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 Posted: Sun Oct 22, 2017 12:28 pm
Forgettable, he thought. They're forgettable.
They're all just pitiable shadows of men. They're feet and claws and jaws and teeth and hate. They're the siren's song to Order. The platform that grants them their moral standing. Faustite watched from his vantage point at the mouth of the alley, where jaundiced light peered upon a foreign shape. It hunched over the tattered remains of a garbage can, scrambling its too-thin claws through the deep gouges in the metal's side. The can rattled loudly in its protest. Faustite breathed a sigh, and smoke plumed in echoed sentiment. They're our diversion, our cannon fodder, our crutch and our crime.
And yet we still make them. We churn them out of people's bodies like factories. He watched as the sinuous youma slowly discovered the mouth of the can, paused in awe. It then darted inside with a quickness that belied its hunger. More scraps fell out — rotten fruit, discarded fast food bags, used personal care items. Faustite smothered his disgust.
The creature paused in its thrashings, as if finally sensing it company. Spindly legs dashed feverishly fast toward the mouth of the alley, toward the liver light, toward the freedom of blacktop and building
"Wait," the captain commanded. The creature froze.
The captain stooped and seized the coiled handful known as youma. Heheld the creature close to his gaze, regarding it with no great sympathy. You were human once. Who were you? A high-ranking executive? A waitress? A college student? Dd you have a dozen friends? Did you have a family that loved you? Are they still looking for you now? The questions oscillated in his mind with no clear answers. The youma awaited his orders. Whatever you were, it doesn't matter now. You're all claws and instinct. Ire and drive. If I keep following Schörl's orders, will I end up the same? A silence fell between them. The youma waited still, its attention fixed on the captain commanding it.
Faustite turned from the alley, from the glaring mess of human refuse. The broken sidewalk followed a long perimeter around an abandoned baseball field, where weeds sprung up as foliage for youma of similar caliber. In some places, the chain links gave way for too-curious children looking for a too-real adventure. Perhaps they, too, became youma.
But he did know the auric indices of company close and company far. Supers, squires, eternals. The broad spectrum of powered light dancing in the distance promised heavy firepower against the captain and his captive serpentine youma. He grit his teeth and kept walking.guine awkward rambly start is awkward and rambly because youma are a helluva thing to address and i definitely did not post this in mini events by mistake nopeeee
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Posted: Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:51 pm
Peter rubbed his eyes. It was late and he knew he needed to get back to the dorm soon because he had an early lab. But more important than his classes was the research he made on the creepy crawly things in the city. Through alley and street, gutter and pavement, Peter had observed these creatures move about, and he documented them as best as he could.
He received some information from others. The half-general Wolfeite seemed to be toying with him more than giving him actual information, but he kept meeting up with him in the hopes that one day he would learn enough to do something. He met a few others who were potentially possessed by youma, or who knew them, but there was still so much he didn’t know. None of them seemed to be the same. For whatever reason, even though they mostly had animal-like qualities, he’d never found two that seemed to be from the same species family.
That night, he’d been tracking a small, slithery youma, watching as it went into an alley. There was always the chance that youma could pick up on his scent, but as a civilian it was much easier to avoid officers and senshi of the Negaverse and Dark Mirror Senshi. It was much more dangerous, of course. He knew that, which was why he thought it might be best to turn the other way and abandon his research.
But…
Quietly, and after making sure no others were around, he drew in a breath and let his aura flare to life, entirely aware that it would alert the captain who had picked up the youma that had been rummaging through the trash. It was a cute little thing, and this captain seemed to have a decent amount of control over it.
“I’m not going to attack. I just want to talk,” Oberon called out around the corner of the alley, his hands held up not just as a sign of peace, but in order to use his magic faster if necessary. He hoped it wasn’t necessary.
“I - “ he started and then paused. There was something different. This officer wasn’t just a captain. The aura was different. Were they part youma?
“I’m researching youma. I don’t kill them if I can help it. I just want to talk, if you don’t mind. My name is Oberon, the senshi of adventure,” he introduced, all from around the corner of the alley, not yet seeing the officer fully. Strickenized Let me know if this doesn't work for you! <3
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Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 8:31 pm
An aura screamed saccharine sweet behind him and Faustite tensed perceptibly. He spun about, expectant of an overcharged senshi sprinting for his face. He expected ire and violence. Pain.
