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Seven days. Seven days since new years eve, since the kidnapping. It was the end or maybe the beginning, no one was really sure. The only thing anyone knew for sure was the suffering, the screams, pleading in the night and the death. They had killed one of them and fed her starseed to another. It wasn’t him, for now it wasn’t him. He still changed to three story slide, tied and dirty. He hadn’t had a visitor today, missed out on his torture session, but that only served to make him more acutely aware of everything around him. Some not to far away had been visited twice, the screams were unbearable, another had gone silent and he wasn’t sure what that meant, but there wasn’t a spectacle made of it, not like the other night.

Another scream, from him this time, as he shifted and pain ripped through him, or at least he thought it was him. Did it really matter anymore? They were all screaming together, for rescue, for strength, for comfort. ‘“I’m alive’, their screams said. I’m alive, but for how long.

He couldn’t remember the last time he balked at pain, recoiled in the face of suffering.

It hardly mattered anymore, he supposed.

It was easy to fall in line. Easy to dole out orders. Easy to form another cog in the machine. The captain himself sat opposite the senshi so tautly chained to the slide, where he whittled away at a small, carved memento left behind by one of the deceased. It resembled a chess piece, he knew, and a rook by the looks of it. A mahogany wood, maybe, for its dark complexion and rich color. He whistled while he worked, Greensleeves timed to the rhythm of his captain’s knife slowly stripping away all intricate carvings identifying the chess piece.

“Hey,” he finally called to the battered, broken senshi. The Captain flicked the wood shaving toward his captive’s face, smiling slightly when the curled fleck struck him on the nose. “Wake up. You’re gonna give me your opinion on this.”

He smiled wider, showing a gap where one incisor used to inhabit his mouth. Absently his tongue struck the socket like a snake after prey.

Finally the captain scooted next to his captive, knife and whittling object still in hand, and shimmied close enough that their elbows would’ve touched had the senshi any ability to move beyond his shackles. “Know where I got this? I’ll tell ya. One of your senshi friends gave it up to me. No, no, not like that…” The grin fixed on his face, loud and oppressive, as he waved the knife as a gesture to soothe the senshi. “She didn’t want to give it up, you see. I had to take it from her. Pry it from her cold, dead hands. Well, they weren’t cold at the time. Might not be cold yet still. Whatever.

“Anyway, I’m gonna make this here thing into a coffin. I’m gonna carve out the center - right here,” he elaborated by tracing a diamond-shaped outline on the chest piece, “and turn this into a little starseed coffin. It’s like… A wallet. But for starseeds. Pretty creative, right?” He laughed - or cackled. Very little remained to delineate the two.

“And guess what else. You’re gonna be the one to test it out. See, I still got your friend’s starseed. Right in this here pocket.” Gently he patted his coat with the flat of the blade.

“Excited? You should be.”

The senshi woke with a start and tried desperately not to panic, but as the captain moved closer to him it was impossible. He struggles against his bonds, against the chains in an attempt to get away. He didn’t want the man that close to him, not with a knife in his hand. He paid no attention to what the other was doing, he simply had no desire to be stabbed.

As the captain spoke his own breathing increases with his rising panic, increased to the point of hyperventilation, words outside of his grasp as he gasped for air. Every breath dragged in shot pain across bruised ribs. Terror filled him, but the last of the words spoken to him filled his eyes with tears, which spilled free leaving trails down filth covered cheeks.

“Please, don’t. Please. I swear I don’t know anything. I have nothing to give you. This, this is pointless.” He managed a rush of words, probably barely understood while he was so shaken. He gasped for air, but after a moment he clenched his jaw and prepared for what was going to come. Would be be made to eat it, like the other? Or was something else in store for him? Was there something worse?

“If you think this is pointless, then you don’t know war.” The captain tapped the flat of the blade against his own temple. “You gotta think about it. People die, and they don’t just die and everyone moves on. They die and people get pissed. And when people get pissed, people make mistakes. Even if you don’t know s**t, someone else around here does. And that someone is gonna get pissed once we kill someone they know.”

