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There was something satisfying about luring weak agents of Chaos to one spot only to kill them like animals. While the old chains and machines were now pointless, Pollux was cleaning them from the makeshift pen they'd been used for, while it didn't hide anything, it would give people a clear view of what had happened. Meanwhile, his brother was quite happily propping up the bodies and taking care to expose the fact they hadn't been killed buy the slashes alone. The deep gashes in the corpses were numerous, and red and pink flesh was only tainted by a little grey matter from what had been a particularly brutal smash into the brick wall of the abandoned factory.

Once a place to print a local news paper, now empty save for vagabonds who would occasionally use it as a refuge. A perfect place to lure agents seeking energy. A perfect place to 'write a new chapter into their future'. Castor found it poetic, Pollux found it particularly pointless and irrelivant.

"So, again, tell me why this is necessary?" Pollux asked, chucking the the last steel frame, now broken, into a pile a garbage nearby. Blood stained the floor- a puddle where the pair had slain their targets- the scent of it was too thick to be unnoticeable. "A message." Was Castor's reply, walking through the puddle of blood, not caring that he was leaving footprints all around.
"Did you really need me with the whole cage set up? Your attack would have gotten them without it anyway."

"Of course-" Pollux looked to Castor speculating, "-I wanted them to feel trapped and afraid before I killed them. They could be the victims this time." The younger brother shook his head, taking a second to flip open is phone and send out the distress call.

Pollux's expression remained un-amused however. "And what will you tell those who come, who will see your work?" Frost's expression was just as cold as his power. "You were never well loved after all."
A bitter laugh left Castor then, shaking off the gore and blood from his hands before walking to his sibling, grabbing the man's chin.
"It's not my job to be loved." Hitting away Castor's hand, Pollux scowled.
"You sound like your father." That charged Castor's anger- grabbing Pollux's arm. "You-"

"It was cruel to say, but you're ignoring others in favor of your own wants."
"... You think I'm ignoring you?"
"Rather, you are ignoring my position." The duo stared each other down in silence.
"Alright war maker. Tell your brother how you would start this."

Pollux just stared at the wall behind the bodies.
"You forgot to leave your signature."


Three minutes later a bloody symbol had been painted on the brick wall, and Castor was busy cleaning his hands.
"Now- let's see who's ready to face reality."

Megrez received the distress call during an empty spot in her patrols. She had been able to take out her frustrations on a few youma, so tonight hadn't been entirely fruitless, but it made the lull so much worse. Another opportunity to pummel something was welcome.

When she arrived, though, she felt no Chaos auras, nor did she hear any sound of a struggle. For a moment, she was worried that she had come to the wrong place, or that there was a trap waiting for her. Nonetheless, curiosity mandated that she go in deeper, especially since she felt Order auras around. Big ones, or at least one big one and one around her strength. As she approached, a coppery smell just about crashed into her nose, and it made her stop in her tracks briefly before continuing on. It was obvious now that something had happened, whether it had gone terribly wrong or terribly right.

Then she finally made it into the epicenter of the incident, and the sight made her literally stagger. So many corpses, all of which had been very thoroughly bloodied, without even a shred of mercy. Megrez swallowed hard to fight down a visceral reaction. Not even when she had stabbed that lieutenant or when she had seen Mica fall by her own spear had there been that much blood (of course, they were only one person apiece, and these were many). At the center of it all were two senshi, one familiar and the other less so. (There was also a page, but Megrez sort of dismissed her in the heat of the realization. Sorry!) When it sank in who she was looking at, she arrived at a conclusion as to what had happened that she felt was unmistakable.

"Castor," she said when she could finally choke out words. "You did all this?" It felt stupid to say when it was something so obvious, but Megrez's mind for words wasn't fully functioning right now. She was having flashbacks to not just the conversation she had had with the Prince a month prior, but to the lieutenant that she had challenged the other day and allowed to get away. She had received her mission: get used to the fact that she would have to kill, and she had already failed at it. She couldn't tell which feeling was stronger: shame over her own weakness, or jealousy over Castor's ability to do what he needed to do with ease.

When Avalon arrived, Castor just smiled, spinning to face her while Pollux busied himself with trying to figure out how to clean up the puddle of blood on the floor so his sash would not get filthy.

"Beautiful isn't it?" Castor said, reaching down to pat a dead agent's head like one would pat a dog. "I think it's a fitting display. Not as open or as filled with corpses as I would like, but pretty good all things considered."

