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Spinel didn't know what to say to the girl's diatribe, though the tone and cadence sounded familiar. Fairly commanding in tone, as if she expected all of them to recognize her, but he'd never been all that close to Tanzanite, had never met Aree Cadence. In that mutilated face there was little that he could see to connect the monstrous and statuesque appearance of the General-Queen. She spoke like she was part of the Negaverse, but he didn't recognize her; although the speech she was giving did ring a few bells. Could the mutilated girl before them be... Tanzanite?

The statues let go of him and his comrades, and he looked over the group. Listening to the girl and imagining her as Tanzanite helped what she was saying make sense, but on another level, it didn't. You couldn't trust senshi. Wasn't that why Spinel and the others like him had to become fractured, repugnant beings to be considered on par with the rest of them? For crimes they--or at least those reborn into the Negaverse, like himself--didn't even remember committing and sometimes were unsure they'd committed? They treated their own senshi well enough, but there was always the fact that they held no rank in an organization defined by it to grate on Spinel's nerves. And now, senshi who had tortured and murdered Negaverse officers were greeted with what amounted to open arms. Even if the arms were reluctant, they were still open, and it grated.

He couldn't move quietly, not even relatively, so the shimmering sound of his bells announced his shift towards the young Corrupted who had just whispered that she didn't understand. Spinel settled a hand on her shoulder, squeezed lightly, and offered her a small smile. Waiting it out would be their best alternative here, he wanted to say, but he didn't dare speak. Not with the girl who might be Tanzanite staring at them. It really was a melodramatic tactic, he thought--but then, Spinel had no knowledge of what Metallia might do.

People said many things in anger they didn't mean; so he tried to ignore Hematite's comments on senshi, and tried to muffle his desire to cover the white-haired senshi's ears with his hands. His argument fell basically in line with Spinel's own understanding of the argument. They had stolen starseeds for much of his career inside the Negaverse--starseeds, not energy. Lives. Not one every night, nowhere near that much--sometimes four in a week if he was lucky--but four lives for thirty weeks added up fast. Two lives in thirty weeks would be a big enough rate of accretion. He couldn't imagine the kill rate that other Negaverse, more successful, agents had racked up in their time.

At least Hematite's speech confirmed that this was Tanzanite. The two appearances meshed, finally, letting his mind make the connection. He settled back on his heels, listened to the officers around him speak. Spinel would not; it wasn't his place. No matter how much he wanted to. He was a dab hand at keeping his thoughts to himself.

"And I never took you to be a blind man, but let's face it, I suppose we're all full of surprises." Paragonite spat out, her dark eyes fixed on the smaller figure who'd placed himself between herself and Aree. She'd been surprised by the sudden appearance of the familiar face. Paragonite dropped her now empty hand to her side, opening and closing her fist. It was a reflex motion from having the baton pulled from her grasp . Her hand felt empty, and it was not a feeling she much cared for.

The General King, however, had succeeded in taking the Lieutenant's rage from her previous focus, and placing it in his own direction. Her lips drew into a thin frown as his words nailed into her. Each one stung, which only added to her continually growing ball of rage.

"The only arrogance here is believing there is no call to be prepared as individuals instead of relying solely on blind faith." the young woman seethed.

Now, do you see?

“Yes.”

The word came before Metallia had even finished the question. It was the survival instinct of blind obedience, total fealty to something far greater than Aree herself could ever be. She knew that now. Standing there, weaker than the day Charonite had corrupted her, another piece of the puzzle had been put into place. Something in the young woman had been pushed just a little too far, and had fallen away into the darkness. Before Paragonite had even lifted her weapon, she had landed a fatal strike. A deadly blow to whatever feelings had caused the once General-Queen to hesitate when Metallia had ordered their execution.

Had Zinkenite not been there, ready and waiting should his presence be needed, Paragonite would have been able to strike the girl down with ease. Aree had no hidden reservoir of power on which to draw. There was no secret strength that was waiting to be released. Left with only her faith in her creator to keep her alive, Aree watched silently as the baton came down on her. That faith, it seemed, had become absolute. Solidified in the moment Paragonite had proven the point Metallia sought to make.

That she must never be doubted.

Never questioned.

