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 Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2018 10:00 am
It was quiet and dark. There weren't people out here aside from the adventerous jogger. He liked it here. It was one of the few places that felt solitary and calm. It made him wonder if the city would be quiter if there ever was a day for the war to be over.
He breathed in amd out and the air was hot and sweet with the last dregs of maturing summer. The uniform made him feel safe but he didn't feel as if he was on duty. Just taking a breather.
He needed a moment to get some perspective.
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Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 6:45 am
"What a night," Faustite murmured, melting out of black. With midnight long past, the moon rose high, and looked with its pale eye toward the teeth of the city. Jagged skyscrapers rose up, each bedecked with gargoyles or strangers, and met the moon with their veneer of marble. They were not yet cold, and Faustite felt every moment of the dull day's heat carving runnels down his back.
But there was more to this eve then a few easily terminated chases — buildings apart they stood, but Faustite felt the auric blaze readily. What a knight. He saw little beyond the swath of white that informed the person's uniform from such a distance. He approached with careful step.
But the wind wanted his presence known — it blustered whimsically and carried Faustite's smoke in direction of the figure, for which the agent was nonplussed. He lighted on the second building, then the third, and closer still he came, half-expecting magic or a knife thrown in his direction, half-expecting an insult to his strange constitution, yet ever more approaching him, perhaps to spite such notions. Perhaps out of residual faith. He did not stop until the splotch of white resolved into a jacket crowned in rich gold epaulettes, until he spotted a sash of unknown entity punctuated with an ostentatious bow. Broken heart symbols adorned the swallowtail coat, and matching gold ran lengthwise up spatterdashes. Heeled, curiously.
The symbols may remain unknown, but their affiliation wasn't — a knight needed no heraldry identifier to be known as a knight. To be known by a designation that Faustite once held a thousand years ago.
"Hello, Knight," he greeted in a smoky tenor. "What's your station?" The captain turned a discerning eye on his latest acquaintance, wary of weapon or allegiance.
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Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 8:25 am
He felt it moving. Youma and Chaos. He knew a youma when he felt it. The chaos clung to the signature differently. It was one he was familiar with when he spoke to Tanzanite. It moved quickly to him amd he wondered if it felt his power and wanted his energy or his starseed. Both were edible and could fuel a youma's needs and even more offer it praise when it showed it to the Queen or whoever was it's caretaker now. They didn't last after all. Earth stopped being their sanctuary. The Rift became home.
It rushed and then stopped before him. This was a far more civil meeting than be expected, waiting for jaws, claws, or some kind of mandible to strike him. Instead, it gave him a chance to look at him. The smell of ash and smoke as his body roasted and the warm kindling glowing in his center. There were still human parts. Still a reminder he had been a person. Strangely he saw pipes and it felt more mechanical then the organic youma he was used to seeing.
"Hello brother Knight." He said in return. "My station? I have no station. I have no Queen. I'm out hunting."
"And you? Starseeds? Energy orbs? What is your mission tonight." He moved closer but rose his hands up in the universal sign of surrender.
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Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 2:00 am
"Bold of you to say that." Hands clasped behind his back.
"You were put in charge of a Wonder, weren't you? That's where you're stationed." I see knights require no basic education as we do. He fell into step of a slow pace, tracing the perimeter, parallel to the parapet. The stiff breeze blew heat about in its bluster, stoking the area like an old fireplace. Faustite found the heat left him irritable, vexed; summer was a cruelty. Worse was having to explain himself,
And drag information from others. "That question deserves another — 'hunting what?'" The move to join him was met in equal part by moving away; Faustite granted no permission to inspect his unwhole person, his inhumanity so flaunted and endeared among very human preoccupations and gesticulations — a head tilt framed against a long pipe, hands clasped at the elbows with too long nails climbing over triceps, eye contact with the void where an iris once was. He pressed his lips together. Why should I answer you. It's either poor choice in small talk or information gathering.
"Both have been my mission. Stealing lives, stealing hours." His gaze followed the night, traced the hands — thinner and smaller than his own — that framed high against black night, defying it. Denying settled darkness with white proclaimed so brightly against sleeping concrete, so desperately far from whatever world was his. Smaller than Faustite, he looked even more a child. His features spoke the development of a young adult, but most certainly an adult, unlike the eternal boyhood clinging to Faustite's cheeks. The cosmos sought to capitalize on the femininity inherent in narrow bones, in small stature, and gifted the knight that bow. Gifted him heels, too.
Faustite drew a breath and smoke left his back. "I'm out for personal reasons tonight."
