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“<********>” The curse rang out across dark, empty hallways. It bounced off of the bleachers and rang through the empty gymnasium, echoing in Tanzanite's own ears. Hillworth was as dark and lifeless as the Negaverse that midnight, save for the light that came streaming out of the small faculty bathroom where Tanzanite was tending to her battle wounds with all the medical precision of an army surgeon on the front lines. Doctors asked questions and, when they failed to receive satisfactory answers, called in the police to further investigate. With hospitals and the emergency room crossed off of her list of available options, the safe haven of the General-King's daytime roost had been her only choice.

Questions weren't an option when she had one long, continuous burn mark circling her throat like some kind of ******** up choker. <******** c**t.” Tanzanite grunted, inhaling in a sharp hiss as she wiped the blood from her nose. It was only by sheer luck that it hadn't been broken, but that didn't stop the blood from trickling for the past hour, coming to a stop only moments ago. She wiped the last bit of it from her upper lip and tossed the mostly red tissue into the sink. The blossom of paper wilted in the shallow pool of bright red water, alongside thin strips of dead skin, bandages, and common household scouring pads. Unfortunately, burns had such a high rate of infection that any dead skin left posed a serious threat. Her bloody fingers closed around one, and she suppressed a scream as she dipped the thing in a small pan of alcohol and took it to the raw burn on her throat.

Tanzanite, a Lieutenant of the ******** Negaverse, would not die from a ******** infection.

The nails of her free hand clutched the sink as she scraped over the burn again, the sting of alcohol almost as painful as the wound itself had been. The sound that echoed behind her clenched teeth was somewhere between a grunt and a scream. Her body shuddered as much with rage as it did with the coolness of the dark building or the effort of cleaning the burns. Where she was so often cool and composed to the point of seeming soulless, Tanzanite's inner emotions were quite exposed at the moment. It was a rare occurrence, a moment of weakness that few ever witnessed, but there was no helping it. She was a raw nerve, her mask worn down by the desperation of her first real fight and the pain of the aftermath. It had been so simple. So easy. One teenage girl, one teenage senshi, and her arrogance had nearly cost Tanzanite her life.

Never again.

When Tanzanite finally found the courage to look up into the mirror, the face that stared back at her was still familiar. Her looks had been mostly salvaged, save for a cut on her upper lip and a bruise across the bridge of her nose. An assortment of minor scrapes and bruises littered her face and limbs, but it was the angry red mark wrapped around her throat that truly sickened Tanzanite. Only half of it had been cleaned off, and she already felt her stomach knotting as though she might vomit at any moment.

She had underestimated the senshi, and she would forever bear a reminder of her own foolishness. It was a valuable lesson, but a costly one.

Obsidouche had arrived. Wonderful.

Tanzanite should have been unnerved by his presence, by the way he watched her as though she were some sort of fascinating side show. Then again, how many times had she watched with the same eager grin, the same intrigued stare? Tanzanite vaguely recalled the overwhelming desire she'd felt upon meeting Obsidian for the first time. The desire to tear open his stomach and watch that smug smile fade as viscera poured out of his body, his hands covered in his own hot, wet entrails. She had longed that night to hear them splash out upon the pavement, followed by the dull thud of his body collapsing. Nothing in this world – save Iris' painful demise – would please her more than to clutch his throat in her hands until those cold eyes bulged and that aggravating voice choked off into sobbing, pleading screams.

Even now, the recollection brought a wide, out of place grin to her lips, teeth still red with her own blood. Her tongue flicked out for a brief moment, licking blood from her upper lip.

Straightening her posture, Tanzanite met his gaze with no recognizable fear. It wasn't a sign of bravery or courage, nor the contemptuous way in which the senshi often responded to their threat. Tanzanite had very little regard for life, and that sentiment included her own. If Obsidian was set on killing her.. well, there was ******** all she could do about it. Even were she not battered to hell and back, she knew better than to think she stood a chance against the vastly more experienced lieutenant. Why give him the pleasure of her fear?

“So it is,” she murmured in soft response, dropping the scouring pad back into the pan. She could appreciate the turnaround of her own statement, even if it made her want to ******** the base of his throat with her boot heel. Her fingers opened, and out of nothingness the stolen starseed appeared. It shimmered with life for a brief moment before vanishing into her closed palm again, as though to answer his question. She'd let the senshi live only to fulfill Charonite's desire to terrify the lot of them. Let them see what they were up against. One sesnhi wasn't worth giving up the chance to spread that fear.

“Still using the same old material, I see,” she turned on her heels to face him, taking a step closer as she craned her neck first to one side, then the other. A low hiss escaped her throat, terribly mismatched with the grin that lit up her features. The delicate, scabbed skin that hadn't been tended to ripped beneath the strain, leaving small rivulets of blood trickling down her pale throat. She didn't bother to suppress a small, almost pleasurable gasp, and another small step would bring her right up to him. If he didn't step back, she'd be nearly pressing against him.

