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 Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:37 pm
When Lysithea left, Faustite wiped his eyes clean of black tears. He washed his face, told Headache that he would be out – that the youma had to watch his desk. No, he wouldn't need his communicator.
Where he was going, he'd have access to a communicator.
Faustite pulled Ilse's file from his bookcase. Her address was plainly stated – if he remembered right, it was a multi-bedroom affair where she worked on cosplays and streamed for her fans. Not so different from Lilith's occupation, or if it was, he didn't know the difference. What did it matter if he had one less influencer in the end?
Faustite donned his hood and vanished – reappeared in the center of Rosie's quaint apartment, all tossed and turned and torn apart, as if someone beat him to his own subordinate. He felt nothing on his auric radar, but that came as no surprise. Faustite darted through the place, to the living room, to the kitchen, to the bedrooms, scouring the walls for the smoke detectors that would then be wrenched from the wall and decommissioned. He hadn't seen her from the corner of his eye. Hadn't heard her, either.
"Rosie. Ilse." Nothing. No rustle of fabric, no shuffle of panicked footfalls.
Standing amidst her tossed bedroom, he wrenched for her in the network of chaos that intrinsically connected them.
Nothing.
"You petty little mistake…" He hissed the words, boiled them on the end of his tongue until they popped, sizzled. A black hand clawed at the wall as he stalked past, leaving smoking black scourges in his wake.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:58 pm
This was….dangerous. Terrifying, if Ilse was entirely honest. She wasn’t eager to confront Faustite directly; even with the upgrade Soleiyu had given her, she still couldn’t match Faustite.
But she wasn’t alone, at least. Michel had her back, and he was on Faustite’s level—ignoring all of the fun bonuses the Negaverse gave that Order couldn’t match. But that was just. The way of things, wasn’t it? The bad guys always had more power, and it was up to the good guys to overcome that gap with gumption and spunk.
So, she took a deep breath, and opened the door to her old apartment—and it was a strange thing. To know that she was walking into a space that she should know, that had once been hers, but to feel…nothing. A blank expanse of memory. There were the markers of a life lived, personal accouterments scattered around, things that must have mattered to her once, but hadn’t mattered enough to take with her while she was packing.
And there was another marker, too.
Ash and soot and broken smoke detectors.
They were right. Faustite was here. Looking for her, undoubtedly.
“Ilse asteroid power, make up,” she whispered, and she bloomed into her new form, delicate skirts settling around her hips in a whirl of magic and petals. She clutched the pager to her chest, so she could signal Michel when it was time, and she squared her shoulders, and straightened her back.
“Looking for me, General?” She called, and she hoped that it wasn’t all for nothing, and that she didn’t end up an ash stain here after all the work they’d done to get her out..
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:17 pm
A bloom of too-bright white accosted him, stole his attention for a brief moment — could've been a neighbor powering up stupidly, but not as a Super. Ilse wasn't a Super, but —
that was her voice.
The flamecraft General vanished in a blink, then reappeared where he had thought he heard her voice. It was the living room, where Rosie's possessions were tossed away in a fit of last-minute decision. Where he saw what hadn't made the cut. There she was — covered in gentle brights and light skirts, fitted in all the trappings of a traitor.
Good. Easier to kill her this way.
Once again he vanished, and once again he reappeared, inches from her. Heat boiled off of him, threatening to blacken the wall nearest them, threatening to burn down the couch. He began draining her energy as the heat about him grew sweltering. Soon the air was chokingly unbearable.
"Better that you lay down and forfeit your starseed," he seethed.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:20 pm
Teleportation. Ilse really should have been more ready for that. She knew he was capable, abstractly, but had never seen it utilized so freely. Before she knew it, he was in her face, and she could feel the heat radiating from him. She stumbled back, not that it made much of a difference. She could feel the energy getting pulled out of her, could feel the heat crackling, was amazed she wasn’t already burning just from convection alone—
“No,” she said, voice firm and unflinching. “I’m not going to lay down and surrender. To you or to anyone else.”
She hoped, this time, that her magic worked—that it played nice with her, and deployed like it was supposed to.
“Unattainable Desire!” She said, calling on her new, stronger magic, and letting the petals whirl. Her legs wobbled, and she stumbled back a few more steps, leaning against the wall. She needed Michel, she needed backup—and she needed her magic to distract Faustite for long enough for Michel to do what he needed to do.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:24 pm
As she called the name of her attack, his core exploded in a furious, roiling fire that licked over the walls and furniture. As the flame hungrily devoured fabric and frame and sheetrock alike, Faustite's mind was cast to Lysithea. Then his family. Then the chance to spend days with his boys. Then the power to devastate his enemies, like the one before him. Then to a world where youma dominated the surface, and people were farmed as cattle until they earned the right to become youma themselves.
