It had been quite a while since Jack had first started watching Elex Yorke's Facebook page and he felt like a stalker for it, but he couldn't let it go. That kid had essentially challenged him and while he normally wouldn't have bothered trying to prove anything to anyone, this teen was different. He had a depth to him that Jack had long since given up trying to find in his peers or even just people in general until the dark-haired boy had confronted him outside the library that one day. While Jack was usually the one provoking others into annoyance by acting like a know-it-all, he was astonished to find himself being fed a taste of his own medicine. He had thought so little of everyone else, believing them to be predictable, transparent, and superficial, but now here was someone who saw right through his own charade. It was both impressive and frightening, but the thrill of knowing someone like that existed made the high schooler more dedicated than ever to upping his game just so he could best Elex.
And then the youngest Yorke vanished.
At first Jack thought he had just decided to stop posting on Facebook, but then he saw that Erol, Elex's older brother, had posted about his family member's disappearance. What could have happened? Sure, there was the chance that Elex had simply attempted to run away from home or something similar, but the likely possibility that something more sinister had transpired was enough to rouse Jack's curiosity. He didn't tend to involve himself in other peoples' business, but he had a personal interest in this particular mystery and it seemed a shame to ignore it when he could probably investigate it more deeply than the rest of the Yorke family - as Sailor Sinope.
The first thing to do would be to get as much information as he could from the people who knew the most about Elex's absence and Jack was willing to bet that meant the other Yorkes. According to Facebook, there would be a charity ball event going on that Thursday evening that the family was scheduled to attend. The redhead marked the event on his own calendar as well. When the time came, he packed his most formal clothing and told his parents he was headed out to a party. Once out of sight, he transformed into Sinope in order to travel quickly and inconspicuously toward his destination. His plan had been to power down once he got there and to discreetly interrogate the Yorkes about their missing teenager under the guise of a concerned peer. Before he had even made it to the front gate, however, a chaotic energy signature not belonging to his court startled him with its unexpected presence.
What was the Negaverse doing here? Could it have been something to do with Elex or was it simply a coincidence? Sinope hesitated. Many clever detectives and other characters he had known - Batman, Sherlock, V, Bartimaeus - didn't believe in coincidences. At the very least, he could check the source out to make sure since there only seemed to be one lone Negaverse agent. That still meant risking injury or worse...but what the heck. He got himself into trouble all the time and he had already come all this way. Why not take a chance? Taking a deep breath, Sailor Sinope ventured closer to the foreign Chaos signature.
Strickenized
((Please let me know if there's anything I need to change!))
Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 3:22 pm
Beautiful pots of heady hydrangeas and boisterous buttercups emulated in rich silk covered the balcony. Delicately painted, wrought-iron bars wound and wove into an expertly-crafted railing, with liberal space between the bars for a view out on the party. Dozens of lights formed their own glittering fractals that lit a hazy hue in the night sky. Fanfare and dialogue lilted through the streets, providing a steady aural cover for the balcony's sole occupant.
There, stark among the white wicker and delicate glass end tables, sat a hunched, black figure on the edge of the seat. Whispers of dark smoke unfurled from a half-dozen pipes laced in his back. Blacked hands wrung together as their own organic lattice, humming with energy as the boy looked on toward the party. Black eyes reflected the ambience as its own darkened smattering of stars. He spent too long looking over the sights, and their imprint on his vision left lurid trails every time he looked away.
Champagne glasses tinkled with toasts while the figure sighed. Watching over parties and fundraisers grew intolerably dull over the short months spent with the Negaverse alone. The dips in conversation, the careful social navigations, the rare gaps to slip away no longer sprung the same excitement in his heart. The whole scene felt stagnant, placid. The bond shared with his brother felt weak, needful. He wondered, then - why did he continue to bother? Watching for his mother's reaction or his father's fruitless searches for him felt like needless self-centered indulgence. Checking for another moment with his brother felt impossible, even troublesome for the shaky assurance of payoff.
Faustite stood and straightened. The impeccable apartment behind him remained dark, empty, lifeless. Somewhere beyond those gates stood its occupants, wrapped in the limitless reverie that were the Steinberg parties. A hand touched to the slider assured him that, with a simple shove, he could gain entry to a place not unlike that from his memories. He could know the feel of cashmere rugs against his feet again, or tasseled pillows beneath his arms. He could --
But he couldn't. Someone approached, dim as the surrounding city, weak like the smoke from his pipes. Faustite frowned. Company seldom promised a proper turnout.
His hand left the slider door and fled to his vest. Meticulous, vestigial behaviors straightened the material and smoothed what few wrinkles threatened to form. He turned then, and waited with both hands braced against the crisp, white railing. The streets stilled. Headlights flickered away, vanishing into an ocean of light pollution. There, on the far side of the street, just beyond an Escalade, approached the figure in question.
A purple hood obscured his face, and a long, translucent sash trailed behind him. The garb looked utterly out of place for such an occasion - enough that the less-practiced Negaverse captain identified him as suspiciously unaffiliated. "They won't let you in looking like that." The irony softened his expression.
Never had Sinope taken part in the world they lived in even briefly, but he was content with his family’s station as middle-class. The elegance and extravagance failed to entice him and not even the games involved with scaling the social ladder intrigued him enough to yearn for participation. While the games themselves might have provided some amusement, Sinope believed that the negative consequences of misstepping were too high while those of reaching the top were even higher. The higher one got, the more people there were beneath you to resent your position and to plot and scheme to get you down. Not to mention, of course, the matter of how much farther there was to fall. No, he was happy right where he was, thank you very much, and did not at all envy those with so much more than himself. It just meant that they had that much more to lose.
Little did he realize he was headed straight for one such person who, even having gained other things in exchange, had already lost it all. The contrast of the lights and their refractions against the shadows of the railed balcony made it difficult to see anyone there, so it would have been the perfect hiding place for someone who wanted a good vantage point but simultaneously wanted to stay hidden from view. If he hadn’t been able to sense the energy, Sinope thought he would have overlooked the place entirely. But now that he knew where the person was, how was he supposed to confront him?
He liked to think before he acted, usually, but the teenager was concerned that if he dwelled too long on his thoughts in that situation, he would have lost his nerve. He was already painfully aware of how absurd his senshi outfit made him out to be, but he felt that if he kept up his confidence, perhaps he could play it off like it didn’t matter. Rather than attempt to scale the front of the building to reach his destination, Sinope went around to the side. If he hadn’t, there was always still a chance a person at the party would have glanced up to see him before he successfully found asylum within the pocket of darkness contained within the balcony.
The closer he got, the more Sinope began to regret his decision. Though he had noted that the chaotic energy signature was isolated, he berated himself for having missed a fact that had to have been at least as important: the signature belonged to someone of a higher rank than himself. Even if it hadn’t, he should have known better than to investigate without some sort of plan considering that his magic seemed next to useless and often even detrimental to him. Oh well; it was too late now. The agent would have most certainly sensed his own signature by now. Sinope definitely preferred to have been the one to approach rather than to have turned tail and found himself being chased by someone he wouldn't have been able to outrun. It seemed the Dark Mirror Senshi would just have to exercise those improvisation skills thinking on his feet and hope for the best. He was so preoccupied with encountering the Negaverse being that he nearly forgot to keep out of the partygoers’ sights.
His senshi abilities made short work of the climb, even with the backpack containing his formal change of clothes, and in a few more moments he had managed to deposit himself behind the exquisite metalwork of the railing. Sinope pushed back his hood as he slowly stood, dropping his hands casually to his sides after. If he’d had his palms out, it could have suggested he was about to use magic against the stranger. “...Good evening.” His hazel gaze penetrated the gloom as best he could manage without squinting, but in the end he felt he was addressing blackness more than an actual person. It would take a few more moments for his sight to adjust to that depth of dark, especially against the glare of the illumination emitted from below. “Here for the party?”
Faustite's hands wrung the banister subtly. The question sounded so nonchalant, so uninformed, so whimsical. Could he not tell by feel alone that Faustite was different? That the difference between him and another Negaverse officer penetrated into the fundamental core of his being? That his very DNA was likely unrecognizable from its former self? Faustite endured such pervasive changes in the last months and yet their reception by others remained markedly reserved… Was inattentiveness such a point of contention between the classes?
"I'm here for my duties." The fact of his presence here remained a delicate subject, a fiercely-guarded wound from his life that had not yet healed. Even the moralistic quandary of hiding the truth stung him.