Tanzanite's faith in that handful of officers had been her undoing. Paragonite's actions would have farther reaching consequences than the girl could have imagined. Had Tanzanite become so lenient, so weak, that a Lieutenant would dare attack her? Somewhere along the line, something had slipped too far. In her vain, childish attempts to cling to them as her last anchor to humanity, Tanzanite had coddled the soldiers she should have been preparing for the reality of war. She was to blame for their weakness, and it was obvious to her now why she had to be punished for their failures.

“One-hundred and forty-six,” her voice broke the silence that had settled over them, as her single eye focused upon Hematite. Though she was still taller than the General-King, she seemed to be sheltered in Zinkenite's shadow. A shadow that was slowly disappearing, as light began to fill the seams of the doors behind him. Aree rested her hand momentarily upon his shoulder in a wordless gesture of gratitude.

“One-hundred and forty-six innocent lives, General. Compared to the six billion people we protect, does that seem an unfair price? I will not have my awareness of what we are doing, my faith in the power that enables us, or my word questioned by a man who can't be bothered to remember the number of innocent people he has murdered.”

Her words filled the chamber, which shuddered violently as the doors began to open. There was no patience in her voice now. No softness or understanding or reassurance to be found. Whatever happened to them now, it was clear that Aree would be doing nothing to stop it.

One by one, they would feel their power begin to wane.

It surfaced on their skin in ripples of light and evaporated into the air, drawn to the opening doors like moths to a flame. It was sucked away bit by bit, until all but Hematite were forced into their civilian forms. If they tried to power up, to reach inside and draw out their Negaverse identities, they would find nothing. Where once they had that comforting spark of power simply waiting to be ignited, there was only the emptiness of being an average human once again. Even their human strength would fail them soon after, driving most to their knees as the voice filled the cavern like thunder.

Unworthy.

Hematite would simply find that he could not move, as the same power that gave his body strength held it captive. His cloak twisted around him like a cocoon, the bands of his armor cinching in until it felt like his ribs might snap.

Aree stepped out from behind the General-King, who stood unaffected among the rest, and took a few slow, dragging steps towards Hematite.

“I will not pity you for your inability to understand the definition of a higher power,” she snapped, her voice as lifeless as the empty socket that stared down at him. Her burnt limbs scraped across the stone and she came to a stop in front of him. The crooked fingertips pressed hard against his chest.

“I will not excuse your stupidity because loyalty is too high of a bar for you to reach.”

They kept pressing, hard enough to break the skin. His strength flowed into her like water into a sponge. It empowered his own slow punishment, granting the young woman a strength she no longer had on her own. She did not smile, sneer, or so much as bat her remaining eyelid.

“I am through playing games with ungrateful children.”

There would be little time for Hematite's ill-advised conspirators to witness what might happen to their fearless leader. The sensation of hands upon their ankles would swiftly draw their attention away, to the long, pale tendrils of light that extended from the cracked doors. Within, there was only the rapid flash of liquid light that moved and roared like a maelstrom, forming a dozen arms that reached out and grabbed them one by one.

And slowly began to drag them in.

“Isn't it a pity? When your rash, childish suboordinate does something incredibly stupid? You want to play leader, after all these months of running away? You want to step out of my shadow? Are you finally ready to be the hero, my dear old friend?

Oh, General, you needed only ask for my help.”

He'd still be able to hear her speak over the sound of his sternum cracking.

“I will start by showing you what it's like to be punished for their arrogance. To put their safety and their lives above your own.

Welcome to the moral <********> high ground, Khaldun. Try not to bite off your tongue while I show you what it's like to be a hero.”

Much to his distress, Lieutenant Ajoite was finding out first hand exactly how deep of s**t he was currently in. He was scared; who wouldn't be? He was still a greenhorn, a fresh and untested agent who joined the Negaverse for the power it offered only to find out too late at what price the power came at. He was a fool then, and an even bigger fool now.

The lieutenant moved slightly when the statue dropped him, moving until he was in a kneeling position with one foot flat against the floor. His left foot protested; surely to kneel one did not keep the toes curled under, lifting him up far enough to be half-kneeling and half-crouching as if ready to spring up and run?

