Gev did not have plans. He didn't have friends to hang out with as a civilian. He didn't have a team as a knight. He didn't even have a tv show he looked forward to every week. It was what made having a set time to meet someone exciting, and he had been jumpy at work the closer the date came.
When it had been time to patrol, he knew he would need to reserve some time to get to the graveyard. Unlike when he was a Negaverse officer, he couldn't teleport anymore, and now he had to walk there. Passing the streets he soon entered the woods and walked the trails to the point where he ducked under the trail signs that split the path and stopped.
The leaves had only just started changing. Half green and coloring about the edges, and there was only the barest hint of cooler weather in the air. With kids back in school, there was not even people out in the woods to get drunk, and the woods were dense that it made randomly walking in the trees difficult.
The only time he had made this trip on foot was the first time Nealite showed him where to dump the bodies. Back then, you had to know where you were going, but once you knew, then you could teleport to a place. He remembered how tired he was, sick, holding the cold body over his shoulder.
He waited on the trail for Faustite.
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Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 6:55 pm
The distance between the deepest reaches of the Negaspace citadel and one of the austere trails marking Destiny City's park system was half a breath. Half a breath and his surroundings shifted from steep crags, violet stalactites and dilapidated bookcases to newly autumnal leaves, thick oaken trunks and well-worn trails replete with bike grooves. Wind went from stagnant to flowing, teasing black wefts about with the promise of coming rain. He smelled wet on the air alongside his own copper and moondust, contrasted to the mildewed, earthen rot inside the citadel walls. And for all that, he wondered what the journey would have given him.
But now wasn't the time for such wonders. The youma captain straightened, drawing a breath, and his pipes sighed his intent as he shifted toward one of the thicker trails. Not far from his sudden appearance was the beckon of a headache-bright Order aura that belied Gevaudan's position. He nary expected an ambush — Gevaudan seemed too honest and too eager for such a trap — but neither did he expect a warm reception. He started into the trails with certainty.
And there, telltale hood curved to a hawk's beak lingered just beneath twin thick branches. The leaves hung from bark like feathers, partially obscuring view of the youth beneath it. Metal heels echoed out the crunch of leaves and discarded twigs beneath Faustite's feet while he approached this confidant. "Gevaudan," he called at spoken volume. I wonder now if your graveyard visit was meant to teach me remorse. No — we face your demons, don't we? We face your regrets, your misgivings, your wistfulness. Maybe some way in which you bonded with your fellow agents.
Faustite neared, ever moving, ever pacing while he deferred to Gevaudan's lead. "This place must hold many stories for you. Sordid ones kept long secret." He looked to his companion with gaze burning for answers.
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Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:25 pm
Gev had wondered if Youma could tell time in the Rift. He had wondered if he had a clock or calendar, and if time escapes those who had no sun to show the passing days. If they did, would it still be the same stretch of time like that of Earth? The Rift had been it's own place entirely separated by the bridge of ghostly knights you had to pass through to get there. It wasn't the palace walls of the Negaverse Headquarters, with their purple lights and sleek, polished floors and walls. It was broken ruins, crumbling castles, and the tragic past of the Earth Kingdom.
He fiddled with the bag in his arm. A few convince store treats for Faustite to have since he no longer could do it himself. When he felt the signature blink into existence, he breathed out a sigh of relief and turned, waiting in one spot and shifting his weight anxiously from one heel to the other.
"Hello Faustite." He said, smiling. "I'm glad you found the place. It's nice to see you again." And he meant it. It was nice to see someone he could talk to. It was nice not to be annoyed or distrusting of the knights and senshi who were attracted to his signature. They weren't the people he had fought with. The people he had fought for. They hadn't proven themselves as good people. They were lazy, disorganized, and were as selfish as he was in wanting only what they wanted. He at least fought to improve the world from the evil of the DMC. They wanted nothing but to fake their importance in the war with little risk or blood.
With Faustite, he knew he must have proven himself somehow to gain his rank. To be here.
Turning, he lead Faustite with him into the woods.
The question was not one he expected, and he thought about it a moment. "Oh. I guess you can say that. I was still young when I was recruited. We didn't do energy orbs back then. To build the negaverse, we needed startseeds. We needed to kill. I was still naive and fresh. It was Nealite, the General Queen to General King Charonite who helped me. The woman who would bring forth Beryl....." The one who would be punished by the Queen.....
