|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 7:14 pm
High above Earth's ruined city, Tanzanite and Wolframite suddenly reappeared. They stood on a floating piece of shattered rock, though it seemed the General-Queen had little intention of keeping Wolframite on his feet for very long. She gave one hard shove with the blackened arm, as her human side finally began to cave beneath the pressure of the youma's growing outrage.
Disrespect was one of Tanzanite's buttons. Of course, Tanzanite had a lot of buttons.
“Let me make sure I have this absolutely correct,” that two-tone voice all but hissed the words, the youma's ethereal rasp more dominant than Tanzanite's soft, human voice. Darkness crept in from the corners of her eyes, spreading until that narrowed gaze held two circles of silver floating in a sea of black.
“I'm aware that I lack a certain... finesse when it comes to dealing with people, so I would like to make sure I have this entirely right. Did you just yell <******** you at me in a place I declared sacred to me ten ******** minutes ago in front of my soldiers, and then storm off in a temper tantrum?” Tanzanite's voice grew increasingly angry as she spoke, her wings flared to their maximum width. She took a step towards him, the struggle to keep her composure visible in the way her black hand trembled.
“Is that what just happened, Captain?”
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 7:37 pm
He hadn’t expected to be followed. It had been a luxury to think that he would just storm off and get the last word. As much as he liked to think he knew Tanzanite, he didn’t know he that well. Her heels were following him, and the steady clack rushing up behind him made him only want to storm off harder. Why was she bugging him? She was the one that had started it! Bringing them here with everyone present and then talking to him like that. He thought they were friends, after all they’d been through, and now she was treating him like a joke too!
Before he could even turn around to ask her, in what probably would have been a voice laced with attitude, what she wanted, he felt her claws grip his high collar and lift him off the ground. It was seconds before he was teleported away, and in that time, he thought of another swear word. s**t.
When they reappeared, they were not back to the comfort of the other part of the Negaverse. They weren’t even back in Lina’s apartment. Instead, Wolframite was dropped down on a very small chunk VERY high up off the ground. If he was afraid of horror movies and zombie creatures, heights was a close second on his list and he felt that this was turning into a rather hellish nightmare – but he knew what those were like and this didn’t come close. Still, turning to see Tanzanite made him wonder.
She had seen her pissed before, but never had it been directed at him. IT was not a place he liked. He had, in his entire record as a Negaverser, upset any of his leaders. Even Charnoite and Nealite had been rather kind to him, which probably would have made a few, older Negas go ‘No way!” He even was nothing but respectful to his Queen, and had to be told not to salute when he first met Linarite and was in Team Enterprise. This was his first encounter with an angry superior officer, and it was startling.
When she stepped closer, he stepped back, but found his heels quickly touching the edge of his rather small island. The vertigo was enough to have him drop right down to his knees, but he turned back to lock eyes at the General Queen.
Normally he would be sputtering apologizes, but he felt right. She had insulted him! He should be the angry one here. She had no right to do that to him. NONE!
He mustered up his wavering courage in a weak attempt at defiance, and stood as firm as he could despite his legs wanting to give way. Tanzanite was terrifying and memories of her eating the aliens from the doom tree with her arm and then ripping out the heart of a Negaverse lieutenant during Elysion came racing back – and that was before the power-up. Imagine what she could do with his vital organs now? Better yet, let’s not.
“Yes, I said it. ******** You, General Queen.” He confirmed, putting as much emphasis on her title as he could. If she wanted to pull rank, then he’d drop their familiarity and just strip them of all friendship and connection. It’s not like he hadn't been there for her through bad times. Yeah. Let’s forget that. She was the General Queen after all and he was just some lowly captain that didn’t amount to anything. “…and you talked to me in front of all the other officers – people I work with and work under and… “ He thought of Bismuthite. “….like I was going to whore it up here. Like that’s what I do without even thinking! Is that what you think? That the second I was with him that I’d just be doing….THAT….all the time?” He hated her. He wished he could push her off the little island, but the wings said that would be pointless. Instead, he balled his hands into fists, or as best as he could with one being bandaged, and continued to keep his glare under the crushing pressure of her intimating image and overpowering aura.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 10:39 pm
Tanzanite listened quietly, but she could not stop the black skin from crawling up her legs or the darkness from creeping out like veins from the corners of her eyes. It was... insulting. Had he not been the one talking to her of humanity? Had Ladon not always been the one trying to tell her that she was human, just like the rest of them? That she needed to stop fighting and just... be human? And now, because of a joke – or her failed attempts at one – he had suddenly stripped away what small glimmer of friendship she had left?
“How is it that I'm the one who can't be human for an hour without my skin sloughing off, and you're the one who can't take a joke?”
Annoyance was thick in her voice, but beneath it there was... sadness? Perhaps, but if so she was trying to hide it, and doing a decent job of it.
“I could have looked any any of them. I could have looked at Hematite or Alkaid. I could have looked at Proustite, and not one would be so childish as to respond with such... such..”
Disrespect? Stupidity? Temper tantrum? Marthozite supplied a variety of endings, each with more excitement than the last.
“Shut UP,” she roared, that monstrous voice echoing like thunder as she snapped at the voice in her head, and Marthozite's voice faded with a quiet laughter. The General-King would not be silent for long, and so Tanzanite used her precious moment of silence to stare balefully down at the young Captain. There was a hatred that stirred in her that was not her own, and the claws of her wings curled tightly in her own long, tangled hair.