He smiled, faintly, in the darkness. "It's easier to meet quota after parties. Less chance of being spotted. Less chance of being recognized for what you are." The excuse provided in itself a mirth that he could not find elsewhere - the irony thick and rich, it sated him in ways that mediocre meals and banal banter could not.
Faustite shifted to entrust his elbows to the iron leaves of the railing. His stance shifted, his back muscles stretched and constricted sorely around their intrusions. A gust of vapors prefaced his sigh and a lilting scent of copper and moondust touched the area before dissipating altogether. The pose belied nothing of his inward reticence. The party would conclude inevitably, he knew, and he loathed to face the inevitable challenge. Could he confront old faces and arrest the needed energy? Or was this planned tactic exceeding his mental and emotional fortitude? Could he drain his best friend? His brother? His mother? Could he walk away with commodities stolen from those he knew? Could he sleep afterward, knowing he committed to the acts with full awareness and drive to do them because they betrayed his moral sensibilities?
No. He would not - could not - think of such matters now. Not with a stranger standing at his side. Not with such innocuous and familiar conversation patterns facing him down.
His gaze traveled to his conversation partner, parting from the grandiose light pollution that underlit their faces. "You're from the Dark Mirror." He spoke the words with self-assurance. "Should I assume you're here to compete for resources?" He watched the other boy with low-key amusement, a brow cocked and waiting for response.
Sinope had only met one true Negaverse agent in person up until then and she had been a corrupt basic senshi, so that might not even have counted. However, he had met her amidst a gathering of several others from her faction when they had been called to action for a battle over a Saturn knight. During that time, he had gotten a pretty good sense for how their sort of Chaos felt with their signatures and how a corrupt senshi’s varied from a lieutenant’s on the same level. This energy signature, though most certainly of Chaos belonging to the Negaverse, vastly differed from either of the other types he’d recognized prior. It put him on edge.
The moment he had recognized something weird about the aura emanating from the balcony, he knew his fate had been sealed. Any chance he might have had of persuading himself out of such an impulsive decision was swept away entirely by a tide of curiosity, drowning the reserves of his rationality for the matter. Whatever it was that set the signature apart from the other Chaos ones he’d known probably only signified that it was more hazardous to his health, but now he had to know why. As long as whomever - or whatever - it was was sentient enough to reason and was not mindlessly feral or indiscriminately violent, Sinope clung to the slim possibility that he might have been able to bullshit his way out of a tight spot with his big mouth.
A year or so of playing the role of class clown at Romano’s allowed him to feign an easygoing, ignorantly friendly demeanor in order to make light of the situation. The sum of this experience equated to the seemingly causal inquiry about being there for the party. The other agent of Chaos didn’t need to be aware of how hard his heart was hammering against his chest, nor how his brain was frantically striving to ascertain just who or what he had stumbled across. If he didn’t mention the obvious uniqueness of the other’s signature, perhaps he could come across as slow-witted or at least unsuspecting. And while Sinope hated to be thought of that way, in this situation it seemed the most practical course of action.
If he seemed stupid, he wasn’t likely to be deemed by the other as a threat (which he undoubtedly wasn’t), and if he wasn’t deemed a threat, the stranger was more likely to underestimate Sinope. While that might not have been a terribly large advantage with the gap between their ranks, the senshi believed every little bit counted. The longer he could play dumb, the more time he had to assess where he truly stood in comparison to the other being regarding wit, power, and overall capability. If he was lucky, he might even have been able to discern some hint of weakness.
One thing he noticed was the hands clutching the railing of the balcony. At first he had noticed nothing out of the ordinary about them, but then Sinope recognized the lighting was wrong. Even though the rest of the figure he was addressing was swathed in shadow, the party glow illumination from below them provided the dramatic ambience of being lit from beneath. At least, it would have if the agent’s hands didn’t stubbornly refuse to be illuminated. No matter what angle of light hit them, they stayed black until the senshi had no choice but to determine that they were actually black in color and it wasn’t simply some trick of the darkness. How much of the rest of the guy was like that?
When he spoke, though, the redhead was relieved to note that the voice sounded human and astounded to discover that it resembled someone closer to his age than he would have expected. The Senshi of Slyness wasn’t about to lower his guard due to those observations alone, though. He also registered the careful and polite manner with which the stranger spoke and thought it oddly refined for a typical peer of his. Did this...person?...actually belong in the world below? Well, he doubted he would learn much more with his mouth shut.
“You have a quota to meet?” Sinope asked, scratching his head. “That sucks. How do you guys even measure?” While he felt inclined to play a certain degree of dense, he wasn’t willing to seem so naive that he had to ask what the quota was of. He didn’t want to be fixated on as a potential liability to the captain’s operation, but he also didn’t want to be of so little interest to his new conversation partner that they decided he wasn’t worth their time and chose to ignore him instead.
“If you were only waiting for the party to be over, why show up early?” the Dark Mirror Senshi risked probing. “Isn’t there a greater chance of you being spotted if you spend time up here so close to everyone before the event ends?” ‘Less chance of being recognized for what you are’? What did he mean by that?
Sinope’s gaze finally seemed to be adjusting to the dark and he followed the contours of the Negaverse agent’s black hands up his arms to define more of their owner. The movement of the person shifting stances allowed him to distinguish said person from their backdrop, giving him a slightly better idea of their silhouette. Stray shafts of light from the party betrayed thin wisps of smoke that seemed to exude from the person, too, and its scent in the air confirmed he wasn’t imagining it. Were they smoking a cigarette? Or did they perhaps carry some sort of weapon that smoked, like a gun? But he hadn’t heard one go off, yet, nor did this seem to match the odor of gunpowder.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he agreed absently with the first statement mentioning his court. “Sailor Sinope, Senshi of Slyness. Kind of a tongue-twister, but the alliteration is fun.” He was still trying to pinpoint the nature of the smoke tendrils when he caught the agent’s gaze. The rest of his face looked normal enough, but… Sinope stopped and stared for a half minute before stating, “Cool contacts,” and forcing himself to look away in order to catch up to his former train of thought. He turned his back on the captain and knelt to rummage through his bag. Keeping his hands busy lowered the likelihood that their shaking would be perceived.
“Resources...oh, you mean energy. Well it looks like there’s plenty to go around, especially since my mirrorwraith just takes a little from each person and I’m not waiting for the end of the party, so it seems that we’ll each have our turn.” He paused in his rummaging to reach into his pocket and pull out his mirror shard. “The wraiths usually get full pretty quickly, so it’ll probably be done before they even start winding down. No one usually notices them, so when you step onto the scene, it’ll be like I had never even been here.” Setting the shard down a moment, the high schooler returned to sifting through his pack. “To tell you the truth, though...I didn’t even come here for energy. I’m looking for someone.” He finally withdrew his neatly-folded outfit, piece by piece, from the bag, and set them atop one of the glass end tables on the balcony. “His name is Elex Yorke.”
The plain ensemble was nothing like the expensive, perfectly-tailored custom suits that the partygoers paraded. Sinope thought the styles looked similar enough from far off, but he also knew that to a discerning eye trained to spot such differences, he would probably stick out like a daisy in a rose garden. Along the lines of the analogy, at least his own store-bought, mass-produced suit afforded him the metaphorical guise of a flower. He prayed it would be enough to allow him to a decent-enough investigation before he was caught and kicked out. There wasn’t much he needed; just some information from the Yorkes about their missing son.
It would have been a lie to say he wasn’t already attempting to begin his investigation right then and there, though. He wasn’t sure if his offhanded mention of the person he sought would produce any results, but the sailor scout reasoned that if it didn’t, his having mentioned him wasn’t likely to impede his search, either. The Negaverse had no reason to target a single, particular civilian just because a Dark Mirror Senshi was looking for him, especially because it might have been more trouble than it was worth just to track him down. On the other hand, if the agent before him did react to the name, Sinope might have been saved the trouble of endeavoring to assimilate into the crowds of upper-class society beyond. Though he made a show of checking to make sure all pieces of his attire were present on the end table, the focus of his attention was on the being with those demonically dark eyes.
Were those…pipes protruding from his back?
Faustite responded mildly. "You ask a lot of questions." He knew little of the Dark Mirror Court, and the Negaverse training manuals did not offer great insights into these potentially competitive faction. What he learned of them came in part from the warehouse wraith, and in part from Sinope's forthright explanations on energy harvesting. Both of their factions required energy reaped from others, implying a parasitic relationship with the city, and both factions were considered corrupted.
