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 Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 9:50 pm
Latticed fingers supported a thin chin and thinner patience. The boy-turned-creature stared into the massive screen's cold light, featureless eyes unmoving. The screen stared back with information displayed in cruel accuracy, its host of knowlege splayed out over walls and floor and crystal panes with a steady arrogance. Proudly it showed to him all information known of the enemy, from a database listing of senshi snapshots and descriptors to generalized factoids about the extraterrestrial menace. Its gorey looseness with information spilled out sloppily at the touch of every key.
But for all its misplaced hubris, the computer never showed Faustite what he wanted. The hours crawled on with dawn approaching, with the youmafied captain growing weary with his restlessness, and no answer came for the question he couldn't ask. He gazed beyond the screen and found the memory still embedded staunchly in his mind — loose, silken cloth; a hand pressed to another, a memory within a memory.
What was it? Where was it? He could not accept a hallucination as explanation. A hallucination never followed so long and so stubbornly as this. Several times now he'd seen it, brazen and damning in its utopian lasciviousness. It was memory for how fiercely it pushed its way into his mind. For how it jabbed and twisted and pulled at thought until he could not think beyond this esoteric conundrum. It would haunt him until he dropped dead of exhaustion.
The wooden stool squeaked restlessly as Faustite shifted backward and righted his posture. His muscles' boredom fled when he rolled his shoulders. How long had it been? An hour, perhaps two? Schörl would call his ventures here a waste of time. But this room was the hub of the Negaverse's knowledge, almost meek in its boringly nondescript contents, so this room would hold any answers the Negaverse possessed. Searches turned up just as empty as his thoughts, however.
Again he typed away, searching for a name to bind to those immaculate stairwells and grandiose rooms. A name for the faces seen. A name for the hand that reached out to each of them.
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Posted: Sun May 27, 2018 9:15 pm
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Long strides bring wedge heel to the hard floor of the Citadel in sharp staccato, eating distance and declaring bold and business-like that the creator has no time to spare for frippery or small-talk. She is on a mission, with Negaverse-issue communication device-c**-tablet computer held in one hand. Moonstone's long braid moves counterpoint to her hips, the bounce of her breasts; she makes no allowances for this in the mannish stride bringing her to the mainframe housing.
Inside, a boy.
An officer.
Captain, like herself - but one of the new guard, unlike herself. Moonstone halts, eyes sweeping over his bent form and sallow skin, the dark hair and burning eyes. She has seen him before, but only in passing. He stands with General Schörl, unless she is mistaken - and she is not.
"Captain." Curt greeting offered, Moonstone turned communication pen into tablet while looking up at the information the half-youma had pulled up. Under his eyes were dark circles and impatience lay across thin shoulders like a stole; whatever he was there for, he was not having a good time with it. Relatable, the databases were horrifically out of date, utterly garbage. Had been for years, with few exceptions. Most of the new guard didn't know to utilize the damned thing, which was a shame, and INFOs hadn't been a viable, working faction in Metallia only knew how long.
No, it was unlikely anything had been updated as it should have been, barring a few entries here and there from individuals like herself. Might as well save the kid the headache and misery, let him know now.
"The database is woefully outdated. It is unlikely you will find what you are looking for there, or that it will be accurate if you do find it." Two years ago, the Haida captain would rather have torn out her own tongue than admit that there were such glaring faults within the Negaverse.
Now? Things had changed.Strickenized I'm old! Let me tell you how I'm old!
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Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 11:46 am
Thumps and thuds and skitters and slides and shifts each accompanied the steady ambience in the Citadel. Occasionally a youma's low sounded closely and loudly enough that the inner occupants heard it. These flecks of life were subconsciously sorted by the youmafied captain into two categories — human or youma. At this hour, youma dominated as human activity dropped woefully low. He wasted no time looking up until that pounding entered the door.
His fingers shriveled slowly from steeple to curl. Black eyes found her at once, her uniform advertising a style of warrior lost both to public failure and fattened colonialism. He made no comment of it as she started speaking —
and cited a similar level of discontent to his own. Pleased, he smiled a mirthless smile, as his face kept no quarter for genuine pleasantry. But she was right; for all due diligence with senshi reports, half were petty and half were likely outdated. All the personal information gored and splayed over the screen came from officers long absent from rank or nubile officers who hadn't yet realized the futility of keeping track. Even his own entries followed rote practice rather than belief in his fellow officer to stay up-to-date. Sometimes he recorded that information for his own personal note.
