Rest in Peace (4) : While making your way through Destiny City, you wind up taking a path you’ve never taken before. Maybe you’re following directions, maybe you got lost, maybe you were just looking for a shortcut—things were going well, until you wind up needing to pass through a graveyard. It seems normal enough—until you pass by a grave and get a powerful chill down your spine. When you stop and look at it, you see the gravestone has your name; beneath it, your birthday and today’s date. If you leave and return, the gravestone remains, but the name and dates look like they’ve been clawed off.
Cryolite had yet to learn the streets easily as some of his companions. Like Waru, or Faustite; who dwelled in shadows and made the niche untrodden paths their home as a point of living. After all? He had nothing in the way of family in the area, and hadn't even moved to the bizarre inner city until junior high. His want of close knit couplings or binding ties was set to the lowest of bars -- waivered between a zero and one for need of company.
And yet? Looking up from texts of dialogue scrolling across his phone; exchanged by coworkers who stayed on late striving for the same ledge into a promotion as him -- there was something about the place he'd ended up that made him feel far less alone than he'd originally wanted to be.
His quota was done, he'd finished his files early in office, edited the rest over protected docs via company said device in hand....
One minute he'd been in the park, near it? Or so he'd thought. And the next? Syrus slowed to a stop as the shadows began to resemble less of trees and iron-worked fences, and more of towering stones, tilted mausoleums, the whole like of a graveyard he'd sworn couldn't've existed?
"Some ******** hoo-doo---" heaved like a sigh of annoyance for being detoured, yet not sounding at all like a man who'd be deterred from the start of where his feet'd taken him. There was nothing in a graveyard for him to fear, he could simply walk through.
Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:30 pm
The stupid city always got weird around the holidays, and it was never in the same way, and - frankly? - Strix had hated it for years, they weren't about to stop now. Change was only acceptable in controlled, intentional quantities, and oops, your cousin disappeared for three days during the Star Festival and couldn't explain where she'd been! or there's a weird monster in the harbor or your own birthday on a gravestone with your name were very much not that. Especially the last one, which they really didn't need today, and they were pretty sure there normally wasn't a graveyard in this general area.
But of course there was a graveyard here! Duh. Why not. Geography was not Strix's strong point, and they weren't normally down this specific clump of roads, so maybe there could be. And they didn't have their stupid phone, either, it was hidden under their transformation back in their normal person clothes, and with all they knew maybe the cell signal here would make it impossible for the GPS to lock on. That seemed like a thing that would happen. Maybe not to them, but, you know, definitely to someone.
And they weren't alone in the stupid graveyard either, because this was still a public space, they guessed? Some blonde guy (some other Negaverse Senshi, probably, unless that was a normal fashion statement now? Strix was generally out of touch with fashion, but that didn't mean it was impossible; on the other hand, it didn't mean it was possible either) was just walking in, and... hey, wait, if this was some kind of weirdly specific prank, there was no reason for it to just stop at Pax, it'd make some sort of weird, freaky sense if this guy was involved in it too...
Cryolite nearly dropped his phone, blinked in startled owlishness at the voices point of origin, And he lamented forgetting to power down before wandering about the city proper -- his incautiousness for traveling about dressed like a Halloween-hooker through the twisting awns and eves of lesser used thoroughfares, he'd been too bold, and now? He was being bothered for it.
"I'm not a ghost, if that's what you're asking," sighed like a cold breath as he paused to put the dimly glowing device away. He'd assumed the head-down, walking, to be universal for 'busy' -- forgotten how that applied not a bit at all to strange looking Senshi prowling dead of night amongst growing columns of headstones. In fact? If he'd run into another single living soul in such a place as this -- maybe he'd have asked the same -- just to make sure something human answered back; the city was oh so infamous for all its inhuman encounters. Far better it was to be safe than sorry.
