right now and I'd be fine, honestly. It's a thing about us corrupt senshi -- we can survive without it, for a little. If you wanted," and her tone and face betrayed nothing but the same curiosity, eager-to-please kindness, "I could take yours out, but you'd pass out immediately. If I take mine out, you could feel it, if that'd help. Did Umber teach you how to pull starseeds or drain energy? I - I mean, um. That's why we're here, after all." She rolled her eyes. "Also, Umber's kind of a d**k, and I don't trust him with Lieutenants. I didn't train under him, but there's just....something about him I don't trust." Her brows furrowed, searching out a memory that didn't seem to come.
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Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 2:40 pm
Thick lashes lowered when she worked out her tensions into her tunic, and Faustite knew he struck a chord. 'It's all so much smoke, I guess.' Smoke coiled into the endst of her uniform, saturated into her hair. Smoke that charred her memories away and ate up so much of her disposition. And, perhaps just as succinctly, the smoke withered away into the clear horizon. Torment did not leave her untouched.
'Whoever she was, she's been dead for a long time. There's no way to bring her back.' Was that your choice? Divest yourself of the person you were because you couldn't remember her, because you don't want to take responsibility for acts you can't recall? You look as satisfied with the results as the husband who spends his days at the bar instead of with his wife. It's easier to forget what's broken and leave it behind. And what better choice is there than the easiest one? A corner of his mouth twitched just so.
Faustite respected the boundary. He chewed his donut while he listened through her next explanations, where his attentive gaze swapped between making eye contact and looking into the starseed hole. The way it suspended itself within the blackened canal of her chest, taunting all who looked upon it… Was it her will to display it, or was that simply the way of the Negaverse? He knew of no such holes on his person, even without the help of a mirror. He pondered its purpose. He wondered how she felt about it, if she felt anything at all. What was it like for one's starseed to stare out at the enemy? What was it like for that starseed to goad a combatant into reaching for it?
Chryosocolla mentioned passing out immediately, and Faustite frowned somewhat. Prone forms came to mind with ease, slackened in their lack of life. He would be no different - another severed thread. "Another time," he answered with a wave of his hand. He didn't want to know that fate.
"I don't want to touch a starseed," he admitted openly. "It's enough to know that our souls are distilled down into a crystal that fits in the palms of our hands." The violation of sanctity was not lost on him. "But he hasn't gotten to energy draining - or pulling starseeds. He said I needed to learn how to defend myself first. That taking to those duties attract unwanted attention." He finished his donut in quick fashion and brushed the remaining grease between his fingers. "He's a sociopath. Human life doesn't matter to him the way it should."
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Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 4:20 pm
Chrysocolla might have found it odd or uncomfortable, once for someone else's eyes to linger on her chest -- but she didn't pay thoughts like that too much heed anymore. This body, like all else, was just meat too if she took her starseed out; it meant nothing beyond who and what she was, just signs like labels. She would have done anything for the Negaverse, if anyone had asked, and to that end everything else was just meat.
It made it easier to think of the bodies that way, too. She wasn't killing people. It was just like visiting a butcher's shop, a slaughterhouse; they were dead but they didn't know it yet, still flailing, still pleading. Just nerve endings. She'd heard, once, that some tentacled foodstuffs would twist and flail with the right chemical reaction, parodies of life: that was all it was.
"Umber," she said dismissively, "is a horrible person, and he disappeared for like six months earlier, so ******** him, honestly. I didn't disappear for six months. I do my job, and I don't go and putz around the woods or something like a caveman." Chrysocolla sniffed, faux-daintily, and returned to the business of her donut. "I won't push the starseed business; but you'll probably want to learn what it feels like, so if anyone tries to discipline you you'll be prepared for it. Would you like me to drain you first so you know what it feels like?"
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Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 8:51 am
Umber disappeared for six months? Faustite filed the information away for later reference; who knows what the general was up to? Chrysocolla's disdain for him was not missed; Faustite doubted that any quantity of magic could fully dismiss humankind's incessant need to grapple with itself. Were they two strong personalities destined to butt heads? Chrysocolla's informal approach clashed with Umber's all-business approach at the outset, but suspicion lingered toward a deeper reason.
