[BMC] Purge (Captives + ISS/Mercs)

[Orestae]

While certain that her own death lingered only moment away, Tanzanite could think of nothing but the pure, unbridled joy she would receive from twisting Lyra's head right off of her shoulders.

“They aren't my underlings, you pathetic ******** whore,” the General hissed, her grey eyes focused on Lyra with murderous intent. She wanted to curl her claws around the woman's lower teeth and pull and pull and pull until her skull came apart. “We are not like you. We do not scrape and bow and compete for rank. We are sisters. Brothers. Regardless of rank, we stand together. We don't-”

Her words were cut off as the blood in her lungs frothed and foamed, choking off her voice until she cleared it with a rattling, wet cough. She was silent long enough to listen to Ares speak.

Oh, how little she knew. How little she could even imagine.

“You got lucky,” the General said, and her cracked lips curled into a wicked smile, “You have not yet seen a fraction of our strength, a sliver of-”

She stopped cold, suddenly silent as Ares laid her hands on Dioptase. For a brief moment, their eyes met, and Tanzanite could do little more than mouth that same, sad 'I'm sorry' before the girl was pulled away. Dioptase, who had always been loyal to the violet-haired General, until the agony of torture had broken her will. Dioptase, who had known her as Aree Cadence once and had damn near saved her life when they had served together below Laurelite. Dioptase, who she had come to know just as much as Stéphanie Leclerc as her Negaverse alter ego.

“Stop. STOP! You ******** c**t!” Tanzanite's rasping voice lifted in a roar. At least, that was what she had intended. It came out as a hoarse shout, as weakened as the General herself, “She doesn't live as a civilian anymore! She doesn't tell us, we don't ******** know! STOP IT! DIOPTASE!”

The General strained against her chains, her body eating away at itself in an attempt to provide the energy to escape. The spines at her shoulder withered and twisted, her fingertips blackening as Tanzanite lurched uselessly against the heavy chains.

She had to get out.

She had to save her.

It didn't matter the cost.  

[Akina Tokuwa]

"Someone gives orders. Others take them. Go ahead and pretend you don't bow at the swollen cankles of Queen Beryl," Ares mused idly, the knife curving an arc back up Dioptase's chest. It formed a neat rectangle. The flat of the blade slipped beneath the thin sheet.

And then Ares began to pull.

"TELL ME THE IDENTITY OF GENERAL QUEEN APATITE," she said, voice raising above Tanzanite's frantic screams. Her back remained to the three Negas. "If Tanzanite will not spare Dioptase, then perhaps you will, Uranophane. Perhaps Wolframite?"

One hand twisted in Dioptase's hair. "Go ahead, Captain. Tell them what this feels like." In a flash, she tore the strip of skin free.  

[A Wandering Esper]

Blood was running down her chin, and blood was pouring down her chest. Before being corrupted by Laurelite, the teenager who had become Dioptase got queasy when she accidentally cut herself.

Even now, if she had anything to puke, she probably would have. This was it, then. This was the end. This was her final stand. The final stand of a traitor.

Suddenly, the fear went away, replaced by adrenaline. What did a woman who was, for all intents and purpose already dead, had to fear ?

It all became clear now. And just as Tanzanite was fighting to break her bonds, Dioptase had her own fight to carry.

"Tell." She managed, letting go of her lip. "Them. NOTHING !"

Then Ares pulled, and she screamed - blood splattering the back wall, the table, everything, red, red, ruby red.

She gathered a mouthful and aimed straight for Ares' face.  

[kalindara]

Even knowing that this had been coming, Birhan was not prepared. That Ares could do this, let alone do it so calmly and coldly, was a slap in the face. And yet, Birhan was still here. Still standing by Ares, the good little soldier, the united front of the ISS.

No one else knew that Birhan had tried to stop this. No one had witnessed the confrontation between the kickboxer and her leader. And with her face stony, and her eyes and ears doing their best to see and hear nothing of what happened, no one would know that Birhan wasn't one hundred percent behind the official party line.

When the knife came out, Birhan moved to stand next to Wolframite. She'd had good luck with him once before. Perhaps he would crack a second time.