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Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 8:27 am
He didn't take offense. "I couldn't give 2 shits about a Wonder or the Code. As for any Royalty, well, I'd sooner see them swim with cement shoes then try and impose any idea of authority against me." He said, not st all shy tobsgate his distrust for the royalty he saw of Order thus far. They had no drive fir leadership and held no respect. They were powerful but lacked the skills and motivation to use their title.
"I'm working to kill the Dark Moon Court. They are a blight I personally would enjoy ripping apart. Leto especially. I'd like to de-wing her again." It was said with a smile. Like talking about your plans to go to Disney World for the weekend.
"Personal reasons? Anything I can help with?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:59 am
So you're one of those. His lids dropped, and starless eyes rested on the knight. Twice now did the euphemism for name inquiry escape him. Front lines, he wagered, both by performance and by his vehement search for blood. The Mirror Court made its enemies and made them well, despite their ineffectuality. What did they do to stir so many hearts? To stoke these hateful fires?
Faustite resumed his pace as the unnamed knight launched into a venomous reverie. The name 'Leto' came up alongside wings — either she was an eternal or a princes, with princes being the heavier wager based off the knight's animosity toward royalty. Perhaps the knight was a useful relation, if he could be trusted to adhere to his own loyalties. Seldom they appeared to be but to his own black loathing. Iniquity stayed close at hand for an agent's own trade; he may yet foster some kind of honor code. Some kind of trade. Faustite's pace continued, smoke ever rising from his back, features stolidly and boyishly blank.
"I know a place where you can start." He stopped, turned, faced the napoleonic knight. Both hands remained clasped behind his back, poised just below the lowest set of pipes. "They call themselves a family. Assault their young and the parents come out to hide them from danger.
"Find one called Sinope — a Super Senshi. I feuded with him and soon met Remarque, Prince of the Dark Mirror. If you want Leto, destroy their easy targets. She will come. And if you kill Sinope, you'll have done me a favor."
He turned again, the night air heat-rich and stifling against his face. Boots clacked dutifully against concrete. "My personal business takes me to Stars and Wonders. I'm told I was a knight. I want to find what I can from the austere places my Enemy calls home. Those bastions at which you scoff.
"And I want to know about the code you mentioned."moonkitsune sinope's player quit but it's ic for faustite to mention it which kinda puts forth a dead-end lead. i tried to soften around it, but if you want me to edit out the mention, lmk
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 5:35 pm
"That's good intel. If I find them, though I tend not to be too selective with whatever DMCer I find. They are all subject to being killed off and made an example out of but now I'll be sure to get a few names before then. Just so I know who it is to bring up if I ever meet Remarque again." The man had shown up during his last attack on the DMC but he hadn't had many words with him. He had to remedy that as he knew he was just a much of an authority figure as Leto was.
He just hated Leto more.
"Any negaverse officer is a knight. You just gain power from Chaos. Knights on the side of order gain their power from their Wonder and in all wonders they are connected to The Code. It is a sort of glowing energy that has sentience. The negaverse actually had a piece of it somehow but was later reclaimed. The Queen might know how the negaverse had gotten it in the first place. If you can find a piece of it, you can talk to it. As for what it does, it doesn't actually do much of anything. It talks but it doesn't direct the knights into any real direction, but it's clear it has it's own goals just as Metallia does."
He watched him. "If you purified, you would be a knight but that doesn't mean you aren't a knight now. There are youma in the Rift who served the Prince of Earth during the time before the war started originally and sided with Beryl. Then Chaos changed them. Can't you speak to them?" He asked.
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Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:28 am
If you can't be an example, be a warning.
Perhaps laying it out as clearly as possible was the best manner in which to address present company. As Faustite spoke, he resumed his pace, and his breath met the air far more than his eyes met his conversant."If you're going to send messages, Knight, best choose your ink well. Mussolini's death and public hanging at the Piazza Quindici Martiri wasn't potent by hopeful accident — it was orchestrated to break spirits. Watching the dictator hang demoralized his supporters. Hanging him in the same place where his Fascist squads killed fifteen Milanese civilians empowered Fascist opposition. This two-pronged approach is far more elegant, more precise, than leaving any Dar Mirror bodies discovered on a whim."
Furthermore, the knight supplied curious information of his own accord — that this Code was an analogue to Metallia, that it can be addressed, that it exerted no great influence over its subjects. But why give them power? Why assign them any pittance without direction — unless they already followed the interests the Code kept for itself? Knights were enemies, largely motivated to attack his unwhole, unhuman body without provocation. This one stayed his hand.
He would ask after that piece of Code at a later date. For now, he turned his attentions to theoreticals. "I would be Kholat Syakhl." Faustite turned in his pace. But you supplied bigger mysteries than that.