Megrez's arrival was met with just as much enthusiasm if a tad more serious. "Take care of the knight Pol- I got this girl." Walking over he motioned to blood on the floor. "Careful of the blood- and yes. A little help from my brother but yes, I killed them. As is my duty." His arms crossed, whi,le Pollux echoed behind him.
"Kill those who do not regret, kill those beyond salvation, kill the ones who enjoy their murder." Though he gave Castor a pointed look. "Be a hypocrite."
"Should we had let them go, knowing what they intended to do?"
Pollux didn't answer.

"Oh look- The brat." Castor remarked, drawn to the arrival of Ganymede. "It's to spread the good news. Gayne. I'm back, and I'm here to do what everyone else seems to be incapable of doing."
"What my brother is trying to say-" Pollux interjected.
"Is he wants everyone to know he's back, and, he intends to actually get this war formally started, given how utterly lacking progress has been made in the last three years." The younger's exasperation was palatable.

"Humor him."

"Hi, Pollux," said Avalon, smiling a shy little smile at her friend. "I think it's a little unbalanced towards the bottom of the canvas," she told Castor, but--she was going to stick with Pollux. How she knew Pollux from his brother, she didn't know. But she knew him.

Babylon always told her that there was a chance to purify the human-shaped ones, but she didn't believe him. Avalon crouched down amongst the blood, delicately balanced herself on the toes of her boots, and nudged the foot of a corpse very gently, and very slightly to the left. It didn't help, but the dead-weight quality of the limb also didn't phase her; she only smiled a little vacantly. "It's a little conservative, don't you think?" She twisted a lock of red hair around one finger, the deeper red of the cooling blood darkening the strands. "We should kill them all. Whether they can be redeemed or not."

She sprang to her feet when Penthesilea entered the warehouse and held out both hands. "Penthesilea!" She didn't try to run through the blood puddle, choosing to stay near Pollux. "Castor says he's going to start a real war," she said, twining her fingers into her hair at her shoulders and fluffing them out, gently.

Athene generally wasn't one to ignore a call for assistance, so when his senshi phone pinged with an incoming request for backup he had turned direction and made his way to the location mentioned.

He couldn't help but feel a little bit uneasy when the location had turned out to be yet another warehouse given that nothing good had happened in the previous few occasions when stuff had ended up going down in a warehouse, but he could sense Order auras of varying strengths about the place and so he had made his way in, despite the heavy scent thick and metallic that lay on the air that caused him to feel a frisson of dread.

Tip tap. Tip tap... He could hear voices as he approached, heard some one saying about humouring some one but when he came upon them his eyes weren't on the other's in the warehouse, at least not initially - instead they were drawn almost unerringly to the pile of dead people. He didn't notice as the cup of take-out coffee that had been forgotten in his hand as he made his way over slipped then fell, hitting the ground and spilling its contents.

Instead Athene stared, finding himself unable to stop himself from staring at the pile of what had once been people in a sort of stunned and the same time horrified fascination.

It took a voice speaking from slightly in front and off to the side somewhat to finally draw his attention and Athene recognised the speaker as Ganymede as he finally managed to wrench his eyes from the carnage in front of him, noticing that she seemed to be addressing her words towards the blond pair closest to the bodies.

"Liryn," somehow when he spoke, he somehow managed to keep his quiet voice relatively even, even as he did his best to push the queasy feelings of nausea that kept threatening to rise. He continued, directing his words to the small cat on his shoulder, making his way over towards Ganymede as he spoke "Stay on my shoulder 'kay. Don't come down."

Athene had no idea why they had been called there or to what purpose, but Ganymede didn't sound like she'd been a part of this... This whole-scale slaughter.

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It started off as a relatively quiet night, with even the youma seemingly in and wherever they oozed from when not trying to terrorise the citizens of Destiny City.

He and Athene had been talking, well more like he had been talking and Athene had been listening since Athene was kind of on the quiet side, but he had been pretty content, especially given the fact that Athene had thought to bring a few cookies in the satchel that he tended to carry with him when out on patrol and had been quite willing to take 5 and let him have some of them.

Then Athene's phone had pinged and Athene had given him a shoulder ride across town, explaining on the way that he had received a request for assistance.

They had ended up at a warehouse and Liryn couldn't help but think that there had been a lot of things happening at warehouses lately - there had been the attack on the Dark Mirror warehouse and the blackout warehouse.... For a moment his fur bristled slightly at the thought of the second warehouse, his thoughts on the nasty corrupt senshi that had dared to hurt his senshi but he could sense order auras around including that unusually clear one from back at the meeting founding the BlackWatch and something else, something...

