Welcome to Gaia! ::

As most senshi magic was, Kerberos's regret-inducing magic was ostensibly temporary. However, one would not know that from looking at Megrez. Something had changed in her after her encounter with the Corrupt; she had become even more erratic, almost to the point of desperation and frenzy. Instead of making steady sweeps around the perimeters and going in-to-out or vice-versa as she typically did on her patrols, she zig-zagged irregular patterns through the heart of the city, rarely lingering in one place for too long if she didn't need to catch her breath and didn't find anything of interest. After some time of this wild search, she finally found a target: a prickling of a lieutenant's aura from below.

Megrez had seen for herself what happened if you let lieutenants and basic corrupts advance to any real strength. She nearly died because someone did not put an end to a wicked beast of a Corrupt before it was too late. She would not allow someone else to meet the same fate.

She jumped from the rooftops, sailing down on top of the hapless lieutenant. There was a resonant crack-pop noise that indicated that the hit had been decisive, and he crumbled to the ground with a cry of pain. She summoned up one giant Super-rank egg and held it above the lieutenant's head, intending to bring it down at full force much in the same way she had incapacitated that lady lieutenant with Pollux. They can't be allowed to live. One dead is a hundred saved. I won't become one of them, I won't let anyone else become one of them. I won't let them get strong enough to kill us all!

"DIE!" The wild scream pierced the otherwise silent night and seemed to echo for infinitely too long afterwards.

Perhaps a more settled Megrez might have seen the fear and pain in the lieutenant's eyes as he looked up and back at her, a plea for mercy written in every inch of his body language. Perhaps a more settled Megrez might also have noticed another, more powerful Order aura lurking in the area and paid it some heed...

"A-wha?"

The shouted attack call and the sudden feeling of something being wrapped around her jarred Megrez out of her tunnel vision. She stumbled backward, her now-bound arms wobbling. Her grip on her egg slipped, causing it to fall backwards and splatter behind her where there was no real target. She felt some goop splash up against the backs of her boots (and presumably the bottom of at least her butt bow), and further wobbling made her stumble backwards yet again, only to slip on her own egg goop and land square on her behind. Frigid egg goop on your behind was not a pleasant sensation, to say the least. Thank goodness for the fuku's natural ability to keep itself clean between henshins.

Landing in her own goop was bad enough, but there were bigger fish to fry. The wounded lieutenant was scurrying off, and Megrez's attempt to scoot to her feet was unsuccessful. She stared at the rapidly-disappearing lieutenant, then in the direction she thought her restraint came from, then back at the lieutenant's trail, then in Iris's actual direction. There was, in fact, an Order Eternal over there somewhere. "Did you just... use your attack... on me?" No hostility in her voice yet; just incredulity and bewilderment. The situation did not compute. What the hell just happened?

The first thing this senshi did was quibble over semantic differences. Magic, attack, same difference, or at least Megrez intended them as synonyms in this case. "That doesn't matter," she said, looking up into the towering blonde senshi's eyes. From just the look of the situation, Megrez could tell she was outmatched in virtually every aspect. If they came to blows, she would lose, and lose horribly. Megrez was not in the right frame of mind to be excessively careful, however. Her mind was consumed with the apparently incomprehensible situation and the implications of what had just happened. "Why did you do that?"

Slowly, she stood up, having to put her hands in the egg goop to push herself up, and then sidestepped away from the mess. At least this other senshi had the courtesy to release her. Perhaps, if she were of a different mindset, Megrez might have taken this opportunity to run off before the situation could escalate, but she did not. "Why did you do that?!" she repeated, with more intensity and a clear wild confusion in her voice that only escalated as she went on. "Don't you realize what's going to happen now?! That lieutenant is going to go on to take someone's starseed, and then someone else's, and then someone else's, and by the time someone finally steps up to stop him, it'll be too late and he'll be too strong, and he'll just keep taking starseeds and hurting people, all because no one stopped him before it was too late! Why did you do that?!" Her voice hit a shrill pitch on the third repetition of her desperate question. With the memory of having her starseed manhandled so close to the front of her mind, her unreasonable reasoning made perfect sense to her. She would not let anyone else suffer as she had done at that corrupt's hands.

Megrez yelped when Iris's fist collided with her cheek, a shrill, piercing sound. Bruises on the body and arms could be covered up and explained away, but ones on the face would definitely come under questioning. She was about to unleash another salvo of "why"s on the other senshi when she got her answer: talk of the senshi as terrorists. She had heard various people complain about Order's reputation, but she did not know that the damage extended to the senshi being considered true enemies of the people. The truth was that Megrez's considerations of the matter simply did not go that far; she had effectively been blinded by the dogma that had trickled down to her from her days as a basic senshi, and to her, Castor and Pollux's possible terrorist act was merely a strike and a call to action. This was war. Something needed to be done.