Such a supposition made sense on part of the Negaverse - seldom had he met a Negaverse agent with a working moral compass - though he remained uncertain about the Dark Mirror Court. None of them struck him as particularly corrupted mentally. Was it simply a sickness of the starseed? Should he pluck this boy's soul to evaluate it himself?
His oath to himself reminded him that he should - despite the social mores. Because of the social mores. The action was simple, well practiced. A flick of the wrist and he could have his company on the floor, spouting no further questions, and vulnerable to his whims. He could leave this Sailor Sinope to die. He could learn a little more about this mysterious alternate faction. He could bring back yet another soul to fuel the engine of the Negaverse - to, circuitously, perpetuate his own existence.
And the cost? One stranger.
But the trade implied no such simplicity. His hands clammed up, his muscles thrummed with nervous anticipation, and his mind worked to churn out every excuse against it. He knew such an act was wrong. He knew long before and long after he was forced to remove a soul himself. He knew the taste, how it beckoned him, how it cursed him. His throat ran dry, his tongue thick. Words lost focus, meaning. Sinope continued to talk, oblivious to Faustite's considerations. A part of him wanted to follow through with it - found thrill in such an irreverent act. Such a realization urged him to hesitate. His oath pertained to deconstruction, not depravity.
All the while, Sinope spoke of energy. Of harvesting.
Of Elex.
The sound of his own name urged him from ruminations. He straightened, recovered himself. He looked to Sinope with the brightest stars reflected in his eyes. "I heard about the Yorke boy." Faustite shifted his weight while he watched Sinope remove a second set of clothes. They looked shoddy to the trained eye. Mishandled. Unkempt. Folds grew in all the wrong places. He would find sneers in place of answers.
Faustite wrenched his gaze away at last, his fingers spidering over the rails as he searched for some tactile sensation beyond a starseed. "You'd have more luck if you posed as a reporter," he admitted at last. "Your suit's all wrong. They won't want to be caught socializing with you, the filth that crept in from the streets. But if you had a microphone in your hand… That's promising. You're young. Maybe a junior reporter from a school paper. Now they're investing in the future by talking to you. Encouraging the youth. Suddenly they're getting publicity, however small. They think you'll take this story with you on your way to college. Your professors will see it, see them. Suddenly there's hardly a downside."
He straightened then, turned, and leaned against the railing. The carefully-painted leaves rested just underneath his lowest pipes, which now furled their smoke out into the sky. "You asked me why I was waiting up here - why I didn't just show up after the party. I'm waiting for the couple that lives here." Hands laced together against his flat stomach. "I don't have the luxury of threading through the crowd and taking energy anonymously. Negaverse agents don't have a wraith to rely on for their energy needs. It puts me at a higher risk of exposure, you're right.
"But you can get a better quota when you're caught. Fear, adrenaline, survival instincts. They pour out energy straight into your hands. And afterward? When they're out cold, and you're still standing? You can take their starseeds. Feed the fear engine that runs off the heart of this city."
"You ask a lot of questions."
His facade of being absorbed in preparing his attire fell to pieces as Sinope slowly pulled himself up and turned his head to look the captain straight in his unnerving eyes. “I asked four questions, one of which was rhetorical. Another of those was a leading question pertaining to the answer of the other, so that only technically counts as having asked two total. Even the one asking if you were here for the party was more of an ice-breaker than anything. You call that a lot?” He chuckled softly. “You must not often be questioned.”
It wasn’t that the redhead was lacking in questions to ask, but he didn’t think he’d get anywhere unleashing his plethora on the mysterious stranger who might well have wanted to remain mysterious, so he refrained. “If you mean I talk a lot, though, then yeah; can’t really deny that.”
They were pipes. No wonder he was up here. Without the dark as a defence, the Negaverse agent was vulnerable to a multitude of prying eyes and the curiosity their owners cultivated. Sinope wasn’t sure if the young man was wearing something to keep them on or what, but it almost looked like they were directly attached to his body. So then where was that smoke coming from? Black eyes and hands were one thing - achievable with contacts and ink, but this was something entirely alien. Were they just going to pretend like there was nothing amiss with his appearances at all?
Those dark eyes contrasted sharply with the glints of light reflected in them, giving them an otherworldly look that sent a slight tremor down the senshi’s spine. However, it wasn’t enough to have distracted the younger powered being from having noticed how the captain straightened at the mention of the name. Nor was it enough to have kept him from considering whether or not the subject of his poor choice of clothing was merely brought up as a diversion. If it was, though, why had he bothered acknowledging that he’d heard about the missing Yorke in the first place? Was it an invitation to ask?
One thing at a time. Better to test the waters with something else first. Since the pupil-less being was making him self-conscious about the clothes he was fussing with and about to put on, Sinope decided to start with that. “Thanks...I think,” he added, considering his having been referred to as ‘the filth that crept in from the streets’. But he was far too intrigued by the direction his fellow teen’s - at least, he looked like a teen - thoughts were going. Not only had the guy revealed himself to be knowledgeable in the mindset of the wealthy upper class in his criticism of the senshi’s doomed plan, but he was critically thinking about how to rectify it and making actual suggestions regarding how to do so. Why?
The considerations of the agent’s spoken thought processes, such as being able to invest in the future by speaking to a school reporter, were so particular that Sinope doubted that people from the party itself would have been able to foresee how answering his questions might have been an investment. “Man...I bet you murder people in debates.” If it weren’t for his odd eyes, hands, and pipes, the sailor scout wouldn’t have doubted that his fellow balcony occupant might have been the sort able to convince a nudist to buy clothing. “Let’s just hope the guests I interrogate are half as smart as you are.” He went toward the sliding door and put his hand on the handle. “Don’t have a microphone handy, but maybe if I snag a notepad of some sort and a pen, they’ll buy the school reporter story. Think this couple you’re waiting for might have one lying around?”
When his conversation partner turned, the redhead’s heart began to beat a little faster in the instinctive fear that they might be discovered. While he was glad to have been able to get a better view of the pipes and verify that they were what was producing the smoke, he feared the bright lights from the party would reflect off the metal and draw unwanted attention their way. It took a considerable amount of his self control not to try to push or pull the dark-haired youth away from the balcony railings. This was a captain. Regardless of his apparent age, he had to have known what he was doing to have gotten that far. He certainly wasn’t striking Sinope as someone who would have unknowingly committed such a simple and thoughtless mistake.
He asked more questions to take his mind off of his concerns. “So why are you waiting for both this couple and the party to end? Are you expecting that couple to show up before the guests start going home?” And what did he want with some random couple anyway when he had a whole party of people to collect energy from? “You know the people who live here?” Realizing he was certainly inquiring a great deal more now, he added, “If you’re feeling like this is an interrogation, don’t worry about answering. I just need to practice for my role of school reporter.”
As the agent compared the his own method for collecting energy to Sinope’s, the Dark Mirror Senshi stayed near the sliding door, but gazed at his shoddy articles of clothing as his listened. He had worn clothing over his senshi outfit before, but layering winter clothing like hoodies and jackets was more practical than attempting to conceal it under a suit. He had originally intended to power down once he got here so that he could put the thing on and stow his other clothes in his pack, but now that Pipes was present, he wasn’t sure he dared to proceed with his strategy. Especially once the black-accented captain spoke of taking starseeds.
Was it really that easy for the Negaverse, though? For this kid who, despite his unnatural features, expressed emotion the same as him? Perhaps he was like Sinope in the aspect of needing to put on a show for both himself and others, talking and acting as if their consciences held less sway over them than they actually did in the hopes that it would eventually be true. If that was his design, then there was still a fundamental difference between them. The sailor scout aimed to behave as amorally as he could without being able to entirely rid himself of whatever sense of right and wrong he had been born or raised with. Pipes, however, didn’t seem to intend to ignore both more so than just one; to go against what must have been considered moral to him. Whether or not that path was more demanding or straightforward than the high schooler’s path, he didn’t know, but he suspected it wasn’t as second-nature to the captain as he made it out to be.
