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Not only was this the most awkward ******** conversation he had ever had, entirely unwarranted and entirely unprepared for -- no matter how much he'd tried to prep on the fly -- Ursula was looking at him with the round-faced o of, you're the thirty-five-year-old virgin?. He had never been irritated about this before. No, he hadn't bragged about it, but sex was a topic he really didn't care to talk about with ******** anybody. Only the Negaverse was pure. Only the Negaverse was worthy of obsession.

Except then he:

- released the pure human form of the Negaverse into one of his best men;
- who then asked him to marry him
- ********, Ursula

An unusual feeling was sinking over him, covering him in a fine veil. It was 'embarrassment'.

God, he needed a cigarette.

"No," he snapped, patting his pocket to try to find his stash. "And you can take that ******** tone with me. You can take it if you want me to snap your shitty little neck. This is not the same as you playing pat-a** with Audrey ******** Collins, you hear me? Don't overstep yourself, Lieutenant. I do not answer to you. Neither does your Queen."

They were both staring at each other from opposite sides of the table, the anger crackling between them both. "Don't let your success with your Tisiphone mission get in the way of the fact that you're still on the lowest goddamned rung of this revolution, and you answer to me. I will castrate you with two ******** rocks before I listen to your pissant little judgements."

General-King Charonite: nervous? Embarrassed? Whatever the case, this was going 'wrong'.

The man opposite didn't even bother to change into his Negaverse form -- perhaps out of some form of humiliation, yet again, digging his claws into Hematite however he could. You're not worth it. But Hematite had already dug his claws in too -- and they were both hackles raised, faces like thunderclouds, Nealite utterly forgotten. Well. Not forgotten, but out of this particular battle, as Charonite stalked around the other side of the table.

Scruff of his shirt again. Hematite was used to this. There wasn't even a well-spat how dare you, there was just that black, maniac anger, and without preamble he slammed his fist into Hematite's face. The younger Lieutenant was immediately scrambling against him -- this was a fight. This was an odd fight. Charonite rarely used his fists against anyone but Hematite, Nealite had noticed by now; it was Deathcord to impertinent officers, it was his hate and his whip against everyone else. To Khal, it was fists. Khaldun got in a fairly admirable punch, but Charonite grabbed his wrist and rammed him back into the wall; he slammed Hematite's head back. Hematite was still fighting. Charonite didn't wince at the sharp kick to his shin, though it must have hurt; then again, did the General-King bother to feel pain?

And then he was shaking him like a dog, voice snarled through gritted teeth.

"If you -- " Shake. " -- speak about her that way -- " Shake. " -- again -- " Shake. " -- I will ******** kill you like they did back in the old days." (Ah, the old days, when they walked a mile through snow and rocks uphill both ways.) "I will just ******** KILL YOU." Shake, shake. "Despite your PARENTS." Shake. "Despite who you -- despite everything, you little ********. You UNGRACIOUS LITTLE b*****d."

Wait, he was calling him ungracious? For having to put up with getting told not to ever remotely enjoy life whatsoever, because apparently it was against Negaverse mores?

Hematite was numb to the pain, at least until the force of the last punch snapped his neck back. That was the point where things had really started going downhill, and his fighting spirit was being slowly suffocated by the reality. Injuries began to compound themselves. He'd punched, kicked, flailed, but it was like he was fighting a brick wall - he didn't even get the satisfaction of seeing a look of pain on Charonite's face when his boot connected with an unprotected shin. He wanted revenge! He wanted to take out his aggression just once on the object of his hatred! But Charonite was still just standing there as Gunn Killingworth, able to incapacitate the younger Negaverse lieutenant without even bothering to drop his human guise. Insult to injury. Defeat. But the pent-up rage had already been spent and Hematite simply winced as he was shaken as a form of punctuation. Death threats, always death threats. From a face that was sure to start swelling in minutes, Hematite only stared contemptuously. How the hell was he supposed to know s**t about the 'old days'? The General-King kept making strange allusions to the history of the Negaverse, but Hematite only knew the cobbled-together miniature militia that existed today, the one he knew had once not existed at all. And had that son of a b***h brought his parents into this!? At the remark, Hematite started gathering his energy in preparation to continue his losing battle. Or would have, had something not interrupted his train of thought before he could open his mouth to goad the General-King once again.

"Nealite-?" Hematite twisted a little in Charonite's grip (and maybe a bit in the hopes he could escape it and get back to brawling) as he tried to look over at the speaker, not recognizing the voice at first. For all of her shouting, Nealite's begging had not been heard by Hematite in the heat of the battle. This voice... wasn't really Nealite's. It sounded like Nealite's, like it had come from her, but was being applied to someone else's words, someone else's demeanor. And the weird thing was, it didn't sound like voice acting. Admittedly, he'd already been warned, but it was still a shock to actually see what he'd thought was purely gibberish. He stared, unable to comprehend the sight in front of him, but luckily complying with its request as a consequence of confusion. Just like the voice, he was looking at something that was both Nealite and not, and he didn't know where the one started and the other ended.

Son of a b***h, there really was a queen of the Negaverse.

"Charonite."

Her mouth was in a fine, thin line, and although her face looked calm and collected, her tone gave away the underlining anger.

