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 Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2022 7:59 pm
Fireworks are aplenty this time of year, and there’s always something going off somewhere in the city. Little pops and noises are common, but something about this firework is completely abnormal–it makes absolutely no sound. Instead, light and color splashes across the night sky and leaves a lingering glow behind. No one knows where it came from, but it lit up the sky like a midnight sun, and was gone after about a moment. Anyone who managed to see it in person may find that when they blink, there is a residual glow before them. Strangely, it even seems like there’s a trail of faded, glowing light guiding them somewhere. Maybe you’re led to some special place, or some special person, or–maybe the trail ends before you ever find out where you were supposed to go. This time of year, like every other important time of year, was rife with strange goings on. There had been the rifts, the reports of strange creatures in seldom visited areas of the city, things vanishing into thin air, and this damndable heatwave that had plagued the city. Acubens tried to remain jaded about the strange goings on, but she'd be lying if she wasn't equal pars curious and nervous about them. They almost never came without a cost... and those rifts were still gnawing at her nerves. But there was one thing that she could count on. Much like the fourth of July across the country, these nights were always lit up with fireworks. Acubens loved fireworks. The sound of the explosion rattled her rib cage. It popped her ears in and out in a way that she was sure others hated. And the colors... gods the colors. All manner of colored sparks fell from the sky like some kind of fantastical rainfall. Her favorite were the ones that fizzled at the end, creating fractals of sparks at the end. the impromptu show around the city was what stopped her patrol in the first place. She'd found the best seat in the city -- a rooftop right in the middle of everything. All around her fireworks whizzed and popped and shrieked into the air. It was what she imagined the beginning of the universe to sound and look like. All color and sudden, violent explosions. One that looked particularly lovely was sent up without a sound -- not uncommon. Acubens always noticed that those with a silent ascent had a louder explosion in the air. Except... even that was silent. Beautiful but... silent. And bright. So bright. Bright enough to leave ghosts behind Acubens' eyes when she closed them. Had she been that close to it or... Acubens sighed and scrubbed her eyes, knowing that it was another freaky occurrence, courtesy of Destiny City. She really should move her and Lavender somewhere else. Somewhere less... ********. Somewhere where the people weren't powered or at least didn't spend their days powered up. Somewhere where they could just be Rhona and Lavender, the eccentric and beautiful lesbian couple that pissed off the boomers. If it weren't for her court she might actually consider such a possibility. She opened her eyes and let them adjust from the irritation of her knuckles. For the most part things went back to normal except... except for a small trail of light leading... somewhere else. Acubens waited for a moment, expecting it to fade. Or was she hoping? It had to, right? This was a trick of light from a child running with a sparkler, right? When it didn't fade, Acubens sighed again, let her head lol back against her shoulders, and weighed her options. She could either follow it to wherever it wanted her to go, or she could go home to Lavender and eat dinner and go to bed. Curiosity over came her more base wants and she leapt form the rooftop to follow the trail of light.
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Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2022 4:04 pm
Acubens wasn't its only follower.
On the opposite end of the trail, Faustite stared with half-lidded derision at the second trail to have become known to him. He hadn't determined why these trails of light cropped up in the wake of fireworks, but the first one he had followed (and Celadonite confirmed it was real) led to no danger. Led to nothing of import.
Faustite knew he would have to follow this one to its terminus, especially if he wanted to prove to himself that they were odd happenstances. The burning boy leapt from a cinderblock fence to the lowermost roof of a theatre, then made his way up until he crested the ostentatious sign. From there, he saw a great swath of the trail amidst the heavy blasts of fireworks through the air. Those, Faustite thought, would either be boon or bane to his investigation — they drew eyes to the sky, but they were brilliant and fleeting enough that they might hold bystanders' attention while a living fire slipped by.
With the advent of another crackling firework, Faustite corkscrewed off the theatre sign and crested the parapet to an adjacent building. The run was long and flat — a strip mall, most likely. He ran across it, following the coruscating trail as it shimmered into different colors, depending on his angle and surroundings. Whenever another firework burst, loud or not, the color shifted again, as if mirroring the burst.
He'd made it only so much further when he felt it — the auric presence of a Dark Mirror Eternal. It soured his mood, his expression, and he wondered if this chase was truly worth running aground of one of theirs. Would it be better to summon the team, frighten them off?
"Headache," he called, and his youma flickered into existence. "Emulate that Mirror Senshi from before."
