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 Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 9:39 pm
This time she was ready. Her momentum carried her past Nova and she stumbled into a crouch, her hands and arms shielding her face as she pulled her cape over her body. The stars rained down on them but missed her in large part, though she felt pain shoot through her right arm. Blood was springing up everywhere. Her white uniform was in large part red now, all over the arms with blood puddling in her gloves: her sword's pommel was nearly as smeared as its hilt.
Kunzite knew that one more successful attack would be the end of her, and the end of the fight. So she kicked her foot out to trip Nova and thrust her blade, aiming to run her through the chest or the shoulder. There wasn't any more time to think.
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 9:55 pm
Nova went down. Nova went down hard, and with a sickeningly wet thump as her side met with the concrete and painted it red. Her shoulder had a sword in it, Nova observed faintly, and all she could taste was blood.
"Stop, stop, no," Nova gasped, her words rushed together, crying like a child. She wasn't a hardened soldier, as much as she paraded around, looking like one. Charonite had known that she wasn't tough, had ordered her to spar. She had barely even started learning, and she could never see a move ahead. She was frankly useless on her own and she KNEW that, but she always felt compelled to at least try to prove her worth.
"I can't-- I can't henshin down, I can't. Don't kill me. Nerissa's important to me, right? Please."
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 10:01 pm
Standing over her Kunzite was an ugly sight: covered in blood and the black skid marks of burns, uniform just about shredded and dripping blood onto her own sword. There was blood trickling from her mouth, too, or at least down from her forehead and over her lips, it was hard to tell if it was discrete tracks or just one continuous stream. Her sword hand was steady, however, and the tip pointed at Nova's chest didn't quiver. True to the last.
It was as if Nova had said nothing. She took the hilt of her sword into both hands, positioned it above Nova's sternum, and then drove it downward without further ado.
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 10:22 pm
The past two times that Kunzite had faced off against the Negaverse, she was pitted against one who was very strong, and offered all of the resistance in the world, and then again against someone very weak, who barely offered any resistance at all.
Both had survived the battle.
Nova did not.
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 10:34 pm
Kunzite stood there for a moment, staggered, leaned on the sword that pinned Nova's chest to the ground like a butterfly to a collector's board, if there were collectors of little girls: for that was all Nova was now, a little girl sprawled out on the ground like a broken doll. A very broken doll. Dark blood was leaking from all the places she was broken.
Away from anyone's watchful eyes, or rapt ears -- it was very quiet here, even the fight had been quiet, for a fight -- Cavalier Kunzite said, "Oh God," and then, "Oh, Jesus," and after a moment dragged her sword out of Nova. It came out, with a wet noise. She stared.
Blood ran into her eyes. She wiped it away. A moment later she was composed again; memories of battle had reasserted themselves, a hundred soft bodies hitting the soft ground. This wasn't the first time (but it was) and it wouldn't be the last time; get ahold of yourself, General, said her voice, or his voice, old in her head. She was aching in a hundred places, her skin burned. Nova was dead at her feet.
Slowly, like a rusted tin soldier, she knelt with some pain next to Nova's body, and closed her eyes a moment; then she closed Nova's eyes; then she stripped off one of her gloves and, against all the quailing of disgust she felt, reached into Nova's chest and found what she was seeking. The leaden starseed. She said something inaudible.
A moment later she was gone, and Sailor Nova left to the mercies of the Destiny City police and the Negaverse.
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 11:05 pm
To the Negaverse, mainly.
The General-King had corrupted Sailor Nova's seed, and there was a faint tie with it. Tie enough to know when it had been broken. Tie enough to sit up on the couch, Ursula looking at him in mild surprise, when he felt it snap.
He didn't waste time -- he put down his dinner plate and, never minding the bandaged wound still at his shoulder (stiff but not festering) grabbed her hand. They both popped! out of existence and into the silent street where Kunzite had just escaped from, too late for any kind of confrontation. They were just left with the leavings; Sailor Nova, beaten and bloody and battered and bruised, a crumpled little girl in purple veiling with a stab wound right in the chest. There was blood everywhere, puddling beneath her, dripping down her bodice, on the road.
Heart, pinpointed. Kunzite did not miss.
Both of them just stared.