At first, all she did was stare dumbly, open her mouth to speak, and have nothing come out for a good few seconds. With a dry sort of croak as her voice finally warmed up, she said at last, "I'm not just going to sit there and let Chaos go unchecked! I nearly died not even a few days ago because no one stopped a corrupt senshi before he went for my starseed! I won't let that happen to anyone else!" She exhaled sharply, then continued. "How are you 'going at this?' How's it working for you? Please, tell me!" The inquiry was not entirely sarcastic. If this other senshi was doing something other than sitting around with her thumb up her a** wailing about peace and negotiation like certain others were doing, Megrez legitimately wanted to know her tactics. Yet, when it came down to it, she felt quite certain she was dealing with another Hvergelmir, but worse: a Hvergelmir openly willing to sabotage her own side's efforts, acting from some strange, twisted veneer of morality.

Who indeed had said Chaos was going unchecked? Castor, Pollux? Megrez would not namedrop them or anyone else to this senshi. If this senshi was willing to attack her, who knew how far up the chain of relationships she would go? "Who needs to 'say' Chaos is going unchecked? Just look around! Every day, someone somewhere in this city is getting their energy drained or their starseed pulled. I can't let that happen..." There was a distant sound to the final sentence, a trailing off that seemed out of place.

Megrez would not counter the assertion that she needed to find a consistent patrol buddy. This much was true. But, in her highly reactive state, she found something else to pounce on. "Are you saying I had it coming because I was patrolling alone?" When Iris moved on, Megrez followed her and let the accusation fall by the wayside. "So you beat them up, and you let them go. Haven't you noticed that they just keep coming back? And sometimes they come back stronger?" A certain phrase struck at Megrez's core, however: You kill and you sink down to their level. She had certainly heard the point brought up before, that those who had killed were flirting with Chaos themselves. She remembered all too strongly her encounter with the corrupt from before, how he had said that they couldn't possibly be so different if she thought Chaos would find a home in her so easily. "I'm not one of them," she said, a faint tremble to her voice as the sentiment struck home and reverberated through her. "I'll never be one of them."

Out of nowhere, her emotions surged up, resulting in another outburst. "So you don't kill, and I've bet you've never killed, and you're never going to kill, right? How does it feel, being so pure like that?! You get to beat them up, let them go, and feel satisfied that you've somehow done your job! It must be great, being able to have your cake and eat it too like that! And what of us- those who aren't so pure? We're just the scum of the earth and no better than Chaos, aren't we? It's gotta feel great, sitting on your high moral ground and judging those of us who aren't so clean!"

The more she thought about it, the more she resented the "purer" senshi, the ones who could claim some holier-than-thou high ground without doing anything of real significance, all because they wouldn't kill. Even if Megrez stopped killing, she would never be clean again, and that just made her angrier at those with spotless records. She would never take it out on them, oh no, at least not physically, but sometimes she wanted to shake them and scream at them and make them feel like she did.

Megrez was caught off guard by the second attack, and another cry pierced the night. She felt the tug from Iris and a mild pressure around her neck, and when she reached up to try and pull the ribbon away, nothing happened. So instead of beating her to death, this senshi would strangle her instead. How fitting for the senshi that had crushed several windpipes in her career. When it grew even tighter, a small, sharp noise of distress escaped Megrez. This was going to be it, wasn't it? A fate worse that corruption or even dying in battle: being turned upon by a member of her own team. Megiddo and Penthe and maybe even Gunn and Castor will find you, and they'll make you pay for killing me, and if Gunn's around there won't even be a body to use as an example of anything! Being saved from danger by her "heroes" was always a prominent fantasy for her. Always.

Her imaginative histrionics remained unspoken, and when Iris unfolded her story, Megrez felt a stone drop in her stomach. She had made an assumption and boy had she been wrong. Bad conclusions, as the senshi had said. "So, you, too? Then why...?" There was a pause and a nervous swallow. "You kill one, they recruit more. You don't kill one, they recruit more anyway. What are we supposed to do, leave the situation in this dangerous status quo stalemate until the balance gets upset for the definitively worse? If we don't step up and do something, something bad will happen..." There was another train of thought at the back of Megrez's mind. This senshi had killed after all. Was she trying to repent for it, somehow? Could Megrez be redeemed for what she had done? It seemed unlikely to her. She had already garnered the judgment of quite a few people. Her sins would never wash away, in her eyes or in anyone else's.

"Defend..." Megrez repeated, as though testing to see how the word tasted. She absentmindedly touched her neck, now free from the ribbon's heat. "But..." Sitting around letting others do the dirty work and just being a passive defense-only shield didn't sit right with her at all. That sounded like doing a whole lot of nothing. Nonetheless, she felt that this other senshi wouldn't listen to that objection, or worse, might attack again. "Never mind." She stood stock still and silent, waiting to see what the other senshi would do in response to her standing down.

There was a short, sharp squeak when Iris picked Megrez up, but she didn't even have the guts to flail around a bit in her grip. She just nodded and stumbled when she was put back down and shoved. Watching the other senshi walk away, she absentmindedly touched her neck where the rainbow ribbon had been. She was now worthy of attack to other Senshi. Had she already become the monster she feared she would become after the Corrupt's attack? Shuddering, holding herself, and trying not to cry, Megrez slipped home in a sea of doubts.