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Since magically ******** Hematite's brain, Tanzanite had been a little bit on edge. It wasn't that she didn't want the boy around, really. She cared about him in the way someone cared about a long lost brother in arms, in the way you cared for a step-brother, even. There was enough emotion invested to take him home after the incident, but apparently not enough to keep her from pumping his frontal lobe full of dark magic in the first place.

Oops.

The damage had been done, though, and there was control to be done.

“Alkaid, just the person I was looking for,” Tanzanite said as she popped into existence in the dark and empty space. Khaldun's blood still covered her hands. Fortunately, Tanzanite usually had someone's blood on her hands, so this probably did not come as a surprise.

Really, it was just hard to surprise people after your arm ate an alien's face off in public.

“I have a problem. Do you know how to get an eighteen year old boy to stop bleeding on my carpet?”

It might have been humorous, were the General not super ******** serious, as suggested by the way worry creased her brow.

Tanzanite's blood was, indeed, not red. It was black and looked a lot like used motor oil. Thankfully, that on her hands was a brilliant shade of red that could not have possibly come from her. Tanzanite was surprisingly casual, considering that Khaldun was back in her apartment bleeding from every single opening in his head. She was certain by the fact that he had enough life in him to stare at her in absolute horror and ask what was wrong with her that he would be just god damned peachy.

“Well,” Tanzanite considered her words for a moment, and shrugged, “From his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. There's blood on his chin, but I'm pretty sure it's just part of the mouth-nose blood delta.”

Tanzanite's sense of humor, while rarely seen, was usually about as grim as the General herself. She held out a hand to the corrupted senshi, ready to teleport the both of them back to her apartment, where Khaldun waited.

In a small pool of his own blood.

All over her ******** carpet.

“I may or may not have obliterated his memory by shoving energy at his brain until it almost exploded. Is there a band-aid or something for that?”

Brain-b-fix'd. For all of your cerebral repair needs.

“Hospital are overrated,” Tanzanite murmured. There had been a time, as a Captain, that she had not realized that her unique new biological composition would not respond kindly to Western medicine. Thankfully they had assumed the x-ray had been broken when it showed that her arm as dense as the lead apron that protected the rest of her. She had slipped out as they waited for another machine, and had not been back since.

It took only a thought to carry then to her apartment.

It was kind of a wreck.

Tanzanite barely lived in the small, two-bedroom place. It had once belonged to Nealite, but she had been evicted when her Queen had relocated her to assist Laurelite in Europe. It had taken only a few threats and a lot of stolen money to get it back. Getting any other apartment would have been significantly easier, but there was a part of Tanzanite that was not yet prepared to let go of one of her last remaining connections to the woman many of the Negaverse knew only as the face in the purple crystal. Nowadays, she spent most of her time in the apartment Audrey had rented under a fake name, leaving her own usually quite tidy and looking rather unlived in.

Now, there were things knocked over here and there. Drops of blood formed a trail from the door to the couch, where Khaldun's unconscious body lay bleeding. Well, he had been bleeding. Now his face just looked like a giant scab.

“All over my ******** couch,” Tanzanite murmured as she prodded the boy's shoe with a finger.

Why would he want magic pumped into his brain?

Now THAT was one hell of a question, and Tanzanite did not know where to begin answering it. How did you explain a history as strange as Khaldun's? How did you explain that a teenage boy lost the only family that he ever had because they failed to properly serve a Queen he had never known or really believed in? Even Tanzanite, who had known him longer than most living – or not frozen in crystal for eternity – Negaversers, knew very little about his past.

“Hematite was one of the first of us,” Tanzanite explained, “back when the only person who even knew about Beryl was General-King Charonite.” Khaldun had certainly always been an oddity. He had never been anything but Charonite's ward and a half-hearted member of the dark kingdom, “When they betrayed the Negaverse, they betrayed him.”

Tanzanite frowned, and for the first time in a long while pity twisted her features, “Khaldun had nothing left, and nobody had any answers for him. He asked me to break whatever...” Tanzanite didn't know how to explain it. Magic? Some kind of spell? “Whatever power was making him forget. I tried and...” Tanzanite waved a hand at the unconscious mess on her couch, “I failed.”

Tanzanite did not power down, lacking the focus right then to gather the Negaverse power up and push back down inside of herself. It was not so simple as just letting go anymore. Instead, she observed quietly, unspoken worry creasing her features.

“I failed because before he passed out, he didn't remember a thing. Not the Negaverse, not me. Nothing. He wouldn't remember Charonite now if he was standing face to face with the man.”

Not that that was ever going to happen.

“You can stay here. I don't use the bedroom,” life had significantly less demands when you existed mostly on starseed energy, “And only Linarite knows where it is. She made me stock with with first aid supplies. It should be safe enough.”