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 Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:11 am
Faustite cared little to watch the end of the tournament when so many of his picks lost their fights before him. all of them, considering; was he so much a curse as Schörl insisted? Superstition wasn't out of the pale when magic ensconced the earth.
It was with lukewarm dejection that he descended the Citadel stairs, the long banister winding like a snake down the throat of the tower. Each step echoed over the walls and rang back to him in a pointless cacophony. Crystalline lights, like a thousand bitter stars, peered at him from down their prismatic surfaces. The column yawned wide, prepared to swallow him down, and Faustite marched steadily toward his appointment, even as thought of the tournament's recent failings slowed him down.
Aue was in the hospital. Chrysocolla won. Rigel lost. Pyrophanite lost. Tourmaline lost. And Arsenopyrite won won won. Perhaps he even took home the tournament. Briefly, Faustite smiled; did Arsenopyrite call on him to gloat? Wouldn't that be a surprise.
By the time he reached the bottom, he spent a full minute crossing stairs. Then came the quick sweep around cavernous hallways, ducking under the stone teeth that threatened to gnash at every visitor. Old offshoots pockmarked with disintegrating doors passed without so much as a glance. Numbers counted up and up and up, until Faustite reached a stretch where the corridor looked too mangled to hold its own weight, and then the numbers resumed on the other side. Finally he found the proper door. A knock and then he invited himself in.
"Congratulations on your performance, General." The adulation came tepid, a nearly satiricall encomium.
He didn't let it linger. "You wanted to see me?"ssbrosb wow that start took me forever
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Posted: Thu May 10, 2018 8:01 pm
Arsenopyrite cursed to himself a bit as he tightened the bandages around himself. The last battle had been the worst. If the scythe had actually made him bleed the pain wouldn't be as bad as it was right now. But instead it was like one giant paper-cut that he had had to cut himself just so it would heal faster and be a bit less painful. There were quite a few things that were still blood-soaked, but he could either trash them or clean them, but for right now they were just out of the way as he continued to treat himself.
The tournament had been... interesting. He had done better than last time, though getting into the second round would have been good enough for him. The first time he had participated he lost in the first round and one could tell that he hadn't battled as much.
This time... it was mostly luck but he did have some tricks up his sleeve, that and actually having a weapon that could do some damage helped.
But there really wasn't time to go over his victory right now. He had told Faustite to come and see him. Why though? He supposed he still felt a bit guilty about not being able to guide the agent, though Faustite seemed to refuse it anyway. At this point though, Arseno just wanted a feeling of what was going on with the agent. Though it might be useless, Faustite seemed to want to combat everyone, or at least think the worst of everyone, which Arseno couldn't blame him for.
He sighed as he heard the door being knocked on, and then opened. Arseno had been able to put his uniform back on, though since he hadn't powered down, one could still see where he had been hit by various weapons from other generals. He raised an eyebrow at Faustite's sarcastic compliment. It was expected from Faustite.
They were in the lab together now, and Arseno was leaning on his experiment table. There was a desk in one corner of the room, but not much else other than the tools Arseno needed to conduct his experiments.
He waved his hand at the other. "No. I only won mostly because of luck. And I don't really care about your thoughts on that particular revelation. You'll just find some way to make it negative anyway." Arseno was bruised and sore and really really just wanted to take some pain pills or something. He really needed to keep some painkillers in his room. He was not able to play 'nice' general right now.
He pulled down his mask and grimaced a bit. "I was wanting to... see how you were doing. You don't have to answer, I won't consider it a sign of insubordination if you don't." Honestly if the other wanted to keep his life totally private from Arseno, then Arseno really coudln't do anything. He had other things on his mind. "I'm not sure what's going on with you, and I would like to know. Or if you need any help." Arseno ended with a shrug of his shoulders. If Faustite wanted to, he could just walk out right now without saying another word, but Arseno couldn't help but be curious. He hated how shut out all of them were to each other, to the point that when there was an attack on civilians, they didn't even care if they hurt their own agents.
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Posted: Thu May 17, 2018 8:47 am
Brows lofted once in response. I struck a nerve. The captain remained quiet, his hands folded over his front neatly. Only minute twitches of his lids belied his skimming of their surroundings. Did Arsenopyrite expect fanfare, then? Celebration? Bubbly exuberance in his tone?
Faustite drew a slow breath on the question asked, however. Faustite knew it as a weighted question, left so open that response required utmost care. Self-branding — cultivating any Negaverse persona — demanded an amorphous candidness. To speak too much was to destroy relationships and credibility, yet to speak not enough would omit him from chance and purview. His gaze found the floor, where he almost hoped a roadmap through this conversation would precipitate. Instead he found blank floorboards, burdened with years of use and reuse, covered in their blankets of sallow dust. No simple answer came for him — he would craft his own.