“How do you determine who to take starseeds from and who not to?” he asked finally, moving away from the sliding door to look out over the balcony at the party guests. “You can’t tell me you were born looking the way you are now. You must have attachments to people out there somewhere.” Likely right under their very noses with the way this guy seemed to know exactly what they would have thought of him in his shabby suit. He was one of them; of that Sinope now had few doubts. “How do you distinguish those people from the ones whose lives you decide to take?” He spread his arms. “Me, for example. I’m probably little more than ‘filth that crept in from the streets’. But I’m not even in your faction and you’re helping me out. Is that to ******** with me? To gain more energy once you decide to stick your hand in my chest and I found out you were just faking it the whole time?”
Despite his speculations, his voice didn’t waver and carried no hint of anger, animosity, or fear. That didn’t mean he wasn’t frightened, of course. His hands had hardly stopped shaking since he’d gotten a good look at Pipe’s eyes. Yet he banished what he could manage with an ear-to-ear grin and clasped his sweaty palms tight behind his back to lessen their trembling. “More questions you don’t have to answer,” he assured the Negaverse agent. “But there is one line of questioning I was hoping you’d indulge me with.”
He unclasped his hands from behind him and folded his arms at the elbow to lean them on the railing of the balcony. “I can collect energy anywhere. My primary reason for coming to this particular place at this particular time to meet these specific people was to find out what happened to Elex Yorke. I know you said you’d heard about him, but if there’s anything you could tell me about what you’d heard, I’d appreciate it. And I’d owe you a favor.”
"I'm not often questioned." The statement came succinctly. Faustite hesitated a minute longer, observing Sinope for all of his fidgeting and ferreting and fiddling, then pushed off from his banister spot.
While his companion prattled on, Faustite reached for the maple handle to the slider door. It capitulated smoothly when Faustite pushed on the handle. Inside, the room remained dim, well-staged, and fastidiously kept. He entered not long after Sinope questioned him for a pen and pad of paper. Faustite did not answer immediately; he looked at the couch for a long moment, considering it, then parted from present company by striding down the far hall. Frames and frames of old photos lined the walls, each offering dim glimpses back toward his companion out on the balcony. He ignored their beckoning looks.
Nor was he gone long - minutes after departure, Faustite reemerged from the dark hall bearing the object of Sinope's inquiry. In his hands sat a business ledger, ringed at the top, with a ballpoint pen clipped smartly to the twisting metal.
But the recipient of his borrowed gift departed from the area, and in his place stood a lone figure. The sudden, abject switch caused him to freeze in his step, to double back on his thoughts and check his memory against the individual before him. The potency of identity magic proved immense; were they not the sole occupants of the house, he would have simply passed the boy off as a distant third party to their conversation. The redressing, the use of the backpack, and their present location offered hint enough to his identity, even if Faustite could not see face or procure name. He passed off the ledger nonetheless.
Faustite offered no comment on Sinope's compliment, choosing to let it fall into the void between them. He did, however, suspend his silence on some of the teen's limitless questions. "It's an easy view without much risk of getting caught," he confessed, gesturing to the balcony. Afterward he reclined into the sofa as much as the pipes would allow, resulting in an awkward straight-backed posture. "It's far enough away to escape notice. If someone decided to look up in the middle of all the festivities and start combing the darkness for me, then they've earned the right to spot me. As much good as that would do." He looked to Sinope then, wondering if the boy ever considered his intrusion an ill move. Faustite supposed not; he hadn't yet given the senshi a reason to regret their meeting.
Faustite hadn't yet regretted it himself. "The couple living here has a pattern. The wife leaves the party over an hour before it finishes. She'll take a suitor with her - anyone will do. Man, woman… It doesn't matter to her. The pair will come up here, start having their fun. They'll take a while to finish. She wants to drag it out.
"And she wants to drag it out because the husband will climb up that balcony about a half hour later," he continued, pointing again toward the door. "He'll come inside wearing a mask. Find them. Surprise them. Join up with them. It's a pattern they've kept to unfailingly."
Seemingly dissatisfied, he stood from the couch and began a quiet pace around the room. Heeled boots bit into the plush carpet. He glanced about in search for something never found. "I've told you enough. If you want answers to the rest of your questions, I need you to do something for me.
"Go play reporter. Ask all the questions you can about the Yorke boy. I don't care if you drain energy in the process. Just come tell me what you learned afterward. Consider this paying the favor before it's owed. Do this, and I'll tell you what I know." He halted, hands still clasped behind his back, and looked to his redheaded intruder. There, they both stood among the darkened apartment, neither commenting on the transgression of trespassing. Never questioning the wrongness of reaping energy unbidden. The thought sat curiously with Faustite, who looked on with a mask unchanged.
"You have until midnight. Take any longer and you'll come back to a scene."
When the taciturn youth disappeared into the residence, Sinope continued talking as if it was perfectly normal; to be expected, even. The agent's potential trespassing was a less immediate concern to the sailor scout than the fact that he would have to power down in order to change into his makeshift junior reporter disguise. He might have been able to remove a few things like his gloves and tiara, but he didn't want to test how much he could take off before his glamor magic proved to be ineffective. His suit was bad enough even without him attempting to layer his senshi outfit under it. No doubt he would just end up looking more dubious with the extra fabric bulking up his clothing, particularly since he was attempting to pass as a reporter. People might have refused to talk to him if they thought he had recording equipment or other hidden devices and it wasn't as if he could show them what it was to prove that wasn't true.
There was no other alternative he could think of, so he heaved a deep sigh and hoped he wouldn't regret it. Though it did cross his mind to pick Pipe's brain for ideas, he didn't want to rely on him any more than he already had. Besides, powering down in front of the other chaos being was one of his main concerns. If the captain might have benefitted from it, why wouldn't he have encouraged Sinope to power down regardless of what would have been safest for the senshi? Stupid as it may have been, at least this way, it was his own decision. The Dark Mirror Senshi set his mirror shard down on the glass table. He took the few minutes of opportunity in which the other young man had disappeared into the hall to revert to his civilian self and change into the suit. Then he retrieved the mirror shard and slipped it into his pocket. Once Pipes returned with the ledger and pen, Jack stepped indoors as well and accepted both with a grateful nod, trying not to dwell on how the other had discovered the necessary props so quickly. He kept his head down, doing his best to avoid looking the captain in the eye as if doing so would have automatically granted the agent a photographic memory of his civilian face. "Thanks." Jack's still-shaking hands grasped the ledger with considerably more force than necessary as he watched the dark stranger make himself at home on the couple's sofa. Other than his hands, the Romano's student managed to keep everything else about him relatively tranquil and silent as he absorbed the information Pipes bestowed upon him. Some of it he thought he might have been able to have done without, but at least afterward he had something of an idea about why the door to the balcony had been left open and why the agent had known. He refused to ponder how long Pipes had watched the couple to learn their pattern so precisely down to the duration of each stage in their process. The mere knowledge that the other teen had watched such events play out, though, let alone multiple times, caused his face to heat up.
It wasn't his business. It had nothing to do with his current mission, and yet as unfazed as he attempted to seem, Jack was uncomfortably aware of how ruddy his complexion must have gotten upon contemplating such thoughts. He swallowed and did his best to act as if there wasn't a sanguine band creeping across his nose and cheeks, spreading all the way to his ears. At least he was still keeping his head down and his eyes averted, so perhaps the room's other occupant wouldn't notice or care, especially while he himself was busy pacing.
If he returned after midnight, Jack would ‘come back to a scene’? He barely dared to consider what sort of scene that might have been. One where unconscious bodies littered the floor, or...busy bodies? Either way, he wasn’t keen on finding out. He had a job to do. “Alright then, fairy godmother. Before the clock strikes twelve.”
The task of descending from the balcony might not have been as simple as it would have been if he’d remained powered. But if this husband Pipes spoke about regularly climbed up to it, then there had to be a fairly simple way to get down without breaking his neck. He didn’t want to risk seeking stairs indoors in case he got lost. With the party in full view beyond the railing, he could easily make his way to his destination without it leaving his sight if he remained outdoors.
Upon his descension, the Romano’s student carried the ledger between his teeth in order to utilize both hands. Consternation began to prowl from the back of his mind to the forefront as he recognized that he’d been wrong. He’d thought the mention of Elex would have been insignificant to the captain, but now he was being told to divulge his findings about the individual once he was finished gathering information. That in itself meant something. Now if only he could figure out what. Pipes had made it seem like the only way Jack would learn that tidbit was by fulfilling his demands. Did he dare give into them?
