Funkydude527

IC Phogen: He smiled warmly at Hoto, patting her shoulder lightly. "Thank you. I will assuredly take you up on that offer." With a sigh that seemed to exhale the melodrama, she settled back into the cool, slick Phogen Hoto was used to. "In any case, I believe I have an organization to rebuild. I am not demanding, but I am offering further employment in the little study-group, mutual-protection, teamwork cabal I once had going." She looked over Hoto's shoulder with a very businesslike, gregarious smirk at Jayar and Zelnos. "And I extend that invitation to those who have not previously been in my employ as well. I assure you, our group is exclusively of mutual benefit between members, and is run like an organization, not an oligarchy."

IC Phogen: With efficency and grace. Phogen took a few breaths, returning to a state of self control. She punctuated her trembling with a clear of the throat and a wipe of the eyes. The rahkshi suddenly gave those gathered an icy stare. "If any of this emotional breakdown gets out, their will be repercussions. Please do not violate my trust." She raised her eyebrows, eyes still puffy, and said, daring Jayar to voice his compunctions with that glare, "Any questions?"

Hold on a second, you are actually going to pull that off? Then again, this is one of the heads of an asylum I am speaking to.. Looks at Phogen's musical inclination in the past few posts. Looks to makeshift harp. Looks to Phogen's staff. Thinks You know, the competition might be nice.

IC Phogen: There was a hitch in the rahkshi's breath. Nobody should want to be her friend after what she said. Nobody. It made no sense. It was wholly illogical, it had no benefit, it practically ensured some form of emotional pain in the future, it made no sense. But here Hoto was, offering to be her friend. No, she was making the statement that friendship was a state that already existed between them. That it has sprung up true despite its foundation of lies. Trembling, a pair of arms wrapped around Hoto. Phogen out a shattering breath through closed eyes, and buried his head in her shoulder. She couldn't let Zelnos and Jayar see her cry. She had an image to keep up. A reputation to maintain. With a cracking voice, sounding a little innocently childish and a little painfully wizened, Phogen made the only promise she could ever intend on keeping. "I-I'll t-t-try."

IC Phogen: The rahkshi was limp in her arms. The shoulders sank and he replied "Hoto... It would mean the world to me if you were my friend." Perhaps not the world, for that was a lofty price for something Phogen knew little of. "But I worry you and Exxan do not understand what you risk by trusting me. I am a backstabber, a cheat, a deceiver, a wretch, and I enjoy every minute of it. I'm not sure even how to be trustworthy or nice for the sake of being nice. I have no clue how to be selfless." The derahk sighed and whispered "I don't know how to be a friend."

IC Phogen: The derahk scratched her head and looked away. Honesty... a powerful tool with a painful tendency to backfire. It was a weapon this particular individual never held in her life, at least not without intent to wound. And now it seemed impossible to back out of being honest with this, the first kinsfolk Phogen had seen in a very long time. She decided to shoot for the stands. If she was being honest, then she might as well go big with it. Nobody would believe Jayar and Hoto and Zelnos anyways about this. It was too unfitting of his reputation. She quietly whispered "I fear I have no friends... That I cannot let myself have them. Everybody wants to follow me or have me lead them, but I don't think I will ever have a friend. On some level, I see friends as a liability. They are a chink in your armor for a knife to find, and worse, their betrayals are a method by which to twist the blade. But to have nobody, nobody at all but cronies and employees and enemies and associates is so lonely. So very very lonely. Embittering in a way I cannot put into words. And I would like to have even just one, maybe two I can confide in, to be open to, without fear of my personal weaknesses and essenced immorality and perversely twisted worldview being used against me. I try to do nice things to get friends. In the end I make up some excuse, some justification for engaging in something as foolhardy as altruism. I am so broken that I have to make up an excuse for doing good. So I never do good. And I never have a friend, despite the fact that I deeply wish I had a friend." Phogen covered her mouth and spat out bitterly. "My abyss is too dark and my intelligence refined too heinously for that now, dear Hoto. My soul is a mechanism of evil honed far beyond the title of 'abomination' that seeks out good only to destroy it and laugh long and loud. I do believe I will never have a friend because nobody would be able to stomach me."

She is a derahk. For a rahkshi as intellegent as her with that toolse be anything but a musician would simply not live up to the classy, Bond-villian motif she has going on. And they make her feel dirty. I mean, honestly. Intense emotions are for fools who want to get themselves killed, or show their soft underbellies to swords, or, Makuta forbid, white knights. Disgusting.

IC Phogen: "I... I do not know." Phogen relaxed a little, letting Hoto back just far enough for the minium of social good graces. She rubbed he back of her head, still a little aggrivated at the weakness. "I just... I just started playing, making sound for the sake of making sound, and... That happened. I felt it more than I thought it, if that makes any sort of sense. I didn't make the music so much as I let it come out." She found that verbalizing it was helping her process it. Phogen sighed resolutely. "I am sorry, Hoto. I didn't mean to..." Oh this was a fine point. He didn't mean to be that honest? That heartfelt and digustingly pure? Hoto wore the traits well, but on Phogen, such was ugly and, frankly, a little nauseating. He settled on a neutral set of terms that didn'y betray the usual unflappable guile. "...be that embarassingly open."