"When Ares is done with that knife," she said, low and close to Wolframite's ear like she was sharing a secret, "I'm going to stick it in your eye. Are you sure you wouldn't like to answer Ares before that?"

Any answer would be fine. Bismuthite, Beryl, the other General Queens and King.

It was funny how quickly things changed. Birhan had been prepared to do worse to Wolframite, not so long ago. And yet, now all she wanted was a reason to make his death quick and painless. It was all she could offer any of them.

There was no saving them from Ares - not the Negaverse, not the Blood Moon Court.  

[Orestae]

“....Beryl?” Tanzanite barked a laugh, though it was clearly a mirthless and hateful noise, “That shows how ******** stupid you really are. We are not pawns of a Queen whose selfishness nearly lead us all to ruin. We serve a high power. A power Beryl could only dream of.. and when she finds us she will scour you and your pathetic ******** court from the face of this planet!”

Even Tanzanite winced as the strip of flesh was pulled away with a sound she could only compare to wet velcro, her swollen eyes widening as far as they could before the woman shouted again.

“She doesn't know! Don't you ******** get it! We don't. ********. KNOW! STOP IT! Hang on. Dioptase, hang on!”

Her words were as futile as her struggle, but Tanzanite fought nevertheless. She fought until her eyes were black with rage and the chains were sloughing blistered skin from her shoulders. Hell, even if she had been able to break free, her burnt legs could not have supported her weight.

“Primase, snap out of it! GET UP. FIGHT. DO SOMETHING.”

She looked at the girl who simply laughed and laughed as the blood ran down her face, and knew there was nothing the Lieutenant could do. What could any of them do? It was that helplessness that maddened the already crazed General. She had lead them here. She had brought them down with her. It was all her fault and there wasn't a ******** thing she could do to fix it.

“Ares, stop it! Your fight is with me, not her! ME! She's seventeen ******** years old!”  

[shibrogane]

With something as savage as Ares's live vivisection going on, Gunn doubted anything she did was going to contribute. Nothing would make a bigger impression than taking apart a living person for the sole purpose of breaking the others. Gunn didn't flinch, didn't even wince when the Captain's scream sent blood splattering everywhere. She hadn't done worse but all the same, she'd known what they were signing up for.

"Oh, like you have anything to fear," said Gunn, her voice laden with distaste. "Other than us. You'll never escape this place, so what does it matter to you what might happen when you see those people again? It'll only be in Hell."

Only seventeen. So what, she thought, crossing her arms as if that would smother the fire of guilt in her chest. "The vast majority of us are between the ages of fourteen and twenty. Rota was seventeen, too," she said. "I don't think her age is a particular barrier. Do you, Ares?"  

[Akina Tokuwa]

Ares turned when she saw Dioptase gathering something in her mouth. Plenty of the Negas had spit at her during their containment. It was a favorite tool of Tanzanite's, one that she had obviously passed down to this girl who appeared to mean so much to her. It was strange to see a creature like Tanzanite care about anything. The Senshi of Smoke had a hard time remembering what she cared about outside of victory.

The wad of blood and mucus splattered on the back of her head as she turned, black clots pooling in her ear.

She turned to Tanzanite, wiping blood from her ear with the green sash that normally hung around her waist. Dioptase was seventeen? A defiant glare flashed in the senshi's eyes. "So am I," she said. It was not quite true. She had turned eighteen in February. Her eyes flashed to Gunn. "Her age is meaningless, as are her pleas. We're smart enough to see this." The girl who dared to tempt darkness was a teenager, the same age as the one who laid on the table -- younger still than the one who was tied to the chair before her.

Age didn't matter, not in this war.

Her calm was lifting. The surface of her control shook, trembled. Ares stabbed her knife into the soft flesh of Dioptase's arm and twisted it. It made her feel better. "YOU take everything, Nega. YOU DO. This is a reaction to your Queen and the actions that she chose to take in this life based on something that happened a thousand years ago." She yanked the knife back out gruffly.

Red beads dripped from the blade on to the floor. "So tell me what you do know. What is the identity of General Linarite? General Serandite? General Zinkenite?" Her lips curled into a snarl, dragging over the faces of Wolframite, Uranophane, and Tanzanite.