He took a breath.
"She had showed me how to kill. Back then, the first time, she showed me how starseeds could be taken. To kill. To face death. She told me what sacrifice meant. She guided me."
"After that, there was no hand holding. She spared me with kindness by taking the bodies that day but hardened me to allow me to thrive and continue serving the cause. It was the second time that I took a starseed that I came here. I was so stupid still. The body was so heavy. I was told to go after someone my age, but it was late. The guy was sloppy. Drunk. I had to drag him all the way into the woods because I was still a lieutenant. His legs kept dragging into the ground. I was so worried someone would spot me, and then, I had to dig a grave. It was the most surreal feeling. To be in highschool and digging a grave in the woods for a dead man."
He walked slowly, looking around as if trying to recall how things looked back then and if anything had changed. It was cool out, and he looked up and wondered if it might rain soon or hold out to give him a chance to talk to Faustite for a while.
"I remember her telling me - even after all these years. She said to me - That their life was taken so that the Negaverse can prevail, that we can conquer those who oppose us and correct the world as it needs to be." He smiled at that. "She said, 'One life, two lives, a handful of lives is nothing in comparison to the number we're sparing in the end, when we defeat the Moon Kingdom and take back the Earth for its rightful ruler.'"
He smiled at that, and felt his chest tighten as he remembered her. Remembered her frozen with Charonite in the Negaverse Halls.
"It was so powerful. It made things - feel worth it. That every small action. Every pain. Every feeling I had was just something necessary because in the end, when the world was better, it was possible because we were all working together. All suffering and doing what was needed. Nealite showed me, but she spared me. She wasn't cruel, but she expected me to follow suit with everyone else because without us all working together, then that bright future wouldn't be possible." He set a hand to his chest, breathing out.
"When I buried people here and second guessed my humanity....my morality...I just kept thinking about what she said and it kept me going." He looked over to him, the smile small and pained in the corners. "It was nice back then. Crazy as it sounds. Things felt so much simpler. They made more sense to me."
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Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:57 pm
The Negaverse bred lonely men, he knew. Isolation became a tactic well-practiced among their rank, leading to isolation cases that provoked the same kind of purification that Gevaudan underwent for his own aims. What became of these men was a mystery — some wound up as forever lost to the sprawling metropolis, much like Aluminite, and others would invariably be found, killed, and heralded as a warning to others of similar thought. The rest grew ever lonelier under the banner of self-protection, of that staunchly competitive need to stand out amongst the rank and file.
Gevaudan must have been one of those selfsame men for the way he spoke so freely, so potently about the experiences had as a lieutenant. And while Faustite never expected a story to unfold so forthrightly, he listened all the same with a measure of patience. Black hands folded into one another at his back, fingers interlaced, while Gevaudan measured out the strange juxtapositions that made up their double lives. That he was weaned on body burial at a high school age was uniquely familiar to Faustite; he paused only lightly in breath when hearing Gevaudan's thoughts on the matter.
Still, a gulf remained between them. He was, by all accounts, green in comparison to Wolframite's seasoned age. He knew people that Faustite hadn't heard of before, and mentioned names shared only by a prince of many storied years. He spoke of a doctrine and direction that Faustite seldom heard out of his own general — one that he doubted for the austerity h found in the Rift. There lay the broken dreams, the nightmares, the end times that haunted many a culture — the vanquishing of future possibility. That, he supposed, was Metallia's goal. Was it only youma who were privy to that insight? Was it only the few that spent time in the hollow halls and broken arches of the Rift who could deduce that? As he watched the lithe form of the knight kick through the leaves on his venture, Faustite pursed his lips on the matter.
Faustite was silent a moment, taking in Gevaudan's lightly pained expression, before his gaze darted off to where black tendrils of trail disappeared into the horizon. "They're still simple," he assured. "The Negaverse is still full of that same cruel optimism. If you're down on your luck, work harder. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. That logic still lives in the rank and file." 'Die for the cause' being a witless non-choice by the masses, agents were still expected to take lives — to file away their ethics and wrench life from chest.
"Does knighthood expect something different of you?" Perhaps Kholat Syakhl and Gevaudan knew each other in a life long since over. But why should that possibility taint the lives they had now, the experiences they shared now? Even if knighthood exacted its demands on the ex-agent, he existed now as a free-floating entity with an agenda to hollow out the Mirror Court. They had business in this life — not the last, not the next.
