Welcome to Gaia! ::

set mid-october

“I know. Shang-Chi is supposed to be good,” said Cybele, leaning back against the park bench. “But I’m trying to do it right and watch the MCU movies in order. I’m only up to Guardians of the Galaxy, which I know isn’t that impressive. They’re all fun, but I’ve only had three months, and I’m also trying to catch up on every other popular thing that’s been released in the last,” she tilted her head and waved a hand, “Ever.”

She sipped at her Starbucks.

Another Super was sitting across the bench from her, a boy a few years younger than her with longish strawberry-blond hair and a crooked smile. He didn’t seem too concerned by what she was saying. Instead, his eyes sparkled at her admission. “Aww, that’s alright,” he said. “We just gotta do a Marvel night or two, then. I’ve got ‘em all. We’ll get ‘em knocked out in order, and no spoilers.” His smile edged even farther to the left. “Promise.”

They were meant to be talking about Caedus and Lyndin and the problems that came with draining comets to make massively destructive weapons. That was why she’d called him over, but he’d shown up with a Pumpkin Spice Latte, which was something that she couldn’t remember trying, and the conversation had quickly shifted away from the war and towards other things that Cybele had not yet experienced. Movie theaters, for example.

Not that she could say she minded the way the conversation was going. She’d spent so much time over the past few days stressing about the war, and the aliens, and everyone’s opinions on the aliens.

Perhaps it was all right, just to have an evening to relax.



With their new orders and increased quotas, Jet and Aquamarine took it in turns to prowl the streets for targets. Sometimes they went together. Sometimes Jet went on his own while Aquamarine saw to the paperwork, and the various civilian obligations that still hampered their lives. Sometimes the opposite occurred.

That night found Aquamarine alone, skulking through alleyways, keeping to the shadows as he drained whatever hapless fool crossed his path. From one street to the next, he walked if the distance was short, and teleported when he didn’t care to waste a few seconds. Bodies fell here and there, sleeping in the dark corners of the city.

Two auras nudged at his senses soon enough, stationary for now, but a troublesome presence all the same. If he could sense them, then they could sense him.

Briefly, he considered heading in the opposite direction, taking himself out of range, but he needed more than his usual supply of energy, and he didn’t like to take civilian starseeds if he could help it.

A Super Senshi or two should do the trick.

Aquamarine teleported closer, into the park where the auras flared bright.




This was Destiny City. Auras passed by, sometimes. The Chaos one in the distance was concerning, but Cybele didn’t think so much of it until it flashed much closer all at once. Then she straightened, slamming her latte cup down on the park bench so quickly that some of the liquid splashed out onto her white skirts.

“Careful,” whispered Cybele. “We’ve got company.”

“I feel ‘em,” said the boy, already on his feet. He managed a final swig of pumpkin spice before slamming his drink down, however.

Cybele stood slowly, scanning the area. The aura was a General by feel. That was concerning enough, even if it was someone who was just out on their own, and worse if it was Sylvite, or somebody else coming to set up an ambush for her. Having somebody by her side was some comfort, but only so helpful if there were people powered down in the shadows, or off in the distance somewhere waiting to teleport in. She peeked through the trees in the direction of the aura, trying to get a read on who they might be up against.

The boy was less careful. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he was dashing forwards. “Come out, come out,”he called, singsong.

Cybele sucked in a breath and started running after him, a small wave of relief running over her as she finally caught a glimpse of blue in the distance. Not someone she’d known, at least.




Two against one wasn’t usually Aquamarine’s preference. Things could get messy with too many targets to keep track of. He liked his prey significantly weaker, and alone.

But the first Super, a young man, approached without an ounce of caution. Maybe it was stupidity. Maybe it was arrogance. Maybe it was a combination of the two. Aquamarine didn’t care to observe long enough to decide. The Senshi would be dead soon enough, and then none of the flaws or motivations that drove him forward would matter.

Aquamarine responded with a smirk and stepped out from the shadows.

