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Post by 🆃ʀɪɴɪᴛʀᴏᴛᴏʟᴜᴇɴᴇ 🅼ᴏɴᴏᴍᴀɴɪᴀ on Dec 20, 2019 19:14:01 GMT -8
"How even..."
Grade floated on the edge of what was the Netopian Lake, now only so much as a Netopian sinkhole of sorts as the water's all gone and the barrier at the bottom now has a large hole in it leading to... Wait, what's this hole supposed to lead to again?
He thought Legion would be here as he remembers this is where he "lives", but at this point he's probably already been long desecrated. Grade was slightly annoyed by that. A new body's good and all, but having that old body back just for legacy's sake would have been good too, no matter how stained by Dark power it has been.
About this hole, then... Grade stayed floating on the edge, deciding if he should hover down and enter it. He remembers his edgy dark counterpart wanting to go to in here for so long. Is it really loaded with Bug energy? If it is, then have the people who've already went in absorbed it for themselves? How would he know for himself if not to jump in? What does Bug energy even look like? Before he knew it, he was then floating right at the edge of the hole itself. The unusually eternal sunset (or is it sunrise) of the Netopian network illuminated the hole none. There may very well be nothing but decay, but he's heavily tempted to jump in it.
He thought some more. To be fair, he had nothing left to lose at this point. Nobody would miss him. Nobody even knows him. Dead or not, he may have never even existed in the first place and the world would still be the same. Navis are destroying each other instead of the humans that created and neglected them in the first place. Nothing he can do will change that one bit. The people he wanted to see didn't really matter to him anyway. It's all curiosity repackaged as an excuse to stay awake and roam around endlessly.
He's fully decided. He hovered ten meters up and flipped himself upside-down, looking up (down) straight at the hole, and then he dived down, letting gravity do the rest.
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Post by Gaia on Dec 20, 2019 21:02:24 GMT -8
StrifeMan.EXE
The man with ribbons tasked him with a simple job. Be free from the bindings that once held him, enforce mercy where mercy would be welcome, and evolve into something new from his previously mentally fragile state. Moving along the edges of Netopia, having left the Undernet for a moment, StrifeMan considered those wounds - the wounds he had inflicted up himself in an attempt to flee the Undernet - and was reminded instead of the very words that now kept him coming back.
The man with the ribbons was very kind to him, all things considered. He came forward, frothing and feral, and he didn't instantly murder him (despite his own attempts at the same). It was these things that StrifeMan thought of as he rounded the corner and saw something quite strange.
He could feel the strings of fate moving him ever forward as he watched the strange Navi rise up above the lake, and then plummet himself to his doom. In many ways, StrifeMan watched this unfold and smile, the cruel winds of fate claiming yet another soul that was lost to its ministrations. Then, he felt a shift in fate, and realized that something was amiss - this Navi was far more than just an individual leaping to his death. It was someone in need.
StrifeMan almost felt himself vomit at the thought, and then came to a different conclusion: This was a valuable resource to the Undernet, and there was no need to let it go to waste. Leaping forward, StrifeMan's inner benevolence reached out a glowing hand from his core, the dark and decrepit form he usually took giving way to this angelic being, with bronzed skin and transcendent wings, and took Grade into his arms. Soaring past the glitched scene of the Bugged Lake, StrifeMan's benevolence placed Grade down, moving aside as a grotesque change of appearance resulted in his usual, red-skinned and haunched over form took place again.
"Heheheheheheh! Ho, strange thing, fate has brought us today! A man trying to make himself a fish, with no gills to breath! Maybe the bugs are different from normal water . . . hahahahehahehahhahe cough, cough. StrifeMan rolled over, coughing wildly out of his laugh, and looked back at Grade, whom he had just saved. "Instead of throwing yourself to the fish, why not swim down stream to a different pond, with different rules and rulers?"
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Post by 🆃ʀɪɴɪᴛʀᴏᴛᴏʟᴜᴇɴᴇ 🅼ᴏɴᴏᴍᴀɴɪᴀ on Dec 21, 2019 1:37:37 GMT -8
"I don't quite understand the analogy much, but are you recruiting me for something? Actually hold that thought," Grade sat up and opened an item window, glancing between it and the other Navi. He couldn't tell if StrifeMan was really damaged or not due to his appearance, but the coughing made him assume the worst. "Are you alright? I have, I-- hm." He scrolled entirely down his window, then once more just to be sure. "I have nothing for repair and, and stuff. Are you gonna be fine?"