If there was a next for the youma captain.
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Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 8:16 pm
"...yeah. Work harder. But the end goal kept changing. The leaders kept changing. The people we worked with kept changing. But I worked. We all made sacrifices. I was a very good soldier." He told himself, looking ahead, feeling the dull pain of years given and the end result of his sacrifices.
"Then the orders changes. The future changed. I couldn't see that world Nealite told me about - it just got dimmer and dimmer. I don't know when I started to get so lost. It wasn't for lack of trying." He said, glancing over at the agent.
"No." He said, the volume of his voice dropping as he felt a sweeping sadness take hold. "They had no goals. They had no leaders. They expect nothing. You make a pledge but there is no one to see it through. Just words. The knights are spoiled with their liberties and become lazy pacifist who wish for the end of the war without taking any responsibilities. If you do not wish to fight, do not fight. If you want to stay home. Go home. If you want to kill. Kill. I hear there are a few groups banding together, but whenever there is a meeting, it is bickering and shouting as each worthless member scrambles atop each other to be recognized as superior without any proof they earned that right. Children crying to be crowned king. Even the Princes and Princesses - all worthless. Somehow they got power, but no knight respects it. I shave stepped from one banner under another that is run by idiots and self-proclaimed martyrs."
He looked ahead, frowning deeply. "I gave up my home to escape Metallia and lost so much of my life and memories only to stand on a side who has no idea where to be looking. They do not train their own. They do not take the bodies home to spare the newly initiated. They do not make them suffer in order to keep them from breaking when it counts."
Turning, he looked to Faustite. "Do the youma have leaders too outside of the Negaverse hierarchy? ......or...........I know I have no right to ask this......but how are things? Back in the Negaverse? Are things okay?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:21 am
"What a vapid waste," Faustite judged after a stint of silence settled between them. His eyes had long closed during Gevaudan's lament and only now opened to the meek darkness in the forest trails. So much he heard of his enemy's ineptitude, showing the Negaverse as all the more impotent for never once trouncing them. They held no faction head, no group power, no aim, no directive, no cohesion and yet they remained alive against the Negaverse's coordinated efforts.
"If they can't gather, then let them scatter. Better that they hide in holes and cracks in the wall so they can cook for their perfidious choices when the fire lights. You picked poorly, Gevaudan. You left what you thought was Bad and plunged into Worse." His gaze lit on Gevaudan, silent, weighing how much he truly mourned of the Negaverse — how much differed between it and Metallia, their absolute source of power. Perhaps she would still have him under better circumstances, though Faustite could not say. Better that Gevaudan suffer a time longer and grow more desperate for the succor of teammates before that offer gathered voice. He ducked under a low branch, its leaves whispering hollow sounds against his pipes in passing.
Further they came toward an abandoned sign now overgrown with underbrush. He waited again before responding to Gevaudan's desperate inquiries. "The Negaverse is well. It's strong by the efforts of its best generals as the sovereigns work in shadow. We'll see what comes from their plots. So will you from a poorer vantage point.
"As for youma…" He paused, halted. Dark eyes flickered to earth while he whet his lips and searched his thoughts. Tension lined his shoulders, which squared when he spoke. "They have leaders sometimes. more like warlords that gather other youma under them and fight for the better stretches of land in the Rift — the more energy-rich crystal fields or the destroyed parts of the city where they have better shelter. Others won't be ruled. Some function in collective like shoals of fish. They're as varied as animals on earth. As the people they were."
Drawing a breath, Faustite shelved further thought of them. "Humor me. Tell me more about the old Negaverse — your proudest times, your darkest times. Tell me how you wanted it to be."
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Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:49 am
He walked slowly, quietly through the brush. Being a more humble officer, he didn't brag much and so many of his encounters had been good only because he had lived, but there had been some that living brought him the most shame.
"I do not have many proud moments. For me, I was proud when I could be a good example of an officer. When I got promoted and earned my rank." He tried to think of one, but it was easier to find moments of deep regret.
"I suppose I reflect and remember more moments that were dark. Things I dwell on even when they are years gone."
