|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon May 31, 2021 7:33 pm
Days had passed, but the wound left by his dusted youma would not heal. Every day he woke, his starseed splintered open for the bond he lost. Every day he told himself his starseed was fine, he was fine, this illness would pass, the pain would pass. Every day he believed it less and less and less, until pain became a stubborn normal. Until pain became the enemy he fought every day as he grasped for lucidity.
Today, the pain was worse. He nursed a headache so vile that he felt his teeth throb, and each twitch of the eyes wedged another knife into his skull. He blindfolded himself to keep out the light. He rested his temple gingerly against the cool metal desk. He banished every youma in a sixty-foot radius of his office and spat fire and violence at every Lieutenant who spoke above a mutter in the hallway. Thus, he reclaimed thought. He reveled in the rediscovery of complete sentences. His teeth were still migrating out of his skull, but he could keep his tenses straight again.
But these small victories over his issues did not an operation report write. Neither did his cephalopod secretary, who was wiped from existence by someone who would never leave his shitlist. Neither did one voluntarily blinded officer who hadn't picked up a pen since they started catching fire in minutes.
Subspace was an easy grab just before a metal-and-glass encased bookcase. Feeling the familiar melted edges of his pen, he wrenched it from one reality into the next, and clicked it to open the link.
There was only one way to write this report. One way he could stand, regardless. "Lieutenant Roselite." He winced at his own volume, then continued in a softer tone. "Report to my office."
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2021 5:58 pm
Roselite still hunched in on himself as he made his way through the castle, attempting to remain as unobtrusive as possible. He could never decide whether he wanted to stare around with wide, fearful eyes, keeping an eye out for anything or anyone that might wish him harm, or if it was better to avoid making eye contact all together. Inevitably, he settled for a combination of both, gaze flicking left and right, up and down, observing his surroundings without making himself a nuisance.
Softly, tentatively, he knocked on the door for office number 430, and further announced his presence, “Sir? It’s Lieutenant Roselite.”
He waited for some indication that he was to enter, then nudged the door open, peering around it before stepping inside. The door shut behind him with a quiet thump. Roselite stood with his back against it, momentarily grounding himself. When he could dredge up enough confidence to stand at attention, he stepped away from the door and did so.
“You wanted to see me, Sir?”
His was a quiet voice, soft and timid — shy, even in the presence of someone who’s acquaintance he’d already made.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2021 5:24 am
Fortuitous that Roselite had the sense to knock. Faustite had time enough to pull the makeshift blindfold from his head (it wouldn't do to look stupid, even if every lumen rammed itself into his skull) before bidding the Lieutenant entry.
Small thing he was, shy enough to melt into the walls if he had any youma to him. Looked ready to break and run, he did. Faustite wondered if it was due to the unfamiliar surroundings — no comfort in this office lacking the usual trappings. Little to do for it now but get to work.
"Yes," he returned, and swallowed some of the pain spit that accumulated in his mouth. He gestured for one of the metal chairs to his metal desk. "Sit. I need you to pen a report." Roselite didn't seem the type to ask him why, but he didn't seem unobservant either. Just scared, though Faustite didn't yet know what he thought he was protecting through his compliance. His everything hurt too much to dig deeper into that riddle.
"Ran an operation recently. Axinite will want details. Paper's in the writing desk," he finished, nodding toward the furthest wall. While the desk itself was metal and glass, it remained untouched, as did the paper inside. A thin layer of ash enfolded Faustite's untouched furniture.
"Going to make tea." Faustite scooted back, opened the bottom drawer in his desk. "Want any?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2021 7:53 am
Roselite scurried to do what he was told. He collected the supplies he would need — paper from the writing desk, and a pen that appeared functional — then sat himself in a metal chair and prepared to begin.
He glanced up at the offer, blinked, and said, “Oh… Yes, Sir. Please, that would be…” Trailed off and paused, gazing at Faustite in concern. “If you need to rest, I… I could do it.”
Was that too forward? Was it rude? Roselite was never sure how to speak to his superiors, had no idea which ones might appreciate the assistance and which ones would think that sort of help to be an insult. With some people, their pride was as easy to wound as their physical body.
Roselite could not yet read Faustite well enough to determine if that was the case with him.
“I heard about the mission.” When Bloodstone saw to the wounded, he came back with brusque comments that offered little in the way of an explanation. “I… I’m sorry, I was down here when it happened and I received the call for reinforcements, but…”
He let the sentence hang there, ashamed to admit that he’d been too scared. Roselite was not a fighter, though he was learning methods to defend himself — slowly, painstakingly — and he often wondered if that meant he was unworthy of the power he’d been given.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:13 pm
The hows of making tea were no longer a thought. The kettle and lukewarm liter glass of water were staples in the bottom drawer of his desk. He poured one into the other, the empty glass was shut in the drawer with the tap of a metal boot, and he held the kettle against himself. Then waited. Then looked down at the pitiful state of his fire, thought better of it, and set the kettle on the counter for Roselite's offer to prep the tea.
