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From more familiar surroundings, to -- well, not quite as but still increasingly familiar ones -- the soldiers of the Negaverse popped into existence into the still darkness and mirror floor of their underground headquarters. It was cold, very cold, like always, some were blessing their uniforms while others cursed it. Some appeared in somewhat amusing positions, having been in the middle of something or other before being yanked away from whatever it was: fingers curled around now-nonexistent cartons of milk, hairbrushes, forks, game controllers.

That was the problem with being summoned here without being warned about it first, especially if you were unlucky enough to have been taking a shower at the time. Because then your hair was wet, and it was really cold down here. Or if you were sitting down, that was just plain embarrassing.

Janice had been sitting crosslegged on her floor and peering over a spread of Mahjong tiles before they popped! away and were replaced with her own faint reflection swimming in the blackness. And quickly, curtly, Uranophane unfolded herself, winding her legs around until she was kneeling in unison with the rest of the group, breath catching and pulse racing in spite of herself. Beryl. This was Beryl. She stared straight ahead, at the tiny twin globs of acid-green lights her eyewear was making on the floor, and listened to her speak.

A pep talk. An... apology? A willingness to take questions.

"I have a question."

Uranophane pushed herself up from the ground, the clip-clomp of her shoes turned massive by the acoustics of the Negaverse cave-thedral. She stood up rail-straight, set her jaw, held her arms crisply at her sides. Making direct eye contact with Beryl was difficult, they weren't Ursula's eyes, there was a power and foreignness to them that was hard to look at.

"Forgive me, Majesty, but you just said," and she took a breath and ground her teeth a bit, "you just admitted, that it's taken too long for us to get acquainted with you. As our leader."

Another pause.

"Why is this."

His mind had been in a haze to begin with; the entire city had been struck down by some invisible assailant, rendered unconscious and comatose with no signs of being able to wake them. What did he care, really? Ursula had been frantic to check in on him when it had happened, and from her obvious distress, clearly some of their numbers had fallen.

And then he'd been told Nikki was in the hospital.

He'd shown up without warning, half-prone to violence, but the sight of her silent and still body had been enough to drain the emotion out of him just like that. Her condition was stable, but like all the other patients, she showed no signs of waking. Her family had tearfully thanked him for coming, and he'd mutely nodded before slipping back out into the streets.

Then, he'd been yanked by an all too familiar pull into the darkness of the Negaverse, and found himself in full uniform, standing before a woman that sent an unconscious chill down his spine. Her, their Queen, and he needed no prompting to sink into a kneeling position.

With Tanzanite beside him, it was hard to miss how roughed up she was--or the blood, still staining Beryl's hands. Maybe that was why he'd snorted out loud when she seemed to patronize Uranophane, and when her attention fully turned to him, the captain rose to his feet without a word.

Charonite was missing. It seemed unusual for the General-King to let his wife and Queen wander about as she pleased, and he considered briefly that his absence had something to do with the panic in Ursula's voice before.

"Our purpose, my Queen." The title attached itself automatically to his flat tone, and those who knew Obsidian would notice the dark humor normally present in his voice was entirely gone. "What are you having us fight for? What are you going to do when we get rid of the senshi?"

What did she expect them to believe in, as far as the Negaverse was concerned? And though he seemed to be focusing solely on Queen Beryl, his mind was elsewhere, back to the blonde girl lying in the hospital without so much as a smile or a tart reply on her lips. It was hard to pay attention to much else.

Being teleported was not only strange, but it was also inconvenient for those being pulled. One moment you could be driving in a car to being in a room full of your peers and superiors moving an invisible steering wheel. For Ladon, he had been trying to eat a sandwich he was forced to eat by Ivan, one of the doctors at the hospital and his temporary guardian while his family was comatose for the time being (or that’s what he was telling himself to keep his chin up). While he hadn’t been enthused to eat the sandwich from the start, he was less than thrilled when he was going for another bite and wound up in the Negaverse. He felt his stomach do a leap from the pulling force that brought him here before he fell down on his rear from lack of a chair and bite down on his own tongue. Smacking both hands around his mouth, he curled in as he held in any shouts, but his muffled whine echoed in the room. It was good for him that the entire Negaverse being transported made the first few moments noisy ones, people having been in mid conversation or singing in their car were now going silent and looking about. Once everyone situated themselves, either standing up or sitting down, they all settled on the woman before them.