He sniffed and sniffed again, suddenly alert on Athene's shoulder as the dark-haired senshi walked forward - he could smell blood and a lot of it.

And then they were in the warehouse and he could see the source - in fact it would have been hard to miss the source, even without his handy vantage point - aka Athene's shoulder, uncharacteristically silent as his purplish eyes took in the causal display of death in front of him, the unfamiliar (at least to him) symbol drawn out in blood on the bricks and the two blond senshi at the centre (Castor and Pollux) who seemed to have a look of each other.

There were others there too and Liryn recognised the two orange-haired super senshi (Megrez and Penthesilea) as having been there at the BlackWatch founding meeting. The Earth Page was unfamiliar though, as was the two blonds at the centre.

Athene mentioned him staying on his shoulder and although, Liryn said nothing he personally concurred - there was stuff on parts of the ground of the warehouse and on some of the walls that he didn't want anywhere near his fur.

Athene was walking over towards another senshi however, another senshi that had been at the BlackWatch founding meeting - the one with the interesting aura and his normally cheerful voice was subdued as he spoke to her once in earshot "You wouldn't happen to know what's going on would you? Athene got a call for assistance, but..."

But Liryn couldn't really see what they were supposed to be assisting in.

If Megrez's reaction disappointed Ganymede, Athene's at least reassured her that not everyone there had lost their marbles. She shifted a small step closer to him as if looking for support, glancing to the cat that currently resided on his shoulder.

The cat looked familiar. It took her a moment but she eventually figured out where she'd seen him before. The night the Black Watch had gathered; he'd offered to upgrade her phone. Guardian Cats she'd never been on great terms with, though she felt somewhat fond of Tomlin, and Horatio was beginning to grow on her, but they were Jovian cats. She supposed in a way it was to be expected. This cat, on the other hand, was an outsider, yet she hoped in he and Athene she'd have an ally in this confrontation.

She'd been through way too much, had spent too many years searching for a place in the war, to get kicked back and made to feel alone and useless again.

“His Majesty's just overcompensating for being gone for so long,” she muttered to Liryn. The look on her face should make her feelings toward Castor rather obvious.

Resentment bordering on loathing. She looked at him and could only think of the person she used to be and hated it. It reminded her of being young and new with no one to turn to and no way out but to run, and run, and run. She itched to move, shifted about restlessly, lifted a hand to shove long strands of hair out of her face, tugged at her bustier like it was too tight around her chest, restricting her breathing.

“And for the small size of his d**k,” she added crassly, unnecessarily, because it made her feel better to mock and joke about someone she disliked instead of admitting they'd made any impact on her at all.

“Somehow I don't think there was ever a situation to begin with,” Ganymede continued with more seriousness. “No one needed help. Just attention.”

And she was dumb enough to be giving it to them.

Castor was over the moon with how well he felt things were. It seemed there were senshi that had a bit of a spine- though he wondered why they hadn't bothered to make more of an impact was something he'd need to ask about later.

He was happy to kick a corpse further to the left, smiling slightly as he stepped onto a leg, the sound of bones cracking and flesh moving without resistance. "So you're still a brat. Cute. But You fail to comprehend why target the weak." Castor looked to Pollux who hesitated.
"Vuoi parlare creatore di guerra?" Castor asked, motioning to Pollux to address those gathered.
"Quando necessario. Dirò ciò che è necessario."
Satisfied with his brother's answer Castor continued. "You kill the weak to show you are willing to kill, that your place is one lacking mercy. Killing captains and generals is all well and good- but it does not thin their ranks, if they were slain others would rise to their position. Yet killing their newest, killing those untrained? Undermine them. Make them hate and grow angry. Anger makes for recklessness. It makes those who share weakness fear their lack of leader's ability to guide them and shield them. Stip them of their tools. Rip apart their forces until they dread the senshi- I want them to feel what we have felt. I want them helpless and confused and-"
"-Basta Castor" Pollux cut him off there. "Si sta parlando troppo liberamente."
Castor snapped. "Parlo verità."
"Forse , ma si stava facendo drammatica"

A heavy sigh from Castor then one from Pollux. "He is my brother. I accepted that fact years ago."

