Welcome to Gaia! ::

Nembus hardly had time to yell.

Everything felt like it had taken place in the space of a minute -- and perhaps it had. One second, she was trying to fake punch her friend as a way to get herself away from potentially being pulled into the mess that was happening near the fountain. Next, she was falling through the air and hitting the ground and hearing commands from Faustite. After, she was blasting a knight. After that, said knight grabbed her and ran.

Ran.

Ran.

She didn't think she was breathing until she hit the bed, and then she gasped for air as if she had just broken the surface after taking a deep dive. What did she do? She was just -- what did she do?

Where was she? She didn't know knights could teleport. Thought that was a thing the Negaverse could only do. Wait. What did it matter? Did it matter? She was on her back and her world was spinning and she was having trouble processing anything other than the man next to the bed and she realized that and felt fear strike her heart. She felt her body clench up, her fingers curl up, her toes curl up, her body convulse as she tried to figure out what the right response was.

His words weren't quite processing, not processing at all, too busy calculating with the fact that too much happened at once that her brain was still trying to catch up to.

Bits and pieces of words managed to register -- hungry, cook, hot, kidnapping, scar, Whisler --

That didn't mean she was responding to them.

Some dim part of her processed he left, left her there, probably left her to die, it was fine, it wasn't fine, perhaps she deserved it, perhaps he would get on with it, perhaps he was preparing something else, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps --

Her head felt like it was spinning like a top and she curled a bit harder into herself as she fell victim to the sensations and whiteout thoughts in her mind she couldn't even quite pull apart. She shook, she curled in deeper, she clung to herself like she was the only thing that could be depended on, and yet she couldn't even depend on herself. She stayed like that while her captor went outside and did what he must, she stayed like that for a significant length of time until her body found it no longer in itself to run at that sheer sensation of panic anymore.

And then she felt light but not in any way that felt like something she desired, light in the sense that she could hardly feel her arms and her legs and her bones and her face, and tired, so very tired, and she desperately wanted to ease into a corner and stay there and hideaway.

There was nothing she could do, and nowhere to go, and no reasonable escape.

It felt like she was pulling weights that weighed over one hundred pounds but it was really just the weight of her own limp body as she dragged herself toward the head of the bed, curling back into a ball and wrapping her arms around her legs and closing her eyes tight, even tighter when she heard the door open again, even tighter when she felt the breeze of someone approaching. She didn't watch him, didn't watch what he was doing, expecting and suspecting and hoping for and dreading the worst, and found herself confused and surprised when what she heard was nothing like a promise of her death or a promise of hatred or anything else.

Just an are you okay that might have made her laugh for the absurdity of it.

She opened her eyes slowly, blearily, gave him a look that spoke of the fear and dread and resignation in her bones, and finally asked one question.

"Are you serious?"

Ice cream. He was offering her ice cream.

Her voice was breathy, loose, even lighter than it normally tended to be, soprano in pitch but airy in execution.

"No," she breathed, "no, I'm not okay -- whatever you're going to do," she choked, shivered in spite of the fact that she hoped all the fear was gone, "just get on with it, alright?"

She closed her eyes, expecting the worst.

She guessed she liked chocolate-- wait, what? Where was the pain? Where was--

He left the ice cream and left her on the bed. Left her again. Went over somewhere else, where she could hear something turning on top of something else. She swallowed hard. She opened her eyes, slowly, only in a narrow slit, attempting to take in what exactly her captor was doing. She opened them further. She squinted in confusion. Was he making food?

Food, of all things?

Was it poison? It was probably poison. He probably took them to a special place where no one could get to her and poison her because of it, all because of her forced affiliation with the Negaverse, an affiliation she hadn't even chosen, an affiliation it sounded like she had never wanted, a loss of her prior life and now a loss of this new life all because she had decided to answer a call by Ashanite and of course, her general was there, and of course her general had called her in, and of course she had to somehow draw the attention of someone who was going to poison her -- was Faustite looking for her? Was Albite looking for her? Or had she just been lost to the chaos?

Not the literal Chaos, but ...