IC Phogen: The edgy, emotionally frayed Phogen was suddenly, and quite unexpectedly impacted with something in a sort of tackle. He tensed quite suddenly, ready for a fight, when he realized that this was a tackle of a different variety. He tryed to make up some excuse for accepting it. It would allow him to use this weakness as another way of solidifying... But... It seemed wrong somehow. That in of itself was frightening to Phogen. She couldn't afford to go soft. Well... Maybe not at school. But here, in the city she might be able to let down her guard a little. Just a little, and wherever it could not be used against her. Blast it all, she was going soft. She needed to do something despicable later to feel clean again. For now, however, he snapped his arms around Hoto and squeezed. Hoto would make a good anchor to reality for now. The slight tremble in his spines ceased, and with the dodge rahk acting as a sort of beacon, Phogen found his way back to reality. He cleared his throat and said "Thank you, Hoto." It was not the confedent voice she was used to, but it had that smooth, cool quality to it once more, despite the lack of volume and shades of shame. The crowd began to clear out, and Phogen, through her closed eyes, heard the clink of widgets as the crowd appreciated the performance and moved on.

IC Phogen: The music slowly shrunk away, that soft, smooth, sad melody remaining as the bombast faded. It tugged at the heartsrings, like the slund of a bird either fluttering against its cage, or too afraid to leave it with the door wide open. It was heartbreaking, but not in its tragedy. It was heartbreaking in its acceptance. It embraced the darker side, wounded by the knowledge that it was the only way for it to survive. Fittingly, the melody faded and remerged with the growing dark crecendo, the former balance of power coming back as the music came to a thunderous conclusion. It turned some heads with its volume. Phogen stopped playing and blinked rapidly, looking down at the ground and away. She cleared her throat. This display of emotion disgusted her, and showed remarkable weakness. She was having a hard time regaining control, and, quite aggrivatingly, it was inexplicable. She offered a feeble. "E-excuse me."

IC Phogen: The concerto finished, Phogen moved to a song of his own making, the crowds thinning once more. He hadn't noticed the exiting rahkshi in the doorway, focused squarely on his work. To him, composing was a strange sensation. He had theorized long and hard about this during his time off, but he still had no answer. The only thing he had confirmed was that his method was unique. To Phogen, composing was much like acting. It was the summoning of remembered emotions and behaviors into a medium that could be transmitted more easily. To summon a sound beyond base utility was to summon a fraction of one's soul. Phogen found it very natural and easy for her to do this in music, but she had figured it was due to her status as a creature of sound. But on occasions such as this, where idleness abounded and naught around seemed to threaten, her music became strange. Instead of summoning part of her soul, her whole soul would come forth, unbidden. Phogen found herself helplessly at the whim of her song. The derahk began the tune. It was opulent, dark, foreboding. It was quiet, but retained a sort of bombast to it. Slow and imperious, it rose from the brackish depths of sonic smallness and came clawing forth. Its touch became unassailable as it became more complex, adapting, changing to fit the morphing tide of the song, but always retaining that nocturnal, icy familiarity in the melody. The song grew slowly but surely, unstoppable, unflappable, unassailable. But somewhere deep within the core of this abyss, a small, sad, smooth sound ran its way through the tempest. Like the eye of a storm, or a hairline crack in the facade, it was easy to notice, but hard to nail down. It was inseparable from the guile of the melody, utterly inseparable, but it lacked that guile. It was such a beautiful, melancholy sound, that threatened but refused to be drowned out by the darkness it was part of. The composer was intensely focused on their work. Their body was no longer theirs. It was the song's. Like the staff that produced the sonorus, intense music, the passionate and intense body was but an instrument. Eyes shut, arms moving with purpose and feeling, the composer was in a sort of trance only an artist could experience. Emotions wrought on their face, vindictive conquest and selfish triumph and glee as pure as the wrathful deception that caused it. But another emotion existed, wincing and frowning through every time the sad and light sound came forth, like the compose was hit with a heartbreaking gunshot. Like a boat tossed about in the storm, however, it appeared only briefly and transiently in the temptest, where the listener thought it was imagined in the lengthy intervals where it was missing, but was so sure of its existance when it appeared as to feel guilty of ever doubting that the sound was, indeed, somewhere in there.

IC Phogen: The derahk looked up to acknowledge the arrival of Zelnos with a small smile before returning to her work.