If being teleported wasn’t enough to turn your stomach, the overwhelming force of power that consumed the entire room in a thick blanket of magic made him continue to hold his hands about his mouth until he felt he wasn’t about to regret eating what little of that sandwich he had. There had only been one other time he felt power like this, a thick crackling in the air that pushed on all sides until it felt like your brain was in a vice grip. It was what he came to assume the power of pure magic to be like, and associating a certain, murderous magic-welder to this woman was not something he liked or felt comfortable with.

This in no way took away from the even more consuming power of her presence, and before anyone started to whisper the word ‘Queen’ around him, he already knew. He had yet to meet Beryl, but he had heard the gossip as much as the other lieutenants had. He’d always assumed that Nealite wouldn’t have changed in any way, but she looked different to what she did now. You couldn’t even have said that Beryl was a sister or twice-removed cousin to Ursula. While they might have a few physical similarities, the way she held herself, moved, spoke, all said she was different all around. Not only different to Ursula, but different to a normal person.

Following suit, he dropped down to kneel, bowing to his Queen in respect as everyone else followed the Captains’ example, and then everything was quiet as she spoke. It wasn’t anything he expected to hear, and while he was shocked to hear that Charonite was also under this spell, he was also relieved to have the confirmation that they were no way responsible for his family being in the hospital. It also allowed him to be angry, as he could now look for the culprit, and he felt even better when their Queen shared the same sentiments.

He did not expect out of this meeting to have a Q and A. Addressing the troops to get to the bottom of this, yes. He was all for that, but he was more than surprised to hear that the floor was open for anyone to throw any question they had rattling around in their heads since the start of their introduction to the Negaverse, and Wolframite had a lot of questions rattling around to the point he could have been a maraca.

While he was taking in all the newest information, feeling many questions answered by other people, namely Captains, he tried to wrestle with which question to ask. Out of the many, the newest information created the freshest questions, and when he noticed others talking, he slowly rose his hand, hoping he wouldn’t ask anything stupid or already widely known.

“Uh – You thaid.." Wolframite stopped, working his bitten tongue to speak properly at such an important time. "- uh, Said that you were killed. Who killed you? Should we be worried about whoever killed you before?” He paused a moment, wondering if asking about someone’s death was too personal to touch upon, but wondering if whatever killed their Queen years ago was still a threat now. “And you said rightful ruler. Not rulers? I’m just a little confused.” He always assumed that Charonite as General-King and Beryl as Queen where the rulers. Was she the only ruler then?

The pull of the Negaverse wasn't entirely unfamiliar to Rhodizite (He'd attended meetings before), however, the presence of the long haired woman before them, was. He'd never had the opportunity to set his gaze upon their queen; he was much more used to Ursula's presence than this... darker, colder presence before them.

He felt conflicted.

On one hand, he felt a sense of duty towards the woman in front of him. A sense of duty, respect and admiration he couldn't quite shake for inexplicable reasons. There was no use denying that, and it showed in his demeanor and the way he watched the woman as she moved and spoke to them, even from his kneeling position. On the other hand... he was entirely unsure what the meant for Ursula, and he could also not deny the the worry and concern that pooled at the pit of his stomach. He'd never asked her what this whole possession business did to her; it really just hadn't been his place. He was concerned and could not ignore the sense of urgency he'd felt when he'd spotted the long haired woman, standing up in Ursula's place.

Swallowing his conflicted feelings, the Lieutenant rose from his place to talk, "My queen... you talk speak about the fact we are under attack. You speak about our need to fight back. Might I ask whom our attacker might be? Is it the moon kingdom and senshi? Or were they.... affected by this too?" despite the fact the whole ordeal hadn't affected him personally (he'd been lucky that the few people he really cared about, aside his captain, were actually awake and well), he still needed someone to pin the blame for this on. He needed a target; someone he could see, someone he could fight.

He needed someone to blame.

Gabriel O'Leary, had, at the time of summoning, been chilling on Paul Wyndham's bed. Not by Paul's choice, though, Gabe had invaded and kicked up his feet on Paul's nice blankets and started rambling with him about What Paul Is and everything included. He'd asked about the scar he had when in jingle mode, had poked and prodded because Gabe was curious. Paul didn't really have an answer for him. The redhead had been puzzling over Paul for quite some time. When they'd met (over a terrible failing of his own, not being fast enough to outrun a Guardian cat--!), he'd known that Spinel's energy had been...big. Certainly almost the size of the Cat's, and as dark as his own.

