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 Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2023 1:20 pm
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Andesine was out draining in Eastside Park when a quick check of her tablet brought her face to face with a message from Queen Laurellite. Briefly, she wondered if she, personally and unwittingly, had done something either uniquely special or uniquely terrible enough to merit this kind of attention out of nowhere. As much and as powerfully as Andesine longed to distinguish herself and prove that she had been a good investment for the Negaverse, she sighed in relief when the message was nothing personal but an announcement to the whole Negaverse.
About a major promotion, at that: General-King Faustite.
Outside of the mission into the Rift back in December, ferreting around General Galvorn’s factory until they had discovered what the Forge could do, Andesine didn’t know General-King Faustite very well. He wasn’t General Ashanite, so while she respected him and liked what little she’d seen of him and his capabilities as a leader, she didn’t have the same loyalty to him that she had to Her General. Still, she couldn’t help but feel excited for him. Not proud of him exactly—she didn’t know General-King Faustite or his life well enough to claim that kind of emotion—but excited about what this meant for him and for the Negaverse.
(It didn’t take the edge off of Monoceros’s betrayal, or Andesine’s growing frustration that she hadn’t managed to find him yet, but—eugh. She had to hone her skills with patience if she truly wanted to help IntOs to the best of her abilities.)
So wrapped up in her pad, she almost missed the feeling of another Negaverse aura popping up on her senses. Thankfully, that shock pulled her back into the moment. Following it brought Andesine to a very lovely senshi with pink and blue ribbons all over her fuku.
“Hi, hi,” Andesine said with a polite smile. “Fair warning if you’re looking to fill quotas? There are some obnoxious frat boys over by the kiddie playscape, and if you want to drain them to death? I don’t think anyone could blame you. But if you want to avoid any sanctimonious White Moon trouble, I already got a lot off of them, so maybe avoid them?”
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Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2023 1:36 pm
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It was an exciting night. Guinevere was mostly only involved with Faustite tangentially--he'd helped her get set up, and Lionel was sort of under him, but they'd never really been tightly enmeshed in the wider team. Still, she couldn't help but feel deeply pleased about the circumstances.
Faustite was a General-King. The peak of power in the Negaverse. (Well, except for Laurelite, but no one else was going to be Laurelite.) And he was--kind of--her General.
Did she radiate smugness a little bit, while closing out her tablet? Probably. Did she care? No.
A Lieutenant's aura made her perk up, and the voice that called out was friendly, and so she waved, cheerily.
"Hi! Thanks for the heads up, people get soooo tetchy about that stuff. Ugh." She rolled her eyes. "I'll be careful, I hate dealing with sanctimonious jerks. Hey," she waved her communication pen in the air, "did you see the news? A new General-King, so exciting!"
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Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2023 2:01 pm
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Oh, nice. Not only was the senshi Andesine had found gorgeous—ugh, she probably had a girlfriend already, in the tried and true pattern that Andesine, still Melissa back then, had learned dealing with all the other queer girls in the drama club at Meadowview and in the DCU theater department—but she also seemed to have a functioning concept of reciprocity. Being nice to people who were nice to you. Such a reassuring quality to see in a day and age when you had people betraying the Negaverse for the White Moon, and White Moon lunatics acting like you were doing something wrong for trying to stay up on your quotas.
“Ugh, I know, right? If it’s not idiots from the White Moon acting like they’re right about everything, all the time, always, then you’re getting some Dark Mirror who thinks they’re better than us when all of us drain people. As if the White Moon doesn’t think we’re just the same thing in different colors, right?” Not that Andesine had extensively dealt with the Dark Mirror Court. Plus, of course she trusted that General-King Faustite wouldn’t have lied in his follow-up to her database entry about the one called Murikabushi. If Faustite, who had ostensibly dealt with Murikabushi more often and more intimately than Andesine, said that he wasn’t hostile toward the Negaverse, then it was probably true.
But it still stung to have heard any members of a fellow Chaos faction acting like they were so much better than the Negaverse. Even if Murikabushi had only said that to get Sailor Pumpkin Spice to trust him to he could play Big Damn Heroes about saving her life, it had stung and Andesine hadn’t made a point of forgetting that (probably unintentional) insult.