Faustite swallowed a tickle in his throat. He stalked toward her in the middle of his own fiery vortex, then he coughed. It was a painful, wracking thing that bent him at the waist and seized his diaphragm. He hacked again, and again, and out came a flurry of petals that were taken up into the firestorm. As they burnt up, they formed a brilliant, speckled halo.
Faustite opened his mouth to speak and coughed hard enough that he braced his hands on his knees for support; a thick glob of blue petals coated in black spit fell into the inferno.
He told himself, it was only magic.
He told himself, it would end soon.
He told himself, count the seconds.
He thought about Lysithea, how she would fade from his life. He thought about how his family was dead, murdered by a betraying friend. He thought about their endless leagues of youma, trapped in the Rift's uncanny caverns, while humans took for granted their freedom on an earth that they would soon suffocate.
He puked a thick, congealed stream of petals. Thick with black and blue, they formed a mulch on the floor as they slowly caught fire. They flickered, burned, and incinerated, each petal as transient as his forlorn desires.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:25 pm
The heat crested. Peaked. Faustite exploded, and Ilse screamed. Even just being in the same room as fire like that hurt, and she’d had to be close to cast her magic.
She ran, as fast as she could, for the door, panic seizing her as flames caught on her old, discarded possessions, lighting the apartment up in flames. Those fires would be coming for her, very quickly, and she had no idea how long Faustite could maintain his fires for.
She had just as much desire to die a pile of ashes as she did a starseeded husk; that was, none. Negative desire, one might even say.
It was miserable to watch, seeing him doubled over, hacking up flower petals that burnt up in the rush of his own fires, but she couldn’t spare the feelings in her heart towards him.
She fumbled with the door, thudding her body against it, hoping the sound of the crash was enough of an alert, and then, with all the strength and frustration and fury she had, she pulled off one of her pretty little wedding heels.
And she hurled it directly at Faustite’s face.
And then, for good measure, she did the same with the other one.
“Killing me won’t bring her back, you know!” She snapped, as if she had any room to do any taunting, when he was furious and the heat was making it hard to breathe. But it was true. It wouldn’t. “And it won’t fix the…the big, gaping hole you have where a heart should be, you manipulative jerk!”
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:26 pm
One of her heels struck him in the back of the head as he recovered from the last of his retching. It hit hard enough to sting, his hair beginning to mat afterward. It was helpful, that gesture — gave him clarity in the form of pain.
He straightened, saw the second heel coming. He knew, then, what he would do with her.
The shoe passed through him as he melted into fire, and the three main gouts defining his amorphous existence braided over one another as they rushed for the girl that tried to flee her burning apartment. One of those gouts lashed over her arm and reformed into Faustite's hand, clutching it out and away from the door. The rest of him became solid at once; he stood at her back, trapping her between the closed door and himself.
He forced his hand through her outfit, through her back, her ribs. He found that special space that housed a traitor's soul. He found the traitor's soul.
He squeezed, so she would know it, too.
"Stop assuming; you're bad at it," he chided, smiling. "Know she won't come back. She was nice to me, you know. Only one who was." His voice dropped to a rasp near her ear. "Thought I'd return the favor. Give her something better than the rest. Guess that makes me a monster.
"Guess that makes you one, too," he finished, as black bolts of chaos shunted down his arm and into the star in her heart.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 3:43 pm
To say that Michel had been taking his time was maybe an understatement. He could have stepped in when he saw flames, or heard Ilse’s scream. There were parts of this fight that he could make out, even unpowered and away as he was.
It wasn’t time, he told himself.
Let Ilse have what words she needed. Let Faustite think he had any sort of advantage.
Let them rough each other up, because Michel couldn’t turn his anger against Ilse but he hadn’t forgiven her for leaving without Lysithea.
He didn't wait for her to set off the pager. He made his mind up about it himself, and when he thought it was time.
He’d worn nondescript clothes. He had a mask tugged up over his nose. His hood was up.
He’d have hardly cared if he didn’t have the precautions in place, but he knew that was his own impulsiveness.
Maybe it was in his mind, or maybe it was real, but he was pretty sure he could feel the heat before he got there. He didn’t power up until he was nearly on top of the two of them, and when he arrived he didn’t swing his weapon down on Faustite’s arm to break the connection between the two.
He wanted to, but maybe Ilse wanted to keep her starseed.
Instead, he ran his thumb over the little thing he’d been carrying with him for weeks now. He’d spent so much time dreaming of all the things he’d do to Faustite when he found him, and right now he couldn’t do any of them without hurting Ilse.