But his gaze met hands raised high, palms out, and words spoken of truce. They did nothing to allay his wariness; the captain measured a couple steps back. He stood with his back facing the chain link, where distant lights peered toward their location. Faustite sucked in a breath, invariably releasing smoke, and watched the senshi's slow approach. He offered no words at first. He wondered over the number of people violating the very lines that the senshi spoke — the international signs of truce — and how that trust eroded over the years. Maybe there weren't safe words anymore.
You're researching youma. Researching. Like it's a pretentious little hobby to work on in your pasttime. Faustite rankled at the thought, though he tried to preserve a pristine countenance. His brows hitched together nonetheless. "That's why you spoke to me, isn't it?" Because I'm a project to you. A passing fancy. A fascination.
But you know more power than I hold.
"What do you seek in them, Oberon of Adventure?" He visually searched the corner of the alley for a fuller look at the senshi. Much of him still remained hidden beyond the ever-present hands. Faustite preferred to draw no closer, even if his own abilities demanded he do so. The youma in his palm roiled and whipped around the skin, its sinewy body writing, and Faustite clutched tight to it. A youma of such small size stood no ostensible threat to an eternal senshi; it wouldn't receive a footnote in the mind of the enemy if Oberon chose to fight. Pity for you, youma. What a worthless change. "What part of their broken lives has captivated you?
"And why speak to me about it?"
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Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 9:37 pm
”Sort of,” Oberon admitted when asked the reason why he spoke to the officer, although it probably wasn’t what the other wanted to hear. “Captain, right? Half-youma?” he asked, trying not to seem too enthusiastic about the idea of talking to them. Not that others would look at him and think he was being enthusiastic. If anything, they might say his expression seemed like he was uninterested.
But half-youma were becoming increasingly more common. Which was both good and bad, because while he wanted to learn more about them, he also wanted to prevent the corruption from happening.
“I was actually interested in that little one you’ve got. No offense. I didn’t realize you were half-youma until I felt your aura just now. I was trying to follow that little guy to see where it went, what it did when it wasn’t looking to harvest energy. Just to observe,” he tried to explain, lowering his hands when the other seemed to realize that he meant no harm, and the threat of being attacked was lowered as well.
“Is that what happens to them? Their lives are broken?” he asked, curiosity in his voice. “Is that what happened to you? I’m interested because I think there’s more to them than we know. Just killing them because they’re in the way isn’t going to give us any insight onto what they really are. Maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me what you think?”
He hadn’t asked for the other’s name. If they didn’t want to offer it, he wasn’t going to pressure.
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Posted: Fri Nov 03, 2017 4:30 pm
Faustite scoffed at the identification. "I see." So often he was reduced down to that single, damning label. His personhood eviscerated. His intelligence erased. His relatability nonexistent. Oberon destroyed the lot of it in a few, incisive labels.
Captain. Half-youma. All he ever was and all he would ever be. Schörl confirmed it. So did Leucite. Chrysocolla.
So you think I should be treated differently because I'm half monster. Should I be spit on? Treated like a handicap? Run into the ground like a beast? He stooped at the waist, lowered his hand close to the ground. The youma, all muscle and wile, touched sidewalk and rocketed out through the holes in the fence. It took to the reedy, overgrown grasses at once — aiming far from the sickening aura that admitted to stalking it. Faustite waved a hand in the creature's direction — an invitation for Oberon to follow if he so chose the lesser company. "Don't let me keep you, then." His vexation crept into his tone.
Black eyes watched his company from a distance. Oberon made no approach, which suited Faustite — he wanted nothing more to do with senshi battles at present — and Faustite kept his smoky presence far from the other boy. "They do nothing of interest. You're wasting your time.
"That one was a feral youma. A once-civilian. Someone's secretary, or father, or schoolkid, or best friend, or distant ex. Now it's driven by instinct to dig through garbage scraps and dead memories. It wanders the city to attack senshi or prey on energy-rich civilians. Maybe it'll make more of itself. Then it returns to the Rift, a place you can't follow. A place where sometimes things stop." Are you hopeful for a piece of their personhood? You're not the only one, Oberon. But of all my time in the Rift, I never saw a real spark of humanity in those dead eyes.
