Welcome to Gaia! ::

The woman accompanying him, he had to keep reminding himself, was not a woman. She was half of one, certainly, the other half scales and fur and claws and tail -- but she hid it all beneath a false skin she wore, dark magic pulled over her in some gross inversion of a selkie. Quartz wouldn't rather think of where the magic had come from, or how perfect the illusion was. He didn't want to know.

His own mask for their outing had been easier, more superficial: his uniform already made for something suitable for a bright-lights-loud-music rave, so all that was left was to spruce it up for effect. Dollar-store makeup had done that trick without eating too badly into his tiny stash of earned money, so that now he had glitter lip gloss, purple mascara, and careful whorls of gold dusted aroung his eyes and cheekbones, deepening into shadows at the eyes. Hairspray and rubber bands did the rest, pulling his hair up into a style that was definitely meant to be a sarcastic take on the horse's-mane that Cinnabar and Schörl both apparently favored.

This was a lesson. Everything was a lesson, of course, but this one, Quartz thought, was somehow a lesson meant for each of them. Schörl could've easily have handled his instruction herself, as she so often had before, and seemed to prefer; he had the impression from her that she didn't leave important work in clumsy hands. But Cinnabar she was apparently fond of, and apparently the half-youma captain had some particular skill at energy draining, which were -- in theory -- reason enough that Schörl might send Quartz off to Cinnabar's tutelage and free up some of her own time by pushing work down to the captain. It was just that Quartz didn't buy it. Schörl had plenty of ways to free up her time, if she needed it.

There was more here. Wheels within wheels. He'd behave himself and see if he could work out the rest of the picture. Good behavior, if nothing else, earned privileges, and his billfold was starting to get thin again.

He kept his eyes on Cinnabar the way he usually did on Schörl -- because tonight she represented Schörl as far as his assignment was concerned, as surely as if Cinnabar had been wearing the general's green frock coat -- fixed, flat, perfectly attentive until he was given a command.

"Is your quota the same, as a captain?" he ventured a question once they were inside the club and the load roar of music offered them some conversational privacy.

Being looked at didn't bother him -- it never had. He imagined that particular sense of comfortable physicality was a holdover from Eli Bell's life as a dancer in a club, where his income would've depended on an ability to draw the eyes of every person in the room. Stroud, too, looked when she liked and how she liked, with the entitlement of a person regarding a painting they'd purchased to hang over their fireplace. It was hardly a blip on his radar now, having Cinnabar do it.

She seemed uncomfortable in the venue, regardless of her selection. From what he understood of it, her half-youma state was a fairly recent development, and he guessed she must still be looking for places she could find a way to drop her glamour to do her job. She didn't seem fond of this one.

He nodded at her answer, folding the information away. No lieutenants to oversee -- but she'd been promoted anyway. That was curious.

"I wouldn't say I know anything," he said evenly. "But I understand I could learn a lot from you." In fact, the truth was that Schörl was a thorough trainer and hadn't failed to explain the concept to him -- but people tended to cut corners if they thought a pupil had some familiarity with a subject, and that would've made it likely that she'd leave things out that she didn't realize were important. It would be better to learn energy draining the way she'd teach it on her own, without any belief that he had any foundation pre-laid.

Quartz didn't really know what Schörl's methods of menacing the unsuspecting population were, or whether they were different from Cinnabar's (which appeared to involve sexual distraction and jiggly flesh) or not. The General's methods were murdering bartenders, he supposed. Throwing security guards around. Giving confused knights to Metallia.

Those were the methods he was familiar with. Frankly, if tonight promised little more than a**-shaking to get the job done, he was happy to hear it.

Despite his assertions that he knew nothing, Cinnabar glossed right over the actual techniques of energy draining, leaving him to fend for himself in large part. Not much of a teacher, then; there was no great surprise. What he had, to divine from, were the context clues in what she said, his own common sense, and observations about her behavior on the dance floor. Quartz would have to extrapolate.

Fine. Schörl hadn't sent him here to fail to learn. If Quartz couldn't glean the lesson, or find a way to get Cinnabar to tell him what he needed, the half-youma captain wasn't going to be the one in trouble for wasting everyone's time. He was.

He watched Cinnabar's blown kiss sail figuratively over his head, uncaught -- instead studying her movements, her behavior. You have to touch them to drain. The trick to it is in pulling the energy slow and steady enough that they don't notice. Pulling . . .

