Welcome to Gaia! ::

His phone rang, not his –normal- phone, the second one that looked –almost- the same. Almost, it was a key word, he flipped it open and listened for a moment, glanced around as he clipped it shut without a word. It wasn’t that he was being rude, he just didn’t want to say anything that would be… interesting.

He casually shouldered his bag, tossed out the remainder of his ‘bubble tea’ from the glass fronted shop he’d been sitting just outside of, and walked casually down the alley towards one of the overflowing rubbish bins. As he tosses out the cup, he changes clothes, long purple-black coat, swirling blue designs indicative of smoke, chains at his waist and a single, sizable red stone.

He’s gone before anyone has a chance to give a thought to where he has gone, and the alley, if you followed it exist to an parking lot beside a pizza place and a shop who’s windows are filled with tchotchkes made to look like ornate Indian elephants and quilts of exuberant color. Plenty of places a young man, called away…might reasonably have gone.

--

He stepped out a moment later, a small gust of wind, air displaced by his sudden arrival.

“Ilmenite.” He nodded, and then tipped his head at the young woman, the unconscious companion. “Recruit?” he asks, tipping his head curious. “Is there a problem with her?” He blinked owlishly, crouching and briefly, with a moments hesitation he double checks, for a pulse.

He does after all come from the older school of thought at his roots. A Civilian left at the edge of the woods, still and silent would have been on their way to a hastily dug, though not shallow grave.

“Good thought.” He nodded. “You did the right thing.” He assured and touched Ilmenite’s arm lightly as though to try and help his reassurance.

“Do you want to wake her up before I do this, or after?” He asked then, waving a hand towards the prone young woman. “Certainly she’ll be more ‘comfortable’ if she’s unconscious.”
He reached an exploratory hand into her chest and touched the star seed within for a moment, eyes widening.

“It’s a very good thing you called, if you’d forced this one… it’d probably have killed you. She's a senshi.” He said quietly. “However, if you want.” He stood and turned to Ever. “I can help you do it.” He nodded slightly, offering up the chance to turn the young woman all the same, though his expression was guarded, the suggestion that it would not be entirely comfortable for the General to channel the kind of energy needed to do that.

“Just crack those in your hand, it’ll return to her, she’s close enough I don’t see it going adrift or being intercepted by anything or anyone.” He said with a small hitch of his shoulder, not quite a shrug, more a physical punctuation.

He brushed at his own uniform, making sure he was presentable. “Its very much like any corruption, it simply… it takes more energy because they are so, heavily infused with the Senshi Energy, the ‘order’ energy.” He waved his hand irritably at the word, scoffing slightly because to call their side of the war ‘order’, and yet be so utterly Disorderly was truly comedic.

“Well, lets wake up sleeping beauty then.”

“I swear to god if you scream.” Zinkenite snarled, lunging forward to put a hand over her mouth. “Neither of us will like what follows.” His voice held a great deal of promise, and despite his stature the grip was amazingly strong, though he seemed alarmingly to be putting little effort into it.

“I’m going to let go… and we’re going to be civilized.” He hesitated a moment. “And for the sake of clarity, since you just woke up, you don’t have the –parts- to keep my attention, so don’t get any grand ideas that I’m going to ‘molest’ you.”

He released, slowly enough that he could have grabbed her again to stifle the scream that might follow, easy enough to ‘yank’ them somewhere else since he had a hold of her, she just didn’t need to know that.

“Alright?” He asked, trying to direct her vocalizations towards a nice quiet –answer- rather than a scream.

His hand clapped back over her mouth, fingers pressing hard enough to bruise the edges of her jaw where he touches, smothering the scream half in the fingerless gloves, and then with a stomach lurching wrench, like tipping over the edge of a roller coaster the world shifts underfoot, and all around her.

It resolves again what seems to be seconds later, his hand pulling away, and there are no more trees, her scream echoes off purple crystals, it’s a blessing or a calculation that he didn’t take her to the chamber where Charonite, and Nealite are trapped forever in crystal.

Seconds later, Ilmenite joins them, yanked out of place by Zinkenite as well, though there was no need to touch the General, not the way he’d had to grasp her to take her with him.

“Are you –quite- finished?” The slender man in the half mask demands, his pale blue eyes dangerously reminiscent of those documentaries that suggest all serial killers have pale blue eyes.

He tipped his chin down slightly and stared at her as though she were a child who’d just thrown a tantrum in the middle of a department store, rather than a young woman who was justifiably upset.

“Likely not.” He replied with narrowing eyes at her thinly stifled frustrations. “Am I making the correct inference, that you would like to join us?” He waved a hand at Ilmenite, but also encompassing the strange purple crystals, glassy and multi faceted.

“Is that correct?” He waited for an answer, more because it was polite than that she could ever leave the place without joining them. She didn’t need to know that little detail though, the last thing he wanted were more outbursts of –any- kind. Likely she’d start crying, and he loathed crying. It made him deeply and utterly uncomfortable.

“If so, then we have unfinished business.”

Zinkenite laughed, a short clipped sound between startled and amused. “This is nothing more than the surface, a small pocket that was more convenient. What we hold as a safe haven is much… ‘Fancier’ than this. As for your discomfort,” he shook his head. “I’m afraid that can’t be helped, though regardless it is… brief. Ilmenite just needed my help to complete your recruitment.”

He made it sound rather simple, just a little extra assistance needed.

“I brought him into this, you can ask him if you like.”