"How do you know about the Rift? About youma who served the Prince of Earth?" It was a question worthy of pausing his pace, of watching while the as-yet-unnamed knight supplied an answer.
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Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:52 am
"You really are a critic." He pointed out again.
He smiled and then pressed an arm to his midsection and bowed to the youma. "I was a general. For a good many years of my life I served under many of the changing powers of the Negaverse. I was there when Charonite and Nealite worked to being Beryl to life. I had served dutifully with every fiber of my being to the great cause."
He stood up straight. "I was there when the Rift first opened. When Tanzanite first brought us through. I met youma. Had my own. Drank at their bar. Orchestrated an energy harvest in the city using them."
"I have eaten starseeds. Pulled them. Buried my dead. I kniw where the graveyards you use are. I have been warned how youma like you are created. Pleaded with a friend once who was in danger of doing just that. I knew Zinkenite back when we were young and serving under Linarite."
"Because of this I mean no harm to you. You are not my enemy unless you want me to be."
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Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 8:24 am
Faustite was silent for a long time afterward, his attention fixated on the bowed knight's slight figure. The history he spoke of was grand and tenured, hallmarked by a surfeit of occasions of which Faustite could only dream — milestones where they first advanced their kingdom, where their politic shifted and skewed from one generation of leaders to the next. So little occurred in Faustite's single year of service that he had only that from which to create a scope; he figured the knight's service years to be several at least. Perhaps he was part of the Negaverse when Faustite was single digits in age.
Much whorled in his mind at this unveiling — consternation that this knight would leave their rank, vitriolic anger that he so willingly and easily identified himself a traitor, confusion regarding how best to proceed, petty disdain for his inferred reasoning for doing so, pity that he should reduce himself to such an ineffectual task. Truly, he knew so little of the knighthood in its present form. Was his transition nearly seamless? Did knights have their own hierarchy and power structures parallel to the Negaverse? And why throw away those years of service? What rendered them such a pittance?
Faustite blinked rapidly, swallowed, spoke in a voice edged and heavy with ire. "What was your name? What is it now?
"Why throw all that away? Tell me your reasoning, Knight." Recovering himself, Faustite approached, and black billowed thicker from his back. He waited with a daggered hand on his hip, waiting to pierce pale should his demands be met inefficiently.
A thousand questions remained of what to do with this knight, of what should become of him, if he should be the warning that he so desperately sought to create. What would Schörl have done with such a find? Send Barbary to follow him home? Call the sovereigns for a recorruption straight away? Steal the traitorous starseed and feed it to the youma to which he could purportedly speak? Faustite felt sorely unprepared for this, and that lack of patience with himself showed in his countenance by thin lines and a creased mouth.
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Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 9:13 am
He did not move. He did not step back. He knew what a agent was capable of and he knew what risk came in letting a youma so close. Maybe he would deserve the judgement from a peer that gave his body to the Rift.
"My name was General Wolframite. It is now Gevaudan. I feel more kinship to the first as it is all I remember, but names are names."
"I gave up my rank because I was a traitor. A led a war against the DMC when they were our allies and went against the orders of my superiors. I recruited anyone willing regardless of side. I explained the risk to my comrades of going against orders and for the others on the other side I cared nothing if they died. They could be fodder if it helped me achieve my goal of destroying the DMC. I could not allow myself to forgive them from taking those officers I saw tortured and killed by their hands and to stand beside them as allies. I could not allow the Negaverse to subject itself to that kind of humiliation and most of all I am selfish. I want them dead and put that desire above the orders of my General Queen."
He looked up as smoke billowed around them, one green eye looking straight into his. "I was warned." He rose his hand up, removed the glove, to show the mark Zinkenite's key had burned there. "I had been punished for my attempt. Stripped of power and served as a dog to them. I accepted that. But it was the warning never to attempt it again that I could not obey. If I did, I know I would be killed."
He lowered his hand. "The Negaverse has no place for traitors. So I left to finish what I have started without interruption. I do not hate you or your kind. I still care deeply for those I fought with, but I cannot let them stop me either. My only enemies are those that wish to stand between me and those I will kill."
"I am sorry." He said, not just to the youma but to all he represented. Strickenized Just editting typos in my post.
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 9:32 am
Faustite remained quiet through Gevaudan's retelling. Black knuckles knit tightly against one another through the force of his restraint, and his shoulders remained steady under their burden of quietude. Worse yet was that the tale he told spoke violently to him, to the parts of himself lost or carved away by one of the Mirror Court. He heard remarkably little about the torture and capture of officers by the charged mirror — he wondered, briefly, if that was intentional — and few others of his affiliation had much to say of that. Some found them amenable partners, as if a Court that steals senshi and competes for energy could do so much to ameliorate the toll they take.
