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 Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2022 4:35 pm
It wasn't like Nectaris wasn't prepared, in theory, to run into a boy-on-fire. She'd read about one, plenty, and read those entries again and again over the last few days considering what was going on with Albite. She'd even had a long conversation about the whole thing with her brother, sitting on the kitchen floor like they always did when they talked about the most serious stuff. It turned out to still be weird to actually see him. Mostly, this was because of the fire. Okay, it wasn't just the fire. It was also the fact that where the fire was, it kinda looked like he did not have a middle. Like, at all. She'd been perched on the corner of a roof, keeping a more casual eye on the city for once instead of dashing around for hours, and when he showed up, she leaned over dangerously far to get a better look at him, her fingernails digging into a crack at the edge of the gutter. Yeah, definitely no middle there. It made her skin crawl. Like, how did he breathe? How did he stand up? How did he go to the bathroom? There were so many questions. Maybe her skin should've been crawling 'cause of the Chaos coming off of him, or 'cause she was pretty sure that she knew exactly who he was and what he'd done. Maybe her skin should've been crawling so much that she just left, like Encke probably would've wanted her to do. The curiosity was very much winning out, though. "Hey," she said, still awkwardly hanging off the edge of the roof. "Are you Faustite?" She didn't wait for an answer before she was saying, "A lot of people say you're all scary. Should I be scared? Should I fight you, or, like, nah?"
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Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 12:18 am
He had an itch under his fingernails. He had thought that, if he could bury them far enough into some hubris-stricken senshi's face or chest, and he wrenched them down, that itch would be satisfied. At least temporarily.
The itch had been bothering him for some time. The more he busied himself, the more he forced himself to avoid dwelling on it, the stronger and more insistent it became. But it wasn't an itch, or wasn't just an itch. No, it felt like someone coated his bones in lacquer. Dipped his entire skeleton. It wasn't just under his fingernails, though they nagged him relentlessly. It was in his teeth, too, and he was struggling to convince himself that sinking his teeth into someone would, somehow, satisfy it. Try as he might, he knew it was wrong.
It wasn't an itch at all, but he left the office under the pretense that it was.
And it bothered him ever since — dogged his heels as he paced through the realm of this disaffected city ever faster, until he reached a brisk walk, until he paced at a speed just under a jog. He wasn't looking for energy or enemies, though his eyes flickered to and fro in its pantomime. He looked at branching alleys, at yawning streets, but he hadn't seen them.
This 'itch' as he had taken to calling it — this wasn't its first appearance. It had cropped up dozens of times, and was ever patiently quelled by the boys with whom he surrounded himself. They plied him with their time, distracted him with their preciousness, and smothered that itch for a while. They were too good, and too patient, with him. Faustite knew that, had he faced this alone, he would have long joined the ranks of the youma.
So he was there, alone, prowling the city for nothing in particular. Hungry to prove to himself that, just this once, he could weather this on his own.
Until he wasn't alone anymore. The voice wrenched him from his thoughts for how familiar it sounded, and he half-expected some Negaverse agent addressing him before he took up the aura.
Only when she started talking about him did he discern the direction of her voice, and he turned to look up at the one speaking. The sight of her hit him like a brick to the chest — the girl formerly known as Sylvite. The one who brought him tacos and weathered his wandering, half-feral conversation. The one who stood in the throne room among them and accepted Laurelite's secret mission. The one who then betrayed that trust, and freed a hard-won Princess, knowing the consequences would dog her until her dying day.
At first, he couldn't answer — he could only scoff. Scoff and smile something achingly violent.
"You're a c**t." The words hissed and crackled in his mouth before he spat them. "Clawed your way up to General, crawled into the Queen's confidence, stole away her quarry, then ******** off to hide under the skirts of the White Moon. Long ******** con, Sylvite. Nectaris."
The fire that used to be organ and muscle and fat blazed. It licked beyond the boundary of its grate, beyond where skin would have contained and protected his visceral loathing.
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Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 6:07 pm
Okay, so you are a jerkface, Nectaris somehow, just barely, managed not to say out loud. Not that she wasn't starting to get used to getting attacked and cussed out and cried at for what she'd done, but it still did kind put people into a category. It wasn't a category she liked. "Ooh, Ooh, are we saying mean things about each other?" she asked. It was one of those situations where she was grinning, but the smile was mostly to keep herself from freaking out. She saw the way that the fire was starting to leak out of that gate thing where his abs were supposed to be. She saw the way it looked like it was getting hotter. "Okay. My turn." With a tilt of her head, she started counting off the mean things on her fingers. "You're a torturer, which is, like, literally the worst thing a person can be. Gross. You take starseeds. Double gross." The grin flickered as she added, "The nicest person I know literally has a panic attack the second somebody says your name." She smiled again, but was watching him, trying to be careful. She figured if he tried to teleport up to her all sneaky, she'd have a second or two to push him off the roof while he got his bearings. "And, unlike me, you never took a second to be like, 'oh hey, what I'm doing is messed up, maybe I should stop.'" A second passed. "I mean, not that you can't now," she said, because the ideal was obviously that he'd purify too, and take Albite, and then they could all be happy together without it being weird. "But, like..." She just wasn't really feeling like that was about to happen.