"You think it's beneficial to know what it's like? I've never seen anyone rise after they got their starseed ripped out. It was all a spread of dead eyes looking back at the world. Indifference incarnate. Lights out to the rest of your life." That utter vulnerability, that immediate jeopardy in which his life was steeped in precarity at the beck of someone else's whim - was that something Chrysocolla dreamed of at night? When staring out at the world, did she delight in thinking about how a starseed fit against the palm of her hand? Conversely, some dreamed of surrendering that much of their personal responsibility to life. Others sought it for baser reasons. Would he turn out to be one of those people, relieved by the notion that for a few seconds, they weren't the ones shouldering the weight of their own lives? In some ways, he thought so; he never asked for socialite responsibilities.
"If I had to choose, I would pick draining first. Telling someone to retire his life to you is a lot to expect." Survival instinct overwrote a lot of behavior, he knew. Would the human race have survived without it? Survivalism curbed so many unhappy lives from ending, and now they live on in filth. Was that a better choice?
Allowing Chrysocolla to rip his starseed out - he suspected that, if she was anything like Umber, she could simply do so without his sanction. He would learn one way or another about the experience of it, and that would form a part of his truth. Chrysocolla offered him the option. Umber wouldn't. And Umber, he expected, may not return it. If he had to know the experience, Chrysocolla was his best shot. All mint-green hair, donuts and kindness to mask the missing pieces. Maybe she would remember some part of herself in it.
Maybe he just waxed romantic over nothing at all.
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Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 12:10 pm
"It helps," Chrysocolla clarified, "to know what it feels like when someone grabs it without pulling. It's kind of unpleasant, I guess?" She shrugged with a bewildered smile, finishing off the last of her donut and not immediately going for another. "Like I said, if you want I can take mine out, it's not fatal to corrupt senshi to have ours out of our body. Not immediately. So you could get a better grasp of it." Only so much meat, at the butcher's shop; there to be used for its' purpose. So it was. So it was. Her eyes went a little cloudy for a second, trying to grab a memory that wasn't there, a hand in her chest and a call beyond her means - but nobody who remembered was here, anyways.
"Give me your hand," she instructed, not unkindly but a little more forcefully than prior. "You'll have a better idea of how draining works when I tell you exactly when I start. You'll be better at it in general, probably."
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Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 8:26 am
"Doesn't it disappoint you to know that our souls, the very cusp of our being, is nothing more than a rock stored in meat? That a flick of the wrist could have you destroyed?" Faustite saw no reason to explore the physicalities of ripping a starseed out when the repercussions were laid so plain and bare. She labeled it unpleasant, buried it in litotes, danced around the implications in the sentence alone. No romantic would survive initation in the Negaverse with such sordid information as that. He wondered, then, if Poppy Anania-Sedgwick had ever dreamt of a world, and if that world was so bleak as this. She cited no memories before; maybe she forgot how to dream.
"I don't want to touch a starseed. Nor yours, or a stranger's, or even Umber's. I've seen it before, and that's enough." Faustite guarded the bitterness from his tone.
He still knew to be compliant, and offered hand at her behest. He wondered if he would feel pain, much like when Umber indoctrinated him into the Negaverse. Maybe draining felt no different than a creeping exhaustion as one would expect from heavy exercise. Maybe it felt like nothing at all.
Apathy was cheap and prevalent these days, spread by the digital age. What surprise would it be if draining felt much the asme?daekie so sorry about the wait! hw and life >:
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Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:05 pm
"If I thought too much about that," Chrysocolla said, dismissive, "I'd still wonder why Umber hadn't killed me, I think. To me, knowing consciousness is stored in something mundane means can't even touch is freeing. You're not one of them any more, anyways." It was hard to tell what she meant, with the way her eyes flicked off into the distance, watching a stray bird go by.
"That's fine. I won't make you." She felt no need to mention eating a starseed; she never would, and she kept none on hand anyways. She knew well enough Umber did, but then again, the General had never been very hands-on with her even though she had technically been his recruit -- what he ate was none of her business, even if she found it distantly sickening, in some back corner of her mind.
