|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 8:32 pm
The fury had gone, but there was little respite from the hollow feeling it had left in its wake.
After the catastrophe of Operation Rota Sailor Vulcan had done almost everything in her (unfortunately limited) power to slake the guilt that plagued her at every turn. There was so much regret.
So much feeling.
Not enough pain.
After the meeting-- the meeting where Vulcan had intentionally baited Sailor Nemesis, and been denied, the meeting where Sailor Ares had abandoned them, the Senshi of Volcanoes had withdrawn. She was still a member of the Blood Moon Court if only because it had never been in her to quit anything.
She was late for meetings, and simply didn't attend any training sessions.
She patrolled deliberately on her own, instead of subjecting herself to the company of any of her comrades. That was a torture she would have deserved, but not one that even she could bear.
Vulcan knew that many of the others were like her. She knew, because it had come up in the meeting.
The recent disaster had left its mark on everyone.
They just dealt with it in different ways.
For the first time in her life, to Vanessa's immense disgrace, she was running away from something; fleeing from regret in search of…
…what?
Vulcan didn't know. She couldn't put a name to the thing that she needed, but it was there; gnawing like a rat on something that she wished would just curl up and die.
It was an intangible thing. She could not beat it into submission, though she had tried.
Oh how she'd tried!
So Vanessa ran, and tried to pretend that it didn't exist at all, because she didn't know what else to do.
It was on one warm evening in the summer, on her way to Kam's apartment after a difficult and satisfying day at work, that Sailor Vulcan followed the curious pull of an energy darker than her own. She'd been hoping to run into Gehenna. And, though she knew that this power could not possibly belong to her knight, Vanessa went in search of it anyways.
The sun was setting in the distance. The light of its dying rays painted the sky in a startling array of colour, so that all of the buildings and the trees seemed almost aglow with a faintly golden sheen.
Curious, humming with the anticipation of a promising fight, Sailor Vulcan surveyed an empty street from the roof of a grocery store. There was no sign of the energy source. But, if she were not mistaken, it was strongest here.
Her heart pounded.
It was stronger than she'd ever imagined. A power difficult to comprehend.
Sailor Vulcan hesitated, and almost turned back.
And then she shook her head, hands clenching into fists, and leapt from her perch. Her landing was soft, bare feet silent where they hit the asphalt.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 12:23 am
So much feeling.
Not enough pain.
These were not concepts that Tanzanite could understand, even as she watched the sun set over Destiny City. Feeling was a luxury for the Youma Queen, and it was one she found more fleeting, harder to grasp day by day. So many people had told her for so long that it would always be there. That some part of her would always be human. But as Tanzanite looked down at the silent, sleeping bodies at her feet, she could not imagine that it was so.
They lay around her like dominoes, dozens of unconscious people that had fallen together, drained of their energy. They would recover, in time, but their energy danced over Tanzanite's skin like cracks of light, her eyes a silver glow within a blackened pit.
Whatever flickering humanity remained in the youma's body was dying slowly, with nothing but pain and anger to stoke the embers of her emotion. No, feeling was not a problem with which Tanzanite could sympathize.
Her winged form was silhouetted against the brilliant sky, all feathers and spines and tangled hair. She was still as a statue, unnaturally so, save when the wind caught her hair and made her feathers rustle softly. By the time Vulcan was able to see her, Tanzanite could have felt the senshi coming. She could feel every energy signature in that city. Every starseed sang to her as though it resonated with her hunger, her consuming need to take life to support her own. To support the power that had brought her back again from beyond the brink of death.
It had been a long time since she'd felt one so close, though. Vulcan's heartbeat called to her like a soft song, her sensitive ears and twisted thoughts turning every beat into a soft, whispered kill, kill, kill that echoed in her mind.
“Senshi,” two voices spoke in unison, the soft human tone sounding more amused than the ethereal rasp that followed.
“Have you come seeking death, child?” Tanzanite spoke as though she were not merely a few years older than the girl. As she turned to face Vulcan, her wings blocking out the sun and casting their jagged shadow across the bodies as her feet. Aree Cadence would have been twenty-two that year, but this woman was not Aree Cadence. This was not a woman at all.
The Black Phoenix stared balefully through its borrowed eyes, and the ancient creature twisted Tanzanite's lips in a wicked smile.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 3:08 pm
thump thump thump
Oh, that power.
run run run
Vulcan's heart beat such a violent tattoo against her chest that it all but hurt to breathe. It warned her away. It pleaded with her to err on the side of caution.
But.
There was something familiar about that energy source. Something that could not be overlooked, or mistaken for anything else. Vulcan was compelled forwards by an instinct much more than she was, and could not have turned back if she'd wanted to. She had an inkling, before she even turned the corner, of what she'd find on the road.
