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 Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2021 8:16 pm
It really did feel like she'd walked right back into some foreign land today. After meeting with Laurelite, Chrysocolla's first order of business had been searching through names and papers and files and checking the rosters she could find to the best of her ability, seeing who was gone and who was still here -- and always knowing, unfortunately, that any missing name could be just as likely a death as it could be a purification.
There was never a safe way to make assumptions unless she'd seen to their death herself, or she'd seen it happen. Even the most outwardly dedicated could purify, and even the strongest could - die, disappear, or slowly drop out of sight and return sullenly to civilian life. (Kerberos wasn't on any lists she saw, or at least not ones she had immediate access to as a member of GenOps, and that lit a guilty-glee flare of emotion in her that she tried not to look at. He was -- as complicated as it had been, as moreso as it would be now, she did still want him to be happy. And he hadn't been happy, with the Negaverse, and there was no way he could be brought back these days.)
Faustite was still active, it seemed, and actively recruiting: pity, that, she'd half-hoped he'd died while she wasn't looking. It would've been what he'd deserved, and it would've been such a prize. She found his name on hospital logs, on recent injury reports, and that warmed her. Schorl, Aue, Ceraskia, Tiberius, Heliodor, Zircon -- no luck there. Sarabauite, Kyanite -- much the same. And for those last two, who could say if the answer was purified or dead or just gone?
Sylvite, though. Sylvite was still around, and still active, and she'd even made General. Chrysocolla might've menaced a Lieutenant a bit to get directions, but it had all been in good fun; she'd never even laid her hands on the girl or raise her voice, only employ a few little pointed threats about incompetence.
-- and all of that had brought her to outside Sylvite's office door, hesitating, because -- it was like with Laurelite. No matter how old she got, how powerful she became, there would always be that awful little memory: a week of captivity, and begging for anyone, anyone to tell her where Sylvite was, if she was okay, and never getting answers, and having to learn secondhand later how bad it had been. It made Chrysocolla nauseous, for a second; she had to brace herself against the door until it passed.
Then she knocked once, twice, before she had another moment of emotional weakness that'd stop her from doing it. "General Sylvite? Are you there?"starl_maga 🎵 I guess I shouldn't be surprised
I guess I've seen a few
Revivals in my time
And you don't choose whether
You're in or out of your prime
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Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2021 7:36 am
Sylvite wasn't supposed to be moping. She wasn't supposed to be upset. Everything was fine. Everything was good, even. They'd gotten eleven people recruited from Order. The aliens that had shown up had turned out not to actually be their enemies. Laurelite had gotten some kind of alliance or bargain with them. Technically, nobody in the Negaverse had even died. Only a traitor had died, and that was supposed to be one of the things that they celebrated, not something that put anyone in a bad mood for weeks. It didn't matter if the traitor was Sylvite's old boss, Sylvite's old friend. Still a traitor. Sylvite wasn't allowed to be sad about it, so she did everything she could to pretend that she wasn't. Mostly, she worked. That was fine. There was plenty to do. She checked in with her subordinates constantly, maybe to the point where she was being annoying, 'cause she needed to make sure that no more of them were going to betray her. There were also reports to write about literally everything that had just gone down, so Sylvite was spending a lot of time in her office, writing and writing while keeping a plushie on hand to squeeze whenever she started having bad feelings. She was in the office when someone came knocking, and she called out a "Yeah!" before she headed over to open the door. Then she froze. She looked at the woman in front of her and blinked. It took her a second to believe what she was seeing. When people stopped showing up at Negaverse events, it was 'cause they were dead, or 'cause they were traitors. They almost never came back. They definitely never, ever showed up casually at her office. Except, apparently, for right now. "Chrys," she whispered, and then she went straight for the hug.
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Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2021 10:01 pm
Whoa, whoa -- Chrysocolla had expected surprise, probably, but she certainly hadn't expected a surprise-hug, and so she just sort of stood there for a moment before she brought her arms up to hug back. "H-hey, Sylvite, it's -- been a while -- you're kind of squeezing me a little hard --" although, truth be told, it was kind of nice. She'd lacked for genuine touch for a while - all those people had thought she was, more or less, someone else. Someone else that they had, eventually, trusted with their secrets and their stories.
It wasn't as if she'd had genuine touch before she'd left. Schorl wasn't really - like that, not this sort of casual contact. So it felt odd to miss it, and odd to be uncomfortable with it, and odd to want more of it; and that was all more complicated than Chrysocolla had bargained for, so she folded it up in her mind and shoved it in a box, and just hugged Sylvite back for a minute. "...you don't have to - let go, or anything."