Well, what harm could it have done? He supposed if Elex was hiding somewhere from someone, it would have given Pipes just as much information if not more about his whereabouts than it would have given Jack. Would Pipes know if he lied? Not that Jack allowed himself to truly lie, but he doubted misleading implications would have been received well if the captain learned of their true nature. Furthermore, he wasn’t likely to receive the knowledge Pipes had to provide him with in return. Assuming, of course, that said information was to be trusted.
Too much speculation. Once Jack reached the ground, he took the ledger from his mouth and tucked it under his arm, closing his eyes to take a deep breath in order to remind himself to focus. Eventually he had recomposed himself to a satisfactory degree and took out his mirror shard to summon his mirror wraith. Once it had gone ahead and he allowed it a couple seconds head start, he marched after it into aristocrat gathering, a single plebeian diving into a sea of gentry.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
By the time he had gathered all the information he thought he would have been able to wrangle out of the wealthy guests, it was 11:32 pm. Jack was worn out after an evening enduring all those strange and disapproving looks, but he thought he might have had some idea how Elex had become the way he had if he really had been raised in such an environment among such people. He couldn’t have blamed him in the least if he’d really run away from home.
Hauling himself back up the balcony, the teenager finally reached. For a few moments, he suffered an internal conflict between dropping on the floor to lie there and not move for the rest of the night and the decision to seek Pipes out as soon as possible so he could get the hell out of that place before they were caught. Naturally, the latter decision won. Jack shoved himself up onto his feet and skimmed the notes he’d jotted down on the ledger. Over the courses of his interviews, he had decided to put the pen and paper to some use. While making sense of and considering how best to summarize his notes, he pulled open the wooden door handle and stepped across the threshold onto the spotless carpet. “Please don’t tell me we’re doing this debriefing here.”
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Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 1:01 am
The seconds ran down like liquid; slow and begrudging in their first steps, gathering up in a great glob of stopped time, before boring their own runnels through time. Moments pooled in his palms and slipped through his fingers in quick bursts, leaving him scrambling to recollect the minutes passed. Was he waiting the entire time? Drumming blacked fingers on black pants while he waited for Sinope's return? Ever losing himself to blinks and starts, he never trusted his comprehension of time passed.
Since training under Schörl, Faustite's inability to simply wait found new abysmal lows. She trained him worse than a dog, leaving him objectified and closeted - a tool stored for later use, a child punished with abuse. He hated it. Abhorred it. And yet he found himself sitting, sweating, ticking the minutes away with little more than harried thoughts to occupy his time.
Efficiency, she would remind him. Efficiency loathes idle hands.
And so he fidgeted. Toyed with his lapels. Scraped sharp nails under each other until he bruised the tender skin, clipped into the hooded capillaries. He bled seconds, anyway. Hemorrhaged minutes. Eleven approached; how long had he waited there? Ten minutes? An hour? Fingers danced together, beating themselves upon their twin until pain urged him to stop. Joints bent backward from pressure, straining against their normal angle. His body swayed with bare hints of preferred movement; a ghost of running spread through his spine.
Sitting here, immobile, watching time pass in its ebb and flow… Could he really find any answers about his old family? Was it worth the risks taken? He could never return. He could never steal sips of wine with his brother at tasting parties, or paint plates at niche ceramics shows, or visit the ocean's gentle churn on a midsummer day with his father prepping to sail. Group identity escaped him. The concept of family unit left him. Now he sat inside his hollow memories, picking at imagined scabs and moving as little as possible fearing to disturb the dream, worried that a single touch might send the carpets and flowers and upholstered furniture skittering away into forgotten recesses. He felt surreal. He felt unreal.
Another glance pressed the clock for answers. Long and ornate, it hung on the wall with its hypnotizing arm providing a steadied rhythm. 11:15, it said. Tick tock, it said.
Time's wasting, she said.
Faustite jerked. The refrigerator hum died, leaving him in aural darkness. His ears strained beyond the ticks of the clock for a single sound - a shuffled shoe, or rattled keys, or a clacking lock. He listened for voices. For sweet nothings parsed out in an air of expectations. Faintly he heard it, little more than a single breath expelled beyond the longest wall of the condo. A sigh. Faustite's breath hitched. His muscles restrained him violently to the couch. Sweat grew cold and pooled with time between his feet.
Shuffling came next - unmistakeable footfalls on the other side of the door. They paced down the parallel hallway, predatory in nature, stalking him as they sussed out his intrusion. Questions flooded his mind. Did he have the wherewithal to wrench starseeds from those he knew? Could he face the very people looking for him and greet them with murderous intent? And if he managed to wrench their souls from their chests, could he stop himself from eating them? From tasting the bittersweet loss of life?
Hurry, Sinope. Hurry.
11:28, the clock read. It ticked on with indifference.
Clack sounded the knob, sharp and loud, racing through the apartment with unprecedented strength. Faustite jumped. He steadied himself on the edge of his seat, legs growing sore with clenched muscles. Muffled laughter taunted him through the walls. For a fleeting moment, he nearly grasped words. But the lilting voices passed before they could rob him of the last dregs of his insanity - before they could drown him in time ill-spent. He sighed without condolence.
Another rustle sounded and he froze once more. His breath stopped. His heart beat against his bone cage with trepidation. Wood creaked, groaned, and strained. Plants rustled. Faustite's hands drew into fists. Self-doubt circulated in his mind, an unwanted mantra. Was this the work of the husband, an inadvertent meal plodding unwittingly into his death?
Red hair surfaced. Faustite set his teeth on edge. An arm darted through the railing, thin and pale, boyish. Familiar clothes emerged afterward as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Sinope --
Faustite glanced to the clock, nigh frantic with expectation of intrusion. 11:40, it read. They may have minutes, or a half hour yet. Passions served no timetable. Affairs of the heart abided no schedule. Mrs. Williams may intrude upon them in the coming seconds. Her husband may already be chasing Sinope's path - might be staring up at foreign legs struggling to surmount their balcony.
Sinope surmounted the obstacle with little trouble and met him with near equal urgency. Once past the threshold, Faustite hesitated no longer. The spell set on his body broke, his muscles laxed, and his mind sped into solving the dilemma of their impending discovery. "No," he answered, the word leaving him before he grew conscious of it. Unbidden, he swept his acquaintance's hand into his own. "Brace yourself."
Against what?
He shut eyes and broke off from his present location, the lush rugs and handsewn throw pillows raveling out from his consideration. He knew of privacy in plain sight - a billboard that reached toward the sky from where it stood, crowning a recently-bankrupt department store. The sign still hung in bold, brilliant letters as its own garish dirge. Terribly old, the building was - draped with gargoyles glaring out into the night and parapets that eked out beyond the exterior of the building. They could stay there for a while, nestled among tarpaper and stolen secrets. They could speak without fear of being spoken to.
Soon, the clock stopped ticking. The stuffy, suffocating stillness in the room slipped away with a keening gust. Cars rumbled slowly, distantly. As he opened his eyes once more, he witnessed the gravelled, disused stretch of roof behind the billboard. Moonlight etched out its looming shadow across the area furthest from them. Faustite sighed as weariness chased away his panic.
He felt unduly tired now, worn down past his limit. He wanted to smile. Exhaustion stopped him. "We needed a change of venue." Another sigh, a lick of lips. Fingers pressed to his forehead found the remnants of his earlier panic. Perspiration, heat, the beginnings of a headache.
"So tell me what you found. What did they tell you about the fantastical disappearance of Elex Yorke?" Faustite paced slowly toward the billboard's framework, and upon reaching it, entrusted his weight to the stairs. Hands clung to the metal railings, anchoring him in an upright position. Even so, he wanted nothing more than to lay down.
Jack barely had time to process relief at the captain's 'no' when two other, unanticipated words followed. They were accompanied by an equally startling grasp of his hand. Thick brows drew together, creasing skin between with renewed tension as he finally looked up to meet the other’s gaze. "What - "
Before he could get out anything else, in what seemed to be the span of a blink, both he and the Negaverse agent were suddenly standing somewhere entirely separate from the afterimage that still flashed behind Jack’s eyelids. Despite having just stepped indoors mere seconds prior, the cool air of night slapped him in the face yet again. The sound of a sigh beside him drew his gaze, but as the taller boy’s stress dropped, the shorter’s spiked and then began to climb steeply. “ - <******** curses erupted from him in harsh whispers, Pipes took the initiative to explain before the false reporter even asked. Jack’s lips were parted slightly, jaw clenched, as he studied the new condition of the being before him. The sweat, dry lips, and irregular breathing were all signs that firmly proclaimed fatigue...in a human being.
