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 Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:31 am
The intentions don't excuse the man. The man excuses his intentions.
The mantra lost flavor on its twenty-fifth repetition, yet Faustite latched to it unyieldingly. It held him aloft as flotsam, bouyed him over the churning, relentless depths of the past month's sour decisions. A useless ear, a friendship corrupted, two mothers and a father dead, death escaped, and an undue idleness forced upon him by injury's hand. He felt lost, unnervingly buoyant on hypervigilance. His body sung a nervous tune that wound him further and further, and he knew not when that quietude would snap and abandon him to the sea.
The times tried him relentlessly. He wondered when his driftwood savior would break, then he wanted it to break, then he tried to break it himself with further action. He lashed out against his assigned ward, against his superior, against the few that would listen. The rest of the world looked on in that same benign indifference.
But he couldn't scrape his troubles out of himself. Down he went through crowded alley, footsteps melting through the drifting snow with his body's undue heat. Dumpsters rounded, shipments dodged, pallets overcome for how they sat stacked in too much snow. The alley opened out into a courtyard, and he rounded the old, empty fountain basin. Oversized stone bugs stood their vigil in the dead garden, and the walkway drew long between two houses. They each fostered a raised patio, with steps leading up to their verandas. Briefly he considered breaking in, if only to have a different woe to think on.
But Negaverse energy flared, weak and lilting and impressionable over the midnight sky. Vague as it was, he couldn't source it. Faustite froze then, listening, waiting for the night to come to him. Once it moved, he would close the distance himself.
All those seconds spent in thought piled on his shoulders; he wouldn't waste an opportunity to shirk them in a simple action.sweenys_revenge find noc > smack a ho > dump in whiskey barrel and drag to schorl?
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Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2018 8:22 am
Strickenized sounds hella good. NPCite can have employed some help to locate his missing senshi as well. Noctua is currently MIA Noctua had felt the Captain approach, smelled him coming closer, and yet she remained still as the shadows she occupied, curled into a curious skeletal knot and nestled between two hedges at the edge of the garden. Was the Captain someone that her general had sent after her? She wouldn't deny that she had been... less than enthusiastic about her duties since Cinnabar had reassigned her. And if they came to fetch her she would escape again. How many weeks since she had seen the man who called himself her general? Two? Three? A pompous man in a middle-aged body but stuck somewhere in a long-gone glory era of his youth. She would remind her of what she was taught Winston Churchill was like if he wasn't so insufferable. Then again... maybe Churchill was too. And old ruin, bursting from his pants, suckling on the painfully drying teat of a past too bright for the dimness of his present. Noctua felt no pity for him. She felt no disdain either. In truth, she felt... nothing for him. No disrespect, no malice just... apathy. He failed to spark the fire in her that the beautiful lion from so long ago had lit deep within her. Failed to touch her the way that she had. Failed to inspire and lead. And so Noctua watched as he reclined in an armchair in his office, a glass of whiskey in hand, dozing sloppily as he waited for a second wind that would never come. His laziness was catching, she also noticed. Contentment had settled into her new ranks, and she could feel it crawling under her skin like a parasite. It caused Noctua to itch and scratch, pulling at her own flesh to dig out the mites that threatened her. Long red claw marks pinstriped her slender arms now, picked open by dull nails and sharp little animal teeth. Would they never heal? Not so long as she excavated, trying to unearth those scurrying little insects that scittered in the darkness of her veins. Her hands moved on their own, up and down her arms chasing a phantom itch by pulling up half-healed scabs and digging around within. She found nothing but minute electric stabs of pain as she exposed and teased the nerves beneath her flesh. Pathetic. She needed strength. She needed a firm hand. She needed a raging fire that she could light her own candle against and go forth into that dark night with the fierce cry of war at her back. She needed... she wanted... a cause to devote herself to with dangerous totality and frightening ferocity and a fat idiot drooling over varsity football pictures was not cutting it. So she abandoned ship. She missed weekly check-ins. She refused to follow through on assignments when she was there. She powered up less and less. When she was powered up she did little more than lurk, refusing to fill her quota. Call it civil disobedience, if they wanted. Call it pouting. Give it whatever name they wanted, it wouldn't change Noctua's actions.
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Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2018 11:35 am
Nothing came. The night was silent. He felt chaotic linger like the brick of a house, like a wall so old and immobile that it was folly to think on its approach. The thought rankled him — hierarchy bade that they greet him, that they identify themselves to him, but he met with more of the same resistance he expected out of Heliodor.
Pity that, he chided himself. A slow pace brought him around the front lawns, and he searched for the closeness of familiar chaos. Nothing stirred even then; silence settled on his shoulders with seconds.
His driftwood cracked, it churned. Livewire wariness struck up a thorough search.
Finally he found the cause. Ever a source of ire, he recognized her at once — the avian arms, the too-long hair frayed and cracked with malnutrition, the tattered nightclothes composing a broken uniform. She curled into the dead of night, into the dead of winter, where no meat would chase away the bitter chill. Pockmarks opened up on her skin like tunnels in a warzone. Red lines spoke her misdirected passions. Whether sleep or wakefulness took her now, he didn't know. Didn't care. The dreamer long since exhausted all hope of empathy. She resigned herself to languish, to cast all her sound and fury into the air before she expired unremembered.
You look like the scare tactic ads for meth use. If that's your trade, I know the person to cure it.
His boot pressed to her hip, shook it liberally, then righted itself on the cold ground. "Get up." He spoke the order crisply, with all the weight of their bad blood rushing as an undercurrent.