He said he wasn't going to hurt her, she heard that at least, but between her fluctuations of resigned calm and her increasing and rising panic, it was hard to bring herself under control. She felt herself begin to hyperventilate and had to pull herself back into the present, desperately, as he attempted to hand her a bottle of water. Or poison. Was he asking if she was hurt? She guessed she was hurt. There were brush burns on her legs from when she fell and his magic started shoving her. Or whatever magic that was. She assumed it was his because Faustite had told her to target him but--

"If you're going to poison me," she nervously held herself a bit tighter, "there are easier ways than trying to give me water. Or you could just do whatever you originally planned," she glanced to the bed, glanced to the walls of the room, gripped herself a bit tighter.

And then relaxed.

Occam's Razor was a thing she heard. The easiest explanation was usually the right one. The easiest one would be that he was actually trying to feed her. But why would he literally kidnap her to try and feed her--

"Yes, I'm hurt -- why do you care?"

Did he really care to hide out with her, or was he just using her as a way to prevent anyone from pursuing him? Because that sounded like a way to get more people to pursue him, honestly...

Didn't have poison there. She supposed she could take him at his word or presume he was lying. Hard for her to tell what she should do. Hard for her to tell if she should presume the worst and take him for a liar or presume he was just as foolish as most other humans seemed to be -- humans, a way she thought as a way to differentiate herself from them, were her reactions normal? How did most people react when they got kidnapped? Was this a kidnapping? Did it even count if he just snatched her to a different planet and then left her alone after that point?

A different planet -- yeah, that was what he had done. Just mentioned that this place used to be a brothel. With hot springs. And that it was a man cave. Well, the fact that this was a brothel gave her a nicer explanation for the bed than her first instinct was, but it also didn't, and there was a moment where her heart caught in her throat before it diminished and she tried to remind herself that maybe he legitimately wasn't going to attack her, that maybe he wasn't going to kill her, that maybe he was just doing what he had been doing when she had noticed other people were nervous -- talking a lot even though only some of it was processing among the nerves she felt taking over her body.

s**t.

She was in space.

An apocalypse.

That drew the barest of laughs in spite of herself.

"A safe place from the apocalypse," she managed, still trying to figure out if she could trust him. He pulled out a first aid kit, placed it beside her, backed up again. Cautiously, she unwound one of her arms from her knees, reaching out to the first aid kit. She pulled it closer to herself, opened it, inspected it. Seemed normal. Didn't seem like there was any secret poison in there. Why would there be poison? It did have everything he claimed there was, though. Perhaps there were a few things for the brush burns.

Slowly, as if it was going to burn her, she picked up some gauze.

Purified.

She zoned in on that, for a moment, turning toward him as he moved back toward the fire.

Purified. Another purified knight. Senshi. How did she find herself captured by another purified person? Why would a purified person opt to kidnap her? Didn't they understand the tortures of the Negaverse well enough?

"General Ashanite called us to help with the corruption of a knight," she murmured, starting to work on her leg. "Purified? Were you a member of his team?"

The concept that they were on the precipice of an apocalypse perhaps could have rung true. Instead, she was still busy trying to process that she was able to simply take care of her wounds even though she had been kidnapped. Was this what Stockholm Syndrome was? Believing that her captor might have actually not had the worst planned and perhaps was just using her as some kind of odd defense?

Usually, Stockholm Syndrome meant that she had been with him for a while, though--

She took one of the hot dogs, cautiously, but she didn't make any moves to eat it, watching him instead. Didn't quite trust it. Might have still believed it was a poisonous piece of food. Was fairly sure it might have been poison, maybe. It sat there while she continued to treat her wound, continued to listen to him. There was a way to ... undo transcendence? That was fascinating. The senshi and knights that were transcendent seemed to see it as a permanent defense --

Best not to think further about that.

"Ah," because a stabbing could quite usually change opinion.

"For what it's worth," she looks down at the dressing of her wound, glanced at him eating the hot dog and still glanced warily at hers, still wondered quietly if he was trying to butter her up before taking advantage of her, make her comfortable so she stopped panicking before he attempted to kill her or torture her or do something else perhaps for her connection to the general who had called them in, "people who were forced remember nothing. I remember nothing of the time before I became a member of the Negaverse."

