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[[ gaia_star [R-UPG] The Inevitability of Hell (Faustite & Ransomite) gaia_star
gaia_star [R] Putting in the Research {Nectaris & Ransomite}
gaia_star Motherly Advice (Elliot/Fr. Isaac) gaia_star
gaia_star Judas (Ransomite x Promethei x Imhotep x Tobias gaia_star ]]

And a minute turned to ten.

And twenty.

And an hour, then two.

Zebulon didn’t move from where he planted himself. There was no point in their gambit to keep Elliot in one spot if there was no one to keep an eye on him to ensure he didn’t just vanish somehow or teleport out. If they woke up and he had already left without a trace, that would be one thing–although it would tell them assuredly where his loyalties lay.

If he decided to teleport out of the room and finish what he started? Promethei wanted to be there and put an end to it before it put the other two in danger.

And that was that.

Elliot didn’t have any obvious signals like snoring or talking in his sleep, but he was a very loud sleeper in another way. There was a reason why he always had his own blanket when he slept. If he didn’t, well, no one else would have a ******** blanket within an hour, and they found that out the hard way. The noises of his shifting certainly hadn’t changed in his absence.

It gave Zebulon the space to amuse himself while he watched over so long as nothing had sound. He read over a few threads on social media first and then swapped to playing a mobile game he killed the volume on that he could play idly. Surfing subways?

Sure.

Name: Thistle Myshonok

Nickname: He loves nicknames and would love to have one someday!

Gender/Pronoun: He/him

Age: DSS ages are hell. He's a baby-faced mid-20s lookin' fella, who is 1225 years old in actuality.

Birthday: Who's to say!

Sign: Squeak squeaken squeak squeaker.

Gemstone: The shinier the better! He especially likes tiger's eye.

Blood Type: he has it, for sure

Fav. Food: he likes all edible things. and some non-edible things. he will put anything in his mouth twice.

Hated Food: There is literally not a single food he's found that he doesn't like.

School/Occupation: He has neither a school nor an occupation and has no need for """"money"""" as far as he sees it.

Hobbies:

Urban Exploring: he loves to find every lil nook and cranny! He is especially fascinated by the Destiny City sewer system, which is also one of the most common areas to find Thistle asleep. He does not like garbage dumps, and he's still getting used to buildings, but the insides are much more curious than the outsides. (He got kicked out of the Public Library for eating the papers. He just wanted to see if the books were any good! sad )

Cooking: Thistle is an experimental cook. He will put things in a pot that should absolutely not be combined with each other, boil them, and then eat them and declare them delicious. (Do not trust his opinion on this.)

Virtues:

Curious: He wants to know things!!! Thistle is curious about people, places, and things - he collects information as much as he collects random trinkets. He is guileless and honest in his curiosity, not so different from a child asking why the sky is blue, and simply does not understand the concept of a 'secret'. Do not trust him with anything you don't want someone else to know, please, because he's just as likely to barter it to get some other 'secret' out of someone else, but not in a malicious way; if asked, he would wonder over how anyone could pretend to 'own' any information at all. (Privacy is not a big deal on Nemausa, clearly.)

Crafty: He can make so many things! Because he had to make due with so little for so long, Thistle is skilled at putting together unusual (and oftentimes non-functional) objects, but he is also able to think well outside the box and come up with solutions that, by all rights, should be as successful as the trinkets he creates, but the difference is that his plans - usually - actually work. He knows (or, knew, way back when) a lot of things, and knew about a lot of people, and everything he has ever learned is a tool, a way for him to find the next step when all hope seems lost.

Generous: He will give you a thing you need even if he needs it! Among the lower classes, there was a healthy barter system in place, where the only value a thing had was that which was determined by either the person who had it, the person who wanted it, or both of those people. It's not that everything was communal; there were two kinds of things, on Nemausa: Mine and Not Mine. Most Nemausish people would jealously guard their horde or work hard to try and tip the balance of every trade in their favor. Thistle has never been like that. If he has something that someone else needs, why wouldn't he share it with them? In his early years, this led to him getting taken advantage of, even when his friends tried to protect him from the worst of it. When he came into his Senshi-hood, that died off, though whether out of respect or fear, it couldn't be said. Thistle, for his part, didn't think anything had changed, and was just sad that people weren't asking him for things as much anymore ):

Flaws:

Naive: In spite of everything, Thistle still thinks most people are basically good. Sweet summer child. He would be led happily to a vat of acid as long as the person leading him there wore a smile.