Half a second passed. Ares spun wildly on Dioptase, slicing a chunk of skin from her lower stomach. She tore it free and then threw the piece at Tanzanite. "SPEAK," she shouted.

Birhan was following orders. Gray eyes fastened on the others, telling them not to back down, never to back down. Primase and Helicase should be screaming too. It was their mission.  

[A Wandering Esper]

Ares backed away from her and Dioptase was left to gather herself. To be honest, she wasn't even following the trail of conversation anymore. Slowly, the words were starting to make no sense, even her own name, as if they were spoken in a language she didn't even understand.

Dioptase was a bloody mess laying limp on the table, with only her weezes for air to prove the fact that she was still alive. The blood, her blood, was dipping down on the table, dripping along her limp, useless legs.

Slowly, the world was blurring. Everything was starting to lose it's meaning.

It still didn't stop pain, or keep her from screaming when Ares returned to her, to finish what she had started. It didn't stop her eyes from opening, though she only saw vague sploshes anymore.

She couldn't see Tanzanite anymore. Where was she ? Behind her ? They had a job to do, didn't they ?

Yes.

Hunting for senshi in France had been a long, often boring endeavor of waiting, hours on end, for a lone blip of senshi or cat energy to show itself. Sometimes all those hours were in vain.

It was how the two had gotten to know each other.

It was how Captain Tanzanite had struggled though the last of her guilt.

It was how Lieutenant Dioptase found her confidence, and her determination.

"I want to be a singer." She said, without realizing she had. "When this war is over, I mean." The young girl looked flustered.

"Do you want to listen... ?"

That night, Dioptase had sang, and Tanzanite had danced, as they waited for an enemy that had never come.

More skin was being ripped from her stomach, and Dioptase screamed again.

When her lips parted next, however, something different came.

"Mes nuits sont longues dans l'autre monde, Les murs se referment sur moi.. Si je tombe, je ne me relève pas... Figé dans l'ombre, rien n'est tel que l'on voit... Si je cours, je n'avance pas.. Ne craigniez pas mes idées noires... Pardonnez-moi si je meurs un peu plus chaque soir, Quand je m'endors dans ce couloir, Quand on ne se réveille pas... Il est déjà trop tard... Cauchemar..."

Was she singing for Tanzanite now, or as an vain attempt to soothe herself ? She didn't know. Maybe it didn't matter.  

[Silent Spy]

Chills shot up Requiem's spine as she heard Dioptase sing her swan song. She wasn't all that comfortable with what she was witnessing. Ares's actions did not surprise her - in fact, compared to what she had imagined this evening to be like, she felt there was considerable restraint. That is, there wasn't any severed head rolling across the floor yet, which was only a minor disappointment. She had been coming into this night with one way to ease her guilt: it was all a horror movie.

Like the Saw films or Hostel, it was a torture film with special effects and neat editing. Of course, she knew better. It was hard to view it all as fiction when a seventeen year sings herself to death, bleeding on a table like some lame prey. But it wasn't the gore that got to her, it was her involvement in it. She would support the Blood Moon Court to her death - they were her family - but she couldn't help but question the actions of her comrades.

How far were they willing to go? Death seemed like a reasonable result, but how much torture must they bring on them? Why not just be painless? Was there satisfaction in torturing them?

She still felt guilty for her abuse of Captain Wolframite, so much so that she avoided looking at him. The only Negaverse in attendance she felt no pity for was General Tanzanite, who she was sort of hoping would be ripped apart from limb to limb, but that was just a happy doodle she drew in her math notebook. Not something she was likely to see happen.

But as for the rest, she had her reservations, but was not willing to speak out. Instead she watched in silence, waiting for this movie to end and the credits to roll.  

[Nio Love]

Primase felt the sharp crack of a heel against her face, entering the skin just under the cheekbone and cracking down against the bone it collided with. Her entire body tilted with the force of the kick, flung to one side. When she straightened up again, the blur of her vision was gone, and she could see again. Her pupils dilated, and her vacant stare suddenly filled with fear. "Wait." She whispered. The sound whistled as air escaped through the hole in her cheek. "Wait. I don't-"

She heard the screams again.