He held his position, one hand pressed flat against the floor. There was no way he could look up, not at... not at the person lecturing them. Her words fell flat on him, his mind struggling to keep up. Something that was alive before the... dawn of time? The survival of Earth? He was confused, lost and even more pathetically hopeless compared to others currently enlisted in the Negaverse. They didn't ask questions, they didn't think this was out of the ordinary, they weren't clinging to the normality of life and writing off the Negaverse aspects as a delusion or dream. He was not a blind follower of something he did not fully understand or believe in.

And here his ignorance and naivety came to bite him in the a**.

Lieutenant Ajoite did not voice his questions or his thoughts; he was beyond his league. He could hear the others speaking, protesting and offering a challenge. What did give Ajoite reason to look up was the running steps of Paragonite, baton raised to --

He stared at the General-King that suddenly appeared. That voice... Something rang in the back of his head. There was something... familiar about the short General-King, something that gave Ajoite pause. He was sure he had heard him before, but... where?

No. Now was not the time to muse and think. There was no luxury of time here to consider the problem carefully. The mystery of the higher officer was written off and forgotten as more pressing and more personal matters came to light.

"What the--?!" Ajoite looked down at himself, his eyes widening as he was no longer Ajoite, but Alexander. "No! Damnit!" He yelled, standing up to protest against this. This wasn't part of the deal! This --

His protests died as he fell to his knees, clutching his head as a booming voice rang in his skull. He couldn't tell of he imagined it or heard it, and right now he didn't care.

The feeling of hands around his ankles made him twist and turn, struggling to kick before he was flipped and dragged towards the door. "s**t!" Alex spat, kicking and struggling. He used his hands to claw up his pantlegs, doubling over to reach his feet. Alexander began scratching at the hands, trying to grab ahold of them and pry them off of him to free himself.

Bismuthite had never felt so horrified as when Paragonite went to attack Tanzan- Aree? His first thought was that by doing so, she'd just made whatever punishment awaited them even worse, and mentally cursed the girl to several different hells.

Then everythign seemed to happen so fast. One minute there he stood, mediocre, guilt-wridden, Captain that he was. The next? He was Billy. The worn, tired, college student trying to balance precent duty with his hopes for the future. It was then he thought how foolish that was, because there was likely no future left for him now. He severely doubted that their punishment would stop at simply being stripped of their powers. No, the Negaverse couldn't afford that. Not unless they took the memories too, but that would just be a waste of power. So, death was his only conclusion. A conclusion magnified by the grip suddenly around his ankles.

Already on his knees when he was yanked the fall was not far, but no less startling. He'd brought this on himself - he should be resigned to his fate. That was what he thought for one split moment; however the instinct to flee was breater than mental resoning. He tried to kick at the hands and free himself, but it was a futile effort. The grip just got tighter. Painfully tighter. There was no hiding the panic in the once proud boy's eyes, the hitch in his breathing.

Once Paragonite had pushed him away, everything happened in a blur. By the time he had a chance to think, everything resonated with a voice that shook to the bone. Metallia. As if on cue, the power he had once wielded suddenly locked him in place, strangling him with his own uniform. It was a trap. It was a betrayal. But whose? He wanted to be angry, but as Tanzanite pressed her fingers to him with a touch of death that drained the chaotic power from him and spoke his sentence, coherent thought gave way to panic. Only now did he realize how little he had known about this war, this world, and his insignificance to both.

And suddenly he wondered how long he would have gotten away with doing nothing at all.

Potential. That was all he'd ever had, the only reason anyone gambled on keeping him around all this time. Maybe they had only endured him for this long because that had always been the way things went. And still he had been forgotten. Gathering energy and fighting off the occasional senshi was not the Negaverse's definition of outstanding achievement. He'd been promoted, twice - but both times only in the hopes that it would finally lead to results. Well, here they were. Judged as treason, when all he had wanted to do was finally prove his worth and protect them all from the danger they had blinded themselves to. To finally have purpose. Yes, he wanted to be the hero.

