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Of all the faces that frequented the halls of the Negaverse HQ, the young lieutenant's was generally not among them. Though no one would claim that Domeykite was good at his job, there were several people that could attest to the fact that he was exceptionally good at avoiding it without getting caught. For years, off and on, he'd done nothing but half assedly update a database and check in for the occasional energy quota fulfillment. With larger numbers and fewer authoritative powers, it had seemed like his task of avoidance was getting easier and easier..

Until one poorly timed run-in with the wrong General had brought his facade to a screeching halt. And so here he was, staring at the door that separated him from the holding cells seldom put to use. Honestly, he'd gotten lost three times just trying to find it. Why couldn't the negaverse just keep their prisoners hostage in an abandoned warehouse like everyone else?

One long, irritated sigh escaped his lips through gritted teeth and he pushed forward, shouldering the door open with his lanky frame. It rocked back on its hinges and slammed loudly into the wall on the other side, beginning an eerie echo that trickled down the endless corridor, bouncing from cell to lonely cell. The vibration of metal on stone sunk into his bones and crawled across his skin, raising goosebumps across his pale flesh beneath the fur lined uniform he seemed so loath to wear. There was going to be no sneaking up on whoever this punk was now, it seemed.

His heavy boots clunked against the pavers beneath his feet, followed by the soft 'scritch' of pants that always seemed too long, no matter how much he grew. He peered into each cell, one by one, looking for any sign of life. There were empty, cold chambers as far as the eye could see. Some were barren, filled only with the glimmering crystals that permeated every inch of the subspace like a parasite, while others held chains bolted down to the floor. A few, here and there, sported what he could only assume was a bed, though it looked more like a table for as much comfort as it probably gave.

On and on he walked, glancing in cell after cell, until at last he saw him. Well, he assumed it was a he. There were tumbles of bright red hair and what appeared to be a tattered uniform, though it lacked that slutty quality most of their female senshi counterparts seemed to sport.

"You Ochre?" He asked, with no formality. He squinted at the darkness again before simply sighing and reaching down to unzip his pouch, pulling out a lighter he used on a nearby sconce. After a few unsuccessful clicks, the flame finally trickled to life, tossing the cold, empty hall in a flickering glow. It wasn't perfect, but it was better.

"I brought you some food and stuff." His other hand rose to eye level, showing off the overstuffed cloth bag he'd knicked from his roommate's supply of 'earth conscious' grocery totes. In the dim light, a cartoon dinosaur was hugging a smiling globe. It seemed utterly out of place with both the lanky, green-eyed lieutenant and the stark hallway he stood in but he seemed pretty serious. If delivering groceries to an outcast was the only thing that kept him from becoming his neighbor down here, so be it.

"Am I not supposed to talk?" he countered immediately, one thick brow raising as he studied the man who, apparently, had been living in isolation for the majority of his stay with Hotel Chaos. The look in his eyes was distant as he weighed his options - to stay and talk, or go out and be commanded to do something new and potentially more difficult. After a moment of consideration, he just shrugged.

"I guess it doesn't matter. If they lock me down here with you that would be counterproductive to what they're trying to accomplish with the both of us, now wouldn't it? You'd have someone to talk to and I, well, I'd be right back to doing exactly what they stopped me from doing in the first place." Which was nothing. Domeykite was so good at doing nothing at all. With the comment, he'd given away whatever secret there was to his part in this mission - he wasn't here to ******** Ochre at all. In fact, it seemed that his assignment was a punishment on its own.

He held the bag closer to the bar to measure the size against the opening the cell allowed. It definitely wasn't going to fit, which meant he needed to pass the things through one by one. That earned a grimace, but no spoken complaint. Instead of answering the prisoner about whether or not he was going to stay, he slumped down onto the cold, hard floor and began rummaging through the contents he had brought with him.

"They didn't tell me what the hell to bring you since they're trying that domineering silent stare thing with their authority this month," he spoke as he rummaged around, pulling out item after item and sliding it through the bars at the base of the cell door. There was some sort of sub, the biggest handheld bottle of water he could find, a bag of chips and some kind of fruit cup. The assorted items hadn't really been for Ochre's benefit. After all, he didn't know the guy and his health was the least of his concerns. He had just assumed that the more he brought now, the less he would have to bring at a later date.

He pushed the bag aside as he drew out his last item - a giant box of what appeared to be nerds, rattling inside the cardboard like the world's clunkiest rain stick. He pulled the tab open with an ease that only came from practice and tipped back his head to pour a disgustingly large amount into his open mouth. There was rarely a time that Domeykite didn't have a cavity's worth of sugar on him.

