Faustite hated feeling powerless. Loathed it as much as he loathed the odd time when he lost to the White Moon. Abhorred it as much as he abhorred the day that he learned Heliodor had gone missing and no one — not even his own brother — could find him.
But that powerless feeling persisted, even as the burning General lowered his hood over his hair to bear off some of the snowfall. He had teleported throughout the snow-laden town until he caught the wicking edge of a White Moon aura, then resolved to chase it down on foot. This one felt a margin weaker than him, but he could drop his own aura no further. Cursing silently, he beckoned the air for Headache to come forth while he trudged through the rolling snowfield that was once a park.
The flicker of red-orange, like a thousand cinders, was easily spotted around Faustite's ever-burning fire. Headache simply buzzed around him, reticent to imitate anyone while the sky veritably dumped on them.
Even with the way his firelight danced over pristine white blankets and reflected back up into the atmosphere, Faustite hadn't gotten a visual on the aura in question. Hard to tell if it was moving or not, but he assumed he was close for as long as he could sense it. Frowning, he signed to the youma that buzzed about him.
The fireflies buzzed, their wings tuning to the sound of Faustite's voice as they projected the message. "Show yourself. Can't outrun me."
His fist curled at his side as he felt his blood begin to boil for battle. It had been so long — too long — since he'd spent all those days cooped up with his own anxieties, with doting on a boy who no longer had a name they could use, with a dozen half-made plans scrapped and began again. Even if this was another nameless gnat wandering about in the snowfall, he craved whetting his knuckles with their blood.
kaefaux
d/w she'll be fine!
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:23 pm
It wasn't a question of if there would be fallout from the Very Dumb Choices Made situation, or at least so dubbed by Solaris herself privately, but when those consequences would start roasting everyone's asses.
Apparently, hers was on the line now.
Solaris enjoyed her time in the frozen parks, drawing or some such, maybe enjoying the company of some of the cute snow bunnies. The sudden Chaos sensation across her mental radar made her body tense instantly, especially when she registered it was definitely stronger than her...
She'd sent away her relaxing belongings back into subspace, getting to her feet and quickly making her way along the frosty, mostly cleared paths. The fact she realized the other energy was coming towards her had set her jaw in grim acceptance, bolting onward on the off chance that maybe whoever it was would get bored of the chase. Maybe they wanted an easier target that night?
Didn't seem to be the case, and she summoned out her phone, finding a suitable contact to send off a quick chain of
Quote:
Gen on me Support 👍 🙏
It'd likely do a few of them a bit of good to cement a code for quick emoji use in times like this, but she put that thought to the back burner as she sent away her phone.
Solaris eyed a large pine tree up ahead, and her decision was swift, launching herself from the somewhat cleared path up to a low-er hanging branch, and scrabbling her way up into the foliage. A small hope, perhaps, that the person wasn't going to notice how her footprints suddenly stopped, even with the patchy, partial cover.
A few more branches up, she crouched, peering down through the still fluffy pine needles towards the pathway. The flickering light was the first part visible, then the smell of smoke, and her stomach filled with ice. <******** voice that projected out made her wince somewhat, a confirmation she really hadn't wanted. Her phone was summoned again quickly, keeping it close as she could to her hunched body to reduce the chance of its light getting spotted as she followed up the previous chain with
Quote:
🔥🔥🔥🔥 💀💀💀💀
before it was once more sent away for safety. She'd been tempted to hold onto it, keep her thumb over the Home button, but the concentration needed for that was... not well-advised given the level of threat she might be dealing with. <******** did not like her lack of defensive positioning here, though she had... some benefit of the fact everything was wet with snow. Faintly.
The tree she was sitting in wasn't going to burst instantaneously at least. Hopefully.
She could hear his approach, weighing her options to just be quiet or not... crouched as she was, she could feel her wings fluff up uneasily at her back, muscles tense and none of her choices especially appealing.
"I'll give you that fact, I can't," she called back dryly in agreement, finally opting for the... less than ideal option of speaking up. Trying to just... hide wasn't especially smart in this moment, she figured--he could summon youma if he wanted, or start setting s**t on fire till he found her, something. Pissing him off more didn't feel smart, but neither did drawing attention to herself.
