Welcome to Gaia! ::

Coming up in August it would be five years since she'd been yanked into space for god-knows what reasons. Her entire life had been uprooted for nine weeks of hell, of days where the sun never rose nor set and the stars didn't twinkle. There had been light, but it had been ambient, sourceless, coming from a field of darkness... Out there among the stars, Marienrode had died. Things burrowed into her flesh in her dreams, sometimes, so rarely anymore where they had once been endemic. Often now, she could pretend none of that had ever happened. It'd all seemed such a bad dream, until she became aware of The Thing at the edges of her mind. A sense of stability.

It was the rainbow road. She knew that; she had seen it in her dreams. She couldn't pretend she didn't know, not when she had felt herself go still and cold into the darkness. There had been something there, once, and now there was the road, there, safe. Part of her. Or maybe she was part of it.

Marienrode didn't meet other survivors. It'd been easy, even. She moved away from Gilbert, to a little condo, made new friends among the teachers at Horizon. She was not made to try new things, not made for bravery. Marienrode liked to sit at home, to read her books, to grow her roses. She liked to bake cookies for her coworkers on their birthdays. She never ventured to the observatory. Everything was well in the sky. The stars shone on. The rainbow road hadn't faded. It all was fine.

It wasn't an overly warm night, though humid, and to Marienrode it was sweltering. Beads of sweat rolled down her spine, beneath the blouse that drooped now where that morning it had been crisp. The heat baked itself off on the asphalt. No safe rest for the indigent tonight. No cool, shady place. She could feel the sticky heat through the rubber soles of her bargain penny-loafers. It crawled underneath her cardigan. Raised bumps along her spine.

No, the thing raising bumps along her spine was a sense that she was being followed. Marienrode walked faster, and faster, but her shoes were new and too large. One slipped off and she stopped, turning, to gather it. That was when she saw it: a monster.

She gasped one rattling breath. On the rainbow road, there had been warriors to save her. Even if they failed, they'd tried. Here there was nothing. Here there was only herself in the darkness.

Another breath. In. Out. Marienrode dropped her purse and screamed.

Babylon had been a block or two away, tracking the youma but not closely - he'd only just sensed it a moment before, and thought he had time before it got into any kind of trouble. The scream that ripped through the night went a long way to prove him wrong about that, and the knight took off, leaping between rooftops so quickly that he left a spray of gravel in his wake.

As he ran, he sensed another order signature closing in. Good, thought Babylon. Help would be welcome - this youma felt big, at least from this distance. He was certain that as he closed on it, he'd get a better sense of its power level.

Babylon finally arrived at the right alley and dropped down, landing close behind the senshi. He looked quickly from the youma to the woman - she looked rattled, her purse either abandoned or thrown, but she would probably be okay. The senshi... well, it had been a really long time, but one did not simply forget Castor.

"Yeah," he said, calling his lantern to hand. "Come on over here and get a piece of us."

That should work, right? Transcendence being extra tasty to youma and all that.

Nights like these made Zircon regret powering up to a fur-lined jumpsuit.

The captain's glamour offered some sort of relief against what would otherwise be a stifling case of heatstroke, but there was no mistaking her for a civilian in this weather, making her patrol routes even more furtive than usual. Being an officer of rank meant little to her when she knew there were others with even more power and a desire to kill on the other side, and without an accompanying agent at her side she knew to be careful. These streets weren't safe for a host of Chaos, and she had no desire to die this night.

She felt the signal flare of power signals a few blocks over, followed by the shrill peal of a scream, and slowed her nightly sprint to a halt, reaching out with her senses to get a better feel for the situation. An eternal and fully-fledged Knight versus a single youma didn't seem like much of a battle worth intercepting, but if she could keep her distance then perhaps it was an encounter worth observing.

Curling her shoulders inward (as if that would somehow lessen the aura Zircon herself emitted), she slunk over her current roost and dropped into the pit of the alleyway, sticking close to the shadows for protection. Her eyes scanned over the figures in blue, recognizing each in turn with an impassive stare, and then looked to the victim, a wilting figure in the shadow of a beast. Zircon would have dismissed the woman entirely, had she not begun to glow, blossoming a small aura of her own as her clothes shimmered and changed.

She let out a soft exhale, enraptured by the light and color. So that's what the change looks like for Order. She'd seen it for herself in the dim visions of a future that wasn't to be, but to watch this girl unfold into a Page before her very eyes was simply fascinating.

From a purely scientific perspective, of course.

"Castor and Babylon sighted at the location on my mark," Zircon murmured into her crystal device, slowly stepping backwards as far as she dare go while keeping line of sight with the fledgling Page. "Unidentified page as well, appears to be newly awakened and perhaps recruitable. Requesting backup, will disengage if spotted." The youma before them was one of the larger ones Zircon had seen--it would take even a team of them a few precious moments to dispatch it. Perhaps by then assistance would be on its way.

Well s**t. s**t to the fan, s**t to the floor, s**t to the sky and everything you loved and adored. If it wasn't one thing it was another. A powerful youma was one thing, and between himself and a knight, it would be easy pickings. But toss in a new knight? A defenseless, (arguable), fresh page with no experience against a youma with not one but an agent on the fringes? Well damn now things just got bad. Hell in a hand basket he just wanted a simple rescue was that too much to ask for.

How much had they seen and, was this their youma? If so he'd need to be mindful. "Yeah, chaos isn't hard to miss. Come on out captain!" Castor would take the knight at his word. Most of the time, he just considered all agents on the same level- weaker than him.

"Don't you know you're in the presence of royalty? It's very rude to not introduce yourself and bow. Or did your queen never teach your lot about manners and how to treat nobility of other nations.. or empires?"