Rest didn't help, but the gesture was well-meaning enough. Faustite splayed his legs out beneath the desk and clutched the front of the stool. "Alright, but I'm the only hotplate in here." Maybe Roselite had some other convenient access to heat. He spent many hours in Bloodstone's office; likely he made creative use of some amenities by now.
Faustite's attention sharpened when Roselite started backpedaling. "I wasn't asking you to justify yourself." They couldn't pull all agents into that operation, that would be asinine. "Besides, you can't teleport."
And help was very sparsely given, Faustite noted.
"But if you're feeling guilty, make up for it in details." That report wasn't going to write itself. Shifting again, Faustite drew himself forward enough that he could rest a blackened elbow on the table and stake his chin on his palm. "Tell me what you know. I'll add the rest."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:50 am
“Oh… ummmmmmmm…”
Roselite looked from the kettle to Faustite and back again, unsure how to proceed. He hadn’t considered a heat source when making the offer, focused more on politeness than feasibility. When he knew he would be spending long hours in Negaspace, he usually brought a large, insulated thermos of coffee with him, prepared in advance.
But if they had crystal powered computers and generators for electricity in some of the buildings, surely they could rig up something to heat water.
Maybe.
If nothing else, there had to be other sources of fire. In a castle this big, with agents coming and going at all hours of the day and night, some of them housed in the barracks, shouldn’t there be some sort of kitchen?
“I could… figure out something else,” he offered. “It might just take a little time, but then the report would take longer and if you need it done now...”
Roselite fiddled with the pen, undecided on his next course of action. Tea first, or report?
“I know you were conducting an operation downtown,” he rambled, repeatedly clicking the pen. “There were civilians evacuated from one of the buildings, and… agents were supposed to collect energy and starseeds, but… enemy forces were quick to respond. There was a Princess, and then a call for retreat.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:29 pm
Faustite listened, but hadn't commented on Roselite's summary. It was functional, and partially correct. Under the table, Faustite hooked his fingers into his grate.
He nodded toward the door. "The report will wait." Tea was far more important, as was the lesson to think first and speak later. Bloodstone was still not among his known officers, but if he grew peeved over Faustite passing on this lesson, he could write a letter of complaint and mail it to Axinite. The guttering General shifted on his stool and crossed his legs.
"Be careful if you go to the barracks. Youma lurk there." He shut his dimmed eyes a moment. "I'll summon you back after fifteen." Or whatever's left of you.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 8:17 am
Roselite dropped the pen and stood, nearly knocking the chair over in his haste. He stalled for a moment, gaze questioning, but Faustite’s eyes had closed and Roselite didn’t think it wise to linger long.
He didn’t quite flee the office, though his pace was certainly rapid enough to seem that way. Roselite ran down the halls. Most areas of the castle outside of Bloodstone’s office and the computer lab were unfamiliar to him, and everything beyond the castle’s perimeter remained largely unexplored. The Dark Kingdom was such a foreign place, and he was not often brave enough to wander around on his own, afraid he might get lost.
Bloodstone’s office turned up nothing, but it was the first place Roselite looked because it was the place he felt most comfortable. He tried the barracks next, apologizing to a pair of agents he nearly ran into, and yelping when a youma nipped at his heels. Too anxious to rummage through what could be personal belongings, Roselite returned to the castle empty-handed, already out of breath from all the running. Agents stared as he sped down the halls. A drooling canine youma chased after him for a minute or two, but it was soon distracted by what appeared to be a bone.
Roselite forced himself not to stop and consider if it once belonged to a youma or a human.
He ransacked a storage closet, peered into unused rooms, and stopped to ask another youma if it knew where the kitchen was. The youma cackled at him and skittered away, so Roselite deemed it a lost cause. Defeated, he began to shuffle his way back to Faustite’s office to offer his profuse apologies.
Only to stop at an open doorway to what might have been someone else’s office, except the obvious coating of dust seemed to indicate that it had not been used in quite some time. There, on a table in the far corner, a bit grungy but not so battered that it didn’t look functional, was a simple coffee maker.
Roselite looked this way and that to ensure he would not be seen, slipped into the abandoned office, and pilfered the coffee maker before making another mad dash down the halls.
He arrived back at Faustite’s office with mere seconds to spare, flushed, out of breath, and a bit disheveled from his search, holding the coffee maker aloft.