Situation was ******** either way, she figured. Great.
The mess of finding this one proved easy enough as he followed the tracks by his own firelight. At such a time of night, most tracks from any other passersby were halfway covered by Destiny City's constant snowfall. That left this Super's, and theirs alone, to follow deeper into the park. Faustite followed until he thought they must have been close, then the footprints suddenly ceased.
Obviously they were still around. Faustite cast his gaze this way and that, looking for where a trail may have picked up again, but nothing. That meant —
Ah, she spoke. Faustite raised his attention toward the sky. Far be it for him to guess which of the pines housed their target, but she was in one of them. Unfortunate that the White Moon outfits blended so well in white winters.
He motioned for Headache to come closer, then signed a few quick commands to the youma. Before it could embark on them, Faustite stayed its movement. He had yet more to say to this one, which was again communicated in gesture.
"Can't hide, either," Headache relayed to their captive audience. "If it takes longer to die, maybe someone will save what's left of you in time." Not that they offered Aelius such a courtesy. Not that they gave him the slightest opportunity to reach out, to serve a purpose as a bargaining chip instead of a slaughterhouse prize.
"But if you're so desperate to live… Some of yours caught one of mine. Let you see another sunrise if you've information on them." Then he motioned upwards, and the cluster of fireflies began soaring, sticking close to the branches of the nearest pine.
kaefaux
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 12:46 pm
"Can give you descriptions, but that's it."
She was.... okay not going to use the pun of playing with fire, she was treading dangerous ground here, attempting to make an offer back while trying to keep those she did know safe as possible. But it was info he likely already had--descriptions any agent there that night could give. It rendered her useless.
Which could very easily render her dead.
When the fireflies began to rise up into the trees, including the one she was in, she blanched, trying to pull herself up quietly into even higher branches. No idea what they were, but she did not sense anything good from them...
"She's here," said the voice that the senshi had been hearing. The source of that voice, however, was the group of fireflies that hovered before her.
Faustite needed no further confirmation. Immediately his form flickered and melted into flame, his burning rivulets braiding across the pristine snow before circling each other on their way up through the tree's branches. While the gouts lit sporadically on the boughs, no snow melted, and they never once bent under any weight. In seconds, the ethereal fire that was Faustite collected upon some of the topmost branches and coalesced into what was, more or less, his appearance.
He looked closer to an atronach than a human. Flame echoed the shape of his body, with only his grate recognizable from his austere look. And while it felt as though he looked upon her directly, only half his face remained — the upper half was gone.
Faustite smiled upon seeing her, though no mirth was present in the flash of flaming teeth.
Oh, no,, he signed, and Headache translated for her.
You can do better than that. You were there. His flamebound visage coalesced into his real form, and the branch sagged under new weight, but he did not linger for long — as soon as he had purchase beneath his heels, he lunged at her, attempting to tackle her out of the tree and into the banks of snow below.
kaefaux
Quoting this here since he uses it like a travel form!
Hellborn ;; (Enhancement) Range: Self Duration: Up to 1 minute Use Count: Up to 3x Miss Chance: Escaping his reach Effect: Faustite's fire expands and engulfs him, transforming him into a living embodiment of flame. For the duration of this magical ability, he appears fully youmafied. When he moves, he moves amorphously as a gout of fire. Faustite can pass through or over nonsolid surfaces, and cannot be hit by physical attacks. He becomes highly susceptible to magical attacks and enchantments, however. Any attacks he makes toward others will be fire property, and will provide the illusion of being burned.
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2025 5:24 pm
Well that was a massive Nope in the prettiest, shiniest packaging she'd ever seen thus far, Earth-side. Realizing the freaking... fireflies--...oh. Okay. Sensing a theme here--were the source of the voice was both... fascinating and terrifying. But all that, and all her questions on that, vanished in less than a blink as the lights beyond her tree cover began to morph and flicker.
