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 Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2023 8:02 am
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Quote: Backdated to mid January.
Faustite coughed as he breezed down the stairs, leaving a small smoke trail in his wake. The halls had been relatively sparse since the holidays, but enough people complained about smokiness in his usual haunts that he was reticent to add more smoke where it was already challenging to breathe. Lucky for him that the ceilings out in the halls were high enough to provide ample room for whatever ailed him.
It was three flights down to the lowermost part of the Citadel, where he would have access to the Hall of Shadows. Despite his boys' complaints, there was still work to be done on the crucible — adjustments to be made, kinks to sort out for it to be more optimized. Better if they could find ways to ensure that it takes less time, therefore easing the youma's burdens, and takes less energy, ensuring that more of that energy went to Metallia and not the gadgets that made her officers more effective.
Moreover, it was a distraction from the restlessness that plagued him. A side project to ease his mind while he consider what to do about the mole in their midst.
When Faustite rounded the final banister, he fully expected the great anteroom to the Hall to be completely empty. What he found instead was a lone figure occupying the gigantic room. It was a curious change, especially since the Citadel itself had fallen quiet, but what was stranger to him was that he didn't recognize the officer's uniform. They hadn't been part of the mission, so Faustite supposed they were either new, or newly returning.
Faustite approached nevertheless, hiding his cough in his sleeve, though he couldn't do much about the noise of it. The figure's back was to him, which granted him a moment to concentrate and pick up the aura.
"General," he greeted, voice a little dry. "Seldom find anyone here. Do you need something?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2023 12:18 pm
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Polite (to an extent), kept his cards close to his chest, didn't offer his name. Tall boy with a handsome face and a long braid that would've gotten him mistaken for a Negaverse senshi were it not for the uniform. Looked like a conductor, almost. Faustite's attention swept over him fleetingly before his burning gaze settled on the unnamed officer's face.
Faustite rested a hand on his hip, half on leather and half on metal. "It's Faustite," he explained by way of correction, his free hand going supine with the offering.
There was something this one wasn't telling him, but Faustite couldn't be surprised at that; anyone who made it to General harbored secrets, and often those secrets were of a kind that were taken to the grave. They didn't need to be best friends immediately, regardless; it might be for the better that they each keep to themselves.
He was cute, though. That was a Problem.
Faustite let out a small sigh, curls of smoke leaving his nose before they petered out in the air between them. They smelled of copper and moondust, with an undertone of salt. "More or less," he answered at last. "Always got business down in the Rift. Seems promising enough. Think we can augment weapons," he began, then cut himself off with another coughing fit. He stepped back, knowing how much black smoke filtered out of him anymore.
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Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2023 1:07 pm
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Faustite fanned away some of the smoke surrounding him. "Crystals are secondary — an energy source for the structure. Keeps the lights on and the elevators moving." As he spoke, his hands followed the words, as if holding the concepts between his talons. He paced, too; ideas for improving the Negaverse inspired an energy in him that only boys managed anymore. "Building's been able to draw on the ambient energy on the Rift. You'd have to ask a Mauvian for details. Something about resonance." He didn't care much about those details, despite the Mauvian's excitement.
"Changing the weapon requires a youma. Bonded one, or they won't want to do it. Has to be strong, too, since the mechanism is unforgiving."
Faustite paused in his pacing, only to hold both his hands up. His left palm faced Chalcanthite, fingers extended, as if frozen in waving hello. His right hand was flattened out and parallel to the floor. "Weapons are immutable," he began, raising his right hand. "Youma are mutable." He raised his left. "A youma's starseed is proof of transformation: from human to something else. If we harness that ability and fold them into each other…" Faustite connected his hands at the heels, then back to back, then interlaced his fingers as he set them palm-to-palm. "We can make a different weapon.
"Doesn't last forever, and the youma's nature influences the product. Still working everything out, but I've watched mismatched daggers fuse with a harpy to become a feathered scythe." He assumed Aquamarine was having fun with that one, whether by tormenting Lieutenants or drunkenly asking the Queen for lessons. Maybe both.
A couple light coughs escaped him as he rested his hands on his hips. "Costs a lot of energy. Takes a good bond, too."
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Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2023 1:58 pm
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The note-taking was different, but ultimately insignificant; his research was already released and molded into a functional trial. There wasn't anything to steal if the General was looking for a quick way to claim that he'd finished something new and helpful for the battlefield. Besides, he might be of a mind to help out instead. He'd had a few volunteers already; surely there could be more.
"Far as we've seen," Faustite explained with a brief nod. "Once the energy runs out, the two split apart. Youma's back to normal, but it needs to revisit the Rift. Rest and recover. Weapon returns to normal, too — same form, same magic in it as before.
"Size of the youma shouldn't matter — it's more about the pliability of its starseed. Haven't seen enough of these to predict how that would go, however. It's more like an open trial right now." He could only convey his suppositions for how any of this should work. What they came up with had no guidance but for where Galvorn had left off, and the rest was a series of educated guesses and trials by fire. They'd gotten something to work, however, and all that remained was for others to try it. And if this General was willing? Then they had more data, as far as it had been explained to him.
"Only had a couple volunteers so far: Jet and Aquamarine. Jet altered his youma, gave it a second form. Aquamarine was the one whose youma helped make a scythe."
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Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2023 2:45 pm
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Oh, this boy had a similar manner of speech as Albite. He'd keep that to himself, for now; better to wait until he knew this one for more than just a five minute chat about research.
To his request, Faustite gave an affirmative nod. He coughed again, hoarsely, then summoned a metal water bottle to hand. After unscrewing the cap, he drank deeply and the water went through him to splash and sizzle on the fire in his gut. Whether Chalcanthite stared in horror at him, looked fascinated, or didn't give a s**t, it wouldn't matter to him. When he was finished, Faustite recapped his water and banished it back to subspace.