Chrysocolla trailed fingers over Faustite's exposed wrist, then, and bit her lip as she focused; drawing the energy into her hand, letting the shimmering orb form under her fingers. It came so naturally to her.
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Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 8:57 am
Faustite smirked, though only slightly. The thought tickled him - that the Negaverse was built on so much ignorance and straightforward thinking. Like the lot of them donned blinders just to get through their workweeks. Some of them, he suspected, didn't care anymore. In this hateful shell of a city, violence desensitized well enough that they could detach themselves from their work and probably feel better for it. They killed people and stole energy, yet no one wanted to talk about that part. The elephant waited under the lampshade.
That Chrysocolla accepted his vehemence against starseeds was relieving, and Faustite relaxed somewhat for it. They fostered fundamentally differing opinions over the stars in their hearts, and his own might change as hers most surely had, and he would find himself wrenching lives away from those rightful owners. If that day arose, he hoped someone with the strength of moral character would end his practice of starseed ripping. He wondered just how far the world would have fallen by then. Was he lucky if there wasn't a world by the time he caught up with the notion of starseed ripping? He liked the taste of that irony.
But there wasn't time to dwell on it - not with Chrysocolla's fingers on his pulse and a sensation of tiredness that grew on him so subtly that he took no notice until the drain was well underway. "How strange. I feel it now." An orb formed in her hand, deep purple and whorling with the darklit sparks of brimming energy. He looked to it, then looked to her face, then to her hand clasped over his wrist. How she managed it, he knew not - but he recognized the practice as energy draining. The field manual issued to him offered at least that much in recognition. A concentrated effort, as he understood it. But the training guide never mentioned the specific practice and process that went into draining, so if he wanted to surprise his superior by returning the favor, the exploit stood high chance of failing.
Still, they made contact with one another, and that option stood open. Faustite imagined a burgeoning orb no different than Chrysocolla's forming in his own hand, and hoped that this method might somehow qualify for draining energy.daekie feel free to have his efforts fail; he's basically shooting in the dark so it makes sense for his 'attempts' to not come up with anything!
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Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2017 8:59 pm
If Chrysocolla suspected any traitorous thought of Faustite, she didn't confess to it; there was no crime in disagreeing as long as you kept your mouth shut. It was something she knew, and knew well, and as long as he kept his thoughts to himself she would do nothing about it. She was perceptive enough to know -- and gentle enough to not act on it.
Starseeds had never passed her lips. She had never destroyed someone's life, someone's soul, with her teeth. Not all at once.
"You're thinking of it like...forming a shape, right?" Her lips pursed in curiosity, and she looked at his hand and back to his face. "It's...not really like that, actually. It forms an orb, but I've seen people enchant other stuff to drain energy too. Think of it like drawing blood, or like rolling out a bit of clay into a rope..." Turquoise energy flickered beneath his fingertips but disappeared just as quickly; if Chrysocolla was affected by his attempts at draining, it didn't show.
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Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 9:07 am
Creator's terms. She's passionate about draining energy. Like rolling orbs of energy from the rest of this dying population is the best and last thing she'll ever do in her life. Maybe that's the truth. Maybe it is the only lonely creative process that officers ever see anymore. What a fate that awaits us.
To Chrysocolla, people still hold some value - even if only as playtoys.To Umber, we're just bags of bones. I'm having fun already.
Faustite looked to her, then to the bond formed between her grasp and his wrist. Her fingers felt warm still, and this surprised him somewhat - like he expected, somehow, that she would grow cold with successful energy draining. She might still, he reminded himself. He never managed it successfully yet. Faustite pushed his thoughts aside in favor of the creator's symbolism she imposed over the top of their deeds, and drew out rivulets of energy like thin wire. They coiled in his palm of their own accord, crossing over the top of one another into a chaotic, finite ball that settled just beyond his fingertips.
And while he only intended to take a small amount, the channel between them spasmed beyond his power, sometimes jolting, sometimes trickling. He broke the connection at once by wrenching his hand from her, and a trace of naked fear crossed his features. He couldn't control it. "What is this-"
He wanted to laugh, but he couldn't steal his eyes from the strange orb in his grasp. Panic welled, and he wanted to be rid of it - this beckoning sphere, it formed temptation.
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