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love and deepspace: sylus

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WHO: Sylus & Alex
WHAT: Sylus predictably gets himself into more trouble than he can handle
WHEN: Early January
WHERE: Starting near-ish to Nightwake, moving later
WARNINGS: TBC

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Sylus has been 'missing' for a few days. This in itself isn't entirely unusual - the man goes where he likes with his own plans and intentions, and isn't always in communication with people when he has his mind put to something - but when Mephisto shows up at Alex's window, banging loudly on the glass with his beak and squawking, she might get the idea that something is wrong.

Mephisto, unfortunately, doesn't speak, and Sylus certainly didn't send him. So, lacking a note or any means to actually tell Alex what's going on, as soon as the mechanical crow has Alex's attention he resorts to hopping up and down the windowsill agitatedly and cawing.

Would you try and get hold of Sylus, Alex? He's been doing things he shouldn't.

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Alex, for many and various reasons including her ongoing uncertainty just what kind of relationship she had with the head of Onychinus outside of a heavily complicated one he clearly knew more about than she did, found herself unconcerned by the sudden silence. There's nothing he owes her, communication wise, and unlike with Zayne, from whom an extended silence would worry her for reasons including abandonment issues she has not touched on at all thank you very much, she's not on high alert to that absence.

Mephisto, on the other hand, is a wonderful indication of something being wrong. As the spy-bird for Sylus, there's no reason for him to be at her window, let alone at the small place she's renting — so with the window open, she stares at the crow and grimaces.

"Okay, my crow speech skills are rusty," she says, knowing she's never had skills in speaking with crows, just a talent for reading emotion when specifically emoted her way from an animal form, "Buuut there's something wrong."

With Sylus.

Why in the worlds does that make her stomach feel... unsettled? She knows he's far from undefeatable, she's been on premises dodging antimatter to that particular extent, and while this world is more open than Etraya was, it isn't less dangerous. Alex hesitates for all of a rough fifteen seconds before she has her local device up and puts in a call to his number, not even blinking that she's saved his contact information as "Gotham Crow." It'd only make sense to her, and she still doesn't really know what Gotham is, but she hadn't been thinking all that hard about it in the first place.

Ring, ring.

There is very much something wrong. If Mephisto's appearance alone doesn't show that much, his behaviour certainly would. He fusses and squawks at her until she moves and even when it's clear she is making a move to try to contact his master he still seems to be unusually unsettled.

The phone rings... and rings... and rings. Sylus doesn't pick up.

Mephisto caws loudly.

A minute later, whether she attempts to call again or not (he will won't answer), a location pin appears on her phone. It marks somewhere far, far outside of Nightwake, around half way between the city and the barrier holding the Darkness back, somewhere in the Autumn segment.

The sinking sensation in her stomach is only getting worse. For a moment she almost wants to believe she's simply getting sick, or her stomach is cramping for other reasons, but Alex isn't the kind to lie to herself. Not when she knows it'd be a lie, and not when she has to face she's worried. Mephisto is worried. Sylus is worrying.

"Mephisto, can we get you some kind of translation collar —" she says, cutting herself off when the location pin shows on screen. Alex curses under her breath, looks to Mephisto and narrows her eyes. "Do not repeat that, please."

She's already turning to head toward the door, grabbing her jacket from the hanger on the wall by the door. Her keys are shoved into her pocket, the phone kept out as she jogs out to where her motorcycle rests. Should protocore tech be around on a world unstable for other reasons? Alex isn't asking, and with her attaching her phone to a clamp between her handlebars, she's not going to start worrying about it now. Pulling on the helmet, she glances around for Mephisto, her visor up as she calls out to him if she can see him.

"If you have his location, find me the fastest way there, okay?" He has a birds eye view on everything. She knows that matters, even as her visor slams shut and she's already turning the engine and heading down the road toward that blip and the nearest teleportation crystal that'll get her out into the Autumn segment.

Because of course, he couldn't do things anything less than halfway to hell and back.

Mephisto does as he's asked, getting a good vantage point within sight of Alex once she gets out into the segment. He caws now and then to make sure she's following and although it does seem that sometimes he's taking her a longer way around, he's definitely steering her clear of obstacles that would make it more difficult to get through on a motorcycle.

They draw closer to the marker pin, hours outside of the Nightwake outer city borders, and finally a figure appears in the distance.

White-haired, dressed in black, walking determinedly but with a stilted pace as if injured or in pain despite there not being any blood or visible injuries on him. He lifts his head up when he hears Mephisto caw out from above him and then looks down again, his expression briefly pinching in annoyance.

Traitorous bird. He was managing fine.

(He was not managing fine at all.)

Who would have thought that a little trip out to the Barrier would end up like this?