Then her tone shaded sheepish. "...Sorry I never... said anything. I know what it looks like when people just disappear." I know you thought I was probably dead went unspoken; it was in the air enough already, permeating the conversation, and there was no need to specify. They'd both been around the Negaverse long enough to know. "But I was busy, really...!"
"How have you been? Congratulations on the promotion." Chrysocolla sounded like she meant it, at least, and there was something unguardedly genuine about her expression for a second.
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Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:02 pm
"Sorry," Sylvite tried to say. It came out all muffled because of the way her face was squished into Chrysocolla's shoulder. She didn't let go, exactly, but she did take a second to make sure she wasn't squeezing tight and ended up just leaning her tiny frame up against the senshi, instead, still wanting to be close. "I just missed you." She stayed right there for a long moment, probably longer than was socially acceptable, because it was weird, too good to be true. Missing people never came back. Sylvite had done a couple of investigations on cold trails, and it had never led to anything good, but Chrysocolla wasn't a ghost, or a magic illusion, or something. She was real, and solid, and touching her, Sylvite could be sure of that. Also, since she was here, Sylvite didn't want to let go so that she could slip through her fingers and vanish again.
Although it was also kind of weird to just stand there hugging in the hallway forever, so Sylvite did pull away eventually, and kicked her office door open a little bit wider. She stepped back towards her desk, waving the other girl inside. She'd been working on her office a little bit at a time for years, and now it was fully decked out in a pinterest-y kawaii aesthetic. There were plushies. there was Japanese stationary. The walls were pink. The rug was pink. The mini Christmas tree on her desk was pink. "I've been good," she said, almost as bubbly as usual, because how else was she supposed to answer that question. "I got promoted back in the spring. I've got subordinates now, and I'm helping to lead missions and stuff."
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Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2021 10:13 pm
"Missed you too," Chrysocolla admitted, surprisingly quiet, and then: "I, um - I have peppermint marshmallows..? So if we sit down, if you -- want any, they're really good, actually." She flushed, so acutely aware of how stupid and stumbling that sounded, but -- it was fine. Sylvite wasn't about to snitch on her for being less than perfectly composed, especially when the other girl wasn't not in the vicinity of tears. She knew. She understood, mostly. Missing people never came back, not the way you'd known them. Maybe it would've been easier on some of those missing people if they'd died. (Chrysocolla had been a missing person, once, whoever she'd been before the Negaverse had taken her. She didn't think about that much anymore; really, for all intents and purposes, that girl had been dead for years. Presumably her parents didn't look anymore.) She followed Sylvite in, pushing stray hairs back behind her ears, looking around with reasonable curiosity. "It looks nice! I can tell you've really been working on making it your own place." Maybe she got a little sidetracked by one of the plushies, but it was, in her defense, very cute. The sort of thing she'd never really owned, but had thought about. "You've got subordinates? What are they like?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:20 pm
Sylvite swerved around the corner of her desk in a practiced motion, and collapsed cross-legged into her chair. "Peppermint marshmallows sound so good," she said, with an actual smile, 'cause apparently the mention of candy was what it took to bring her away from the edge of emotional collapse. Chatting about subordinates helped, too, as long as she didn't let herself think for too long about that one. "Okay, so, I have a couple of Lieutenants who had a rough start in the Negaverse like I did." She paused, looked at the blue haired girl in front of her, and added, "Like we did, I guess. I had to carry one of them out of the Rift, it was a whole thing, and now I'm working hard on getting them all adjusted. Uh, taken care of." She'd actually been focusing even more on the cute, soft office decor in recent weeks. It turned out there were lots of people out there who could use a space that was safe and cozy. "Plus I got two Supers reassigned to me recently, so that's super cool. I mean-" she glanced downwards for a second, her cheeks flushing just a little bit. "They're not as cool as you, don't worry, but it's fun, seeing different people's magic and stuff." She leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. "So what have you been up to?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 12:56 pm
Chrysocolla took a second to focus before coming up with a bag of marshmallows out of thin air, pulled out of subspace - the bag was unopened, and she handed it to Sylvite before sitting herself down as well, legs crossed at the ankle. That was reflexive, now; there were ways to compose herself in public that she'd managed to learn, ways to look and seem a certain way, and most of them she'd managed to process and incorporate. "It's not a coolness contest," she said, flustered, "so I'm sure they're fine? What's their magic like?" That did actually pull Chrysocolla's attention even harder - she had magic she'd derided, once, for being not immediately offensive. But things changed! Now it was just as much a part of her arsenal as any violent movement, especially now that it'd shifted and remade itself a little to realign with her. "It's really cool you're getting subordinates, though...! I mean it. I'm not really cut out for that kind of thing." "I'm not sure I can actually tell you the details? It's, um, kind of classified, I guess. But the general gist of it is that there was an officer who made herself into a Knight and ran a couple of years ago, she stole an artifact when she did, and I'm around her age and matched up with the kind of friend circle she'd generally had before that? So," Chrysocolla shrugged, "you know. Had to go find a traitor, become her friend enough that she'd tell me where the artifact was, and then kill her. It was pretty tough, everything considered."