“Have I not treated you consistently with respect? Have I not made every effort to ensure your safety? What do you think I came back for?” Her voice was a low hiss, all the anger and sadness of those past few months streaming out of her in a rare display of emotion. It was strange for the often stoic General-Queen to speak so openly, especially with a Captain. But this, despite his belief, was not just any Captain. This was Wolframite, and he had suffered in such a way that the rest of them could not understand. Of all people, she had expected him to understand why she might not quite understand when her jokes were terribly out of place.
She expected him to understand why she might not realize what she had done.
“Do you know what it's like to be ripped apart and pieced back together, Wolframite? Did you think my arm justmagically changed sides, or can you not put two and two together and get god damned four?”
Those silver eyes glowed softly, and the General-Queen's body all but shook with rage. The youma below snapped and snarled, and in the distance, the angry howl of a more powerful creature echoed her rage. It was as though the city was in sync with her.
Tanzanite lifted a hand, and with a sickening squelch, those black claws sliced easily through the tissues and bone of her own chest. She did not flinch, as though she was almost incapable of feeling the pain that she should have been experiencing. The black blood ran in small rivulets down her chest, and no sooner had her hand pulled out than the pale skin was knitting itself closed once more.
There, in her palm, was her own starseed. Unlike others, it did not glow. It did not even pulse. There was no fluttering lifeforce there to crush. It did not look like a corrupted senshi's starseed, black and charred, but more like.. nothing at all. It was as though there were a small singularity, a black hole that sucked in the light around it, surrounding itself with a halo of nothingness. She held it there in her palm, and held it out as though to prove some point.
“I'm not human, Wolframite,” she laid the sad truth out in a flat tone of voice, “I don't eat. I don't sleep. However much you might wish it so, I'm not, so don't get upset when I fail to act like one. I don't need you to remind me of it while disrespecting me in front of the only family I have left. Those people – and you – are the only thing I have left, and that little hissyfit did far more damage to their opinion of you than my comment ever could.”
Tanzanite closed her fist, and the mouth in her palm swallowed the starseed back into her body. If Tanzanite was showing her strange form of love, it was most certainly of the tough variety.
“So what the hell is your excuse?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 11:07 pm
He hadn’t expected her to react in such a way. Anger, yes. Maybe he even expected to get hit. Thrown off the little island to smash into the crystal landscape below, and maybe that’s exactly what he wanted. For someone to beat the s**t out of him. Of course if he had to pick the best and worst candidate to do so, he had. Tanzanite looked all but ready to trot back to the group and play hacky-sack with her new starseed prize and leave Wolframite as some distant fertilizer on this tiny hunk of rock. Something the vultures or whatever those youma above were could nibble on from time to time if they were bored and needed a plaything.
But she did nothing of the sort, and just as he was prepared to huff and continue on his little episode with the justification that he very much deserved to do just that, she started to dig into her chest. The act alone sparked him out of his little rebellion and switched him back to panic over Tanzanite’s well-being.
“Wait! DON’T…!” Had she lost it?! For a moment, he really thought she was trying to kill herself, just as he was in challenging Tanzanite this way. The blood was more than upsetting to him, having only just recovered from witnessing some rather brutal butchering, and he all but moved up to her, arms raised to touch her elbow and pull her arm away. It was this arm that kept him from doing so. Every part of the youma body seemed to react violently just by him being close, and his hands hovered in uncertainly.
Looking up, his panicked eyes caught that she wasn’t even bothered, and soon produced, in her black-stained hand, dripping the fowl-looking blood of hers, a starseed or what should be one. Of all the starseeds he had seen, and he seen a lot more than the newer generation who only collected orbs now, her starseed was peculiar. Strange. Unsettling. It was like looking at a cutout of space itself in the shape of a diamond, and he was nothing but confused at seeing it. The fact she could HOLD it out to him and still be alive was enough to floor him, but to hold it out and show that it wasn’t …normal, further pushed him to look at her, completely unsure of what she was trying to tell him.
She, of course, was one step ahead and filled in the blanks. He had heard she wasn’t human, and outright denied it. Crazy talk from a depressed woman who felt bad about her youma appearance to the point of questioning her humanity. This time however, he felt need to pause and consider.
And all he could think was….where was Aree? Where was the human girl he took care of in Lina’s apartment if the human side of her was gone? How could Tanzanite be here and talk like her and not be her?
The General Queen didn’t give him a chance to dive into these questions with her and continued to progress to the point. He misunderstood and ruined his own reputation more than she had, and while he thought it had been the other way around, now he was the person who made himself look like an a**. It wasn’t a thought he liked to find out, and he could only think what everyone was saying about him now.
At least they’ll finally be talking about you.
It wasn’t the type of gossip he wanted though, and he looked down, ashamed. His sudden mood swing was all but stomped out now, and he was back to looking meek and out of place. “I’m sorry…” Maybe he was too human.
“….I thought you were making a joke of me.” Of course, looking at it, he should have known better. When had Tanzanite made fun of him in any way but in a friendly manner?
“What you said - It just hurt…” He wasn’t one to bring anything personal to others. Born and raised to keep matters of his own life private, it was hard to really say anything to others other than business – or what the Negaverse saw as business. However, after someone just showed their starseed to you by ripping it out of their chest, personal was pretty much on the table.
“…….because we just broke up.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
