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Gehenna hadn't really been expecting anyone to find him - of course, that had been a lot of wishful thinking and the fact that he was slightly inebriated. If he ignored auras, they ignored him too, right?

Patrols were a joke these days, though he kept up the pretense to keep Delphine from bitching. He had taken shelter here in the courtyard of an abandoned office building, somewhere near that old burn site sore they'd had taped off for ages. If he had to guess, they probably relocated because it wasn't as peaceful of a neighborhood as they had once been led to believe. That's all humans wanted - peace and security. He could have been giving them that, but what he was doing here was a lot less glorious than protecting the civilian masses from greedy Negaverse agents. The last time he'd bothered to do that, he'd woken up to another nightmare.

The corrupt had caught him attempting to kick down a pretentious sculpture, one of many that littered the forgotten courtyard. A handful had already been crumpled in on themselves - an improvement to the nonsensical abstract, in his opinion. The owners hadn't even bothered to take them along - they had to be meaningless.

The wolf whistle caught him off guard and he whirled the moment he connected it to a strong chaos aura. Inwardly he was cursing at himself, but outwardly he just took another swig from the beer can clutched a bit too tightly now. At his feet was what was left of a six pack. For a moment he just stood there, staring. He had to decide quickly if this was just a flat-chested woman with a very rich voice, or just a very flamboyant man that liked flowers.

Choices, choices.

"And the Negaverse has this weird way of making all its senshi men look like women." He sipped his beer again to hide his uncertainty, though he was more convinced the longer he stood there. "But I'm flattered. I think." He let his eyes drift over Kerberos in what he hoped looked like a drunken leer, as if he were trying to decide if the man looked enough like a lady to excuse hitting on him. As he studied, however, he made a note of the bare feet, the too-long hair, the draping clothing. Even a bit tipsy, he was aware of what constituted a weak point.

Maybe he could just hang the guy by his skirt from a lamp post and be done with it.

Gehenna's eyes swept down to the corrupt's bare feet, watching the way the jewels glimmered with each step. As he swept his eyes back up the swaying figure and settled them on his face, he tried to decide if the man was genuinely hitting on him or just attempting to distract him. He was both too tipsy and too unfamiliar with this situation to really decide.

With a small smirk, he leaned down and hooked his finger in the plastic rings holding his beers, then stood and took a few sloppy steps to the side. It was a poor attempt to keep distance between them.

"Oh, I'm not really looking for anything. Y'know, just.. destroying shitty modern art statements that no one cares about. Destroying things is a pretty healthy outlet and all." He shrugged and drained the last of his beer, then tossed the can haphazardly to the side where it rebounded on a pile of once-a-statue rubble. He pulled the next one out of the ring.

"Besides, if I wasn't, I'd -" he cut off just as he pulled his arm back and launched the full beer can right at the corrupt, hoping it might daze him and at least put them on a level playing field.

Gehenna had a brief window of time to mourn the loss of perfectly good beer, watching as it impacted and began to spray a high pressure fizz across a row of nearly-dead shrubs. He was still staring after it sadly when the man shouted something he belatedly registered as a Senshi attack, jerking his eyes back to the corrupt just in time to get a face full of petals.

"What the ********.." he groaned and took a step backward, swatting at the air with one thick, burly hand. His gaze shifted back up to the beer can where it was bubbling out its last spurts and the regret of throwing it hit him harder than he expected. That was one of the only beers he had left. He needed that to forget all the things he didn't want to remember.

A sinking feeling began in the pit of his stomach, not just because of the beer, but because of all the stuff it was meant to erase. As the spray died he realized he was doing to have to face all the consequences of his poor judgment, his lack of self control, his mounting heap of failures..

One hand reached up and pressed hard against his breast plate as the sinking feeling in his stomach spread to his chest, eating at him like the worst kind of heartbreak he'd ever felt. Even as he fought not to remember, Cinnabar's gasping face flashed across his vision - the feeling of her arms as she struggled to breath. His eyes dropped from the corrupt to stare at his feet. Hver's frightened eyes were staring back at him as she desperately crawled away. A pang in his chest made the hand over his chest ball up into a fist, as if he might be able to crush the feeling out of himself.

Then the worst of it, and the start of all this regret, flashed inside his mind. That lieutenant that had never stood a chance, bloodied and broken and quite possibly dead, lying on the street in a pool of his own blood. One of Gehenna's legs buckled and he hit the pavement beneath him, kneeling to his own shame. It didn't stop, though. The images circled his mind like a tornado, bleeding together with nightmares that had been haunting him for weeks. His head bowed as he tried to fight off the feeling of regret and hopelessness, as he tried to ignore the images of loved ones and strangers, bleeding and broken at his own hands.

Kerberos was forgotten as the Squire was consumed by his own mind.

Gehenna was lost, drowning in a nightmare of red. Face after face swirled through that storm, bruises and blood and broken bones marring the form of every person he cared about as they drifted in and out of view. He knew it was all his fault, every last one of them. Everything he touched was ruined.

Then a metallic ring resounded through the red stained darkness and his mind surfaced just enough to realize he was not alone in the sorrow. Someone else had caused this plummet, a someone that had just knocked him onto his back with a well-placed punch. He didn't even remember getting there, but as he stared up into the corrupt's eyes, he knew that this was one of those dog-eat-dog moments.

This effeminate creature was going to kill him and let his last memories be of all the wrongs he had done in this life. He struggled, but managed to push himself up onto his elbows, locking eyes with the man. He stood out among the sorrows, a perfect, delicate flower among all the broken creatures filling his thoughts. If he was already drowning in the red storm, what was one more bruised petal tonight?

Gehenna balled his right hand into a fist and drew hard on the magic, reaching for it between the crashing waves of guilt and panic. It was hard to grasp at first, but it was there, and the moment that the spikes across his knuckles clicked into place, it drove all sense of guilt and sorrow to the back of his mind. The red storm began to flood his vision. All the haunting visions of his loved ones fled him and left only one, single person alone with the berserker and his rage.

"You're not sorry."

The words were a growl through grit teeth, managed in those fleeting seconds before the rage became an all consuming force. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and in the same motion, threw a hard punch squarely at Kerberos' knee. He didn't wait to see if it crippled or stunned, he just drug himself to his feet.