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Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2021 2:02 pm
Sylvite reached out for the marshmallows eagerly the moment they popped into existence. She ripped through the packaging, popped two in her mouth, and said, once they were mostly chewed, "One of 'em makes the enemy feel like they're stuck in freezing water and the other one peels off their skin. Mmmm, these are really good." She popped a third marshmallow and managed to savor that one longer while she actually, finally got a good look at the Eternal in front of her. In some ways, Chrysocolla looked different than she had back when they'd both been high schoolers. She was older, obviously. She sat like a grown up in a way that Sylvite still didn't. She was put together. She was put together, and coming back off of a successful mission, and she was still talking like she wasn't good enough. Sylvite shook her head. "I think you'd do great with the new recruits," said Sylvite. "I mean, it was you who pretty much taught me what I know about all this stuff in the beginning, and look," she gestured at the room around her, and at the small pinboard on one of the walls that had her medals on it. "I turned out." Sylvite shifted a little bit and found herself reaching for the candy again. "And that was a long time ago. Now you're doing important missions like hunting traitors-" Don't think about it, Sylvite told herself. Don't think about it."I mean, if you're gonna keep doing stuff out of town, that's one thing, but I think there's a bunch of stuff that people could learn from you."
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Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2021 9:50 pm
"They are really good. There were still a bunch left on the shelf? I'm probably going to get some more later." But that was off-topic. Back to the point. "So they get good combat magic," Chrysocolla lamented, only half-joking when her face twisted into a look of petulant dismay for a second. She really was over it! ...Mostly! Especially now that her magic had shifted. Sometimes she just wanted to whine a little, inasmuch as whining was something she should do (which it wasn't, because if she wanted any respect she had to act her age, she'd been told that enough). "I don't really have anything on my schedule right now, so, um, if you wanted to use me to help with some training sessions, I'm definitely around?" Chrysocolla rolled her eyes a little, then, at the implication she was responsible for Sylvite. "If I'm responsible for you, that means I'm also responsible for Faustite. Ew. Is he dead yet?" Her face did shift soft, tender, when she looked around - really looked - at all the personalizations that'd been made to the room, all the medals Sylvite had earned. It made her look younger. It made her look a lot more like Sylvite had known her to be. "...I don't think I'm going out of town for that long again any time soon. Unless Laurelite personally gives me the mission? Or one of the General-Sovereigns, I guess. Getting a break from some of the stupid stuff that goes on here was nice, but... it was pretty lonely, and I was basically stuck as a civilian the whole time, and a bunch of it kind of sucked. I could do it again, if I have to? But I don't want to."
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Posted: Sun Dec 12, 2021 3:13 pm
"Hey! Your magic's good," Sylvite shot back, 'cause nobody was allowed to get all down on herself in this office. That was a rule she had just made up. "Making someone all depressed gives you just as much of a chance to grab their starseed as like, making them cold." Sylvite had never forgotten the time she'd insisted that Chrys show her that magic. It had been miserable, which made it perfect for their enemies. "Also," Sylvite grabbed a marshmallow but then had to push the bag away a little bit before she accidentally ate the entire thing in like a minute, "It was Umber who screwed up Faustite. That one's not on you. It might be partially just on Faustite for being weird, but, yeah." Since they were past the pleasantries now and getting straight into gossip, Sylvite didn't even try to sit in her chair like a proper General. She tucked her feet up on the seat and put her chin on her knees. "He was gone for a while, too, but he's around, yeah. I keep trying to make friends with him, but," she shrugged, as much as she could from her curled up position. "He also keeps doing dumb stuff. Like, really dumb."
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Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:36 pm
"All I'm saying," Chrysocolla countered, "is that my magic doesn't just set people on fire or anything, which would be useful in its own way, okay?" She grabbed a marshmallow offhandedly, taking her time with it, and then a second one. "We can always use more magic that just... sets people on fire." Not that magic usually left any physical traces, unless you got really lucky; physical lethality was a wish nobody was going to get granted. She wrinkled her nose, though, face all scrunched up in irritation. "It would've been really nice if he'd died while I was gone, but I guess I'm not that lucky, am I? Umber had his problems - " not that she was counting giving her a youmaglia as a problem, exactly; it'd worked, hadn't it, she'd come out of it all missing time and with a buzzing in her head (and not liking the way Desdemona looked at her, disliking it badly enough to think about just leaving so she didn't have to see her sister's eyes one more second), "but I'm kinda responsible for Faustite too." "...dunno. Schorl worked out for me. I guess he just didn't have the guts? If I'm lucky, he'll die off 'cause of all that dumb stuff you say he's doing, and I won't even have to be involved." Chrysocolla rolled her eyes. "Never that lucky, though."
