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 Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2023 6:22 pm
He was tired of some unnamed illness slowing him down. Tired of being confined to office duties in case he grew weak or useless in the field. Faustite understood the risks for returning to full duty — he could be blindsided by a coughing fit in the middle of a fight, or seize up with pain when he had a narrow window to dispatch an opponent — but those concerns seemed like impossible hypotheticals when Faustite was feeling too antsy to sit in an office again.
So he went topside. And the weather ******** sucked. It had just rained, so the night sky had been darkened further with morose clouds. Smog hung low in the city, clinging to buildings or interstices between rooftops, sometimes on the rooftops themselves. There was a humidity to the air that caused it to feel warmer than Faustite would have liked, especially with the fire youma equivalent of a fever. The combination was stultifying, though Faustite would let nothing hinder him from a basic exercise like draining. Especially after he'd used up so much energy to get the crucible properly tuned.
Faustite forced himself to move forward, irrespective of direction. Wouldn't matter where he went as long as he could collect some energy, maybe pick a fight if he was up to it.
At first, the jaunt was fine. Despite the smog blurring street lamps into smudges the color of motor oil, Faustite was moving without issue. Metal heels struck gravel with the sound of popping bones, some morbid chorus to his movements, but that mattered little to him as long as he could breathe freely. Let half the world hear him coming if they wanted.
It was after he leapt to the second building — a single-story housing a sandwich shop next to a tattoo parlor — that he faltered. Felt the telltale itch in the back of his throat. Faustite paused, waiting, then it came over him — another coughing fit that lasted over a minute, that doubled him over as he sucked in any breath between spasms to stave off suffocation. It took sitting down among the years' collection of refuse that his hacking fit showed signs of stopping, though it hadn't yet reached that point.
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Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2023 5:40 pm
There was gross amounts of Chaos. There was the smell of smoke coming through the winter air. The was a weird, not quite human sputtering sound coming from somewhere in the distance. Nectaris knew how to put pieces together. She was pretty sure that she knew who she was gonna find at the end of this particular set of clues. Which, for a second had her questioning if she should even go see what was up. She knew that Encke didn't want her going anywhere near Faustite, which made sense considering how stuff had gone last time. If just the sight of her was gonna turn a full-on General into a ball of seething rage, then, yeah. Not the best situation. That was part of why she'd been trying to recruit some others to talk to him, instead. Pendour had been trying with him, and the other knight was insisting that anyone else getting close to him was gonna mess everything up, but, like. For one thing, Nectaris was curious, and for another, it probably wasn't great to let someone like Faustite just run around being evil. She wasn't expecting to find him coughing up a lung, though. "Hey," she said, sidestepping some trash to get a little bit closer. "Are you okay?" Her moon staff was out. She leaned on it as she looked over at him and added, "To be clear if you're gonna go all inferno again, I'm not gonna hesitate to whack you in the face just because you look sad, but also, like-" The way her eyebrows scrunched all worried said everything that her words didn't.
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Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2023 6:17 pm
Faustite knew the voice. It took but one glance to know with certainty who was speaking to him. He couldn't quite swallow down his coughing, however, despite his ribs screaming for these fits to be over. Felt like knives were being jabbed into his intercostals, trying to pry those bones away from whatever organs were left in him. Smoke came out with each cough, but even that tapered off to hardly anything.
When she approached, Faustite held out a hand as if to halt her in her tracks. Only when his coughing finally peter off did he attempt to speak.
"All you White Moon ever see is a monster or a pity case," he croaked, voice cracking from his parched throat. Slowly he hauled himself back to his feet, still breathless, still uncertain if it was going to happen again. He looked at her, then his stare grew half-lidded with incredulity.
He'd never understand them. He'd never understand her, or the way she looked like she gave a s**t. Had to be some sort of instinctual thing to help people who looked sick. He'd already proven once that it was dangerous to approach him, and she already acknowledged that with her ridiculous threat. What else did she want, then, if not to watch him cough out everything that kept him alive? She could only gain from his death, anyway.
"Don't look at me like that. We both know that, if I die, you'd sink your claws into Albite and drag him to your side." A couple wan, mostly stifled coughs escaped him.
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2023 3:38 pm
Nectaris listened to the hand. She stopped. She rocked side to side on the balls of her feet. This gave her enough time for her confused stare to turn into a confused and concerned stare. "What? That's not true at all," she told him, once it seemed like the coughing and crackling had died down enough for her to get a word in edgewise. "Like, yeah, I kinda see you as a monster since you, uh. Y'know. Tried to murder me." She didn't know what kind of reputation he was expecting to get if he was constantly running around trying to flame-grill people while also cussing them out. He'd even managed to do something to shake Pendour, which, from what Nectaris could tell, took a lot. "But a lot of agents, I, like, just see them as my friends." Some of them, she still even saw as her responsibility, since she'd been their General once and everything. Some of them, he was right, in that she saw them as her boyfriends. Or, like, potential boyfriends, if she could get them to purify. "You're not wrong about Albite, though," she told him with an unapologetic shrug. Faustite could keep her from dating him for right now, but he couldn't stop her from trying to get him out of the Negaverse. "But I'm gonna try that one whether you're dead or not, so, like. You can burn me about it, or you can have some water and see if it helps." She summoned a bottle of strawberry flavored water from subspace, and held it out.