So, he just had to find a way to separate them that didn’t involve violence.
Faustite’s grating was a good target. Even if he didn’t throw the smoke bomb into it, close enough was good.
He’d dreamed about it, though. Should have brought a fire extinguisher. He wanted to smother out every last little spark of life in him.
But, this was good enough. For now.
He hurled the little smoke bomb as hard as he could, aiming for the flames he could see through the metal. He had a good arm, but it wasn’t like Faustite was a stationary target.
Michel just needed to make sure he couldn't run away before he was done with him.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 3:48 pm
Ilse screamed. It was fear, at first, but it changed, quickly, to agony, as Chaos poured into her starseed all over again. She struggled, though; brought pretty manicured firs around to dig her thumbnails into Faustite’s wrist, in an effort to get him to let go. She would not be broken, not like this. Not after she’d found her way out.
“If she was…” It hurt to speak. Her throat felt raw, from screaming, from inhaling hot air. “If she was nice to you….why did you hurt her?” It seemed such a simple question, to Ilse. She knew why she had hurt Lysithea, why she had fed into the lie—the lonely, miserable obsession that had made her want to possess, to own.
It wasn’t all Chaos. Wasn’t all whatever Hessonite had done, that terrible night. It was also just….her, some poisonous part of herself that she had to work to be better than, she was pretty sure.
Ilse was starting to get dizzy. The pain in her starseed was almost unbearable, but she had to keep fighting—knew she couldn’t keep Chaos out forever, but hoped desperately that she could, at least, resist for a little while.
There was the bright flare of a Knight’s aura. Michel, finally—he must have been delayed, somehow. But he was here now, and Ilse was grateful. At least maybe she might survive this.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 3:50 pm
"I didn't until you told her, you ******** cu –" Coughs and sputters cut him off as smoke billowed up about the pair. He held fast to her starseed, clutched it, urged chaos to violate the rest of it, but nothing poured forth. Not a drop of chaos passed through him, as if the connection was severed. As if the well ran dry, and her nails dug deep in his wrist.
That was his first panic – he exhausted their supply of energy. But how could that have been true, when the Queen announced they were flush with energy after their success at the hilltop?
His second, more likely panic was that he was imminently experiencing what Aquamarine experienced at the hands of Sessrumnir, with one slight advantage – he had a starseed in hand. So he kept his hateful fingers wrapped around it and hissed through his teeth at his door-barred victim: "Beg them to ******** off. Think of what'll happen if you don't."
Fire still spread through her apartment, roiling and flickering up the walls, spreading choking smoke that would suffocate them if they drew this affair out. Maybe, then –<******** it," he muttered to no one, and squeezed.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 3:53 pm
There was a plan. Michel was doing his best to follow it. Faustite wasn’t making that easy.
He still had her starseed, and though Michel resented her for turning tail and running without Lysithea he wasn’t going to let Metallia have her back. The smoke in the room was thick–not thick enough, Faustite was still breathing.
If he’d had his way, he could have just handled Faustite on his own, but like this? He couldn’t risk Ilse losing her starseed.
Well, he could.
But.
Realistically, Michel knew he shouldn’t do something that could jostle the starseed any more than absolutely necessary, but he was getting the distinct impression that Faustite wasn’t going to give it up without a fight.
More of a fight.
Well, desperate times and desperate measures and all that.
Michel couldn’t rely on what he knew for normal human physiology–did Faustite have pressure points? Did he have kidneys to punch? He had a face–a perfectly punchable face–so Michel drew his fist back and aimed right for it. It seemed safer than trying to hit the open flames of his body. He wanted to tear him back, throw him into one of the flame-lit walls. Let it crumble atop of him. Michel wondered if he could burn alive.
Wanted it.
Wasn’t going to risk it. He needed to separate Faustite from Ilse and her starseed before he lost his chance and had to choose between keeping her alive and taking him out. He had to hope Ilse’s starseed was more durable than Faustite’s will. He just needed to surprise him for long enough to make an opening.
Michel hadn’t breathed the strange smoke, but then–he couldn’t remember the last time he did breathe. Maybe that’s why it made sense to try and skewer Faustite through the middle. He didn’t know if it would hurt, if it would kill him. He just needed to surprise him.
The weapon wasn’t easy to maneuver delicately, so his effort to shove the clock hand through the grating around Faustite’s flame was sloppy at best. But then, he didn’t care what he broke as long as it got the job done.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 3:54 pm
Ilse’s vision was beginning to blur. She kept struggling, still clawing at Faustite’s wrist—it hurt, he was so hot, a creature of fire and malice and murder, but she couldn’t just let go. She couldn’t stop fighting, couldn’t let him kill her, couldn’t just give up, not when Lysithea had risked so much to make sure that she got away safely.