Furthermore, the branding. That anyone would honor such an alliance spoke of high politic, but even for how he was raised under Schörl's hawkish precision, he could not see such an alliance as holding any benefit. Throughout military history, alliances were matters of convenience to be disposed of when no longer convenient — and Gevaudan, Wolframite, was punished for ascertaining when that convenience faded. Curious.
When he finally spoke, his voice maintained its careful quietude. "You have a lot to do, Wolframite." He stirred into a pace, his restless energy mulling through his hands. "You face many court members with no army at your back. Pity this busy monster, manunkind."
Black eyes pendulously passed over Gevaudan in each reversal of his pace. He paused only to look down the deep chasm between one building and the next, where cars struggled desperately to puncture darkness with their needlehole lights. "I won't obstruct you. They deserve their fate, your anger, mine. The Negaverse wants me leashed — a Sovereign already declared it — but you're still free to act.
"Be my arbiter."
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:35 am
He bowed with a soft smile. He had beem judged and passed.
"I had a magic leash placed on me. I had to follow the orders from the dark moon court after they had burned, broke, and starved us. After they killed. I have never felt such a restraint upon me as then and after it was taken off I knew that leash was there. I could feel my limits made tight. When a dog pulls and finds just how far their reach is and yet is still able to look out - it is a cruelty. Why make a dog bloodthirsty and then punish him for biting."
He rose from the bow. "You have given yourself to Chaos. It is both a honor and a curse. To be limited in your time here. If you should ever need my help, know I will do what I can to help. I may not brim with the energy I once swore myself to but that does not mean I have forgotten those I fought with. Those values and sacrificies."
"Do not share that to the members of order but I am here shoukd you need me." He smiled with genuine kindness to the youma. "What is your name?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 8:00 am
"I was being figurative." Another instance of this interpersonal miscommunication happened with Castor; strange that they so quickly defaulted to a literal interpretation. In Gevaudan's case, it spoke specifically to his experiences.
And he spoke at length of them, as if starved into silence for years over his trials. The myriad justifications fled from him, a lurid rush, rendered scenes of impotence committed by superiors past. They shared in their being wronged by the injurious Dark Mirror Court, though not in how they addressed such problems. Gevaudan rendered himself a dog absent a pack, who fled his own solely to slake his thirst for revenge. Now he stood alone and slavering, with no other knights about to form a pack.
Though he wasn't the first Negaverse-affiliated to use dogs or wolves for a figurative descriptor. Briefly Faustite wondered if Gevaudan had connection to Wolfeite, or Kamacite, or Aue, or Tourmaline. And did they suffer by the Dark Mirror too? That investigation was better left to wait.
Gevaudan wasn't the first to mention a limited lifespan either, though none could say how long Faustite would live. The knight swore for it nonetheless — nearly lauded it. "Your loyalty is noted." Who holds your leash now, I wonder. Still you act in service of Metallia; those actions are rote. How much still remains of that officer? 'Wolframite' lives in symbolism and allegiance, if not in body.
He considered, briefly, offering Chrysocolla in return. But Wolframite's history was long and rife with active service; a mismention risked discovery and loss of confidence. An arbiter proved more helpful than any petty rewards from dragging the impotent eternal senshi. "Faustite," he answered, using the word as a springboard back into his restless wanderings.
"'To be limited in your time here.' What did you mean, Knight? Do you know how long a youmafied officer can live?" Or was it simply a matter of soldiered servitude decreasing the average lifespan? The question settled on his shoulders nonetheless.
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Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 9:18 am
"Oh. Figurative.....right." He guessed it was odd for someome to admit they had worn a magic collar for a while. Thinking about it, it also sounded indecent in a way and he pulled at the edges of this sleeves to straighten them out nervously.
"It's nice to meet you Fausite." The youma didn't talk much and he wondered if he had been just as somber as a human. "Do you remember your name before you became a youma? Or officer name?"
"Oh...well, I know you can't be outside of the Rift long. A friend....General Tanzanite was that way.....she also suffered from her youma half. It caused her human side and health to deteriorate. She started to waste away. I'm not sure if that is for every youma but her transformation had been sudden and then a slow takeover of her body. At first it was just parts of her. I'm not sure if she is some great youma in the Rift now. No one saw her since last I remember befofe I left."
He looked to the man with a softening expression. "Who knows how long your lucidity and humanity will last."
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