Messy: Growing up in a literal garbage heap did not make him the most cognizant of cleanliness. The idea of something having a 'place to go' is entirely foreign to him. I pity his future roommates. He's lucky he's cute, because in polite society, this would get him tagged as inconsiderate at best, and abjectly just icky at worst. It also means that he loses things. A LOT. Except that as long as it's a thing in his horde, he doesn't consider it lost, he just considers that he doesn't know its exact location at that exact moment. If something is lost out in the world and he can't find it, he is basically heartbroken, as if that one item was The Most Important Item To Ever Item.

Regressed: Thistle didn't used to be like this. He was a proud warrior, once upon a time, who led his people against those who would oppress and destroy them. But after the Chaos came, Thistle had no choice but to retreat, mentally, to the last time things were simple and he was happy - and that was a long, long time ago.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Eyes: Big and gray.

Hair: Wavy/curly blond-brown hair, down to about his chin.

Face: Roundish.

Skin Tone: Pale.

Body Type: Skinny lil fella.

Clothes: He probably looks like a thriftstore threw up on him in his civilian life.

Physical Features: Mousie!!! (See description)

Backstory/History:

Nemausa was beautiful, once. So said the elders, anyway - Thistle never believed them. The world he was born into was a garbage dump, and always had been, always would be. And that's not metaphorical; the planet had slowly become overrun with the rest of the galaxy's refuse. They were only barely able to keep up with the demand, burning or destroying whatever they couldn't reuse or recycle into something with a purpose.

The strange thing was, Thistle knew that they didn't have to do this. Someone, or more likely lots of someones, were allowing this to happen - and, so it turned out, inviting it. The ones who happened to live in tall towers, far away from the smell and the mess and the miles and miles of garbage were the ones who decided when they could take another delivery of detritus.

And they got paid to do it, too. They got paid very well.

So Thistle did what anyone who discovered that, for some reason, his little garbage planet had been deemed worthy of a Senshi: he fought. He gathered his brethren and slowly but surely, they knocked the towers down and brought low those who thought themselves so high.

And then they were all down in the garbage together.

And then the garbage had its own ideas. What Thistle would later learn was Chaos seemed, at the time, just…an impossibility. The garbage was…coming alive. It took vaguely humanoid shapes, of all sizes, and began stomping around, absorbing and crushing and destroying everything and everyone in its path.

Except for Thistle. Thistle spent the next many hundreds of years avoiding being stomped on, mostly; occasionally, he'd be able to temporarily destroy a smaller one, but it would eventually reform itself out of black inky bile and different forgotten hunks of debris. It was never ending.

The memories of who he'd been before - a hero, a leader - began to fade. He began to forget. He began to return to what was safe: being small. Hiding. Being nothing more than a child, in a world he couldn't possibly begin to understand. He went underground. When they found him there, he went above-ground, scaling what structures hadn't been destroyed. He traveled all over his planet, looking for a place to hide, and did not find one.

Instead, he found a way out, a string he could pull that didn't have trash and death on the other side of it. He took his chance without a second thought. In his dreams, he still sees the great moving mountains of other cultures' garbage, stomping past whatever little hidey-hole was keeping him alive. He made himself so small, and he hardly ever remembers what it's like to be anything but that…but sometimes, in his dreams, he sees it, like a flash, a bright spark in inky darkness. That power, he thinks, might still be buried deep within him.

Deep, deep, deep within him. He's just not sure if he's brave enough to find it again.

What was he doing?

Zebulon had always been inescapably nosy–of the four, he probably had the strongest representation of the gay gossip gene–but something was more pressing about this nosiness. Every move that Elliot made was being met with suspicion, even the moves he made to go to the toilet.

Moves that brought him closer to the door were met with the most suspicion.

He didn’t know the exchange Tobias and Elliot had the night before, but he had to assume Elliot knew the door was blocked. Dragging heavy s**t wasn’t exactly quiet. If he was trying the door anyway, then, for what reason was he doing it? Had he found something in the bathroom he could use for escape? Had he powered up and was testing it before he just teleported out?

He jumped when the doorknob not only twisted, but the door pushed forward.

