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 Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2017 2:29 pm
The message left for him struck Faustite as odd. Not so much by query — starseed consumption was a commonplace occurrence in the Negaverse — but for the target audience. Why him? Word had its tendency to percolate and spread, so Faustite imagined that his own brushes with starseeds were no longer secret affairs, but he as a captain claimed no authority over the subject. If this Captain Marcasite wanted a sponsor, he made for a poor choice. If she wanted advice, he was poorer still. And if she wanted a medical anomaly to observe through starseed consumption, the end result would damn them both.
So why? He pondered the question as he looked over the message a last time on his tablet. His return message still sat at the top, showing as read. Was Marcasite gathering case studies? Trying to gauge her own descent into madness? Poking around for thesis papers to prove her worth for a promotion?
It's the nature of men to seek only what benefits them. To poach paltry stories for their own ends. Marcasite should be no different. Benevolence is rare — rarer still in the Negaverse. She isn't out to cure me. Get that idea out of your head.
It's dangerous to hold hope in your hands. Faustite sighed in a puff of smoke.
Faustite's stance stiffened as he shut the pen and pocketed it. He stood adjacent to the great double doors to the Negaspace citadel, where the ground proved craggy and steep. The respective few buildings jutted out of the ground, stark and defiant, manmade in the face of crippled nature, and he stood among them as master and slave of hs own made fate. The irony teased a cynic's smile out of him. The perimeter about the citadel would do — broad and easily distinguished, they would secure privacy in their talks. His legs itched to move. But the time for the meeting had not yet arrived; Marcasite had a few minutes prior to their discussion.nuxaz tired crappy start, lmk if anything needs to be changed!
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Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 3:12 pm
When she had first caught him virtually popping starseeds she hadn't thought too much of it. Levi was an overworked man who strove to excellence in the fields that he had chosen for himself. Porsha didn't seem to view consumption as something notably worrisome as a whole and she herself had benefited from the energy expelled into her when she crunched one beneath her teeth. It was only when she noticed the amount he would use throughout the day, among other things, that Jade began to grow excessively worried.
When it reached a point where he would bail on her, often in the name of work, or send her away from the office when she came by she knew that it was a problem™.
Her largest issue was that she didn't know where to begin or how to handle her boyfriend's slow decent into dangerous levels of starseed consumption or where it would lead. So, she had began to dig into files when she could and look for rumors of people who might have given into the addiction that she heard could come with starseed eating.
That was how she found one Captain Faustite.
She was pleasantly surprised when he responded to her request for a meeting and even more so when she discovered that he had beat her to the designated location.
"Ah, Captain Faustite I presume?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 9:27 pm
Faustite's gaze snapped up when a captain's aura solidified out of the amalgam of Negaverse energy. She looked like a patriotic british import for the blatant displays on her uniform. The tone of her voice did not match; did it disappoint him? He wasn't certain yet.
Faustite gave a nod as his fingers crept into a lace behind his back. "You wanted to talk," he replied, more a statement than a question. About starseeds.
But you don't look like someone who's falling apart.
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Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 7:34 pm
If Faustite was looking for someone who was a little off their kilter, he would be disappointed because, by all accounts, Marcasite was as well adjusted as they came. (So far.) Her own issues were minuscule and were relationship adjacent than anything that really came from the chaotic influence in her life and wrapped around her starseed.
Unless one counted the fact that her boyfriend was on the fast track to a downward melt down because of responsibilities and his coping mechanisms relied heavily on popping soul gems and whatever other substance that secretary he hired coaxed him to do.
But now wasn't the time, she was entertaining someone who had been kind enough to respond positively to a request to meet. Her best PR face was put on and she kept a practiced smile when she nodded. "I did. I...have heard rumors about," she paused to take in the darkness that filled his eye sockets and the pipes that protruded from his back. "The circumstances that led you to where you are now, I was hoping that you would shed some light for me?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:10 pm
So you want to know how I was pushed down the road to become what I am now. Is this another research project?