“Well, since you asked so nicely…”

He teleported before the boy could finish his approach, reappearing behind him to deliver a swift kick to the Senshi’s back before whirling around to confront the second one, rapier in hand. This one was a girl, her dress mostly white, her hair a pale, minty green, with purple flowers threaded through her antlered tiara.

“You look familiar,” Aquamarine observed.

If they’d met before, he would have remembered, but… he was sure he’d at least seen her somewhere, or perhaps read her information in the database…



The boy was clearly not prepared for the General to teleport, and the kick sent him flying straight into the dirt. Perhaps it was to be expected, but Cybele winced anyway, only to turn to face the man who was now looking her over.

It wasn’t necessarily comforting to hear that she looked familiar, given the circumstances. She’d heard from Nembus that Sylvite had updated her database entry, asking for her death. If this one recognized her from that description, it really wasn’t ideal, and if he realized that he’d seen her in passing at the Negaverse meetings she’d attended, that also did not bode well.

At least he didn’t truly know her, or seem to be specifically sent after her.

“Probably a coincidence,” said Cybele, voice kept carefully casual, even as the other senshi called out his magic from where he’d landed on the ground.

Cybele had never asked about his sphere, but his clothes were blue, and his magic apparently made people feel soaked through to the bone and bitter cold. Again, Cybele thought that his timing could have been better, but he was trying.

She took advantage of the potential distraction to swing a fist at the General’s face.




Aquamarine considered the girl a second longer, enough that his brain began to offer up a memory, but the other senshi’s magic hit and Aquamarine was suitably jolted from his thoughts.

That was fine. Their magic had limits. It was best to determine what those limits were, and what their magic actually did. This magic felt cold and wet, almost painfully so. Aquamarine shivered and grit his teeth, watching the girl use the opportunity to take a swing at him. He might have been able to dodge if the bitter chill of magic didn’t slow his reflexes; the most he could manage now was to jerk his head enough to avoid a direct hit. Part of her fist still struck his cheekbone.

Aquamarine stumbled, then twisted to correct his footing. He lunged and thrust his rapier toward her, though his senses remained attuned to the senshi behind him.

Wait it out, he told himself. Let them show off all their little tricks.

Then, if they managed to escape, at least he’d have some information.



It wasn’t Cybele’s preference to show her cards so early in a fight. She preferred to see what she could do with fisticuffs alone, size up her opponent’s fighting style, and then only fall back on her magic when things wore on and she started to tire, or when the situation otherwise turned desperate.

Although she was facing down a General, and his rapier was fast as it flashed across her lower arm and drew blood, and although she hissed from the pain, she was not sure that she would call the situation desperate.

However, she’d also found that senshi magic tended to work better when paired up when it did alone, and so she called out her own basic magic, fired the bow upwards without hesitation, and accepted the familiar sharp focus that it granted her.

She could be fast while this General was slow, or cold, or distracted, or whatever it was that the other senshi’s magic did, exactly. With that new focus, she swung out at him, again.

The other senshi took the opportunity of that distraction to slowly make his way to his feet, rubbing his back and glaring bullets at the General while he muttered something that sounded quite harsh under his breath.



Aquamarine did not avoid the second punch as successfully. The girl’s fist came at him faster, with better precision than he could boast at the moment, still chilled to the bone. She struck him hard in the jaw, close to his mouth; the corner of his lip split on his teeth, drawing blood.

Stumbling again, Aquamarine hissed and ducked just out of range, eyeing the girl with a frustrated glare. Even with his attention on her, it did not escape his notice that the other Senshi had climbed to his feet. Soon, the second Super would be upon him, too.

But the magic was fading. Aquamarine felt the cold seeping from his bones. Ease of movement returned as the chill diminished. He smirked again, hardly fazed. The boy’s magic was a nuisance, but the girl seemed to rely on more physical means of attack, likely because her magic served no other purpose than to enhance one’s own abilities.

Aquamarine vanished before a third punch could be considered. He reappeared behind the girl and thrust again with his rapier, aiming for the column of her spine.