He settled when he saw the person on the other side was definitely still just a boring civilian.

“Elliot,” said Zebulon, dryly, looking up from where he sat on the floor. “What do you want?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

Honestly, there was a small part of Zebulon that took a bit of glee in shocking Elliot so badly that he swore. Let him be off-balance in the way all of them felt so terribly off-balance. Let him suffer for it. Another small gleeful part enjoyed it in the way best friends enjoyed razzing each other.

The rest of him was tired, tired in so many ways. The exhaustion didn’t stop the snort of air, though, harsh as ever. “Good joke, a great joke even, but I’ll need you to stop anyway.” He rolled his eyes. “Nothing about this is sexy, Ellie.”

He wasn’t sure if Elliot would be able to see the gesture at the chair with his limited scope of view, but he gestured widely at it nevertheless.

“Nothing about this is giving sexy. Better s**t to use for that.”

Zebulon heard every ounce of that sarcasm, and normally he’d rise to the occasion and mirror it until one of their mutual partners either lost their minds in laughter or told them both to calm down, but he met it with a roll of his eyes instead. It felt strange and awkward the moment he had done it, but really, did it matter?

This was one of the people who had betrayed him the most on the planet. He’d confront rolling his eyes feeling wrong later.

“Don’t think I could be sexy right now anyway.”

That was certainly a rarity in its own right; Zebulon had some notoriety among the four of them and in their friendship circles for never quite not being ready. He knew there was a time and a place, sure. Being in his own home was usually both the time and the place.

Right now, with the heavy air that hung over them and the dried blood on Diryas’ knuckles, it was nowhere near.

With a heavy sigh, Zebulon pulled from his lips, “Did you want something?”

It was about as flat as Zebulon felt as the adrenaline left his body earlier, and he felt it fitting the miserable mood if nothing else. He sighed, averting his eyes for a moment, letting out a confirmation of, “No, it’s not.”

To the bathroom he would remain until he was at the point where they had gotten a royal involved and he was leaving the Negaverse. That was the rule and the plan as it had been settled.

… Well, sort of. They kind of just decided they needed to put him somewhere to keep an eye on him and also prevent him from leaving. It was terribly hostage-like in some ways, where his payment to get freed was his purification. Perhaps it should have sat worse in his gut than it did. Perhaps the fact that it didn’t represented a problem.

Perhaps the fact he needed to worry that Elliot might kill them all was a bigger problem of its own.

The breaking of the silence pulled Zebulon from his own mire, and he turned toward the crack in the door with a flat, “The impossible, but,” because there was no undoing any of this s**t, was there? Elliot sure had done everything he had done, and many of those things repeatedly, even if it wasn’t to people they trusted in their circles, but sometimes it was to him. “I’ll settle for you leaving the Negaverse.”

Did he remember? A lot had happened in the past … he couldn’t even tell at this point. A vague look at his phone told him too long and yet not long enough, too short and yet not short enough, and not long enough for him to have slept, and yet it would have been if he hadn’t appointed himself the one to watch over him.

“You remember what Toby said, right? Doesn’t have to be?”

Zebulon didn’t honestly know what he thought about that prospect. Elliot had drained him and left him unconscious in a park, in a series of events that had apparently resulted in him becoming a Negaverse person of interest. Was there really anything that resolved that? Was there anything Elliot could offer that would make that better that would be more than a temporary bandage?

“I don’t know what I want from you. An undo button would be ideal. Hard to trust the guy who drained me and left me unconscious in a park in a city crawling with people who would have seen me as easy prey.” His hand ghosted over his chest. “One slick move and,”

He twisted his hand.

“Pop.”

“I was your first?” His voice was dripping with the sarcasm he’d usually banter with. “I’m flattered.”

He wasn’t.

The news that Elliot tried to come back for him, though? That was a disruption to the narrative that he had set up in his mind the moment that the betrayal news had struck. Knowing that Elliot had been the one to drain him had made his blood run cold. It still was running cold. Even if he had come back, it was still a betrayal, and it still hurt.

But it shed a different kind of light on it, anyway.

Another piece of his statement caught him though, and the part of Zebulon that was still wrapped up in fury wasn’t quite ready to let that slide. “Who do you think deserves it?” Perhaps the bite wasn’t fair. Perhaps none of this was fair. “People at whatever club you were attending that night?”