She could see enough of his form, or what remained of it. How it moved up. Flames. ******** flames. Where this a lighter-heart moment, she might have made a quip about the Negaverse just flat-out cheating now with all this s**t. Their agents could teleport and become flames? Rude. Foul. She wants a ref to step in on this one. Alas, there was no celestial whistle blown, no magical flag tossed to the ground to signal the Negaverse couldn't have every cool and useful thing out there, and Solaris had to deal with the very, very bleak reality that a form of sentient flame was moving up into the tree with her. Didn't catch it on fire like she'd figured, though, and again--had this been a very different situation, she'd have been immensely curious on that.
But she had a sickening feeling that while it might not melt snow or turn trees to charcoal, it'd likely still hurt her. Magic tended to be that kind of a b***h.
Solaris remained frozen on her branch, eyes wide and metal accenting her uniform glinting in the firelight he cast about as he settled on the branches above her. Magic could be as terrible as it was beautiful, and Chaos and its creations were not excluded from such.
The hand movements didn't exactly distract her from the disturbing sight of the fiery smile, but the echo of the voice from the swarm made a shiver coil in her gut, weighed down with ice.
She got her feet properly under her, at least, already trying to calculate how to move here, what to do next. Her options were so limited... so, so limited...
You were there.
Solaris managed a sneer, a curl of her lips and a flash of teeth that might have served as an instinctive challenge to his own joyless smile. There was no mirth, no mocking in her stance, only the silent agreement and not liking one bit where this might go.
Then the ******** lunged.
As the General flew through the air, the branches spaced enough for him to easily get at her, Solaris took her only real available option. It was stupid, of course. Close range was not it's proper place. But she kicked herself backwards the moment she saw his body begin to leave the branch above, lifting a hand and snapping her fingers with a snarled, "Catalytic Combustion," with the resulting tightly wound ball of energy bursting from the spark and darting through the open air towards Faustite.
Not that his decent had left much room between them by the time she got it off.
Solaris wasn't spared from the resulting explosion, no matter if it hit him, the tree branch... it was all too close to her as she fell backwards towards the ground. The rush of intense heat and energy propelled her further down, landing harshly in the snow and getting the wind knocked out of her. It was by pure luck and instinct that her wings had curled around her somewhat, fanning out a little to not be crushed against the ground, and that the snow itself offered a tiny bit of cushioning.
She was trying to scramble back, not really knowing what she was doing, just trying to move away, even as all her exposed skin was raw-red and she was barely managing to gasp for the air the impact had torn from her. She just needed to get the ******** away from him.
Strickenized
Solaris Magic for ease: Catalytic Combustion She points her fingers with one hand like a 'gun' to direct her magic at a target. Snapping those fingers, Solaris creates a spark that stays in front of her hand. This spark is the catalyst for a rapidly growing flood of energy to pool into an expanding, fuzzy ball in front of her hand. It maxes out in size of about 3 inches diameter (the size of a baseball). This ball of golden, condensed light and energy then shoots out towards the target Solaris' pointer finger is directed at. The ball can travel up to fifteen feet before exploding and dispersing, even if it hasn't hit a target by that point. Anyone hit by the ball itself, or the resulting explosion, are subject to blunt force damage and rapid, high heat when the ball explodes that last for only five seconds. The extent of the damage is up to the player, at minimum should cause moderate bruising, and slight blistering on exposed skin from the heat. Solaris can use this magic up to two times a day.
It was a risk to lunge at her without knowing what her magic could do to him, but Faustite couldn't let the opportunity pass him by. He needed her still enough to summon the shield glove bracelet and raid her memories for something about that meeting, or even the fight thereafter — something that gave him the faces and names of everyone culpable in their abortive little manhunt.
But magic came easily to this one, and Faustite couldn't pivot midair. His expression darkened as he awaited the inevitable, and he had only a mere fraction of a second to wait. What struck him in the grate had burst, neutralizing his inertia and dropping him straight through the tree as he was dashed between branches on the way down. Whatever it was must have hit him with enough force to paralyze his lungs, he realized, as he swallowed impotently on his way down. Another couple of branches — one in the shoulder, one against his hip — and he had been spun in the air for a last time and unceremoniously dumped in the blanket of snow at the tree's base.
Then he gasped, and with new air filling his lungs came all the sore hurts that reminded him of how he would bruise. Burning mixed with burning, too, and he wondered if her magic tried to scorch him in the same manner that the youma in him did.