A stint of heavy silence passed when the captain calmly returned to his work on the ex-chess piece, whittling away its interior until it resembled something of a scaled down kayak. And during his work, he often paused to withdraw the starseed from his pocket, and compare its size and dimensions to the hole he now carved. Occasionally he yawned, loudly, and half-turned toward the senshi during the process to drown the beleaguered soul in his own foul halitosis. When finished with the arduous task of whittling out the last of his latest undertaking, the captain held both the finished product and the starseed right beneath the senshi’s nose.

“Here’s how this is gonna work. You watched me do this - I didn’t once stick the starseed in the hole, did I? No. So we’re gonna play a game where we’re banking on my carving skills. I’m gonna stick this here starseed into the hole. If it fits, you get to live - but your little friend here,” he paused to shake the starseed in palm, “ain’t gonna be so lucky. She gets to live on inside of you. So much for that s**t about rebirth, right?”

The captain whistled his own excitement over the proposed game, followed by a breathless laugh. “Whew! Doozy, right? Now, let’s say this thing doesn’t fit, and I carved it all wrong. Well, then you die. plain and simple. I stuff my fist into your chest and it’s game over.

“Ready to play, boy?”

The waiting, the watching, it was probably the most torturous of events for the week thus far. He didn’t want to watch and he tried to look away to avoid the captains breath, not that he thought his was any better. He was certain anyone near him now would reel back from his smell. The stench of sweat and dried blood, a week of torture, no baths and meager meals. The stench of a prisoner of war, a captive. Every second that ticked was a thousand eternities, every glimpse of the starseed settled fear more deeply in his belly. He was sitting on the edge of panic and he didn’t think he would be brought back any time soon or ever.

He jumped when the captain spoke, a scream escaping his mouth the moment he pulled at an open wound on his arm. Fresh tears leapt to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. “You’re insane and I don’t want to play your game. Just kill me. I won’t take that, I won’t.”

He clenched his jaw further, he felt he might break his own jaw in the process and moved to press himself more firmly against the steps to the slide no matter the pain it caused him. If this was the last thing he did in his short life, as terrified as he was, he was going to resist, because he felt the captain was just toying with him. He had some promises made to him this week, but none had been kept.

“You will have to kill me,” he ground out.

“Ain’t gonna kill you ‘til we know for sure. Cool your jets, boy.” Finally the captain set to the task of testing his new carving. With starseed in hand, he rubbed his thumb against the smooth and still warm surface. He handled it gingerly, almost reverently for its beauty and implication. Afterward he watched the senshi’s countenance carefully as he traced the tip of the starseed against the opening in the ex-chess piece. Smiling, he pressed the seed inside with the butt of his thumb. It was a rough fit, but a fit nonetheless.

Their fates were sealed.

“Looks like it works, don’t it?” That grin stained his face irrevocably. “Guess you’re gettin’ a snack. You’ve got to be happy about that. I mean, you haven’t had any food in what, few days? Boy like you’s gonna need some nutrition to keep suffering like this.”

The captain beat the wooden piece against the palm of his hand to shake out the starseed while he spoke. “Anyone ever tell you that, if you press on someone’s jaw just right, they can’t seem to close it? Now, I never got the chance to try it myself, but we got time to test this little thing out. I think it’s something like pressing on the part where your jaw meets your skull or something like that. Like this…”

The captain reached out toward his captive with one hand, thumb and forefinger pressed to the meeting of mandible and bone with the swell of the man’s neck cradled into his webbing. Carefully the captain squeezed, initially fostering no luck, but after a time and a few choice locations, he managed to pry the senshi’s face open just far enough to accept the starseed. Knowing the dangers of getting his fingers bitten off, the captain kept his grip as furiously as he could manage while his free hand slipped the starseed inside. Fingers clotted with blood forced the seed further down, to the back of the man’s throat, where choking may ensue if he could not cough it out.

Afterward he slipped his fingers out as quickly as he could and slammed his palm against the bottom of the senshi’s jaw to force the swallow, or shatter the seed.

It didn’t matter which.