Was it worth being honest? Perhaps she should attack him once she felt less loose, but where would she go?

She cleared her throat. "So if he knew you at all..."

Well, it should have been an obvious tell. But perhaps Ashanite was good at playing, pretending. She was familiar with it. Nembus pretended to have a whole life as a civilian that she absolutely did not have.

"You're probably right in that you might have picked a bad person to kidnap," not that she agreed with kidnapping at all, "I have a team in the Negaverse, now," Faustite, Albite, "and allies in the White Moon, too," Phaethon, Cybele, Kurma, Sedna--

She wrung her hands and cautiously picked up the hot dog.

It smelled good, but-- she would watch him for a bit longer.

Was he just trying to make her comfortable? Make her fall asleep so he could do what he willed?

Wasn't he supposed to be kidnapping her? Doing... something bad? Holding her hostage? Tying her up? Taking advantage of the isolation? -- Why was this what was happening? Sympathy, warmth, another one of those White Moon-aligned types telling her that she could choose to leave and that they would be her friend and support her if she did.

It was baffling.

She stared at him in mild shock instead of responding to what he actually told her before she regained her composure. No. The other shoe would drop eventually. He was just buttering her up. Or something. The pizza did smell good, though. That was pizza, wasn't it? It smelled like pizza--

He didn't seem to be dropping like a fly yet. The hot dog was probably safe...

She warily finished dressing her wound and took the tiniest nibble of it as she watched him walk off.

"They won't, yeah. I've known a few people who've made the cross." She winced. "From what I understand, you actually lose even more transferring back over. I've built up ... something, you know?" No, he didn't. He couldn't possibly know. "It's been three years. Put a life back together." Well. For a given value of life. Did she even have a life? What qualified as a life?

Felt like waxing too much philosophy. She moved on.

"Space. I guess that explains why Faustite hasn't just yanked me back yet," she chuckled, quietly and warily. She could have guessed. She could tell. She couldn't exactly go anywhere except... apparently outside, where it was very cold.

She was curious.

She was also very afraid of what he might do.

"I think I'll stay here for now," she offered, though curious. "I've been told I have my own place in space. Can't access it from here, though."

Oh, so he did get it.

To a degree.

He had lost his memories when he purified, or at least half of them. Would never quite feel like a dead start like she had, a new birth with nothing to look back to and nothing to base anything off of. But he was sure of being Whisler. And he was sure of everything before. Nembus didn't have any of that. She wondered if that comfort would come with stepping onto the other side. She wondered if she would just be even more lost.

Probably that one.

Nembus chuckled quietly. "Even harder when people come and go just as easily as they probably did before you corrupted."

At some point, it was easy to believe it was intrinsically her. She had another group of people now. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The pizza did smell really good, and she wasn't feeling like she was about to faint or drop dead from eating the hot dog yet, so perhaps this wasn't some elaborate poisoning trick. Unless it's a long acting poison. But why would he be eating from the same pizza, then? That would be silly. She was making too many reasons for this to be more like what she would have expected it to be. Slowly, cautiously, she took the plate that was offered to her.

Still seemed like she was going to wait for him to eat before she did.

"General Faustite, yes. He's my general. Usually on fire." She took another bite of the hot dog, at least. "He's a bit," what was a good word? Understanding? Assigning her things she didn't want despite? Another person ordering her to do things she didn't sign up for? Kind to the fact that her memories were a hole? Concerned for her civilian life and her readjustment? Complicated. "Spicy."

That seemed right.

"Hopefully he won't try to set you on fire. He can do that. Burst into flames." Nembus cleared her throat. "Ah. Anyway. Yes. I think I would be more comfortable looking around if I hadn't been kidnapped." Or shoplifted, as a certain general might have said. "No offense. But. Maybe."

She didn't quite address the concept of seeing hers, and she bit back the burn in her nose associated with tears she refused to let show. Her exterior remained stony, even as thoughts of Kurma jumbled through her mind.