“This should work!”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 9:11 am
It was easy enough to wrench his phone from subspace, and set the poor, damaged thing to a fifteen-minute timer. It was easier, still, to lay his head on his arms and take a nap. Maybe, by the time the alarm woke up, his headache will have abated. He nodded off in a few minutes' time.
Only to be roused by the door bursting open, by a breathless and rumpled Roselite holding up a coffee maker like the thing should shine with god rays. Faustite squinted, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and took a minute to process what he was seeing. Sure, Roselite wasn't dead, and no pieces were missing, but he wasn't sure he wanted to ask what the shy recruit went through to get that coffee maker.
The flameless General nodded, and gestured toward the end of his desk. A coffee maker used to sit there in his Captaincy, before he had to swap out all the furniture for something more fire-resistant. Which reminded him — this coffee maker looked kind of familiar.
"Don't think they make medals for that." But someday, when his fire returned, he might fasten some metal strips to the back of one of its knobs and send that off as a medal. They've made medals for less, he supposed.
He pushed the bottle of water forward for Roselite to use, then went digging in the opposite desk drawer for his collection of cups. He still had a lot of strange ones in there, collected for their weirdness. A few were shaped like seashells with different colored insides, one was a teapot shaped like a highly ornamented toilet, and he had a mangy-looking teacup that was deliberately made with fur on the outside. He grabbed Ctrl and Del from his strange keyboard tea set — they seemed the least offensive — and set them upright on the desk.
"I've a few kinds." Next came some boxes — a red rooibos, a fruity and floral blue tea, a few kinds of black (loose leaf earl grey and assam being the most prominent), a white tea that was nothing but silk sachets, and a green tea imported from Hong Kong.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:21 pm
Dutiful as always, Roselite set up his prize, daring to wear a small, pleased smile as he did so. After pouring an appropriate amount of water, he spent a few moments examining each type of tea. He drank more coffee than tea and thus had little experience with it, but quickly decided tea should never be fruity and set that one aside. In the end, he chose the green tea for its supposed health benefits. Faustite was looking a bit under the weather.
At that though, Roselite eyed him cautiously. “Are you unwell?”
Though he was wary of intruding beyond what his rank allowed, Roselite nevertheless could not quell his curiosity. In his short time in the Negaverse, he’d not yet had the opportunity to meet anyone else like Faustite. Roselite suspected there was no one else like Faustite, at least as far as the fire was concerned.
The fire, which did not blaze as intensely as the last time Roselite had seen him.
“I’m… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” he said as he went through the process of making tea. “I heard you were injured during the mission, so… I was wondering…” He gestured to Faustite’s meager fire. “Is that because of your injuries, or… does it just… happen?”
Roselite ducked his head before he could stare too long, lest he seem disrespectful.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 3:32 pm
"Mean it or not, you're prying." Faustite spoke it as fact, even as he rooted around in a drawer for the cup-sized tea strainers. If Roselite tried to strain tea with coffee filters, he would probably throw the boy out on his a** and find someone else to write the report for him.
The metal tin was accosted by a metal spoon, and the shriveled bits of tea leaves were scooped into both of the metal tea strainers that fit over the brims of the cups.
"My youma was killed, and this is how it affects me. It isn't normal." It was painful, and dreary, and exhausting, and it led him to sleep for the majority of each day, as if there was something left to heal, as if there wasn't another piece missing from him. But Roselite wouldn't know that pain as a Lieutenant — new as he was, Faustite expected he knew little to nothing of youma but for what was in the Handbook. Likely never ran into youma, and if he did, it was with his Captain standing over his shoulder. Or he met one as a civilian, learned their ferocity. This one was quite cowed.
"I'm told I'll recover over time, or if I find another youma." Neither option appealed. If he waited, he'd waste away without the ability to eat. If he bonded another youma, he faced the same possibility of what happened to Squiddy. Youma weren't much for friendship, but it felt somehow disrespectful to find another so soon.
Even if it was for self-preservation. Wasn't much of a life to preserve.
He rested his chin on a fist as he watched Roselite work. It was his turn to pry. "Who told you I was injured?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 5:36 pm
Roselite had very little experience with youma other than random encounters. Beyond that, he knew only what he could read in the training manual. While that offered enough to allow for a modicum of understanding, he could not bond with one of his own and doubted it would be an option any time soon. Even in the event that it was, Roselite could not be sure he would want to.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, but did not explain what he meant to apologize for.
All of it, probably. The prying. Faustite’s youma being killed, and the effects thereof. Roselite might not have any idea what it was like, but he was sure it was awful.