Faustite drew a sharp breath, ending in a gust of smoke. "You mean to ask how I youmafied." The word sounded far less alien to him now; her dancing around the subject with care was far more uncharacteristic of the organization they both served. Recourse and political correctness held no lofty position amongst recruits, especially as they patured past lieutenants.
The word 'abomination' came to mind.
"There isn't much to tell. My general kept breaking me and kept feeding me starseeds. He scheduled training sessions closer and closer together. Sent me out to gather starseeds for it. Forced them on me when I refused." His lips ran dry, his mouth parched. The lace of fingers tightened at his back. He looked to the captain before him in her nationalist uniform, with her unmolested humanity and the whites of her eyes and her undeniably professional tone. Nothing went awry in her body that the medical community as a whole hadn't seen or heard of before. She had, at least, that much hope for her brilliant future.
With eyes momentarily closed, he recounted the last moments. "One day we trained, and he broke something else. I don't remember what it was anymore. Left me to fend for starseeds like he'd taught me to do. You've eaten a starseed before, haven't you, Captain? It's a simple taste, but a powerful one. All the sum total of a person's memories, all their euphorias, on the tip of your tongue. Waiting for you to bite. It's intoxicating. As addicting as they say in their training manuals. So against my better judgments, I found some for myself. But the one I last bit that day took the stars out of my eyes.
"Poetic, isn't it?" He spat sarcastically.
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Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2018 10:39 am
Her smile wavered when he put it bluntly.
Her hands folded before her, the palm of one resting over the back of another, while she listened. For the duration, the white haired woman stayed quiet, choosing to drink in as much of the information as she could. Everything presented made her stomach twist into knots, dread building in her chest despite the way she strove to keep it from her face.
Years in theater and preforming lent to an excellent poker face at least.
Xenotime never seemed to shy away from starseeds when it came to helping with a starseed boost, but she didn't push them upon her subordinates, in Marcasite's experience at least, the way it sounded like Faustite's had. And, she was sharply reminded about the harshness of Levi's superior and how he had almost violently banned more consumption than he had deemed necessary.
All at once, it was fascinating to compare the three methods.
And then, he confirmed her fears. Starseed consumption had turned into some sort of addiction, one she had felt tug at her every time one of the gems was crushed between her molars. The very same thing she was witnessing happening to her favorite person in the world who seemed to recede from her and find more solace in addicting things; like starseeds and drugs and party girls who came with no strings.
"That's all it was then? Over consumption?" The words spilled, shakier than she would have liked, because everything felt like it was compounding with the weight of his information.
"What's it like? Being part youma?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:55 am
Faustite's attention steadied on her when he confirmed it. "As far as I know." Pressure and fear and pani occluded, but he felt certain of his observations. One more starseed, and it was swallowed down with his humanity. The lack of showmanship about it only confirmed it as real — no invention of the mind could dispose of one's physical identity so neatly.
"You don't sound very chipper anymore, Captain." Faustite watched her for a time afterward, looking for anxiety's meddling creases or sorrow's weight in the mouth, but found nothing but a cleanly neutral expression. In return, he frowned a modicum for the both of them. What's going on with you? No one asked me about starseed consumption before — the Negaverse has all the answers it ever wanted on the trend. But you're asking a peer for personal experiences. You're trying to connect to the experience. Why? Are you trying to end your own addictions? Someone else's?
What's driving you?
When he finally looked away, he seated himself with a forward lean for the pipes in his back. Fingers intertwined before him, much the same as Marcasite's hands, though more an imprisonment than a show of proper etiquette. "It's surreal for how normal it feels. People humanize it." His gaze snapped up to her — sharp, intimating. "It's like everything state the same, but the world turned more racist. People will run from me or find me as some cheap fascination — a bauble to collect on their mass consumption of experiences. Others think I should be exterminated. Or fixed. That I'm an abomination for how I look. The rest look on with pity in their eyes. Like I should be coddled for what happened to me. Or blamed for how it happened. It's the same fight amputees fight.
"I still have to fight my body sometimes. Just like you do when you're sick. Opening windows is second nature now. Some days my bones still hurt from spporting these pipes.
