[forward-dated to the evening of april 23.]

It had to be a joke.

That was the only thought on Chrysocolla's mind for what felt like an hour, fingers clenched tight-so-tight around her tablet she almost thought she'd break it. She wouldn't, right? They were built to last. They'd survive being dropped off buildings. Even with magical strength, she wasn't going to crack its casing.

It had to be a joke.

But Laurelite wouldn't do something like joke. Not about something as important as a new General-Sovereign. Not in general, really, when she was addressing the entire Negaverse.

But this had to be a joke.

It was not a reality Chrysocolla was willing to accept. Why would it be? She'd been wishing for his death for years and years. Who cared if he'd been her fault in the first place in a lot of ways? He'd never given her any credit for anything good he'd managed to make of himself, anyway.

She had tried, once. It made her make a face to think about it now, but she'd really been trying to help him, then. Not that she had done it well, or that she'd really helped at all, but...

On some level, Chrysocolla knew -- had known for a long time -- that he hadn't been the only person at fault for that mess; it'd been a lot more her than him, even, not like she cared. He'd been a Lieutenant. She'd been an Eternal, even then, and she'd held some of his fate in her clumsy hands. But they'd been teenagers. Weren't they supposed to be messy and figure things out? She'd heard that, somewhere, and it wasn't as if she didn't see enough messy teenage basket cases in the Negaverse these days; they were as common as they'd always been.

And if she'd ever cared enough to actively recruit, that really was the perfect archetype. Disaffected teenagers, angry at the world, dying to mean something and be someone and get all that everything out -- but that didn't interest her. Better to try and retain the drifters, given how often people deserted, given how there was still no real structure in place to prevent it. As much as Chrysocolla would've preferred to just stick a youmaglia in anyone who so much as voiced a ******** doubt in Metallia in the first place, that wasn't going to happen, and she had to suck it up and deal. There was nothing she could do about Generals deserting, and apparently they were acceptable losses, the same way that stupid teenagers were acceptable leaders. They hadn't been special cases. There were probably tons of teenagers in the Negaverse even right now who had half the same details.

And more important than that, Schörl had preferred her, much more so, and as teenagers that had made all the difference for both of them.

It didn't mean much anymore.

Distantly she'd been aware of this for a while. It hadn't been information she could exactly avoid. The weight of Metallia's gaze on her when she'd tried to take in Kurma and failed had been miserable enough it was still haunting her, but overall she wasn't special, when it came down to it. Not in any way that particularly mattered. Most of the time, there wasn't anything differentiating her from almost every other active and loyal General in the bunch, except they got deadly weapons and she just got magic and her fists.

Chrysocolla knew she was not outgoing, or adventurous, or impassioned; she knew she could be sweet enough, when she wanted to be, but her personality was not exactly given to attract people to her. Not in any direction. It took a lot of work, which work she wasn't very interested in putting in most of the time. Not unless she was told to! And she usually hadn't been told. (What did Kerberos see in her, anyway? She'd never really figured it out. Not yet. She liked him more than enough to keep him secret, and a lot of what she showed him was partial truth, but sometimes she couldn't shake the feeling he was still trying to save that little teenage girl she'd been, the one she couldn't remember. She didn't even get dreams about being that other her anymore.)

And then there was Faustite, surrounded by layers of a team he'd built himself, leading operations into the Rift, trusted by General-Sovereigns and the Queen to carry out high-risk missions -- he was dynamic, was the point. He'd had some of that, even back then. And even back then, Chrysocolla hadn't had ambition or force of personality or something fierce and hot in her chest driving her, and she still didn't: she went where she was pointed, and she did what she was told, and she was an instrument of blunt force for the Negaverse. She didn't need to be more. What would she do with it? What would she want with it?

That team? Of course she knew about Team Faustite. It was kind of hard to not know. They were like weeds; they got everywhere, and there was somehow always more of them, related somehow to Faustite's leadership, and they were usually so dedicated it almost made her sick. If the Negaverse had any true mercy for her, Hessonite would've let her just start cutting them down for fun; throw those starseeds out and let them spin back up again in chibi senshi in half a decade, or break them into youma for free cannon fodder. It would've been so satisfying! It wasn't anything she'd ever have asked in reality, she wasn't stupid, but she wanted. She wanted so badly. It would've been so satisfying to her.

It was one of those unrealistic daydreams; she had a few that she knew would never happen, because nobody would ever give her that, but she still liked to cling to them sometimes. Lifestyles she couldn't have, and orders she couldn't give, and kills she couldn't make.

And even if none of them died to hurt him, even if she couldn't do that because every inch of it would mark her as a traitor, couldn't someone still hunt them down like dogs, just to make their lives basically unlivable? It was probably what they deserved, just for being near him. They weren't her friends or her team. Chrysocolla didn't care. She didn't care about most people, anyway, but this was more pointed than her usual blunted antipathy.

He wasn't supposed to have nice things or get to grow beyond himself. It was simple! It was so simple. This was the world she had been content to live in for years now, and if she continually did her best to ignore anything that had to do with him, she had been able to pretend it was still true. But no. General-King for him, because the Negaverse apparently thought he was important and special and reliable and deserving, and for all her years of loyal service and all the blood she'd gotten to spill Chrysocolla did not have enough of a spark of her own to -- to do anything that would've marked her as more. She could be forced to acknowledge it and ledge that information in her soul, but it didn't mean she had to like it; it didn't mean she had to calm down her heart beating frantic with rage in her chest.