“Pity, I had such high expectations for you, Obsidian.”

Tanzanite shuddered involuntarily, but she did not move. Her body tensed for a brief moment , the newest addition of pain merely a pinprick when compared to what had already been inflicted. It was not the pain which drew the reaction, but the proximity of a man she knew to be extremely dangerous. If Obby was expecting her to pull away, scream, kick, fight, he would be terribly disappointed. Even when he pulled back, she only regarded him with that same cold indifference, one hand lifting to wipe the blood from the place his mouth had been only a second ago. She regarded her bright red fingertips for a brief moment, licking the blood from her middle finger as she watched him turn.

His mocking words brought forth an anger that did not reach her expression, and the desire to sink her nails into his flesh grew tenfold. That smug grin. Every arrogantly uttered syllable. Tanzanite envisioned herself digging her thumbs into the corners of his eyes until that narrow gaze was nothing more than a hollow socket. It was that very thought which brought a smile to her face, and for a moment she simply stared at his back.

It would take only a second to wrap her cables around his throat, only a minute to choke the life out of him. By the time anyone found that pretty red head of his, not even dental records would be able to identify him.

It took only a step to close the space between them, and with greater strength than her thin frame suggested, she thrust a hand forward. There, in the cavity of Obsidian's seemingly heartless chest, Tanzanite wrapped her fingers around his starseed. It was nothing, really, and yet somehow Tanzanite was able to clutch it in her fist. With her body pressed up against his back, Tanzanite pressed her lips to his ear. Her voice was nothing more that a low hiss, lips curved in a wicked smile as she spoke.

“Getting under your skin isn't so terribly difficult either, love,” she hissed.

It was a better reaction than Tanzanite had hoped for.

The nose that had stopped bleeding only moments ago gushed anew as Obsidian's elbow made contact; the bone did not break, but Tanzanite felt the pain shooting back through her skull as though a red-hot rod had been jammed all the way through. Even amidst the blinding pain, that cold apathy remained, despite the fact that her head was pounding. It was the kind of focus that you earned in exchange for your humanity; a rare skill, one which was paid for by the unwillingness to feel many of the conflicting emotions which clouded the mind of the average woman. There was only one emotion that bounced around inside of her splitting skull now; hatred. The deep, seething kind of loathing that set her blood on fire and made her want nothing more than to smash his face into that mirror over and over again until those pretty features were nothing more than a massacred pile of glass and flesh.

“Agreed,” she murmured, almost inaudibly, as he snatched at the wrist that held his starseed tightly within her fist. Her free hand drove upwards quickly, the heel of her palm aiming to collide with his nose. She wasn't as strong as the more experienced Lieutenant, but she was fast and all but unshakable. Knowing fully that she might not come out of it alive, her heart raced with a growing excitement, and Obsidian would likely be able to feel the beat of her pulse through her wrist. The grin on her face seemed out of place, tongue swiping quickly to remove the thick coat of blood from her upper lip.

With the flexibility only a dancer or a gymnast could claim, she pulled back as far as she could while he still held her wrist, lifting one foot and planting it right in the center of his solar plexus. With all the strength she could put into it, she kicked him back, simultaneously releasing her grip on his starseed; as much as she wanted to watch the life go out of those arrogant green eyes, he wasn't worth dying for. Rather, he wasn't worth dying for unless she got the satisfaction of drawing out every last pleading, gasping sob before he went.

If she managed to kick him away from her, Tanzanite would not flee. The Lieutenant would stand her ground, wiping the blood from her face with the back of her hand, her pale cheek smeared with a bright red streak. Lips parted in a wide grin; for the first time in what felt like years, Tanzanite experienced a strange sort of joy.

“I want to hear you scream when I kill you, Obsidian,” she said with a faint laugh, bracing herself as she stared him down. It was the only reason she'd let him go; to hell with punishment, to hell with repercussions and consequence. She wanted to make him scream like a frightened child, to listen as the screams faded out when she cut open that pale throat and exposed his insides to the open air.

A crook of her finger beckoned him forward again.

Suddenly, all of that joy and excitement had gone, right along with Obsidian's desire to fight back. It visibly drained from her expression as he spoke, her features reigned back in to that placid stare with those simple words.

The realization came rather suddenly, and with a mental backlash that was more painful than any physical damage Obsidian could inflict. He wasn't fighting her. Hell, he was barely even toying with her. All of his insults and taunting had been bait. ******** bait, and she'd risen to it spectacularly. Predictably. She had risen to it and proven that she was, in fact, just a girl. A new Lieutenant, and though she had held her own well for a new agent against an experienced Senshi with significantly greater power, her relentlessness and apparent psychotic lust for battle were only going to get her so far.