Maybe this officer, staunch and bitter as she was, did the same. Knew the same. Was wronged too many times by a malfunctioning, prideful system.
"I saw a memory when I was in the Rift. It wasn't mine." Fingers laid over keys and their too-long nails clacked and stabbed dutifully, dredging out more useless information onscreen. "But I saw a building unlike these — it was whole. Well-kept. People familiar with magic lived inside. Knights…" He closed his eyes to catch the ephemeral symbol in his mind's eye. Pluto for one, he knew. A star for the other.
"I want to find that building, Captain. It has something I want. But everything we have covers individuals, not places. Grudges, not histories. And there are no buildings listed but our own.
"Tell me — do you know of a place where knights lived?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:49 pm
His smile was that of a pitiless thing recognizing one of it's own, more a courtesy than might have been expected. Moonstone appreciated the dispensal of frivolous niceties from the lantern-eyed half-youma: they recognized rank on sight, the rest mattered less than what either had for breakfast. That he went straight for the meat of his quest spoke volumes about where he was mentally and emotionally within the glorious ******** that was the Negaverse.
What little information to be had appeared onscreen. Moonstone scanned over the broken symbol, listening to a tale spun from dreams of magic and Knights. So, he wished to find the place from his dream...it was unsurprising. After the barren wasteland of the Citadel, who wouldn't? Yes, she knew. She'd heard the stories - knew the rumors...she knew what became of many officers that purified, how they often became Knights themselves.
Just as Knights became officers when corrupted properly.
"It is not unknown to me, this place where Knights and their hopefuls lived and trained before going to serve the planetary Wonders.." Moonstone's heels clicked as she moved in further, dark eyes watching as the half-youma absorbed her admission with a keen interest; before he could impatiently ask that she spit the important part out, the Haida captain offered the information willingly.
"You speak of the Academy."
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Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:01 am
She spoke, and Faustite reached into the somethingless where to poach his communicator into reality. Stretching it apart, the captain began rudimentary note-taking with fingers dancing over its display. The Academy, she said, and the word only delivered snippets and snapshots of boys dressed in their uniform best, wandering rank-and-file into England's old stonework buildings. It promised boyhood excellence in the days of nuclear families, and before that, the times in which men were fed long before their families. The days of polio, malnutrition, bone death.
But he knew of no magical Academy, no knightly hub for their Wonder training. And if the Negaverse possessed little record of it, then it wasn't in their reaches. A pity, as that would hamper their enemy marvelously.
"What else can you tell me about it?" Black eyes reached her curiously, expectantly. He knew only the luminous columns, wide windows, and dormitories sporting figures he nary recognized. But those rooms — tall, whole, unbroken — held no place in the Negaverse's heart. All that he saw had to lie elsewhere. This captain spoke of it with more familiarity than he could hope for; all attention lay with her. All attention followed her form, cut with lines and styes unfamiliar to his old histories, with thought processes just as hidden.
Faustite adjusted in his seat to follow her approach more properly. Feet did not remain flat on the ground for long, however; he soon fell into his eternal-motion habit with a heel bob and a head c**k while he poised his hand over notes.
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Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:04 am
Interest in the Academy whispered warning of traitorous thoughts - or a keen mind seeking answers. Zinkenite would have wanted to persue such a dreamscape as well, and he a General Soveriegn of impeccable loyalty. The half-youma settled into his note-taking, asking questions to draw Moonstone down paths leading to the answers he sought.
"There would be no record here, it is nothing our Queen would wish made common among the lower ranks." Likely, Moonstone herself shouldn't know, but she had been a captain of the Negaverse for far longer than many had served- indeed, there were few still actively serving in Destiny City that could lay claim to such a storied and lengthy career.
Being around so long had...benefits.