Arms crossed and he raised two fingers to chin, pausing. The youma's signature faded ever more from memory, as did the crowding of Order senshi once felt. The evening settled, though his nerves did not. "For the feral, I've heard chaos energy overwelms the starseed. Shatters it into splinters. What's left are the contortions of a creature without any emotional baggage. No will to trouble an officer. There are thousands of them, Oberon. All denizens of the Rift." He saw the dire crags come to life in an insidious mass, all in shadowed creatures of malignant form and purpose. He saw them reshape the landscape in their own nefarious image.
"But that's not what happens to everyone." Faustite invariably started to pace, walking the length of the divide in the sidewalk. "For me, it was starseeds."
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Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 2:24 pm
Woah, this guy was not pleased at all. The tension in the air was enough to make anyone turn tail. Except for Oberon, because he was absolutely thrilled with the opportunity, despite the minimal change in expression on his face.
“No no, this is better,” he insisted as he watched the youma he’d been tracking run off into the distance. He’d seen enough of it to make notes later, anyway. Meeting a half-youma was much more interesting, and Oberon’s eyes practically lit up when the captain confirmed things he’d heard before. Youma were once humans. There was no real proof that he’d come across that it was possible to turn them back into humans, but the fact that they were once was, well… it was promising. Hopefully it was a physical phase change instead of a chemical one. A shift in matter rather than a metamorphosis.
“You ate too many starseeds?” Oberon practically chirped, really really wanting to move closer to the other to get a better look. “I’ve heard it can happen to senshi. Were you a knight? Do you have a name I can call you?” he asked, having hoped the other would have offered it, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
“Would it be okay if I talk to you for a bit? Since I’m wasting my time with the feral youma, I mean.”
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Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 2:52 pm
Faustite's lips pursed, thoughtful. Strange it was that a senshi, White Moon, would take more interest in his story than the Negaverse. Than the sole entity responsible for driving him forward and caring for him. The entity responsible for his state change in the first place.
But what did Oberon hope to gain from better understanding youma? Closure, perhaps? He may have lost someone to that fate. A mother, a lover, a sibling, a friend, a distant classmate. Perhaps he wasn't one of the ilk that required personal experience for motivation — maybe he simply wanted a cure for all the rampant beasts. Maybe he simply wanted a change of opinion on these insidious monsters. Everyone had their vices, their fixations. Why not youma? Danger was ostensibly no object to senshi.
Especially Oberon, who held no qualms about approaching half-youma. Beasts in the skin of men.
Faustite rankled at the mention of knighthood, a naked snarl rippling through his features. "No. I was never with them. I've always been Faustite." He approached, tentative, with both hands raised and fingers splayed to show the shine of nail in the low, pollution-diffuse light. "I was a lieutenant when it happened. Green. Uninformed. Docile." He paused in closer conversational distance, having strayed as far as he could while maintaining an unspoken boundary. His hands interlaced and found anchor near his stomach, even as restlessness pervaded him. He kept careful track of Oberon's movements nonetheless.
"I'll tell you my story — and all that I know of youma — on one condition. I want to see what you do with it. I want to see where it takes you." One hand parted to light on the fence, black fingers curling into claws around the chain link. It protested his intrusion with a light, sharp sonance. "It's your choice."
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Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 6:21 pm
Oberon immediately lifted his hands in a sign of apology when it was clear that knight was not the right word to use. He knew he needed to tread lightly, but if he didn’t push at least a little then how was he supposed to know what reactions were genuine and what was just practiced obedience? So the half-youma felt no positive things for knights; that was good to know.
“Sorry sorry,” he muttered under his breath as he lowered his hands back down to his side, but not moving from where he stood. “Faustite,” he repeated, wanting to commit it to memory. “It’s nice to meet you.” He hoped that it was clear that he was sincerely pleased, but knew that the other was wary of his presence. Oberon didn’t blame him. As calm as he seemed on the outside, Oberon knew to keep on his toes.
Excited about the opportunity to hear this captain’s story? Absolutely. But he didn’t trust him in the least.
“Seems fair enough,” Oberon chirped in agreement, watching the long fingers that curled against the fence, his eyes bright. “Really, it seems like you’re getting the short end of the deal. I can offer some of my energy if you’d like,” he said with a small shrug, knowing that he was putting himself at a higher risk, but if they wanted to attack him, they would have done so already. At least in theory.
