Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was late, and finding an abandoned warehouse in the less-than-reputable downtown area of Destiny City had been relatively easy. It had once been a storage facility by the looks of it, one wide, dirty room with a tin roof and a plethora of windows that were either broken or too grime-covered to see through. The roof had been rusted through in places, and what few droplets of rain were not drumming down loudly against the tin were dripping through the holes. Still, even with flickering lights and a damp atmosphere, it would serve Tanzanite's purposes well enough. Indeed, finding such a place in that particular part of town had been an exceedingly easy task.

Dragging two unconscious men there had been significantly more difficult.

They stood now against two cold stone pillars, their bodies tensed and shaking against the ropes that held them. For the past half hour Tanzanite had watched as they'd struggled to free themselves, screamed their throats raw against the duct tape that muffled every would-have-been cry for help. She watched as though bored, arms folded across her chest. There was no compassion there, no pity or remorse, not even the smallest sign of regret that she was about to end their lives for no more than a training exercise.

It was going to be a good night.

She waited for their newest Lieutenant under orders from the General-King – Valleriite, he had called her – to introduce her to what would be asked of her as a Lieutenant. Show her that this is the ******** Negaverse, he had said. Too many disappointments, he had said. This was her duty; to show Valleriite the ways of the Negaverse, to show her that this was not some storybook adventure or some video game challenge.

This was the ******** Negaverse.

It was easy to recognize her new comrade on sight. Pretty girl, short skirt, magnificent hair? These were the things that it seemed nearly every female Lieutenant seemed to sport. Tanzanite gave a grin of approval at the way the woman responded to the men, not to mention what she considered to be quite the stylish entrance; perhaps this one would not be such a disappointment.

“Well, I did scuff my boots while dragging them here,” she murmured, glancing down at the bland scuff mark upon the otherwise pristinely oiled leather. It would vanish when she powered down, of course, but it didn't take much to earn a place on Tanzanite's s**t list.

“I see you already have the jumping skill covered,” she noted, clearly pleased. Learning to use their flea-like jumping ability gracefully did not come naturally to every new officer, and Tanzanite dreaded the task of teaching some uncoordinated, bumbling idiot how to jump several stories and land on something other than their face. Well, that would save them a few hours.

The men were fidgeting now, their eyes bouncing wildly from Valleriite to Tanzanite, to one another, and then around the room. Perhaps they were looking for some clue as to why they'd been brought here, some hint that this might all be some sick joke, some bachelor party prank; they were not so fortunate. Only shattered windows and dirty floors would meet their gaze, offering no hope that this night would end well.

“The General-King has instructed me to teach you how to properly steal a star seed, how to handle disposing of a body, and then take you for a little test drive out in the real world. He has high hopes for you, Lieutenant. I hope that you're not...” She turned her gaze back to the two men, eager to see the change of expression as she vocalized their fate, “squeamish about killing humans, Lieutenant Valleriite?”

It was clear by the way she twisted the word, the way disgust seeped into her otherwise monotonous tone, that her attitude towards the general population was not a pleasant one. It was also quite clear that she considered members of the Negaverse to be much, much more than merely human.

Generally, Tanzanite disliked people. In fact, she typically disliked people enough that if they touched her, her mind began filling with various ways to detach their hand and all of the sick, twisted things she could do to their bleeding body thereafter. Fortunately, for the both of them, she found the boldness of the girl to be...intriguing. The corners of Tanzanite's lips kept that same wicked curve, twisting further as Valleriite so deftly proved her cruelty.

Oh yes, she could certainly see herself getting along with this one.

Her gaze lingered upon the Lieutenant a moment longer than it normally might. A spark of obsession, perhaps? Who knew, when it came to Tanzanite. The things she coveted were random and often made little sense, but she pursued them with unrelenting focus until she was content. Whether sparking obsession or merely vague interest, she let her eyes slide from the pretty girl to the now bleeding man. Silver eyes narrowed slightly, a sudden hunger evident in the way she watched the blood drip from his chin. He was sobbing now, struggling to breathe as the blood oozed down the side of his face. The sound was beautiful, and Tanzanite experienced a rare moment of peace as she listened to the broken man, pushed past the point of denial.

He was facing his death, and the two of them were there to witness it. It was a rare moment, one which Tanzanite cherished, reveling in the sick pleasure of seeing true humanity. Stripped of arrogance. Stripped of pride. Stripped of their undeserved wealth and their egos. Raw, bare human nature, crying and sobbing through blood and tears. This is what they were. Weak, pathetic, undeserving of the peaceful lives they been gifted.