"But I am afraid he has merit. If in a far different way of presenting it. Killing a general is not easy nor is it going to send as big an impact as killing multiples lieutenants. A single captain would do little to aid in the overall impact. To unhinge them they need to see us in a way that puts them at their weakest- anger, rage, revenge, those things. Emotional vulnerability is a fast way to break down person's defenses. Killing many in one place in the most brutal manner possible also will make those higher recall the blood moon's tactics."

Pollux spoke and Castor grew bored.

"You keep bitching Gayne, but you don't bother to think." The prince of hair picked as his ear. "None of you bother to think."
"I've been gone three years and yet the balance has remained scaled and tipped towards chaos. Senshi ignorantly think purification is the solution, that we might have peace." His shook his head a bitter smirk rising.
"All you should have to do is look at your homes. See the death, the emptiness- We should have been born there. We should have had people, homes, families- Chaos destroyed us, leaving nothing for us to come back to. Genocide is so easy to forget when you can't remember it." A edge came into his tone.
"I waited a thousand years for a promise that will never be filled in this lifetime. I was born to rule an empire, and that empire is dead. I am a prince, born to kill and conquer yet there is no one left to invade. Earth is a rock, corrupt and unfit for us to use to regain what was stolen from us."

He stared, dead eyes at those gathered while Pollux's hands folded behind his back. "You think this is brutality? That this is disgusting? Then tell me how you plan to fight, how you plan to face those who died on your worlds, waiting for you to save them? Can you even remember their names? Their faces? Their lives? Or was you world and it's people so insignificant to you that you are willing to let them be erased?
I called you here to see what is needed to even begin to restore the balance. To remind your weak, pathetic asses that you're a goddamn war, and unless we ******** kill them, we'll have no hope for any future." His voice rose to an infuriated frustrated yell. Under him the ground had frozen, and Pollux had come to stand closer to his erratic sibling.

His body was shaking, and stilled when Pollux gently touched his shoulder. A passing glance and Castor turned to stare at the bodies.

"Mi dispiace Pollux."

The senshi of frost stood silent as ever simply looking at those gathered.
"....." After a small while he spoke.
"I ask you to speak gently. I'd rather not be forced to have to restrain him."

He was serious.

"Jeesus ******** christ...."

He hadn't seen the DMC's master work in person, but he rather figured he was looking at a good example of it now, his eyes drifting over the discarded bodies with slowly mounting emotions.

Horror, disgust, and rage.

He heard parts of the excuse, and they sounded a lot like what Castor had said the same night he had violently attacked based only on the suspicion that he might have been the same Lieutenent that had once gone up against him.

He had fared much, much better than these poor souls. Under Castor and Polux's patronizing preaching, he could hear Hver talking about the careful degrees of separation, of preying on lack of self worth, and he could hear Zinkenite.

You have two choices... well not really a choice... you join us or you die.

And here was Castor preaching about saving worlds devoid of people, while mowing down the people of this one.

"You... ********... sick... b*****d." He instinctively moved to put himself, protectively, slightly in front of the slender figure in glittering white who had come with him.

How many of them had begged him to stop? Castor might claim otherwise, but he couldn't imagine someone so damaged acknowledging anyone who might have come to him begging they made me, please help me, I don't want this...

"You're an IDIOT. This stops nothing! They'll go out tomorrow and corrupt two for every one of these. They won't give a ********. They didn't give a ******** last time one of you ******** thought this was a good idea, they opened their arms to them and told us all to accept them as allies when they finished falling into Chaos's arms."

when their wings were as black as yours. He thought, his jaw set in a teeth grinding grimace.

"They've been telling everyone for years the Senshi are the problem and you're proving them right with every corpse. The only one you're helping is THEM, you stupid sick ********! Born to kill and conquer? No wonder they haven't tried to corrupt you, you're as ******** up as Ares, and if no one remembers what happened to her, they're dumber than you!"

It was like Mistral. Mistral had killed plenty, as warped as any agent of the Negaverse, and in the name of Order. That was the most dangerous way for chaos to win. The most insidious, and destructive, and the fact that they'd been summoned here on false pretenses wasn't helping, and there was very little between the Knight of Mars and full on charging Castor and Pollux. Much of that barrier was his concern for Hver, who had seen similar horrors, and hose oath to non violence made him wonder if she'd forgive his urge to violence, under the circumstances.

Of course he couldn't exactly be blamed if Castor was just too overwhelmed by peoples failure to soften their words. He suspected he might be forgiven a little judicious self defense.

Thin their ranks indeed.