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Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 7:01 pm
Wordlessly he held out his hand. The gesture was measured against the unknowns of Oberon's power — at what point would contact prove too much a liability? Still, he would net energy, and teleportation needed but a single thought. No great threats had come to bear in their conversation thusly. Even as the dead of night enveloped their senses in hypervigilance, Faustite had yet to meet lethal danger in the other boy.
But this did not absolve Oberon of suspicion entirely.
"Don't try anything." Faustite waited for the senshi's hand to touch his before he could start the saccharine flow of energy from one point to the next. He could — and would — drain while speaking. Spinning out orbs into his palms earned a certain endearment for its longstanding practice; he knew, however, that holding them in form demanded more concentration than he could spare if Oberon wanted to start trouble. He couldn't keep them on his person; to Negaspace they would go.
But where would he start with his story? Seldom told, he never practiced its sonance. He never tasted the moiling bitterness on his tongue before now. Would it do to start at the beginning? The end? He drew a breath, a puff of smoke echoing the sentiment. "I didn't join the Negaverse by choice. You could say I was conscripted. And my corrupting officer held no love for boyhood — he never cared for who I was or where I came from," he offered with a shake of his head. "So when he trained me, he trained with the brutality of a beast. He trained me to think of damage in terms of starseeds. Broken bones became a bill to pay in human souls. And if I didn't eat, he'd chew one up and spit it into my mouth. He'd make me swallow, even if it meant a broken jaw. Once it nearly did."
Faustite looked away, black eyes peering toward a lukewarm sodium light over Oberon's shoulder. It flickered sickly and painted its stutter-step vision over a recently-patched wall. "It builds a dependency. Stokes a need. You start thinking that you want to get hurt. That you need to taste the rush in your mouth. Eating a starseed…" He faltered, distant. His breath hitched with the echo of a rush. "It's like tasting the sum total of every good experience in someone's life. The brighter they are, the better they taste. The more you want them. The more they eat away at you. The faster they learn to erode you." He chuckled sardonically.
"The last time I trained with Umber, he broke my wrist. Greenstick fracture. By then I learned to choose the starseed. But the last one I tasted that day turned me inside out. My head pounded and my fingers burned like unsubtle guilt. I couldn't power down. That was it.
"That's all it takes. One more starseed and you're just another monster."
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Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 7:38 pm
Silently, Oberon had lifted his hand as offering, but instead of palm up, it was the back of his hand, as one might do with a nervous animal. Not that he thought of Faustite as an animal, but it would be more difficult to grab onto anything with his hand turned the way it was. It was meant as a sign of temporary submission, at least long enough for the energy to be siphoned from him.
Lucky for Oberon, his own magic returned the energy to him for long enough a time for him to get to safety once the meeting was over. He did it each time he met with others. His energy, while not like someone with transcendence in their blood, was renewable enough.
He stood by as Faustite told his story, frowning as he explained how he came to be. Oberon didn’t know how he would have handled being forced into the Negaverse, and it just proved correct even more of his theories. If Faustite was telling the truth.
The implication was there. Choosing a starseed was a pretty straight forward confession. So starseeds were like a drug to them.
“That’s rough, buddy,” he said without really thinking about it, but he supposed he should probably try for a little more sympathy. Oberon drew in a breath and let it out slowly to give him a few moments to think. “First; thank you for sharing… Second; so you took on qualities of a youma after too many starseeds? Do you think it was the starseed itself? Like, did that particular starseed cause the change, like a concealed virus, or is it more like cigarettes and lung cancer?
“Monster, though,” he continued with a small shrug of his shoulders, “I feel is just a matter of opinion.”
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Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 8:41 pm
The series of orbs grew in his hand as he spoke, each jettisoning off into an unmentionable space as soon as it reached the proper width. After a time, Faustite's hand dropped and no further energy was asked of Oberon. It would be enough for an evening. Enough for a meeting. The payoff for speaking with this senshi lay elsewhere.
Faustite's countenance wrinkled into a frown at the pity phrasing. Oberon did not play too far into it, however, and moved toward more needful questions. For his lattermost question, Faustite gestured his own conclusions. A pair of fingers met his lips, lingered, then left with a quick blow of hot breath into the cool night air. Even at the standard temperature, his breath fogged perhaps unduly.
