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 Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 4:15 pm
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Requests for meetings seldom reached Ochre; as a corrupted senshi, he figured he was more on the sidelines of Negaverse affairs and contented himself fewer leadership responsibilities. Really, he never much wanted the role, after seeing what Xenotime underwent daily — she suffered a lot of sleepless nights — and the rest of the Negavverse agreed with him. Ochre could follow orders. He could provide supplementary guidance. But leadership? That was a role best left to someone else.
So when Chalcanthite elected to contact him, Ochre felt bewildered. Initially he thought he did something wrong, perhaps pissed off a fellow agent and Chalcanthite got word of the altercation. But Ochre couldn't remember offending anyone, and Chalcanthite was listed under GenOps rather than SpecOps, so he had no real leads on why Chalcanthite was contacting him. After stumbling his way through the conversation, however, he understood the reasoning behind the captain's outreach - he wanted to know about draining troubles.
Sufficiently relieved by the revelation, Ochre cooperated with establishing a time and place for a meeting. For this, he chose a seldom-known guerrilla gardening location on a roofop. The building sat abandoned for several years yet, due to its poor location and need for structural renovation, so the surrounding neighborhood commandeered it as a cultivation area. Ochre enjoyed the sights and scents that came of being around it - tulips, lavender, crocuses, and other plants he couldn't name formed their own carefully-planned and highly-illegal garden. And with the arborvitae in pots on the sides, there was enough privacy screening to hold a conversation. In the center of the rooftop, four Ikea benches sat facing each other for a communal meeting place.
Ochre settled in with two coffees and a small carton of caffeine accouterments — red stir sticks, pints of milk and half-and-half, and every kind of sweetener packet he could covertly loot from a greasy spoon restaurant. The coffees themselves were black, as purchased from one of the few late-night coffeehouses in the area. He only hoped it wasn't burnt this time.
Ochre pulled his Negaverse tablet into hand and spread the halves apart, then stared at the daunting QWERTY-style keyboard. At pathetic speed, he typed a message to Chalcanthite.
omg not used to touchdcreebs lol! um i am here, rdy wen u are1
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Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2017 4:08 pm
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Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 11:13 am
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When he first felt the whispers of an officer's signature on the air, and next saw blues and greys approaching, Ochre jumped up from his seat to greet Chalcanthite. He offered a pleasant smile; formalities often exacerbated his nerves. "Oh, uh, just Ochre's fine. I still don't feel like I've really earned being called 'sir'…" He bit his tongue to keep from embarking further on that subject.
"I'm good, though. Um, the place wasn't too hard to find, right? It's kinda hidden, but I thought that'd be a better choice." Pausing, he glanced back at the bench. The second cup of coffee sat undisturbed on the stone surface, not too far from one of the pints brought along. He gathered it in a blink, and offered the drink to Chalcanthite as complementary to the meeting. "Here. I thought it might be helpful. I mean, I know we're not supposed to drink coffee too late at night, but people are always drinking it at meetings and stuff. You don't have to drink it or anything! But if you want to, I brought some milk and sugar for it. Straight coffee's kinda…" He cleared his throat. "Anyway, uh."
While exhaustion addled him, the meeting's purpose did not long stray from his grasp.
"You said something about energy draining?" Ochre sat down slowly, ensuring the long fabrics of his uniform remained out of reach of his heels. His hair required similar, if greater, treatment - he paid careful attention to how the braids tried to abscond with his own coffee. Ochre loathed to knock over the cup; doing so imparted a terrible impression on the attending captain, and he really didn't need more bad publicity.
sara draconia your response wasn't slow at all!
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Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 3:57 pm
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"That's, um. That's a really impressive plan," he admitted with a nervous laugh. Were all Negaverse officers expected to be this self-motivated? Ochre didn't remember much of his tenure with the Negaverse (nor did he really remember upgrading, for that matter), but he never felt particularly pushed toward development like this. It made sense that someone had to revise the training from time to time — not all the techniques worked for everybody — but he always figured that the Generals cleaned up the usual training. Maybe this officer was really trying to get the leg up on his competition.
Inwardly Ochre hoped he wasn't competition, because he'd probably be the shittiest competition ever in the ingenuity department. He just did his job and tried to support his fellow officers where needed.
"Well…" Ochre paused a moment as he tried to pull fragments of memory together. So much of his service felt like static — disjointed and meaningless. "I mean, I remember almost getting knifed when I was trying to drain energy. Some guy recognized my, uh, 'tattoo' —" he circled his chest, "— and tried to fight back before I could really start energy draining. And that really sucked. Like, anything where you have to restrain the person is kinda asking for trouble. Um, jeez, I think I remember someone getting pepper sprayed once… Yeah, that was bad. And I mean, half the time I have senshi busting in on me when I'm trying to get my quota. So yeah, I mean, a more efficient way to train for energy draining would be great.
"But I'm not… Very good at coming up with that kind of stuff. I don't have the head for it, you know?" He looked up at the captain's impassive face. "I know that generals can magic up some items to drain energy. I think that's the safest way so far. So if other ranks — captains, lieutenants — could do the same, then maybe… That would take care of some of the risk? Sorry, uh, it's probably a bad idea." Ochre rubbed at the back of his head bashfully.
