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 Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 4:57 pm
Though Ptolemaeus usually found more entertainment roaming the more shady areas of the city, doing the same thing repetitively got old fast and as the senshi of change, he felt somewhat obligated to change things up every now and then. Being predictable could be both boring and dangerous in his line of work. Thus, that evening, the Dark Mirror Senshi decided to check out the unfamiliar territory of the upper-crust community.
He wondered vaguely if the wealthier citizens of Destiny City reacted any differently to senshi battles, youma attacks, or the war in general when such thing were encountered by non-combatants. Did money make a difference at all when it came to powered beings? He doubted it, but it made him chuckle to imagine someone attempting to bribe their attacker in exchange for leaving them be. The Negaverse didn't seem interested in money from what Ptolemy understood, but Remarque hadn't divulged a whole lot about their motives and it sounded like the royal might have been somewhat biased against them. Unfortunately, Ptolemy himself hadn't met enough Negaverse agents to either confirm or deny this guess. There was Richard - Huntite - but he felt bad asking the man too much about his faction when the guy had already gone as far as exposing his civilian identity to him. He didn't want to risk getting Richard into trouble with his superiors more than he already might have.
That was why, when he sensed a chaotic signature upon his exploration of the high class vicinity, the teen immediately homed in on it. The closer he got, the more it roused his interest. Its chaos wasn't like that of his fellow Dark Mirror Court members, but it wasn't that of a corrupt senshi, either. He hadn't met too many Negaverse agents aside from Huntite, let alone gotten to study their energy signatures, but this one seemed unlike any he'd sensed prior. Did many of them feel like that?
Halting just out of view, he regarded the signature more carefully to try to determine how safe it would have been to approach. He was always willing to just talk, but he could never be sure the other party felt the same. And while Ptolemaeus doubted White Moon Senshi he approached would attack to kill on sight without giving him a chance to explain himself, the impression Remarque had given him of the Negaverse was quite different. Reckless as he often might have behaved, pain was different from death and the sailor scout valued his life too much to throw caution to the wind no matter how unconvinced he was that all Negaverse agents were complete villains.
To his great surprise, the agent didn't seem much more powerful than himself; a lieutenant, if he recalled their ranking correctly. There was still something about that energy that still made him wary and yet simultaneously curious. Finally making a decision, Ptolemy stepped around the corner to proceed, expecting to enter the other's range of view and vice-versa.
"Heya, sweetheart. You on the neighborhood watch?"Strickenized ((Finally posting the start I typed up yesterday at work. If there's anything I need to change, please let me know~))
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Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 4:17 pm
As the evenings grew warmer, high society shifted to accommodate. Balcony parties. Pool parties. Clear drinks. Fruity drinks. The cycle stood as varied as it was traditional - each season warranted newness, but not too much newness. Everyone still needed some element of longstanding recognition to continue playing the game. New trends always held an homage to the old. Even with all the new money flooding into the area, they still needed the old money.
High-low dresses were the new halter tops. Vapes were the new cigarettes.
Faustite's - Elex's - family was caught somewhere in-between. While breaking into the consumer computer market, they inherited no small sum from patents of a bygone era. They weren't Carnegies or Fricks or Mafia-born Sabellas, but they edged their way into the outskirts of the parties. The Yorkes remained the footnote on the guest list with a dozen other new names or old rejects, yet still they tried to make a note for themselves. A footnote all their own, Elex supposed so long ago. They need not clamor for the upper eschelons, though Anna hoped dearly for it and Elex's father toiled all the more for that one breakthrough needed to revolutionize the market. They hoped hard enough that they never said it aloud.
Even pigeons were superstitious, Faustite knew.
Now, looking down upon the bountiful spread of the latest fashionable summer dresses and hairstyles, the latest remix of cocktail drinks and small talk, Faustite noted that the Yorkes were no longer that footnote. Only his brother and father lingered, his mother nowhere in sight, and a larger crowd than average coiled about them.
Loss was the new gain. Despair was the new happiness.
But a voice wrenched him from the scene, a voice borne of the growing chaos beyond the scope of his attention. Faustite did not immediately look away from the party beneath his parapet, but he paid the voice the attention it asked for. Sweetheart. Is that wishful thinking?
Energy confirmed another Dark Mirror, their ilk becoming steadily more common in the lieutenant's outings. This one he recognized not at all - not even from the gathering of them present for that monster. Did he see no purpose in fighting it, or was he simply not around? "Hello, Senshi. Sometimes it pays to watch the tides of fashion wash out to sea. It's easier to see what's trending."
