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 Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2011 11:15 pm
The Professional Prophet shibrogane He was injured, his uniform beyond ruined, the cloth pieces shredded. Virgo, her attack having run its course, was almost uninjured; she had a few scratches at one ankle, dried blood tracing a line over the planes of her face, but she was largely unharmed, her fuku unstained with any of the multitude of gross liquids it'd been covered in before. She smiled at the General as he fell to his knees, set one hand on a cocked hip and caught her veil with the other. The ease of long practice gave her motion more grace than it ought to have had; really, the blond ought to be dead by then, with the abuse she'd taken, or at least heavily concussed. She wasn't. Virgo, much like her enemy, felt immortal. Untouchable. Locusts had not affected her, she had lived through Hematite's berserker rage and her own, and she had only scratched her ankle where others had been crushed. She felt invincible when she sauntered over to the armored man as he rose. And this turned out to be bad, because it meant she was in no position to defend herself from the injured Hematite's attack. That didn't mean no one else was-- A body quickly imposed itself between the General and the Captain of the Zodiac Guard; not a Zodiac, not a Chronos knight, just a young senshi who had come into her own only a few days before. The petite brunette sailor scout didn't know much, but she knew that she couldn't let anyone get another's starseed. That would lead to certain defeat. "Thank you," said Virgo, "but you need to move--" Her advice had come too late. That gauntleted hand was in motion. Virgo's would-be rescuer didn't stand a chance. The General's hand jabbed straight into the senshi's chest. There was a glint in Hematite's hand when he drew it back, and the senshi fell to the bloodstained dirt. He knocked back the starseed quickly. It would do nothing for his injuries, but the burst of energy kept him in a facsimile of that reckless state he didn't want to give up yet. If he was going to die, he wouldn't die a coward. His eyes only darted away from Virgo's once. "This time, don't come back." Trying his hardest to ignore the pain, he darted forward to wrap Virgo in a deathly embrace. And kept going. Right over the edge of the Surrounding. For the first time during their entire battle, Virgo screamed. Slamming her into his armor had done nothing. Throwing her into a crowd of fighters had drawn a laugh and a smile. She'd swaggered over to him after being introduced to the wall at seventy miles an hour or more, bounced her brain so hard against the inside of her skull that she still had a headache even after refracting the damage back to Hematite, but she hadn't screamed even then. Watching the starseed of the young senshi who'd saved her life crunch between Hematite's bloodstained teeth was the one thing that had drawn a pure, long note from the Zodiac Captain's mouth. She caught the body, lowered it and stepped over it; she'd find out the girl's name and mourn later, attend her funeral even. For the first time she noticed the bodies liberally covering her Surrounding, her home, and the hate and rage literally burned inside her skin. She wanted Hematite to join them, so that they'd finally be avenged, and she charged towards the scarred General with full intentions of ripping him to pieces-- His shoulder slammed into her, and her stomach lurched oddly when the entire world tilted. No, it wasn't tilting--she was going over the edge, into the empty black space below the Surrounding. They were falling, they would be falling forever, she was going to die and leave Leo and the Princess and all the new Pages alone-- She forced herself into calmness, unclenched her hands and tangled them in his dreadlocks. Generals could teleport, and she refused to let him go back to the fight if he didn't take her with him. Virgo would hold on as long as it ******** took. He'd have to freak out and teleport back soon. Hematite would have to.
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 1:23 am
Battered and bloody, Hematite was secretly glad for the chance to stop for even a moment. The starseed he'd consumed was the only thing keeping him conscious at this point. He could feel air rushing past, faintly, and his arms unwound from Virgo's body when it was clear that neither of them were going anywhere. Unlike most if not all of the others, Hematite had no concept of space, vaccuums, and laws of motion, which accounted for his odd calm. All he knew was death awaited them both, somehow, out here in space. Virgo's reaction confirmed as much.
Aside from Alkaid, Hematite didn't spend a whole lot of time up close and personally with senshi. If he wasn't trying to kill them, he was avoiding them. But he'd known Virgo longer than almost any other senshi. Helped lure her to her (temporary) death years ago. But in this morbid free-fall it didn't matter what he said or did, how he felt, anything really.
"You're pretty, Virgo," he mused. "Hah... senshi always are."
Two metal fingers of the gauntlet brushed along the side of Virgo's face, drawing a double line of fresh blood. His own blood. His knuckles were raw underneath and bleeding through any slots. He was looking at her pensively, almost jealously, with eyes half open. And he was laughing quietly to himself, even when Virgo began pulling on his hair.
"The universe gives you senshi everything. You're born royalty. Powerful. Dangerous."
"We're not all so lucky," he added darkly.
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 1:36 am
Only three males had ever been allowed to be as close to Virgo as Hematite now was. Two of them held the title of boyfriend; one of them had been her Princess's Prince, carrying her away from the sight of a particularly vicious youma battle. This made his actions, to her, even more reprehensible. Didn't he have someone else's face to stroke? The touch of metal on her skin was even familiar. Leo did it sometimes, which made her fear for her love; did he worry about her? Would he be okay if she didn't come back?