"It's written into the handbook. Jotted down in their neat, flavorless phrases." He closed black eyes to recall the words. "'Any powered human's starseed who consumes too much energy — whether it be a senshi, a knight, or an officer — turns into a humanoid youma'." He opened his gaze to Oberon. "Too much energy. Starseeds are rife with it. It doesn't matter the shape or color. It's written like a blasé warning for all the headstrong lieutenants, captains, generals that think it couldn't happen to them. That maybe they meant something else. That they meant energy orbs, or chaos energy." He locked his jaw tight to his own insolence. He marched forth in his ignorance once, straight into an ocean of addiction. Even now, the waters cloyed his nose and mouth when a starseed passed close.
"The starseeds we eat aren't chaos-ridden. Civilians, knights, and senshi like yourself don't know that taint. What reason is there to suspect a virus?" He looked Oberon in the eyes then, searching. Is that what you're after? A disease you can sew into your soul? A last attack on the one to eat you?
"Tell me." His hand curled against his hip. "Define a monster. Define a youma. Are they one in the same to you?"
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Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2017 7:55 am
It was a little distressing to know that even though it was warned against, this man was forced into consuming them like some kind of weird experiment, or maybe this was the end goal. This was one of the many reasons why Oberon was glad he hadn’t been pulled into the Negaverse. Sometimes he wondered why there weren’t more child soldiers. Were they really that noble? Or maybe it was too complicated to house children? Or maybe there really was an army, despite not seeing them during the attack on Negaspace, of children raised to be warped soldiers for Metallia.
Oberon listened quietly, storing the information away for later. He would record it all, of course. Theories were already developing in his head. Theories that weren’t yet worth sharing because they held no real merit, just the thoughts of a teenager trying to figure out an age old war that no one seemed to really know why there was fighting in the first place. Control? Power? There were other means. There had to be more to the starseeds. There was the whole cache of them found that Oberon and his friends managed to bring back up and send to the Space Cauldron with Cosmos’s help, but why were they there in the first place, collecting dust?
“Monster is more of a morality thing, isn’t it?” he wondered, knowing he was returning the man’s question with another. “Youma might appear monstrous, but they don’t know any better, do they? The feral ones at least.” There was still the question of morality with those who were still arguably human.
“For all you know,” he said thoughtfully, his expression unchanging from the casual interest he held for the situation, a hint of wariness in response to the tension, “I could be a monster.”
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Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 3:21 pm
"Can you say that, knowing what you do?" Disappointment wrote over his features. Faustite spread fingers over his mouth in thought, considering, before dropping the gesture to his side. "What about the humanoid youma? The greater youma? Both have minds as sharp — sharper — than ours. And if we look only at the feral, are they exempt from moral boundary or are we morally bound to protect them like animals?" As much as he threw the words at Oberon, he could not shirk the feeling that he questioned himself as harshly. Thought spooled out into bitter sailor's stories of monstrous tidings and all the misconceptions therein. He thought he understood youma. He thought he understood something of his twilit standing after his confrontation with Leucite. Was he wrong?
"I can look at a youma and tell it to heel. It can't deny me. They have no agency." But I do. "Are monsters so named because they made the choice to be malevolent? Are they at all different from youma?
"Are monsters beneath youma moralistically?
"Does it mean anything to be a monster anymore?
"Are morals pointless?" The last question caught on his teeth, rent halfway through.
He said too much, not of the Negaverse, in their infinite holding of the world, but of his own personal misgivings. His own weaknesses. His bound duty to not-think was broken, and not with further action, but with paralyzing in action. The youmafied officer bit tongue, cast his gaze outward toward a derelict shop's empty, haunting windows. He felt their gaze trained upon him.
Pity for you, they would say. Pity for you, the boy-not-boy who flaunts his weakness like a dare. Who can't think through the irrelevant. Pity for you, the creature who sounds off with a hated enemy when allies won't hear the words.