"Can take you down there. Show you how it works. Good opportunity to test our learning materials, too." If Chalcanthite could do it the self-guided way, then there wouldn't be a need for Faustite to make himself available to others.
"What sort of research have you got?" While Faustite could speak on some of his projects, he was more interested in learning what the other Generals got up to when they had free time. Faustite didn't much care to stare at his own things for too long, though he wasn't terribly well versed in research, either. Still seemed better to ask about it than to drone on about what he'd completed with a team.
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Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2023 4:49 pm
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"Take you to the Rift, then." Faustite turned around and waved for the other General to join him, even as he coughed into his sleeve. The walk through the Hall of Shadows was never pleasant, but one fell into a quiet acceptance of the place's eerie nature after enough repeat visits. It was likely that Chalcanthite wouldn't react much to it, though Faustite still found it morose and hair-raising.
"Sounds like a lot of science," Faustite replied simply. "Physics or something." Something that he would have likely been forced to take, had he remained human and grown up, but escaped as a youmafied officer. Faustite understood that other agents like Amazonite or Kosmochlor were highly interested in the logic and science behind a phenomenon, and they wanted to investigate it for the betterment of the Negaverse, but Faustite preferred his comprehension of the world have a little more wonder left in it. He didn't understand how the crystals in the Rift held energy, only that they did, and that energy sustained a nigh infinite number of youma that answered to their commands. If he understood how they worked, he suspected he would find them less entrancing.
"You're right. Rift is enormous. Ever-changing, too." Faustite had never seen the edges of the Rift, even after all his time spent in it. There was always somewhere new, something he hadn't seen before, some fresh youma to meet, some austere cliff to climb.
"Anything to help newer officers — and more human officers — navigate unharmed. Heard of enough accidents down there with trying to find a personal youma. Expect that's why we don't see so many officers with them anymore." Too many accidents, too many drawbacks. Whatever the case, he'd seen a strange separation between officer and youma, where they had each become separate forces under the same umbrella.
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Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2023 1:26 pm
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"Thought music was all math and frequency," Faustite returned. He was reasonably sure his mother told him that one, for she was the one that wanted him attending voice lessons when he was young. No — it was both his parents. He could remember both of them telling him that voice lessons would be good for him, that he'd be practicing a skill that would help him get better marks in math. That it would improve his logic somehow. He'd rather loathed that idea, for he wanted nothing to do with a subject that deconstructed the wonders of the world into strings of numbers and formulae, so he'd given it up early on.
And if, after all this time, it turned out that his parents were wrong? He'd probably have to lay down immediately.
"If people would learn to stop being stupid and quit pulling ******** starseeds out in the middle of the Rift, then they'd have less to fear." The General's gaze grew lidded and his hands picked up the emphasis on his exasperation. "But as long as they keep ******** around, the Rift's going to look like a killzone." That wasn't the youma's fault; they simply needed to quit recruiting braindead cannon fodder and promoting them to Generals.
Faustite gestured outward as he descended the steppes to the fallen city below. "Youma don't want to be subserviant to idiots. Bonding to an officer means surrendering some of their freedom, and what's the point in that if the officer's a moron? Youma like that get bullied by their brethren.
"So if you come up with a way to make the Rift safer, don't waste it on the ones who can't read or follow directions."
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Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 11:54 am
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"It's a sordid state of affairs," Faustite commented bitterly as he took the lead into the worn road and deep valley that awaited them. He would remain quiet for much of it, partly for vigilance of the various youma that often stalked the area, and partly because it was his nature to remain quiet. He paused seldom, preferring to stay moving to remain free of being considered an interesting target. Even as a pair of Generals, one being part youma, he was under no assumptions that each youma in the area would heed their intrusion as peaceful.
This trend continued into the Scar, where the bisected mountain rose up before them. Faustite kept his thoughts to himself when he started through the craggy underbelly where many youma made their homes. In this area, he picked up speed, preferring to jump from pile of rubble to pile of rubble to keep from disturbing the myriad creatures who made their homes in the gaping holes that lined the mountainsides. All manner of screeches, shrieks, clicks, skitters, and chitters filled the ruined mountain with a sense of liveliness, though it was all only a facsimile of a true ecosystem. No creature here fit the definition of 'alive' biologically. None but Chalcanthite and possibly Faustite.
As the pair neared the clearing, the creatures thinned out. They were less inclined to avoid the area as before, but collective memory hadn't yet faded — or the youma that reclaimed the space were naturally averse to wide open spaces. Faustite never stopped to ask.
"This way." Faustite ushered Chalcanthite on with a wave of his hand as he descended a narrow staircase hewn out of rock and dead soil. It reached down into a pit, into the fractured hole of a building, where they would find their way among obsidian, glass, metal framing, and numerous cords that glowed eerily bright in the broken space. As they passed nondescript black panels, the displays would light up with WELCOME, GENERAL FAUSTITE or WELCOME, GENERAL CHALCANTHITE, but Faustite did not linger long enough for the panels to display their options.
He reached the elevator, which was connected to nothing but the small catwalk on which they stood. After boarding the platform, Faustite manipulated the touchscreen for the platform to take them to the lowermost floor. Out of habit, he checked the energy readout — still 99,999 hours of power remaining, according to its own instrumentation. Faustite sighed through his nose.
"Doubt we'll find anyone down —" Faustite paused to cough, holding onto the guardrail for support as he hacked away hoarsely. When his coughing slowed, and he was able to swallow, his brows creased as he continued. 'Down here. Negaverse has been mum on its reception of this idea."
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