"In short, it isn't any different from being human."
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Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2018 2:07 pm
She was grateful for the gloves that covered her fingers, otherwise she might've started picking at the cuticles of her nail beds. There were several questions on her tongue that she doubted he had the answers to so on her tongue they stayed, until she swallowed them down her throat with all of her unspoken fears.
"Ah, I'm processing. Don't want to forget anything after all." It was easy enough to dismiss the faux concern, because Jade wasn't the type of person to fall apart around other people. No, that would be saved for closed doors back in one of her apartments for a later date.
Maybe she would make one last attempt at convincing her beau to come over before she fretted too much. There were still too many variables she needed to consider now that she was presented with this kind of information. Just as there was likely more research she could delve into, but she wanted to hear it from a proper source, someone personally affected first.
Marcasite gazed at the shorter captain's appearance, taking in the darkness of his eyes and the pipes that protruded and then, her gaze lingered on the otherwise paleness of his skin. "It's not something you had to experience before, is it?" While she should have considered the question more before she spoke, the woman knew she would have asked anyway.
Faustite's gaze was sharper than she anticipated, fingers pressing into the sides of her hands and her throat swallowing in response. "You are human, aren't you? To some degree surely." He still looked mostly human, but she had no one else to judge it off of, only rumors otherwise of dead idols long gone.
"What do you think should be done with you?"
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Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2018 10:46 am
Processing. Like a waitress at a restaurant trying to impress her betters. Can you balance all those orders in your head, Captain? Or are you floundering for conversation?
Her question roused a laugh, however slight. "I was upper-class and white. The portrait for the benefits of colonialism." Racism, sexism, ableism. None reached him in a victimizing manner — he recalled only a handful of corrective incidents where his phrase was unintentionally racist, or he hadn't yet learned to consider that some simply can't where most can. But those days were soon to pass, and Elex Yorke resided in a milquetoast neutrality with most he met: never fully the subject of criticism, yet never truly exonerated in a friendship status. But that time felt ancient to a still-teenaged soul.
"Define human. I think, I feel, I'm sentient. For three hours a day, I can play one so well that you'd never know the difference." He smiled then, sardonic and brutally self-aware. "Will I pass lab tests made to deduce humanity? I doubt it. I don't pass legality either.
"But that doesn't matter. Humans humanize." I'll be human to all the right people. A monster to all the rest.
Her next question reminded him that he spent too long in one position — that his legs wanted to move and his arms tired of being held so taut behind his back. So again, he walked. "Isn't that a loaded question. What do I think should be done with me…" The question raised his spirits for all its irony. "But it doesn't matter what I think, does it? Not when I am the one being done with.
"I've answered your questions, Captain. One after another after another. Why are you investigating the Negaverse's chaff?"
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Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2018 11:48 am
She hummed, because something about the way he held himself lent to how he described himself. Most of him, save for the pipes and the lack of a visible sclera, looked much like she expected a young rich boy to look like, on a surface level anyway. Had other parts of him shifted, that she couldn't see or that maybe neither of them understood?
Youma biology made no sense to her, they turned to dust and vanished when defeated depending on the age...would he still bleed or would dust pepper out his veins instead?
"Human as in, are you more human than youma or do you think the youma and what it gives you makes more of you." She clarified before waving her hand about. "Suppose it doesn't matter, you're right. You're human enough regardless when it comes down to it."
It was one of the reasons romance stories turned monsters in to humanoid creatures, to justify the way they wanted to love them practical or otherwise.
"Curious of the perspective," she offered, shrugging before she picked at the sleeves of her jacket. "You're sentient, there should be some sort of say." But she wasn't foolish enough to believe that having a voice meant much of anything depending on who you were using it against.
When the question was asked, Marcasite folded her arms over her chest and tried to level her glare but it was unnerving, and strange, to do so against someone who's pupils she couldn't see and she didn't know if he was even looking back at her.
Wetting her lips, she sighed. "I wanted a personal perspective instead of reading clinical reports. Experience first hand speaks more volumes than pouring through however many recounts. It makes it real to see and hear it from someone effected personally. For me."