But Oberon's last words held promse — the slightest hint conferred within that a monster depends not on appearance at all, obvious as that was in hindsight. "And if you were a monster, what gives you the right to call yourself that?"guine that went wildly off track, sorry! one handed tags get weird but pib has my arm
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Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 8:15 pm
Oberon’s eyebrows rose slightly as Faustite spoke, the questions and proclamations coming not so much as a surprise, but as something as a reprieve from everything. Like a breath of fresh air, even though, ironically, the half-youma spewed out who knew what chemicals into the cool night air. Even though the man-turned-youma was clearly displeased with… probably a lot of things. Oberon figured he would be pretty angry about things if he was forced to become a youma, too.
Whether or not Faustite was speaking in rhetoric or if he seriously wanted answers for the questions he asked, Oberon wasn’t sure, but the more frustrated the half-youma seemed to become, the more interested Oberon was.
"Animals are intelligent too, and humans decide what to do with them, don’t they? Youma can be highly intelligent, just like dogs, or dolphins. But even if they do horrible things, they don’t have the ability to determine whether or not it’s morally acceptable. And who really knows what morals are acceptable. It’s all a societal choice, isn’t it? Something can be okay in one part of the world, and not in another.”
But all of that was common knowledge and probably bored the other man.
“There was a show that my parents watched when I was little, and I can’t tell you much about it now, but there was a character who was accused by another for being a psychopath after he’d done something particularly… morally not okay,” Oberon chirped. “Well, the character responded by explaining that he wasn’t a psychopath. He was a sociopath. There was a difference. Psychopaths are insane; they can’t distinguish between wrong and right. But a sociopath knows the difference; they just don’t have a conscience. They don’t care.
“So really. Who’s to say a psychopath is a monster when they don’t realize what they’re doing is bad? For a lot of people, it would be both psychopaths and sociopaths they’d consider monsters. For me, I think it’s the sociopath. The one who knows better but doesn’t care. I’m not saying psychopaths should be treated like animals or youma, but I’d keep an eye out for the ones who know exactly what they’re doing before condemning anyone else.”
After he finally shut up, Oberon shrugged. “For all you know, I’m a sociopath. Or… I could just be interested in learning what makes people, and youma, the way they are.” xStrickenized Sorry, he's a wordy little s**t.
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Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 2:45 pm
"We're in a specific part of the world that has morals," Faustite answered back. But we aren't in the Rift. We aren't in Negaspace. Morals shift between the two. I've seen it myself. I know how to act in DC. I know how to obey unspoken moral doctrine like a ship following a lighthouse. Obedience isn't the problem.
It's acceptance.
Can I accept being morally obedient to the Negaverse and to Destiny City? Can I still be a moral person when choosing to disobey morals? What concessions will I have to make?
Where Faustite bent over books for his answers to moralistic conundrums, Oberon turned to popular culture. Academically, Oberon stepped into a dead zone — any scholar would cease to take him seriously. But those same scholars would discredit Faustite altogether by his claim of inhumanity alone. Ethics professors spoke in theories only so long as those theories held promise of coming true. And in the land of acceptably academic arguments, Faustite knew, consensuses seldom existed. Ethics split into branches over virtue, morals, and pragmatism and fanned further into sub categories and sub-subcategories. At this point, television sounded just as viable a source as works by ancient greek philosophers. Abstracting into meta-ethics promised further headache.
Faustite was drowning in thoughts. Inaction. Misdirection.
Oberon was right concerning animals — they held their own intelligence, their own social contracts. Ostracizing and assault still existed among them. The patterns were there. Undoubtedly, youma maintained their own social contracts amongst themselves. Maybe they differed from mankind's. But Faustite was not yet a youma — he knew no compulsion as a youma did — so could he count himself still human? Transhuman?
"There are those that know what they're doing and still care. Would you call them sociopaths? Or victims of circumstance?" He froze in his movements only so long as to watch for an answer. When pressure rose in his chest, he reminded himself to breathe.
"That's twice now." His gaze found the hollowed storefronts once more, a quick flicker, before darting back to the super senshi. "You could be a monster. You could be a sociopath. What reason do I have to think that you're a sociopath? Because you study youma like they're swimming in a petri dish? Because you speak without a flicker in your countenance? Maybe you would be to someone else. But for me, it's the selfsame signs seen in Negaverse agents." Signs of hollowness. Signs of brokenness.
So what broke you, Oberon? What sent you looking for youma?
Are they a reflection of you?
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