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Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2022 5:14 pm
She spoke like she was twelve. Her sentences, simple and stupid as they were, pissed him off two-fold for how he had never noticed her speech style to be so childish before. Was that new, or was she always this way, and he never realized it? Faustite was supposed to be astute, aware, observant. Was he any of those qualities, if he hadn't noticed his former coworker sounding like so puerile?
He approached as she spoke. Leapt to the roof as she named off his duties, one by one, as if they were crimes. His expression flickered into a bare snarl.
For as much contempt and disgust that she inspired in him, he knew he had to keep her talking. She called him a torturer, but his tortures were few and far between — Hopeite and Harmonia had vanished, Ganymede was an excessively mild case and had escaped, and Cybele bore something more like torture but had escaped as well. He knew she had stolen Ganymede away from them, but it would be smarter for the Princess to divulge Jet's promotion over Faustite's small-game psychological prods. Either she ran into Hopeite or Harmonia, or she encountered Cybele. Faustite suspected the latter was more likely, but he couldn't prove it without hearing it from her.
And that nicest person — it wasn't Cybele, and Ganymede wasn't afraid of him. She'd made other friends in that mess that called itself the White Moon.
He kept approaching her at a steady walk, expecting her to back up in kind. "Why?" He challenged her. "If I stopped, you couldn't call me a torturer, a murderer. Couldn't charge me with every crime you detest. Couldn't hate me on account of some arbitrary redemption.
"Your kind kills youma. Sends them back to the Rift for them to slowly, painfully rebuild themselves only to be dusted again. Is that not torture? Or is it forgivable — encouraged — because they're not human anymore? Tell me, how many youma has that nicest person destroyed for their own spoiled ******** virtues?"
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Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2022 4:54 pm
"I don't hate you now," said Nectaris with a roll of her eyes, because she was pretty sure she'd given him a chance to explain himself right off the bat, and he'd been the one who'd been starting with the insults. Which, he'd been just fine dishing it out. He'd just turned all toxic sad boy when he had to take it. Like, did he want sympathy or something? Weird. She blew a sharp exhale up so that it ruffled her bangs. "But, yeah, I'm gonna hold you accountable for your actions, especially if you're gonna, like, appear mysteriously out of the shadows and start going off about the stuff you think I've done wrong within five seconds. You're not perfect either, sorry." He walked up to her, but she didn't back up more than a step. Her chin jutted out, proud, and she looked into his eyes. He was only a few inches taller than her. It wasn't hard. This close, she could feel the heat of the fire coming out of his middle, but it wasn't burning her. Not yet. She held her staff in between them, one crescent point pressed into the ground as a fulcrum point. She was still thinking that she could push him off the roof if she had to. "So now we've got that out of the way. We're both messed up. Should we go back to, like, hi?"
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Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2022 5:25 pm
"Your mistake." She would find reason to hate him eventually, if she wasn't smart enough to pick up why he was so detested from the people with whom she spent her time. Maybe they shielded her from atrocities. Maybe she hated Cybele and supported what he did to her. Maybe she'd never heard of the operations she ran, or the people who thought him irredeemable. Whatever the case, there would be time — and opportunity — to hurt her as much as she hurt them.
"You betrayed yourself as Sylvite. Betrayed the rest of us, too. None of your petty deflections can change that."
She stopped, but he continued until he, too, could envelop a hand around her staff. Heat poured off him, his words full of crackle and seethe. His breaths enveloped in smoke as it streamed from his nose, under his ribs, from his lacrimal ducts.
"Why?" He asked instead, ignoring her please. His attention struggled to stay on her face, as he was oft drawn toward her starseed. Wished she was a Negaverse senshi for how it would glitter, bare, but she wasn't transcended to conceal it from him entirely. "What's the point in knowing you again? What good is it when you're dead from the neck up?
"Bought me ******** tacos and look at you now."