"How I'm doing," he echoed. "Probably the same as you." His gaze shifted from floor to the battered and scraped general to the old ghosts of windows. "Sometimes weary. Sometimes well. Sometimes irritated. Sometimes exhilarated. Every promotion grants higher highs and lower lows. More challenges. More strengths. More chances for feeling like you belong." But I haven't found that yet.
Faustite paced away from the door and toward the once-windowed wall. His footprints cut their phantom figures into the clouded floor. "I found the starts of camaraderie. Agents — peers — who are more than their tired jobs. That's hopeful, isn't it? That we can act as numbers and still trust enough to give our names?" So often, agents simply did their jobs — they drained energy, they fought senshi at the behest of the Negaverse, they followed orders as those were given. Seldom, he found, did those selfsame agents really indulge in each other's company. They cast aside the notion of befriending one another, of learning who they worked with beyond some mineral codename. Perhaps they thought they had enough friends. Perhaps they thought those connections were unprofessional. But weren't they needed to avoid the fate of a caricature? To avoid becoming someone like Labyrinthite or Chrysocolla?
"How are you, General? That looks like it hurts." Great gaps in the otherwise uniform coat told enough of a story to anyone with eyes.ssbrosb it works great! i like that arseno is p fed up with him haha
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Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 7:33 pm
Arseno raised an eyebrow at the other. Sometimes he wished that he could read minds, but alas he wasn't born the senshi of thoughts. Or minds. Whichever one had the ability to do that sort of thing. He listened to Faustite though, only moving to stand up fully and cross his own arms as he waited patiently. "Feeling like you belong..." Arseno finally repeated after the other was done. He still wasn't sure if he had found that yet himself. He had found a purpose but not any actual feeling of belonging still. Like he wasn't as bloodthirsty as some of the other generals. Or maybe it was the fact that they still didn't tell him what they were doing and didn't care if they put their fellow agents in danger.
Arseno nodded once. "Yes... camaraderie would be nice. I may be a General now, but it's still hard to tell where one is in the grand scheme of things. We still have our fellow agents who create these huge events and not informing the rest of us. And then when they eventually reveal themselves, they have put other agents in danger and just don't seem to care. We may have larger numbers, but I sometimes feel like that makes us a bit too careless in how we act." They possibly could lose one day. And to act as though other agents were disposable pieces that could be destroyed without consequence... It was why he kept himself locked up in his lab most of the time while he was in the Negaspace. He couldn't even trust going to an event as a civilian without being targeted by a General that he may have known.
"I do have my own group that I know in my civilian life, and I feel as though I can trust them. But we are small in the grand scheme of the Negaverse. At what point will we actually trust each other enough to be able to inform all the agents when others are up to something." He looked at Faustite again. His mind had wandered a bit. He had started to go into that mindset, one of a doctor thinking out loud, wondering what to do or what had gone wrong with his latest experiment.
With the question from Faustite, he wondered if the other was trying to change the subject? It wouldn't be surprising at least. It wasn't a comfortable conversation. "I'll live. It hurts, but it hurt worse when it wasn't bleeding. Like a couple of giant papercuts along with quite a few bruises. At least it will be a good time to document how long it takes to recover from all of these with my healing powers." He sighed. "Will you be joining the tournament next year Faustite? I joined to see how I would do, and it was a bit interesting to go up against other agents I had fought with before and to see how much better they've become." And now he sounded like some school counselor or coach or something. Great. He made a face when he realized how he was sounding.
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Posted: Sun May 27, 2018 1:06 pm
How loose you are with your discontent, General. That these so-called 'events' necessitated other agents going in blind was itself an indication. Perhaps that distrust was warranted — honor among thieves spread only so far — but placing other agents at risk implied a different problem. Treachery infected the Negaverse. Maybe not from the few who ran their missions with secrecy, but some of the many that they neglected to inform. Purification from rank was rare, yet not unheard of. And what did they take with them upon leaving? Whatever information they were given.
But Arsenopyrite's point wasn't made of air — the solution to this infection was to burn the lot of it away, and destroy good agents in the process. They raised us on murder. Was it naiveté to be surprised?
With your healing powers. Faustite's gaze found the gaps in soft black cloth once more. How long do you stay a general each day? How long did he bemoan these halls for the way agents treated one another? And how long would he be remiss about his own place in the negaverse? What did he do to contribute to bettering their environment, their interpersonal relations? Murderers natively distrusted murderers — to cure them of that would be its own feat. But nothing about how Arsenopyrite spoke indicated a solution. He only displayed his physical wounds as he spoke of the longer, deeper, deadlier mental ones.