"So whatdya do?" he asked around a mouthful of candy coated bliss.

"The bars?"

Domeykite's eyes swept up over the cell door as if he were seeing it in a new light at Ochre's panic, though there was nothing that hinted at an electrical charge. It was a mundane cell set in a mundane wall in a mundane corridor. The observation caused his lips to press into a thin, tense line - an obvious sign of disgust. As a lover of technology and all things first world, he could understand the sense and science behind currents and circuits. But magic? It was sporadic and ever changing, as different from senshi to senshi as it was from faction to faction. He didn't elaborate on whatever had given him the sudden case of stink face, but chose instead to just ignore the conversation entirely in favor of watching the starving man trapped behind the magical barrier.

As Ochre spoke, Domeykite listened, a rare feat in and of itself. With the knowledge that the bars of the cells were charged with some kind of magic, he chose to lean his back up against the stone partitions between the cells opposite the lonely prisoner.

"Yeah, you're just going to have to learn that your personal opinions on the moon Senshi don't really matter. Well, none of your personal opinions really ******** matter at all anyway." A shrug rolled his fur-lined shoulders before he tipped back his box of sugary goodness and dumped another mouthful of candy into his gaping maw. His teeth were already tinted purple at the edges but it was hard to tell in the darkness and he had little concern for it besides. His parents had great dental insurance. As he chewed the crunchy goodness down into a digestible, gritty slosh, he crossed one long leg over the other at the ankle and leaned his head back to stare up at the nothingness above him.

"I'm probably not supposed to be giving you any god damn advice if they're trying to starve you into behaving but I don't think they'll expend the energy to punish me for talking too much." A long, irritated sigh passed his lips, hinting at a weariness his age didn't suggest. As a lieutenant, one would assume he hadn't been in service to the ranks of chaos very long, but the truth was that he had been doing this so long that he didn't remember what if felt like to be his own person anymore. He knew he was never getting out of it, no matter how hard he did or didn't try.

"Once you sign your soul over to the devil, she owns it." His gaze dropped back onto the corrupt where he sat on the other side of the bars, so close but entirely unreachable. "You do what they tell you to and don't make waves or you'll be punished far, far worse than this. This is child's play in comparison to some of the s**t I've seen over the years. Your little contusions," he pointed with his free hand at the very same marks Ochre had just drawn attention to, "those aren't even the worst things you need to worry about. There's a senshi that looks like she's going to fall apart at any moment and she loves it. She's always talking about the glory of Metallia and how sacrifice is the path to righteousness or some insane s**t like that."

That same shrug rolled his shoulders again, though he did cast a small glance around him, as if he expected a General-Queen to burst out of the wall kool-aid man style.

"These people will ******** with your brain in ways you can't imagine."

Domeykite watched as the man devoured the sandwich he'd brought him, scarfing it down like he'd been given the food of the gods. Although he had very few opinions on non-sugar based foods past their requirement for sustenance, he had a good guess at just how little he'd been eating if that sub was so appealing. They definitely weren't taking care of the corrupt at all - but that wasn't a surprise. He'd known officers that were essentially homeless and very few of their comrades cared enough to change that. In the beginning, those had been the souls that were the easiest to corrupt.

"They're never going to ask you those things, it's not a job. It's life." He set his box of sugary goodness down on the rough floor of the hallway next to him, carefully, so it didn't topple over. With his head leaned back against the wall, his eyes rested blankly on the shabby corrupt inside his holding cell, studying him. Domeykite didn't trust him any more than he assumed the senshi trusted him. The Negaverse had never given him any reason to trust anyone in it. "You belong to them, now and forever. There are very few ways out." Death was the easiest, and the other? Well, even Domeykite wasn't brave enough to plant the idea of 'purification' in a senshi's head. If Ochre had been put down here for trying to stop a corruption, Domeykite certainly wasn't going to entertain the idea of what might happen to him for admitting that the reverse was possible. The senshi were always the loose cannons and purification was absolute treason.

"You'll probably find out sooner or later, the good General Ascendant Alkaid tends to seek our your type." He waved a hand at Ochre for emphasis as he spoke, carrying a sarcastic respect in his tone that would have earned him a slap in the face had she been around to hear it. He ran that same hand through his hair, pulling the unruly locks back in one sweep before they bounced back and settled into the same haphazard style - a nervous gesture, for all that he appeared outwardly calm. "She hates the White Moon Senshi with the fire of a thousand suns, though I don't know why. I don't talk to her, or ask questions, or look her in the eye. She makes my ******** skin crawl. You can feel it from miles away." He rubbed his hand over the uniform where it covered his forearms, as if the mere thought of her had peppered him in goosebumps.