At first, he hadn't questioned the fact as he knew that they were both on the darker side of the spectrum. But the more he saw him in his powered form, the darkness on his forehead, the crackle of a hole in his chest. The slight but ever present personality shift. One they all had, really. Gabe had at first been full of trepidation at the concept of killing. With the help of Spinel and Linarite, however, he was slowly filling in to be a passable Negaverse agent.

It wasn't the focus of his existence, not yet...but it was enough to nag at him when Beryl spoke of decimating Senshis and...stuff. He had been one of the last to fall to his knee, looking utterly baffled as he glanced around. He fell to it and kept his head bowed till he heard a chance to blurt his question. He'd barely let the Queen finish calling on him before he spoke.

"What about corrupted Senshi? If the Senshi are driven out in the end...are you going to get rid of the corrupted ones, too? What if they stay loyal?" A hint of concern had crept into his voice, eyes glancing around the room to find Spinel's form. He fell silent, biting his lip and toying with his lip ring. Hopefully he hadn't asked something really ******** stupid, because making a buffoon of himself in front of this scary queen of Doom was not his idea of impressing the superiors.

He bowed his head again, red locks falling into his eyes, waiting for an answer. Beryl's aura hung over him like the weight of Atlas' burden.

The fact the Queen had not quite told them whom was responsible for the epidemic had not gone unnoticed by Kremersite. He'd remain knelt down on the floor until the queen had spoken of teams; he recalled the fact he'd been told several times he should not be patrolling alone, and yet all he could think about was that the one Lieutenant he had worked well with was now in a bloody coma.

He stood when addressed, "Yes," a pause, "Our fallen peers. Those that are sleeping, my queen... what exactly are we doing to help them?" he was trying to keep the anger out of his voice; it was not directed at the queen, but rather, the world around him. He felt cheated, even if there'd been nothing he could have done to help, he still felt like he should have done something, anything, "Is there even anything we can do to help them?" he hardly believed hospital visits were going to be worth much at all. Specially not if this was, in fact, a spell, as Beryl had pointed out.

He bowed his head as soon as he'd spoken, a clear sign of respect, almost as if trying to prove that the fact he was practically shaking with barely withheld anger... had nothing to do with the meeting, nor the elegant woman before him. Her cold aura, was in fact, something he was focusing on; it was something he was using as a distraction of some sort.

He was going to punch someone on the way out, if there was nothing he could do to help.

You never quite got used to the stomach-turning sensation of being pulled through space and form, but you knew that when it happened, things were serious. The captains had all been pulled together into the same place, at the forefront of the throng. Linarite didn't even give herself a moment to look and see who was in front of them. When Obsidian and Tanzanite both dropped to their knees, she followed. The blood on her friend's shoulder made her hesitate once she was down, amber eyes widening slightly at the sight of it.

When the queen's voice hit her ears with its honeyed tones, every muscle in the young woman's body went rigid. A reprieve had been granted by Ursula upon her good will at finding out about her expectant condition, but Ursula was not the queen. Beryl was the queen, and Beryl had delivered the ultimatum. But time passed, questions were answered, and it was all absorbed. There was only one thing that picked at the Captain's mind and conscience.

Jilted bride? Is that why they were all here? So now the bride had found a new husband and they were in charge of grabbing her dowry?! It was, in Linarite's mind, such a typically Ursula thing that she couldn't help herself. One slim, hesitant, white-clad hand rose into the air silently and her eyes finally turned up to the Queen of the Negaverse with a confused look in them as she tried so hard to hide her dawning realization that not everything might have been as she thought it was.

"Your Majesty, forgive me, but for some of us this is very important. When you ascend the throne as rightful ruler," when, not if, which was all very important, "the world will be better. When we eradicate the taint of the White Moon and their alien power, there will be peace? I fight for my friends, and for my family. I can and will slaughter anyone for this assurance alone. For your cause, majesty." Really, she was making it so easy. Linarite wanted, nearly begged, to be lied to. All Beryl had to do was simply agree that this was the path, and the blue-haired Captain would never stop - would go until death for only this cause.

But was it really their cause?