Welcome to Gaia! ::

((Note: This RP is a GM response to a sign-up plot Tig ran a while back. There were no official sign ups for this event. It's more like the end of a quest chain, the previous part of which can be found here. There will be more fo these events in the future, however! So don't worry if you didn't end up in this one. This is just a test drive.))


Suddenly, it was quiet.

One by one, the former Negaverse officers were dragged across the threshold and into the torrent of light beyond. Hematite would hear their screams, but there was nothing he could do for them. Nor they for him, as the doors closed on the gruesome sight of Aree and Zinkenite standing face to face with their brave but foolish leader. His expression remained twisted in pain even as the chaos behind the door drowned out his screaming. The roar of power was deafening, its current so violent that it swept them up like a maelstrom and carried them deeper into the void. Without their power, they could do nothing. They were little more than human debris, flotsam and jetsam swept up in Metallia's seemingly infinite power.

Like so many lives before them.

There was no throne beyond that door, nor any woman to sit upon it. The moment they passed the threshold, the door was gone. The light grew brighter and brighter, until everything briefly vanished in a blinding flash. It withdrew just as quickly, pulling away in what looked like a reverse hyperdrive special effect sequence. The light retreated to the faint pinpricks of stars, and left only darkness between. An endless sea of stars that stretched in every direction.

They were weightless. Shapeless. They had no body to speak of, nor a voice with which to respond to Metallia as the Milky Wave came rolling lazily into view.

This is what they want, the senshi you fear so much.

Metallia's voice was the calm in the center of the storm. It filled even the vast expanse before them, like a net cast out to blanket the cosmos so that she might pull it in and call it all her own.

Dead worlds. Chunks of rock and gas. When the final moments came, the Moon Queen showed no discretion. In her fury, she spared not a single human life. Only the senshi were given pardon, sent forward to be reborn. Of course... you know that.

Don't you?

Metallia was surprisingly chatty for an ageless demigod who had, only moments before, brutally punished her loyal servant for the crimes of her subordinates. Her tone was a conversational one, calm and amused as they drifted through the cosmos. Metallia was not hateful as Beryl was, nor did she have Tanzanite's somewhat frightening presence. Her voice was soft but strong, like a steel bar wrapped in silk.

You know how the people of Earth stood united against the stars and the moon. How they defied the Universe itself, and paid dearly for their audacity.

Her laugh rolled like soft thunder throughout the Milky Way as they drifted into the spiral. It faded out in a soft hum as Pluto's icy husk slipped past. The other planets followed, recognizable spheres of gas and rock that were easily remembered from the pages of their sixth-grade science books. A thousand years was nothing to them, and a human lifetime was little more than a blink of an eye. It made sense, then, that a human life would matter so little to the senshi born of those worlds. What was the hundred years that belonged to a mortal soul when you could just be reborn over and over again as long as their planets and stars remained intact? Like aliens in a summer blockbuster, human life had been deemed insignificant by comparison, their home world useful to the senshi only for resources to rebuild their vast and tyrannical empire.

Earth spun into view as though summoned, and they slowly descended through the thick and hazy atmosphere. From a distance, it seemed much like the world they knew. The continents had not been much different back then, their shapes recognizable. Only when they began to descend upon Europe would they begin to notice any difference at all. The cities they knew were gone, the landscape largely unscarred by human civilization. Hills of green and deserts of gold rolled past, undisturbed by the strings of roads that criss-crossed modern day France.

It was there that they made their final descent into a lush expanse of forest land, as the white walls of Earth's great capital rose into view. They were followed by the smooth faces and gold-trimmed domes of what must have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of buildings. The closer they got, the more they were able to understand just how big the city was. By the time they were able to make out the ant-sized figures of citizens rushing through the streets below, the edges were already out of sight.

It was a sea of stone and mortar, Earth's panicked residents drifting through like so many plankton. In the center, Endymion's palace rose like a monolith, the Great Tower at its heart. A beam of brilliant white light shot suddenly from that highest peak, a pulse that was swiftly followed by nine more. Each brought the distinct aura of a blast of senshi energy. The peculiar magic that felt just as foreign to them now as it did in their own time.

They swept in on the city, to see that those tiny figures were not drifting at all. They were running, sprinting from the heart of the palace. Those who did not keep their footing were trampled beneath those who did. Here and there, the few senshi who survived Beryl's first attack wielded their power against those humans who dared fight back. Only a few of those humans bore the uniforms and energy signatures that marked them as something other than cannon fodder.