Bodies, weakened almost to the point of death so that Vanessa could not tell whether or not they lived, strewn around the magnificent form of an almost woman. Sailor Vulcan stilled at once, gold eyes flickering over the horror of the scene in front of her, and exhaled. Her breath rattled.
Tanzanite's question caught her off guard.
Vulcan remembered the Black Phoenix from when she'd emerged on the battle field, the night everything the Blood Moon Court had worked so hard for came crumbling down. Vulcan knew what it was that faced her now.
She had not come seeking death. Death had not come looking for her.
They'd simply run into each other.
Sailor Vulcan, who'd recognized the futility of fighting or trying to flee, knelt before the General-Queen. She bowed her head, turned her eyes to the ground, and struggled to keep her shoulders from trembling. Never in her life had Vanessa known such exquisite terror. Never had she been so aware.
This wasn't about submission, or surrender.
It was about respect.
And a silent plea for forgiveness.
thumpthumpthumpthumpthump
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 3:53 pm
Some things could not be forgiven, and even Tanzanite's shattered memory could not forget the horrors of what the Blood Moon Court had done. She had forgotten her mothers smile and her sisters voice. She could not remember in which graveyard Bethany Cadence's body had been laid to rest, or why she had cared so much when she'd found those chalk outlines on the charred floor of her childhood home. She could not recall the address of that place, or whether the door had been glass or screen.
But she could remember the pain.
She could remember with perfectly clarity the way Ares' knife had felt in her neck, the sear of the brand as it scorched her mouth. She could remember the way Marthozite's hand felt, slick with his own blood, when it relaxed in hers.
The way the light left his eyes, and how his soul burned her body as she consumed his starseed.
She could remember Dioptase's eyes, wide and pleading, while she could do nothing to save her life.
Primase.
Helicase.
Linarite.
No, Tanzanite could not forgive, and Black Phoenix could never forget.
Her heels clicked across the pavement with steady, sure steps. There was nothing in the approaching darkness for Tanzanite to fear. Even as summer thunder rolled overhead, the darkening clouds flashing with heat lightning, she seemed utterly unphased. Nothing went bump in Tanzanite's night, for what did Destiny City have to offer that could be more brutal, more horrifying than what Ares had overseen?
What Vulcan had, in her own small way, been a part of.
She circled the girl, every step carrying with it the soft rustle of feathers and chime of chains. Like a predator circling overhead, her blackened eyes staring down.
“I remember you,” she said at last, and the words burned with the power she'd stolen from that small sea of bodies. Those black claws reached down to run through Vulcan's hair with a surprisingly gentle touch. A regular senshi might as well have been a porcelain doll. So fragile and... breakable. The urge to crush Vulcan's skull in her clawed fist came and went like the tide, but Tanzanite held tight to her self control. This girl was an opportunity, and she could do far more damage to the senshi alive than dead.
“Can you answer my questions, then? Can you solve the riddles, little senshi?” Her words were a hiss, the nonsensical ramblings of a woman too far gone, “Can you tell me why I need to kill them.”
She hunched over, and her scaled face hovered upside down in front of Vulcan's. Her head tilted sideways at an unnatural angle, “Why I feel the need to kill you?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 5:16 pm
Memory was a funny thing.
Vanessa couldn't remember what she'd had for breakfast that morning. But she would never forget the way it had felt, as a lowly cadet lost in the dark sea of Ares's ambition, patrolling the empty corridors of the warehouse where they'd kept Tanzanite and Wolframite and Uranophane and so many others.
Too many others.
Vulcan hadn't been required to deliver any blows, or cut off any fingers, but she'd felt the suffering of their victims as surely as it had been her own. She remembered it all. Every tortured scream. Every helpless gasp.
Every single time she'd turned her back on them.
She didn't deserve to be whole, when her failure to take action had caused so much suffering.
There was no guarantee, if she'd tried, that it would have made any difference. Probably, it wouldn't have.
But, that wasn't the point.
Vulcan did not need to look up to know that the General-Queen paced around her. If the gentle sounds of those feathers and those chains weren't enough to give it away, the dark promise on Tanzanite's voice certainly was. There it was at her head. By her shoulder. And then-- behind her. It sent a tremor of horror rocketing up and down the senshi's spine and, when Tanzanite's claws found her hair, Vanessa had to remind herself to breathe.
"I was… never any good at riddles," the senshi's voice was a frightened sob, though no tears streaked down her dark cheeks. She bit her lip, met Tanzanite's deathly silver eyes with her golden ones, and wondered if she was about to die.
The senshi was restless where she knelt, because she knew.
This was judgement day.
Whether she lived or died, Vulcan's self-imposed suffering was going to end. At least, she hoped it would. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then resigned herself to the inevitable.