White is the new black. Out is the new in. Absent is the new present.
"But you didn't come out here for small talk, did you? Most people don't."
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Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 10:45 pm
The return address broadened Ptolemaeus' grin and he snickered softly at the metaphor regarding fashions. "Pure poetry. I'd really love to know what it pays, though. Do you stand to gain something from obtaining the knowledge of what's currently trending? Or do you simply enjoy keeping up with fashion?"
His dark brown gaze shifted from the Negaverse agent to the partygoers beyond and his toothy smile eased up into something more...vulnerable. Perhaps because his addressee was still facing away from him.
"Nah; small talk is for the people at that party. It's verbally keeping people at arm's length. Me, though...I get a little too lonely for that." Leaning over, he slung an arm toward the other teen in an attempt to drape it across his shoulders. "Keeping people at length verbally or otherwise. Don't you?"Strickenized ((No worries; take all the time you need))
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Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 9:40 am
Faustite snorted softly. The senshi chose mockery, and Faustite kept his gaze trained on pale peaches and bright whites. "What do you gain from noticing the things around you?" He answered back. "There's a lot to see at once, and we can't take it all in. Why do you see the things that you do? Why do you notice one and not another?" The group of rhetoric served to illustrate his point if the senshi chose to listen.
He felt the hand on his shoulders and immediate reaction urged him to shrug it off, to push him away quickly - but doing so belied weakness. And Faustite did not savor that hand crowning his shoulders, nor did he enjoy someone's smell coursing over him like an unwanted perfume. He could smell the man's breath from such a distance. He could feel the air passing from this senshi's nostrils. Faustite kept his gaze trained on the party for a time, a handful of long moments - just long ehough to say that his facing the other man came not from the arm draped around his shoulders. He knew better than that.
He scoffed at the question. Lonely - like he was shopping for some empty time spent in a bedroom. Truthfully, his hours were spent in less productive ways, with the Negaverse asking for energy and his laptop history showing full of psychology, sociology, online English classes. He started dabbling in Russian. He made copies of Chrysocolla's chemistry study guide and filled in all the answers. He started fussing with the books in the Negaverse library, reordering the legible books and redistributing the ones that looked illegible. But busywork seldom occupied his mind fully, and the rare agent he met sported a brokenness that left him wanting.
But at least he had Chrysocolla. And Arsenopyrite, at times. This senshi, with the way he latched so suddenly to another warm body, seemed more attention-starved than he. Surprising, considering his lack of overtly monstrous appendages.
Then again, the real monsters never looked the part. "No, I don't."
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Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:57 am
Ptolemaeus blinked slowly, appraising the young man beside him as his questions were not responded to with direct answers, but rather his own set of inquiries - ones he didn't seem to expect actual replies to. But the senshi wasn't even near satisfied.
"Everyone chooses to notice different things," he spoke in nearly inaudible tones, staring out at the gathering below and yet not really seeing anything. "And what we derive from what we notice is unique to us. That's why I asked; because I wanted to know what you got from it." He extracted his arm from around the other. "But if you find it too personal a question from an interested stranger, I hope you'll pardon my audacity."
The snorting and scoffing was not lost on the sailor scout. He was used to being looked down on, despised, and outright rejected, but this was an altogether different sort of rejection than the usual. It was silent, apathetic, and merciless. That wasn't to say he'd never encountered such treatment before, but it was so rare that he hadn't remembered how to defend against it in time. Even so, he raised higher the facade of his dauntless grin to conceal whatever damage had been done.
"Good for you," Ptolemy said, his inflections in those three syllables implying genuine happiness that someone else in the world was not as miserable as he was, but simultaneously hinting at the pain and envy of that very same fact. His voice mellowed as he continued, "I came to learn. What are you here for?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 1:51 pm
Faustite looked to the scout, checking for additional forays into his personal space, then back at the scene. There's always use and abuse of power here. If you were looking to learn, then you signed up for a semester-long class. Even now, the subtle designations between parties shifted and stirred, with partners exchanged and gossip written off. Scandal rose overtly when expected, and subtly when uninvited. How much did the scout know?