His heart was thundering in his chest as she watching the captain fit the starseed in its supposed coffin and it fit. His eyes went wide and tried to back up to no avail, it was possible. He was pressed as firmly against the slide steps as he could be and he had no where else to go. He glared at the captain when the other grabbed his face. He fought thrashing and moving his head about, but he was too weak and needed to focus on keeping his mouth closed.

He was losing strength fighting the captain and the other has was correct about his ability to open his mouth. As much as he tried to bite down to keep himself from accepting the starseed, it went. Into his mouth, and down his throat, crushed and journeying down to his stomach. He gave a tortured scream and wept. Why, why subject them to this. Its was something you learned in all this. That little sparkling seed that could be pulled from you was your soul. He’d be forced to eat someones soul, someones existence.

He cried out, shaking and trying tiredly to break away from the slide and kill the captain. The strength from his anger didn’t last long, his world spun after a moment. He began to weep, balling like a baby, as guilt wracked him and pain and nausea started to wash over him. He looked up at the captain his expression pitiful.

“Why? My comrades, they dont deserve this. Why …. I …. I …” he screamed out wailing in desperation. A starseed for lunch was torture for dinner.

“Why? You want me to give you some kinda heartfelt reason, senshi? Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t have one. Don’t need one. Sometimes people do shitty things just ‘cuz it’s fun. You wanna go looking for explanations in that, go ahead. Doesn’t bother me any. The way I figure it… Once we pump you full of starseeds, there won’t be nothin’ left to ask me why.

“So I guess, the best answer I can give you is: because. It’s a b***h, huh?” The captain laughed again, his grin exposing the socket where his incisor vacated his mouth. Again, his tongue struck the hole healed over with clot and meat.

“If you’re done asking pointless questions, then sit tight and enjoy the ride. Eating starseeds, it’s a trip. Get used to it, ‘cuz you’ll be doing a lot of it about now.”

He tried to fold on himself to ward of the pain, to fight the nausea. It was difficult when he was drowning in despair trying to breath barely able to catch his breath as he wailed into the night. He hardly realized the captain was there at all. If he left at that very moment he would not even realize. His wails just continued and he wished for death for the treason he had committed. He had eaten his own comrades starseed. It was too much to bare.

“Oh, what’s that? You want another? Let’s see if I got something else for you.” The captain squinted while he dug around in the pockets of his uniform, tracing the linings with his bare fingers. The tip of his tongue stuck out through the hole where his tooth once resided. “There’s gotta be something else rattling around in here… Pack of cigarettes, lighter, some old dog tag from one of your friends… Huh. Coulda sworn I had another one for you.

“Oh wait! I think I know where it’s at.” His hand strayed to the chest pocket of his uniform where he withdrew yet another seed, though this one showed markedly less vibrance than the first. “Old keepsake I’ve been holding onto for, you know, emergencies and just plain fun.” Blowing on it gently, the captain feigned the motions of brushing the dust from the captive soul.

“Now, open wide, cuz this one’s gonna be a doozy. Trust me, they get better and better as you keep going.” Again the man reached out to cup face in hand, and plod through the motions of forcing another starseed down the senshi’s gullet. “And remember to chew this time - wouldn’t want you choking to death on one of your friends. What’ll my superiors think?” He laughed.

He was too distressed to resist, the next starseed was swallowed with almost no resistance as the senshi wailed. He almost choked on the thing, but it was force down. Moments later his pain doubled and his nausea had him heaving, but nothing came up. He was screaming out and shaking in absolute agony.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” he cried out, the sounding piercing the relative darkness. He could easily be heard for the last few minutes, maybe more as he descended into hysteria, as he was broken, as he was changed.

He quieted as his existence was taken from him and the pain resided. He looked up at the captain with a absolutely haunting most wicked grin, one eye sealed oddly, skin deathly paled his brooch shattered.

“Would you like to play of game? I think they might? Let me play with them. Let’s play in the funhouse, me you and the senshi. Let play, lets play.” He howled and cackled, changed, no longer senshi, no longer human. A youma.