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Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2017 10:59 am
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Ochre winced at the confessed nightmare. "I can only imagine what that's like. I've never broken a bone before, but I've seen Xenotime come home with some pretty bad ones… That must've been hard to work around. And explain to other people." He'd been lucky, certainly — and maybe Chalcanthite was, too. Maybe the senshi decided to take pity on him and assume he learned his lesson. Or maybe something drove the senshi off, or… Was it impolite to ask? It was probably impolite to ask.
Conversation moved on regardless, and Ochre acquiesced. "Oh, um, pulling my starseed out? No, not really. It's just… I dunno. Sometimes, depending on who I'm around, it just seems like a really bad idea. Not that I mean you, or anything!" He laughed sheepishly. Chalcanthite's look did not escape him; the man showed no warmth himself, and Ochre wondered if plucking his seed in front of a recruit like him was a bad call. A slim hand rubbed the back of his neck. "It's just, not really something that sounds like a good idea when you're facing down a White Moon senshi or a knight or something. And sometimes Negaverse agents can get a little put off by it? It's usually the new ones, though. Like lieutenants who haven't made their way around the block to lose their greenness. Is that a word? I think that's a word." It's a word now, anyway.
Ochre dutifully reached into his chest, however — his hand passed beyond the shattered skin and found the seed glowing beckoningly from its sanctum. He brought it out unceremoniously, where it balanced in a hover over his finger. "But yeah, it doesn't hurt at all. But I guess it's pretty weird to see, huh?" He knew very little on why it occurred, or how. Agents had no ability to wrench their own starseeds to this effect, and they lacked the blackened holes over head and heart. So much of their kind remained unexplored in that regard.
What happened to senshi planets under the rule of the Negaverse? Why did they have such gaping holes, such long hair? How could they pluck their starseeds and remain awake and aware? Most of the time, Ochre tried to shelve such questions.
"Do you, um, maybe know anyone that knows why we can do this? Cuz if there's a reason, it's never been explained to me."
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Posted: Wed Oct 25, 2017 11:58 pm
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"Yeah, the Order starseeds are kinda… Plain," he elaborated at last. He'd seen a few starseeds in his day, especially through Umber's research projects. "My brother had a whole list of them. There was like, forty catalogued starseeds or something from his harvesting scheme. I mean, the whole thing kinda went sideways since Order showed up out of the blue, but I'm pretty sure I can still find his notes. If you wanted them, anyway. They didn't really have anything on Negaverse senshi or Dark Mirror senshi though. So, I dunno if they're super different or anything." Ochre shrugged.
"Oh, and um, is your leg okay? I mean, I didn't notice a limp, but…" Some people are really good at hiding their injuries. And not just the physical ones.
Ochre deposited his starseed back into its proper area (being a hole on display, which irked him in a manner), then resumed fiddling with his hair. The overly-long wefts felt heavy in his hands, weighted with the years of chaos servitude. He looked down as he spoke, with efforts to make eye contact. He wasn't too certain of himself around the formal ones. "Um, I think the only question I have is, where do you think you can go with this research? I mean, I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to steal your outcomes or anything. I think it's a really, um…" He paused for a word. "Commendable idea? And I'd love to see lieutenants and basic senshi and others benefitting from better draining practices. And not getting maced in the face. But I'm like, not super savvy with the whole innovation thing. So I don't really see what you can do with that information, you know?
"Which makes it sound like I'm saying it's useless research, and it's totally not, I just… Where do you think it can lead besides just different teachings on how to drain people? Do you think you can work with the cats and make like, a fancy draining thingamajigger that our new recruits can use or something?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 4:18 am
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"Oh!" The mention of cats lit Ochre's face immediately, and he trembled with pent-up excitement. "Actually I know some of the cats! They're really incredible little furbags, you know? I mean, I haven't met every Negaverse cat around, but I like to think I met enough to know that they're all pretty cool people. I mean, cats, but… I dunno, they act like people so why not call them people?" He shrugged wide and cocked a brow.
"They have this great home base kind of thing inside the Citadel in Negaspace, too. It's like, hmmm…" Ochre's face pinched with concentration as he shaped the citadel and its chamges out of fingers and air. "It's down here in the bowels sort of. And the door's locked, but if you knock, they're usually pretty good about it.
"When I first discovered it and went in there, I met this cat named Tiberius. And he's super huge? Not like, 'wow this cat could go without food for weeks' huge, but… I dunno, just big. Kinda in the way that you're big, but like… Filled out too. Not that I mean any offense or anything, you can be as big or as narrow as you want, but all I'm saying is he can really fill your lap? And he let me pet him all I wanted, it was pretty wild. All I had to do was basically just be nice and agree to help him out once in a while. Definitely recommend meeting him. Oh, he was also looking into technology upgrades to our tablets, so I'm sure he can help you out with just about anything you can dream of. The rest of the cats probably can too, come to think of it. Cool, huh?" Ochre breached a bashful smile.
The cooling autumn weather curled around him, and Ochre struggled to pull close a jacket that never existed. The impracticality of his outfit often nipped him in the later months. Slipping away for that reason sounded pretty douchebag, but… "Oh! Uh, how about I take you there? To the Mau Headquarters I mean. There's usually cats there at pretty much any hour, and you can hit your goal of meeting a Guardian Cat. What do you think?" He finished, holding out his hand in invitation.
sara draconia can fin this on teleportation if you want!
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