Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lina Knight would find her in the place it hall began.

Upon the hilltop in a dark corner of the abandoned manufacturing district. Destiny City had once been a marvel of modern engineering, boasting block upon block of factories and warehouses. As with so many others, the Great Depression had taken it's toll here. One by one, the factories closed their doors. The warehouses boarded up their windows. All that remained now were decrepit buildings, piles of rubbles, and the ghosts that haunted them.

One of those ghosts stood quietly amid the rubble, the tips of her blackened feet just barely touching the circle of stone that marked Marthozite's grave. It had taken days to dig through the rubble, even with the strength of a hundred men, and Tanzanite had not been back to that place since the evening she had laid him and the others to rest.

Three bodies in four graves; there hadn't been enough of Helicase left to find.

Tanzanite knelt at the edge of Marthozite's grave, ran her fingertips over the small, fragile blades of grass that had begun to grow from the dirt and ash. They were the same color as his eyes, the same shade that had looked at her with that slight, knowing smile as she wrapped her fingers around his starseed and wept for the very last time.

She'd never be human enough to do so again.

“Do be quiet,” the Youma Queen's agitated rasp cut through the cool evening air like a knife. September was coming to a close, and summer was hanging on only by its fingernails. What little warmth was left in the air seemed to vanish as one got close to her. Like the man they reminded her of, those blades of grass would have their lives cut short soon enough, snuffed out by the cold hand of winter.

“You'll wake the dead.”

What are you.

The question was far too familiar to ever phase Tanzanite, even when spoken by the only woman who had never before questioned her humanity. Even as Lina strode directly up to her, an act that for any other would have been considered suicide, Tanzanite did not pull her gaze from those stone rings. These were the ghosts that haunted her, and with Lina Knight standing beside them, they completed the story of her fall from grace.

Even as Lina unleashed her fury upon the Youma Queen, Tanzanite did not stir. The Knight could had been beating her small hands against that pale, cold skin and the reaction would have been much the same. Even when she pushed, it was like trying to move a wall of icy stone.Time, Tanzanite was swiftly learning, was something she had plenty of. When you did not eat or sleep or breathe, what did a few moments of silence really matter? Humanity's incredible ability to adapt and progress had often been contributed to the urgency provided by a limited lifespan.

Tanzanite no longer had one, and so she remained forever trapped in the moments before a death that would never quite stick. An end that would never come to pass. Even when their war was won and the Negaverse could finally return to their lives, there would be no place in that world for General-Queen Tanzanite.

Tanzanite was simply a weapon, from the razor-sharp edges of her claws to the dark power that burned in her softly glowing eyes. She had been hammered into shape on the anvil of the Blood Moon Court, forged in the fires of Metallia's power. She knew nothing else but their war. Thought of nothing else but their fight. Lived for nothing else but to shed the blood of those who might oppose them. When the time came at last when the Negaverse might lay down their weapons, Tanzanite would lay down only her life.

Then, and only then, would she find peace.

“You know very well what I am,” she said at last, though she did not lift her gaze from the graves, “You've always known what I am, but you've never wanted to admit it. So desperate to be the last one standing. The last person to have faith that I am something more than this.”

Her eyes lifted to meet Lina's at last, and they were as dead and lifeless as the bodies six feet beneath their feet.

“Everything Ares was, is gone. Just as everything I was, is gone. It's time you recognize that, Audrey.

It's time for you to grow up, little girl.”

“Kill her?”

Tanzanite's act was a convincing one. Her brow arched perfectly, eyes widening just enough to feign the slightest bit of surprise. Tanzanite was no longer human, not even close, but she played the part so well sometimes. It was easy to understand why Lina clung to her hopes that perhaps there was some redeemable scrap of humanity within that shell of ice cold skin and glossy black scales. However, had she been able to peel back that pallid skin to see the heart beneath, she would find only that it did not beat.

Even the tone of her voice was an act, every subtle shift so carefully placed.

“I didn't kill your mother, Audrey. I did not take her life,” she said, her tone slightly amused. As though it were somehow funny to think back on the moment she had watched as Shelley Collins let go of the railing that had meant to separate her from a thirty-story fall.

“She let go.

I just told her the truth about who you are, and what you've done. Gravity took care of the rest.”