"Of course, Captain," he said mildly when she returned, watching her poke the little ball of energy down her top. "Thank you for the demonstration."

Quartz's initial attempts were clumsy. He wove out into the crowd, navigating into the sea of writhing bodies, and attempted to do as she'd done. At first, this resulted in a sum total of nothing; he touched and stroked strangers on the shoulders as he passed, weaving them out of the way, and was eventually forced to admit that generally just thinking about the idea that touching someone would make the magic happen was not enough to, well, to make the magic happen. He'd just been basically fondling people's upper arms for no reason. He wasn't learning anything.

A different approach, then. Maybe it would be easier if he could prolong the contact until he figured it out, see if there was any sort of a spark, some feeling to let him know he was doing it right . . .

Quartz picked a woman who'd been watching him with obvious interest;he considered her a moment, then gave her a wink. He was attractive and in good shape, and it drew looks, certainly -- but some of the choices were clearly young queer men, and they faced enough danger of being taken advantage of at clubs without him draining them into some kind of sleepy stupor. Women weren't much better off, certainly -- but the one he'd picked seemed to be here with a solid group of friends. He was confident they were generally all keeping an eye on each other.

She made her way over, introduced herself as Claire. He smiled his best smile and said he was Jared, and asked her for a dance. Quartz had no real expectations that she'd refuse, and she didn't.

Dancing came easily -- no real surprise, given his apparent former profession, he supposed. He held Claire closely and generally bounced her on his thigh through the music, and occasionally leaned in to whisper sociable questions in her ear. What kind of music do you like? How'd you hear about this club? Are you okay if we get closer? Easy questions, ones he thought wouldn't put her guard up. Something to keep her focused on the interaction and not his attempts to siphon energy from her.

In the silent downtime, he focused on his fingertips. Pulling, Cinnabar had said -- so he enshrined that idea in his head and focused on it, trying to visualize and then will it into happening. He pictured her energy as the flow of blood from her heart, the run of nerves from the brain -- imagined a bright column of it passing straight down the complex ridges of her spine -- and suddenly, there was a feeling of something jumping under his fingers, like touching a lightning lamp, his hand absorbing it like radiant heat. Claire gasped and stumbled, falling against him.

Quartz had an oddly distant feeling. He caught her against his chest with one arm, steadying her weight -- but kept her there a little longer, like he was being solicitous of her health, and pulled a little more energy, enough to feel like he'd gotten something out of it. Enough to be sure he grasped the basic mechanic.

"You okay there?" he laughed quietly, settling her back a little, but still in his arms. "Looks like someone hasn't been staying hydrated. You want to take a break, maybe get some water?"

Claire nodded, smiling back. "Good idea -- I'm sweating buckets. Wanna come with?"

Quartz looked away to where Cinnabar was waiting, then glanced back. "I should check on my coworker," he said. "She just got out of a two year relationship, I want to make sure she has a good time."

Claire gave a little moue of disappointment, but they parted on good terms. Quartz snaked back to where the captain stood, the energy ball warm in his palm. It was weightless, but it felt heavy, all the same. Heavy as wool, then as wood, then as lead. Each step back toward Cinnabar, away from the detached illusion, made his stomach roil.

You did this. As easy as dancing, you just sucked the life out of someone. You were killing her, that's what it really was -- you killed her a little. You served the Negaverse. You served Metallia.

Like punching people and dumping them in revolving doors. Like taking teenagers hostage. Like throwing young girls through windows as easily as bags of mulch.

You've committed atrocities for nothing more than wine and sunlight. You pathetic, disgusting creature. You did it with a smile.

By the time he reached the dark-haired woman and her layers of tulle, the smile on his face had fallen away to a glazed, flat expression. Quartz held up the little energy ball -- smaller than hers, a beginner's effort, inexpert -- then tucked it into a pocket along the side of his pants, hidden in the seams. "Excuse me Captain, I have to go to the men's room," he said, sounding a little distracted -- and walked away before she could offer a response.

He made it to the bathroom before he started crying, and barely managed to get the stall door swung closed before losing the contents of his lunch into the toilet.

He could feel Cinnabar's approach before he could ever hear her arrival. Quartz's self-preservational instincts screamed at him that he had to move, had to do something, had to remember how to swallow down his feelings and run on the fumes of good behavior. His overwhelmed emotions, however, would process none of it; he heaved for breath and tried to wipe at his eyes as he heard the door being knocked in.

