Welcome to Gaia! ::

The Negaverse trio popped! into the dark, crystalline subspace favoured by their Dear Leader rather than the slightly nicotine-smelling space favoured by Gunn Killingworth, a mass of blood and extreme irritation -- blood in the case of Hematite, excessive irritation in the case of Charonite. And there was nothing from Nealite. She was a broken, much subsided version of the usually-bombastic Ursula that was usually seen, a rather strange and small creature who'd been loaded like a sack of potatoes over Charonite's shoulder -- except that she was still shuddering and convulsing as though she was throwing a fit after the teleport, after Charonite dropped Hematite and then unfolded her to the floor.

Charonite's reaction to the entire thing was no surprise to ******** EVERYTHING," he said in decibels just below 'eardrum shatter', "I'm going to -- I'm ******** going to -- " And then Hematite tuned out a little as usual, as Charonite proceeded to describe Astraea's past and present sexual history, as well as her guessable sexual history in the future, and exactly what he was going to do to her in terms of what her body's condition would finally be like under the coroner's knife. And it took twice as long as any normal man would have taken to describe due to the ceaseless repetition of "********" and "s**t" and, once, memorably, "******** shitty ******** was in a bad way. He'd already been tenderized before the battle had begun, and most people upon getting kicked in the crotch that hard would have simply puked. His nose was a ******** wreck. He was a ******** wreck, period. A point-blank blast from Astraea wasn't exactly a walk in the park; it felt as though he'd been fried, head to toe, like he'd stuck a fork in an electrical socket and weaved it around some.

And Nealite had just been whaled on, completely, her injuries from Sailor Nea beforehand globbing on to the extreme beatdown that Castor had served her. It would have been bad just taken as that, recognised for what it was: one epic streetfight, delivered by a boy who no longer cared that his opponent was a girl. She'd have trouble looking out of her eyes in the morning. It was touch and go as to whether her cheekbone was broken.

And the beam that she'd taken from Astraea --

She was still juddering as though her nerves had been hooked up to something electric, eyes rolled back in her head, but then suddenly and horribly she was still. There was an ugly bluish tinge to her face that wasn't just swollen pre-bruising, a growing, ugly purplish tint. And she was still. She was so insanely still.

Charonite knelt down next to her, already tugging off the <******** ridiculous cape (how the hell had Kunzite ever managed that ******** thing), tugging open the sailor collar some (she was unconscious, her dignity wasn't about to be scathed) and pressing his fingers to her pulsepoint. He ditched the middle man and leant down, pressing his ear to her chest.

Then he scrambled around to Hematite, who seemed at least 40% conscious, and pressed his fingers to his second lieutenant's neck as well -- didn't bother to press his ear to his chest, but put his fingers to his pulsepoint, impatiently brushed away the blood still coming out in sluggish torrents from his nostrils. Checked his pulsepoint again.

Then he just shook him like a rag doll.

"Khaldun, wake the ******** up," he said sharply. "Ursula's not breathing. Come to. COME ON. DO NOT ******** MAKE ME WAIT AT THIS POINT. KHALDUN." (This was more than a little unfair, but.)

"URSULA ISN'T ******** BREATHING," said the General-King, and gave him another shake just for good luck. At this point consciousness was slowly oozing over Hematite like slime, but that wasn't good enough -- when was anything good enough? He was hauled pretty bodily over to Ursula's prone form, which was now really bluish over the edges and horribly clammy and silent, and Charonite pried her jaw open. He scraped her tongue away, pinched over her nose and leant down -- sucked in a breath and breathed it into her instead, slow and even. Then he pressed one hand to her sternum, laid the other hand over his curled fingers, and started pumping.

"One hundred to the minute," he said tersely. "Breathe in every two to three seconds. Now <******** TAKE OVER FOR ******** SAKE, for the love of Nemesis, Khaldun, I need you right now. I need you to do this RIGHT NOW."

It was disconcerting to see Nealite's body, unresponsive, getting fisted down on her chest with no reaction whatsoever. She looked dead.

For long, uncomfortable, agonizing moments they did CPR -- Hematite mechanically breathing painful breaths into Nealite, and Charonite swearing the time under his breath as he pumped on her chest. One. Two. Three. It was not romantic in the least: Nealite's lips were clammy underneath his own, and when you had Charonite next to you pressing down on Nealite's sternum it didn't exactly set the mood.