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Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2022 7:48 pm
She was a traitor. She knew that. She'd accepted that. The harder part to swallow was the part where she'd hurt people when she left. She'd tried to ignore that, and to soften the blow whenever she could, and sometimes it worked, but sometimes it didn't. Her lips twitched as she met his gaze. He wasn't so much taller than her, but she still had to look up. "Fight me, if you want," she told him, with a shrug, "If you're all duty bound, or whatever, cause I'm a traitor. If you hate me." His body was hot. She could feel it from here. He was grabbing her staff now, but that might be his mistake. Her moonlight burned with something brighter than just fire. It would burn him, she was sure, if she needed it to. "But I'm not braindead." She rolled her eyes at that, too, 'cause that was just too much. "New, sure, we can go with that. Restarting, yeah. And 'cause of that, I'm willing to give you another chance. Take it or leave it." She kept stealing glances at his fingers, remembering what Encke had said about the way he was always taking people's starseeds. She was ready, if something shifted, but she was also trying. Which meant she added, after a tiny hesitation, "Albite wanted to try again, to be friends and stuff. I heard you guys are close so I figured you might be the same." She gave a casual little shrug, pretending she wasn't already sweating from his flames.
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 2:11 pm
"I'm duty-bound," he admitted through gritted teeth, "and I hate you." The words were quiet, simmered in smoke and wrapped in a ripple of heat. His grip on her staff tightened, the metal gleaming. "Why should I give you a second chance?"
He knew his allegiances. Knew where his loyalties lay. Were he someone like Chrysocolla, or Jet, or Rakovanite, he would have fought her. They were, after all, duty-bound to stop those who stood in their way. Those of SpecOps were duty-bound to dispose of traitors as quickly and efficiently as possible. But that, he suspected, would be a waste. Nectaris was a scab, but she was a scab attached to a much greater wound.
While it hurt to reign in his own ire, he managed it. His breaths were tinted with smoke and his middle was brilliant as a roaring forge, but he hadn't yet attacked her. Even if it was all he could want.
Though his gaze narrowed at the mention of Albite's name. "You know Albite. What did you do with him?" Because it could've been anything, knowing the boy. They might've gone to dinner together after punching each other out, or he traded her starseeds for something stupid and utterly not worth the cost. Nectaris sounded like she was still in high school, so he doubted she could concoct a whole capture and torture scene, but the thought crossed his mind. Briefly.
Whatever transpired, it was likely to have been Albite's idea. What the ******** was that idiot up to now?
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 2:34 pm
Okay, so it was both. Nectaris nodded, accepting that, ready for gouts of fire to start tackling her, or like, whatever it was that Faustite did when he fought people. A second passed. Two seconds passed. Nothing. The painted wood of her staff smoked under the heat of his fingertips, but it was a Knight's weapon. It would take more than that to ruin it. Her gaze flicked from his hands back up to his eyes, and when she saw how annoyed he looked by the mention of Albite, how surprised, she grinned. He must not have knows about stuff. She guessed Albite was keeping their little thing a secret, even from his husband. He didn't kiss and tell, or he didn't wanna get in trouble, one or the other. Nectaris, on the other hand, totally would. She was all about open information, and it wasn't like that was something that was gonna let the Negaverse track down her family. "Nothing weird. We talked, we kissed, 'cause, like, we've been dating and stuff for awhile, apparently. It was cute."
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 2:44 pm
His grip tightened until his knuckles would've gone white if they were still skin-colored. He couldn't stifle his lip raising into a sneer as she went on; there was no helping it anymore. A thousand thoughts crossed his mind, each of them more bitter than the last.
He knew he shouldn't ask. Knew this line of questioning could only do damage. What could she possibly say that would be salvageable? Either it was a lie meant to hurt him, meant to sew dissent in his team, or it was a truth that proved worse than a lie. The ugliest of those truths was one he hadn't wanted to face, hadn't stopped to consider, despite its percolation at the corners of his thoughts. If she spoke it aloud, what would he do? What could he do?
Worse yet, what would he have to do?
If Albite was the source of all those purifications, then —
"What did you talk about." Faustite's T crackled like fresh bacon when it left the tongue.
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 3:23 pm
Now it sounded like his words were on fire, too. That. That probably wasn't a good sign. She'd thought that she was doing good, thought that she was buying time, but maybe she'd said the wrong thing after all. Which, like, he still wasn't trying to starseed her, which was nice, but she felt like she was maybe on that being something that was happening. With only a second's hesitation, she rubbed her thumb against the button on her ring that would send a distress call to Encke. She'd promised him she'd be careful. She'd promise she'd let him know if she got in over her head. She was pretty sure she was gonna get a lecture later, but she didn't want to have lied to him. "I mean, I gave him the same offer I gave you," she said, "To get to know each other again. Then it was just chatting, really. Kissing, yeah, but I dunno if there's much to say about that." She didn't mention the part where she knew they were married, that seemed like it would just be too much.
