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 Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2018 6:17 pm
Okay, so Sylvite had been procrastinating a bit on the whole investigation thing. It was just that a lot of nights she didn't go out at all. She had to at least try to keep up on homework, after all, and there was cheer practice and after all that she just needed to sleep, and yeah, half the time she ended up playing games on her phone until 2am, so then she needed extra sleep later on and basically when she did get out she was kinda rushing to just get her quota in. Still, she didn't want to let Ochre down, so eventually she forced herself out of her apartment and powered up. To make up for any delays, she did put some thought into setting up for the interview. She found a kinda cool bent metal sculpture that had probably cost the city a couple million dollars surrounded by park benches and empty flowerbeds. Hopefully it even looked, like, official? In any case, she curled up on one of the benches and spent a good fifteen minutes flipping through the databases on her communicator. Faustite, huh? So Umber had actually ended up recruiting someone else. Someone... better than her, then? Well, it looked like he was already a Captain, like Ochre had said, and that he actually made his reports on the enemy, so, yeah. He definitely seemed like he could know something. This was the part where it got kinda awkward, so before she could psych herself out, she held up the communicator and said, "Um, hi, Captain Faustite? I'm Lieutenant Sylvite." She took a breath and tried to think back to investigators on TV, but like the nice ones because she couldn't be mean to her superior. "I had a quick question for you, can you talk right now?" She ended up sounding more like a secretary. She glanced at the road signs. "I'm at Spring Street and Fifth."
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Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 3:58 pm
His tablet buzzed with all of its dry emergency while the captain's fingers were slicked with Vaseline. Casting it a dull glance, he continued the plodding but blind task of running the petroleum jelly over the dry skin surrounding his pipes. Each pipe formed a habit of drying out his skin — regardless of the weather, or temperature, or even his own hydration, his skin itched and bothered and busted in places.The result was an otherwise forgettable process of paving over those cracks with ineffectual products.
He wiped the excess on his pant leg before reaching for the pen. Half of him expected Heliodor with another complaint or a bid for assistance. The other half expected Schörl, perhaps, with final news of Heliodor's ndoing. The likelihood of either taking place had Heliodor's name readied on his tongue as he answered the call.
But the young, sonorous voice on the other end wasn't Heliodor. Nor was it Schörl — or any other known entity. The name sounded unfamiliar — he hadn't seen anyone by the name of Sylvite even at the tournament — so he held his responses in a curt frown as he listened through her message. Each pause was counted, each upward closing intonation noted, each turn of phrase received with a further furrow of brow. When he finally spoke, it was in a measured neutral. "A question isn't quick if it needs a meeting." Regardless, he refreshed his uniform.
Spring Street and Fifth, she said. "I'll be a moment."
A moment being a span of seconds — Faustite apparated into the broad of night, where familiar darkness covered smoke's constant sighs from his back. The streets sat largely emptied, the sidewalks doubly so, and across the narrow intersection sat the square block's sole occupant. She looked utterly benign, the way she was sandwiched between a piece of modern art and the collective of benches surrounding it. Like a cosplayer who sat about at Harajuku square and waited for fame to find her. But she already showed more agency than someone like Heliodor; she reached out without first being ordered. Ostensibly.
Faustite crossed with a muted wariness for the dearth of activity. And when he walked within the cusp of the sculpture's upward illumination, he introduced himself to the seated figure. "You must be Sylvite." He extended a black-touched hand. All the marks of the Rift's starvation tactics still touched his face and body. "Faustite."
She looked older than him, at least. Perhaps she'd show a penchant for maturity too.
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Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:03 pm
Sylvite chewed on her lips as she waited for a response, and then his very first words were plenty to snap her out of her fancy crime drama daydream and remind her that she had no idea what she was doing. "I mean, it shouldn't take that long," she mumbled back, her tone switching from its usual bubbly to almost whiny. She rolled her eyes at the tablet. Then, she took her finger off of the communication button and huffed. This was supposed to be fun. He was supposed to be helpful, not like a jerk. He definitely did not get to act better than her. Okay. This was probably just nerves. She'd been worried with Ochre, too, and he'd been fine. She didn't really have a lot of time to settle down, though, before he just... appeared. She went wide eyed, but not quite in the usual starstruck way. For a moment, she hugged her knees tighter. His outfit wasn't even that exciting, but his eyes... what was up with those? They were grey, and not in the normal way, and he wasn't a senshi was he? No, his hair was normal too, but there was definitely something magic about him. Okay, this actually was pretty interesting. She jumped up, finally starting to grin. Her nose wrinkled at the sudden scent of smoke as she started to approach, but she still shook his hand, which was... black? What? Okay. That could wait, though. She was on a mission. "Yeah. I'm Sylvite. Nice to meet you. Um..." are you okay? He did not look super okay, but that was probably none of her business. "So you wanted to get to the point. Okay." She took a quick breath, then tried the fancy investigator tone again. "So I'm looking for my General, Umber, who's missing. I saw he recruited you too, so I was just wondering if you'd heard anything?" Man, she just couldn't stop looking at those eyes.