And they would get her nowhere when it came to Obsidian.

The simple act of turning his back was more damaging than any punch he could have thrown, and it was the first thing he'd done that night that had brought pain to her expression. It was a write-off, a dismissal, a clear and undeniable expression that said 'Kicking your a** isn't even worth my time.' Or maybe it was just the truth of that statement that cut so deeply. Either way, she stared at his back for a long moment, a dozen different emotions racing through her mind. That voice still chanted in the back of her mind, urging her forward. Telling her to plunge her hand deep into his chest and rip out his starseed one and for all; consequences be damned.

Only now, there was a second train of thought. It was cold, calm, and logical. It was overwhelming the first, telling her that attacking him would only prove his assumptions in addition to getting her killed. She didn't have a chance against an opponent like him, an opponent who was on her own ******** side no less. Even if she had, Charonite would make quick work of her if she ever seriously threatened another Lieutenant. Especially one as valuable to the Negaverse as Obsidian was. She needed control.

Tanzanite reigned in her temper slowly. It was an act which she was well practiced in, an almost ritualistic way in which she gathered up her thoughts and feelings and rationalized them back into the corner of her mind. Her hands still shook as she made her way across the short space between them. Her steps were measured; confident but not aggressive. Her hand wrapped around his upper arm, and she sidestepped to place herself in front of him. The back of her free hand wiped the dripping blood from her bottom lip as cold grey eyes stared up at him. Tanzanite was tall, Obsidian was taller. Tanzanite was strong, and Obsidian was stronger. Tanzanite was an agent of the Negaverse, but Obsidian was a ******** warrior.

“Then teach me,” she said flatly. There was no begging in her tone, nor any lack of sincerity. Granted, she still fought the temptation to lean in and return the kindness of leaving bite marks on his throat, but that desire took second place. There was an intensity in her narrowed gaze as she fixed it upon him, “I need to be more than this, Obsidian. I will not be like them.”

Obsidian didn't need to guess who them was. There were plenty of candy-a** lieutenants who could have filled that role.

Tanzanite had never cared much for power. At least, not in the sense of being in charge. She was one of few Negaverse Lieutenants who had no aspirations to call the shots. Given the reigns of their operation, she was just as likely to try and blow the entire planet out of orbit as she was to try and rule it. She would, however, follow a competent leader with fierce loyalty. All she required in return was the strength to do what she wanted and the control to make sure that she was never, ever helpless to change her own fate. Never stuck in mediocrity and nothingness.

Never helpless. Never weak. Never just another face. Just another name to live and die.

Her grip on his arm relaxed; he had stopped, so force was not necessary. She just needed his attention. Even if he did laugh in her face, it was worth a try. Even if he laughed, she would find another way.

Tanzanite found it difficult to put into words exactly why she needed it. There were many things about the life of Aree Cadence that she had desperately wanted an escape from. The evenings spent with her arms wrapped around her sister, covering Bethany's ears from screams that she could not stop. They had never been the subjects of abuse. Their mother had been the one stupid enough to have an affair, and she was the one who paid the price for it years afterwards. Still, one didn't need to take the hit to understand the pain it caused.

Them, she had said. It was her way of defining everything she detested about who she had once been. Scared, helpless, weak. A girl who sheltered herself in obsessive training – ballet, jazz, whatever it took – to escape the fact that she was not, nor would she ever be, more than this.

Their reasons for joining the Negaverse were so different, but they ran through the same vein; to have control. Strength. The ability to be able to say that they would never sit idly by and let life, fate, destiny, whatever the hell you wanted to call it, have control.

When she finally spoke, her words were simple. It was rare that Tanzanite was openly emotional, especially with someone who she felt an almost unnatural desire to choke, but there was something in those pale irises that spoke of sincerity. Intensity. This was not a desire or a whim. It was a need. It was the reason she pushed herself into fight after fight after fight. The reason he had found her beaten to hell and ripping burned skin from her throat.

“Because I won't – I can't go back to that.” She neglected to define what 'that' was. “I can't.”

Tanzanite watched as he walked away, but she said no more. There was no more to be said. She had her answer. It was a small hope, a thin thread. Barely enough to hang her hopes on, but still enough to keep her feet rooted to the floor, eyes focused upon his back. The only thing left to do was finish scrubbing the burnt skin from her neck, recover, and hope that the next time they met, she would be stronger. Better. More capable of proving that not only did she have potential, but that she would train, work, grow. She would become more on her own.

For now, all there was to do was return to the bathroom, clench her teeth, and pick up right where she left off.

She waited until Obsidian was well out of earshot before she let out another angry, pained scream.