The boy was larger, but the girl was quicker, perhaps more clever, and the word “traitor” kept flashing through Aquamarine’s mind.

“You were the one from the soccer field…”



Cybele’s magic kept her in the moment, focused on what was happening around her. She heard the General’s boots crunch on fallen leaves as he appeared behind her. She heard the sharp sound of his blade cutting through air. She shifted. He was still quick. The sword still slashed across the side of her ribs.

At least it didn’t sever her spine.

The magic also kept her from thinking too much about this soccer field, even though the way he said it drew up tension in her stomach and a pang of familiarity in her chest.

Something from before her corruption, then?

No. That was someone else, she was about to say, which wasn’t quite a lie. Whoever she’d been before the Chaos had stolen her memories felt like a different life. While she was trying to reclaim parts of it, the Negaverse certainly didn’t need to know about any of that.

The boy spoke quicker, though. “Yes,” he growled, with an intensity that suggested that he knew exactly what the General was talking about. He sprinted forwards, between the two of them. “And she escaped anyway and you can’t have her back.” He slashed out with his arm in something that was less a punch and more trying to knock the General’s arm away so they didn’t have a sword pointed at them for a moment.

Cybele sighed softly through her teeth as she felt her magic beginning to fade.



Aquamarine dismissed his rapier rather than risk it being knocked from his grasp. Not that he couldn’t easily resummon it in that event, but things were beginning to feel a bit crowded with the lumbering boy deciding to get up close.

A rapier wasn’t necessary to dispose of them anyway.

Without the magic impeding him now, Aquamarine retaliated, putting all of his enhanced strength and speed into the fist he flung at the boy’s face. The sound it made upon impact was incredibly satisfying, but he didn’t allow himself time to gloat. As the boy staggered, Aquamarine teleported behind him and caught the boy before he could fall.

The boy was larger, heavier. Without their powers, he would have been stronger, might have had an easier time overpowering someone as slight as Aquamarine.

But with their powers, his ungainly recklessness was less of a match for someone who trained to make effective use of the Negaverse’s superior abilities.

“I don’t want her back,” Aquamarine hissed into the boy’s ear.

Then he shoved a hand through the boy’s back and ripped his starseed from his chest.



There was nothing but rage in the senshi’s face for a long moment. The General’s fist hit him right in the mouth as he snarled. It knocked three teeth loose and sent him staggering. The rage in his eyes grew hotter as his mouth began to fill with blood. He tried to swing out again even as he stumbled backwards.

Cybele saw what was happening and pushed through the way things got muddled as her magic faded in order to stand by his side.

None of that did much. The General teleported again.

The boy hissed as the General caught him from behind, a noise that shifted to a deeper growl as he heard whatever it was that the man said. It wasn’t until there was a hand shoved through his back that his face shifted into something scared.

Then his starseed was out and he just went limp.

The sight of it made Cybele feel like someone had punched her in the chest.

She pushed down the panic, though. Whatever instincts had carried over from her life before allowed her to do that much. Her own anger was icy cold as she stepped forwards, and while she was as quick as she could manage, she was also careful,never letting her eyes leave the General’s hands, or her friend’s starseed.

She punched at his stomach, something powerful to knock him off balance.
She just had to act quickly, just had to get it back.




Her fist connected. Aquamarine expected shouting, he expected tears and curses and hysteria, so he was unprepared for an attack mere seconds after he had the starseed in his hand.

He shouldn’t have been. It was stupid of him, a miscalculation with its roots in arrogance.

It would not happen again.

The impact robbed the air from his lungs, sent him stumbling back and toppling over. Despite that, he had his wits about him still. He rolled away and sprung to his feet, summoning his rapier back into his hand. He coughed once and inhaled, forcing his lungs to remember how to work properly.

In his other hand, the boy’s starseed glimmered.

“Not as foolish as he was, are you?” Aquamarine said. He didn’t even spare so much as a glance for the body. They all began to look the same after a while.