Her heart pounded like the thunder that rumbled across the sky.
There was something awfully exciting, about being so weak. And so very, very vulnerable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2011 2:10 am
”Let me tell you, she hissed, her human arm wrapping around the girls shoulders from behind, blackened fingers gripping her throat. There was no struggling to be done against Tanzanite's hold. The grip was vicelike, and yet she did not crush Vulcan's windpipe as the voice in her head softly urged. She pushed down those dark desires, swallowed her own thirst for revenge, and pulled the girl in close. Her lips were ice cold against the senshi's ear, for Tanzanite's blood no longer ran warm.
All because of them.
Everything lost, because of them.
“They took my hands first,” she murmured, as that black arm draped over the young woman's shoulder, claws finding their place against the surface of her skin. Tanzanite could feel Vulcan's heartbeat beneath her fingertips, and the fragile fluttering of her starseed. It sang to her with the energy she now required to survive, promising the momentary peace that she felt every time she took one of their lives. She ignored its calling, and the sharp point of her index finger sank half an inch into the tanned flesh.
“Pulled off my nails and broke my fingers. I felt the rats eat away at them for days before the nerve endings were gone.”
The claw began to move, a slow and painful drag as it pulled up in an arc. It sliced through the flesh easily, but Tanzanite was in no hurry. She held Vulcan firmly in place, and spoke as though the things she had to say were being read from a dictionary.
“Then my legs. Gunn burnt them to the bone. I listened as she laughed over my own screams.”
The incision was surgical in its precision, as though she had carved that same mark over and over again. The double curves of that crescent moon. The symbol she saw in her waking nightmares.
“Then my eyes, when the infections ran rampant and the fever would not break. Nemesis rotted my body from the inside out, took apart my skull and made me feel my own death over. And over. And over.”
With every word, her temper grew. With every syllable, that cold mask was melted by the burning intensity in her words. There was an anger there that should have burned her soul alive. Surely it would have, if Tanzanite had a soul left to scorch. The crescent cut came to a close, and she twisted her wrist sharply to dig the claw beneath the flesh, ripping it away to expose the raw muscle beneath.
“They took something from me, and no matter how many of them I kill. No matter how many bodies I drop into the sea, I cannot get it back. And if I can't feel... pain. Regret. If I cannot feel sorrow?”
There was a softening to Tanzanite's furious features, the knot in her brow slowly coming undone as she stared at the crescent-shaped piece of skin in her palm.
“I will make you do it for me.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 9:00 pm
The surface of the pavement was harsh under her knees. Tiny stones cut into her skin. It went against Vulcan's most instinctive nature to just sit there, while Tanzanite coiled those fingers around her throat. The pressure made the senshi gasp. She started underneath that deathly touch, heart beating so fast Vulcan thought it might erupt from her chest, and could not bite back a horrified sob when the General-Queen pulled her back.
Provoked by the presence of Tanzanite's breath at her ear, and those claws against her skin, Vulcan trembled. Vulcan trembled and quarrelled within herself-- against the terror that pooled in the depths of her soul, and pleaded with her to do something. Anything. It didn't matter what, so long as it stopped the creature that murmured over her shoulder.
But Vulcan knew that Tanzanite could not be stopped, and there was another, darker part of the sailor scout that sincerely hoped she would continue.
This was what she deserved; what she had spent so much time looking for.
Pain blossomed out from her chest, where Tanzanite pierced her skin. Vulcan inhaled sharply and quit shaking. Everything about her was suddenly rigid. Not with defiance, but acceptance. She grit her teeth, and balled her hands into fists at her side to keep from striking out. Her own fingernails bit into the softness of her palms.
Resigned to the inevitability of this and eager about its realization, Vulcan held her breath and submitted to the vinditive steel of Tanzanite's will. She tried to imagine what it must have been like for the creature; alone, in that dark room, with Ares, and Gunn, and Nemesis.
And then that claw moved.
Vulcan cried out, and the walls of her imaginary strength started to crack. She tried to lurch, to squirm and to writhe. But Tanzanite's hold was unforgiving. There was no room for her to move.
Helpless, and glad of it, Vulcan let herself be cut.
Gunn had laughed while Tanzanite screamed. That was wrong.
Vulcan whimpered. Tears streaked down cheeks that were flushed with the exertion of sitting still, at the mercy of such exquisite vengeance. Vulcan was not aware of them. She could not feel much past the sensation of having a piece of skin ripped from her chest. It tore from her lips a mangled scream.
Nemesis should have resisted. What information could possibly be worth such suffering? Such cruelty?
She hoped with a sudden, violent rage that surged like bile through her system that Ares had been denied what she'd hunted for.
"I feel pain," Vulcan sobbed, lifeblood staining the front of her fuku a beautiful crimson, "I feel regret."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
