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 Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2019 7:02 pm
It was almost, like, normal now for Sylvite to come out at night on official Negaverse business. Her long hours in stealth draining at the mall were pretty much a thing of the past unless she was running behind, but that wasn't very often because she could pretty much always find a frazzled student out for late night coffee or whatever to drain from while she was out looking for people to interview. Except actually, while keeping her quota up was going super well, her finding people to talk to was going less well. A lot less well. Maybe it was the cold, or like, the grind after the holidays or something. It was probably good overall for the Negaverse that all the Order senshi in their cute-but-dumb tiny skirts and that one knight with no shirt were holed up inside so they didn't freeze their butts off, but it was a little annoying for Sylvite's new mission. She'd actually been staying home a little extra too, 'cause college applications were a thing, but she was out tonight, hoping the slightly warmer temperatures would get people moving around a little more. She was even at a park. Parks were supposed to be hotspots for this stuff. While she was waiting to see if anyone showed up, she jumped up into the empty branches of a big oak tree. When that got boring, she climbed out to the edge of it and hung upside down by her knees. Strickenized Let me know if this works!
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Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2019 8:40 am
Hotspots they were. Hotspots for lantern light edging out between the trees, ghosting here pr there like a stirring vessel. Like a search party. A search party that found a gem inside a man's body, who lay face down under the thick bracken. A search party that pocketed their finds.
Faustite stepped out from the tree line, metal boots sinking into the melting snow, and took stock of the remaining area. Largely empty, the park didn't afford much but a distant family enjoying a snowball fight. A count of five with another three tagging in. Too risky by potential publicity measure.
There was, however, a captain to eir right. Visible at a distance, she hung as a swatch of black in an otherwise white landscape, framed by primary colors that screamed loudly under their blankets. No one else occupied the set. No one else approached that familiar figure. This stretch of the park was now dead as dead can be, and the choice for further leads was before em. If nothing else, human agents knew best where hotspots of human activity and dead zones were.
Heavy boots began their short journey toward her. While time passed between them, Sylvite hadn't entirely faded from Faustite's mind — her interest in Umber, in youma life, her flippancy. Did she still qualm about homework and essays? About quotas through finals week?
Through the playground ey walked until coming to a stop at the foot of a tree. "Captain Sylvite." With hands behind back, ey toyed with the warm jewel, want flooding eir mouth. "Still investigating?"
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Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 8:10 am
Sylvite was pretty sure that it took longer for the blood to run to her head when she was powered up like this. Was that something she could study, if nobody showed up? Break out the stopwatches and see how much better she was like this, for jumping and hanging upside down and stuff? On second thought, that sounded like a lot of math. Gross. Someone was getting closer. It was Chaos, a General, but that was cool. She liked friends, too, especially strong ones. Soon, she started smelling smoke. It was a really specific smoke, too, kinda dusty. She remembered it, and she grinned even before he came into view. Of course she wasn't gonna forget the guy who was an agent like her, but with magical, smoky eyes. Seemed like someone had gotten an upgrade. He was even harder to miss, now. She waved when he came into view. "Hi, Faustite!" She swung back around so that she was sitting on top of her tree branch, feet dangling, while she took a look at his new clothes. They were way better. He had cool patterns on his sleeves, and his eyes looked like fire! "You're looking shinier." Investigating? Oh, right. "Yeah! Not the Umber stuff, really, that was super cold, but I'm actually in Information now!" She lit up further at that, wiggling her toes. It was fun so far, and had gotten her an upgrade. She was into it. "So like, figuring out who we're up against, fixing the database. Yeah." Thinking about it, she was pretty sure she'd seen his name in the database a couple times.
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Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2019 8:48 am
Shinier, like a freshly-polished pair of shoes, a restored ring, a new car. Like a possession made better with years of careful maintenance. Like a few parts were replaced, swapped out for better ones. And what a truth that was, owing to Lauri. Owing to Schörl.
And Vanadinite and Kainite, Faustite knew. What upgrade would there be without their intervention? What connections form on such short notice.
