Welcome to Gaia! ::

Megrez felt the tingling of a Chaos aura around her level and the softer sensation of a weaker Order aura. These auras were different from the standard ones, however; that Chaos aura was not a Negaverse officer aura and that Order aura was not a Senshi aura. The Order aura was quickly recognized as a Page, but the Chaos aura was a bit more elusive. After some thought, she remembered feeling a similar aura in the warehouse where she had gained her first kill. She had chucked plates at a corrupt senshi's head that night, and the sensations seemed to match up. A super-level corrupt senshi and a page, in the same place... there had to be a battle or something suspicious going on.

Not one to leave such suspicious situations alone, particularly if they involved a Negaverse target, Megrez crept around the corners. A peek confirmed her gist of the situation: there was a Page in deep trouble. Conjuring up a basic-level egg (she needed the super-level ones for the coup de grace, of course), she charged up behind the corrupt senshi and launched the egg at the back of his head. Though it wasn't a particularly salient thought, Megrez relished the idea of getting that, long, beautiful, probably incredibly silky blue hair splattered with sticky, sticky egg goop. As she threw her egg, she called out to the Page: "Quick, get out of here! Run! I'll take this one!"

Well, if the corrupt senshi didn't know Megrez was there before, he had to now.

That wicked grin was not lost on Megrez, no. If anything, she appreciated it. It was an indicator that she was dealing with a real b*****d. This guy was the kind of Negaverse agent who needed to be taken down. He had already established himself as a decisive threat to Order, and so she would have no qualms about putting an end to him.

Figuring she was too close to manage a quip back, Megrez got ready to take a swing at the Corrupt, only to become distracted by the feel of petals brushing against her face. She blinked as a reflex, and like a tiny stream of water, memories trickled to the forefront of her mind. The flow started with her memories of the meeting some weeks ago. She had blown up under pressure and made some enemies. She was certain that at least one person would make good on her vow to let them kill her should she corrupt. Would it be Ganymede? Kairatos? The shithead? Penthesilea, Megiddo, Gunn, maybe even Cybele?

Then she had gone on to kill that captain, hacking and slashing his body to tatters even after he was decisively dead. He had begged the lieutenant with him to run, showing care and responsibility for those below his station, and yet, she had killed him. Some family's son would not be coming home that night. Had the papers announced his death? Had his family been stricken with grief, shaking their fists and concluding that only a "terrorist" could do such a thing? She had killed him with brutality on par with Castor and Pollux's initial show. There had been so much blood...

Speaking of those two, the story didn't end there. Not long after killing that captain, she had gone on to take another lieutenant's life and allow Pollux to do the same. He had frozen some innocent (? no, she was a lieutenant, how could she be innocent) woman's eyes, making her death beyond painful. She had concussed her target with a giant egg and crushed her windpipe while she was unconscious. It wasn't quite as bloody, but even now, the snap-crunch of her breaking neck sounded infinitely too loud.

Her death toll was up to three now: the lieutenant in the warehouse (oh, no, she hadn't forgotten him, she would never forget him), the captain, the lieutenant in the pair. She was doing what she was supposed to, wasn't she? She was cutting away at the scourge of Chaos, wasn't she? Then why did it feel so painful, so horrible in this moment?

At that meeting, there had been talk of Order's reputation, of how Castor and Pollux and anyone who supported them was flirting with Chaos themselves. What she was doing was frowned upon. How many of them had gone their entire senshi (or knight) careers without killing anyone? How many would continue to do so? How many would remain pure like that till the end? A deep jealousy and resentment of those pure, unstained people rose up in her, only to be squelched by a crushing sorrow.

Everyone hated her now. She wasn't fit to be a member of Order's ranks.

Of course, all Kerberos would see was a full-body shudder and a slight dampening to her eyes.

The few seconds in which Megrez had been paralyzed by her pain were more than enough for the corrupt to close the gap and do the unthinkable. She gasped, then looked down to see the hand completely in her chest. Somehow, she had a sense that this monster's hand was in fact completely wrapped around her soul, that he could just tug it out and that would be it. She would end up being one of the people who died because some person had refused to kill a corrupt senshi before he got too strong. She would die because no one had had the guts to take this guy out before he became a threat. An ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure.

But there was one worse thing he could do.

She recalled talking to Megiddo, expressing fear that a Negaverse officer could just stick their hand in her chest and bam, that would be it. She would lose everything. And right now, she was in the very position she had been dreading. His hand was completely in her chest. He could say the word and erase her and replace her with a hideous corrupt parody of herself. Then the terms of her vow would come into play, and her former allies would kill her, finally removing her from the picture for good. It seemed that, whether he pulled her starseed or corrupted it, she was about to come to an end right here unless she could act quickly.

What do you regret?

"No," she said, her voice shaking with fear and escalating into desperate shrieking as she went on. "No, no, no! I won't let you turn me into a monster like you! I won't! Never, never, never!" Doing the only thing she could think of that wouldn't knock the corrupt back with her starseed, and bent over and bit his arm, clamping down as hard as she could muster. If she died here, she was sure the reactions would be mixed. Some people would mourn, some others would express relief that another problematic senshi couldn't hurt Order's reputation anymore. But even dying here would be better than corrupting. Anything would be better than corrupting.

Megrez stood there, shaking her head, clutching her chest where the corrupt's hand had been. The strange feeling of being "aware" of her soul was gone, as though it had dispersed through her body. Perhaps a starseed was something one was only aware of when they focused on it or it became particularly noticeable, like a heartbeat. She was unsure whether to disclose her body count to him or not; he either wouldn't believe her and assume the count to be higher, or he'd be disgusted that she had gone on to make three kills and hadn't stopped at her first. There was most likely no point to it, especially since there was a more important question being leveled at her:

How quickly would you turn on your own with a little bit of darkness in your heart?

The shithead had posed a similar accusation towards her when she had exploded at the meeting. How long would it be till the others were no longer pure enough, not fit to her standards? She already had a thin trickle of jealousy and resentment towards those who had not killed, those who were were perfect and pure. Those feelings even extended to her past self. She hated how spotless they seemed to be, how they inherently held a moral high ground at all times. And the worst part was that they barely even truly did anything in the war. They might beat up an officer or two from time to time, but did they ever make any decisive strides? No, or the war might be looking significantly different right now.

But she had sworn to herself that she would never attack her own side. She had made a point to say that Kairatos wasn't a target and that she wouldn't attack Hvergelmir. They were her people, so to speak. She firmly believed that, if they fought each other for any reason, Order was doomed to destruction. Her takeaway from Castor and Pollux's show of power was that action needed to be taken as a united front, and it still mystified her that some people would rather stand around in their apparently for-show fukus and do nothing, or worse yet, force others to do nothing.

Still, she shook her head. "No," she said, a slight quaver to her voice. "No, I'll never attack my own side. Never, never."

<******** sicko! The invective rang through Megrez's head near-automatically, and she reached up and yanked his hand away. "Don't touch me!" Cupping her free hand, she called up another basic egg and thrust her hand forward with the intent of smashing it straight into his face. I won't become a monster! The phrase became a mental mantra. She wouldn't let this creature be the one to do her in. She would remain whole (or as whole as she could be), and she would not let him turn her into a monster in any sense.