Setting down the ledger, the redhead slid the straps of his backpack off one arm and down the other into his waiting hand with practiced ease. He unzipped the bag and stuck in a hand until his fingertips brushed the well-known contours of his transformation pen. In a few moments, he stared down the black-haired young man as Sailor Sinope, kneeling to recollect the ledger with his notes without once withdrawing his eyes.
“...I feel like you could have afforded to give me more warning than that,” he chuckled, but the sound lacked any mirth. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you any manners? No apology; no ‘please’ or ‘thank you’? I don’t know how things work in the Negaverse, pal, but I’m not some loyal lieutenant you can just boss around - pipes or no.” Acting quickly, Sinope began to close the distance the agent had made between them. “Let’s try an answer for an answer. What interest do you have in Elex Yorke?”
Gradual, careful movements comprised Pipes’ progress to the support of the sturdy framework and then to the stairs. He had turned his back to the Dark Mirror Senshi. Sinope readjusted his expression and firmly but briefly gripped the other male’s shoulder - just long enough to attempt to jerk him away from the reinforcement of the railings. Just long enough to try gazing into the pair of voids that served as his eyes. His grinning mouth moved to produce a nearly inaudible murmur. “Sly Secret Steal.”
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Sly Secret Steal: Sinope locks eyes with his target on the battlefield and casts them a knowing grin.
This causes the target to be seized by the unshakable feeling that Sinope knows something about them they really don't want him to know (whether or not he actually knows it)
The player of the target can interpret as they see fit what their character thinks Sinope knows. Sinope does not necessarily know whatever it is, but his attack causes his target to think he does, which serves as an unnerving distraction during battle.
The light show demanded note for its unduly long process - a song and dance done where Negaverse officers simply assumed a form. What was the purpose for it? Why open himself so freely to a potential enemy? He could reach out through the lightshow and retract a starseed without further thought of it. A waste of potential information, surely, but if it helped buy him out from under Schörl's grasp…
"My mother taught me manners," Faustite admitted tiredly. His eyes slipped shut for several long seconds while he retraced the image of her. Her hair, long and curled as it was, perpetually pinned up into a tight and commanding bun. Her hands, worn by time, yet softened with a lack of rote work. She spoke with them, mostly. Savored them. They touched teacups with only the slightest grasp. "But she warned me that manners were for those of equal standing." He cast Sinope a withering look.
But Sinope met his gaze, murmured nonsense, and accompanying it was eerie revelation. A sense of uncertainty, of the ground washing out beneath him and leaving him grasping for purchase. He felt ill at ease, violated, robbed of some portion of himself that never quite found his tongue. Resentment filled him immediately. Then, as surely as the boy looked at him, his haughty grin smeared garishly across his face, Faustite realized his poor position. Sinope chastised him so readily because he knew - he understood with certainty that Faustite lacked power. Lacked drive. Lacked agency. His puppetry laid bare, Faustite possessed no further intimidation beyond that of an unusual appearance.
The thought left him cold. Eviscerated. What was he now, but an ineffectual captain playing at the husk of his own life? He proved himself the vulture inhabiting his own decay. How trite. How… Childish.
What furor boiled in him simply left with a vaporous sigh. Black billowed from tarnished pipes. "What does it matter?" Weariness laced his rhetoric. "You already know.
"I am - was - Elex Yorke."
Sinope’s grin fixed to his face as if pinned there, painfully retained in place, as his mind ran through all the possible reasons he could think of for the captain’s statements. His lips stretched tight across the fixed points of their vertices as incredulity passed through on a train of thought. They slackened slightly as that train sped on past, departing as quickly as it had arrived. There was no denying it. Somehow, what he hadn’t seen before became clear and the being in front of him really did resemble the young man Jack had met in front of the library so many months ago.
What hit him harder than the recognition of Elex’s physical features among his inhuman traits was the recollection of Pipes’ supercilious attitude and its perfect match to that of the person Sinope sought. Though his power had, once or twice in the past, providentially happened to lead his targets to exposing a real secret to him, it had hardly been anything near as heavy as that. The closest he had come had been uncovering the first name of a White Moon Senshi, but that had been entirely unintentional and not even a result of his magic.
His reaction then seemed paltry to his body’s reaction now, but at least the Negaverse agent couldn’t see how his mouth abruptly turned dry or how his concealed hands failed to stop trembling as they both clasped the ledger hidden behind his back. All Sinope had to do was keep his grin up and appear unwavering in his false cognizance. That was easier said than done, though, when all he thought he had known about Elex had dissolved into more questions. Suddenly, within the span of one simple sentence, all the inquiries he had made at the party that night - all the research and planning that had lead up to it - became inconsequential.
There were just as many inquiries Sinope found he had for himself as he did for the person before him. Why had he been so adamant about finding Elex, again? He had found him obnoxious, but in a way that intrigued him because even during their relatively short, standalone encounter, no one else chafed him quite so much as to leave a lasting impression. He, as Jack, had wanted to prove he could be just as much an insightful p***k to the older teen as Elex had been to him. And now, as Sinope, through cheating in the form of senshi magic, he had. Even if it hadn’t been due to his magic, even if the young man had planned to tell him anyway, this wasn’t what he’d wanted. But what could he do? Evidently, Elex had bigger things to worry about than some middle-class high schooler playing senshi wanting to get back at him out of pride.
It immediately struck him why the Negaverse captain had been at the party but not participating and why he had simply teleported them both out of there rather than have been discovered by the couple whose property they had been trespassing on. This was why Elex had turned up missing. He was no longer fully human, so he couldn’t return to the life he’d had as one, but he wasn’t yet willing to completely turn his back on that life even so. He couldn’t go home anymore, but he must have been homesick. Why else had he told Sinope to gather information that probably would have been useless to him? Because the people it would be gathered from would be people he knew or had known. It would have been an indirect way to hear from them. For all his talk of frightening energy out of civilians and starseed snatching, Sinope doubted the Negaverse agent wanted anyone he’d known to even glimpse him in his new state, whether they identified him as the lost Yorke son or not. The threat of causing and seeing horror painted on the faces of people familiar to him would have likely been enough to keep him at bay unless he absolutely had no other choice.
That didn’t make him harmless, though; not by a long shot. In fact, the Dark Mirror Senshi of Slyness had been subjected to the emotions of people affected by his magic often enough in the past to know that the worst may have been yet to come. The concept that he possessed knowledge they didn’t want him knowing often made them desperate and dangerous. While Elex behaved more like he had been defeated than anything else, Sinope wasn’t about to believe he’d do nothing more about the situation. Of all the factions, the sailor scout imagined that the Negaverse was the most diligent about tying up loose ends and likely the most murderous in their methods of doing so.
So what now? He could run. He didn’t know where the hell they had teleported to, so it was very likely he’d get himself lost if he attempted to flee, but it might have been safer than staying there. Then again, if not Elex, other Negaverse agents would find him and do what needed to be done without hesitation. There was also the fact that he had gotten himself into this mess specifically because of the taller male. He wasn’t about to just let him off the hook because he himself was scared.
For all Sinope knew, Elex might have been afraid, too. Perhaps his alignment hadn’t been his choice. Even if becoming whatever he was now had been his will, there were still parts of him that were unassailably human. After all this searching, all this - dare he admit it? - concern for this acquaintance of his, he found him alive, but he didn’t know if he was well. He didn’t know his mental state or even understand his physical state and it gnawed at the redhead that only part of the mystery had been solved. If he was going to do a thing, he supposed he might as well have done it right and seen it through to the end.
He just really hoped it didn’t result in his end.
“Hehe...hahahaha!” Laughter bubbled up out of him, though conveying no more delight than before. “You finally admitted it! And here I thought you’d be stuck up on your high-and-mighty throne of pride forever.” He shifted his weight and stance, dropping one arm with the ledger in his hand while he planted the other on his hip. “Was it really so fun watching me run around doing your bidding? Did you get off knowing I was busting my a** humiliating myself when the answer was right under my nose this whole time? I bet you had a good long laugh as soon as I’d left - at my third-rate clothes, my poorly-devised plan, the fact that I was way in over my head and out of my league, and my desire to find someone who you knew I’d never discover.” He shook his head down at the ground, chuckling softly. “Must’ve been a riot.”