Drawbacks as well. She had hunted many a comrade-in-arms turned traitor in the past as part of Special Operations - should this sallow-cheeked creature decide desertion to be his path, Moonstone would simply hunt him down and remove the life from him, breath by breath as had happened many times before. Metallia will have you, as she has us all, one way or another.
Settled and secure in path, she half-perched near the other captain and brought out a rectangle of Sugar Pine and a whittling knife. "Officers often purify into Knights." Moonstone inspected the aromatic wood before shaving curls from it with practiced ease, "Knights corrupt into officers."
"That was no dream, Captain. That was you. A memory of another you, another life. Some faded glory dredged forward. Useless." Her tone held hard edge, knife biting large chunks from the pine and sending them to the floor. "The Academy is long-dead, it is ash and ruins."
Glancing up, Moonstone stilled her blade, "You can see for yourself, if you wish."
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Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2018 9:41 pm
Metallia doesn't want it made common, yet you know it. Why. Legs crossed restlessly and he balanced his tablet over one knee. Wary, his gaze found all the interstices on her where humanity gathered. In her hair, the corners of her eyes, the way her chest tucked into itself. The way her hands moved and splayed and wove out a history. We shut our answers away because secrets are power. You'll never tell me why you know.
He followed the turn of the knife, light-sharp and teething, as it carved alongside word. Back and forth was the exchange. His wrist flicked out a simple diagram of her words. Why does that matter.
He needn't ask, he learned — she answered just as tersely. His lips pinched with a c**k of his head as he hummed out his reservations. While his pen moved faithfully, he questioned the information given — was it a life as someone else? He recalled no such thing, remembered no other clues to this once-life but for the fits and starts of memory taunting him. When chill struck through his heart, he knew no other snippets of a life he could claim. Was that, too, a previous life? Did magic deliver their consciousnesses from one body to the next, heedless and whimsical? Was there some ordained structure to it, so neat and cyclical as this officer presented it? Were they, now, eating the fruit of their past lives to lay the seeds for a hundred years in the future? His burden deepened.
His typing grew tighter. Severe angles and gouging lines slashed their way through his notes, now more reflections of his thoughts than the succinct delivery of present company. Peppering the page with obscene arcs of question marks, Faustite finished his note-taking quickly.
Glancing up from his lashes, Faustite kept his neck cocked. He tasted the sea on his tongue. "Poetic, isn't it: another me from an ostentatious utopia. From grandeur." 'Academy?' he needled through the program.
"Where is it? Or do I have to purify to get there?"syrie pibby has her paw on the crook of my elbow and it's so cutely distracting. she even nose mushroomed my forearm and drooled on it a little while she slept
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Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:37 pm
Not knowing would rankle. This one wants to know everything. Safety in knowledge, in holding it over others. Intel would have suited. Zink would have suited you...or squandered you. So strange, after so many years, being able to find fault in her superiors. Even the General Sovereigns were no longer immune.
Something about this one reminded her of Zink. Or she was feeling...nostalgic. Either way.
"You seem troubled by this." Moonstone flashed teeth, still moving her blade in sweeping motions that subtracted material with a surety that said she'd discovered the shape to be. Perhaps she had, or perhaps there would be no shape, only a relentless hacking of the Sugar Pine down to nothing as they spoke.
No answer or acknowledgement was needed; it simply pleased the Haida captain that her strange companion of twitching, impatient fingers and bird-like head position. Discomfiture meant he was less inclined to pursue whatever garbage life he'd seen. "I think of it more as a bloated, rotting relic of the dead...but I'm not one to dwell on the past."
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
"Purification is a means to that end, yes. But there is part of the Academy here, in Negaspace. It was damaged horribly during the Invasion." A scowling face began to take shape in the wood, broad teeth and oblong shapes for other features. "Those White Moon bastards destroyed much of what they were able to reach, as they do."
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Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2018 5:32 pm
You're not one to dwell on the past. You're not one to share, either. The captain provided few clues about herself beyond that she whittled, that she fostered a special disappointment in the Negaverse's capabilities (a sentiment that he shared blackheartedly), and that she knew older happenings than most captains or lieutenants, and perhaps most generals now. So what, then, was her story? Jealously jaded was a possibility — ever passed up on promotions would explain her age-old knowledge and her equal rank to him. It explained her bared teeth, the way she cut and clawed at wood with a steady viciousness. She tore it like a man tears a log with his rusted hacksaw.