“You want it back?” he taunted her as he caught his breath, lifting his hand, fingers wrapped around the starseed to hold the girl off. One wrong move and he could easily crush it. “I’d take yours and let you join him, but I wonder if someone else might like the honors. Certain people don’t take kindly to traitors.”

He glanced over the girl, unimpressed. At least he’d managed to bloody her a little.

“All that effort, wasted on you.”



He fell, toppled, gasped, and rolled. It was everything that Cybele could have hoped for.

It was everything, except for the fact that the starseed was still glimmering in his fist. He knew what he was going for. He knew what was at stake. He was fast enough to make his way to his feet before Cybele could press the advantage, and he held the glowing gem in front of her.

Taunting.

She knew what he was doing. She’d done it, once. Her breath caught in her throat anyway.

Sidestepping, she positioned herself between the General and the fallen senshi. At the very least, she would not allow him to be captured and made a slave the way she had been. Once there, she eyed the rapier. She glanced back to the starseed.

Both of his hands were full. It would take him a moment if he tried reaching into her chest.

“Good,” she said, voice low. “Waste your effort.”

Then she lunged towards the starseed, one last attempt to pry it from his fingers.




Aquamarine could continue to fight her, could taunt her more, play a little game of cat and mouse to see to what lengths she would go to have the starseed returned. He could strike out with his rapier, draw more blood, watch it stain her pretty white dress; the dark colors worn by Aquamarine and his peers never really did justice to the bloodstains. He could let her get a few more hits in, observe her fighting style, learn her magic, determine whether or not her threat level was accurate in the database.

Or he could claim his victory with a single starseed and let the one responsible for this traitor correct her mistakes.

When the girl lunged, Aquamarine flickered out of sight, reappearing several yards away, near the thick trunk of an old oak tree.

“I would’ve thought you’d know better,” he said, his tone conversational, the starseed still clutched in his hand. “I have the upper hand here, you know. I have since I arrived.”

Teleportation was a skill he coveted as a Lieutenant, one he made sure to practice often as a Captain, testing and stretching his limits for almost five years, so the skill was as perfected as it was going to be with his limited power, until the promotion to General.

Now it was easy, less draining.

Aquamarine took advantage of it every chance he got.

“One wrong move and I crush this, or I vanish for good and take it with me. Either way, he’s as good as dead.” A smirk twitched onto his face. “I’ll give you the chance to beg for it, if you’d like. Maybe I’ll have a change of heart.”



She’d lost the element of surprise, and the General was fast. Not for the first time, Cybele found herself cursing the weakness and sluggishness that had come along with her purification. Now she could only watch as he teleported to a tree a short distance away.

She looked at his sword, looked at the starseed, looked at the distance between them.

“Oh yes, you’re an all powerful General and we should all just accept that you’re the strong one and let you run around and do whatever it is that you want,” she said, and although her voice dripped with sarcasm, a twisting feeling in her stomach told her that he was right.

He was just taunting her, now. When she got too close, he’d flit away again.

There’d been a time when she would have thrown herself after the starseed anyway, and probably ended up on the end of his sword, but recent events had her a bit more cautious. Instead, she took a few steps back, knelt, and cradled the unconscious body of her friend in her arms.

She’d protect him from being turned into a puppet the way she’d been, or from being desecrated in some other way. That was all she was sure she could offer, now. Her heartbeat quickened as she felt his shallow breath against her chest. Her eyes burned, and she fought not to let that show thought on her face.

She’d cry later, if it came to that.

“Are you the type who gets off on other people’s suffering?” she asked, the sarcasm giving way to something flat. It seemed he was, and she was determined not to give him that satisfaction. Her expression stayed blank, even as her hopes weakened.

“He’s my friend, and I would appreciate if you would give it back,” she said, although she doubted it would matter to him. After a moment she added, “And if you don’t, I will hunt you to the ends of the Earth and find you when you’re not at an advantage.”

Hot as her eyes felt, her gaze was sharp.

“It’s my specialty.”