Primase heaved her body, trying to escape the restraining hands holding her down. Her head tilted up at Dioptase, on the table. She couldn't see what was happening, why wouldn't that b***h just move an inch to the left! She had to.. she had to.. what was it again?

GET UP. FIGHT. DO SOMETHING.

Her wild, unfocused gaze rolled to fall on some kind of horrible disfigured monster with Tanzanite's voice. In a final surge of sanity, Primase thrashed in her hold, fighting with every last breath she had to try and break free.

She had to get up. She had to fight. She had to save Dioptase, at any cost.

But oh, the singing. It brushed against her like a loving touch, threatening to pull her down into madness once more.  

[MoonKitsune]

The purpose of their gathering had been made clear. Whether Ares had felt she wanted to try an idea or that she was getting frustrated, they were all here to bear witness and be forced to answer. As officers, they were higher ranking, and with the burden of responsibility came with valuable information. While he was just a Captain, often uninformed than others, he still had to answer to the fact that these fresh-faced lieutenants not only looked up to him for protection and support, but with hope and the belief that things would turn out alright.

Looking at the beaten, worn faces, torn and ripped, their eyes sore but pleading, he imagined himself a year ago. Back then, he had been a fresh lieutenant, still getting sick in alleyways after taking a starseed and questioning why he was here serving a Queen and fighting senshi. Back then, he had gotten into many battles and had his uniformed a** served to him, even rung up a flag pole by his own weapon. A real screw up and joke as far as lieutenants went, and as green as any of the lieutenants here. Still, he fought, and still, he believed.

He had taken his punches because he had the belief that he was improving the world. For once, someone believed he had the power to be of use, and let them on their team, and what a team that was. For once, he was in a group, a whole, and was welcomed. He grew attached to people, those he called friends either by only their Nega name and the few he had the privilege to meet outside of uniform. These were his friends, his family, and the people he could trust further than the easy, lazy relationships anyone could get from school. They fought to the death to protect each other’s lives and took stabwounds and magic attacks for each other because they all worked for the same beliefs.

It was why he could not give a name. Even if he had any to give, he could not. They protected each other, and while he watched with sharp-eyed horror at the senshi butchering a young girl, he knew he could not give a life for a life. At this point, he knew her life was passing.

He closed his eyes, and curled his head down, listening as Birhan spoke into his ear. Blind. It was almost a joke now to have that threat, be he couldn’t function enough to smile. Instead, his eyes stung as tears dripped. He was past the point of caring about it now. When someone died. You were supposed to mourn. The uselessness of the situation and the cruelty of it all made him feel weaker than before. Weaker than a Nega. Weaker than a civilian. Not Wolframite nor Ladon could save her, and for that reason, he did not deserve to live.

“Even if we gave you names, you would only kill them. Even if we KNEW the names, you would kill us and kill them. You have no heart to easily kill a girl, and wouldn’t have any mercy killing us. We can’t make deals for those like you. Someone who is just like Wiseman.” The name held significance to Wolframite as he looked up, eyes misted but sharp as he glared up at Ares. Wolframite had seen an entire team brutally slaughtered by the wizard and here he saw a senshi taken pleasure in her own handiwork.

“We don’t need civilian names. We know each other in uniform.” They were close that way. He glanced to Tanzanite. Aree. He’d fixed her wounds and even now, he wanted to kid about how skinny she was and how he’d want to take her home and fatten her up some more with some good cooking. He turned to Uranophane. He could kid about her being beaten up when she had really mopped the floor with him during training. He looked at the lieutenants. He had yet to know them, and that hurt him most of all. He had no names, and they wouldn’t even be nameless markers in the cemetery he visited in the woods. The nameless Negaverse mounds. They would be people he would never meet on patrols or se outside of uniform. Friends he would make. Family.

The girl on the table made him close his eyes, unable to look any more as she was hacked and cut in such a crude way. 17. They were the same age. She might have gone to school with him before. Just a few tables down, playing with her hair as she popped some gum.