Quietly, he waited for the water to make its way through the coffee maker, watching as it slowly filled the carafe.
To Faustite’s question, he responded, “People talk.”
Roselite might not be very social, but he overheard plenty. Agents talked in the hallways — sometimes loudly, without a care that they might be overheard. Gossip was not hard to come by.
But he also didn’t always rely on gossip.
“And Captain Bloodstone works in the infirmary sometimes,” he admitted.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:49 pm
"b*****d," Faustite muttered on reflex. "Not you. Bloodstone." Sure, he borrowed the Captain's recruit sometimes, but that was no reason to go spreading his business.
"Save the apologies." He hardly understood the convention. no matter how he studied it. If Roselite was actually sorry for prying, he'd do better. If he was offering empty condolences for Squiddy, he was better off saving his breath — those condolences undid nothing, and sharing them only garnered empathy and understanding in other humans. Between a Lieutenant and a General, it was different — the Lieutenant lacked context. Between a human and a half-youma, there was barely any ground to call common. There wasn't any expressed understanding in that apology. There wasn't anything.
And that pissed him off. He looked down at himself, hoping for even the sickliest of flames, but he still housed only a candle's worth of fire.
Damn, he thought. Damn damn damn. Damn everything.
"Back to the report," he decided, before he pressed Roselite's face to his stomach to see if it would melt to the grill. There's something to be ******** sorry for. "I need you to focus on numbers and enemy movement patterns. There's a few peculiarities — that there was no discernible figurehead, that the Princess's appearance populated their ranks exponentially, that their tactics were all guerrilla." Faustite slumped into his arms; his head began to ache.
"And pour it straight."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 8:10 am
Roselite made no attempt to defend his Captain. Kind as Bloodstone often was to him, Roselite was not so blinded by the stars in his own eyes that he couldn’t see Bloodstone’s faults. He was a b*****d, among other things.
As he poured the hot water, Roselite wondered if he’d done something wrong. This was not an uncommon thought; he frequently blamed himself for things. Everything he did, everything he said, all of it fed into the anxiety that twisted his insides and broke up his words. To make up for his shortcomings, he took up his spot on the metal chair again, retrieving pen and paper while he left the tea steeping.
Jotting down notes first so he wouldn’t forget anything, Roselite said, “I… I don’t know what a Princess’s aura feels like, but… if it’s anything like a General King, I imagine that alone would be enough to draw more forces to her location.”
Roselite set his pen aside long enough to summon his tablet, pulling up the database for reference. He’d been through it many times to familiarize himself with any relevant names, though he suspected most of the information to be out of date.
Even the one Princess listed there, a Senshi known as Iris, had a single line’s worth of information, and nothing more. The only other references to royals were a Prince Castor and a Princess Leto, but only one of them had their own entry and it was... unhelpful.
“I’m—… um…” Instinct compelled him to apologize before saying what was on his mind, but Faustite didn’t seem to appreciate that, so Roselite held the compulsion back and forced himself to say what he meant without the polite trimmings. “Does anyone else in the Intelligence branch ever actually do anything, Sir?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 6:06 pm
The water poured; the tea steeped. Its welcome grassiness mixed well with the office's stagnant air, and Faustite felt a little better for it. Even if the tea would just sit in his stomach until he threw it up, it helped his mentality.
"Felt awful. Like an itch in your teeth. Like fingernails in your brain." Nothing about the Princess felt natural, or tolerable.
"Could be other Order coming to gawk. Possible it's de facto leadership too. Might not always be a leader, but assumed the role that day." Would be hard to say without intercepting Order's comms. Far be it for any agent or senshi to crack that, though; only Mauvians were on par with Mauvian tech. Ultimately, Roselite's thought was more likely.
The fiery youth chuckled. His hand reached his temple as he regarded Roselite lopsidedly. For as sheepish as the new recruit was, he had Opinions, so either his Captain ran his mouth to him like he was a therapist, or Roselite was astute enough to notice the Negaverse's languishing roles. Didn't matter the reason; the sassiness was refreshing.
He liked a little cattiness with his officers. Well, his illicitly borrowed officers. "Probably not. Try to stay busy enough that I don't notice their idleness." Nothing of notice, anyway. Most of Intelligence was quiet about their goings-on, and either generated infinite routine draining reports, or stalked other officers and kept to themselves for that reason, or did ********, or they just thought everyone else was need-to-know about their activities. Faustite shifted, folded his legs up precariously so he sat crosslegged on his stool.
He'd probably regret that before the end of the night.
"Do you see a lot of idle hands?" Roselite sounded like he spent enough time in Negaspace to notice something like that, especially if his superior constantly ditched him down here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