The blankness could be just as satisfying as any emotional outburst. It generally meant the emotions were there, purposefully suppressed, either because they were thought to be a weakness or because the one in possession of the emotions didn’t want to offer him what they thought he sought.

As delightful as it would have been to hear her plead with him, this worked just as well.

“Your specialty…” Aquamarine observed.

He snorted. Her little threats meant nothing to him. She knew nothing about him, not even his name, just his rank and his weapon and his looks, but few on her side were alive to corroborate. When he encountered her kind these days, they generally ended up much like her friend: sans their starseed.

Let her try to hunt him down. She would fail.

“You’re going to have to try better than that,” he warned her, twirling the starseed within the tips of his fingers. “Your specialty, if you have one, is in betrayal. I know who you are, Cybele. There’re several database entries on you, if memory serves. You were given a chance in the Negaverse, and you wasted it. You turned your back on the Earth as soon as you turned your back on us.”

He didn’t care for her reasons, if she was mistreated, or lonely, or scared, or whatever bullshit excuses the traitors had to explain away their treason. The fact of the matter was, deep down, none of them understood loyalty.

“I won’t kill you tonight,” he offered. “You deserve to suffer, over and over again, until you have nothing left but the tears you try so hard to contain, before you meet your end.”



Seeing him twirl the starseed around in his fingers made her heart jump into her throat, and she visibly stiffened. It would have been a chance to make a leap for it, but her arms were full, shielding her friend’s body. She couldn’t protect him and try to save him at the same time.

Perhaps-

Cybele summoned her phone behind the limp senshi’s back, and jammed her thumb into the button that would send out a call for help, all while keeping her eyes on the General in front of her. She’d keep staring him down, keep him talking, regardless of the way her palms were sweating or her heartbeat felt like it was about to break her ribs.

“Specialties are supposed to be a bit rare, aren’t they?” she said, just a hint of a barb in her words. “Leaving the Negaverse seems to be an everyday occurrence, lately.” It seemed like almost every other person that she’d met was one that this man would consider a traitor. “Although I’d call it running away, rather than treason. Hard to be a traitor when you’re just kept as a slave.”

Perhaps he’d argue with that. Hopefully he’d argue with that. She needed time, and she wasn’t going to dignify his threats with a response.
If he wasn’t worried about her hunting him, fine. If he thought himself so infallible that he didn’t have to kill her while he had a decent chance at it, fine.That would give her an advantage when she found him later on.

She would find him. Even if the boy lived, she wasn’t forgiving this.




“Is that how Sylvite kept you? As a slave?”

Beneath the taunting tone, there was some mild curiosity. Aquamarine knew little of Sylvite, but he found the idea difficult to imagine just by the look of her. The pink was too peppy, too cheerful. Nothing about her struck him as particularly harsh, except that she was a General, and to get to that rank tended to require a certain level of expertise. Still, expertise didn’t necessitate cruelty.

In Aquamarine’s experience, the Negaverse was full of incompetent idiots more than savagery and insanity.

These days, anyway.

“What was it that sent you running back to your former allies?” he wondered. “Was it Sylvite? She gave you the opportunity to know greatness, something none of your kind even deserve. Was it the job you couldn’t stomach? You don’t strike me as the timid sort. That was you downtown with the Princess, wasn’t it? During Faustite’s mission. Did she tempt you? Promise you love and hope and all that warm, sentimental bullshit your friends like to spew? It isn’t true, you know. They’re no better than us. They just have prettier words.”

To Aquamarine, it didn’t matter why Cybele left. It didn’t matter why anyone left, at least not beyond what it meant about their recruitment methods. Force had a way of backfiring. Minimal guidance had a way of backfiring. Too much guidance had a way of backfiring.

Maybe some people couldn’t be kept, despite their best efforts. Loyalty was in one’s character; some of them simply weren’t built that way.

“If you’d rather be a slave to the Princess, by all means. You’ll both get what you deserve soon enough.”