It was all half truths, but she wasn't going to share anything more than that.
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 6:20 pm
"That's a question better saved for the medical squad." Percentages were mixing words, telling neutered stories of how much was taken and how much left behind. Human life reduced to numbers, figures, factoids. His existence compressed into minutiae with all relevants neatly sucked out and disposed. Was that how she wanted to look at him? To look at anyone? As numbers and graphs and spreadsheet values? Faustite tucked his frown away.
She wasn't trying to befriend him, after all. And if she was, she made a poor effort of it.
"You're sentient," he offered back. "Does that mean Metallia should care about your opinion?" That frown was just as quick to surface. He tucked an arm around his midsection while his other hand hung tasklessly. So much of the conversation left him restless, unenthused. So much Negaverse bureaucracy resulted in false choices — in clever shams overlaying the nature of their duties. Small tokens to indicate their appreciation for an officer's life when their reality was no more than chaff. Criticisms etched themselves into his tongue until he tasted the blood of his fury. Such questions only meant to incite. To burn an old dolor within him.
Is it my eyes or my age or my starseed consumption? Are you the aloof sort that raises barriers to comrades? If you treat a peer with so little respect, then I wonder for your recruits. How lucky they are to have you shutting them down.
Or did you conveniently forget that trust fosters teamwork when faced with someone youmafied? Pity that. "Don't lie to me. If you can't play candid, Captain, then we're done." The upper staircases called, where more worthwhile studies lay. Smoke coiled about him in a casual turn, suffusing into the area in a dark miasma.
Pawn your 'personal experience' excuse onto someone more naïve. Who are you fooling with a face that blank?
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Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 1:43 pm
She realized too late that she had struck a nerve and her grin faltered, though it remained largely intact. Her tongue ran across her teeth behind closed lips while her mind tried to figure out the best way to move forward.
"Depends on the goal." Marcasite answered after more silence settled than she would have liked to allow. Her experience with Metallia was limited to one instance, when they'd all been summoned and they'd been tasked with retrieving artifacts used to crown the powerful being puppet-queen.
There was no use pretending otherwise and the pale haired woman shrugged.
"I'm not lying." Her own retort was curt, a harsher swallow as she beat down temptation to retort carelessly. It had irritated the captain gracious enough to meet her and answer questions before. She was used to speaking frankly, without many filters but she wanted to be respectful.
"I wanted to know what happened and I wanted to know if there were signs, that's why I asked to speak with you because you have personal, first hand experience. What I've found of others speaks of a different story, that one doesn't matter to me. Getting over powered by a monstrous creature is classic, having something rupture inside you and create that... It's harder to see, maybe harder to prevent."
Marcasite's jaw ticked and her fingers dug into her sleeves.
"I have someone I'm watching and want to prevent from falling too far they can't be pulled back out." Even now, she didn't know if it was a fruitless endeavor. "So, thank you for your time."
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Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 7:49 pm
Faustite observed his silence until she finished speaking. While Marcasite lacked the head for solidarity, she supplemented with a willingness to shift her stratagems. The fanatical hoarding of her secrets finally abated, leaving him with a flimsy, milky answer to a question he could not hone.
"You don't get a warning," he spoke at last, his voice careful and tepid. "There aren't signs. It doesn't spare you that courtesy. One minute you're you, and in the next you're not. Your only choice is to watch the cravings.
"So break your someone of those cravings. Throw them in a cell. We have a number."
He paused, however brief, his words forming a hot weight on his tongue. Faustite waited only long enough to taste the burn. "And tell someone. The Negaverse is full of liars and miscreants and divisive despots, but we all share a name. A bloodline to Chaos." We have to believe there's solidarity. There must be solidarity. "If you can't bear to break your someone of it, there are those that can. I'd have traded a month in a cell for eyes and hands like yours — in a week's time, your someone might feel the same."
When Faustite resumed his strafe toward the door, his shoulders no longer showed the same hard lines kept through their passing conversation. He bid her then in a dry neutrality, one that smothered a subtle reconciliation. "Good day, Captain."
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