"There was one a creature known as Wiseman. Some sort of strange beast of a person in a cloak. We didn't know where he came from, and he vanished as quickly as he came. He showed up once while I was on patrol with a team of officers. I was still a lieutenant. Still green about my ears. Death was still - a very hard thing for me. Since I was young and new, officers don't expect much from you and tend to try to protect you as best they can. You're expected to know your limitations and keep back. This Wiseman did not give any of us that choice. In a moment he tore and smashed the entire team in front of me, and the only reason I lived was to deliver a message back to my superiors. I did not earn my survival. It was arbitrary. A roll of a dice. I hadn't even put up much of a fight. His power was nothing we had here. It was so different. I was just terrified and wanted nothing more but to live. I regretted that the officers who were more able than me had died when I lived."
He still remembered them. Team Tra-La.
"A lot of why I live now is just by chance. By other forces or luck coming in. And yet while I know I should be happy that I was spared, I know that it was not earned."
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Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 7:05 am
Why ask if you aren't interested in the information. Faustite's lips pressed into a line, distanced as he was from the knight. Talk of the Negaverse — of youma, ostensibly half of him — slid wordlessly into forgotten nothing while Gevaudan focused on a name that Faustite never heard before.
Faustite identified with the parts of Gevaudan's tale that confirmed life in the Negaverse as a long-term survival stint with few chances for real glory. So much of Faustite's life for the past year hinged on exactly that — and his general's constant dogging of his meager successes only further fueled that displeasure of war's actuality versus the proud days it once held. And as Gevaudan unfolded a story in which he witnessed his team's death, in which he was spared precisely because of his impotence, his weakness, his claim of nothing among the rank and file, Faustite recognized that theme in his own repeated brushes with death. Seldom did he save himself on his own merits, but on the merits of others.
But they now tread on grounds of self-loathing, where sparing oneself was status quo and anything to the alternative bespoke worthlessness and unearned longevity. Faustite's countenance further simmered in distaste, where he cleared his throat to catch the knight's attention.
"Don't pity yourself. It's unbecoming of an officer, however much of one you represent now. That white coat must have softened you." His hands locked at the small of his back, pressing his posture straight, as he continued in tandem with the knight. "What use is there for an officer who can't hold his head high? Who can't be proud of survival, whatever the cause?" A good soldier is a live soldier. A bad soldier is a dead soldier. In all our ideals, we can't forget the practical. How efficient.
"Whatever this Wiseman did, be glad you're still alive."
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Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 7:55 am
He frowned st that, not wanting to hear what he had heard before. Buck up. You're alive, aren't you? Forget and move on. Look forward. Who cares how you got here as long as you can keep working and keep moving. Don't question these things. Question nothing.
"Spoken like a general." He said, a twist of bitterness in his words.
"An officer who takes pride in simply being alive misses the point. You can do plenty of horrible things in order to live. But to take pride in it? That's another thing." He wasn't proud of a lot and it left him wanting to earn the right to hold his head higher. "But it is something to be worked on. To make your life worth those sacrifies." Just like Nealite had said to him.
"Maybe I am getting soft. I don't have anyone kicking me for every mistake to keep me in line." And he said it with a degree of affection and hatred.
It was getting chill and he looked at his soft white coat before his attention focused. " I do remember being there when we almost killed Castor. It was Christmas eve I think. Some odd magic summoned a lot of us to Town Square. A lot of senshi. Castor was there and a fight broke out. We were more than outnumbered. But Tanzanite and Linarite foyght Castor and managed to subdue him in front of so many senshi. I helped hold him down. The senshi all around just watched too."
"We had to escape before Tanzanite could finish but.." He smiled. ".. I completely forgot that. Another time we were so close." But he had felt pride. Tanzanite and Linarite had oraised his call to action. A small smile grew on his face.
The woods opened up and showed a dried, overgrown field. In the center was a tree already dropping leaves early.
"We're here."
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Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 9:01 am
"Don't mistake me. Life gives you the opportunity to make up for past mistakes. It gives you the experiences you look forward to — the ones that give you reason and grounding as an officer. You still have time to remake the world as you want it.
"If you live in your own misery, you're better off dead," Faustite finished quietly. He watched Gevaudan, his eyes sharp with a hawkish judgment to them. Composed of geometric lines and the smooth unyielding of steel and industry, He drew a breath that billowed silent smoke into their atmosphere, reminding his company of his presence through his ubiquitous copper, salt and moondust. You left your crucible too soon. I question your ability as an arbiter. Will you stumble where you're needed? Will you lose interest out of a self-serving, newborn laziness? I wonder.
