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The senshi was gone within minutes, and by the time Hematite had managed to extricate his legs from Nealite's and get back up, there was no way they could catch up with her even if they wanted to. Hematite looked angry, angrier than Nealite may have thought he was capable of being. All the time, he was ground under someone else's heel in the Negaverse, be it hers, Obsidian's, or especially Charonite's. He bottled it up like wine and let it turn to vinegar, until the rare days came along that he controlled the situation, he chose who lived or died, and only then could he drain himself of the psychological bile. And now there was one less chance, but the anger did not dissipate.

Dusting off his gritty palms, Hematite couldn't even look at Nealite. He'd long since managed to ignore the shouting and screaming from the street level, and fixed his eyes on a far-off cloud instead. "How could you? How the hell could you do that to me?"

"I know <******** enough."

The low, gravelly voice of the General-King was unmistakeable. It also had the quality -- at least, in this particular context, in this particular situation, mixed up with all the rage and the anger and the adrenaline and the frustration -- to just about raise the hairs on the backs of the necks of Hematite and Nealite both.

It was unmistakeable. The screaming from the street faded away, the world got sharp-focus; the far-off police sirens were a nagging anxiety in the backs of both of their minds. General-King Charonite was there. Right in front of them, dirt-smeared and mussed-up as they were, sunglasses pushed up high on his forehead so that he was looking at them both with those pale grey eyes of his -- and they weren't happy. In fact, the twist to his mouth bespoke barely-contained, fist-planting rage, and his knuckles were white.

He strode over to Hematite first: somehow the very act of having to walk over to him got on his last nerve, and Nealite watched as he simply fisted his hand in the front of Hematite's jacket; no punch came, though, as he simply dragged the boy over to where the other flame-haired Negaverse lieutenant was standing.

For a moment, there was even a breath where she thought he'd do the same to her: grab the front of her shirt and tug. He did something far more humiliating: Charonite reached backwards and grabbed her hair.

He wound it once in his fingers; she teetered forward with the tug. And then they were in the chill of the Negaverse otherworld, the dark-crystalled walls and the dust and the deadness, Nealite's muddy clothes having exchanged themselves for her Lieutenant uniform despite her having changed into civvies. Charonite dropped Hematite bodily on the floor and let Nealite's hair go (thank God); but it was none too gentle, and he was staring at them both.

The explosion came.

"You ******** misfits!" he bawled. "Don't bother trying to explain. I saw every. ********. Thing. I was expecting -- I was expecting -- "

He slapped his hand into the wall. "I was expecting a grain of ******** brain for you two to rub between each other!" he shouted. "I was expecting a ******** star seed! Two of my men?! Two of my men versus ONE SENSHI?"

He strode over to Hematite first, still struggling to get up. One booted foot in his thigh put paid to that. "What the ******** were you doing?"

Her legs liquefied the moment the voice boomed behind her.

Oh dear god this can't be happening...

There he stood. The General-King of the Negaverse was standing right there and was staring at the both of them. She couldn't look into those eyes, not this time. His gaze still pierced through her nevertheless, and she knew they were doomed. They'd be lucky to still be breathing after all was said and done; she'd never seen him so angered before, and it was terrifying to behold.

As he latched onto her hair, she bit back a cry. It was humiliating and demeaning but she knew that resisting was not an option, that she was nothing more at this point than a ragdoll, his to use and abuse as he pleased.

Once in the Negaverse, she was freed from his grip, and stumbled to catch herself, her heels sliding across the stone floor until she regained her balance. She knew better than to attempt to fix her hair... no, there were much worse things to worry about now, and she instinctively cringed as the large man beat against the wall. As he turned to demand answers from the other Lieutenant, Nealite could only bite her bottom lip, horrified for when his wrath would inevitably turn back towards her.

Well, Charonite had him there.

"Lieutenant Nealite, s-sir," Hematite stammered to fill the silence rather than with his reactions to the boot. When Charonite was this pissed, there was no way in hell Hematite could keep his own voice from wavering even a little. At this point he was pretty sure he would not be able to feel his leg for another week longer than the shoulder the senshi's attack had hit him in. And he didn't know what to think at this point, of the source of Charonite's rage - this was the reason he went out of his way to set the bar low. He was a failure because he chose not to do anything he could fail at, and thus cement for himself an ironclad fortress of indifference. The method had worked for a year but now it was no longer viable. Either Charonite knew Hematite had been a fraud, or the bar itself was being raised and there was no more room for shirking. Neither possibility was pleasant to imagine.

Now, he could tolerate the orange-haired lieutenant sometimes, but to be perfectly frank this was her idea and her fault. Just as he'd been about to rip the starseed from dream-senshi's chest, she'd interrupted him, and now this. The idea of selling her out made no impact on him after such a betrayal. He'd just be very careful not to bring up the cat. His voice finally managed to gain some substance as he bolstered his ego. "She pushed me away just as I was about to get the star seed! I didn't know what she was doing!"