Erythrite had been initially reluctant to respond to the call for assistance, because, well, frankly, surely someone else would. Even in the context of her new duties as a member of the Intelligence branch, running in to rescue someone was Not Her Division. Never mind that her actual care for basically anyone else in the Negaverse was practically nil. She was watching it destroy her family and friends - why should she feel affection for the organization? Besides, tangling with Castor seemed particularly unwise. Alex had described what the Prince of Hail and his brother had done.

Erythrite had no desire to end up a splat on a warehouse wall, thank you very much.

But she could feel the auric balance around her, and it was so utterly tilted out of the poor Captain's favor that it seemed a horrible thing not to help. As much as she despised the Negaverse, leaving another human being to die was something she wasn't sure she could forgive herself for. So she diverted, and spoke quietly into her communicator.

"Captan Erythrite, coming to assist. We'll still be a bit outgunned, but two is better than one." She bounced from roof to roof, and unlike Zircon, she didn't bother using the alleyway, instead vaulting off the nearest rooftop and landing herself (rather gracefully, if she did say so herself) next to the other Captain.

"My goodness," she said, calling one of her fans to her hand and fluttering it at herself, careful to keep the backside facing away from the Knight of Mercury and the Eternal Senshi. "Isn't this a tangle."

Present herself as delicate and nonthreatening. The less they thought of her, the more surprised they'd be when her fans struck with the weight of steel.

"But look at you," and she turned her attention to the Page. "Barely in this magic mess a minute and you're already doing big things. Such incredible potential."

Babylon frowned as the pair of captains emerged from the shadows. He'd found Zircon to be reasonable in the past - but that was before everyone had had their strange dreams. Perhaps she remembered Mistral's future betrayal, or Babylon's part in it as Mistral's sponsor. Perhaps her aborted time as Zoji La soured her against him.

None of these things explained why she was so boldly courting a newly awakened page - and in the presence of himself and Castor, no less. "She's been watching," he said to Castor, holding his lantern out. In another moment, he thought, perhaps he would need to call his magic forth. Hands where I can see them and no sudden movements. "She must have seen her awaken."

Now that - that could be dangerous. To be perfectly honest, he knew what needed to be done here. Zircon and the other captain knew too much. They needed to be killed, but Babylon had never taken a life before and he wasn't sure he wanted to start now. It would be easier with someone I didn't know. With someone I didn't want to save.

"Stay away from them," he called to the Page. "They're dangerous. We'll handle this. And then we'll make certain you get home safely."

"You could be Zoji La," said Babylon, lantern flaring. "Or you could die here. It's your choice, really."

Zircon acknowledged Erythrite's presence with a small glance as she jumped into the limelight. She had hoped Castor's name would have drawn bigger numbers, perhaps a general or two, but simply having someone else at her side was some small measure of comfort, like bringing a frilly parasol to ride out a hurricane. Besides, the other Captain seemed to hold herself with greater presence and poise, which gave Zircon the chance to slip back into her natural position as 'second-in-command'. Plotting and scheming and making observations were all things she could readily do, but not if she needed to be making speeches as well.

"A tangle indeed," she muttered lowly, hoping to keep out of earshot of the knight and senshi. It wouldn't do for their opponents to hear the insecurity in her voice.

And then her world was flooded in blue light, and Zircon grimaced in pain, the lantern's brilliance searing blind spots into her vision. She looked to Babylon from under her hands, as if that might block some of the light from coming through, but as he delivered his ultimatum, her expression wavered.

"I don't like either of those options," Zircon called back, a strange energy seeping into her bones the longer she stood in the lantern's glow. It churned in her stomach and bubbled forth, dredging up the horrible truths she imprisoned deep within. Rolling sands, the bite of a warm summer wind. "I can't be Zoji La," she added, her voice cracking as she clutched for her chest, "I was never meant to be Zoji La, or it would have called for me, wouldn't it? The Negaverse took me when no one else would. You can't ask me to leave that."

The pain in her eyes turned to stark confusion, and suddenly she put a hand over her mouth, aghast at the words she'd just confessed in such company. She hadn't said as much to anyone since the strange dreams began, and now that the words were out in the open she found she could no longer dismiss them as a simple smoke and mirrors trick in her dreams. Whatever visions she'd seen had been real, at least in one iteration of reality, and that was a horrifying enough notion on its own.

But those were considerations for another day, when she wasn't trying to woo a Page in the presence of White Moon royalty. She fumed silently under the cover of her hand as Castor went on about their idiocy, and quickly lost the will to sit by and hold her tongue. "Raze the city and you'd be killing thousands of innocents, not to mention the collateral among your own people," Zircon snarled, her cheeks flushed in rage, her hands shaking in fear. She kept her eyes on Castor warily, but motioned for Bolton, gesturing for her to come closer. "This is what the White Moon stands for, this is how senshi posture and preen about with power they don't deserve. Come home with us, Bolton, before this conqueror decides he wants to do something rash."

Bolton stepped back and away from them all, until her shoulders hit the brick exterior of one of the small bookstores that were so endemic to the area. Rather than finding that store of inner calm, the way she had the last time she was trapped between two equally terrible modes of death, she found nothing but a black, gaping hole. Nothing but terror inside.

She looked at Babylon, threatening death so smoothly. She looked at Castor, who wanted to raze the city. In the light of the magic, she blurted, "But I live here."

The threat was clear. Babylon and Castor were the threat here. But those auras, the ones emanating from the two women, those had been the auras of the murderers. I'm twenty-seven, she thought. Not a child. Don't talk to me that way.

Bolton took a step away, towards the pair of women. It was that step that sealed her fate, in the end.