His head snapped back up, all traces of his amused facade having ceased. “Did you really think I wouldn’t figure it out? Do you really think so little of me?” A fresh sneer slashed his countenance. “No, that’s not true. You’d have to have at least given me some thought to underestimate me. But you don’t even know who I am, do you?” Sinope lightly tapped the edge of the ledger to his temple. “You’re so caught up in yourself, I bet the question didn’t even cross your mind as to why some random Dark Mirror Senshi might have been asking after you; even gone out of his way to disgrace himself among circles of people he doesn’t even know. You probably didn’t even notice that he risked powering down in front of you just to get information on your whereabouts.” The teen took a step toward his addressee.
“But that’s just fine, because you’re an Oh-So-Powerful Negaverse Captain, now. You go by a fancy new name and everything, even if I’m too beneath you for you to have bothered sharing it with me. You said so yourself; that you were, not are Elex Yorke, so you needn’t concern yourself with anyone who had been associated with that identity. Whatever I may have been to him or he to me, we’re as good as strangers now.”
His index finger pierced the air. “Actually...that’s not exactly true anymore, is it?” The distance between the Negaverse agent and had shrunk to a mere foot. “Now that I know who you used to be, I’m a liability. Regardless of whether or not you decided to abandon that life, a non-Negaverse senshi obtaining that information is a no-no.” He wagged his single, upright digit tauntingly from side to side. “My faction may be chaos, but it’s still unpredictable and unreliable and the alliance between our two is shaky at best. Even if I didn’t do anything with what I learned, the fact that I know your old name might still reach your superiors. Then you could be punished for having been careless enough to have allowed me to obtain it.”
The redhead leaned in and fixed the captain with an especially audacious smile. “So...what are you going to do, Elex?” The index finger proceeded to prod the other male in the chest. “You picked the perfect place for us to escape to, but it’s also ideal for silencing someone after they’ve fulfilled their usefulness to you.” Though he continued to talk like he had the upper hand in the conversation, tell-tale drops of perspiration dribbled across his brow under his hood. “You’ve had your fun and I have no idea where we are, so there’s little chance any attempt to escape on my part would be successful. It’s your move. Go ahead.” He stared straight into those dark orbs as if staring hard or deep enough might have revealed something more human behind them. “‘Feed the fear engine that runs off the heart of this city.’ You already look part machine; might as well play the role.”
Faustite stared, unfazed, at the boy while he busted up. Laughter pealed out unabated, urging the beleaguered captain to question it, to press Sinope, to find answers in the grating behavior. But Sinope allowed it not, nor did his weary body - limbs leaden with lead refused to rise beyond their metal braces to choke off Sinope's supply of air. And, soon, the boy roused himself from his laughter. Funny how conveniently he timed his grip on himself.
Faustite set his teeth at the mention of bodily relations, of vulgarisms that built off one another until Sinope formed a veritable image of the human body through diatribe. His visceral imagery hinted at heady anger, furor even, toward the youma captain for behaviors assumed. Sinope accused him of self-aggrandizing, of thinking nary a hair's breadth further than himself in all instances. He treated Sinope as a pawn, and shuffled him off with the express means to have a laugh at his expense. Already he felt drawn back into his own life, when maids and servants catered readily to whim.
Even in word choice alone, Sinope built up a social slant between him. He forced Faustite back into his ivy tower by silver tongue and dared him twice to return. The sea of anger only brewed henceforth with violence at its back. And surely, as Faustite remained for it, stewing in his lukewarm irritation, Sinope ranted on.
And on.
And on.
He abused the interstitial rests an agent had to take - knowingly, if Faustite guessed correctly. His exhaustion wore in his face, his hands, his posture; no longer did the captain command a proper position for his rank. So Sinope took advantage, and took every step toward precarity that he could find.
But there remained little reason to pardon him when the rant wound down and his fury settled. Anger still clouded their stormy relation to one another. Sinope jeered and raged and danced at length while Faustite bided his time, waited beneath Schörl's regrettable recommendations until opportunity urged him onward.
But she also sent him on his way with enough energy to cover such disagreements.
He did not speak. A faint flicker sounded in no precise location - a barest hint - and from the captain exploded such a choking, heavy smog that the sight of Sinope was lost to him. Copper, moondust, sea salt enveloped to wick away part of Faustite's anger, and his energy. It clung to them, steadfast and wanting. Seeking. Razing every pneumatic passage found.
He loathed to leave this cover to linger; another motion toward the guessed location of Sinope's throat announced his second action. As surely as the smoke bloomed into the night sky, it rescinded its paths; it swept up through nose and mouth and seared on its descent toward target alveoli. There, it wrapped about itself in vulnerable lungs, pressing out all oxygen it could find. Condensing into liquid ash. Begging its host to evict it so readily as he mocked its progenitor.
Yet his own ire festered. It seethed and roiled and pressed him for more where he once knew restraint in his actions. He once believed in equality over all things, and yet his long-held insidiousness encouraged him further.
As always, the Dark Mirror render themselves impotent to action. Leto, have you seen drive before? Have you seen passion?
He reached, black hands opened outward, and found purchase on naked breath. The blackened hood clawed at him. False echoes of his own hands as well. A sharp strike at his temple threatened to dissuade him, but ire coursed surely. Anger and giddiness. The foreign phrase was lost to him but for its passion; he couldn't simply stop at a half-measure.
But part of him resented it; killing Sinope would prove him right.
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Dispersion ;; Range: 3 foot radius with Faustite at the epicenter. Duration: 30 seconds Use Count: 3x Miss Chance: Circumventing magic, stepping beyond radius before execution, stepping out during the attack. Holding breath and closing eyes mitigates some of the effects. Effect: Faustite draws his hands together, and a sound curiously akin to an opening lighter may be heard. With a deafening blast, Faustite then envelops himself in choking smoke. Those caught in the radius of the initial blast endure a residual ringing in the ears and mild disorientation. The blast itself articulates as the billowing black smoke, and those who breathe it will suffer burning lungs, stinging eyes, and may cough frequently depending on their reaction to the smoke. The symptoms of ringing ears and coughing will linger after leaving the smoke, up to a maximum of five seconds. This attack is not intended to produce lasting damage (like lung damage or hearing damage), but may do so at the defending player's behest.
Occlusion ;; Range: Any single target within his 3' radius. Duration: Remaining time of Dispersion attack Use Count: 3x Miss Chance: All factors affecting Dispersion; if the former attack lapses or the opponent steps out of range, then this attack cannot be used. Effect: Using Occlusion immediately terminates all effects of Dispersion. Faustite draws all the smoke of his Dispersion attack into the lungs of the affected victim. Thus, the smoke passes through nose and mouth and leaves behind temporary, mild burns in these areas. When in the victim's lungs, the smoke condenses into a toxic fluid which triggers various symptoms. Water inside the lungs acts as an irritant and necessitates coughing and gasping, while the hot smoke aspect sears the lungs. Though very painful, this attack does not produce permanent damage. The carbonaceous water evaporates at the end of the attack. Any lasting damage may be incurred at the behest of the defending player.
All the while his mouth was moving, Sinope was paying exceptional attention to his addressee’s reaction. At first it was fairly impassive, but then as he worked to push more buttons (and more of his luck along with them), he thought he might have gradually begun to garner results. He noticed Elex appear to clench his jaw and possibly be gritting his teeth, which set the senshi’s mental gears in motion. If there was one thing he was confident in his ability to do, it was getting a rise out of people. He had worried for a bit that the agent wouldn’t have responded to his provocations; that he had misjudged Elex and the individual he had known had receded too far into the brainwashing chaos of the Negaverse to be reached by his petty words. The fact that the other teen was demonstrating signs of human emotion, however, was promising.
To the sailor scout, that meant the black-haired youth could still probably feel, judge, and reason for himself rather than remain apathetic and indifferent to everything and everyone as Sinope imagined the ideal Negaverse soldiers to be. Honestly, he hadn’t even been certain that carefully-cultivated Elex Yorke would have felt strongly enough about the topics Sinope brought up to be emotionally affected by them, let alone reveal that he was emotionally affected. At least he was showing something, though. His restraint also signified his distance from the other end of the spectrum of Negaverse mentalities where feral monsters simply followed their most base instincts. Elex seemed to be free from both the cold indifference of more deeply corrupted agents as well as the unsound mindlessness that propelled youma to behave recklessly. That, at least, gave Sinope hope.