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Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2021 8:35 am
Sylvite puffed out her cheeks. "Yeah, fire magic would be pretty great," she admitted, 'cause there was really no way to argue with that. "But hey, if you want something a little bit more offensive, you can stick with me next time there's a big battle or something. You can borrow one of my knives." Sylvite had two, which was perfect for sharing, and it was kinda fun imagining just how scary Chrysocolla would be with sharp metal and the ability to mess with someone's head. Schorl was someone that she'd heard of but never known much about. She'd stopped being active around the time that Sylvite had hit Captain and gotten really into her Information stuff. Although, sitting there, Sylvite realized that she didn't necessarily know a lot about Chrys, either. After the whole kidnapping thing, she'd changed schools and changed Generals, and they hadn't really talked much after that. "Or maybe I can get him to stop being dumb?" said Sylvite, 'cause she didn't think it was good to want another top General to die. She uncurled slightly, suddenly wanting to change the subject. "So, if you're not doing missions or getting subordinates, what are you gonna do now?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2021 9:30 pm
"I don't really know how to use knives," Chrysocolla admitted, grabbing another marshmallow, "so you'd have to teach me? Bladed weapons aren't really my thing. I kind of have a little bit of training, but that's really basic self defense stuff with pocket knives, not - " she gestured ambiguously - "you know. Daggers." Maybe I can get him to stop being dumb? just got Chrysocolla rolling her eyes, but she at least seemed content enough to leave it be for the time being. No matter how self-admittedly petty she wanted to be about her (in her opinion, extremely reasonable and justified) grudge and loathing, she hadn't seen Sylvite in over two years; she didn't want to make it all weird by just talking about Faustite. If anything, she'd probably be winning if she didn't even think about him, right? "I'm... not really sure? I was going to, um, officially file the paperwork for joining SpecOps, because I never actually joined any of the branches and I always meant to, but besides that... I don't really have any plans, unless Laurelite or Hessonite or anyone assigns me stuff." She looked a little baffled - or more than a little, really - at the prospect of unfettered agency. Life under the confines of a mission had been one thing, but this was something else, something she didn't really have experience with.
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Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2021 8:58 am
"I don't think daggers are that hard to figure out?" said Sylvite. It wasn't like a sword or something where you could accidentally cut your own head off if you did it wrong, at least not easily. "Like, yeah, there's some techniques we could go over, but just stabbing works in a pinch." She summoned a knife, dropped it on one of the few clear spots on her desk, and flicked the blade so it spun. "Plus, these babies got enchanted when I upgraded, so now even if you just barely get someone it still hurts a lot," she added with a grin. That seemed like the kind of thing that Chrysocolla would appreciate. Like, she was talking about joining Special Operations, so hopefully she knew how to appreciate something as cool and useful as a magic weapon. The knife spun dangerously close to the edge of the table, so Sylvite had to scramble to grab it. "I bet you'll do great in SpecOps, though, if you're already knocking out missions. There's always more missions." Always more traitors to hunt, she thought, and swallowed.
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Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 3:51 pm
"It's super different from just using your fists, though," Chrysocolla said, a little defensively, "since you have to take other stuff into account?" That was the extent of her protest - it definitely wasn't a sword, or a warhammer, or anything she would've needed to wield with two hands, and when it came to weapons that was probably good. She'd daydreamed about having some kind of maul, a couple of times, if her birthright had been a little different; if things had started out with less cats, and more artifacts, and she'd shed a Knight's name. But that was all just daydreaming, senseless thought, and she tried not to pay too much heed to it most of the time. (Even if, Chrysocolla thought, she'd probably look a little more... respectable, maybe, if she had a uniform instead of her fuku. Characteristic as it had become, it was still absolutely impossible to disguise without taking a hacksaw to it, and who had that kind of time?) She leaned away from the edge of the table, not so eager to accidentally get nicked, and only leaned back once Sylvite had gotten full control over her weapon again. "Thanks." "...If you ever want me to come by or -- well. You know. Want anything? Just, um, in general? Let me know. It was kind of cruel of me, not letting you know why I left or where I was or if I was okay, so... even if it's just something dumb like doing your paperwork or whatever, it's seriously not like I have anything super high-priority going on."
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