But he forced himself upright. There would be time for making a Database entry about it later. For now, he lurched to his feet, still breathless, and started stumbling toward her. With each blink, the world shifted a margin, but the earth was beginning to still in the seconds following. He beckoned for Headache, then, and pointed it towards her. When he saw the cluster of fireflies pass him, he thought it looked much smaller than before; it must've gotten caught in the blast.
It reformed in the image of Faustite near her, though the process took longer than typical. A few seconds passed for the whirl of orange fireflies to solidify in the image of its master. "Be still if you want to live," it warned. "Your struggle is ******** traitor, Faustite signed at the cluster of bugs in his image, but Headache never responded.
Once he was certain he wouldn't teleport himself half into the ground, Faustite vanished in a blink, and appeared at her other side with a series of chains woven from delicate metals on his right hand. A flat garnet jewel sat in his palm, but what may draw the eye more readily were the serious of virulent violet crystals set into the knuckles of the device. It was those that gleamed brightly, as if powering a machine, while his bejeweled hand darted toward her starseed.
kaefaux
Up to you if he makes contact~ But upon making contact with the skin above her starseed, they would both see the same powered memory play out!
Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2025 6:29 pm
She almost got back to her feet, managing to push herself up enough to somewhat crouch, one foot crushing down the snow while the other knee sat burning in the icy snow. Her lungs were pulling in air rapidly, and she had to force herself to go slow, to try and actually fill her lungs rather than hyperventilate on panic and having the wind knocked out of her.
Lights flickered and condensed, and she realized the youma fireflies of all damn things formed... Faustite. It spoke with the voice she'd heard in that alleyway in their first encounter, and maybe she would have paid more attention to the fact she hadn't seen him speak, if she wasn't in such a bad situation...
"Doubt that," she hissed, the cough that followed it still not diminishing the boiling, snarling temper of a creature trapped. Wasting breath on banter mid-battle wasn't her thing in more serious moments, unless she needed to try and distract or taunt someone.
But she also knew at least some of the tricks in this b*****d's toolbox, and her inability to counter the majority of them to the degree she needed.
With the firefly-Faustite on her right, the flicker of imagery to suddenly see him on her left left her confused for a fraction of a second before the reality of the moment caught up. The fake, and the real one. Solaris tried to shove herself up, even if her legs were weak from blasting herself like that, but the moment her hands touched the snow to push up...
She spotted the sort of glove he bore, the bright glimmering gems and metal, and her heart ceased pumping. She could see the purple crystals at the back of his hand and her blood roared in her ears. Panic, fear, hate--they all mingled and coagulated into a sickening mess in her gut, freezing her in place at the worst moment even as all she wanted was him dead.
His hand pressed against raw skin and the rigid fabrics of her uniform, just above her starseed, and even as she tried to push the limb away from herself, the pain and the terror of having Chaos so horrifically close to her very soul warred in volume to the utter confusion and misery seeing that delicate device on him stirred.
"What did you do to him?!" Her screech was deafened by her own roaring pulse, pain ricocheting through her body as her thoughts whirled and tumbled and her memories flew--
"I won't let you fall, promise." Her voice was light, cheery, hair curling around her face in wind-tumbled haphazardness. The personal glider was solid beneath her feet as she straddled the central seat with its low backing and heavy harness open, a second seat behind it just as expectant, her boots planted firmly on the small platforms on either side of the vehicle's main body. Wide, long wings stretched out from the glider, its surface glistening with solar-paneling, fueling the thrusters positioned under the wings and main body. Her hands were resting on the handles at the control panel, Solarian text gleaming back at her from the glowing console.
The young man standing on the solid platform of the aerial docks looked less than convinced and far less trusting of the open air beyond her. Above her. Below her. She tossed her head to clear her bangs out of her face, and in doing so, she could see they were above the clouds, this floating island quiet and somewhat remote in its smaller size, more of a small village than a city. Flora of dark blues, purples, reds, and black rolled softly over hills, bits of water suspended in mid-air as the island passed through the clouds and collected more and more condensation. The constant winds, along with the low gravity of the planet, allowed water in certain volumes to float, twinkling like gems in the air, before too much collected and pulled the rest of the mass downward.