"I'm Cryolite --" hacked himself off from running on about how he must've actually been the Senshi of Dissonance, instead of Sublimation; if only because he didn't believe in coincidences -- and yet here he was experiencing them! "--and since we're doing introductions in the most unlikely of places! Who're you?"
His narrow gaze skipping over lengths of brown and a rather stylish headband, catching the drift of shadow that he'd swear was moonlights play -- ignoring the barest rustle of leaves and growing fog -- it was just what happened with freshly watered grass -- or his eyes playing tricks -- it had nothing to do with the fact that the atmosphere of the place made his skin craw.
Daekie
Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2022 9:57 pm
"Pax." They bit it out, not full of any particular vitriol but not filled with any love for the entire concept of physical, vocal conversation, either. "Nnot -- not asking if you're a ghost." Gesturing him over made sense in Pax's head, maybe not so much when they actually thought about it, but they sort of beckoned him 'come hither' and then hunched into themself a little in counterbalance.
Having all this hair was so hot. It helped at this time of year, but jeez, what was it going to feel like in summer...? Being pretty much entirely covered in all black didn't help at all... then again, though, at least they had total layers, as opposed to whatever this guy - Cryolite - had going on, which was...
...Pax wasn't going to be a b***h about it out loud, they had a little more tact than that, but they visibly took his outfit in fully and sort of scrunched up their face a little bit in response. If they'd been in that, they'd never power up again, so maybe this was better; that sort of sex appeal had never done much for them, anyway. Strategically placed tape might've been more coverage.
"Over here. Tombstone. Is that your -- that your birthday?"
"Considering how strange this city can be? It's a reasonable ask: is one corporeal, on this plane of being? Made of spiders and souls--" Syrus scoffed, all black-nailed jazz fingers and tease in tone, merely shrugging at Pax's insistence that they were absolutely not asking anything strange as that -- He came at the stunted beck and call, elegant and sizing the other up along the way, not missing the scrutinization of his attire. If anything? He shared whatever Pax's feelings were, as if they'd once been his own. Only too many months had gone by for him to still be so sensitive over his freshly-frozen-hooker look anymore; he'd take whatever the mystical 'cosmic tailor' was to task whenever he clawed his way into an upgrade.
Until then? He called his skin-bearing attire tactical, at best, and at worst? A visual distraction. Even if he envied the idea of --- well -- not Pax's full on body condom, but pants would've been nice, maybe a pop of color so he didn't look like the Senshi of Skinwalker Ranch instead of one more closely tied with sublimation and shrouds of ice...
"Coming-co..." Syrus was about to laugh it off, but his breath caught on the exhale and withered along with the light in his eyes. He hated admitting to knowing the numbers there, and yet? He did indeed know them. Crouching in front of the stone with his information scrawled on its face -- he dared to reach out and touch -- "You and I haven't met before, have we? That this isn't a--a company trick? Some Senshi hazing?" He only had the one General, and his 'boss's beau couldn't've remembered his birthday if it'd been ingrained on his flesh with the rest of his scrawling black tattoos. His look for Pax became narrow concern while the mist thickened where he knelt.
The ******** was his --- was his anything -- doing on a tombstone?!
Daekie
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:13 pm
Pax laughed, a quietly rusty sort of noise; it was a little mean, but it was moreso a little like they'd forgotten he was there for a moment, amused by something in his demeanor that they didn't feel like they needed to point out. "Don't know you! Not just - just me, then." They didn't quite look him in the eyes, gaze fixed on his neck, or maybe his shoulder.
"Dunno what it -- what it is. Got any ideas?"
Shiningamisgirl
a tag can be three sentences. that's fine heart i tell myself this every day like a self-improvement mantra
A stifled chuff of a sound, it could've been a laugh -- or Cryolite swallowing his own foolish fear at feeling a chill creep up his half-bare spine. He thought to himself: 'Today, do I want to face the macabre and find out when I die?' Even as a joke. The answer was a swift and solid wall of n o p e that sat uncomfortably mid-center of his mind.
