Welcome to Gaia! ::

Gevaudan

He waited by the big tree at the center of the gravesite. It had been a week and he had been back for another meeting. Part of him wondered if Faustite would be up for seeing twice a week but he didn't want to push his luck. He decided he could at least see about it if he remembered to bring it up. It wasn't like it was necessary but he felt a degree of urgency in giving as much as his memories he could in fear he might forget them too with time.

This time around he had a bag over his shoulder. Something to enjoy while they sat and talked. Gev wasn't sure how often the youma enjoyed the little things humanity had to offer and had brought some drinks and some pastries from a bakery with him. He hadn't been sure if Faustite liked soda or bottled iced coffee so he brought both.

The weather was at least better than last time and the sky clear. More leaves had fallen since then and carpeted the field in dried leaves. It was nice and quiet and he took deep breaths. They predicted for fog next week.

Gevaudan

He smiled, looking up when the half-youma materialized into the graveyard. Waiting patiently by the tree which provided the few dry places to stand and sit, he watched as Faustite walked over. His stride was direct and with purpose, lacking the lazy swagger of puffed-up boisterous self-confidence. It didn't have to forced appearance of apathy that other men adopted or even the broad shouldered stomping of strength that tried too hard to squeeze out respect at a glance.

“Hello Ey.” He said and nodded. “Maybe. You'll have to be the judge with what you fish out. I don't know what you'll find.” The most concerning thing about the item was he couldn't see the memory alongside the officer. He simply sank into himself and a sauna-like hest that once released felt like rising from a dizzy spell from a fast fever.

There was no small talk, to which Gevaudan was disappointed, but he did not stop Faustite's actions. Instead, he set the bag down and set his palms flat against the dried bark of the tree behind him, fingers curling in in hopes of some anchor to rely upon. Locking his knees, he lifted his chin and waited as the hand pressed flat against his chest. Already this close to the Negaverser, he could feel the heat radiating from him in the cooler air and the fumes of ash from his body. He held his breath and in a moment felt the radiating heat wash over him before his mind fogged over under the undertow.


They had assembled together in front of a set of massive doors. To any officer they had only ever seen them open and unless curious might have never seen their face. Tanzanite stood proud and gilded nearly completely by the parasitic youma that one memory ago only claimed her arm.

It was a history and the first hushed waves of awe and curiosity of a army of officers Faustite might no longer recognize.

As they moved together, Tanzanite questioned them as horrid amalgamations of one living citizens of death clawed behind crystal walls. All the while they moved amd basked in confusion, horror, awe, and wonder before the great expanse opened itself to them. It was a history of 2 royals and a romance made easily and with no regard to the kingdom of Earth. It was a political takeover. It was resistance and it was genocide.

All throughout Tanzanite directed their attention, commanded the lessons not to be repeated, and renewed a common drive that in unison called all soldiers to work hand in hand proudly to protect their planet and avenge those fallen. The fallen that were now roaming youma about them. Within her.

After the long excursion through the Rift's opening and reveal to the Negaverse, the memory dimmed out.

Gevaudan's chest rose a bit more quickly now as he was pulled back and he stared with lost focus at the officer.

Gevaudan

He leaned his head back, eyes closed as he tried to return to the memory Faustite must have seen, and walked through it with a easy familiarity. It had lost some of it's impact, the information given now familiar and easily adopted since, but he could remember the awe of it.

“Surprised you'd want to hear that.” He cracked at eye to glance at the half-youma beside him. He had been expecting questions of Tanzanite or the youma there but not what it meant to him.

He closed his eyes again. “Do you...feel what I felt that day when you go into my memories?”

He wasn't sure how much his strange jewelry fed to him.

“Now….”

“It was a truth. As much as one allowed to us. It was one thing to follow orders, but we stood upon history and among living evidence of our own cause. So often I find myself fighting someone who has little idea as to the reason why they are doing it aside from a brittle order to follow those on their side because someone told them. I was one of them and while I had trust and pride in my superiors, I know now that blind faith is dangerous. That even they can be lied to and could have been raised on that blind faith of someone else or the power that fuels them. I often doubt the motives of those I idolized now that I am older. I do not doubt what I saw.”

He opened his eyes. “I was there with a team when the doors first appeared to the Rift. Back then they were still closed. Something made it so that they revealed themselves. When they opened, it felt more like a calling to us all. A demand to use what we saw to act. To be educated instead of mindlessly devoted. Or...well, less so.”

There was still a line. A demand not to question too much.

Hands between his knees, he looked up at the falling dried leaves of the tree's canopy.

“I worry what else I may not be shown and what truths I might miss sometimes. If I was newer, I wouldn't know my own history as an agent.” But he made that choice.

“I ...also am embarrassed about that day. I was a dumb kid and lashed out to Tanzanite. She made a joke and I was still tender to a recent breakup with Bismithite. I was so disrespectful to a dear friend of mine and a superior I should have been mindful of during a meeting. She took me aside to talk. I didn't deserve an explanation but she gave me it. She cut herself to show me she wasn't human any longer but a youma. Yet she revealed that she still saw us, and me, as family. That her body had changed but she still felt for all of us the same if not more now after her loss.”

He smiled weakly at that. “That day means a lot to me. To be humbled. To know that you don't know. That sense of pride from our history. A sense of duty. That corruption was not a word meaning evil but a title of the mark of our rebellion.”

He glanced to Faustite. “What did it mean to you?”

He smiled as Faustite tocuhed his shoulder and expressed a moment of thanks and appreciation. It was one thing to share information about the Negaverse and himself, but he hadn't considered how it must be like being a youma without any context to your existence or the reasons for your creation.

"I can recall many of our leaders. Charonite. Nealite. Beryl. Tanzanite. Metallia. I've followed the orders of many with high hopes. Now..... I don't feel that same awe anymore."

"It must be strange for you then. To have gone all this time thinking you a were sidekicks or animals. We really never used youma when I first started. Most were created or feral. It wasn't till the Rift was open that the youma there started to be paired with us. Youmafication wasn't even known until Tanzanite started to youmafy. It didn't really take over till when we were captured. When she became the Dark Phoenix to save her people......to help save me. The ones still alive."

"I always respected them. I saw their villages. Had a knight as my partner who saved me a few times. They were no different than any officer just....somewhat tragic in having been scarred by the moon's power."

"Have none of the youma told you this? Do they not talk to each other?"