Solaris knew her world, though, she knew the winds well enough to fly them. She held a hand out to him, all grins and delight. Still, her voice softened as she forced herself to acknowledge the more serious nature of the, and understandably so, concern of his. "I swear it. You'll be strapped in, you will not be able to fall off. The glider has an AI on it so even if the pilot nods off or something, it'll kick in to bring them safely back to the nearest dock. I won't free glide if you'd rather I not--I can just stay on the glider with you."
She wanted to show off, wanted to show him fun, exciting sights and tech here on Solaris. But she understood his apprehension--Knights of Pluto didn't go soaring through the air too often, from her understanding.
She smiled, though, lifting her hand to him anew. "I can't show you the < wander-leaves > if we don't, didn't you say you wanted to see them up close, Eion~?"
Her sort of bribery seemed to work, because he finally gave a heavy sigh and she could have sworn she saw a small smile, but he reached for her hand in turn, and her fingers closed around his to help him up onto the glider--
Strickenized
< wander-leaves > is Solaris speaking a Solarian word for the leaf-mice, that I have yet to figure out so placeholder! <3
Oh how she struggled — how she fought and twisted and writhed to keep his hand away from her starseed. But regardless of how she fought, his skin was atrociously hot to the touch, and the chaotic power vested in him multiplied his strength to an atonishing degree. Eventually, he foiled her defensive measures just enough to touch his hand to her skin.
But just before he made contact, he heard her mortified objection ringing in his ears. Do to whom, was his first thought. Had she known, or known of, Velvet? That old knight was likely centuries dead, given what had become of the Knight Academy where he had once been. Maybe she had some ******** ethical compunction about corpse-robbing. The White Moon so loved to clutch their pearls.
But those thoughts were gone a fraction of a second before they were completed, subsumed in whole by the memory wrenched from her.
And a strange one it was — of a space wholly foreign to him, of technology similarly esoteric. It looked like something out of a well-funded science fiction movie, something like Mad Max if that took place on floating islands and had a more positive bend. But what took him far more by surprise was the individual staring back at her in consternation.
It looked like himself, if he was dressed in a Pluto knight's garb and grew his hair out into floor-length dreads. He'd recalled something of that nature when looking through Velvet's eyes so long ago, thanks to that concoction he found in the Rift. And while it didn't kill him, there was still something jarring about seeing another version of himself through someone else's eyes. And it was stranger still to feel as she felt — that mix of wistful for the winds and hopeful for dragging a friend along. A friend she almost pitied? Someone who she felt for? Faustite couldn't begin to frame that complexity appropriately.
And she called him Eion. What the ******** did that mean? Was that Velvet's name? His title? And what the ******** did that mean for Faustite's name? For the ******** demon banana who called him Eion and likely watch him blanch sheet ******** white? The questions only compounded —
But the memory passed in an instant, and Faustite was ever jarringly ejected back to reality with that fading mix of emotions still clutching stubbornly to his heart. He wrenched his hand off of her as if he paradoxically burnt himself, and that shield glove bracelet was soon banished for how quickly it drained of power.
It wasn't the ******** memory he wanted. <********>, he mouthed at his youma.
He signed, and his youma translated for the feathered thing at his feet. "That scrawny twink with the unwashed hair — that was Velvet?"
kaefaux
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2025 6:21 pm
The partial gloves of her uniform did extraordinarily little to really defend her skin against the scalding nature of contact with him, but the blistering skin and forming burns could heal. If she survived. An exposure to Chaos against her starseed? That was true, true terror for her. The reality of either death, or worse, corruption, before she could free her world from the devastation of Chaos. A choice of fates, she was realizing with horror and dismay, that likely also had now affected her friend.
Yes, Kyrie knew Velvet likely didn't survive to this era--of those she'd seen affected by the extreme longevity thus far like herself, it'd been just senshi. Not knights. Maybe some had, and she'd only yet to meet them. She had no idea. Perhaps the very concept was, on her part, wistful thinking for a bygone era that she could only remember in fragments and dreams. Nostalgia focused on the sweeter facets, while her dread and self-loathing highlighted the grotesque she'd committed and observed. Her recollection of friends, typically, fell into the rose-tinted former. A longing for companionships and misadventures to replay anew.