...Hope for what? That Elex’s mind, personality, and overall sense of self was still intact? He didn’t seem like he would have been able to revert to his original body anytime soon; that was for sure. So what did Sinope - Jack - want with him? He told himself he certainly couldn’t have cared less if the captain was on the side of the Negaverse or the White Moon Court. He himself was of a chaos faction, so he couldn’t talk. What was his concern, then? He might lose himself to the Negaverse, the senshi realized. Though he seemed to be human-enough in his mental state now, who knew when that would change? His body had already transformed irreversibly, it appeared, so who was to say that transformation wouldn’t progress further? Who was to say his unique, profound mind wouldn’t follow?
It was too great a loss for Sinope to abide. He respected Elex, he realized, and there were so few people among the thousands he had encountered in his lifetime who had ever impressed Jack like the privileged teen had. He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he allowed a person like that to fade away without having given it his all to protect them. This isn’t about attachments. This is about keeping a fellow intellectual’s brain from going to waste whether he wants me to or not. As long as he continued to value his own safety above anyone else’s, he concluded his sanity wouldn’t be compromised. But then...what am I doing now?
Wasn’t he endangering himself by putting his trust and survival into the hands of some Negaverse captain he barely even knew? And all for the sake of making sure Elex could still function within his own head. Ensuring that, though, did nothing to ensure Sinope’s continued existence. A reminder of this soon manifested through the click of a lighter, the blast that followed, and the opaque wall of smoke that rushed to consume him soon after. As tinnitus hindered his hearing and he winced, he tried to make sense of what was going on. Was it a smokescreen? Was Elex preparing to leave him there, obscuring his vision so he couldn’t follow?
Oh, but it was worse than that; so much more unfathomably worse. Either Sinope had overestimated the agent’s exhaustion or he had pushed him farther than he’d thought - maybe even a combination - because the attack he was confronted with turned out to be more intense than anything he’d imagined he could have been hit with. In an instant, the intangible substance emitting from the demi-human entity had found its way into every exposed orifice including his mouth, eyes, and nose. Intuitively, he held his breath, covered his nose, and shut his eyes, but it was all in vain. The smoke had already permeated everything and it stung. It clawed at his esophagus, rendering it raw without him even finding the chance to utter a sound. He began to cough erratically, forcing him to open his passageways once more as his lungs sought fresh air and took in more pollutant instead, worsening his already-debilitated state.
Evidently, however, his assailant wasn’t quite finished with him yet. No sooner had he started coughing than the smoke somehow seemed to focus into a concentrated mass that forcibly invaded his mouth and nostrils. He barely managed to crack open his watering eyes to witness Elex conducting the cumulated column directly into the senshi’s respiratory system. Sinope helplessly sunk to his knees, unable to yell or block off the smoke as his coughing became relentless and soon mutated into choking when the liquid ash formed in his lungs. He shut his streaming eyes again against the agony that seared his insides, fierce enough to have potentially been caused by real burns rather than the mere sensation of them. He couldn’t have been sure. The suffering was beyond anything he could have comprehended or compared it to before, awakening in him a new awareness of the heights that pain levels could reach and that the human body could endure without simply shutting down.
On the fringes of his physical perception, even as the Dark Mirror Senshi’s choking up toxic liquid and carbonaceous sputum persisted, he felt the impression of fingers and thumbs closing around his neck. There was true rage in that grip; a fury that frightened Sinope enough to force himself to act despite his pain, frantically attempting to loosen its hold with first his own hands and then the ledger he must have still been holding. He clouted his potential murderer with it, catching him on the side of his head before it slipped out of his grasp and he discovered he had not the strength nor concentration to grab it again. Whatever chemical or thermal asphyxiation he was going through was finally beginning to affect his brain, it seemed. Dizziness and nausea had impaired his ability to tell if he was still upright or lying on the ground. He retched and heaved as his body attempted to detoxify itself, but to no avail.
I’m going to die, was all he could think of, over and over the same revelation as he felt his consciousness begin to abandon him. I’m going to die and it’s all going to be because I just had to circumvent my own rules. The barest hint of a smile upturned the corners of his seared, blackened lips. How ironic.
Energy washed out in droves, leaving him hollow. Strength withered from his grasp; he released the neck so butterfly marred and watched the figure collapse into hopeless retching. The wings flapped, however faintly. His stomach lurched at the thought.
His vision lurched in short time; the landscape lurched askew in following the new trend. Faustite gritted teeth at his own expression of weakness - at Schörl's certain disapproval. He failed to kill the Mirror Senshi, he knew, as he looked down on the retching form. He watched the muscles in Sinope's back coil and recoil in their expulsions. He watched black coat the ground, spread, seep into the interstices between the pebbles. Was it human of him to feel revulsion all the same? Was it weakness? Identity? Similarity? Shuddering anger left him, and exhaustion claimed its place as vulture among emotion.
He tried to kill someone. The realization struck him far more harshly than the ledger. He tried to kill someone. He blasted with smoke a senshi who antagonized him, drowned his adversary, then wrung his neck. He felt in his hands the last futile efforts of the body fighting for life, the pulse of muscles under new callouses. A twitch of fingers would snap the cervical vertebrae with relative ease and leave his quarry dead in minutes. An assassination, he knew. A silencing.
How simple it was to fall into expectation.
"You're right. It would benefit me to kill you. You're competition to the Negaverse, you know my name, you know... " He paused, drew breath. "Nuances about the life I left behind. I've already proven it's easy to do.
"Some stories, you use up. Others use you up." Faustite stooped, freezing muscles against the shifting rooftop, and brushed fingers down the face of his adversary. In his palm formed a vivid purple orb that expanded in size to fill the space. Inside, millions of light flecks whorled and swirled in their own turbulent ocean. He brought it to his face, where its luminosity cast heavy shadows across his visage. "Consider that a tip."
Faustite straightened and pressed the orb past his lips. He never relished the way its brittle exterior shattered under pressure, or how it left his mouth full of air. Yet he swallowed it down to steady the earth, to sooth the rancor left behind. His hands still trembled faintly.
"Stay out of my affairs. For both our sakes." He turned from Sinope then, raveling out into the atmosphere.
The instant the other’s hands left his throat, the Dark Mirror Senshi twisted to face the ground, bracing himself with his arms, palms flat, as they quaked from the effort. His back arched and his chest heaved as he expelled the contents of his stomach along with more of the black fluid from his lungs that had condensed from the smoke. Sinope wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get it all out. It seemed like no matter how much he coughed and hacked, even if he started coughing up blood, it wouldn’t have been enough.
He was barely able to make out the sound of Elex’s voice between his gasping and gagging, his whole body trembling with the strain of attempting to keep himself from falling into his own bile. When the captain bent forward toward him, he flinched, jerking his head up and craning it toward the other male. Before he could coordinate his limbs into backing away, the agent had grazed Sinope’s face with his dark fingers, withdrawing from him what the senshi soon discovered with the sweep of fatigue overtaking him was his energy. Moaning softly, he felt himself collapse, but managed to guide his fall away from of the majority of what his body had so violently rejected.
Even with his big mouth, which usually so quick to shoot back a smart-aleck answer or some taunting retort, the sailor scout wasn’t able to bring himself to voice words. He lay on his back on the gravel, staring up at his addresser with half-lidded eyes. He continued to cough every so often, but it was more intermittently since that had required so much of his energy, too. Though he stayed silent, his gaze didn’t fail to notice the shaking of the other teen’s own hands.
With a final warning, the being once known as Elex Yorke departed in presumably the same way he had brought them there. Sinope closed his eyes then; feeling safe and relieved, at least, in knowing that the source of his recent suffering had likely left for somewhere far away. The black-haired youth’s former exhaustion felt as though it had become his own in the transference of energy. He would worry about where he was and how to get home later, but for now, he required rest.
Pipes’ final parting words rang in his ears more persistently than the tinnitus from the prior blast. Stay out of his affairs? That sounded good to the redhead. Part of him - likely the part that loved life - thought that if he ever got a glimpse of the Negaverse agent again, it would have been too soon. Another part of him, though, spoke to him at the back of his mind and made him shudder.
Even after all this, do you really think, as fascinating as he is, that you’ll be able to ‘stay out of his affairs’? He closed his eyes again. Although...maybe you will. After all, he didn’t forbid spectating them. And then unconsciousness wiped that last thought, too, from the slate of his mind.
