Welcome to Gaia! ::

“Did you know this would happen,” Tanzanite asked in a hushed whisper, her forehead pressed to the smooth surface of the crystal that encased her former best friend and the Negaverse's first commander. They were lost now, forever punished for their crimes against the Dark Kingdom they had returned to life. She could not fault their Queen for her decision; treason, no matter their previous service, could not be tolerated.

Not for anyone.

Or so that was what Tanzanite told herself.

Sharp claws dragged down the shimmering purple stone, but even their supernatural strength could not leave so much as a scratch. How many times had she thought to shatter the thing, only to realize that she could not even had she so desired? Just the way she had looked upon it for the first time had been enough to make Beryl question her loyalty, and she dared not provoke the Dark Queen again. Especially not now that she had felt Metallia's power, and knew that it was that power that supported Beryl's ultimate plan.

“What the ******** were you thinking...”

It was a presence she hadn't felt for what seemed like years.

To the rest of the Negaverse, Hematite may have been just another Captain. To Tanzanite, he was one of very few who knew what she knew. Who had seen what she had seen. He had been as close as she was to the two leaders now trapped in the crystal she leaned against, if not even closer. He had watched, as she had, as they had risen to power. As Beryl had returned and staked her claim over both Nealite's body and the General-King who had devoted his life to the Queen's return.

And then, as suddenly as she had returned to the world of the living, Beryl had cemented her grip on power by removing the only two who had ever posed a threat. The only two people that anyone in the Negaverse would have willingly followed. She had taken them away, and Tanzanite had spent months convincing herself that they were liars and traitors and deserved it all. It was a well-crafted lie, and there was not a single gap in the complicated web of them that Tanzanite had woven for the truth to seep through.

“Captain,” she said slowly, none of her surprise showing in the two-tone voice, “It's been a while.”

Tanzanite could not understand the idea of it never being long enough, as she more or less lived in the dark, cold subspace in which the Negaverse existed. It was a foreign thought. Here, she could forget the rotten world above, the twisted and horrible place in which the poor were victimized and the vain and wealthy controlled the world. A place that the senshi would see enslaved before they ever allowed it to be returned to it's former glory.

Here, close to the source of their power, she felt safe.

“And that has to do with me... how?” She asked, her tone surprisingly curious, “I'm afraid I'm not a brain surgeon. At least not unless you're looking for a lobotomy.”

That she could have done.

She's dead.

Spoken by anyone else, the words would have pulled from her a cold stare and an immediate departure. From Hematite – from Khaldun – they pulled a sympathetic stare. It was a brief one; she couldn't pity them. She couldn't mourn them. They had chosen their fate. They deserved it.

They were traitors.

They were traitors.

They were traitors.

It was what she had been telling herself for months, the impenetrable safety blanket she had woven around her mind. It was only the magic of denial that had kept Tanzanite alive through the transition of power. Her lies and her talent for bottling up her emotion had allowed her to shift her loyalty from the pair in the crystal to the woman who had trapped them there.

Traitors. Liars. Fools.

Her coat of cold apathy snapped back into place, and Tanzanite listened without changing her grim expression as Hematite went on. He was furious, pouring out his heart in a way that almost made the General uncomfortable. Some emotions felt foreign to her, but the pain that poured out of the Captain were not. It was the same pain she had been living with since the day Nealite had stopped answering her calls. Since the day Beryl showed a shocked Captain Tanzanite the grim fate the couple had suffered.

She knew that pain, but she did not know how to take it away. However, she did know what it took to corrupt a senshi. While she could only do it on a significantly smaller scale, she knew how it worked from when she had Charonite's assistance in corrupting Vivianite.

As he crossed the gap between then, she straightened. She saw the fury in his eyes. The pain and the suffering and the anger, all pouring out of him and into a foolish plan that could have easily killed him. She watched with curiosity only until the threat came out. With incredible speed the black hand shot out between them, and wrapped five dark claws around his head.

“Well then, Captain,” she said, the claws squeezing his skull with enough of a grip to hold his body still through the anticipated seizing, “This will either kill you.. or it will give you something worth living four. Either way, it's going to hurt.”

Tanzanite opened up the channel between herself and the Negaverse, releasing the power inside of her as she had once done into Vivianite's starseed, and Bismuthite's after. She called it up from somewhere in the darkest corners of her mind, and pushed it into Hematite. Into the net of dark power woven around his mind. The magic crackled around her hand, snapping in the air as the dark energy surged in against the defensive spell.

It would hurt.

Oh, how it would hurt.

Tanzanite was a bull running rampant in the china shop of Hematite's mind. She hadn't the faintest idea what she was doing, but when someone came to you and gave you the ultimatum of either killing them or spending some time trying to play magic tricks in their brain... well. The choice was obvious.

For a brief moment, she thought she might be making some headway. Her hand gripped Hematite's skull like a vice, knowing that if she withdrew now he might not survive the encounter. Dark magic was a painful and reckless thing, as any Negaverse agent who had ever been promoted knew well. Her hopes were brief, and they were crushed entirely as she felt the defensive spell snap back into place.

The magical net that bound Hematite's memory was burnt and broken in places, but it was still there. His fingers were digging into her arm, bleeding and cut from the scales that would not give way. She held him in place even as the screaming stopped, as the clawing and thrashing gave way to a frustrating silence.

She had failed.. but had she also killed Khaldun in the process?

If so, Charonite was going to-

Tanzanite stopped.

Charonite was gone. Nealite was gone. They weren't going to do a god damned thing to her.

Beryl was another story. Would she even care?

“Hematite,” she said tentatively, her fingers unwrapping from around his head one by one, “Khaldun?"

“Well, let's see,” Tanzanite began, leaning back all too casually against the crystal pillar. She rattled off points one by one, counting them off on her blackened fingertips.

“I'm an unmedicated homicidal sociopath, or so I am told.

I'm pretty sure my original arm was probably eaten by dogs in the park.

This,” she held out the blackened appendage, “Is actually a sentient life form who spent the better part of six months trying to take over my body. Thank goodness I actually can't tell where it ends and I begin now.

Thankfully I then spent three months more or less killing children until I beat a ten year old into the pavement, killed a Guardian Cat, and came back to have the s**t beaten out of me by the one person left who even knows what we started out fighting for.

I never got a pony.

My father probably never hugged me enough.

I never won the spelling bee.

Nobody ever got me a Tickle Me Elmo, even though it was the only present I asked for.

Aaaand I'm hellbent on taking back the Planet Earth from a group of invaders from outer space, who both outnumber and outpower us in a seemingly constant uphill battle. Oh, let me not forget to mention that most of these invaders are fifteen ******** years old.

Oh! And when I was promoted to General I regained my sanity and lost a good deal of my capacity for empathy, so now I live in an eternal Hell full of people who insist on crying to me to fix their ******** problems.”

She smiled, far too sweetly for the expression to be sincere, and leaned in.

“So what's wrong with you?”

Hematite just stared, bleeding out of every possible place that a human could bleed from, it seemed. It gushed out of his nose and ears, and several broken capillaries had left his eyes swimming in bloody red.

“I- I don't know.” He stammered the reply, and never had the General felt so suddenly ashamed of her sarcasm. He was lost, as she had once been. No, more than she had ever been. While their hacksaw surgery had not restored her old friend's memories, it had done him one better by erasing them entirely.

“Come on, then,” she sighed, and rested her hand upon his shoulder, “I'm Tanzanite, and I have a long, long story to share with you." It took only a thought before the two vanished from the dark chamber and back into Tanzanite's apartment.