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Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:22 pm
She was young, vibrant, reminiscent of his classmates. Unsteady with herself in the Negaverse's staunch, inhuman politics. His lips quirked faintly in his appraisal. What parts would Chaos find wanting? If she made it so far to claim her rights as general, would she contort herself with delusions like Arsenopyrite? Staunchly ignore her own insecurities like Chrysocolla? Consume others like Schörl? Or would Metallia's magic find another way to carve all the good out of this girl, and leave her effortless ventriloquy behind in the mold? He would watch and receive his answer in time, he supposed, if se held promise enough to go anywhere.
Of all the expected stumbles and tumbles, however, he never foresaw the name mentioned. Brows lofted, and he blinked his starless eyes at her. "Umber," he repeated, half in disbelief. How many months had it been since he heard the name?
His expression eroded to a casting remembrance as he settled into a slow pace. The heat from new spring, still crisp to those still human, left him wanting for a breeze.
"I haven't seen or heard of him since I was a lieutenant. Since I was normal," he added, as if Sylvite knew the difference between the two. "I knew he was missing, but I didn't miss him. I know no one that did." To hear now that someone else noticied his vanishing act suggested a more insidious result. That rather than Umber meeting his end at the hands of the enemy, or an ally who found him insufferable, he simply disappeared. Vanished into the ether. Left the void, and for what? Arsenopyrite's seditious encouragements came to mind.
"Our general isn't coming back. Find yourself a new one," he added with an undertone of empathy. "One that treats you like a person."
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Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2018 1:50 pm
She watched his face carefully, mostly because it was the investiagator-y thing to do. What if he like tried to hide stuff or something? With the whole eye thing going on, it probably wouldn't be hard for him... but detective game aside, she felt a little bad when he reacted so strongly to the name Umber. Oops. Like, he'd hurt people, she should probably be a bit more careful about bringing him up. On the other hand, it had been Faustite who had been all skeptical about her being able to ask a quick question, so, like, it was fine. On the other hand, like, at least she knew what she was working with now. "Oh good, you don't like him or anything," she said. "Yeah, he's a total jerkface." Looking back, her own experience with him hadn't been terrible, but it also hadn't been good enough to keep her from hopping aboard the Umber hate train whenever it rolled into the station. Especially since he'd hurt her friend and everything. Anyway, now that they had something in common, she was feeling much better while she was still serious, she wasn't trying quite so hard. "Is he like dead for sure then?" she asked. "Like it's fine if he is I just have no idea what happened and that seems like it would be good for the Negaverse to know, right? Like, he was a General! It's weird." Tapping her finger on the side of the bench, she looked from his eyes to those fingers. "Um, sorry, this is like, another question, but uh, normal? Not normal? Am I allowed to ask about that?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 2:12 pm
Her willingness to insult her superior officer teased a wry smile. Umber taught above his grade level at the time, he realized; in his absence, those lessons finally gained clarity. He understood Umber's choices for him a margin better, though he hated the man during the many months since their last meeting. Soon Umber faded to obscurity and Faustite knew a new demon. But between the two, he wagered Umber was the easier general. At least he was straightforward.
He drew a breath and out came a light burst of smoke. "You're very invested in this." His gaze fell on the nouveau statue, twisted into some unrecognizable shape. Rowan would have liked it, but Rowan was gone now. "I'll tell you what I remember; it'll answer both your questions."
Hands folded into one another at the small of his back while he talked. "I was a lieutenant like you. I treated the Negaverse like a vacation from schoolwork — an opportunity to see the strange and fantastical that happens here and nowhere else. I didn't put stock in threats of violence. Of subjugation.
"But Umber did, and he trained me for war. He trained me for combat whenever he could. Broke bones whenever he could. Fed me starseeds whenever he could. The last day I met with him, he broke another bone. I don't remember which anymore; it wasn't important. He vanished for a meeting and left me to find starseeds on my own, as he'd been doing. I felt his signature bleed away. Went on a hunt. Took two starseeds, ate them both. Tasted the sum of their euphoric memories before they split my head open.
"My eyes went black. I became the fantastical." His attention reached her again, and he half-expected she'd be bored by now.