Now there was Sylvite, hanging pretty, voicing confident. To whom did she owe her new accolades? Did she know to attribute them to a General? To peers? Did she know to recognize their work as much as her own? Or did she stand by so-lauded individuality as the self-made success story? Faustite watched her, brow cocked for the light fare, lighter and lighter it went. Light until it could blow away in the wind. Until it held nothing at all.
But Faustite's standard expressionlessness acquiesced into a knowing smile when Sylvite explained the basics of eir own branch to em. So she wasn't yet told to memorize the roster for who belonged in her branch. That smile grew, underlined with a proud hint of ivory knife beyond lips. Ey set into a pace, content to wear down grass near that tree while Sylvite drained her head of excess blood. Smoke furls chased about em and wrapped into a nothing embrace when ey doubled back. "Remember to watch your allies. Traitor-spotting is our responsibility before SpecOps finds them a tree." Faustite cocked eir head to spare her a look.
Hands remained fixed at the small of eir unbending back, even as Faustite came to a stop. Ey looked up to her, mouth shut into a line. "Tell me what you're doing now."
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Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 7:09 pm
Sylvite was all for a good mystery if it was the kind she could sink her teeth into, but even now that she was in a more casual setting and not an interview, she had no idea what to make of this guy. It bugged her. She liked friends, too.That was probably it. She liked friends more than mysteries, and Faustite seemed set on just being mysterious. She swiveled on her branch to face him when he came around. "A tree?" she asked, head tilting before she looked over to the one she was sitting in. This one had really thick bark, and she chipped off a piece to look at closer. Then she looked back to Faustite, her nose wrinkling as she figured it out. "Oh." The Negaverse was an army. It obviously killed people, traitors especially, but she hadn't really thought about it like that before. "Yeah. Okay," she said with a little shrug, her usual smile gone. She could be serious about stuff like this. "But it's better if there's no traitors at all, right? Or at least not a lot." She hadn't really thought about it being a problem, but to be fair the information she was working with was kinda terrible. "That means the Negaverse has to be as awesome as possible. Like, strong, and winning and stuff. Then people won't leave. For that, we're gonna have to know our enemy enemies." The smile crept back. She was pretty excited about it all. "I'm trying to get the database more filled out since right now it's crap. I've figured out a couple senshi's names and magic and stuff." She dropped her little bark shard and looked him over again. "You probably know. You do this stuff too, right?" The more she thought about it, the more she knew she'd definitely seen his entries.
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Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2019 11:03 am
Faustite nodded slowly. She tried. She was doing her job. She was performing the basic exercises expected of her as an officer in Information. She was doing so in all the capacity she had.
"We win people through love or fear. One placates, the other quiets." Faustite watched her then, all dressed in candy shop pink, sitting in a tree like a nursery rhyme waiting for her big finish. She played with bark. Toyed with childish instincts where truth had her ripping the skin off a living thing. How self-aware was Sylvite? How driven was she, and to what end? Where would she see herself in the vast, empty, rote instinct that was their shared faction? She saw enough ambition to reach Captain's rank, whether through her earlier investigation or a more visceral accomplishment. She began to make her name, carve her own identity out of actions atop reactions. She wasn't a blank lieutenant anymore. So when did it become dangerous to tell her the truth?
"You got half of it — every group needs an other. An enemy." Faustite opened his right hand. He looked to it, imperious, finding it both empty and wanting. "The other half is more sinister — we use that other to define ourselves. To trim our rank and file. It's a self-policing doctrine as much as a flesh-and-blood foe." Faustite opened his left hand. "Information is both these things.
"And we get to choose who fits which mold. We choose who's the hero, who's the traitor, and when they're selfsame." Both hands dropped and the youma general turned back into a slow, purposeful circle about the tree. Cinders flecked and dropped away where they sparked on wet snow like stars.
Ey managed one revolution before asking the next question. "Tell me how you're filling out the database. What your methods are."