The cloud of fireflies flashed with the next firework to detonate. Then, as they wound together, they formed a fine imitation of Murikabushi.
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Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2022 3:04 pm
A chaos aura. Acubens halted in her approach and weighed her options. There were maybe five agents that she held any amount of trust in, and this could be one of them. but then, if it wasn't, Acubens wasn't in a very friendly mood in regards to Agents that particular evening. To be perfectly fair, she was only ever in a barely tolerant mood for them. And there was also the possibility that this was a negaverse trap. They were keen on those, forever trying to snuff out the light of the ordered soldiers within the city. And it didn't seem like they cared if the Dark Mirror Court got wrapped up in those plots or not. The energy was that of a General, and if she felt them, then they knew she was there too. There had been no attack, however, so they were, in essence, in a stand off. Sending her senses out, Acubens could feel only one more presence. A basic level solider of chaos. Corrupted perhaps? Acubens had precious little exposure to them, but they couldn't be much different than their ordered counterparts. She approached slowly, careful to keep her senses open to ambush. She came to a corner and halted again, eyes and senses open and ready. Slowly, almost painfully so, she peeked around the corner to try and see who was waiting for her. What she saw was a basic alright, but not the right one. for a second, her heart skipped a beat. Murikabushi had been dark mirror last time she saw him... had something happened? And yet... there wasn't the tell tale sign of the corrupts on him. His chest and forehead remained intact. "Do you think I'm stupid," she called out, already calling her magic to her lips. "We don't have to fight, but there's no reason to deceive me. I just followed a trail. No more and no less."
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Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 9:16 am
Faustite heard that voice and wheezed his smoky soul out into the atmosphere. Hadn't someone killed her? Couldn't she have gotten lost in that unstable, labyrinthine hell they called Mirrorspace? Why hadn't she moved into that Mirrorscape and lived out her ramshackle, fugitive life with her best friend and accomplice, Sinope?
He let her talk as he wound in his feelings. Only when he was certain his voice would not shake when he spoke did he dare answer.
"Yes." With a flourish of his hand, Headache disbanded from its Murikabushi imitation and regained its form as a flurry of glinting orange fireflies. The youma buzzed back to its General, landing on its shoulders in a cloud of hiveminded bugs. It was with them flashing on his shoulders that he approached her, and finally saw her again.
And she looked unchanged. That disappointed him, somehow; that she hadn't lost an eye or become irrevocably crippled was another sign of her Court's indolence.
"But not for that." Flame eyes eyed her hawkishly as he spoke, and his gesticulations danced through thin lines of smoke. "Tell me where he is, since you're so enamored with the look of your own kind. So drunk with it that you'd pardon their every action," he finished, as a snarl threatened to form on his face.
Headache hadn't seen the mentioned boy but in a few scant Database images. When it flew from his shoulders to emulate the unnamed boy, it could manage only a hazy image of Sinope.
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2022 11:30 pm
That voice... How long had it been since Acubens had heard that voice... She turned the corner to meet the half-youma... general. He was a general now. Yes, Acubens supposed he would be. It had been so many years since she had last seen this half-creature that she had once loved so much. She wanted to reach out to him, to ask him where he had gone, why he had left her, but she withheld. Because she knew the reason he'd left. Who among humanity wouldn't leave after suffering such trauma at the hands of someone like her. No doubt the sight of her fuku made him even angrier, knowing what one of her kind did to her. And when he asked for the culprit Acubens opened her mouth to say that she didn't know when the accusation of her collusion hit her. She shut her mouth with an audible clack and stared at him, her brows a heavy line over her eyes. Her previously supplicant stance was now bent in confusion, trying to parse out how and why Faustite would think that she could ever in a million years do such a thing. "Faustite I... I have no idea where he is. I thought it was just normal Negaverse bullshit... you guys ******** with us like you do and I was ready to defend him but... then I found out about... " Acubens' face twisted as she remembered that day. The way she tried to keep Jett from telling her. The way she begged Jack to tell her that it wasn't true. That it was a Negaverse trick. "What he really did, I would rather die than abide. So I sent him away. He left that day and I set his things out that night. By morning they were gone and I don't know or care if it was him or the garbage collectors who picked it up." So that was why he went away. Not for the crime, but because he thought that she would defend it. It was, Acubens supposed, a fair assumption. She defended a great many crimes that her Court needed to commit to stay alive. Always in the frame of war, or rather what it took to escape it. It stood to reason, however much that reason offended her, that she would excuse this too. And yet... Above even the scandalized rage that Faustite would even entertain for a moment that she would excuse such a heinous act... there was sorrow. If only he had spoken to her. If only she'd looked for him afterwards. If only... "He's a monster, Faustite. And I don't give a rat's a** where he is now. And... for what it's worth... I'm sorry that one of my kind did that to you."