The peaceful lives Tanzanite was determined to strip away, even if she had to do so one by one.

“Shhhhh,” she whispered, a single finger following one long, dark rivulet of blood. It flowed from an open wound on the man's cheek, down his rough skin. Tanzanite's pale fingertip followed it down to where it dripped from his chin, until her finger was stained with red up to the knuckle. A single swipe of her tongue cleaned away the blood, dragging a low murmur of approval as the familiar, coppery taste stung at her taste buds. Her laughter was low enough that it was barely audible above the muffled screams, but there was no mistaking the pleasure in it.

Stepping back, she would take Valleriite's hand, gently placing it upon the struggling man's chest, just above his wildly beating heart. Tanzanite stood behind her, one hand placed atop Valleriite's, her head leaned in just enough that her lips would brush against the newer Lieutenant's ear.

“Focus, Valleriite,” she whispered, cold eyes studying the girls expression. This was a sacred moment, the moment when one learned how to steal life away as though it were something they were entitled to take. As far as Tanzanite was concerned, it was their right, “Can you feel it?”

And if Valleriite focused, she would be able to feel it. Something that no ordinary human could sense. A spark of life deep in the man's chest, something that was intangible while it remained a part of him, but something she would learn to crave when she felt it. It would flutter with every heartbeat, and Valleriite would be able to feel it there, the energy pulsing against her palm.

The very essence of the whimpering, sobbing man's life. The very thing that kept the Negaverse alive, that gave them their power. Their strength. Their superiority.

His starseed.

Valleriite had no way of knowing it, but Tanzanite had chosen her prey well. She had followed them for days now, watching as they did what they could to make their pathetic human world a better place. Fed the homeless, helped needy children, and gave everything they had to the utterly futile cause of preserving the good in humanity. It was their generosity, their nobility which had made them so easy to catch. One needy look, one glance from where she had sat cold and seemingly homeless in the corner of an alley, and both had done as she expected. They came to her, they wrapped their arms around their shoulders and whispered a quiet, solemn 'God bless you' as they helped her to her feet.

These men were among the best that humanity had to offer, both priests from a local parish who would very soon meet the God they had placed so much faith in.

Her lips curled with amusement as Valleriite spoke. The sentiments were so similar to those Tanzanite had felt when she had first been told such things. Told that the power which fueled the Negaverse could be found within the hollow shells of human bodies. Tanzanite had stood, mouth slightly agape, as she had been informed that it was humans who provided their energy and their power, and that the purpose of Lieutenants such as herself was to harvest it. It had seemed ridiculous, even impossible that all of their power had come from the pathetic ranks that she had been struggling her entire life to escape.

“This man does not fascinate me,” she said with a smile, flattening her palm against the man's chest, in the exact same spot Valleriite's had been only a moment ago. “It's what is inside of him that fascinates me. They are shells, Valleriite. You could look at a slab of rock and see only a common piece of stone, but within it...” Tanzanite trailed off, preferring to show Valleriite rather than tell her. It took only a moment of focus to push her hand through the man's chest, as though he were nothing more than a ghostly apparition. His eyes went wide and his body thrashed. It was not painful for him, but it was a violation worse than any other. A perverse invasion of the most intimate kind.

Tanzanite's fingers found the small, barely present energy signature of his star seed, and wrapped around it. With one hard yank she ripped it from his chest, her hand coming out as easily as it had slipped in. There was no wound, nor any other sign that anything had happened save for the way the man's eyes widened for one brief second before his body went limp against the bindings. His head lolled forward, chest still rising and falling with shallow breaths. Not dead – not yet – but in a coma from which he would never wake.

Pale fingers fanned out. There, glittering above Tanzanite's palm, floated the object of her fascination. It was such a tiny thing, but beautiful nevertheless. A crystal the size of a penny, pulsating with the life that she had stolen from the now unconscious man.

“Never has there been a diamond that was not buried under layers of worthless rock and dirt, Lieutenant. What might seem useless and pathetic is only a shell, a way for the world to hide what we're after. And what better place to do so than to plant them in the bodies of the people we think so worthless?”

She held out a hand, gesturing to the remaining man. He was now rigid with terror, his head shaking frantically back and forth, a low whine pleading from beneath the tape. It was Valleriite's turn now, and Tanzanite was eager to see how the new Lieutenant would handle it.