And Charonite was deadly silent, barring his muttering at the numbers as though they were responsible for everything from the Negaverse down. And he didn't panic, he didn't freak out in a waterfall of <********>, he just kept on with what he was doing as though it was their last chance. And it probably was their last chance. What the hell could they do for her otherwise? The hospital? That was a much-too amorphous maybe.

Hematite realised dimly that Charonite had stopped counting: underneath his voice, instead, he was repeating: come on, come on, come on.

And then Nealite suddenly coughed into his mouth, and the General-King stopped. "Give her some ******** room," he snapped instead, but there was an undertone of relief in his voice.

It was all uncomfortably close, him to Nealite and to Charonite. The splint on his bad hand was making it hard to hold himself up, sliding a bit on the glassy crystal floor. His thoughts moved dimly within his mind. Horribly, he wouldn't be able to keep the first aid up much longer. He'd been taken out of commission twice that evening; he barely understood what kept him from losing consciousness right there and then. Probably that nauseous feeling churning in his stomach. It seemed to be doing what was normally Charonite's job of kicking Hematite into gear. Everything was backwards. The General-King himself was unusually calm, the sort of thing that even Hematite in a state of complete disorientation knew was not a good sign. What had happened to the count? It was just words now. He breathed in, out, working to fill Nealite's lungs, starting to shudder with exhaustion the longer he kept it up. But, finally, the reaction both he and Charonite were hoping for, Nealite came to. Only...

"Gunn!?" Hematite, out of confusion, drew back from the just-barely-touching interlocking of lips, trailing a few loose dreads along Nealite. He parroted her, still rather good at the single-syllables even this close to the threat of unconsciousness. She'd taken him for Gunn Killingworth!? Was it always about him with her, always about her ******** schoolgirl crush on a guy who'd as soon return it as become a sailor senshi? There was a semblance of exasperation beneath his bruises and blood. His dark eyes squinted down, with a drop or two of nose-blood dripping onto her senshi uniform's bow.

"Yes, sir." The accompanying sigh was not sarcastic, for once, but genuine. Everything still ******** hurt, especially now that he'd lost his drive and was stuck just a little too awake now after helping Nealite cheat death. Hematite's kneeling position over the other lieutenant was quickly deteriorating along with his balance and whatever godforsaken chemical reaction had temporarily stepped in for his lost blood and sleep and decent health. She wasn't dead. Good. He pushed himself back once or twice to make room for her to breathe some air that wasn't secondhand out of his lungs. It wasn't long before he'd slumped back down to the floor again, on his side rather than face-up like Nealite. Safely parallel to the ground, he began compulsively wiping at his mouth and lips with one arm, the one he'd estimated to have less dried blood and dirt on it. Eurgh, she coughed into his mouth.

He'd thought of Nealite like a sister during the battle, and his opinion had not changed in the last ten minutes. So they weren't really related, but... god. That was not right. At this moment the only thing he desperately wanted back from his all-consuming amnesia was the assurance that he was a serious tonsil hockey champion before he'd come to Destiny City. It'd at least dull his disgust with himself to know Nealite hadn't been the first girl he'd stuck his lips on. The headache he had, though, was starting to become a constant rather than just a byproduct of thinking with a head injury. ******** ********, ow.

"Can't imagine why," he grunted to Nealite, though it came out distorted by his broken nose.

She ignored Hematite's smartass comment and instead focused on what the General-King had to say, her eyes daring to open themselves at last and stare up at the solemn looking man in sunglasses.

It was awkward, just lying there in front of him (though having Hematite keeled over next to her did make things a tad bit less odd, strangely enough) and she summoned up what energy she had left to attempt to rise up into a sitting position. She caught herself gasping and falling back down within moments, the pain in her back, her stomach, and especially her chest refusing to let her budge for the time being. Determined, she wiggled her way up to where her elbows kept her partially propped up. It would have to do for now, at least until she could regain more strength and tolerance for her new battle wounds. It was humiliating, knowing now that Astraea had escaped, the entire thing her fault for setting him back. Goddamnit, was she good at anything anymore?

She bit into her lip as he explained she was leaving Hillworth, the pain of her teeth grazing over her cuts completely ignored by the impact of his statement.

Leave Hillworth?

Hillworth was all Ursula had known since her arrival into Destiny City, Hillworth and Charonite. Despite any bitching she might have done concerning either, her job there, her place there, her duties...Hillworth was a stability she'd never fathomed having to give up. And he was telling her that she'd have to leave his side, leave the school that was responsible for keeping her sheltered, fed, and paid?