What he did know was that she sang beautifully, and he felt sick as she sang her own requiem. “We live and die for our planet…..and our friends. Why would we give you more to kill?” he asked, unable to look up as his throat closed. It was a childish thought really, but all he could think of was that he didn’t want to do this anymore. Sitting here in this chair, and that he just wanted to go home.

But he’d never go home now. He was going to die.

The only thing he COULD do was not give a name.

He hoped Bismuthite would be happy without him and that he watched his back.

Curling down, he started to rock slightly. “Please…..please just stop. We don’t know anything……….please….”
 

[Akina Tokuwa]

Blood oozed out from Dioptase's flayed skin, her old wounds, and the blood in her mouth. She covered the table, spilled out to the floor, bits of life squeezed out of her drip by drip. There was nothing gentle about this good night she was heading toward, nothing comforting. Ares had expected tears. Maybe begging, maybe curses. But singing? No, not singing.

It was not the sweet melody that stayed the hand of the Captain of the Blood Moon Court then. It was the language: French. Ares was not just a senshi of the Black Kingdom and now the Blood Moon. There was an often-stifled part of her that had been raised in France, had grown up speaking that language, and had spent her first year at Crystal Academy fighting to give the French Club more prominence.

In order for her to do the things that she had to do, Sailor Ares could not be reminded of her own humanity as Fallon. She could not envision herself on this table, or her friends. She could not think back to her years spent in France, or the mother who she had convinced she was a monster two weeks ago just to keep doing her work on behalf of the Blood Moon. Hearing Dioptase sing brought too many feelings welling up in Ares' throat. It cut its own gash in her, one that bled in tears spilled for her forgotten civility, for the crushed girl trapped within a warrior's body, for an innocence that had been stolen and destroyed forever by the Black Kingom and this war of children.

Letting out a sharp cry, Ares plunged the small dagger into Dioptase's thigh. It missed the thick artery, causing pain instead of death. "You will not get a beautiful death," she hissed, bringing her face close to Dioptase. "I will not allow it." The knife tugged upward, pushing at muscle, splitting skin. A fresh river of blood spilled down the side of a pale leg.

No question was asked.

When Wolframite spoke the name of the man who had led her Queen and Prince to demise, a demise that meant Ares could never return home, could never see the faces she had grown up with over many lifetimes ever again, the Captain of the Blood Moon Court whipped around, hefting the blade at him so swiftly that blood spattered across his chest. "YOU were the ally of Wiseman," she snapped. "YOU will pay for his sins. You will all suffer just as you have made the people of Destiny City suffer -- just as you have made me and us and Rota suffer. You have one eye, Wolframite. But I didn't realize you were blind." The knife lowered slowly to her side, dripping a puddle of blood on the ground at her feet.

Gray eyes snapped to Primase. "Get her under control, Mercenary," she hissed. "We have barely begun."  

[Orestae]

Tanzanite felt the weakness in herself as she was screaming the girl's name over and over. She could feel the way her heart felt as thought it might burst with fear and hatred and loathing and sadness as another strip of skin was torn away, hitting her shoulder with a wet slap. The emotion that had always been the crack in her otherwise flawless armor was now showing to be her greatest weakness, and even the strong-willed Tanzanite could not keep tears from flowing from the corners of her eyes.

“Dioptase, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Stephanie,” she didn't think as she let the girl's name slip, “Oh god no. No, no, no. ” Tanzanite's body shook with rage and fear and hatred, but all the strength she could muster was barely enough to rattle the chains and make the chair creak, "Hold on, I'll save you. Oh god. Stop, please-"

Nous nous battons ensemble, pour la terre.

The words rang in her head like an echo to Dioptase's defiant words.

We fight together, for Earth.

The words Dioptase had taught her as she pulled the raging then-Captain off of the body of the senshi whose skull she had hit and hit and hit until her fists collided only with pavement. The words were what Stéphanie Leclerc had whispered to Aree Cadence as she'd helped her wash the blood from her hands and bandaged her kuckles. They had stuck with her since that night, and they had kept her strong through those dark and seemingly endless days.

“Nous nous battons ensemble, pour la terre.”