"I called Umber several times. He never picked up. Never explained how or why this happened. Never said what I could do to reclaim my old normal." Catching her gaze, he lifted a hand more fully ito view. His taloned, ink-stained hands begrudged the moonlight.
"But he makes a habit of this. He left Chrysocolla out to try, too. Now you."
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Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:04 pm
She blinked at him as he started infodumping at her. It was a bit unexpected, like, she wasn't sure if she would tell a total stranger underling all this stuff, but whatever. Maybe it was the post-Umber solidarity. Listening, she didn't quite feel like she deserved that title, but this guy didn't need to know that. His to-the-point attitude was gonna stop this from taking like an hour and giving her lots of jucy tidbits. Like, dodging Umber had definitely been the right choice on her part, but then she had gotten kidnapped that one time, so it kinda balanced out. "Okay," she said. "Wow. Sounds like you had a rough time. Yeah, he just kinda forgot about me but he was super mean to Chrysocolla and now you." She wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tounge. "Gross." Pulling out the communicator would probably be a bit obvious, but she made her mental notes for later. Jerkface. Faustite doesn't like him because of reasons. Abandonment issues with literally everyone."Yeah, that was the question," she said. "Thanks for talking to me! I guess it wansn't anything new, but it kinda confirmed some stuff." She squinted. "How'd he even get to General if he's so finicky, anyway? Ehh, I guess it doesn't matter now." She turned to the more interesting matter, Faustite himself. She tore her gaze away from his eyes in order to stare at his hands with just as much interest. Far too much interest, some might say. "So," she said, looking back up with big eyes and the twitch of a hidden smile to her face, "You just eat a bunch of starseeds and you go all magical?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 11:39 am
Faustite only cocked his head to the side in blithe assent. Hands found their way to the small of his back once again. "They don't need to treat us like people." That humans ultimately became youma when under Negaverse control indicated that they trained for it. That the hierarchichal Negaverse structure provided that platform to acclimate them to total servitude. And in instances like Schörl and Umber, the dehumanization only added to this deathly recipe.
When she passed over her own question, Faustite watched her quietly. In a hurry to stop talking about him. In no hurry to find a general. You relish your freedom, don't you?
They don't like people like you. People like us.
"As far as I've seen." He sniffed, kicking dirt under feet as he resumed a pace. "Pyrophanite said it was a merge. That a youma comes around and fuses with an agent. There are too few of us to know."
She seemed interested in the matter, however, and he seized the opportunity to impress more information on her. "We still hold influence like other officers. Still eat, sleep, and serve. Still command youma despite standing between human and post-human. But our servitude to Metallia is more complete, more trustworthy. Your life goes on when you quit powering up — ours ends. The stakes are real. It isn't extracurricular," he finished, more in spite of himself than any flippancy exhibited by Sylvite. That she took any interest at all in socializing with him was its own marvel.
"But it isn't what I would wish on someone who likes the life they lead." Partial youmafication wouldn't suit Arsenopyrite for his attachments to schooling, or Uvarovite for his control complex, or Tourmaline for how she so enjoys connecting with others. Perhaps it wouldn't suit Sylvite, either, for all the childish wonderment with which she looked at the world.stari_maga frazzled, braindead post-finals tag 4 u
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 8:02 pm
Sylvite continued to give some frowns and eyebrow waggles as Faustite gave a last insult to Generals, but her heart wasn't really in it. Umber was pretty old news to her, too. She was a bit curious about the whole disappearance thing, but that was absolutely nothing compared to this delightfully new discovery that people could get even more magical than she had thought. She deflated a bit when he started to actually explain things, though. "Oh," she said. A half second of sharp silence hung in the air. "It's from youma. Okay." She didn't like youma. She still wasn't quite over how she'd almost got eaten back before joining up, or how they gave the Negaverse such a bad name. Still, if it was just giving someone cool eyes and stuff, that wasn't the same, right? Her mind piled on the justifications while he gave her more information and warnings. She started rocking back and forth, heel to toe. "So you're still a person," she said, "but you're better and cooler and stuff. And magic." The hesitation was mostly gone and she was back to wide eyed wonder. "But I can't be like that because I gotta be boring and everyone is super concerned about the boring part of my life for some reason." She sucked in a big breath and gave a full body sigh. It wasn't like she would just give up her family and friends in a heartbeat, she got that it was probably tough, but she was starting to get kinda annoyed that everyone was cooler than her. Then, she managed to go back to actual, less obsessive eye contact. "Sorry, I'm not trying to rant at you or anything. Like, I really am sorry about the crap. Have you been okay since then? Happy?" She leaned forwards. "Have you been having enough fun? That's really important."