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 3:52 pm
Few people had seen Faustite smile. He hated the way he looked when he was smiling. It looked unnatural. It felt unnatural. In the past, when he smiled more, misfortune would befall the thing about which he smiled. Before his father died, Faustite remembered smiling at him. The same happened to his brother. Now, he was hesitant to smile around Waru, or Trey, or Aelius.
Now he only smiled at those on whom he wished misfortune. Now his snarl grew into a smile, full of teeth, bearing all the violence he wanted her to suffer.
He reached around the staff, reached for her clothes. He would bring her closer to him, with nary an inch between their noses. Close enough that she may squint from the heat. Close enough that she could taste copper and moondust on her tongue, like a bitter memory. Maybe she' smell some part of Albite on him, and that would help her find all that specificity that she hid behind half-assed ambiguity.
He muttered smoke-limned words into her face. "Details. Now."
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 4:27 pm
Oh. That was the answer to her question, the very first one she'd asked him, about if she should be scared. In that moment, she could hear his spit sizzling in his mouth. She could see in his face everything that anyone had ever warned her about. There he was. There was the torturer. There was the murderer. His eyes were an inch from her face. His hands were on her. They might have been wrapped in her clothes, but she could feel the fire on her skin. For a second, her eyes went wide. Her jaw dropped. She was just a scared little girl facing a monster. Then, her eyes narrowed right back at him. "I told you," she said. "And now you're trying to burn me. Back off. I'm a traitor. You don't get to do, like, the threatening order thing with me." His hands were on her staff, but hers were, too. She gripped tighter. She pressed her lips together, and she called on the power of the Moon. The area around her was bathed in soft light. To her, it was warm in a way that she barely even noticed, but to Faustite, it might feel quite different. Strickenized Magic - Nectaris channels her magic by touching her staff to the ground. An image of a glowing full moon forms on the ground beneath her, 15 feet in diameter, and the area is filled with moonlight. Order characters only feel the moonlight as a slight hopeful omen, but to Chaos characters, the light gives the sensation of painful second degree burns across their entire body. This stops immediately if they go out of range of the spell, and the pain is purely illusory. This magic never leaves lasting damage. Nectaris can channel for 45 seconds.
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 5:18 pm
There was ever a special thrill for watching fear unfold. Something in it egged him on, urged him to chase fear into terror into bald futility. Let her be horrified. Let her think him a monster, some creature cobbled from Metallia's darkness with no other purpose nor want. Because, just then, that was all he craved — he could have lived off of her trepidation.
But then she opened her mouth, and he thought of Albite, and how they both wasted words like they were an infinite supply. His hand left the staff for her starseed, but light opened up above them in a spotlight made of the torturous moon. It lit across his skin like unchecked flame, and he shrieked something flamewrought and smoky as he stumbled away from her. "<********>," he cursed at her, at the moon, at the magic she wove without words, and he hadn't cared to check his own hands afterward.
He knew what burn scars looked like. He knew eschar.
Stalking around the circumscribed magic, he spat cinder with every breath. "Of course, I'm trying to burn you, you're worthless! You have nothing for me, your head's ******** empty, you're holding over me that you've kissed my boy, so why the <********> would I let you live?" Flame erupted about him, bright and terrible and starving for her.stari_maga Meltdown ;;
Range: 10' radius around user
Duration: Up to 30 seconds
Use Count: Up to 2x
Miss Chance: Escaping range at or before the buildup stage
Effect: By expending some of his core, Faustite can whip up a firestorm on a local area, prefaced by dancing cinders seconds before the burst. Inferno gusts orbit clockwise, burning anyone caught in their whorl. Friendly fire possible.
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 5:46 pm
The second he backed off from her staff, she jerked if off the ground and held it in front of her, long ways like a spear. She wanted distance. She didn't want to be close to him anymore. Her skin felt hot, and it was already starting to sting. She was pretty sure she was gonna need some aloe vera after this. She'd tried, but she'd messed up, somehow. Maybe it was the part where she'd called him mean for being a torturer, maybe it was the part where she'd brought up Albite. Maybe it was always gonna be a lost cause, 'cause he hated traitors, or because of something from before that she couldn't even remember. Either way, he was all worked up now and trying to kill her. The fear kicked back in when he literally exploded. She might have been near the edge of his firestorm, since he was trying to stay out of her magic, but the flames still licked at her hair, and her clothes, and her skin, until she could stumble backwards out of it. She didn't want to fight anymore. She was pretty sure she'd lost the advantage of being able to push him off the roof. So, with him sitting there yelling about how he wanted her to die, Nectaris turned, and she ran, butterfly cape fluttering behind her. She turned towards home. Encke would be coming from that way. When she reached the edge of the roof, she dropped down into the alleyway below.
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