Every so often, she imagined she could feel the sharp blade of the mysterious Knight slip between her ribs, her body going warm and numb in the light of her own machines. Other times, when she was dashing across the rooftops of Destiny City, the wind whipping her hair would take on the dry, spiced aroma of a place she'd never been. As a native citizen of Destiny City, the woman was no stranger to nightmares, and had been plagued with them a number of times since beginning her career in the Negaverse. But never before had her dreams felt so poignant and real, tactile and immutable in her mind's eye. Some nights it was easier to patrol than it was to sleep, to dream, to die again and wake up sobbing at home as a civilian, but when she went too long without rest the lines between her world and the dream began to blur even further, which was its own form of hellish.
Keeping herself powered up helped, to some extent, as long as she had someone to drain, which drove her from the relative safety of her apartment and out to the streets. There had been a time when the Captain had been more selective about her victims, but necessity demanded that she lower her standards, and after four nights of the terrible visions she was willing to do just about anything to make it stop. She knelt over her latest target, some business suit who had taken the wrong shortcut to the nearest public transit. He'd looked large and intimidating for the average cattle, but he went down as easy as anyone else, and it had only taken a few moments to drain him into an exhausted stupor. Zircon furrowed her brow, her lips thinning into a pursed line. Of course he would be tired after work and have less to give her. Of course he would drain so thin for a man of his stature. Considering her options, she leaned forward over the dazed body, reaching into his chest. If he hadn't been such a colossal waste of her time, then maybe she wouldn't have needed to go digging for his starseed.
Ah, there it is. Zircon watched in fascination as she plucked the man's soul from his chest, observing precisely when his breathing stopped. Glancing coldly at the minty green crystal, Zircon mused to herself what purpose it might serve her. Might he be the control for her new hypothesis? Perhaps he was better suited as a youma, to serve the rest of eternity as penance for being so horribly inconvenient--
Something brushed against the edge of the Captain's senses, causing her to go on alert. She closed her hand around the starseed, her eyes darting up as she felt for auras. For a moment, she felt nothing, and she began to wonder if her dreams were starting to spill over again. But just as she began to curl herself back over her prey, she felt the glimmer again; neither the sickly-clean soap of Order nor the familiar warmth of Chaos. Instead, it brought to mind an argument on a rooftop months ago, a woman with outlandish accessories and cat ears. Whoever was blinking around in the early evening was leaking parallel energy, and that was enough of an anomaly that it needed to be examined.
With a languished sigh and a glance at the glowing gem in her palm, Zircon pressed the starseed back into the man's chest, watching the choked gasp for air that signified that he wasn't too far gone. None of her experiments would work if her materials weren't freshly reaped, so taking it now would just be a waste (and worse, a reprimand from the brass). Before the man could reorient, she jumped for the rooftops, using the higher vantage point to signal in on the strange energy signature. With a moment's concentration, she had a bearing, and without hesitation she began to close in, dropping down to street level about a block away from the park.
Of course it would be the park at night.
A little stronger and a lot more tired than the last time they'd encountered each other, Zircon began to approach the energy-leaking figure, making a concerted effort not to rub at the bags under her eyes. She put her hands in her pockets, lightly touching a starseed with a metallic sheen that she'd been saving for a rainy day. "You know," she began, stopping a good distance from the guardian cat, "You can be awfully hard to find sometimes."
Carneli
I hope this is okay!