"Maybe she just knows something I don't, but I'm not down for the game she's playing. Don't take her up on any offers."

His gaze drifted from the corrupt senshi to the door he'd entered from, slowly taking in the hallway and its complete lack of escape as he let his eyes travel the line of cells. It was such a medieval, lifeless form of architecture without a single piece of modern technology to be found. It made him uneasy - he was surprised there weren't skeletons left in chains for dramatic effect.

"This is kind of ******** up though, I have to admit." A resigned sigh escaped him and he looked back at Ochre. He might regret it, but the senshi was the first person he'd met in a long, long time that wasn't drinking the kool-aid without asking what went in it first. He couldn't be sure that it would last, but for now he couldn't leave a sane person down here alone. The idea of caring about the well being of someone other than himself was a foreign idea but these were cruel and unusual circumstances. "Is there anything I can fit through these bars that you might want?"

"Food and books."

He nodded and shrugged, as if that wasn't anything too terribly hard, though if he had admitted it out loud - he didn't own a single book that hadn't been acquired for a greater purpose. The lanky man much preferred video games to sitting down and reading, but he couldn't very well pass a piece of electronics (not even a handheld) through the bars without it being sucked dry of energy, he'd bet. There probably wasn't even a place to charge one among the old, magically fitted dungeon. That idea alone made him queasy as he tried to picture being stuck down here, tied off from every game and community he prided himself on. He thought it might kill him faster than starving, but he had always been a privileged thing.

"You're right, is sucks a**," the sigh that passed his lips was a sound of disgust irritation, but didn't seem necessarily directed at the Senshi himself. He'd lived through various fluxes of the Negaverse with different leaders pushing and pulling and warping the institution to benefit the time. He understood the need in a way that he understood why Horde leaders were so ruthless, or why Darth Vader was so fond of chokehold-first, ask questions later. It was a necessary evil to keep a military machine running and in a time when Nights and Royals were more rampant than their own ranks, it was hard to crack the fist on loyalty alone.

But he really ******** hated being responsible.

"I guess you can't really blame anyone for not wanting to ******** get stuck down here with you or risking their neck to give you a little peace of mind." It sounded like a 'but' was going to be tacked on, or an apology on behalf of the general populace of soldiers, but it didn't come. "I can find some books or maybe even newspapers. If they're a little outdated, they probably wouldn't be too pissed." Maybe. There was a small purse of his lips that hinted at hesitance and a certain degree of uncertainty, but he'd said what he'd said and he would do his best. He always was a sucker for the underdog, even if that was primarily in a pixel-based environment.

He drew his knees up slightly and leaned forward, draping one arm across them and dropping another mouthful of nerds into his mouth. As much as he loved candy, he certainly wasn't sugar coating the situation.

"Any food requests?"

Domeykite was halfway through another mouthful of candy when Ochre admitted that he didn't like his own favorite food, at all. One thick brow quirked in question, like Ochre had just told him he believed in three headed dogs from hell, but he declined to comment on how ridiculous not liking candy was. Just as well - Domeykite would never actually bring anyone else candy. He wasn't inclined to share.

"Don't apologize so much." His tongue ran across his lip, lapping up the remaining bits of gritty, purple sugar. He could have used his own bottle of water right about then, but he at least had the decency not to whine about it in front of Ochre. "It's not like I hate it down here, I just.. underestimated how boring it is." He didn't have to elaborate to a kid asking for condom advertisements as a past time. "Plus I have a raid to be at in a half hour. They kinda," he waved a hand dismissively, "caught me off guard and all with this s**t today."

The nerd box was stuffed back into the zippered pouch on his leg and then, with a small groan, he pushed himself back up to his towering height. One hand leaned against the stone wall to steady himself and the other raked through his disheveled hair, doing absolutely nothing to fix or change it, but simply showcasing his bad habit.

"Next time I'll bring some s**t to do, we'll talk. Don't go crazy before I get back down here, alright? Or at least, if you're gonna go crazy, make sure it's the interesting kind." He smirked at his own joke, though he knew it wasn't in great taste to make fun of such a highly possible outcome - people went insane in solitary all the time in real prisons, let alone in a magically charged dungeon. At the very least, he'd promised to come back and be entertaining. Ochre didn't really know him, but Domey wasn't often the type to do anything out of the goodness of his heart. It was something.

"I'll be back."

He offered a half-hearted shrug and wave as he turned, heading back to the door that he'd entered through. Truth be told, the whole idea of being thrown in the dungeon for insubordination was nauseating. They hadn't been wrong to give him the assignment.