But whoever she was, she kept to efficiency. More information was spooled out, though not at speed. Years sitting in the Academy guaranteed no easy find, even if the location still existed. Any Negaverse agent or knight or passerby might have found it, considered it, and kept it for themselves. A senseless hurry burned in him like a bad habit.
She confirmed that part of that Academy remained in their reach — though not the most needful details. Not the where in Negaspace. He set his jaw. "Where in Negaspace?"
It wasn't the Rift. Teething shadows and wild, desolate landscapes of corrupted earth were no longer in his future. The Academy remained as some building in their purview here. It loomed beyond the mists of recognition, perhaps near, perhaps leagues far from where they now stood. His mind wandered to it incessantly; what would they find in visiting the Academy now? How much would it have changed since the time of his otherworldly memories? Would he recognize any of it? Or would the pair find the area so overtaken by youma and wilderness that the strange bracelet seen was unrecoverable?
As she continued her carving, intent as a starving dog, he wagered against his temper. Heat flared under the stuffy collar of his uniform. "That 'past me' left a bracelet in that place. He pressed it to people's chests, their heads — saw their memories. Lived them. I want that device." Fingers curled into his chair's captive arms.
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Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 1:54 pm
Moonstone shared no more about her own history than was absolutely necessary; her war stories were boring and irrelevant, her medals kept clean and tidy and tucked away to be brought out and worn only for meetings. The half youma chomped at the bit, wanting to take hold and bolt, to break from the gate and tear away down the track. Beautiful. Impatient.
The blaze of youth, or a beast running before an all-consuming blaze?
In her hands, Raven took shape from wood. Strange blocky teeth and disconcerting eye.
Where had Moonstone sliding her gaze from the carving to Faustite again, expression approving; her approval deepened as he explained wanting the memory bracelet and she notched 'feathers' into the wood. "Down the winding way from the Citadel, near the acid-etched plateau but further down again." An awful memory niggled at the back of Moonstone's brain like a cavity in a tooth; she shook her head and it slipped away. The Haida captain gave better, more concise directions upon repeat, "It is a long way to walk. Faster on Wasgo."
"I could take you."
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Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:07 am
He sat up, clasped his hands around the arms of his chair. "Then take me."
So much direction granted in Negaspace — and the Rift — was pointless. Any bids to north or south lacked point, owing to a lack of magnetism under normal rule. Tucked away in an otherwhere, their austere locations were sought either by youma instinct or an old mental map or happenstance guided by landmark. However this captain found her way to such a relic, he didn't know. But he wanted to see if she was correct, or if she thought to challenge him in a landscape better suited to 'accidental death' excuses.
She was, at that, unknown to him. Only so much as uniform, speech mannerism, and idling habit became clear. The rest — a bid of a name presumably belonging to a youma — only flagged some accomplishments. No ideals, no thought to how she treated her youmafied counterparts in their hierarchy, no indications of personal ambition. And nothing given in the Negaverse remains 'given', so much as 'traded'. But even that price eluded him.
And the way she carved was itself a performance. Who would want that ugly thing? Schörl? His gaze slipped from sugar pine to the captain.
"We should share names before we go." Separation was its own threat in the Negaverse's wilderness. "I am Faustite."syrie end on your post with leave?
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Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:22 am
Yes, there it was. Impatience, the sharp of his teeth barely hidden. Was that part of youma nature flashing or just him? What was human, what was beast - what did deliniating any of these things matter once they were merged as they were in the creature perched livewire before her?
Late he remembered manners where she had dispensed with them ages past. Her name meant nothing to her fellows when so many left or died before becoming relevant, yet he wanted it. Peculiar.
"I am Moonstone." Both chose definitives, 'I am' rather than something softer - places within the Negaverse known, worth to Metallia known. She liked that about him as much as she could like anything about a stranger newly met. In her hands, the rough hewn Raven peered out, silent and judgemental and needing finishing.
"Come, Faustite." Moonstone banished her blade and the carving, moving towards the door again. "If you must tell your superior, tell them on the way." Wasgo was waiting, after all.
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