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:45 pm
Faustite wore a wry smile at her self-clarification of half-youma. If she wanted that path, he wouldn't bar her from it. She was the type to learn best when personally facing all the perks and consequences. She might find herself prettier, more appropriate to the Negaverse by making those changes. The ones with monster's features were often not the fearsome ones.
"And magic," he echoed with a loft of brows. Faustite aborted his pace as he chose to sit at the edge of her bench. Ever aware of hardware, he sat as violinists did in the height of their performances. Metal groaned into bone when he hunched. Hands pooled in his lap more informally as he turned his attention back to her.
Faustite leveled her an appraising glance. "If it's boring, get rid of it." She looked near his age — the age of modular lives controlled by parents, of textbooks parsed out and force-fed to the unwilling, of teachers telling everyone how to live and how to love and how to lie. How to memorize all the facts that would never build a framework of life. How to read within the annals of poetry from decades before they were born. Maybe she, like he, learned only a distaste for the future waiting for them. Maybe she didn't care for the catty fights that broke out when someone's social status was threatened in the locker room hallway.
Or maybe she was a little older, a little wiser than she let on. Maybe she found college's ceaseless demands for money outweighed the education given, but was trapped into expectation for another four years of institutional intellectualism. Why not escape? Why not taste that life on the other side of reality?
That she then inquired about his well-being felt grievously beyond the pale of the Negaverse. She defaulted to it in a second thought — out of social necessity. "I live," he answered curtly. His life as post-human wasn't a matter of survival. "I prefer this to who I was."
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Posted: Mon May 07, 2018 7:09 pm
She took his tiny bit of encouragement to its logical extreme and let herself daydream for a moment. Was it based on the same magic as the regular Negaverse stuff? Then, she'd probably end up with some kind of candy magic, right? Like Dia. Except it would maybe be a part of her? She wasn't quite sure how that part worked. Maybe she'd get stripes on her face, like a swirly tiger. Maybe she's be able to take people who were gross and turn them into candy statues. That would be really useful. Depending on where they fell on the scale from annoying to disgustingly awful, she could either put them in her room or just eat them. Of course, that was assuming she still had a room, since that was technically part of her "boring" life. And doing homework wasn't that much worse than looking for energy on a slow night. She brought it back into reality. Now that they were talking about him, he wasn't answering her questions, but she could still figure out what she needed to. He lived? Yeah, that was what people said before they went home and posted a bunch of memes about being dead inside. This guy was definitively not having enough fun. If he wanted to be all mysterious about it, that was his problem, she didn't have to give him snacks and friendship bracelets. "It's not that simple," she said, out loud this time. She turned around to face him on the bench and shook her head. "I'm not stupid. I know that. I just wanna be awesome and have fun and I'm trying, but boring stuff's gonna pop up no matter what. Even in the Negaverse." She licked her lips and wondered how much she wanted to be honest and how much she wanted to try to be encouraging. "I think the trick's just to add as much fun stuff as you can? Like, that's why I'm doing this investigation thing. If I prove I can figure stuff out maybe I'll get to do more coll stuff." She fell silent, but from this angle she could see the pipes in his back a little better. She found herself staring again. "...Does it hurt?"
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Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 8:23 am
Faustite tilted his head to the side, shutting his eyes for a moment. "Youmafying is that simple. No bills, no taxes, no property ownership. No political scandals. No classwork. Just Negaverse duties and off hours — assuming you want a life without social norms and shark smiles." But she was young, infatuated with magic, and possessed unknown durability. Youmafication could break her. It could strengthen her beyond the gnashing enamel of the Negaverse's teeth, too.
Faustite looked to her again. She grasped positive and negative reinforcement far better than his recruit. She recognized that, barring her own personal entitlements, the Negaverse operated on something of a meritocracy with blended elements of seniority. If she sticks around long enough, she'll probably get promoted. Conversely, she could speed up that promotion by doing something that marks her as indispensable — as more useful than the average crop of men and women wrenched from the doldrums of their lives.
But he placed little stock in utilitarianism.
"Maybe you will," he conceded. "Or you can look for the fun stuff yourself."
But the question about his back arose and he hummed lowly. "I always know it's there. It hurts when someone hits the pipes, but it doesn't predict the weather like plates and screws in an old man's arm. It's…" Shaking his head, he shrugged. "become normal.
"Everything becomes normal if you wait long enough. Even bores."