"I don't know," he confessed at the general's question. "Next year is far away." It felt like ages, like a lifetime pressed into another twelve months. His body suffered this youmafication and Arsenopyrite knew it; would he survive it until then? Would a White Moon senshi murder him? Or a knight? Or one of their own, as Arsenopyrite feared?
His thoughts still lingered on earlier conversation, however. He wanted to leave the matter to rest, to answer summons and excuse himself back into Negaspace proper, to escape moralism, to answer his general's call. But that latent problem still ate at him, unaddressed. "You mentioned your place in the Negaverse. You're a general now, Arsenopyrite. You place yourself where you want to be. You hold sovereign right to make your own projects. So what will you do? Where will you go? Will you teach murderers how to value each other? Other lives hold no meaning when you take them all the time."
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Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2018 6:57 pm
Arseno took a hand to his face and rubbed it a bit. He was feeling tired. Too tired. He would have to go back home and rest for a bit. He just wanted out of this place right now. He didn't want to be reminded of the fighting. Once he was done his gaze lifted back to Faustite. "Well I feel it would be best if you tried it anyway. You are... better than a lot of the agents I've seen, though perhaps that's my own fault for not interacting with enough of them. You could easily surpass me when you become a general Faustite, and I hope you do. If anything I'm probably holding others back. You could be much better than me, whether that's with the Negaverse or if somehow you are purified." He doubted that the latter would happen, Faustite seemed to youmafied at this point to be able to go back and he was never sure what the other was thinking anyway.
He nodded his head in agreement with the other. "You are right in some respects... I have taken quite a few lives with my experiments. And it's getting easier. Something I didn't want to happen but if I could just get them to work..." He shook his head. "I still haven't quite figured out my own place. No one ever informs me of anything, and I don't have any grand schemes to go out and take a bunch of innocent civilian lives all at once like some of the others. I don't believe I could teach murderers, people who are willing to do it so easily and with joy to stop it. Even if my experiments are a success, others will probably continue to take lives willingly. I don't have enough influence, which means I haven't done enough."
He knew he wasn't the only General seemingly doing nothing. There were a few others, but it didn't make him feel any better. It just showed he needed to do more, though he still wouldn't want to participate in those trick events.
"Well, you're free to go if you wish Faustite. I'm glad you are where you are, I know it's been hard. And be better than me. I know you will. And I'm glad to have caught up with what you're doing for now. And while it probably wasn't that great for you, thanks for listening to me ramble. You've made me think a bit more, but even if I haven't come up with what my own purpose is, you've given me something to think about. Though once you do become a General, I would like it if I could still help you in some way."
Still though, it ate at Arseno, that he had barely been doing anything. Perhaps he should just try to concentrate on school a bit more if he needed an excuse for being a terrible General.
It was something he still didn't think should have happened. He should have never reached General this quickly, and with no way to overall improve the situation of the Negaverse, whether it be through trying to convince others to kill less or going out and fighting Order characters.
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Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 6:31 pm
You're losing your way, General. Such a pity when we take our wrong steps off the path; it's too easy to get lost. He nodded low to Arsenopyrite's bid, however. It would do poorly to question him now, to brook reticence or disagreement or any manner of obdurate response. He sounded tired, beaten, taxed. He must take ill to combat.
"It must be time to make better communications, General." Faustite clasped his hands together before him. Already they had the tools available — the tablets provided a far more technologically modern interface — but no programs yet arose for useful asynchronous communications. That they spoke so secretly amongst themselves was its own shortcoming. "People treasure gregariousness. Charisma. If not from you, then from someone beneath you. Every idea needs its spokesperson." Faustite imagined that he would need his own if ever he endured his father's hard brand of ingenuity. The Yorke name coasted too long on his grandfather's dime for that, however.
Arsenopyrite harbored a growing interest in seeing Faustite out the door, to which he would capitulate. But the thought of himself becoming a general raised unease; he bowed his head to the words as if they would skirt him by, and he might escape, unnoticed, into the darkened halls.
He spared a last thought toward the general's predicament. Arsenopyrite struggled along in his own manner, blind to Faustite's life as he was to Arsenopyrite's. He must have felt the mounting pressure to perform, to lay claim to his new station in a manner wholly expected, to deliver to the Negaverse some grand result that might push them far ahead in the war. And while they might disagree on ethics and moralities, Arsenopyrite still stubbornly retained his elements of humanity. Strange it was to see those again after so many months of Schörl. "Whatever you're doing, General, commit yourself wholly. Metallia sees merit in effort." She has to.
With a last nod to the general, Faustite left him a measure of privacy. The tournament wore on, and Arsenopyrite needed time to tend his wounds — all of them.
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