Charonite moved away from his position of playing Pin The Boot On The Hematite and, finally, turned around. He held Nealite in his pale, grey-eyed sights, walking towards her with slow tread.

"It's funny, you know," he began, apparently having swallowed his anger. Or not. Their General-King's anger went in bell curves, in and out in waves, not one long sustained scream (unless he was really, really, really off the hook.) "I see Lieutenant Hematite going for the star seed. And then -- this is what interests me, Lieutenant Nealite -- I see you body check him."

He suddenly strode back and gave Hematite another kick to the thigh. One last one, apparently, just for luck. "Let's cut to the chase," he said, moving back to Ursula. "Did you know what I saw? I saw you squabbling like ******** children over getting the star seed. I saw you letting the senshi go."

He was standing close to Nealite now, looming over her. His mouth was a bitter, twisted line, white-lipped with hate. "Nealite," he said. "I have never been so ******** disappointed, so ******** irritated, so -- ******** -- surprised -- "

He turned away. There was the bellow again. "YOU TWO ARE ******** TODDLERS!"

The parting blow to Ursula was quiet again, but possibly worse than everything that had gone before: "Buy a clue, Lieutenant," he said harshly. "Lieutenant Linarite would never have been so god damned foolish."

She shouldn't have said anything. What in god's name had possessed her to say something, to bring upon the anger and wrath of the General-King onto her?

Her eyes widened at he drew closer, his larger form towering over her, regardless of whatever heel size she wore. She heard him, and her mind argued, but her lips kept themselves sealed, refusing to speak her mind. Nealite had gone for the star seed, what was wrong with that? She had felt it, for one brief moment, in that senshi's chest before she was ripped away. Should she even bring that up to him? Would he even listen if she did?

The words he threw at her hurt worse than any other pain she'd experienced before. She would have much preferred being on the ground, writhing as she was being kicked, than to have it implied to her that she had failed him. Her purpose in the Negaverse was to serve him, and she had failed.

His last comment pierced her, and she inhaled a deep breath in attempts to keep her emotions in check, knowing all too well it would just bring about more comments of childishness should her emotions get the better of her. Her ears were in disbelief, but in her heart, in her spirit, she knew what he had said, and it had crushed her.

"Yes sir." She said softly, bitterness creeping into her voice. "I understand."

There wasn't anywhere lower he could cower under Charonite's gaze, and Hematite didn't dare to move so much as an arm or a leg in case of an imminent boot. It was humiliating. And lucky ******** Nealite, she didn't have to do anything. On orders!

And now it was his turn. Charonite really did know the lengths Hematite would go for the sake of avoidance. But Obsidian, the resident sadist!? Horrified, Hematite opened his mouth to protest, and shut it again as Charonite seemed to forgo even delegating Hematite's fate. Knowing what Charonite did to humans and senshi on a regular basis, he didn't even want to imagine what the words implied. Damn it. This really was the end of the line. No more shirking, no more avoiding, and apparently now that Charonite had caught a glimpse of Hematite actually fighting a senshi, there'd be no more dodging battles either. If fighting was anything like it had been today, he'd be dead in a month of senshi-related injuries. And if he didn't, he'd be dead even sooner of whatever Charonite considered the most drawn-out and terrible way to go. Hematite had no intention of dying if he could avoid it, but that had been how he'd lived the entire past year. It was time for a new game plan.

So, what now? There were plenty of things he could say, but again, he was in neither the position nor rank to pull them. There was a hollow pit inside of him where he channeled those frustrations for later, for when he could set them free on deserving victims who did not outrank and outmatch him like the General-King. One of his arms had begun to itch underneath the jacket, but he was too afraid to even scratch it with Charonite towering over him. Dreadlocks rustled as Hematite raised his head slightly. He addressed Charonite's boots with a small sigh first. It was what he always said, or had to say, but somehow it seemed to be nothing more than a dying echo in the face of the final warning. "Of course, sir. I... I won't fail you this time."

The General-King paused. He was still seemingly examining Hematite lying on the ground, as still as he ever was, a kind of preternatural stillness that heralded an explosion. A bomb, ticking quietly. But his boots didn't smack into Hematite any more, perhaps mollified by the sir, or at least just tired of kicking him: even Charonite had to tire of punishment.

"It's strange, you know, Lieutenant," he said, "that you sit on this information like a bird in a nest, and then just try to yank it out to save your own skin when the crunch time comes. Strange."

He added: "I'd thought that would be beneath you."

Charonite yanked Hematite up to stand -- none too kindly, but not with further abuse. A jerk of the shoulder sent him towards Nealite, Charonite standing between the two of them like a pissed-off referee. "Thank you for the info," he said, sardonic. "If you'd just wanted to say, 'Hey, look at me, we're both complete failures who can't report bullshit' it would have done the job in fewer words.

"This meeting's over."

One touch. And then they were back in the Hillworth gym, as Khaldun and Ursula -- with Gunn Killingworth stalking away from them, his hands in his pockets, every heavy step on the floor angry percussion.