He closed the window and stood up, brushing dust off the sleeves and back of his 'coat'. The long ribbon connecting both of his sleeves shook on their own to do the same. Thanks for saving me, by the way. I, I suppose it really would be dangerous in there, isn't it... He chuckled. That's definitely something I'm not... ready for. Anyway, 'different pond'?"
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Post by Gaia on Dec 21, 2019 17:39:36 GMT -8
StrifeMan.EXE
Getting a closer look at the Navi, Grade would realize that StrifeMan was haunched over, the majority of his physical body covered in strange glyphs, wounds and hidden behind a veil of strange, mist-like apparitions. At his chest, where his heart would be, there is instead a deep indentation with a constantly churning void of red and black smoke. As StrifeMan turned to look at him, the coughing seemed to only get worse. To put it bluntly, StrifeMan looked miserably ill, hurt and in on a bad run - and, yet, the sinister smile on his face turned it all into a grim visage.
"Ooooh, someone who cares! That is nice, very nice. StrifeMan will be fine, no worries! Maybe StrifeMan misunderstood - do you not have a soul, corrupt with anger and misguided by rage? The soul that lies under deep, only aroused by trauma and despair? The Darksoul that fuels us from the Undernet?"
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Post by 🆃ʀɪɴɪᴛʀᴏᴛᴏʟᴜᴇɴᴇ 🅼ᴏɴᴏᴍᴀɴɪᴀ on Dec 21, 2019 19:20:56 GMT -8
The more Grade looked at him, StrifeMan just seemed to be in worsening shape... but if he says it's fine, then it must be fine, right? It may just be StrifeMan's aesthetic or something.
"Oh, a Dark Ss... I actually had one but," he chuckled again. He felt awkward for having to put what he considers his 'edgy phase' into words again. "I was too into my Dark Soul that I developed a mechanism to activate it as forcefully as I could, and," with both his hands gesturing around, "I developed an alternate personality that took over my Dark Soul, eventually that Dark Soul took over my body, I was then banished from my own body and now I'm this, this one. This... new me."
Grade scratched the back of his neck. In a way, he misses that power. Well, not enough to risk making another monster born from himself, anyway.
"So, yeah, this body doesn't have a Dark Soul in it. I no longer feel rage and schadenfreude. Sorry to disappoint you."
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Post by Gaia on Dec 27, 2019 12:07:13 GMT -8
StrifeMan.EXE
StrifeMan narrowed his gaze at Grade, frowning at him. "Vile and befuddle!" he hissed, suddenly taking a few steps back. The wildest thing occurred, as it appeared in all ways as though StrifeMan moved forward, but each step took him in reverse. "I. . . you . . . you were taken over? So you threw a part of your soul away? Rage and schadenfreude overwhelmed you, and this one felt bad about it? Haheahehahehhahehahahee! That's amazing! No, no, no!" StrifeMan continued on, suddenly moving around Grade almost like a predator stalking his prey. The humanoid figure lowered itself onto its hackles, claws and fur sprouting over his previously armored body.
"A wolf that had a sheep inside of it, and the sheep comes out to play? Such a strange thing, that is, when the sheep is usually the one being worn. Or perhaps this sheep is still just something on the outside, and the wolf is still down deep, dormant?" As he spoke, StrifeMan's body shifted into a more progressively lycan form, his baroque armor eventually growing back out to cover his legs once again. "The slashing and the smashing, the roaring and the goring, the seeking and the SCREECHING?!" StrifeMan was suddenly very close to Grade's face, his very much lycanthropic face suddenly shifting into a screeching eldritch horror that was more beak than it was anything else. "That was too much for you? StrifeMan thought he sensed something meaningful in you.
"Hohaheahheaheheee--cough, cough. Haa." StrifeMan stooped away from Grade and lowered himself down back into his constant prowl, slowly standing back up as that hole in his chest once again released an appendage, his current form being peeled away until he was his grey, charred, humanoid self again, standing back up on two legs. "A man with a lie is a man that might not die, but a man that to himself has lied . . . why, he's already died." He turned back to look at him, gazing the navi into his eyes directly. StrifeMan's eyes shifted constantly from their purest black, to this amalgamation of wild colors, feral brown, blinding white and any other design of creatures from a million different mythos. "StrifeMan offers purpose, to you, lost and without anything that appears willing to pay any cost. Find yourself that thing that you were scared of, if you dare to embrace it again. It was yours - you were gifted it. Take it. Own it. Be it. Be like StrifeMan, hahahe -- okay, maybe don't be like StrifeMan. StrifeMan has problems, its true, but they are his! No one else is allowed to feel and see what he sees, unless I lets them!" The deranged Navi moved around Grade, constantly, incessantly talking as his mind wandered from thought to thought, intent on letting it all out, even between Grade's attempts to respond - if he had any, moving to look at Grade's general direction whenever he spoke from time to time, his voice rising impossibly high and then dropping intensely low at random intervals, to a barely audible whisper at times.