"You couldn't wait ten ******** minutes?!" Quartz screamed back, voice cracked with tears and raw-throated from having vomited. Her order for him to open the door went totally ignored.

Bathroom stalls weren't exactly noted for their spaciousness. This one was no exception: when the door came crashing in, propelled by Cinnabar's boot, there was no place for Quartz to be except in its way. The metal struck him squarely in the side with enough force that it immediately bounced back, clanging off the latch and into his arm the second time before Cinnabar caught it, striding through.

If there was barely enough room for one person in the stall, there was definitely not room for two. And certainly not room for the third person there with them in spirit if not in being, invoked like a foul spirit by Cinnabar speaking her name.

Schörl, who didn't have to be there for Quartz to feel her fingers ghosting warningly across his Adam's apple, her laughing breath against his ear.

Backed into a literal corner, he wanted nothing but to escape.

"Leave me alone," he hissed, ready to lash out if Cinnabar made a move to touch him.

Quartz, as far as he knew, had been in good health prior to his corruption. Even without any memory of Eli Bell or the man he'd been, some things had been obvious vestiges of a former person: a very physical career, a very fit physique. Of all the paces his keeper tended to put him through, the physical demands had never been the most trying. He'd started out in near-peak physical condition and remained there still.

There was nothing physical, then, about why he felt so incredibly exhausted all the time. That wasn't the reason.

It wasn't physical tiredness that left him too wrung out to keep dissembling. He'd just had enough for one night.

"Why?" he echoed her with full incredulity. "Are you ******** kidding me? You want me to explain why walking up to an unsuspecting college kid in a dance club and draining the life out of them, then sending them off to who the hell knows what, might bother me? I mean, do you also want to ask why bears s**t in the woods? Come on."

Quartz tugged a few sheets of toilet paper off the roll and started wiping at the corners of his mouth, anxious to distract himself from the cramped quarters of the bathroom stall and the threat Cinnabar presented.

Skim a little off the top. As though he hadn't already decided it days ago, Quartz settled upon a realization: he despised this woman.

At least with Schörl, there was little time wasted on bullshit justifications. Whatever lip service she paid to the alleged nobility of their cause, she never expected him to kiss portraits of Metallia or write paeans to her faceless greatness. She didn't require gratitude or love -- she required only results. Cleverness, obedience, success: they were standards to be measured up to. Schörl had never asked him to hold himself or their cause above moral reproach (she didn't seem to believe in the concept of moral reproach, in fact). She didn't bullshit. It was easier.

This, on the other hand -- people like this -- there was no justifying this kind of thing. There was no it's for a good cause or it's in their best interest or if they understood what we were doing, they'd thank us. ******** all of that, because none of it was true.

The only thing that was true was that Quartz did horrible things to people, and he was going to have to keep doing horrible things to people for the rest of his life, and he was going to keep doing them for one reason and one reason alone:

He didn't want to die.

That was it. Nothing noble or heroic about it; he wasn't a good person and he wasn't doing his best to be. He was a selfish coward and he wanted to live.

Anyone who thought they had a better reason than that to do what the Negaverse did made him sick. These people were never going to be his friends.

He folded his arms, wishing he could leave.

"Everyone's innocent compared to us. Anybody's better than you or me. Do you honestly think when you drain people you're some kind of hero? That someday, children sleeping in their beds will quietly thank their lucky stars that the great Cinnabar is out there, doing what she does?"

Well, so at least that answered why this particular captain was friends with Schörl. Hell, who was he kidding, everything answered why she was friends with Schörl. Quartz yanked toilet paper off the roll and started wiping at his mouth irritably.

The words you should learn to accept what you are rang chillingly in his head, though, haunting his thoughts. He took an instinctive step back when she leaned in, wedging himself into the space between the toilet and the wall with no further to retreat. The opening stall door, a moment later, was a relief.

He had no illusions that he was going to get any kind of a glowing review from Cinnabar. This woman-thing was not his friend, certainly didn't like him, and had no real interest in lying about his performance. Nothing about her suggested any innate sense of mercy toward others.

Still, he did need to at least be able to say that after his lapse, he'd collected himself and finished his work. That showed improvement, which was better than the alternative.

Quartz stepped past her to wash his hands, not particularly fond of men's bathrooms even when they didn't stink of puke. "Of course you're right, Captain," he said, defiance wilting in his heart as quickly as it had bloomed. "I'm sorry for my lapse. I'm still learning to build my resolve. The General says it's not my best skill."