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Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2022 4:38 pm
That she knew did not change the severity of his stare. It remained through her description of kicking Jack out, abandoning his things, caring not what happened to him. Faustite thought that death begat death, and that the Dark Mirror was ever too softhearted about punishing their own.
At her apology, however, he let down his attention and shut his eyes, breathing a slow, smoky sigh. That following the trail of fireworks lead to this —
He wondered, however briefly, if this was an illusion. A road to the past, to whatever he wanted to hear, however bittersweet, some kind of amendment and closure that never was. But he felt her aura, knew she was real. He couldn't pretend otherwise. Whatever these silent fireworks did or didn't do, they faced each other now.
And Faustite faced down an apology, where forgiveness was its own terrible challenge.
Waving away his youma, the facsimile of Murikabushi vanished into a fit of fireflies, and those fireflies vanished into the snap of a portal. They were alone, as far as he could sense. Alone, evenly matched, and he suddenly found the topic of conversation to be terribly draining. He didn't want to forgive the Court, he wanted to hold Jack against them and against their willful ignorance, and now he hadn't that option. He would abide an armistice, however — a stay of execution until he could make sense of the boiling rage in his gut.
"Enough of that, then." He began walking forward again, his attention on the meager spatters of firework. "If you were following it, trail leads to nothing."
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Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2022 6:21 am
Faustite was still and calculated, just like he always had been. That, at least, had not changed, and it brought Acubens some measure of comfort. Comfort that she did not think she'd ever be afforded. Comfort that she didn't dare assume she'd be afforded more of. In truth, Acubens didn't expect Faustite to forgive her or her court. What had happened to him was vile and egregious, and even that didn't fully cover the depth of disgust she was feeling even now. Memories of Jack and his crimes brought bile back to her throat and caused her hands to itch for his pen so that she could shatter it herself. Shatter it the way he had shattered so many others. But that wasn't in the cards for any of them. And so, as Faustite considered and thought, Acubens stood still and silent, waiting for him to make the next move. Whatever that move was. If he chose to attack and punish her, she'd endure it. If he chose to come to her, she'd accept him. If he chose to do nothing, she'd leave. She'd placed the ball firmly in his court because he deserved that much. He deserved to control his own fate, even after Jack had tried to take it from him so many years ago. And if she did that, then maybe, Just maybe, They could start to heal from it. Even a little. If you were following it, trail leads to nothing.Acubens smiled slightly, the ghost of the expression lighting on her face, but she hid it with her hand as she scratched her cheek. "I wouldn't say that," she murmured softly, mirroring his approach with gentle, careful steps. "Destiny City, it would seem, works in mysterious ways."
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2022 7:07 pm
It had been so long since he thought to connect these idiosyncratic, unrelated events with the human connections that precipitated around them. Longer still since he considered such happenstance things to be intentional, wrought by some grand design. Strangely, now that he had known of unconscionable cosmic powers, now that he had seen the fantastical, he paradoxically found Acubens' statement less convincing.
Rather, he wanted to refute it. Wanted to tell her that there wasn't any grand design, that the city had no soul, that the people inside of it hadn't deserved the starseeds that the White Moon fought so frivolously to keep in their chests. All the power and magic bound up in their own bodies was meaningless. He wanted to remind her that no amount of magic, regardless of its alignment, would reunite him with the family he so sorely missed.
They were dead. Despite magic, the dead stayed dead.
Dead brother, dead heart. Dead father, dead empathy.
He knew he hadn't the energy to say as much. Whatever grandiose designs or random circumstances comprised their reality, it threw together Acubens and Faustite. They now had to live with the reminder of the other one's existence. And while he wanted to like her as he had so long ago, he felt his trembling anger cool to wooden resignation.
This was it, then. Just as the fireworks led them to nothing, their fateful encounter yielded no satisfying resolution. The mess was still a mess. The pair still had to carry its burden. They had only the past years to inform them now.
Back still to her, he murmured begrudgingly through gritted teeth. "Don't want to forgive it." For what had the Court done, precisely, to rectify his losses?sweenys_revenge wow a month later, tell life to slow down ;;
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