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Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 10:35 am
She squinted down at him from her branch when he bringing up stuff that sounded like it had come out of some textbook. She was pretty sure she knew which one, too. "Are you talking about that guy? The Prince?" Sylvite wasn't exactly known for hitting the philosophy books, but both her history teachers and characters from every other dramatic movie got really into the love and fear thing. In the stories, mostly it was love that won out, and that made sense to her. "But wasn't he wrong about some stuff?" she asked, leaning forwards a little bit over the open air. "I mean, fear also makes people run." Sylvite might have even gone traitor herself if Umber had paid attention to her and tried breaking her bones or whatever before she'd found out just how nasty Order was. She decided to keep that bit of information to herself, though, and just let him keep talking. Now he was talking about stuff that she hadn't learned about in school. It was something about enemies she didn't quite get, even when he tried talking with his hands. Something about gray areas and making the Negaverse look good? She rolled her eyes hard when he vanished back around the tree. He was one to talk with the whole eating starseeds until he turned into a half-youma thing. Like, part of her understood, with how cool his firey eyes had ended up, but it didn't change the fact that he was one of the people she was gonna have to keep making excuses for. She dropped down in front of him when he came back around, her heels poking holes in the grass from the impact. The last question was easier, and she got a bit of her smile back thinking about it. "I've been getting starseeds from civilians and then when someone shows up, I offer to put it back for their information. They seem pretty willing to trade for it so far." She nodded, then pressed her lips to the side. "I did get punched, though."
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Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:14 pm
Faustite grunted with a loft of brows. She had the first seeds of thinking critically, though she missed the flexibility of bimodal ruling. Those with fleet feet are quick to love, but we needn't politic. She livened to much different conversation, after all — not quite the bleeding-edge ruling strategies so posited by Negaverse Generals alike.
Generals like emself, who looked upon Captains that hadn't yet marinated in proper guidance. Proper such a subjective thing, like preferring Schörl's rattan cane over Umber's bisected blades over Arsenopyrite's sheepish hand.
"Details are delightful, Captain. What information and how are you compiling it? Explain your method for choosing your civilian targets, your places to camp. How you intend to use the information you gathered.
"You aren't my Captain; I don't expect you to have every answer. But I expect you to have an idea." Drawing a breath that pushed smoke into the night, Faustite watched with smoldering interest.stari_maga i forgot how to write whoops
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Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 4:03 pm
"Okay, okay." Sylvite gave the tiniest head bow even as she crossed her arms. Was it just her or was Faustite acting kind of bossy now that he was a General? It didn't bother her enough to send her storming off, not yet, but she wasn't grinning anymore, either. "And yeah, I can obviously answer your questions." She looked right back up into his eyes at that. "I've mostly been looking for ways to identify people and understand how they fight. So, like, physical description, age, sphere, and magic." She counted the categories out on her fingers and then nodded. "Yeah. That's the basics for everyone. There's other stuff that stands out sometimes, like if someone's super aggressive or seems like a good recruit or something.You can look at my work if you want. It's all here." At that, she summoned her little tablet, in the pen form, and she tapped it. "The database, I mean." "Civilian targets are mostly just whoever's out alone. I might need some other strategies since they're not always around. I've been looking around a bunch of places, but I've had the best luck by the college, actually." Sylvite was only able to do the formal eye contact thing for so long, and she ended up taking a step back and leaning against the tree. She was still looking at Faustite, but with a little more tilt to her head. "I'm mostly looking for information that will help us fight people. Like, combat. Not getting surprised helps a bunch. Plus, what targets we should focus on for what." As usual, her words were coming out in a big jumble, but she took a second there to pause. "I mean, I'm open for suggestions, though. Is there other stuff that's more important to know?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2019 10:22 am
While Sylvite explained herself, Faustite summoned eir communicator pen to look over her proffered work. The descriptions were sparse, but seldom yielded unnecessary information. While informal, they held promise. "More than most." Closing the pen, Faustite slipped it into the nowhere from whence it came. "Lieutenants will do only what they're shown and nothing more. Captains like you start thinking about what their reconnaissance does, how it's useful.
