Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was true, she had to admit, at some point the Negaverse had taken a strange turn of opinion. Where once there had been blood shed and sacrifice, there had been implemented a sense of family and loyalty to the individual citizen that she had not been taught at her induction. If the purse of her lips was any indication, she did not like the way such words tasted on the tongue.

"That stretch of time baffles me and I admit, I spent most of it prowling the darkness and questioning my place among these ranks. Not unlike you, I suppose. My home was not here, then, but on my own world - light years away from the Sol system and our leaders." To many, it was perhaps seen as avoiding her duty but Alkaid had no ability to feel guilt or shame over such. She had not known what purpose she served and thus, had served none. She had always assumed Metallia would come for her if she was needed.

She had found her own way back, finally, and now she stood here to bring another of Metallia's creations back to the path of servitude.

"I live by the knowledge that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. If I must devour a hundred starseeds to save a million, so be it." Of course, she also loved the taste of power, much like the fervor she'd seen pass through the half-youma as he consumed her gift. As he stood, she moved back and away from him. Her gaze drifted up to lock his and a smile bloomed over her lips as realization spread through her. She was winning this, slowly but surely, and she was pleased with even the small first taste of triumph.

"This war goes back to a time our world has forgotten almost entirely, when Senshi lived on their home worlds and Earth was ruled by a prince, named Endymion. He was loved, as was his betrothed, Beryl." She turned away from him and started to cross the carpeted room, to a bookshelf that stood lonely and forgotten in a corner of the room. "But he betrayed her and fell in love with the treacherous moon princess, Serenity. She was also known as the pure heir of the moon kingdom, Sailor Moon. Beryl was outraged and fearful for what might become of her home land if Serenity became queen of not just the Moon Kingdom, but Earth as well."

As she spun the tale she had learned so well from her predecessors and the images played back to her from the vault of memories in Elysion, Alkaid's finger rose to cross the brims of a dozen forgotten books. She paused over one and pulled it down from the shelf: a gilded binder with no other distinguishing features. Her fingers flipped through page after page, but her story trailed on.

"Metallia answered her need by giving her the power that runs in the veins of every Negaverse agent, every youma, every soldier we have in our army. Prince Endymion deserted his people and pledged himself to his lover, and when she had him securely in her pocket, she sent the forces of her allies to rain war down upon this Earth. They wiped out the kingdom here so entirely that no one even remembers it ever existed." She stepped toward him again, still slowly flipping through the book. As she approached, it became evident that she was looking at a half-filled photo album, though none of the pictures had satisfied her yet. "I don't know how, but Metallia was the saving grace of the Earth Kingdom. All of the senshi worlds were destroyed, one by one, just as the kingdom of Earth was. It was sweet revenge and for a time the Earth knew peace without senshi, until we were all born again here, on the last planet that could sustain life."

At long last, she stopped on a page that displayed a single picture. A woman with a pool of orange hair, clinging to a man with lilac dreads, sunglasses, and a face that said get the camera away from me this instant, and an out of place teenager that looked like he would rather be anywhere but taking that photo. Not that she could argue with him, as someone had forced both dreadheaded men into awful Christmas sweaters. She held it out for Bischofite. If he had ever been on a tour of Negaspace, he probably already recognized two of the three people there.

"When we were awakened, Metallia was prepared to fight us back once more. Charonite, that man, was a ruthless, loyal leader that performed her will without question. He filled her ranks, brought Beryl to life once more, and set out to eliminate every Senshi that threatened the Earth and Metallia's everlasting protection - at any cost. He was the man that brought me to this side of the war." She moved now to perch carefully on the couch arm, tucking one ankle behind the other and letting him soak up the tale of the Earth as she knew it, wondering if it really made much of a difference to him. "Few of our leaders have come close to being able to fill his shoes."

Alkaid watched him with rapt admiration as he began to speak. She fell to silence and let his peculiar accent fill the silent apartment, studying him as he looked down at an all-too-human scene in the photo she knew had to be, by now, years old. Inwardly she was praising him, the longer he spoke and the more he shared, mostly for arriving at the conclusions on his own but partially because this was the most involved he had been since she had pulled him out of the alley earlier in the night.

When he passed the photo back to her and rounded behind her to watch her close the book with a 'thud', she was smiling. It wasn't a mimic of whatever human emotion she thought suited the situation, but a true representation of her pride in a kindred spirit.

"That's just it, Bischofite, you've already arrived at the moral of this story all by yourself." She let the photo album slide from her lap and onto the cushion of the couch at her side, turning partially where she sat poised on the arm. It was just enough to look at him over her shoulder, connecting bright eyes to ones that stared back just as intently from the holes of a bone mask. "You'll find that great leader encased in crystal at headquarters, right beside his beautiful wife, for treason. They're all human. They're all capable of succumbing to corruption."

She shrugged then and looked away from him, staring out at the apartment around her. The couch, the decorations, the door to a bedroom with a queen-sized bed. It was all trivial, meaningless human nonsense. "My loyalty is to Metallia, to her power and the power that keeps me alive. There is a sense of survival instinct when faced by those more powerful than yourself, but I think you are right. She needs the power to make her will known."

She slid down and off of the arm, landing back on her feet near the half-youma. "Do you like waffles?"

Alkaid's shoulders rose and fell in a small shrug at his question. She had no idea why certain soldiers had been promoted over others, or why those still bound to human needs and wills had been chosen at all. His guess was as good as hers, though she was sure nothing Metallia did was without reason.

Her gaze fell to her shoulder as he theorized, listening to his words but concentrated on what she suspected was one more curiosity about her condition. The skin peeled away like the dead cells left by a sunburn, flaky thin layers that gave way with relative ease. When he finally breached a point all the way to her true skin, the talons were met by the harder, stone-like flesh. It released a trickle of chaos energy through the broken point of glamour, detectable at close range but nothing that could be felt outside of the apartment.

"I don't know why she does anything that she does, her whims are beyond even my scope of perception. Perhaps she does gain something from the humans that draw on her power, or maybe it is as simple as needing a leader that all of the human masses can relate to. Maybe it's all just show to inspire them to do their best." The smile that she so often wore, her mask, surfaced again and she tilted her head as she gazed up at him. She seemed to be considering him, again, but this time there was a much more positive air to her inspection. Bischofite was, perhaps, not as lost a cause as he had first appeared.

"English pancakes it is." As she swept past him and headed for the open archway of the kitchen, a single hand rose to touch his arm, then fell away gently. "I haven't cooked in a while, just so you know." She disappeared through the doorway and a light flickered on after, illuminating the dimmer living room where she had left Bischofite behind.