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“My dearest love,” Tanzanite read aloud, her voice toned for theatrics as the words rang out through the empty halls of Crystal Academy, “How I long to see you. In time, my darling, these petty schoolyard feuds will not be able to leash our desire. I long to caress your face, I yearn to kiss your lips, you are the sun to light up these gloomy– what is wrong with these kids?” She cut the reading short, crumpling up the love letter and tossing it over her shoulder. It bounced off of the opposite row of lockers and into the growing pile of crumpled up homework assignments and notes passed while the teachers backs were turned.

Her locker search thus far has provided no useful information outside of enough gossip material to make any teenage girl burn with envy. Sadly, gossip was something Tanzanite had no interest in.

Gossip hurt feelings and scarred emotions, and that just wasn't enough for the indigo-haired Lieutenant. Tanzanite wanted to draw these senshi out of hiding and listen as their bodies broke under every infuriated blow. She wanted to rip out their starseeds and pin open their eyelids as she rained down her fury upon them so that she could see the light leave their eyes. And she couldn't do that when the only information she could garner was that Elizabeth Perkins had a she-boner for Emily Jenkins, who had a secret love for Amanda Wesley, who spent last week making out under the bleachers with Simone Worthington, who couldn't tell her parents or else they'd send her off to Catholic school!

Reading through the minutia of their lives was nauseating, but it was an unfortunate necessity.

With her cables wrapped around one fist, Tanzanite hefted a crowbar onto her shoulder. The thing was bulky and inconvenient, but apparently wielding the power of the Negaverse meant she couldn't break open a simple combination lock. Hooking the curved end beneath the base of the next locker door, Tanzanite prepared to wrench it open when a voice caught her attention.

“Life can get so tedious,” the woman's voice came as a surprise, considering the Academy had been locked up rather tightly after hours. The crowbar hit the floor with a loud clang as Tanzanite uncoiled her weapon from her hand. Now, one might wonder who would choose a set of jumper cables instead of a crowbar for a weapon. And one might be considered stupid for even asking. Because this is the Negaverse, and that's how s**t is done here. Don't question it.

The girl caught her attention as soon as Tanzanite caught sight of her. It was rather clear that the woman wasn't a student, and certainly not a professor. Even without the telltale energy signature to give her away as she transformed, Tanzanite might have known immediately that she was one of Charonite's Lieutenants. After all, she was a pretty girl with long hair and a short skirt, and that seemed to be the order of the day for the General King's lieutenants.

Tanzanite mad a mental note to pick up an issue of Hustler to see who next week's recruits might be.

“It does get rather boring, doesn't it?” she remarked. Her tone was not conversational or friendly, but the same monotonous drawl that seemed to soak every syllable the woman spoke.

“Of all the things I look like,” Tanzanite mused with a faint smile, “A spy has never been pointed out as one of them. Still, I suppose it's an improvement.” She had been referred to as a whore, a callgirl, a stripper, a dominatrix, and a dozen other variations that suggested that her profession somehow involved using her breasts more often than her brain. Granted, nobody who had said these things had been of particular importance to Tanzanite, so the insults had simply rolled off of her without a second thought. A shrug of her shoulders dismissed the notion entirely.

“I'm searching,” she said flatly, turning upon her heels to approach the closest row of lockers. Without the crowbar breaking into them was somewhat difficult, but she didn't need any assistance getting into the particular locker of interest. She spun the lock left, right left, and it popped open with ease. Reaching in, Tanzanite snatched a small black book from the inside and marked off a few numbers on a page close to the front; a log of which lockers had been searched so far. After all, one couldn't go through every locker in Crystal Academy in a single night.

“You wouldn't believe the things these girls have in their lockers,” she muttered as she stuffed the book back in, slamming the door behind her. “Useless, but perhaps we'd have a bit more luck rifling through the teacher's desks instead?” I'm Lieutenant Tanzanite," she introduced herself in a formal manner, but did not extend a hand in greeting.

Touching people wasn't really something Tanzanite did, unless it was in a violent and usually fatal fashion.

The Negaverse girls would not just beat the Senshi on looks alone, they would pulverize them. The small handful of women who Tanzanite had met so far had all been equally beautiful women. It would be like pitting Lance Bass against Samuel L. Jackson in a contest of badassery; bitches didn't stand a chance.

Tanzanite bobbed her head in a small nod at the other Lieutenant's words; gym bags, hm? It was a novel idea, but one which made sense. She hadn't expected to find their precious items in their lockers, but perhaps more subtle clues. Still, not so much as a trace of a Sailor Senshi had shown up in her search. What a disappointment, even if it was an expected one.

“Gossip, mostly,” Tanzanite explained, retrieving the crowbar from it's place upon the floor. She strolled over to the locker just beside her own and jammed the wedged end beneath the door. With a great deal of racket and force, the thing popped open. Forcing open a metal door was not a quiet process, but that was not Tanzanite's concern. After all, the few security guards that occasionally patrolled were almost always slacking off somewhere outside. Even if the overweight, uniformed men did come running inside at the sound of all of that banging and clanging, they posed little threat.

One of the best perks about being a part of the Negaverse: you no longer felt threatened by any human who wasn't carrying some kind of significant weapon. Their feeble nightsticks would do little to stop her from plucking their star seeds like ripened fruit should they choose to interfere with her task. Besides, one jump was usually enough to scare them off. As useless as the ability to leap several hundred feet in the air might sound, very few people wanted to test their luck against someone capable of jumping to the top of a house with little effort.