Most never stood a chance.

You doubt my judgment? You doubt my methods? Petulant children.

They found themselves quite suddenly standing in the middle of a battle the likes of which they had never seen. They stood with weapons in hand, their eyes searching out the senshi that would dare attack their home. The walls were too high to see which way might lead to the palace, but the Great Tower rose like a northern star to guide them home.

The pulses began again, each a little longer. This time, though, there were only nine.

Let us see if you fare any better.

Metallia had brought them back to the very moment it had all began. To the day when Beryl made her final stand.

And all of Earth stood with her.

"Like hell." Sinjarite stood on the threshold of battle, staff firm in her fingers. There was the most minor tremble in those fingers as they closed about the slim golden rod of it, the blood-garnets set into the whole thing dark and dormant while drained of their reserves. Everything about her flowed away from that brilliant gold in varying shades of nebulous darkness: eyes, hair, garments edged in the palest of golds, marking her as a manipulator of energy more than a true warrior.

Aurobos, the name given to that deadly face on her staff, remained in repose even as the base of his being thudded against the ground in her indignant fury. It really had only been a matter of time before the battle which had begun simply so that the Earth could keep themselves aloof from that magical, matriarchal tyranny would result in this...this desperate attack by a group of cocky fools. Sinjarite refused to consider that it could be, would be anything else.

"Like hell!" It was a curt, defiant challenge that demanded response.

Arcanite flexed his fingers around the handhold of his shield as he leveled a hard, assessing, look at what lay before he and those he fought alongside. Comrades that he would fight for almost as passionately as he would Earth itself. They were unable to access the Great Tower by transporting. This was as far as they could go using that medium.

'Which just means we'll have to force our way through the old fashion way - let me at them!' the face on the shield Arcanite carried spoke with a vigor and thirst for battle.

"You always know just what I'm thinking, don't you?" Arcanite muttered to the loudmouth shield in his grip.

'Yes, now let's get our selves to that tower!'

Arcanite's shield was always the eager one, urging it's wielder to jump in to battle. Arcanite, however, had always been the cool, calm, and collected one, those amber ever so hard to read.

"Then you know we can't chance such recklessness."

The shield grumbled something unintelligible.

Arcanite, with steady breathing as to level his rage, looked over the rush of people to assess just how many, and which, senshi they were to be dealing with. Where sight failed the sickening feeling of their power signatures gave him some minute idea.

It didn't matter how many there were. They would not take Earth. Never. Each shot of light added to his rage, passion, and determination. It also instilled fear of what would come if they were to fall...

We will not fail. This planet will not fall in to their hands. Arcanite assured himself, jerking his head to toss pale blond hair out of his face.

He then rose his voice to reach his comrades;
"We have fought and overcome each obstacle that has been placed before us. This shall be no different. The Senshi will fall. Or our souls be damned."

With those words, he readied himself for the battle ahead.

'Your speeches suck.'

Arcanite made no reply to the shield's deadpan barb.

"Always the bleeding heart," drawled Hazenite, the words trailing like a scent after Aleksite's observations. He was tall, dark, elegant and ornate, every bit like the bow he carried, with deep bronze hair kept meticulously away from steel-colored eyes. He was often (and as rumor would have it, deliberately) at odds with the black-haired Shittenou standing nearby, and it was clear to see why. "It's the nature of war. Lives are lost in war. Get over it. We have bigger things to worry about."

Like making sure their forces were taking this seriously and doing their part to hold the Dark Kingdom's ground. And that damnable shield. Endymion had proved himself a total fool, but that did not erase the strategic significance of the Great Tower.

He thoughtfully curled his hand around his bow as he passed his raptorial gaze over the situation at hand, assessing it. Utter pandemonium, par for the course. They were unprepared, not par for the course. His weapon was hungering for more power, and so was he. Thankfully, the home turf advantage of the situation meant there was plenty to spare, clambering like frightened woodland animals all around them.

One end of the bow rapped against the ground -- it was practically taller than he was -- as he turned on his feet a little, in search of a capable subordinate. "Captain!" he clipped, after finding one who looked in good shape. "Round up your squad, or anyone who hasn't broken both their damned legs yet. See about making some of these people stay put. We need a better supply of energy if we want to win this. Don't be afraid to use them as cover, the enemy likes to delude themselves into thinking they're in a higher moral standing."

((Hey guys, quick note! I derped and forgot to assign MK a character. So I will be holding off on the next prompt until she has a chance to post. That was my bad. I'm sorry, MK. <3))