When she does eventually see the familiar figure walking in anything but his relaxed usual amble, Alex frowns behind her helmet. She doesn't bother slowing down until she's close, and even then she only slows down to plant a foot and help drift spin her back wheel around so she's facing back toward Nightwake. This isn't exactly an easy ride, even taking shortcuts. That's weeks of land outside the city — normally train or flight distance, and neither exist around here.

Even if there are literal flying air ships.

She hits the kickstand with her foot as she dismounts her bike, leaving its quiet engine purring as she pulls her helmet off and stalks toward Sylus. She's visible concerned, brow furrowed in a mix of that concern and a touch of irritation she can't really explain.

"Sylus! What happened? Mephisto was pulling his feathers out worrying about you!" Hyperbole rather than literal anything, but it's about the energy Mephisto had been giving off. Moreover, she doesn't feel it was exaggerated now that she's out here. "I'll start pulling his feathers out worrying next thing if I don't start hearing explanations. Where are you hurt?"

Scanning him with her eyes, she steps closer and promptly starts trying to determine where she can sling her arm around him to redirect him toward her purring motorcycle. Why wasn't he teleporting himself? Sure, she doesn't fully understand how his Evol works, but this all is feeling worse the more things start pinging as outright wrong with him.

"I told him not to bother you, kitten."

His voice sounds tight and tense around the edges. Alex has heard what he sounds like when he's injured before now, before his rapid healing kicks in.. as well as the way he so easily shrugs off that there is anything wrong with him at all. The sun shining down is not helping matters in the slightest.

"But he wouldn't listen. As usual."

And he is avoiding the question. He tilts his head a bit, as if he might look over his shoulder if the motion of turning around wouldn't cause him to lose his deceptively steady footing.

"I'm not hurt. A Darkness-infected creature and I had a little... disagreement, close to the Barrier." He can see the way she's trying to figure out how to support him, and she's probably wondering why he hasn't teleported, too? The fact of it is that he tried, and it's probably the most agony he's been in for some time. He didn't get very far.

"You should probably keep your hands to yourself."

Alex ignores the overly friendly pet name as usual, just like she ignores his statement about keeping her hands to herself. Sliding one arm around his waist, she tugs him closer to her, frantically flipping through her mental inventory about what the Darkness does when it infects one of the otherworlders, picking up a few possibilities just from what Sylus hasn't already done.

"Uh-huh. Sure."

She likewise turns them both toward her bike, mule stubborn as she gets them moving that way.

"So you're what... Darkness infected yourself? Seems a little ironic with what your Evol looks like," she says, but he can probably tell her pulse rate is up, and she's not summoning up even a hint of a half-assed smile to make it seem like she's joking. (She is, vaguely, attempting a joke.) "Okay." Breathing in, then out, the touch of a furrow on her brow as she frowns. "Who do we need to get you to?"

What is it they're supposed to do when Darkness infects a person? Is it native magic that helps, is it the oddity of touch necessity in this place, is it something else? She's seen the looming wall of Darkness at the fringes of the boundaries of their 'world' here, but she hasn't tried to touch it, let alone resonate with it at this point. It seems like a markedly bad idea, and Sylus isn't currently changing her opinion on the matter. But what were they supposed to do when they came into contact with the Darkness and were contaminated? Her mind is pulling up blanks to her consternation and increasing, pointed worry.

She would be able to feel the way he tenses up when she touches him in spite of his warning. Normally, such an unwanted show of physical contact would have him wisping himself away, so why doesn't he do that now?

Reasons.

Everything hurts. The infection is like a screaming agony over his nerves and attempting to teleport had only made it worse. As if it had somehow accelerated the spread. When all is said and done he's doing a very good job of not showing exactly how much pain he's actually in.

He gives a small shake of his head to the question.

"I wouldn't know."

And that is... an honest answer, not simply Sylus trying to be evasive. Getting into this situation hadn't been something that he planned, after all, and he hadn't got so far as looking into how he would do something about it. That had been a problem to deal with when he got himself back to Nightwake, if Mephisto hadn't decided to get outside parties involved.

Half way to the bike, a jolt of pain across his nerves has him missing a step and stumbling, dropping heavily to one knee. He breathes raggedly for a moment or two, trying to shake it off.

Maybe it is better she's here. Catch him saying that out loud, though.

There's no easy way to catch his full weight when he stumbles and starts going down. Alex is only able to support and steady the rest of him as his knee is about to hit, unable to stop the inevitable effect of gravity that has so much of his weight bearing down on that knee. Her arm around his ribs now is tight, with her hold on his arm slung over her shoulders tightening as she gathers herself to lift him up to his feet again.