Did close matter when there was no win at hand? It motivated. It urged the officers to do better with the bittersweet taste of victory settling on their tongues. That positive reinforcement that they so desperately yearned for was there, living, vibrant, well, and loathsome in its escape from their grasping hands. What searching mouth would taste it, that prince's starseed? He yet lived so many years after the fact. How strange the tides of war that rested on the backs of ill-motivated youth.
So this is where your regrets lie. Faustite stepped onto the field with his thoughts curled in his hands. There they lay at the basin of blacked palms where they waited for proper opportunity. He looked first to the fallen leaves, then to the mismatched patches of grass where years of disuse reclaimed human aims. Human aims. Only people buried their dead. Only people buried each other.
He vented his own small measure of ire. "My general would say close isn't good enough. Close still falls short of the mark." Faustite approached, coming to a stop a breath away from Gevaudan's shoulder. There, his heat filtered into the wet air as condensation clung to his pipes. He looked to the head of hair before him, black as his, Gevaudan's smaller stature muddying the lines between their respective ages.
"Tanzanite comes up often between you and Castor. What's her story?"
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Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 10:00 am
"I don't live in my misery." He snapped back at Faustite, one green eye narrowing at him at the accusation.
But he tigged his jacket straight and calmed down.
"But you're right. No one sings songs for Almost. But almost is what's left when you stop. Castor knows I want him dead. He wouldn't see it any other way after all these years. From what he took from me. He is still a royal too. Taking him out would send a clear message to all of them." Even as a knight he did nit hide his bloodlust for a royal senshi. Castor still deserved his judgement.
"I often wonder if I can take their crystals for my own use, but I can't remove them. I have to only settle for their bodily deaths."
"She was a respected officer. Powerful and commanding. Wild. She was friends with Castor in some way. Lover to Linarite. The Linarite loved Castor. Linarite was my captain. She lead team enterprise. Zink was also in the same team. I think he took it hard when Linarite purified. But Tanzanite wanted him dead as much as I did even before Linarite left."
He walked across the field. "Linarite corrupted again later but I do not know what happened to her. I only found out these things later. I wad too young at the time and outside of what was between them but it was something close and intimate. Something painful."
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 9:18 am
"Would it anymore? He admitted his own unimportance." And Faustite's experiences of their enemy backed it — ones and twos and fews caring only about their immediate allies, sounding only their names, allied not for a common cause but for necessity's demand or some mismatched chant of friendship. They wielded powers poorly suited to each other, or struck out alone with only their own poorly understood morals for company. Never once had Castor been mentioned, even among the Negaverse, until Faustite met him. Until Faustite met Gevaudan. Such ineffectuality was assured through practice alone.
So many names long lost to time cropped up in further conversation — Linarite, Zink, again Tanzanite. Were they the first members of the resistance calling itself Negaverse? Affections darted amongst each other as they did with Elex's high school peers, now approaching their graduation dates with their once-classmate long disappeared. Was he a legend now, like those names falling from Gevaudan as citations?
"Strange that they would take her back when she so lived on whim." That she would throw away the sum total of her experiences for love — would Heliodor have done so, given the choice? His destruction was assured the moment he learned Elex's affiliations, but would he have followed willingly, and parted with all that he had? Faustite steeled his jaw, heat burning him to discomfort. A smoky breath met the night air. That recondite love was left to people, not youma, and only people emotional to the deepest caliber. He strayed far from their ilk under the guise of his new form. His kin were now broken bodies, failed experiments, weakened hearts shattered by Metallia's potency.
"Lucky them for having that intimacy," he muttered bitterly. The youma captain approached the tall tree in the center of the clearing, newly-fallen leaves crunching underfoot, subservient still to the step of industry. When he neared its canopy, he sat on part of the gnarled root system that protruded in hooked arches from the ground.
"Linarite was permitted back in the Negaverse because of Tanzanite, wasn't she. Was it to strengthen Tanzanite's human side? To stave off the youma's control?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 9:40 am
He moved after Faustite but moved to rest his back against it's trunk. His head went back a moment to look up and he closed his eyes to recall thoughts and memories.
"Rumors spead. They were all Royals at some point amd some have the memories of it. They would know even if they rose up that they can still die. Castor may not have authority but he is still a symbol. Royals seem indestructible to some senshi. It's good to prove otherwise. He is also a strong power if he feels like acting. You never know when something will change to band senshi under him out of need and desperation."
But it wasn't fully honest. "I also need to repay him for my eye."