“The point of this,” she said as she rifled through the lockers contents, pulling out books, notes, and personal belongings alike, “isn't just to look for something that could link one of these girls to the Senshi. We want to scare the ones that are here. Take an object or two, however seemingly meaningless, and they'll start wondering who knows what. We want them terrified. Taking something seemingly harmless...” Tanzanite plucked a couple of family pictures from the locker door and tossed them aside, “Makes them wonder if we know who they are. If we'll be going after their families and friends. We want them on the defensive.”

“The more we unsettle them, the more likely they'll slip up and reveal themselves.”

“We should do that whether they respond to this or not,” she said, her expression placid with her focus on searching the contents of the locker. “I'd give a great deal to see half of them screaming in terror, Senshi or not.”

Tanzanite liked this one.. well, as much as she ever liked anyone. Which was to say she had been in the girl's presence more than two minutes and did not yet have the overwhelming desire to strangle her. She liked the way Serandite thought; it was direct but effective, and Tanzanite wouldn't be against letting youma ravage the prissy halls of Crystal Academy. Hell, she wouldn't be against letting a pipe bomb ravage them.

“Nova,” she said as she unfolded a note from inside the locker, scanning it's contents. Nothing but plans for halloween and a brief discussion of the Hillworth boys. Tanzanite frowned her momentary displeasure. “I wouldn't say she joined so much as she was.. persuaded by the General-King, from what I've picked up on.” Tanzanite neglected to mention her personal contact with the corrupted senshi. Such bits of information were irrelevant to the current conversation, and Tanzanite had never been one for needless bragging.

“With her on the General-King's leash, the senshi will be scattering like mice in no time. That girl is like an atom bomb of Negaverse power ready to go off at any moment.” And how Tanzanite wished she would. Preferably sooner rather than later.

“How long has it been?” She questioned, attempting to push the conversation forward. Using the same acting skills that she used each and every day under the guise of Aree Cadence, Tanzanite forced her tone to be conversational. “Since the General-King recruited you, I mean.”

Tanzanite's knowledge came more from Charonite's 'Sink Or Swim, b***h' teaching philosophy. Her second day as a Lieutenant, she'd been sent off to wreak havoc alongside the corrupted senshi. In truth, she had been in the Negaverse roughly as long as Serandite, the only difference being that Charonite had thrown her a** straight into the deep end.

“Not much longer than you, actually,” she said, taking her crowbar to the next locker. Again, she chose a few select items to remove from the locker before tearing the rest of the contents out and spilling them across the floor. This needed to appear like some sort of routine robbery.

“We should,” Tanzanite agreed, forcing a small smile. It wasn't that she disliked the idea, she simply had a difficult time expressing any emotion that wasn't 'Get Over Here I'm Going To Eat Your ******** Face Off'.

“Well, some of the gorgeous bitches double as assholes,” she muttered, and upon thinking of Obsidian added, “And vice versa.”

Hey, Obby's a pretty b***h. Yesheis.

Well, that was interesting.

Tanzanite watched as the bunny appeared, grew, and began to shake out lockers as though they were ragdolls. Her expression was unchanging – even when Tanzanite was genuinely impressed, she was not one to show it – but she leaned back against the door of the locker and folded her arms across her chest, watching with interest. Of the many things she'd seen in her short Negaverse tenure, this was certainly a new one.

“STOP RI-”

The voice caught Tanzanite off guard. Preoccupied as she was, she hadn't considered that the newest racket might draw the attention of the security guard. The man had rounded the corner into the hallways just after he'd begun to speak, and was abruptly cut off by the shock of what he'd found. Which was.. well, a giant bunny shaking lockers. If you're not freaked out by that, then there's something very clearly wrong with you.

The man was a stereotypical security guard. He was a short, pudgy man with a balding head and plain features. His blue shirt was wrinkled, only half tucked into the dark gray slacks. With eyes wide, his dark brows halfway up his wrinkled forehead in absolute terror, the man was practically frozen to the spot. Only his hand moved, groping for the can of mace and the night stick he had at his wait.

Pathetic.

“Tell me, Serandite,” Tanzanite mused, her grin returning, “Have you had a chance to steal a starseed yet?”

Oh, how she liked this one.

Tanzanite grinned at the challenge, appreciative that the girl seemed to have a backbone. Far too often the Crystal girls were spineless, petty little things, undeserving if their wealth and their lives. It made Tanzanite's job that much easier; she was more than happy to strip them of the latter.

“They did always teach us to share here at Crystal Academy,” Tanzanite said with a grin, shifting her gaze from her comrade to the two terrified men. They seemed unable to determine if they should run or foolishly fight, though one now shakily held up his can of mace. “I'll take the left, you take the right?”

“This is p-p-rivate propery,” the guard stammered the interruption, his voice cracking halfway through the statement. It wound down into a low whimper, his lower lip trembling as he regarded the pait. It drew a long, hollow laugh from Tanzanite.

“We'll give you...” Tanzanite lifted a wrist as though checking her watch. She did not have a watch, but the motion was performed anyways for a dramatic effect, “A ten second head start. One... two...”

The first of the guards dropped the can of mace and turned on his heels. He took one shaky step forward, nearly tripping over his own feet. Then another. He had taken only a few clumsy steps before his round eyes went wide. He murmured something about his family, some unintelligible 'I Love You's' before staring down at the hand that was buried wrist-deep into his chest.

“Ten. Tanzanite hissed, having crossed the short distance of the hallway at a dead run.

“Th-th...” the man spluttered, convulsing as the Lieutenant wrenched her hand further in, wrapping around that starseed. It wasn't an object so much as it was a force, an energy signature unique to each individual while it remained within then. He shuddered as she wrapped her fingers around the seed, and with one firm yank ripped it violently from his chest.

“That wasn't ten seconds...” The man whispered hoarsely as his body collapsed to the floor.