"I already told you. That answer hasn't changed." Was the other boy expecting a shift in his story? A second verse to the tale that undermined the first? Faustite was no fool. He knew well enough what it meant to stick to the story he was given. He wanted something, be it straightforward as company or something subtler like information. Faustite knew not which. And as the night air enveloped them, the breeze ruffling overlays and teasing hair, it whisked away the sense of authority standing over him. Here, around the midnight hour, no one else lurked. No one else sought to break into the richer neighborhoods, where alarms and posted policement and all manner of dogs sought to deter even the smartest agents from draining on their property. It was a useless challenge, a waste of effort. But the boy next to him showed up despite this, and all for reasons of wanting to learn.
With the removal of the offending arm, Faustite set to pace. Hands found their place behind his back in a slow meander that saw no overt destination. "The Negaverse asks a lot," he started, searching for the right words. "Energy. Information. Devotion. It's a machine built on the sweat equity of others. If you want to learn, I can help you. But there's a cost.
"I want information." He paused then, and looked out toward the party where champagne bottles popped their corks. It flowed into glasses with a messy flourish before many a waiter handed them off to expectant guests. It seemed everyone had a thirst tonight - perhaps his conversant, too. "Months ago, a fiend tried to drown a warehouse in its black oil. A number of your kind came to stop it alongside the Negaverse. Someone with large black wings led an attack with some of your own. I want to know the names of who was there - and the nature of the creature they fought. That doesn't sound too hard, does it? In return, I'll tell you what I can." He shrugged and clasped his hands before his stomach, waiting for an answer.
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Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 3:57 pm
"You said that sometimes it pays to keep up with fashion and to see what's trending. I didn't get your answer on how you think it pays, though; just a bunch of questions reflected back at me. But I get it; I make a lot of inquiries. It makes people uncomfortable." He watched the younger teen's hands meet behind his back as he began to pace and shifted the focus of his own weight from one foot to the other, listening as combed his gaze through the extravagantly-dressed individuals below. Ptolemy observed their body language and attempting to assess the mood of the average person at the party, absently comparing them to that of the lieutenant. Did they all want something from one another? Were any of them actually enjoying themselves to any extent? Did they look upon each other with admiration, or only envy, condescension and contempt? Who knew if even they themselves were aware of the true answers? And what interest or connection did this Negaverse agent have with them?
A spark of amusement briefly lit his features. He hadn't been very specific on what he wanted to learn, but either the younger male didn't care just then or he was making his own assumptions in offering him a trade. That was fine, though, since there wasn't really anything the senshi could think of at the moment that he didn't want to learn. It might not have even mattered because he didn't know if he could provide sufficient information in terms of the details the lieutenant was asking for.
"I remember that incident," Ptolemaeus confirmed, "but I wasn't among the ones who came to stop it. I have an idea who might have been, but in order to confirm names and just what it was that they confronted, I'd need more time to research and collect some second-hand information. I'm afraid there's not much I can tell you off the top of my head." He extended his arms in a half-hearted shrug. "If you were hoping for a first-hand source, sorry to disappoint, but it might still be easier for me to contact the other members of my court and ask than than it would be for you. Did you still want me to try?"
'Tell me what you can', huh? About what, exactly? he couldn't help wondering. About why you want to know about my court? Would you tell me about the Negaverse? About yourself? Even if he had been able to instantly supply what the young man wanted to know, he doubted his fellow chaos being would have been so forthcoming about such things just because he was capable of it.
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Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 12:38 pm
"How about that." Faustite responded with a lightly-cocked brow.
The fizzle-pop of champagne shot through the party, the breathless and dauntless excitement rising for the occasion. Skin aglitter with dollar signs and decadence obscured teeth. One of the patrons called for another. Pale bubbles lit up empty glasses. The only relation between the party's pinnacle presence and the lone inquisitive pair remained the breeze that accosted both groups.
"I have a lot of time on my hands." He considered the thought only briefly. "And I want to know what happened that night, so ask who you must." A mystery's only a mystery as long as it's barely unsolved. We want to be taunted with an answer just beyond our grasp, don't we?
I don't think anyone knows the answer to this one. The Dark Mirror looked just as dumbfounded about it. I'll have my mystery for a while yet, even if I see this senshi twice.
Faustite turned from the scene smoothly. Measured steps delivered him to the edge of the precipice, where he looked down on a couple bidding their farewells to the doorman. He recognized them. "I'll be in touch." He spared only so many moments as he could, for the couple whisked themselves to their car in a purposeful departure.
"Goodbye, Senshi." He cast the words aside as he vanished, having leapt down upon the avant-garde craftsmanship adorning the wall.kitomyx wrapping this one up so it's not hanging around.
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