"You lost your play privileges, Noctua. Sent them astray on these half-hearted binges. Now you're curled here like an animal waiting to die. But that power isn't yours to throw away."
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Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2018 12:26 pm
For a moment, Noctua wondered if he had even sensed her. Perhaps he was too far lost in a reverie of his own and her aura could not reach him. He remained, faced away from her, expression betraying nothing of what he felt and thought. She watched him with bright blue eyes and waited, still and frozen in the winter night, for something to happen. It was, after all, unlikely that he would simply allow her to remain there unattended and expected somewhere else. Especially after the scenes which she had played a part with him. There had been such... anger. Such fear and cracking arcs of electric anxiety. No doubt Noctua had garnered herself a reputation with Faustite already, and not a pleasant one. Even if he wasn't sent there by her general to fetch her, there was every chance that he would harass her just because. When had he begun to use her name? Noctua cocked her head to the side and peered out of the shadows at him. She remained still for a moment, one long, confused moment, before the calm command of Faustite's direction curled familiar warm fingers around her bones and worked her like a puppet. She stood, joints cracking their protest in the cold and the snow, though she did not move any closer to the Captain as he spoke. The winds passed between them, ruffling the rags of her fuku before leaving her still again. She very nearly melted into the shadows around her were it not for the unearthly glowing of eyes too large for her face. They studied the Captain, suddenly a great deal more calm than she had ever seen him. Was that the reason that she stood when she was commanded? "Then whose is it," she asked simply, her voice resounding in the empty space, taking up more room than seemed possible for such a frail wraith of a girl, "if not mine to squander?" She should have been indignant that someone else laid claim to a power that was rightfully hers. But be it from the cold that surrounded her or the frigid and sleepless expance within her, she failed to feel anything. The terrible image of the giant glob of a man drooling in his sleep in a garish leather armchair flickered to life in Noctua's mind, freezing the sun in her chest to impossible temperatures. "The man who calls himself my general does nothing but weep. I've had no assignment but quotas for months. So... in the end... I'm not the one squandering anything." If anything she was a victim. She was meant for more than this. She could have been more than this. She would have been more than this if cinnabar hadn't... if she hadn't... But she did. And now Noctua was languishing in a loveless arrangement without any of the passion and fury of Cinnabar's lead and to what end? Quotas? "I'm not the one squandering anything..."
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Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 6:57 pm
"Your file listed Cinnabar before your current general. Two generals failed to teach you the basics. They must've been promoted to ineptitude. Kept as placeholders in a time of need." Was it the invasion that kept them around? That earned their promotions?
"Mediocrity begets mediocrity. You need someone better. Someone who knows how far to push." Faustite's hands found his back, where they interlaced with ease. A smooth pace kept the wind over his skin, wicking away his excess heat. His temperature became her coffin for how he built his presence around her. Boon as it was against the algid January weather, copper and salt dominated the cleanness in the air. No longer could he smell anything but himself when walking his smoke about her.
Her, the bone-thin banshee that cursed with nightmare. What could she be when left to the lion that devoured the sun? How much would be left when broken by vitriol? How much torn away and cast aside when molding her in the crucible? The gentle forge did nothing to roust her passions. What Cinnabar and this present general left behind was an utter waste of life and soldier, abandoned to leading herself when she never suited the part. In the hollows of her eyes stalked the thoughts that chased her out of bed, into the cold of night. But those were the thoughts they needed — they were the flames to which she'd hold Noctua's feet.
Her recount of her general proved it — ineptitude left to wander and command. To form and stoke passion when none remained. What use was someone so lacking in vision? What use was someone like Chrysocolla, left at the very height of command? What prudence was there in breeding more directionless recruits?
None.
"You'll have a new general." He reached to clasp her hand, disinterested in invitation.
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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 10:06 pm
Something angry coiled inside of Noctua as Faustite talked about Cinnabar failing. No. No she hadn't failed. She had been busy. She had not had the time to seek out someone who wasn't even officially working under her. Really Noctua wasn't officially working under anyone... she had just sort of assumed that Cinnabar would seek her out and take her in someday. It was just that the days between contact were growing longer and longer and Noctua was beginning to feel, well, forgotten. Which was why Faustite's words cut her even deeper because somewhere within her, deep beneath the initial rage, was the understanding that Faustite was right. No matter how much she wanted to deny it, he was. Cinnabar had failed to take her under her. She had failed to keep regular contact. She had failed to teach her. Noctua was a child of the negaverse who only knew Chaos as her mother when there should have been a face and a name. And know that he was right made Noctua's blood run cold and her mind move too fast. Suddenly she was forced to look over all of the times Cinnabar hadn't shown up. All of the time Noctua was gathering energy alone and found herself attacked. All the times that Noctua had to learn about herself on her own. What was that sound? Was that the wind picking up or was her breathing? She watched Faustite with narrowing vision and watched as he held out his hand to her. Had he spoken? What did he say? She cast her panicked gaze back up at him. What was he doing? Despite the chill of winter, Noctua felt hot. Too hot. On fire. So many things were happening all at once inside of her that her mind failed to carry out it's most important function. Protecting her. So she did what she always did when her temper ran high and confused her. Her body acted without her thinking, slapping the hand offered to her with a painful sound, and she bodily recoiled back into the shadows that she had been hiding in before. Her eyes, wild like those of a cornered animal, searching for something... anything to get her away from the sense that he was making. An opening through which to attack or flee. Anything to find a quiet spot to sit and ignore what had happened. In the end, Noctua's body acted without her mind making a choice, sending her back into the brush, sliding away and back into the night to nurse her wounds.
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