Umber sat with globe in hand, his most recent draining victim asleep on the bench he sat upon, distanced a foot away at best. He grew more bold with his draining measures, this time joining the victim soundlessly during her wait for the bus. Umber needed only to touch her elbow before the energy slipped within his grasp and her lids grew heavy with exhaustion. Now the teen leaned against the plastic confines of the bus stop with only her bundles of clothing to accompany her on her journey through dreams.

Umber paid her no heed. His attentions were locked on the gold orb with brilliant activity shimmering inside - a universe itself drawn from another human being.

I hold in my hands energy itself - vitality. Not extracted from blood, or bone, or flesh, but from the skin itself. I wonder if we were wrong all these years, or our methods imperfect. Perhaps the majority of our actions were worth their weight in placebo effect. I suspect that's a measure of it, but... I cannot toss aside rituals so old and ingrained into my very thought structure in light of these processes. The Negaverse's means of harvesting energy may be only one way to extract it, with ours being a viable second, although far more messy. It brings to mind, then, if it's possible to accomplish the same results using the methods I was taught. Would blood vials be worth the same in the eyes of my superiors as globes of energy? As starseeds?

No ritual or exercise I know of can carve the soul from a man - only sanctify it, expel it, or trap it within its own prison. It could simply be that the Negaverse refined all of these actions in its thousand years of existence - if the tales hold true. We have never dreamed of such a lengthy existence. By comparison we are fleeting seconds to this organization.


Umber paused his musings to watch the thousand fleeting stars bounce against their confines or each other. Some fizzled into a tailspin before a rush carried them back up the length of the globe. Others stirred their own channels that their brethren rode effortlessly before branching out into their own ventures. For a fleeting second, Umber considered that the energy within may be divined from - though he knew not whether the results would pertain to the person drained or the person being divined for. He canned the idea nonetheless; too whimsical, and not useful to present company.

The lieutenant was in the process of depositing the orb into supernatural subspace when a peculiar, albeit abrasive, energy seized his attentions. From where he sat in the relative safety of the bus stop shelter, he could find nothing to suggest the source of the disturbance. The vast swaths of snow threatened to obscure oncoming senshi, should they wear their predominate whites well, and the thought of being on the receiving end of a surprise attack irked him as a hunter and an agent both.

Instead he rose slowly and stepped out into the middle of the street, murdering chance of surprise attack from the new arrival as well as himself.


Songstress Kitsune