IC Phogen: Idle hands were the tools by which Phogen often found herself working, and this was no exception. Having no access to the Vorjak's Ninth, the derahk contented himself with one of the Matoran's more famous sonatas, as played on the simple chrome staff he had resting on his lap. He balanced the staff on his knees, and struck the two tuning fork ends with his finger. Both produced the same, even tone. Then, with repeated small taps, the sound began. The sound was as phantasmic as her Matoran voice, but in this case it helped. By modulating the sound coming off the tuning forks for frequency and pitch, she was able to place the burden of the actual sound production on the percussive staff, and simply change the sound coming from each side to produce the music. The effect was an otherworldly, ethereal sound. The sonata she chose was equally surreal, so as the strange tribute to Vorjak would not be in poor taste. To Phogen's small delight, a very small fraction the crowds passing the Actors Pit seemed to agree. Six widgets was a meager sum, but the pride of being paid, or at least viewed, for the quality of his work was payment enough. It compensated for the missed opportunity of the concert to garner a small degree of attention from strangers. Still, he waited for the throngs passing out of the theatre to bring out his kinsmen, this idle activity losing its novelty with increasing rapidity.

IC Phogen: Phogen smiled and shrugged innocently. The best way to maintain the appearance of honesty was to say nothing untrue. "Believe it or not, I actually am a bit a musician myself, and thanks to a particularly generous donor to the arts, I have a small amount of funds to dispose of before returning to the academy. I acquired this particular meager payment as compensation for my skill a while back." She smiled warmly, winsomely, giving the impression of a friend who would pull off an elaborate scheme for mutual benefit. "Indeed."

IC Phogen: It took some quick mental math. She had pilfered a 100 widget bill and a 10 widget coin from the hapless fool on the cable car, used 17 widgets to buy the caramel cake, and tickets, at least those in a section that was not in the middle of nowhere ran at a little under 20 widgets when taxes were added... Oh, this worked out marvelously. Moreso if someone else had money, but either way it would benefit employee number one. She slid the 92 and change widgets across the counter. "Four tickets, second-tier house seating. Please distribute them to the other three rahkshi and the big fellow right there, good sir." With that, Phogen stepped aside politely to let the others approach, gracious in her payment.

IC Phogen: In elegant matoran, trying her best to look disarming and casual, Phogen ghoulishly whispered out "Oh, we are no escort. Just a few individuals trying to get tickets. We come of our own accord to experience the performance. We are patrons of the arts, and paying customers like any other. We mean only to rend our money to you in exchange for a chance to enjoy the fine arts." The voice was unnerving and phantasmic all at once, but his body language showed confidence and intelligence, as well as a sort of joviality.

IC Phogen: Phogen looked over, showing the intellegent smirk and glowing eyes under the hood. She offered up a wry bit of humor in a quiet voice. "To whom do I have the honor of sharing the third wheel with?"

IC Phogen: Phogen chuckled to herself, sauntering far enough back to allow for the illusion of privacy. The enigma next to her was intriguing. An obvious third wheel, and one who looked like not much fun was to be had. The derahk glanced over and examined Zelnos a bit before looking back to the two leading on. She idly commented as the group madetheir way to their seats "They're a nice couple, aren't they?" And she meant it. A couple with utility. And a happy couple to boot. A happy associate was an effective associate. And Hoto was certainly being effective.

See, you say that, but when has Phogen ever actually paid the people who supposedly work for her? I think they should form a union, try and get their rights upheld I approve of this idea. With every amount of approval I can merit.

Ah, don't let Funky intimidate you. There have been friends and successful Rahkshi for the last 250 pages, even though Phogen was no where to be found. Phogen's power came from its numerous minions, so if none of you let it control you but rather band together yourselves you'll do fine.SHHHHHH! Don't defame the cabal! Its a nice place. With many opprotunities for success and connections. But really, Phogen, like Exxan or Fang or Kat or the scads of wonderful characters on here are all fun to interact with. My devious planning and IC leaks into OOC discussion aside, I really do reccomend you interact as broadly as possible. Make friends, make enemies, make alliances, make plans, make good meals, make events. Dont limit your interactions is the point I was haphazardly (and probably a little faux-arrogantly) getting at.

Well, Shocks definitely out of that completely. Competence? We are talking about a Rahk who is afraid of flowers and cuts up books for fun. Loyalty? He would sell his friends for some half-decent food.They could at least could eat caramel cake together.

Dont avoid Phogen. To avoid Phogen is to avoid friends and success. Also, THEY ARENT SERVANTS! They are employees, associates, part of my cabal, part of my organization, but not servants. Imexpect not servitude an obedience, but compotence and loyalty.

IC Phogen: The rahk gave Jayar a thankful smile for biting his tounge before turning back to Hoto. "If you insist. So, what might be playing this evening? Opera? Play? Concert?" He took note of the unfamiliar being snaking his way, quite aggrivatingly, through the crowd. This one would be investigated further.

IC Phogen: He sighed and smiled wryly at Hoto, but it seemed fake, like he was hiding sadness remarkably well. "Hoto... The last thing I want to do is make your friend here feel uncomfortable. I can understand if he ah..." He looked at Jayar knowingly, encouraging with a brotherly grin. "If he would prefer me not tagging along."