The mention of Faustite’s promotion, though, made her grin. “I just saw the message on my tablet, yeah,” she said brightly. “I haven’t gotten to work with General-King Faustite much—General Ashanite is the one who brought me in, so I’m on his team—but what I have seen of our new Sovereign? Has been impressive.” She nodded. Yeah, that was a good word for it. “He’s dedicated, he’s clever, he did so much work to organize the mission into the Rift at the end of last year.… An inspiration to look up to, no question.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2023 2:30 pm
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Guinevere rolled her eyes. Ugh, this poor Lieutenant. Clearly she'd dealt with all the same nonsense Guinevere experienced; the sanctimonousness, the self-serving attitudes, all of it. And,f rankly, it sucked. So much. But that was the price, she supposed, for being part of the strongest faction. Everybody else had to make up reasons why you were wrong and evil, so they could feel better about themselves.
"Ugh, the White Moon is the worst. Luckiest thing that ever happened to me was getting out of there, even if I guess I didn't know it before." She thought of the beaded string of feathers that had been pressed in her hand, that she still carried in her subspace. A sign that someone had thought she didn't want to go.
If she was smart, she would have gotten rid of it. She was not smart. At least not about that. But she guessed she was allowed to be sentimental about this one little thing, right? No one had to know.
"The Dark Mirror's not all bad, though! I mean, they're kinda split right down the middle, I guess." Or at least, her experiences were. A solid 50-50 on decent versus jerk. "Sorry you had to deal with one of the butthead ones, they totally suck."
And, anyway, there were more important things.
"He's my boss--well, sort of. My boss's boss, you know," she waved a hand. "But I really like him, and it's super cool to see him get honored this way. Great leader. Smart dude. The Negaverse is lucky to have people like him."
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Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2023 2:51 pm
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“Here’s hoping that I’ll get to meet some of the better Dark Mirrors eventually,” Andesine agreed, nodding along with the senshi’s points. Talking to sensible, reasonable people who knew how the universe really worked always felt so good, so reassuring about the general character of the universe. “There’s not a lot of help for the White Moon lunatics unless they want to get out of there, but the Dark Mirror Court hasn’t sold out the planet to outer space. The reasonable ones could so easily help us out if properly incentivized; it’s just a matter of figuring out what it would take to get them to help.”
Something that Andesine hoped to investigate more with Intelligence. Keeping tabs on the White Moon and trying to recruit from their ranks—obviously, that took priority, simply because there were more of them running around Destiny City. But somebody had to keep tabs on the Negaverse’s nominal allies as well—figure out who among their number actually counted as an ally and which ones were too avoidant, too self-righteous, too lazy, too timid, or otherwise too unreliable to work with.
Maybe Andesine needed to make a personal project out of that. Dark Mirror entries in the Negaverse Intelligence Database were so few and far between; it seemed like other officers only recorded notes on the Mirror senshi when they did something truly exceptional, such as the ones on Astraya whom Eternal Chrysocolla had noted fighting with each other about where their allegiances truly lay.
But for the moment, Andesine filed that idea away for later. She’d need to think on it some, and make a concerted effort to put out feelers, and decide the best plan for how to make it all happen. Definitely things she couldn’t do right here, right now—at least not easily and not without risk of being terribly rude to a pleasant and overall decent coworker. But she’d work on it, ask General Ashanite and General Arsenolite for some feedback on any plans she came up with, prove her dedication to the Negaverse by getting intel that all of them could use and making it available to anyone who thought to check the database.
For now, though, Andesine gave the lovely senshi with the ribbons another smile. “Boss’s boss is still a real feather in your team’s collective cap,” she said, “especially with someone who’s so hashtag-goals in so many ways. By the way?” She held out a hand. “I’m Andesine, and so pleased to meet you on such a good omen-ed night.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2023 3:01 pm
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Guinevere nodded along. This wasn't really her area of expertise; she was a really useful weapon, and she was pretty much good with that. Her job was to wreck s**t, collect energy, and destroy the enemies of the Negaverse. Also, maybe, sometimes, to recruit cute girls.
Anyway, that wasn't what she was here for right now. For the moment, both she and Andesine had jobs to do, and babbling on wasn't going tog et either of their quotas reached. So, she flashed a cheery little smile, an took her hand, giving ti a quick shake.
"I'm Guinevere," she said, "and it has been fantastic meeting you. We should look each other up later, maybe patrol together on purpose. For now, though--good luck with the rest of your night!"
She pulled back, giving a quick wave. She had quotas to get, especially if she wanted to live up to being under a brand new General Sovereign.
Always so much work to do.
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