"Come on, we're almost there. If you don't know what'll help, I'll call ahead to the hospital — I don't know if it's safe for us to use the teleportation crystal when you're like this."

Unable to make full use of his Evol, unable to even walk. It's the sort of insight into the degree of pain he has to be experiencing that sends chills down her spine. Alex swallows, all but pulling him along and making him lean onto her for support as she gets them moving again to her bike. Now expecting that his legs could give out on him, she's not politely letting him pretend he can stay unsupported with her as the extraneous decoration.

"Touch energy isn't helping at all?" Verifying as she presses her lips together, eyes flicking ahead to her phone attached between the handlebars of her bike.

Sylus isn't expecting her to be able to catch him. Luckily he knows how to fall. He also, thankfully, knows when to bury his ego and doesn't resist her efforts to help him back up. The little kitten has always been stronger than she looks.

He makes a face once he's upright again, part a pained grimace and part annoyance at being in such a position at all. Her question gets a small shake of his head. Later, he'll give some thought to just why the central magical tenet that seems to power this world is so utterly useless against the power being held behind the barrier.

"It doesn't seem to be, does it?" Since it... should be helping by now, if it's going to, shouldn't it. "It looks like I really am at your mercy."

Always room for a wry joke, even when his already pale complexion has been drawn even whiter by his condition. He does lean in against her with his brows furrowed, speaking volumes in doing so however lightly, though he's still urgently doing repeated self-assessments as they reach the bike. His Evol is a liability. He can almost feel the Darkness threading through him, a white-hot agony up the length of his right arm - hidden by a glove and sleeve - tapering out to tendrils of itching, throbbing pain across his shoulder and chest and down the entire right side of his body.

Sylus is not so proud as to not be able to understand that he is in a bad way.

"Make the most of it. Who knows when it might happen again."

If it did help, he'd at least feel some relief. The fact it's currently only doing her technical good, for an internal gauge nowhere near too low, is unsettling. She's not a medical professional, she can't help that way, but damn if she can't dial in to the ones who might know.

Alex steadies Sylus when it comes to mounting her bike, so firmly at his side and pulling him slightly off balance into her that it's all but telling him to throw his leg over at whatever speed he can manage. "Too high a price," she says, trying to sound light and only managing to sound serious. "The one time I wanted you at my mercy was finding that stupid brooch, and even that you gave up too easily."

Once she'd figured out he had it, and she'd gone through the whole stupid trick of, well, not actually managing anything effective and ultimately being allowed to 'win' the brooch off him. It was a faintly embarrassing memory before, but now it's simply more factual, slightly amusing. What had she even expected? Even Alex can't really say at this point. She'd wanted answers so badly...

Just didn't feel like the answers she kept getting were leading to anything bright or beautiful. More dangerous, and not just the things she'd been learning from Sylus. It's striking to her in that moment to realize a literal criminal boss has been more honest about what he's said or what he isn't saying, has been more direct with his violence, than the guy she grew up with or the doctor she trusts her health to, and only one of those guys is also here.

(Her work partner and the artist she also bodyguards for as side stints are... not people she deeply trusts, beyond trusting them to perform to their facades. It's pretty clear neither of them are just the people they present themselves to be at the surface. Rafayel is even less subtle about it than Xavier.)

She mounts the bike in front of Sylus and pulls him flush to her back, ducking her head forward to get her helmet shoved back in place. Alex doesn't want to end up wind blinded. Visor up, she says, "Hold on as tight as you can. If I need to tie you to me, don't think I won't."

Feeling enough of what she considers to be compliance before she takes off, Alex has her phone calling to the main hospital in Nightwake, waiting on the line for one of the charge nurses in the Emergency Room. She's still waiting when a shadow overtakes them, the rush of wind at cross-section to the wind generated by the speed she's driving her bike at leaving her shifting weight and pulling her bike to the side sharp and sudden, near to sending them both skidding sideways. One arm holds Sylus's arms tight to her waist, while the other one locks elbow and holds up the handlebars even as her foot props them up through the drag and a very large, very purple and silver dragon slams down into the unpaved road in front of them, frills of its mane standing on end as it hisses out a long, low, "You. You corrupted fool! What, were you planning to ride to our residence, you pathetic thing, suffering the agonies of your own hubris?"

Alex straightens them up, possibly with Sylus's help, pulling off her helmet as soon as she can manage it. "Uh." Her eyebrows lift. "All that aside, Lord Dragon," what is she even supposed to call a talking dragon (Sylus, would you even know—), "Are you able to help?"

He's hiding it a little bit less, now she already knows he's a wreck, but he still gets onto the bike with a deceptive amount of ease. Though she makes a point of pulling him closer he doesn't lean in too heavily, still so very conscious of the fact that he might pass this infection on to her and that she might not weather it as well as he is currently doing...