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Posted: Wed May 16, 2018 8:53 pm
Sylvite chewed on the insides of her cheeks and listened to Faustite lay everything out. It was weird hearing him talking about the facts about responsibilities instead of dwelling on the magic, but he was talking about stuff she wouldn't have necessarily thought about until now, like no math homework. She was more into the awesomeness factor, but that did kinda speak for itself. So much staring was still happening. So much. It was good they weren't in a big crowd with starseeds that she could pop like candy because he was making it pretty hard to listen to her tiny measure of self control. "Yeah, okay," she said. The no family, no cheer and stuff was still there in the back of her mind, but she decided not to talk about it. After all, he was stuck like this, and she didn't wanna bring up anything that might be a sore spot for him, especially since they were still kinda sorta on official business. "Maybe, then." The way he was talking about his pipes got a raised eyebrow. "I mean the whole predicting the weather thing is kind of a rip off," she said. "I've got messed up joints from cheer and they mostly just get weird when it's already muggy or rainy. I think it's a fluid buildup thing, so I dunno if it would apply to whatever's going on with you in the first place, but anyway, it's kinda-" she cut off her sentence and blinked, then frowned. Her shoulders drooped as she looked down. She kicked a decorative pebble and sent it skittering across the sidewalk. "Boring. Wow, you're right," she finished. She poked at another pebble with her boot, then looked back up. "Well, this is one more interview done, so that's gotta be getting me closer." It had been a couple years now, so she wasn't sure what it was going to take to get a promotion, but she wasn't gonna lose hope yet. "If not, uh, I'll figure something out, and you can, too! Hmm." She considered for a moment, then folded her hands like a proper detective once more. "Do you know how far we can jump down without getting hurt by chance?" Might as well finish the interview with a bang.
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Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 11:17 pm
Where he leaned, hands clasped between his knees and forearms braced on his thighs, Faustite only cocked his head lightly. "I know." A brow cocked in echo of that sentiment. Boring was right. Cheer injuries and math homework and future planning for the next four years became the exact banality that shuttled about their lives. As Elex, he would have met that exact fate. He would still be facing academia, pressure to make uninteresting friends, pressure to pick out a perfectly usual 9-5 career, to find a nice girlfriend, to carry on the family name, to meet expectations never expressed, to live and die as socially acceptable. Perhaps he would have known Sylvite by her banal name. Perhaps they would have been friends, or more, or enemies. Strange how he felt more and more distant from that life; he wondered if Sylvite would feel the same.
If she would feel anything at all about youmafying. Elation, excitement, sadness, bittersweet nostalgia. Rage. Remorse. Relief.
Strange how these life-changing errors never reach a storybook ending — not for him, not for other partial youma, not for Sylvite if she reached that fate.
"There's a lot to say about a life like this. It's freeing, but lonely. Engaging, but recondite. Exhilarating, but messy in all the raw ways. Above all, it's different." Faustite swallowed as his fingers laced and unlaced in restless knuckle-patterns. He opened his mouth, his lower lip hanging in pause. His gaze skipped from one rock to the next as they looked for the interstices of their conversation. "Maybe you'll consider it," he said at last.
Faustite hummed to himself at her question as his gaze found a parapet. His lower lip tucked under teeth momentarily. "As far as we can jump. Farther if you know to roll." He stood, then, and hands folded at the small of his back.
"And Sylvite, if you find him, punch him for me. It's an order," he finished in a loft of brows — the gesture a lukewarm mix of jest and seriousness.
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Posted: Sat May 26, 2018 11:53 am
She just chewed on her cheeks as he listed off his adjectives. Different. Yeah, that made sense. It sounded really interesting, that was for sure. It looked really interesting, too. Still, it didn't really change the fact that no matter how much they talked about this, she wasn't truly gonna know. "Yeah, that makes sense," was all she said, resolving herself to just take the last couple moments to admire his nice smoky eyes while she could. All of the deeper, life changing, conceptual stuff she was sure she would have plenty of time to roll over and over again in her mind while she was blankly staring at the scribbles on the whiteboard in math class. She nodded. "Maybe." That wasn't really what this was about, though. Umber. Right. What she remembered of him was that steely gaze and of course just how strong he was. Like, all of the Negaverse was named after rocks, but he seemed to fit the bill of actually being cold and solid, plus obviously he was a general, so she didn't think punching him was the best idea. Of course, he was also probably dead, so she figured she could cross that bridge when she got to it. She nodded again, more energetically this time. "Yeah, okay." She grinned. Maybe she was even slightly amused. "Anyway, thanks for all your help, Faustite. It's been nice to meet you." She tried to think back to what the end of conversation pleasantries were on those investigation shows, but she wasn't sure and also that had kind of failed at this point. Instead, she just waved as she took a couple steps back and said, "And, um, have fun!" Then, she turned and within a couple seconds jumped up onto a nearby roof. Now it was time to find something fun to get into.
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