"When someone uses their magic, start counting the seconds." The youma general started into a pace to hide eir grimace. " Recording the keywords to Suttungr's attack was good. Figure out the range, how long it lasts, and any database-reading agent already holds advantage. Find out a senshi's attack lasts thirty seconds and you've only to teleport out of range for that long." And if senshi magic carried over faithfully upon corruption, then they already gleaned more information on prospective recruits. Seldom they would be, however, as corrupted senshi proved themselves a volatile mix. Some meek, some insufferable, some worthless, some mulish. They acted like officers but less capable.
Faustite halted the pace, curled a fist against eir hip. "It's also up to us to make this information useful. What would you do with what you gathered?" Faustite gestured an open palm toward Sylvite. "Would you trap Suttungr in an ambush? Capture Pavo?" Beneath winter's thin boughs, the general looked on with genuine interest. What did recruits dream of when they acted in the Negaverse's favor? Officers like Sylvite didn't appear to act based on perceived threats, so what did they look for? What did they see in their futures?
As snow started to fall and children's play grew more distant, more like the tinny radio static often heard in bygone artifacts, their conversation lingered. What came in that quietude were more ideas, more thoughts to broaden the Negaverse's influence. There was, at whatever rank, more to learn.
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Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2019 10:08 am
Sylvite waited while he read over what she'd written, tapping a foot on the cold ground.. She wasn't, like, nervous, not really, she knew what she'd written in there and all the work that she'd been doing lately, and she knew that it was good, but she also hadn't really had someone serious look over it yet. Also, Faustite kept asking all these questions that she wasn't really expecting. She knew that people had been talking differently to her since her upgrade, telling her that she could get lieutenants and stuff if she wanted, and now figuring out this Information branch and maybe actually being one of the smart people in the war. It was getting less like something she could do, and more like something she was supposed to do the more people she talked to. Sylvite tilted her head back, just a little, and sucked in her cheeks. "I guess I'm not totally used to Negaverse stuff being more than just following orders," she said. "Doing this stuff at all is pretty different from just draining energy all the time." It wasn't an excuse, though. She'd get better. She was already trying to put the pieces of everything together in her head as Faustite told her to get more specifics of magic. That made sense. She nodded. That meant she'd have to see people's magic, probably, and not just have them tell her about it. He was still walking, which was annoying because she liked seeing people's faces, but it gave her a little time to think. "The college," she said when he came back around. "I mean, your ideas are good too. I feel like Pavo might even come over without a fight?" She'd been pretty nice, and Sylvite wouldn't wish getting captured on anyone but the worst of the worst. The gross glowy knights? Yeah, sure, but not a senshi they could maybe relationship build with instead. Then, there was the other category. "Suttungr might just have to die?" Sylvite wasn't totally sure how recruiting enemies worked, but she couldn't see that jerkface having any part of it. "But bigger scale, I know the Negaverse likes focusing on high school age, but it seems like there's a lot of activity at DCU. We could crack down on that. I'll be going in the fall, but maybe we could get some recruits or something?" She looked up at him, her eyes still a little too wide with not really knowing what she was doing.
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Posted: Sat Apr 06, 2019 12:04 pm
'Negaverse stuff' was just following orders. That's what we expect from Lieutenants." And lieutenants they stayed until they proved to have some modicum of sense to salvage — some skill, some edge pertinent just enough that they could nurture it for their purposes. Often, still, those who were promoted stuck to that same mantra of 'just following orders'. How easy it was to dull poignant moral questions and imperatives when one was 'just following orders'. Nuremberg ever the buzzword — the recycled zeitgeist.
Those rage lit brilliantly in eir core, Faustite pursed lips and reminded emself that her points sounded less like objections and more like observations. She was no Heliodor, averse to expectation. She worked because she 'just followed orders', but she was not eir rough to make diamond. And pleasing em was not her direct responsibility, but a duty carried on the shoulders of all captains.
Ey still couldn't stop emself. How dare we ask you to think. A slow sigh exited eir nose.