He put his hands into his face - oh, wait, maybe his face was supposed to go into his hands? The enigma of body, spirit and reason trembled a moment before he looked back up at Grade, righting his strange autonomy from his twisted sense of reality back to normal. "Find what you've lost, and let it become found again. Once you've found what you've lost and decide to find it for yourself again, and promise to not lose it, then . . . well, I'll find you, I suppose."
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Post by 🆃ʀɪɴɪᴛʀᴏᴛᴏʟᴜᴇɴᴇ 🅼ᴏɴᴏᴍᴀɴɪᴀ on Dec 27, 2019 19:46:13 GMT -8
As StrifeMan in his scarier, different forms drew his face closer to Grade's, he instinctively covered his nose. A bit insensitive. Other than that, he just stood there listening, digesting his words, observing as StrifeMan changed his bodily details as he moved around, trying to not get distracted by his randomly changing tone.
Three seconds after StrifeMan's speech has ended, one phrase lingered in Grade's mind. 'Find what you've lost'... Finding what he's lost-- Isn't that what he went here for in the first place? But he wasn't here, was he? Grade turned away from StrifeMan and towards the 'Lake', thinking where else what he'd lost could've went. It must be that place, where he'd last seen from Legion's eyes before he got stabbed by some unusual brat, and his uncontrollable telepathic connection with Grade entirely severed. He bit his lip and twirled the ribbon attached to his conical sleeve.
"I think he went in the UnderNet. The thing that I've lost, I mean. I don't know if I still have clearance to get in there, it's been a while..."
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Post by Gaia on Dec 27, 2019 22:18:36 GMT -8
StrifeMan.EXE
He perked up as his partner suddenly began talking. StrifeMan turned, interested, and moved until he was directly behind him, moving his head to be directly next to Grade's.
"So . . . does this one need a path to a place that has since been displaced?" StrifeMan muses, cackling to himself as he reached a hand - normal, human, uncalloused palms accompanied by the feral claws coming from where his fingers would normally be. "Take my hand, if you wish to be reunited with what you lost . . . StrifeMan can take you there."
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Post by 🆃ʀɪɴɪᴛʀᴏᴛᴏʟᴜᴇɴᴇ 🅼ᴏɴᴏᴍᴀɴɪᴀ on Dec 28, 2019 0:00:07 GMT -8
Displaced? What does he mean, displaced? Grade was just about to ask him, until StrifeMan offered a hand to him while his head was above Grade's shoulder. In a way, it felt romantic, what with his choice of words as well. The warm feeling just almost nearly made him smile for once this day.
His metal glove slithered into his gauntlet, revealing a marble-white hand that was cold and hard to the touch. After staring at it intently for a second, he held at StrifeMan's palm, careful not to get scratched by his claws.
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Post by Gaia on Dec 28, 2019 7:43:20 GMT -8
StrifeMan.EXE
Grade's sense of romance made him feel one thing in a scenario - but he was hallucinating it. StrifeMan's presence was not warm. It was cold, desolate, and the shadow StrifeMan cast over him felt weighted, burdened, and crept across his skin like a chilling phantom only barely resisting the urge to rip him to pieces. If it weren't apparent before, Grade could feel the depravity and wretched malcontent radiating off of him.
Taking StrifeMan's hand was another sensation altogether. The world seemed more thin, fragile, his very sense of reality slipping as the very land before them seemed to waver and warp. StrifeMan's touch was almost searing, this crashing wave of agonizing sensations unlike anything Grade would ever feel before - the weight of all the pain, suffering, agony and sickness coursing through StrifeMan, altogether too many to describe, crashing over Grade. Before he could take his hand away, StrifeMan closes his hand, tight, barring his claws down on Grade's hand.
"Then let's go." StrifeMan's shadow shifted, coiling off of Grade and back onto the ground, as it opened up beneath them. They descended, into the darkness, into the depths.
[STRIFEMAN + GRADE LC => Hacker's N]
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Post by 🆃ʀɪɴɪᴛʀᴏᴛᴏʟᴜᴇɴᴇ 🅼ᴏɴᴏᴍᴀɴɪᴀ on Dec 28, 2019 17:17:09 GMT -8
Grade: 35/350 StrifeMan: 25/250
Thread closed
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