To see that article again, the glimmer of metal and gems... the wistful hopes were violently wrenched from her childish, stubborn, wistful grasp, and the pain it drove made her misspeak, yes, but she didn't care. He still existed, if only his starseed, and that potential was bittersweet but still enough to her to consider. But what did it mean for this General King to have it? Had he taken it from a reborn soul? Killed the Earthling that would have potentially held something of her friend? Nothing else made sense to her. She couldn't fathom any other way for a tool of a knight of Eion to fall into another's hands except by such violence.
Or at least, in her fury and hate, it was all she was willing to accept as sensical.
The thoughts all happened in split seconds--her terror of Chaos, her horror at recognizing Eion's device, her hate at this burnt remnant of a human--and the memory played out in a cruel sweetness. Bygone era...
As Faustite pulled back, Solaris managed to suck in a pained breath and shove herself back a few paces awkwardly, haphazardly, on the ground to try and gain distance. Even if her legs were weak and her hands felt damn near numb from the pain of cold air against burns. His question was almost impossible to hear over the roaring in her ears from adrenaline but she still snarled up between the General and youma. "How the <********> do you know that name?"
Because he shouldn't. Velvet was the man who must have died ages ago. Even if he had been reborn, she wasn't sure of the statistical chances the Earthling would receive the same name--though, perhaps stranger things had happened.
She scrambled like a rat from a flame. Terrified little thing, unwilling to stand against him.
Faustite drew himself to his full height, no longer hunched over, but the familiar ache of burnt tissue followed along the top edge of his grate. That senshi magic could burn him was deeply offensive on the logic that he was half-made of fire himself, but perhaps that had more to do with their root in Order, or a youma's sensitivity to senshi magic. Whatever the true answer was, the end result remained that it pissed him off.
His lip twitched with a measure of derision while she asked her question of him. Were she anyone else, he'd have disregarded it in full to chase her snow until he caught her and dredged out her starseed and added it to his mouth for a quicker recovery time on those bruises and burns. But she was the easiest to recognize for having been there, of all that he'd come across, and he was counting on her to have seen the full spread of Order's suicidal idiots that decided to capture (and kill) Heliodor.
He needed faces, not names. Trying to peel them out of Heliodor proved difficult at best — a one-at-a-time affair. And some likely never showed their faces to the hostage.
Headache, sensing Faustite's shift, dissolved its image into a cluster of fireflies that rejoined their master by lighting on the shoulders of his uniform. While Faustite signed, sections of those fireflies lit bright orange as they buzzed together to form an imitation of his voice.
"Meet me here tomorrow night, at ten, and I'll answer that question for you."
The crystals on the bracelet had gone dark; he had little reason to linger. In the next moments, he — and hi cloistered youma — vanished from the area.
kaefaux
Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2025 3:26 pm
Solaris had begun to focus on her magic again--haphazard though it'd been for so, so long, it worked enough for her to have survived thus far. If she could have just a little more of that luck...
But he... drew back. Her brows furrowed, untrusting, but the false Faustite deformed back into the swarm, and the real one didn't continue to pursue. He...
He gave her a ******** offer.
She could only stare, bewildered, still processing the implications, as he vanished. Teleported away, she figured. Left. Left her alive. Her skin was burned and raw, and she knew that while she'd heal, it'd be a slow, painful process. Her hands would take longer than the rest of her, though. Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet, wincing all the while and willing her legs to not buckle under her. There were enough medical supplies back in her van for her to lick her wounds there.
Yet, she couldn't bring herself to leave immediately. Could only stare at the place he'd been standing, and his youma translated what she assumed were words from the hand gestures he'd made. A trade. She was given a chance to trade information. Answers about how Faustite knew of Velvet, in exchange for.... Her eyes squeezed shut, head shaking slowly as she cursed herself in a mixture of English and Solarian. It shouldn't even be a question in her mind. She should stay away. Information like that wasn't worth the identities of allies who'd been at the wrong place at the wrong time, people who didn't even all vote for the fate she and others had pressed for on the traitor senshi.
And she was considering the fallout if she did make the trade, how she could try to mitigate the ********. Her laugh at herself was pained, agonized.