Once, he would have been begging for his life, long before they'd reached this point. But he was completely irrational now, running on emotion alone. So it would maybe have been cathartic, even comforting, to hear from Tanzanite that he alone would be the one to pay the price for his paranoia - if that had been true. His focus on Tanzanite's monologue was interrupted by yelps and cries. Bright light flooded over Tanzanite's shoulders, broken up only by the shadowy silhouettes of eight soldiers - eight civilians -slowly being dragged out of sight. No -

"Zinkenite!" he choked out at the motionless General-King. His eyes snapped between Zinkenite's and the other soldiers, unable to even point to the Negaversers who needed help. Hematite was oddly resigned to his fate - but while he was beyond hope, they weren't - yet. It hadn't been their idea. They were only trying to help, or to follow orders. Was Zinkenite's newfound power so important to him that he would stand by and let all of them just die? Hematite couldn't begin to understand how serious Paragonite's attack had been taken - violence was the way of life in the Negaverse. Unrest between officers had always been exchanged in blows from his point of view. His patience snapped, and he returned his gaze to the single eye of the only other person who could do something, faint as the chance was. "Tanzani--"

He heard and felt the cracking of bone under her fingers, and the name trailed off unintelligible as she continued to speak over the chaos.

There was no hope. Tanzanite remained impassive; she was their judge, their jury, and now their executioner.

It seemed like some horrible parallel universe and he really did have to wonder if he was thrown through one of the DMC's mirrors to some other world. This all didn't seem right. To be here, in this situation, to be in the impossible station of having to prove his own loyalties, to only see other officers raising arms against Tanzanite. A ghost Aree that was a fragmented, burnt picture of the past. Out of respect he looked at her, but out of frustration at the BMC for what they had done to her and at the sadness of seeing her now, he only looked to the space before her very feet. He remained silent, not knowing how best to express himself other than what he had just told them.


When the officer rose and moved in, he could only look at her dashing feet in alarm. What was happening here? Had he really associated himself with officers who would try and murder Tanzanite?! THAT WAS NEVER HIS INTENTION! He wasn't a traitor. He wasn't here to overthrow anyone! He had only had the best intentions! "DON'T!" He called out, but it was too late, and while others might have assumed Tanzanite was invincible and would call upon her power to save her, Wolframite always saw Tanzanite as human more often than youma. He knew she was vulnerable. He had tended to her when she was sick. Had seen her broken and beaten in the BMC. Had paniced when the rescue party and pulled them out of the ruble and rushed to be told that Tanzanite was dead. He had been there, banging against her crystal cocoon.

And now he would see her die again by the hands of her own officers and he had been on their side. No. No.

But she was stopped in time, and not by who he had expected. The power was new, but it was power of the Negaverse, and that of high authority. Not quiet Tanzanite, but it at first had been mistaken as such. Yet, she was not powered up, and remained the fragile figure. To see who had teleported there left him gapping.

"..Zink.." He whispered, confused but absorbing facts quickly with his eye. He was....but when....just ...He was a General-KING. The wind was knocked out of him, and if he wasn't already on his knees, he would have fallen to them. So this was how it was. The crushing blow of being associated with the wrong people, those who would overthrow the officer he most respected, and to look up to a friend that had been promoted because he always had made the right decisions. He was so far from the ideal that he tried to grasp how he had tried so hard to focus on his goal and wound up so far away form the mark.

Where did it all go wrong?

While Wolframite considered the present wrongness, things were about to get much worse.

The voice shook him to his core, and the door beside them, ignored until now, opened. Before he had time to react, he felt his body ripple and watched as energy was being pulled away form him. No. Not energy. Power. His dark uniform rippled, and reaching out for it, his power slipped away to reveal Ladon Shepard. Teenager and nothing, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt. Not General Wolframite. Not anything. Just - nothing.

He patted his body as if missing a cellphone and would find his power back in his side pocket, but it was nowhere. He tried and tried to feel for it, but it was gone, drifting off like a breeze to the door. He couldn't be dismissed. He wasn't done. He couldn't go back to being JUST Ladon. He gave everything for this cause. It couldn't be over! "Please. No! I didn't mean what you think we are doing. We just wanted what was best. I don't want to overthrow anyone. I don't want to take your place!" If anything, he wanted to be her best. He wanted to be relied upon, to his a good soldier she could have by her side. And here he was, nothing on his knees, while General-King Zinkenite took that place.

As if to answer his thoughts, hands wrapped about him to take him away to what he felt was certain death. What was living if he was just a civilian anyways? Still, he fought. He would always fight. "I only wanted to keep everyone safe!"