That kind of power... what would she do with it, anyway?

It wasn't as if there was that kind of advancement for her. Maybe Order Senshi got Royals. Negaverse Senshi didn't. There would've been one by now, dark and bold and with some rot-empowered crystal in their hands; they would have been a symbol. If it could happen, there would be one by now.

...Would there? There weren't that many who stuck around for too long before fading out or heading out of town or turning traitor. The only Eternals she could remember being active at the moment were her, a bunch of Faustite's boys (which was really kind of dire!), Kamacite, Cymophane... Tristan? She'd never talked to Tristan, but she'd seen her around a few times. Amphitrite had left town years ago, around the same time Chrysocolla had gone on that mission; hopefully she was doing well.

(The prospect of something else -- no. She wouldn't accept it. It was better to not send updates or news or almost anything. She said hi, once in a while, and that was enough. It had to be enough. She didn't deserve Desdemona's attention just because they were sisters; that wasn't the way things worked. It was a natural distance. Desdemona was fine, and busy, and distant, and all of those things had to be true or some of the world would split apart; and that was something Poppy needed to be okay with, because it was nothing she could hold and change and break.)

There was probably a few names not coming to mind, but she was a little distracted at the moment, her shoulders so set they'd gone rigid -- and it wasn't much better with Supers, either, so many people made just enough of themselves to earn a promotion and then lost any of that spark. Negaverse Senshi were rarer than Officers; even if the rates for fading out, or falling between the gaps, or turning traitor -- even if those rates were the same as they were for Officers, it hurt more when there were less of them.

Why did her hand hurt? Oh. That made sense. She was digging her nails into her palm where they weren't occupied with holding the tablet, crescents of pressure denting the fabric of her gloves. If her fuku hadn't been so durable, she figured she would've torn holes in them by now.

She took a second, then, and peeled her fingers away from the tablet. It was hard to break; it was fine if she dropped it on the floor roughly. It wouldn't chip or go on the fritz. And if she did actually break skin, that would be a problem; she spent a lot of time holding things, one way or another, and cuts on her palms would be a huge pain to bandage and conceal. People would ask questions.

It was -- the thing about this was --

So what if Faustite contributed more to the Negaverse? He didn't deserve it. Chrysocolla was as certain of this as she'd been for years and years, in the way she'd been certain since some time in her mission away; unchaperoned her feelings had gone septic and hot and hard, like fever, like rot. She felt it with a fervency she didn't really feel about most things, except maybe serving the Negaverse and some of those daydreams she would never have; except, maybe, General Schörl. Who was gone, anyway. So that didn't matter. Chrysocolla couldn't sit and spin her wheels anticipating that return like a dog waiting for its owner; if it ever happened, she'd think about it then, and she would accept any prizes or punishment she had earned as loyally as she always had.

He didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve anything good, ever, and she would swear this to the day she died; it was one of those deep-set feelings that ran through her entire body, the same way stupid lizard-brain fears did. She hated him about as much as she hated anything at all.

It didn't matter if it was an irrational feeling. It was, probably, a very irrational one! The Negaverse obviously did not share it, and Queen Laurelite obviously did not share it, and Metallia herself did not share it if she'd made Faustite into a General-King, and she wasn't going to go run around telling people how much she didn't think a General-King deserved his position. That wasn't something she'd done before, and she wasn't going to do it now. If nothing else, it would make her sound like a traitor, and at that point nothing else she said would be convincing enough proof of her loyalty. If someone had said things like she wanted to say but about Hessonite -- she would have broken them, because that was what you did, with dissent. Break bones. Break spirits. Cut it out at the root before it spreads, and force a youmaglia into their stupid little head so that they got the idea to never, never, say stupid little things like that ever again.

It was a thought she had to keep to herself, given how deep it went, or at least not share it with anyone in the Negaverse. She knew what it'd sound like. And as bitter as it might have made her, she wasn't a traitor; she wasn't going to go running to Order and pretend like she wanted to purify just to selectively leak information. Was she?

It did take some thought to decide. But she probably wasn't, anyway. It'd be too much effort and too many moving parts for something that probably wouldn't even amount to anything; over all these years, she'd never seen Order go on a manhunt the way the Negaverse could. Maybe Kerberos...? That might be safe. She knew how to coach it, and how to phrase it, and how to angle herself to come off the way she wanted to come off; if she just happened to complain to him about how she thought Faustite didn't deserve his rank and how she thought his huge team was a hazard, and hurting any of them might make him vulnerable... it was a thought. She'd need to think about it some more, because if anyone else had done this, she would've called them a traitor -- but she wasn't, of course. She would've done anything Metallia asked.

Not that Metallia had ever actually really asked anything specific of, specifically, her. But if she had -- if that ever happened, the way Chrysocolla desperately wanted -- she would've done anything. Anything. No matter what it was. It was only what Metallia deserved.

It wasn't as if she thought she deserved all the good things in the world or anything, too, because she didn't. But Chrysocolla was generally happy with what she had and what she was given. Maybe she needed to try to have more ambition, but...

...she needed to think on it. It was a good hour to go patrolling, and that'd get her mind off things, anyway. She just needed a little blood on her hands to get her head on straight and think about her next move.

She wanted to leave her tablet where it sat. But that was petty, and stupid, and she didn't want to explain why she needed a new one, so she picked it up and shoved it as roughly into her subspace as she could manage.

And then she was gone, further into the city streets for the night.
[total wc: 2491]