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Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2023 2:53 pm
"Suspect you haven't thought about that." He let out a couple light coughs, and with his index finger, made a couple of circles in the air around her distant figure. "Any of that." He spat to the side, a fat wad of black that sizzled where it landed.
"White Moon are ignorant. Never think about anything beyond their own perspectives." As far as he was concerned, Nectaris already demonstrated that. Multiple times, now. Her 'friendship' with agents was dangerous, in that it opened byroads for their insidious propaganda. The kindnesses that they paid that, somehow, were worth more from the enemy than from their allies. But, he supposed the Negaverse was to blame for that — an organization operating on a falsehood would never stand to hold its weaker, more emotionally sensitive types for long. Most of them, anyway.
Another few coughs escaped and Faustite started into a small fit. Each cough raked at his throat; he furrowed his brow further as he tried to tolerate it alongside everything else. Then he spat into his hand. Worked the glob between his fingers, feeling for viscosity, then scoffed as he wiped it on the back of his pants.
"You won't get him." He watched her carefully. "No matter how he dotes on you.
"Because you don't think about what you're doing." Faustite gestured with a clawed hand toward the strawberry-flavored water she held, though she offered it to him. Then that hand curled against his hip as he waited, wondering if she would come to understand what she was doing.
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2023 6:01 pm
She was stupid. She was ignorant. She was braindead, as they liked to put it sometimes. There was cotton between her ears. Her lightbulb wasn't that bright. There were a lot of ways to say it. Nectaris had heard all of them, 'cause everyone thought it. The people who were close to her were nice enough not to say it, mostly, but Faustite wasn't one of them, and she'd been expecting the insults the moment she walked up. She didn't flinch. She glanced at the water, and then back to him. "You mean I didn't think about the part where I nurse you back to health, and then you just go back, do whatever you can to make Albite either hate me or corrupt me, and then you, like, villain laugh and go back to uh," she puffed out her cheeks while she tried to remember his evil plan, "Turning all of Earth's population into youma or something like that?" That sounded right. It had stood out, when she'd been reading the database. "The thing is, I'm not trying to, like, save you." She'd been thinking about maybe trying it, depending on how he acted, but yeah. No. She wasn't gonna sit around and nurse him and try to show him the error of his ways if he was just gonna insult her the whole time. "It's water," she said, tossing the bottle at his feet since he wouldn't take it from her. "They give it out in hospice all the time. If you die, okay. Whatever. Poetic justice, TBH. I'm just trying to keep you comfy for a few minutes like a decent person." Also 'cause Albite probably wouldn't like it if she bashed his husband's head in while he was down.
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2023 6:12 pm
She'd put quite a bit more thought into what sorts of nefarious deeds he could be up to than Faustite was expecting. Granted, if she did have the trick to fix him, he had no reason to be loyal to her after she used it. She was right about that.
"No," he answered, coughing wanly. "Not that part.
"The part where I'm on fire, and you're offering me water. Did you ever think —" He paused, coughed again, "— that what works for people won't work for me? You don't know what'll happen if I drink that." Faustite looked from the water bottle to her, waiting for her reaction.
It was true. If drinking water killed him, then she wasn't trying to save him. She didn't know what would happen.
"Albite's a decent person." Wearily, Faustite dredged himself to his feet. "Only thing you two have in common." He winced as he swallowed, as if tasting something sour. Leaning over, he picked up the water bottle by the cap. Managed to stand it up on the parapet, near where he sat, before the plastic had begun to melt in his grip.
"You're friends with Encke. He came to your aid, at least. Think he'd rather you kill me. That what this is about?" He asked, tapping the water bottle's cap with a claw.
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2023 6:32 pm
"You're smoking," she pointed out, because of course she'd noticed the part where he was on fire. It was impossible not to notice the part where he was on fire. He glowed brighter than Encke, and she didn't think she was gonna be able to get the cinder smell out of her hair for like a week after standing this close to him. "Like, more than normal. I thought maybe it could help you cool off a little or something, but if it's gonna hurt you you don't have to drink it." Obviously. He must have noticed that she wasn't trying to force it down his throat. He could always take it home to Albite instead if he wanted. She bet that he'd like that. She didn't say anything about Encke. She was probably giving away too much information about herself, considering, but with her brother she at least had a little bit of restraint. "And if you're just gonna be all suspicious and weird and also mean to me then, uh-" she thought about Pendour for a split second, and tried to hold back the words, but in the end she just couldn't. "Have fun dying, I guess." She backed up, step by step, until she kind of hopped off the edge of the roof.
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2023 6:40 pm
"It'd melt before I could get it open," he murmured, mostly to himself. The faintest smile grew in lieu of a scowl and he tapped the top of the bottle again, banishing it to that nowhere place. It would sit among the bags of jerky, the granola bars, the jars of protein powder. He'd drink it later, maybe while writing this one a note.
"Not dying," he corrected as he raised his attention to her. The words burned in his throat. "Not dying," he echoed, softer this time, while Nectaris made herself smaller and smaller. While Albite's paramour tucked herself away in the distance.
There had to be a way out. He just needed to find it.
Soon.
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