Cybele was quiet for a long moment, as if she was considering her words. She was, but there was something more calculated to it. As the seconds passed, she wondered how long she could pretend to think before he got bored of it and blinked off with the starseed.

“You’ve got your own issues if you think love and hope are bullshit,” she said first, her tone dry. Then she hesitated again. She was not sure if she wanted to delve into her feelings on Sylvite and Ganymede right now, but, if it kept him talking?

“Sylvite had the sweeter words, actually. The lies. She made up stories to protect her own conscience. Said she saved me, kept bringing me bad cookies to make up for taking my life away. She would have never called it slavery, but,” Cybele shrugged, as much as she could with the weight in her arms. “That’s what it is, when you cut someone off from everything they know and make them serve you.”

Then she went silent again. She would not talk about the Farnsworth, she decided. If he hadn’t picked up on Ganymede’s name, she wouldn’t tell it to him. There was no reason to talk about her actions, or anything that might put a target on her back. It was better to talk about her dislike of the Negaverse. Cybele had never made any secret of that.

“I don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to wrap your head around me leaving after all that.”



“Oh, I can wrap my head around it,” Aquamarine said. “That doesn’t change the fact that you are what you are. You Senshi seem to be the most prolific traitors. If I had it my way, you never would have been brought into the Negaverse in the first place.”

He filed away the information about Sylvite, let it sink into the depths of his brain where all the rumors and gossip about his allies festered. There was, of course, the very real possibility that Cybele was lying or exaggerating. Perhaps her starseed was damaged in the purification and her memories were ******** because of it. Regardless, he took everything she said with a grain of salt. To an extent, her insight might be valuable, but it certainly wouldn’t sway him.

She was nothing to him — a pest, at most. Her very existence was a nuisance, but she would get what she deserved in the end. She already had a piece of it cradled in her arms, unconscious and treading toward death.

Aquamarine smirked at the starseed and twirled it within his fingers again.

“Shame you couldn’t save him,” he said. If it weren’t for the mission given to him by the Queen, he might have crushed it just to see her reaction.

Along the far edges of his mental radar, an aura flared to life — distant, but obnoxiously bright; not so powerful that Aquamarine would worry, but strong enough that another skirmish wouldn’t be so easy. Aquamarine had no visible reaction to it except for an imperious tip of his head.

“Make no mistake,” he told her, “You will be hunted down and disposed of. Your starseed will either join his, or you will be destroyed. There are no second chances.”



As her friend’s breaths became shallower against her chest, as they seemed more desperate, it became harder for Cybele to focus on her on words. It became harder for her to keep a straight face.

Her lips twitched at his assessment of senshi, even though he was wrong about it. Cybele had found that a decent amount of Order’s forces were made of traitors to the Negaverse, and from what she’d seen, the balance of purified individuals leaned a bit more heavily towards Knights.

She flinched when he pointed out that she couldn’t save her friend. Tears pricked at her eyes.

At least his threats meant nothing to her. She no longer wanted death, but she did not fear it, either. The thought of her starseed being crushed was nothing compared to the thought of her will being stripped from her again.

“Fine,” was what she said, doing all she could to keep her voice from trembling too much. She curled her lips into a snarl, instead. “Come hunt my starseed. It will save me the trouble of having to find you before I leave you as lifeless as the last agent who tried to set a trap for me.”



It was a satisfying sight — the glimmer of tears in her eyes. Aquamarine lingered long enough to enjoy it.

But the aura he sensed was drawing nearer. As much as they needed starseeds and energy, he didn’t care to waste more effort on the latter when he already had one in safe keeping. Why risk losing one for the possibility of more when more wasn’t even a guarantee?

Besides, his amusement would only last so long.

“Finding me isn’t the problem, is it?” he taunted her. “We’ll cross paths again, I’m sure. Destiny City would never be so cruel as to make strangers of enemies. Your problem, when that happens, will be in catching me. As I said before… I have the upper hand.”

Then, as easily as he arrived, Aquamarine vanished.

He took the starseed with him, leaving the traitor with nothing but an unconscious body and the cool evening breeze.