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 11:17 pm
She hadn't expected the sudden teleportation, but even more so the sight that lay before them when she finally gained her bearings.
Nealite didn't recognize the form at first, but soon enough the limp corpse became recognizable under the dim light of the lamppost overhead, and her orange eyes widened as her hand gripped tighter to his.
"Oh god, Nova...."
Her head turned slightly, her stomach lurching at the sight, but it wasn't long before her eyes returned to stare. It was all she could do, stare at the lifeless form of the young girl who'd been such a darling. A poor confused little darling, but who had possessed more power than a majority of the lieutenants combined.
What in the hell could have happened?
"Charonite.... do you think...do you think it was him?"
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Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 11:43 pm
"No," said Charonite, and he reached down -- with difficulty -- ignoring the shoulder as he lifted up the broken body of Nova up into his arms. Shoulder wound. Side wound. Chest wound. She was still warm, sopping with blood. "I know it was him."
Kunzite would not have taken a corrupted senshi lightly. First Serandite. Now this. One single -- one single ******** man -- was laying waste to his ranks. He knew this would happen. That was Kunzite for you. 'Competent' didn't cover it. It was the first time he had been up against someone who would be systematic about it, not a cluster of milling, baffled senshi all questionmarking to the world because Astraea could only give them five minutes' warning at a time.
"This can't stand any more, Captain."
Kunzite had closed Nova's eyes. Otherwise they would be staring sightlessly, violet and dark, up into the night sky. Charonite wasn't even swearing any more. He should have been swearing. He should have been angry. He just sounded dead.
"We'll gather in two days. Prepare for it."
He wasn't looking at the corpse in his arms. Nova in death was tiny, fragile, childlike.
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Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 12:04 am
She remained where she stood as she watched him pick her up, her body nothing more than a ragdoll in his arms. A small, fragile sleeping ragdoll that would never be awoken again. She would never draw doodles of Negaverse agents to be bashfully hidden away within desk drawers. She would never write letters of encouragement to those who'd recently suffered the wrath of an angry General-King. She would never question whether or not her shoes were embarrassing or not, never confide her insecurities or make atrocious coffee.
Nova was dead.
The realization began to finally hit home for Nealite as she watched him turn. She heard his words, heard what he was saying and processed it in her mind, but her thoughts were solely trained on the dead child in his arms. Nova may not have been the most evil among them, but to die by Kunzite's blade? If Nova, of all agents, fell to his sword, what did that mean for the remainder of the Negaverse? Charonite himself had been injured by the Captain... did this mean more death was to come?
No.
She couldn't let him. They couldn't let him.
"Yes sir." She responded automatically, eyes focused still on the child that lay curled up in the arms of the General-King. Her mind had begun to wander back to days earlier, when she herself had faced off with Kunzite. How Beryl had the opportunity to kill him, and his evasion of her attack. Had she been any sooner, Kunzite would be dead, Nova would still be alive.
Her eyes narrowed and she shook her head, forcing the thoughts from her mind. No, if she ran into Kunzite again, things were going to be different. Things were going to be <********> different. First Charonite's near-fatal wound, and now Nova's death. This had to stop, and it had to stop now.
"Is there anything we can do?" she finally asked, her voice quiet, yet steady. There were no tears to be shed for Nova, simply anger over the fact that there was a b*****d out there, somewhere, finally able to match himself in power among their forces. "Her star seed? Is there anything that can be done for it?"
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Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 12:10 am
"He took it," came the reply. "He's thorough."
Charonite was looking down at the body now. Nova was incredibly pale and bloodsplattered and small -- that was what struck her, the smallness. She was a child. She was a baby. Sailor Nova couldn't have been more than fifteen really, could she have? They'd corrupted a teenager, somebody who had probably been more interested in makeup and highschool than she was in the Negaverse. And then again, they corrupted many children. Serandite. Scheelite. Tisiphone.
There were a thousand reasons that Kunzite had taken the star seed. Probably the main one was so they couldn't use it. That was the Captain. He never left an end untied.
"Ursula," he said, quite quietly. She realised he'd been staring.
"We'll take her back to the Negaverse. She'll be -- her body won't corrupt."
But they were both staring now, like parents. Bewildered, grieving parents.
Charonite's voice was rough now. "Let's go."
And they both blinked away.
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