Faustite nodded but once and kept chin low in thought. She sounded uncertain, guessing about in a field of tactics and self-discovery still foreign to her. What had her general taught her, then? How to keep draining energy? How to sit in trees and look around as idly as their opposition? Ey squeezed knuckles together after folding eir hands behind back. A c**k of eir head focused attention elsewhere, to the long-gone voices of children.
"Better to start where you've most experience. Fights or friends. Your choice," and eir gaze lit on her again. "Try both if you want a challenge. We reward ambition." When that ambition succeeds.
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Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 7:35 pm
The comment about ranks felt weird, somehow, especially when Faustite got all huffy about it. Like, she'd mostly been getting creative within her orders, but she still felt like she deserved her upgrade and that she'd been doing a good job with it. If she had to reach further now, though, she could reach further. She felt like she'd already been doing a pretty good job getting creative. She could try to keep going. She might have frowned just a little anyway, but she at least kept her mouth shut and nodded. See, she was already getting better at being a professional officer! His saying that she'd have a choice between fighting and friends broke her silence, though. She giggled, and something about the laugh wasn't a hundred percent sweet. "I mean, it's gonna be both no matter what," she said, going into a more relaxed pose with her head tilted. "I'd way rather play nice, but a lot of those senshi get really, really into punching people." At least it would look good on her record, apparently? She probably wasn't gonna care when she was nursing bruises or whatever worse stuff Order managed, but it was worth something. She could tell that Faustite only half seemed to care. She followed his gaze over his shoulder, but there weren't auras there or anything, unless he could feel them better than she could. She only stared into the darkness for about a second before she just asked. "Find something?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2019 11:29 am
"No." Faustite shook eir head, eir gaze touching ground like a raw frost before flickering up to her face again. "Just thinking."
The moment passed, pronounced dead. "You think either senshi will attack you regardless? Interesting." As she wound on, her statements backed into generalizations. No longer were they talking about Pavo or Suttungr, but many senshi at once. Just how many had Sylvite run across? And how many of those proved themselves of the same moral imperatives? Even for someone like em, who lacked humanity with each passing day, ey found whole knots of senshi reticent to attack. Groups and groups waiting to play savior to every fallen soul. There were those who wished for even Satan to have a second chance.
"Everyone wants to pity someone. Especially senshi." Perhaps Sylvite needed to look the part of a victim. Better to look one than to be one, but being one outright rendered the act quite compelling. For what senshi would look at a bruised Sylvite holding her broken jaw and attack nonetheless? If she gave the name of an officer that beat her so thoroughly, would they still tell her she deserved it?
Faustite's mouth twitched. What an influence you are. What a plague.
"But I should be going before something happens to one of us. My general wouldn't have it any other way." Ey risked another look at her, at all the potential a bruised face would give her. As ey learned for Hopeite, a cut ear can be reattached within three days if kept on ice. Surgical safekeeping — what an investment to goad their officers into compelling pity tales. Perhaps Heliodor would earn more of a personality with fewer of the parts he was born with.
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2019 10:34 am
He thought it was weird that she thought senshi were going to attack her? She had to blink hard at that, 'cause they did, pretty often, even with her being five foot even and able to pass for fresh out of middle school. That was just senshi, too. It got way worse with knights in the picture. Senshi could sometimes be okay. "Maybe not Pavo," Sylvite said, slowly. "Maybe not all of them, especially if I switch up my, like," she sucked on her lips for a couple seconds, trying to figure out the right word, "Tactics?" Like, starseeds got senshi so worked up. She knew that, and she'd been trying to use it to her advantage, and it was working to get basic information out of people, but it didn't work as well for showing that the Negaverse could be nice, no matter how comfy she made the people that she knocked out. "The pity thing's a good idea, but from what I can tell some of them are still really into fighting." She didn't totally say it like a complaint. The fights weren't as bad now that she could teleport, and they did help her get more complete information like Faustite was wanting. Still, thinking of herself as a fighter felt really weird. She nodded when he said he had to go, although she squinted some, too, since he was a general. "Yeah, I should probably keep moving, too. Have a good night, Faustite!" With that, some of the chipperness was back in her voice. Strickenized Can probably fin on your reply?
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