Welcome to Gaia! ::

"YOU."

It was almost as if some higher power had been watching over Sailor Nemesis that evening... taking in her situation in all its grand dullness, taking pity upon her insurmountable boredom, and deciding that tonight was her night for a blessing. For in that next moment after she got up off the bench, she heard a pressed, sharp voice ringing through the cooling darkness.

A very familiar voice. Granted, many voices had clouded the air of the now mostly-decimated convention center during the battle for the Crystal, but the human brain had a way of associating this particular one with the welt on her face that hadn't quite gone down yet.

And right when Nemesis had put two and two together, there she was -- already running at full speed towards her from the sidewalk, fist raised and ready.

Uranophane held one hell of a grudge, and she was still pissed about that bullshit paralysis attack.

The Negaverser couldn't believe her luck either, really. She'd just dealt with what was probably one of the worst eighteenth birthdays in human history, and in spite of telling most everyone she didn't really care about it, it had added some weight to the pit of bitterness residing in her gut. Along with everyone else that had been going on with her life -- her boyfriend in a coma, her increasingly confusing and strained relationship with Vera -- this meant she had a powerful drive to do something reckless so she could distract herself from it all for a few minutes.

And this one senshi, out of all the ones out there, whose name she didn't even know... all she really knew about her was that she completely hated her guts... had decided to show up on the Captain's patrol path. So, of course she took the bait without a second thought. Of course she went and threw that punch.

Nothing had ever felt so utterly satisfying -- and at the same time, so utterly painful and enraging. For a brief moment time wound down to a slow-mo crawl as the image of Sailor Nemesis's face deformed by her first, partially blotted out by the fist of the senshi on her own face, was committed to memory. The next instant the Negaverser was trotting backwards, the tips of her boots digging into the pavement.

"Fancy seeing you here on a night like th-huagghhhhh--"

And one point to Nemesis: she didn't stop to listen to the monologue. Uranophane found herself about to get violently intimate with the pavement if she didn't react soon, and in a show of frantic reflexes did a bizarre sideways cartwheel to keep her balance. The momentum allowed her to loop back around and swing her own boot out, its cruel-looking tip headed straight for the senshi's shin.

It was a good thing Uranophane's goggles were on. Otherwise Nemesis probably would have gotten a tasty morsel of smug satisfaction when her eyes widened with surprise at the sensation of arms hooking around her waist and yanking her down. The next instant they both hit the pavement, and hard, the senshi's grip still deathly strong and keeping her from springing back into action.

Needless to say, the several few moments were kind of frustrating, the senshi determined to keep Uranophane pinned and the Negaverser determined to try and get up off the ground again. For a minute or so they remained tangled on the ground -- grappling each other's limbs and yanking at each other's hair, trying to twist each other in wrestling pins they probably only half remembered from seeing it on television a few times -- and to make things worse, the grounded struggle combined with grunts and cries of aggression meant any unlucky passersby probably got completely the wrong idea about what exactly it was they were doing.

"Get. The <********>. OFF!" Uranophane snarled for the second or third time -- and then as her hair was pulled again and her head twisted at an uncomfortably unnatural angle, she suddenly remembered she had those pointy metal shoulderguards. So she abruptly changed tactics, twisting her torso around in an attempt at ramming her foe with one of them.

The Negaverser frothed and pulled back against the strain of Nemesis's grip, a few strands of hair breaking loose and her braid threatening to fall apart entirely from all the abuse it was getting. She had her hands splayed against the ground and her boots digging strongly into the pavement, using all the strength she had to try and slip away like she had been since she was pulled to the ground.

But then the senshi's taunt hit her ears, and almost instantaneously Uranophane went slack -- it was easy to imagine that she might actually be considering giving up --

-- but just as quickly Uranophane wrenched herself around and, with reckless abandon, clamped her teeth over her foe's arm.

This Negaverser had one hell of a jaw. She opted to not let go for several seconds, instead worrying into her arm like some enraged canine, in order to gain herself some more footing. Wonderfully, it worked: Uranophane couldn't see much of what was going on before she finally let go, but could definitely feel the damn senshi's control slipping.

The hand on her chest had stopped pressing so hard, and without another pause she swiped it away and butted her head forward -- both dodging the punch and adding to her own leverage in the process. The tables had turned. Now the Negaverser had a firm grip on Nemesis's shoulder, shoving her down into the pavement.

Uranophane grinned a terrible grin.

Nemesis could see a tiny smear of her own blood on that grin. Ugh.

With a small pop, something had appeared in her other hand. It looked like a pen... it was a pen.

"You're right with that, actually," the Negaverser responded with a curious c**k of her head. "I'm not considering this a victory until your star seed is in my hands..."

She twirled the pen around in her fingers momentarily, until giving it one last flip and gripping it in the familiar 'psychotic stabbing' position.

"...and your corpse is fed to our minions!"

And then the pen came swinging down. Fortunately for Nemesis, she had a target other than her eyes in mind. And, curiously enough, it landed lightly on her forehead, and she could feel Uranophane start to draw several long, jagged lines across her face.

A split second later, there was a stinging pain as the ink proceeded to unzip the the top couple of layers of the senshi's skin.

This was actually the first time since idle tests shortly after her promotion that Uranophane had used her weapon for the properties it had gained, and suffice to say she wasn't disappointed. Every line she drew translated itself into a shallow incision -- the pen wasn't only mightier than the sword, it was one.

Negaverse: totally poetic.

She had it in the bag... or perhaps with just an iota more foresight, she would have. Throughout this entire fight Nemesis hadn't invoked her magic even once, and there was no telling whether she had before she got here. Uranophane should have been on higher alert. She realized her mistake when Nemesis hissed out that familiar set of words, and it was with no shortage of internal rage that the movement of her arms wrenched to a stop as if an against an invisible accumulation of rust. The Negaverser was left with a mixture of shock and rage in her expression. It took too much effort to even wrench her jaw open far enough to voice her outrage with a muffled snarl.