He opened his eyes amd reached up to touch the eye patch. It was a injury he had since he started. A mistake made by being foolhardy and brash.
He looked back to Faustite again. "Not that I know. I'm not sure why they let her back. I wouldn't be allowed such a privilege after becoming a traitor. It sets a bad example for the other officers. I have never know the Negaverse to be so forgiving. But Metallia let Tanzanite deteriorate. It turned it's back on her as punishment. That's what they like to do. Reward some for loyalty. Crush others for it. They let the youma on her eat her."
He tried not to think about how frail she was the last time he saw her.
A moment passed in silence before he asked. "Are you lonely? Jealous of the love Castor and Linarite had?" He asked. His mummbling hadn't been missed.
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Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2018 10:09 pm
The truth crawled out from beneath a heap of excuses, justifications, and poorly-formed war studies. Faustite examined his companion with an unimpressed scrutiny, sharing all his volumes of disagreement in cocked brows, chilled reservation, impassive body language. "You want the glory," Faustite answered simply. You share so much in common with him. I wonder if self-loathing pushes you to hate him. How would it feel to know you're so comparable? I wonder.
But Castor's story fell away for Tanzanite's, which related far more to Linarite's. And in that he found his eagerness for this history tempered by simple threads of humanity — lips pressed to lips to begin a simple tapestry, to spread, to grow, to birth new relations that would feed this brittle conflict. Surely they did as Linarite drifted from one edge to the other, destroying her life twice over in the process. Was that transition worthwhile? What did it mean to love to the destruction of oneself? Who could appreciate that bond? Who, of all the broken, sordid souls littering Destiny City, deserved that treatment? How would the world harness it, commodify it, archive it, reformat it, sell it?
Faustite's legs crossed loosely and he wrenched them further inward by the edges of his feet. 'Metallia let Tanzanite deteriorate.' Why. Was that weakness part of it? A tepid frown marked his features.
But he could not dwell properly, for Gevaudan interrupted with prying of his own. The youma captain gathered his breath, suddenly and acutely aware of the distance missing between them, the arm's reach that bridged them, and sighed to the click of vented pipes. Out burst plumes of smoke, replete with their virulent protests, their pitched screeches that clawed away the affront of Gevaudan's pointed question. As smoke billowed about him, Faustite determined he would not abide such nosiness that night.
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Dispersion ;; Range: 3 foot radius with Faustite at the epicenter. Duration: 30 seconds Use Count: 3x Miss Chance: Circumventing magic, stepping out of range. Effect: Faustite draws his hands together, and a sound like an opening lighter may be heard. Smoke pours from Faustite in a deafening blast. Those caught in the initial blast endure a ringing in the ears and mild disorientation. Breathing smoke causes burning lungs, stinging eyes, and frequent coughing. Ringing ears and coughing symptoms linger after leaving the smoke for 5 seconds. Any lasting damage is defending player's choice.
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Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2018 7:16 am
He stared back, awaiting an answer, looking into Faustite's face to see any signs of one, before the pipes protruding from his back shook and sputtered before a billowing mass of smoke and ash poured out and all around them. Gev had already been aware of the smell of smoke and flame off the youma, but while it tickled his nose often he kept the impulse to sneeze down. Occasionally some fleck of ash would get in his eye and he would rub at it, but it went away quickly. This however was akin to putting your head in front of a semi exhaust, and he looked about with confusion and panic.
The reaction was not one he expected to a question, but one of self defense or maybe some uncontrolled impulse. Some bodily function his youma side needed to release so often to keep his airways clear. Or maybe he detected something he did not. Gev rose up, looking about and unable to see called out through the clouds of rising smoke and ash. "Faustite? Is everything okay?" He called out, and regretted his body's natural impulse to breath. Even as he coughed it was hard to hear with the sharp-pitched noise ringing in his ears. He brought the fabric of his jacket to his face but then took off a glove in order to press it to his nose and mouth. Eye watering, his already limited vision was destroyed, and he moved to the point he last saw Faustite. The man hadn't been far.
He moved and reached out with his bare hand. "Faustite? You okay?" He asked, coughing as tears rolled down his cheeks to locate the man to make sure he hadn't somehow overdone himself by going this far with him. Had there been a time limit? Was he experiencing some kind of pain from being away from the Rift too long?
Coughing, he touched something and squeezed it to assure the youma he was still there.