"I don't know 'what' anymore than I want to know 'when'--" and this was a stranger he was talking to! Something this elaborate from some random new-meet passerby, "--but I do know that I don't want to know anymore than this. If it's a joke, it's an ugly one, and if it's not? Then we should go."
And he didn't scan the fog any more deeply, if anyone said he did he'd swear it all a lie; though the slip of shadows and flash of coagulating mist did make Pax's boots all the more mesmerizing to stare at than the growing scene of unease around them.
"Any favored haunts that aren't random graveyards?" Oh, and there his own smile was, even if he couldn't catch Pax's eyes. There was all that hair to admire -- or the rivulets of neon-pink that stood stark against all that black.
Anything other than his own grave.
Daekie
Three sentences, three words, I love them all~
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:21 pm
"Not like it's - it's ghosts," Pax jeered, and that one was definitely a little mean; it leaped off their tongue almost without thinking about it, how naturally it came. "Gardens. You wouldn't know them." In contrast, that was dry, drawled-dry, even as they almost tripped over their own tongue to try and make the enunciation clear.
Ughhhh, they hated talking to people they didn't know. He'd confirmed it was his grave, why did he need to keep saying things? They didn't want to have a conversation - it was means to an end! But no. More talking. Everyone in this stupid city loved to talk all the time.
Shiningamisgirl
pax, internally: he's talking to me too much. i need to b***h so he gets the idea i hate talking and leaves me alone.
pax? honey? you live in a city full of protagonists. you're lucky they're not monologuing.
Cryolite had to take a moment, wide eyed and sneering because, "Are--are you mocking me?" a little bit of his own tease from before coming back with bite, with banter dry as the Sahara and grating as sandpaper over his skin. He was sure it would've driven most others off in a huff. Yet with him? He was hooked, lined, and sunk into the conversation now; however one sided. He couldn't stand to be outbitched, especially not by the likes of a walking bodycondom!
"While also insinuating I wouldn't know a--" and he didn't know what Gardens was, true, but he wasn't about to admit that and give up the game! The cold had seeped into his knees and the fog was a thickening soup around his ankles. He stood to abate the feeling of being crouched in it, swaned his arms out like an open offer for Pax to 'lead on' if he had better places to see them off to.
"I bet you don't know them either-" and even as he scoured every groove of every neuron he had, he relented that he truly didn't know if Gardens was a person, place, or thing? If it required an invitation? but he was rolling with it godamnit!
Maybe this would become his night. He'd get nothing else done, not make it home, not have to delve back into an empty bed surrounded by alarms, and notes, and work that was ceaselessly waiting....
Putting in the effort to make an acquaintance of someone who clearly wanted nothing of him sounded more and more appealing by the minute.
Daekie
Is Syrus making more work in order to avoid work? Is this procrastination?! Maybe! He'll challenge Pax to a stareoff next out of sheer stubbornness~
It's a wonder the Negaverse doesn't have a handbook chapter on 'monologuing', but it does seem to be the nature of the protaginists in this one!
Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2023 8:30 pm
Pax had apparently decided that responding verbally to him at all was out of the question, or at least below their dignity, because the huff they offered radiated I'm better than you and you're wasting my time Or they hoped it did, ideally; if nothing else, after a second spent glaring lasers at him, they turned on their heel and started walking off.
Honestly!! People these days!! Who had ever wanted to talk to a stranger on the street for longer than was necessary??
Shiningamisgirl
it's what they don't tell you about the negaverse. the more chaos you absorb the more you want to monologue. fin on yours btw
Cryolite rolled his eyes straight out his skull, flipped his too much hair back over his shoulders as he spared a moment to watch Pax march away. Though on some part he was impressed, couldn't hide the small smirk for getting a huff and serious death-glare out of the other as they heel-toed right on their way.
He supposed he couldn'tve felt too upset at being brushed off like lint---
