Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sometimes they died.

Oftentimes Charonite would turn his victims into youma, and set them mindlessly prowling the backstreets and dark places of Destiny City for their prey, keeping to the shadows until it was nighttime. They were mindless missiles, set out on no course at all to do as much damage as they could. They were senshi lurers. They were there for estimates. They weren't there to try to take down senshi: they were weak, pitiful things.

Sometimes, though, he craved the star seed and not the monster -- plucked the star seed from the chest of the human and watched them crumple into a catatonic state. Destiny City Memorial Hospital was full of people who sank down briefly into high-Glasgow comas and then passed away; "beaten into neural damage," was the official record, because no doctor liked paying attention to what was really going on outside. Nobody did. They weren't alone.

But sometimes Charonite beat them to the point that they would breathe briefly without the star seed and then die; and he never left them there. Dead people in the streets caused panic. That would be for later.

The forests outside Destiny City sufficed for that -- that was what the Lieutenants were for, too; but without Khaldun or Drew to dig the shallow grave today, that was what he was doing, the corpse wrapped like a ghoulish Christmas present in a trash sack as he dug.

It was hot work. A cigarette poked its way out the corner of his mouth as he shovelled earth: you didn't need it to be too deep. Thankfully, the grave would be off the site of any trail --

-- except that sometimes, enthusiastic hikers went off the trail, didn't they.

The body was bad enough -- the shovel and the dark-skinned, muscular, much-bigger-than-her body of the infamous PE teacher up at Hillworth was another. But things hadn't really gotten bad until the twig snapped, and immediately, the attention of the man known as Gunn Killingworth was right on her.

He stared at her, evenly: not with guilt or panic, or surprise, even. That was a little bit horrible. He just looked at her, looked right through her, as though he was peeling off Pandora's skin and examining the muscles that made her up -- bones and fascia, slippery internal organs, her fretwork of veins. Then he slowly put down the spade, and walked towards her.

Didn't run: just walked, his long legs eating up the distance, coming right towards where she stood.

Pandora's aim was good; the rock flew straight and true towards the man --

-- where he caught it.

There was a resounding thwock as it hit his palm, sort of like a baseball hitting the catcher's mitt. He didn't even break stride. He simply dropped the rock again so that it fell to the forest floor, and kept on walking. Then he was there, right in front of her, his hand having snapped out to grab the collar of her shirt.

"Interesting," he said. "Most times they try to run."

His grip was tight and inexorable, and he loomed in front of her as though he'd collected all the gold medals and was on his way to the Commonwealth. He was staring and still; the sweet fresh scent of turned earth was strong now, but a little underneath it was the reek of putrefaction. Dead body.

"What's the goddamned phrase?" he was saying. "Oh. You saw too much."

Pandora's knee found its target as much as her stone had: straight into Killingworth's groin. Unfortunately, Killingworth was much taller than she was, even in midair, and so her knee didn't have as much lift as it might: it made contact. The expression on his face was... well, it was interesting, if not priceless.

He walked her backwards into the nearest tree: both her wrists were pinned above her head, all too easily, and he examined her like a insect stuck to cork.

"Poor baby," he said, though his voice was flat and emotionless: it held about as much sympathy as -- well, something that didn't hold that much sympathy in it. "You fight like a cornered ******** wolverine, you know that? Interesting for a preteen girl. Go on. Do it harder. See what you can do. Fight for your ******** life."

And he let her wrists go.

It was infuriating, enough to leave her shaking with fear and impatience. Killingworth had ducked back from the bag hit, narrowly missing it, so that its guts did spill out all over the forest floor -- her stuff, her mask... was that the glint of the knife? He caught her foot and shook it off with one absent, dismissive gesture.

"Too high again," he said. "Lacks power on the follow-through. Nice try. Use your surroundings."

The powerfully-built, darkskinned man gestured again, as though to say, come on. He was toying with her. Like a cat, playing with its food.

At last, Killingworth stepped back, Pandora's hands still grasped around the handle of the knife. She had driven it squarely into his thigh, and now -- a little like some kind of horrible Excalibur -- she couldn't get it out, and he was staring at her. The trick with the leaves had worked: he was wiping smudges out of his face now, having stumbled back a few paces when she hit him, which was when she'd driven in the blade -- the blade that now wasn't coming out.

Blood was dripping down his trousers, bubbling up dark crimson from around the tip. She'd managed to jam it in at least an inch deep -- blood wasn't fountaining up, she hadn't hit the artery. Slowly, eyes never leaving her, he closed his hand around her fingers and jerked the knife out of his thigh.

Then he kicked her. He punted her, a little like a football, just enough so that her breath was forcibly expelled from her ribs and she rolled back into the dirt; Killingworth suddenly shimmered in front of her, darkness roiling briefly around him like some kind of cloak. What was left standing in front of her was a man dressed in some kind of dark military uniform, cloak swirling behind him, blood now a dark stain at his thigh -- and he knelt down next to her. Horrifyingly, he laid his hand flat at her ribs, fingers spanning -- and shifted his palm up over her heart, pressing her flat into the ground.

"I'm amused, you know," he told her. "A little bit interested. How about I make you an offer you can't refuse?"

"Nothing much," said the man. "Just your star seed."

His hand was at her sternum. And -- horrifyingly -- his fingers were sinking into her skin, as though to capture her heart like a fluttering bird, little tendrils of black smoke coming up from where his hand was disappearing into her chest. "And your eternal ******** loyalty," he was saying. "And your pledge to the Negaverse. And your service, when I want it. And your death, if I need it."

There was a light now -- shafts of light were coming from around his fingers, bright light, and her entire soul was shuddering in her chest. He wasn't pulling out her heart, as she'd thought. His fingers were just closing around something inside of her and somehow the smoke was curling around it too -- she was faint, nauseated, draining. Something good was being taken away from her. And something was answering inside of her:

You are not Pandora Idlewild Sagan. You are Moonstone.

He was sucking her dry, like some kind of vampire. The fight was going out of her too. And something in her wanted to answer to him now. "Pledge me your goddamned loyalty," he was saying. "I am General-King Charonite, your leader and your life."

There was a plume of dark smoke that obscured his face for a moment, like the last wisp before a wound was cauterized; and then he pulled his hand out, shaking it as though to get the dirt off. Charonite stood, yanking her to her feet, and suddenly in another fit of nausea and darkness she was changed as well -- like she'd been pulled inside out, slipping into her other skin.

She was wearing brown. Haida fringe. The rest of it was unashamedly military, buttoning up her front, epaulettes on her shoulders.

"Good," was all he said. It seemed... a little anticlimactic. "Now you can help me bury this god damned corpse."

Ignominious.