She couldn't think about that. The enemy was talking to her. "I was prettier before you blew me and my Court up," she said, venom coursing through her voice, raging through her blood and freezing it like ice. "And before you woke us up in that hellhole." Barren Pines. Did he remember that? Her fingers had moved from his dreadlocks to his throat, digging in along the ridge of his spine and leaving little bloody crescent moons, staggered along the back of his neck. Her olive eyes narrowed in hate, and seemed even greener for the red blood drying along the curve of her eyelid.
"Aristocrats are married to duty," she informed him, her thumbs pricking the corners of his jaw where they met the skin of his throat, muscles taut beneath the pads of her fingers. "You don't have to fight like this, you know, you can stop--you can all stop, and then we can go away. I can just be normal again." It'd be nice, to just be Elke for a while.
In zero-gravity, she couldn't rely on her usual fighting tactics. No gravity meant even kneeing him in the groin wouldn't do much; a punch would fall flat too. She had her hands, her ability to squeeze tightly and cut off air--which reminded her, and she looked up towards the rainbow road. If they drifted too much farther, they'd lose air--they'd lose pressure. It was integral he teleport them back before they reached that amorphous barrier... or that he die, so she could phone home and return to her people. "You Negaversers always sell your souls to the lowest bidder," she said. "It's only fair that you suffer for it."
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 3:18 am
"Just finishing the job." His fingers fell away from her face and one hand instead rested around her wrist as it lurked just outside his vision, below his jaw. With every movement of it he could feel the sharp pricking of her nails digging in, adding to the cacophony of pain she'd already inflicted. "And returning your favor today."
God it was ******** easy to forget for moments at a time what he was doing here, where they were going. In one instant he was striving to kill and in the next he was harmless and talkative. He was tired. Cold, everywhere. And it was getting ever so slightly harder to breathe here. The air was thinner. His eyes roved around, from Virgo to the rainbow road that grew smaller and smaller in the distance. Not above them, exactly; direction had lost meaning to his senses.
The fingers felt like they were tensing over his windpipe, which was automatically inciting a primal panic within him. His conscious acceptance of fate was a tired facade. Even though it hardly mattered when and how he died at this point, he wound back to try and push her away, hard, with all of his remaining strength. He had no understanding of zero gravity like Virgo did. Space was a horrible empty hell but he had seen and experienced little of it. The enemy. Virgo was the enemy. "Oh give it up already."
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 3:32 am
Her favor? What favor had she dealt him recently, let alone today? She supposed she ought to thank him for adding to the pile of reasons why she would fight the Negaverse to her very last breath, but she never would. The drive to murder them all would have come eventually; this way, it just happened even faster than otherwise. That thought brought a small, wry smile to her pretty face, and it looked macabre with the blood trailing down her cheek, painted in parallel stripes.
Small, perfectly spherical drops of Hematite's blood marked the way back to the Surrounding. The air was getting thinner by the moment, there was no friction in space. She had to do something and she had to do it fast, had to get him to teleport them back--
He tried to push her away. "That won't help," she said. She pulled herself out of the way of his fist and then dug her teeth, hard, into his bicep; a punch would do nothing. No physics, no force. But a bite, that didn't depend on physics. Neither did strangulation, and she could do that too if she just shifted her hands--
So she did, tasting metal and blood in her mouth, feeling the muscles work beneath her hands. He made a rattling noise as he struggled for air, but she refused to let go. Hematite--bloodstone. She would have laughed if she weren't trying to scare him enough to preserve both their lives. The liquid was thick and coppery before she couldn't take it anymore and pulled away, spitting out a mouthful of blood that quickly resolved itself into another sphere. "Take--us--back--" she hissed, pulling the General close so their faces were not even three inches apart.
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 4:33 am
There would be no more talking. His hands were scrabbling at Virgo's, desperately seeking to dislodge them despite the zero gravity making a mockery of his efforts. Sharp pain lost him the use of an arm as Virgo sank her teeth into it and he would have yelled if his windpipe wasn't being crushed. He was acutely aware of his breathing now, when he couldn't hardly at all. Strangulation was one of the nastier ways to go. He'd accepted death, but not this sort of death, and he flailed and kicked at her as if the normal laws of physics would kick in here and now in his time of need.
He was starting to convulse, dizzy. His remaining hand tried to crush Virgo's wrist in a grip that was getting steadily weaker. Blood - his blood - bubbled away from Virgo's mouth and hung in the air before she spoke, the very picture of senshi savagery. Inhuman, every last one of them. Monsters. Beasts. Never to be trusted. Virgo should have died, and this was why.
In all the confusion, panic, and disorientation, he seemed to completely lose touch with reality. The desperate panic intensified the longer she cut off his oxygen. Her olive eyes would watch his own dark slowly roll back. Another death rattle escaped him. He had no choice. He had no doubt Virgo could and would kill him if he didn't go somewhere, anywhere. His memory built up a fuzzy, oxygen-deprived picture in his mind, slowly, ever so slowly.
The fighting pair blinked out of the void of the Surrounding, leaving nothing but a bloody trail to prove they had been there at all.
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