She walked towards the two kneeling men, her eyes staring down at them, burning into them. "I have never been so ******** disappointed, so ******** irritated, so.... ******** surprised."

Well this was rather familiar.

Her eyes narrowed and a smirk grew from the thin line. "Why, you two are acting like <******** toddlers, even."

Although she made no threatening actions, her voice alone held danger in its words. One hand outstretched itself towards Charonite's head - what was she going to do? - before it stopped.

Her eyes went glassy, her focus not on either subordinate at this point, but in no particular direction. Her mouth, opened and ready to say something, simply hung there, jaw slacked, as her white skin turned even paler.

Something was going on in the mind of the Queen that neither man could see, but it clearly had shaken her, disturbed her, and sent her into a state of shock.

And, just as quickly as she'd arrived, Beryl was gone, leaving a startled Nealite moving to clutch onto the back of nearby chair. Her expression was nothing less than utter shock, confusion, horror.

Eyes closed, her bottom lip tucked itself in her mouth, her teeth biting down hard as the woman said nothing, merely shook her head, as if in disbelief, as if she were trying to make sense out of what the <********> just happened.

Something had happened, and Nealite was not talking.

The General-King had already moved forward. He scooped up the woman -- Nealite, now, not the queen that Hematite had seen before -- up into his arms, where she looked as though she currently had all the decision-making processes of a limp noodle. She'd seemed horrifying before; crackling with power. Someone familiar and all at once entirely unfamiliar. Again: like the ******** bizarro world he'd assumed he'd entered. And now she was just small, pale Ursula, looking broken and bemused in Charonite's arms, and the General-King was staring at her with actual -- dismay?

"The soul hasn't taken yet," he said curtly, looking at the woman in his arms, but this made no ******** sense. "She's two people, Khaldun: the Captain and the Queen. The Queen -- pushes herself forward."

He was already shuffling past, moving sideways so that the girl's head wouldn't be conked on the wall. Obviously moving towards the bedroom. "Queen Beryl hasn't absorbed her fully."

And this was horrifying enough, except when Charonite raised one leg to kick the bedroom door open, he said: "Probably never ******** will, it's been over twenty ******** years," and disappeared from view.

Hematite sat there, dazed. He'd fully committed himself to the belief that this was a dream, so he didn't dare to get close to the pair of superior officers on the off chance the whole scenario changed again, for the worse. He'd never been absolved this quickly of fighting back against the General-King, which he could just add to the end of a very long list of things about this evening that were 'off'. Giving the man a wary look, he listened to the short answer, watched as both General-King and Captain disappeared from the room. He didn't get any further chances to question the bizarre nature of the statements.

And then he was alone, fallen on his a** in the middle of Killingworth's makeshift dining room. His mind doubled back - engagement, queen of the Negaverse - and skipped forward - the way the queen had reached a hand out at Charonite, the very definition of sinister, how one minute Charonite was throttling him, and the next defending him. He thought about the way Nealite looked after that strange, powerful, different state - like there was hardly anything left of her when it had been through with her. All this was still oddly dreamlike, except that Nealite had looked so realistically sick and weak. Like that night she'd almost died. His fists clenched. This was an easy one to explain - Charonite had done this. He'd done all of this. Who else could have!? Who else knew all this archaic Negaverse bullshit about things like Queen Beryl and soul-swapping? Nealite couldn't have stumbled into some kind of magical soul trap on her goddamn own. And now she was two people, and the one Khaldun knew was less likely to come out on top in this situation. But what the ********. Was any of this real? Maybe he'd started reading too much into dreamworld again. No matter what, this was a clear sign that he had to do something to get between this relationship before it had the chance to flourish. Not just for his own sake, but... for Nealite's as well. She'd thank him later. Really. A lot later.

Maybe Charonite would hear the apartment door slam, but Khaldun, human once again and sporting his identity-concealing hoodie, didn't care at this point. Escape was what he'd been hoping for all that time, and he wasn't going to spend an extra second down some ******** Negaverse rabbit hole. He ran; he ran and didn't look back even once. Where? Didn't ******** matter. None of what had happened in that apartment made sense. He was going to think about this somewhere that wasn't... here. If he could bring himself to think about it at all.

He'd laid her down on the bed, but she didn't notice. She didn't notice as the cushions fell to the side of the bed, that her hair was moved away. She didn't notice a thing but the warm touch on her hand, the one thing keeping her from crying out, freaking out as everything came crumbling down in her mind.

Nea heard him, heard his order to revert back to Ursula. Her mind screamed at her no, that she'd be weaker, more vulnerable if she went back to Ursula. That whatever it is that took over would simply have an easier time devouring who she was, now that her powers were gone.

Closing her eyes, she shifted back into Ursula. No, Charonite, as rough as he was, had not proven himself untrustworthy. If he requested it of her, she would listen. The loss of power from her shifting made her feel all the more open to attack, all the more weaker and vulnerable, just as she feared.

"Please...don't leave me." She said quietly, the words whispered. She was ashamed for being so weak, being so scared, but not to the point that she would hold her tongue. Whatever that rush of emotions had been, that rush of memories, Ursula was not yet prepared to handle such power, to control herself.

Her body turned to curl up, moving into a more fetal position. She moved her hand, latching on to the hand that had held her wrist. She needed him there. She was terrified to be alone, unprotected against her own self.

"Please..."