She looked away from him, unable to keep her focus on his face, those emotionless glasses that hid those ghostly eyes of his from the world. Nealite had heard his reasoning, or what he was willing to divulge, but she couldn't help but wonder if he was intentionally distancing himself from her. Surely not....right? Or had she finally ******** up enough to embarrass the both of them, this time?

Turning slightly, she flinched as something sharp pricked her side. She lay there, temporarily confused, until she recalled what exactly could be poking her. Damn it all, was she going to forget that too?

Reaching down with one hand, she forced her weight to keep herself up as her gloved hand reached into the small side pouch of her fuku, withdrawing the five glimmering star seeds she'd managed to swipe pre-Castor battle.

Extending her hand out, she offered the seeds to the General-King, unable to think of any other response to give but a simple soft, "Yes sir."

You could have heard a pin drop.

Well, you could have heard a pin drop anyway -- it would have made a tiny ting! sound on the glassy stone floors of the caverns that the Negaverse awkwardly called home. The General-King was looking at Hematite with an expression you honestly didn't see on his face a hell of a lot; it was a slightly befuddled expression, as though he had planned for every plan from A-Z and now here was coming Plan 9. From Outer Space.

And he was cradling the shining star seeds in his palm, turning them over with one thumb, looking from them to Nealite to them to Hematite to them again.

"We were planning to infiltrate the ******** prom anyway," he said, a bit roughly. "That's why I got Hillworth goddamn involved, we were going to make a show of strength -- I've got no ******** idea why you want to hang out at that thing anyway," he said, and he was talking to Nealite now. "It's just an excuse for you to wear a different pair of shoes, Ursula -- well that's probably why you want to god damned go, isn't it."

Pause. At this point there was every possibility Nealite was wishing herself a thousand leagues under the earth, or Hematite, or both.

"I'm not getting you a damned corsage," said Charonite, who still had that slightly baffled, vaguely 'did somebody get the name of that bus?' expression on his face, which he was trying his best to shake off. "All right, Lieutenant, I'll be your... escort."

It nearly had a question mark on the end. Escort. Escort??

"And you're going to a ******** doctor, Khaldun, because you're obviously ******** delusional at this point."

Hematite had been thinking this was going to work out quite well, all things considered. He'd fulfill his end of the bargain with Nealite in a situation where the General-King would be very slightly less inclined to explain how easily Hematite could be strung up by his own intestines for asking, and at the same time make sure the whole CPR thing could be put out of her mind. Nealite wasn't just some girl to him the way all others were; she was a confidant, untouchable and undesirable because she was valuable in a more meaningful way than for her body. And he could very well have ruined that tonight, all because of Charonite, who had in careful retrospect appeared perfectly capable of doing the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But Hematite seemed to get petty revenge by the baffled look on the General-King's face. Charonite was not going to say yes to anything that wasn't work. Women? Hah. Charonite was already married to that god-damn black and purple uniform he had on. It was not one of Hematite's prouder moments, or even his that-wasn't-as-bad-as-I-thought-it-would-be moments, to be the proxy asking the General-King on a date. But at the very least, he had every confidence these two witnesses were never going to speak a word of it themselves. Good enough.

He continued lying there, bloody and bloody tired, eyes wandering as the General-King found his voice and berated Nealite. The walls and ceiling were never particularly interesting to look at in this place. He was sorely tempted to raise a hand to make the universal gesture of 'get on with it'. They were alive, but Hematite would prefer to have a nose that women could stand to look at. Go on, say no. Show Nealite once and for all the General-King wouldn't be her- wait, what?

That wasn't supposed to happen.

Hematite met Nealite's glance with one of his own, a look like someone had told him the sky was green, the grass was blue, and rock & roll and metal were actually j-pop and country. Then he glanced back at the General-King, whose uneasiness was not nearly comforting enough. Charonite said yes. To Nealite. And it was all his own fault.

"I'm delusional," he repeated, slowly, half question and half answer. At this point Hematite was cashing out what little faith he had in his understanding of the universe. This was too goddamn backwards and his head hurt too goddamn much. Was that all it was, then? He didn't have any other experiences of getting hit in the head by magical cat attacks to compare this one with. "I must be. I mean, man, the more I think about it, what the hell was I saying? Was I trying to set you two up? Haha. Haaa. That's hilarious."

He blinked, and spoke in a much quieter voice to Nealite. "I'm delusional, says the guy who's never looked for a date in the whole year I've known him. God, Nea, that Audrey better be ******** worth this, or I swear I will make it haunt you."