She couldn’t remember all the specifics—was pretty sure the discussions had taken place as whoever they used to be, under the magic—but she knew that much. Lysithea had saved her. Lysithea had wanted to help her. And she couldn’t spit on that sacrifice by letting herself die in exactly the same way that she would have if they hadn’t bothered at all.
At least the only pain now was a hand squeezing her starseed. She couldn’t feel Chaos in it anymore, trying to crack it to pieces and make a monster of her.
With all her will and breath, she spat at Faustite’s face. It would burn up and sizzle in the hot air around them, but every bit of defiance she could manage was defiance that might save her life.
“Get. Off. Me.” She snarled, yanking on his hand.
If her starseed went out, then it went out. She would just have to trust Michel to put it back in.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 3:55 pm
Cute that she tried. Hopeful, wishful. She spat at him, got him across the face, and he spat back. "Mine's hotter," he rasped.
He hoped the damned starseed would crumble in his hand, but it was sturdy; he wondered if the silencing smoke prevented him from being able to break it inside her chest.
But his wonder was cut short – a punch struck him in the head and sent him forward, where he hit the door and bounced back. It was jarring, spun the room about, and nearly dislodged him from Ilse's starseed cavity. Then the next strike came as he tried to wrench Ilse's starseed free.
He felt his whole self lurch, as if someone took him by the waist and hoisted him about, but he felt no pain for it. Heard the terrible, rasping scream of metal as it bent and contorted. The inertia was such that he was driven back and away from Ilse, starseed still in hand, and the tortured little jewel looked delectable. Positively savory in a situation like this.
But he wanted her a youma, more than he wanted to savor another starseed.
He drew his hand back as Ilse's body hit the floor. Twisting his head toward his attacker, he finally had a face for that troublesome Saturn Knight – blonde, curmudgeonly thing with a grim look and, he assumed, a clock hand zweihander struck through his middle. With a starseed caught between middle and ring knuckles, he made to punch the present bane of his existence in the ******** off," he seethed. "Let me take her for a youma and I'll give you Lysithea."
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 3:57 pm
Michel was having none of it. He didn’t know how long he had before Faustite had the ability to teleport away, or the focus to call for reinforcements. He didn’t want a room filled with youma, or subordinates. There was enough going on already, and he just wanted this over.
“Oh, no. You lost the chance to bargain with me a long time ago. I’m taking everything now.”
He gripped the hilt of his weapon tightly, fully intending to use it to hold Faustite in place. The handle felt hot. Everything felt hot.
So, he should hurry.
There were a thousand things he wanted to do to Faustite for putting Lysithea through all of this. For putting him through all of this. He’d wanted to hurt a lot of people in his life, and maybe he wasn’t proud of most of that, but there wasn’t a bone in his body that felt bad about wanting to see Faustite destroyed.
Michel didn’t know how long he’d have to drag this out, so he savored the sensation of his fist against Faustite’s face first, and then he drew his arm back to do it again, and again, and he beat down on him on any part he could reach. He wanted the last thing he felt to be pain.
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2022 3:59 pm
His punch missed, but Michel’s didn’t. He caught what he could, but he couldn’t pivot — couldn’t move. He needn’t look down to know why.
What Michel had for him was rage. Unadulterated, unbending rage, pure for the fact that he was without any chaos in his body. Bloodlust was in his character, much like Tanais. And like Tanais, he knew this would end purely for him. Faustite, stuck in a teenager’s body, wasn’t built for close combat. Couldn’t match a grown man like Michel. So while he blocked part of the assault, he couldn’t defend his back. And as much as he tried to draw away, to burn the hand holding the heavy piece of metal struck through him, he couldn’t muster any heat.
So this was how Aquamarine felt. It was a familiar, hollow doomed feeling. Something coated in inevitability and passed to him in private.
And this time, he didn’t have Almadel’s card. Didn’t have anyone to call, any way to teleport. Didn’t carry a communicator on him for how often he melted the things.
Gritting his teeth, Faustite served for every punch that landed, felt pain doing through him from ribs to arms to his face, felt his cheek swell and his eyes begin to close, felt numb in one arm where it fell useless. His lip split and blood coated where Ilse spit on him. Her starseed — he’d dropped it, he realized belatedly. Caught one fierce punch —
There it was, a brilliant shock of pain for the crack he heard, bright enough that it blinded him, and he thought, how many lives will it take .
“Stop,” he hissed through blood. Spat it on Michel for how urgently he spoke. “******** — I’ll surrender!
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