(And who knows what it might do to her heart, when all is said and done. It doesn't bear thinking about.)

Since they are on the move and there isn't much he can do about that, he lapses into thought while the bike rumbles under them and the landscape speeds past. Mephisto is somewhere up above them. He can hear the occasional cawing from the mechanical bird.

Normally, the sudden appearance of a very large potential enemy would have him reaching for his gun. It's probably lucky for them both that the jolt of pain that comes along with needing to maintain his balance on the seat behind Alex keeps him from doing that until the dragon speaks to them. And... has an attitude problem, apparently.

"If it isn't, it's going to need to get out of our way," he mutters to her. His tone is clear enough - if he has to, he can absolutely push himself to make that happen.

Alex barely checks her impulse to elbow Sylus for his muttering; he probably feels the little twitch of her arm that would presage it if she hadn't caught herself first. Instead, bike steadied, she keeps her eyes on the dragon...

... Who huffs out a long sigh, coming closer on surprisingly soft feet. Its immenseness seems like there should be more of an impact to environment than what actually happens. Bringing its head to about their level, it gives them a very dry look.

"Don't make your life harder than you need to, youngling. We're here to help against some people's better inclinations." The massive head comes to hover right over them, tipped sideways so one large, beautiful eye is regarding Sylus and Alex both. "Do I need to consider you one of those?"

Alex has no idea what purification feels like, but even she can pick up on the moment a new magic starts suffusing not only the man at her back, but herself to some extent too. Probably a really good idea to keep not using my Evol. Unexpected complications aside, one never knows when resonance might hit... in an unbalancing way. Still, she tightens her grip around Sylus's arm, twisting around to regard his face while the dragon continues to bathe them in shadow while mending with what might feel like liquid light.

Sylus wouldn't know what it felt like either. It isn't as if any part of any of his lives have ever involved anything like it for the faintest hint of familiarity. Yet, still, something in him seems to understand what is happening as he feels the warmth of the dragon's magic wash over him.

He doesn't show much on his face. His gaze shifts to meet Alex's when she tries to turn around and look at him, and there's the faintest upward twitch of an eyebrow as if to ask 'what?'

It's working, the tingling pain and throbbing, ice-fire agony of the Darkness digging through his body receding into little more than a memory, and Sylus feels the tension he had been holding in his entire body for the past several hours slowly slide away, leaving him worn and aching.

And he is exhausted.

A few spots swim into his vision. He blinks them away. The dragon is regarded with a cool and slightly curious expression. That... was power. Something worth the time it would take to research.

"... Thank you."

Yes, he does know how to be polite when gratitude is warranted.

The dragon exhales gently over both their heads, the warmth of the air he breathes out stirring both their hair before his shadow retreats as the dragon pulls his head away. "At least you remember manners," he says, but there's no bite in his voice now, his great eye turning to regard Alex consideringly. He doesn't say anything, only nods to himself: the Darkness corruption hadn't yet transferred.

Taking a step back and to the side, the dragon settles his wings against his back again, the urgency that'd made him irritable starting to settle down. "Make sure the youngling Little One rests," he says, gaze on Alex. Both of them are comparatively small, but he figures she'll understand, even if she is somewhat smaller than the Little One.

Alex resists the urge to look back over her shoulder at Sylus, who towers almost a foot taller than her. Little one? Uh... sure, on relative size, she supposes. Most everyone human would look smaller than an adult dragon.

"I will, thank you." A pause, while she continues to hold onto Sylus's arm at her waist. "Dragon sir." What's she supposed to address him as? The dragon doesn't give any clues, gathering power in his haunches as he crouches and then launches skyward with a few powerful sweeps of his immense wings. There might be magic involved in that take-off as well, but nothing she recognizes, and the wind and dirt kicked up has her raising her other arm and shielding her face.

Everything dies down almost as fast. Lowering her arm, Alex utters a very thoughtful comment.

"Huh."

That he bites back a retort is a miracle in itself but let it never be said that Sylus does not know when to be adequately grateful. He can see the way Alex resists turning her head to look at him... they both know exactly to whom the dragon is referring.

It's definitely the first time in a while he's been called 'little' in any respect.

When the great beast has finally gone, Sylus briefly tenses his jaw. He breathes in slowly, exhales, and then lightly rests just enough of his weight against Alex's back to be noticed. Now the agony of the Darkness cutting through him is gone his body is fighting to repair and refresh itself, and with the sun beating down on them as well as Evol-induced exhaustion playing a part...

He's a proud man, but not stupid. His chin props gently against her shoulder.

"Your eloquence never ceases to astound me."

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closed;

rolls in after the new year saying whaaat

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whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasup

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