The information that Ares asked for was something that Tanzanite could not give.

They were already dead.. but Linarite? Serandite? Zinkenite? They were not, and neither her own life nor those of the officers around her could justify giving up those who had fought beside her for so long. Dioptase's words strengthened the General, and she knew that if Ares didn't get something soon, they were all going to meet a painful and bloody demise.

She had to turn Ares anger from Dioptase. It was the only way to help her. The only was to spare her another round of the gut-wrenching torture.

“She won't beg you,” Tanzanite growled the words at Ares, and she forced her swollen eyes as open as she could. She had to be strong. She had to do this, and she had to make it convincing, “She won't fall to her knees and plead for her life... not like Hades did.”

And there it was. Tanzanite forced her lips into a wicked grin, a mask of confidence. She needed to draw the woman away, make her mad, make her change targets. It was the only way.

“She won't plead for her life as I cut her apart, inch by inch, cube by cube, cauterizing every wound until she was a torso hanging in a ******** basement. She won't beg for your mercy and tell you everything you've ever wanted to know about Queen Nehelenia. Pity that all of that information turned out to be useless, given that your weak, pathetic ruler managed to die without my assistance. Can you imagine how much it hurt, Ares? Can you imagine what it felt like to have my claws pull out her eyes, to live on without sight? It was pure, sweet, blissful agony, and she begged me to stop.”

Tanzanite tilted her head back, and a wicked laugh tore out of her throat, “Dioptase won't tremble beneath your fingers as Hades did beneath mine. She will not watch as dogs feast on every square of her muscle and skin. Oh, Ares. I ended the last line of your first faction, and if you don't kill me, I promise you.

I will end this one, too.”  

[A Wandering Esper]

The pain stopped, then suddenly started again - it was perhaps the only thing that Dioptase truly understood at this point.

Ares pulled her closer to her face and the girl remained impassible, tears of pain still rolling down her cheeks.

One thing, however, she understood.

Nous nous battons ensemble, pour la terre.

Always. Forever.

It was the only thing that mattered, even though the negaverse was about to lose one of it's daughters.

"Nous nous battons ensemble." She managed a smile. "Pour la terre."

And then... one last wish.

Please find it, Aree...  

[Akina Tokuwa]

Hades.

A name. It was just one name. Ares had not even been particularly close to the Senshi of the Future. Hades was distant, a bit of a know-it-all. It had to do with time powers, the Senshi of Smoke reasoned. How could you relate to the here and now when you were constantly looking to the future? But as far as Ares knew, she had never come through the mirror to the White Earth. Had she seen this coming...? Did she know the fate of the Black Moon? Did she know how they would be cut off from each other, lost for all eternity?

Sailor Ares hoped that when she died the Space Cauldron in this existence would accept her starseed. But she could never be sure. For all she knew, the cycle of parallel rebirth had been broken the moment Nehelenia died. All that Ares had left were her memories of the only people she ever thought cared about her, the only people she felt she could be at peace around: the Black Moon Senshi. The Blood Moon Court was a burgeoning network, but they had not yet become family to her. They had not endured millennia together, and perhaps they never would.

Tanzanite was smearing the only thing that Ares had left to remember the Black Moon by, perhaps for eternity.

With a bestial roar, Ares gripped Dioptase by the throat and hoisted her off the table, dragging her broken body over to Tanzanite. One arm pushed Lyra out of the way and then flipped the dagger back into her palm. She brought the blood-caked face of Dioptase mere inches away from Tanzanite's own.

"DON'T YOU DARE SPEAK THEIR ******** NAMES TO ME," she screamed, voice pinching in hysteria.

A spurt of blood whipped across General Tanzanite's face. Sailor Ares released Dioptase from her hand. Her other arm rose up, the blade of the dagger brightened with fresh blood. It crawled down the sharpened edge and then oozed onto the dark skin of Ares' hand. It took several moments for Ares to even realize what she had just done.

Captain Dioptase fell to her knees. Her head bobbed backward, revealing the hastily carved slash that exposed her esophagus. Blood poured like a waterfall from the wound, and she fell like an anchor to the ground at Tanzanite's feet.