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Inwardly, Levi was fuming. Outwardly, Domeykite was leering.

“That wasn’t very polite, now was it?”

The woman he held against the wall of the old warehouse seemed alarmed - her eyes were wide and her mouth was parted around a scream his fingers had choked into silence. There was a deep, strained sound of air as she struggled to fill her lungs through her nostrils, but it was enough. She could breathe.

Domeykite laughed at the open panic written in her eyes, driven by a starseed he had already consumed and, probably, a little unhinged over five hours of sleep in the last four days. The woman, young and wearing tattered clothes, tried her best to swing a hand at his torso but she didn’t have the leverage to do a thing apart from make him smirk at her. He took the punch to his ribs and shrugged his shoulders for her benefit, just to show her how hopeless she was.

“My job is to clean up worthless humans such as yourself. It seems like I’m probably doing you a favor anyway, right?”

Maybe she would have protested, but his other hand broke through the subspace in her chest and caught her starseed with a veteran’s skill. He didn’t taunt her any more - rats were only fun until they were cornered. As he pulled his wrist free, he saw one last moment of fear and confusion in her eyes before she collapsed at his feet, doomed to fade away into nothing without her soul.

The lieutenant dressed in varying greens and furs turned away from her as he inspected the glowing indigo gem held between his fingers, watching it glimmer as he tilted it this way and that.

“I hate pickpockets,” he said aloud to no one but himself, beginning to just walk away and leave her, forgotten. There was a fine line between revenge and justice and for Domeykite it was clearly blurred.

The lieutenant's bright eyes swung from the starseed he was admiring in his palm and out, toward the man that had arrived so clearly unnoticed. The sudden unease that swept him was due not only in part to the usual anxiety he felt beneath the roll of a General's aura but, too, in part to the automatic realization that he had completely failed to assess his surroundings. He was still a lieutenant, sure, but he had been party to this war long enough that he shouldn't have been so careless.

Inwardly, he began chastising himself, even as his palm curled around the starseed protectively and dropped to his side. He was dreadfully low on his own energy reserves, making it imperative that he had the back-up.

"No," he began slowly, letting his eyes drift over the General's face - the very young General's face. Young or not, Domeykite paid him the same amount of stiff respect he reserved for Labyrinthite and Xenotime; high ranking officers made him uneasy after his own experiences. It made him suddenly suspicious of the phrasing and, consequently, put him immediately on guard. "Just a civilian that jumped me on my way home from work."

A slender hand reached into one of his uniform's many zipped pockets and procured an old, leather wallet that looked slightly worn around the edges. It was old and, in his honest but possibly superstitious opinion, lucky. He waved it for affect before shoving it back in the pocket he'd reserved for it temporarily. That was proof enough.

"Domeykite," came his return answer, "and we haven't. I'm not much of a social butterfly."

It was one of those uncomfortable moments where Domeykite wasn't sure if he was going to be scolded or if the interaction he was about to have was an honest, normal person to normal person chat. It was so hard to judge from the first moment with a higher rank; it always seemed like they each had two personalities (at least). There was undoubtedly the person they were, before the war took them, and then the soldier that had already discovered their reason to fight. The mossy-haired man chewed at the inside of his lip as he realized he was tired to the point of a wandering mind and found himself hard in a fight against the urge to dig into his pocket and drag out a cigarette. Exhausted and weary, he was sure that he looked every bit as awful as he felt.

"Is this going to be a problem?" His thumb jutted backward at the woman where she lay sprawled, half in the shadow of the alley mouth. Too tired to keep dancing around a white elephant, he opted to just point at it.

Relief swept through Domeykite as he realized that maybe, just maybe, Jet wasn't of the homicidal variety of General that seemed to be plaguing his life. It made the energy he was expending on his guard suddenly available again and he relaxed gladly, letting his shoulder shrug just a little with the motion.

"I'm alright. Her right hook might have split the inside of my cheek, though?"

With no reason to expect the younger man to strike out at him now, he did the polite thing and took several languid steps forward toward Jet until he could close the distance between them. It let him step a bit more into the light of the old street lamps, making him seem a little less like an old comic book villain. It also illuminated the dull gleam of blood where it had pooled at the bottom of his teeth and threatened to spill over the cusp of his lip on the right side. His tongue touched his cheek gingerly and he frowned, immediately - now that the adrenaline was beginning to wane a little he could definitely feel the dull throb. Having tasted the blood already, he just brought up the cuff of his uniform and wiped at the corner of his lip.

"I'm just tired and she was lucky."

It wasn't anything that wouldn't heal on its own though he supposed it would ******** suck to light a cigarette now. Smoke and open wounds had a bit of a sting.

"Thanks for coming to check on me, though, I guess?"

It felt awkward to be thanking anyone for coming to his rescue but especially a General that he didn't know. Domeykite's experience within the Negaverse hadn't been filled with gentle reassurances or genuine concern. He just stuffed his hands into his pockets, ignoring his bloodied sleeve and swelling cheek.

The lieutenant couldn't help the small narrowing of his eyes no matter how hard he tried to keep his face usually smug face straight - he was tired, and the effort to fight his instincts and maintain his nerve was too high a cost. Domeykite's interactions with generals had rarely been quite as understanding as this one and, in his sleep deprived state of mind, he didn't readily believe that anyone could care quite so much about a lieutenant.

Especially one that they didn't know.

"I, uh, yea.."

The lanky man wasn't quite as quick on the uptake as he would have liked to be, but he muttered the words out just before he was forced to turn his head to the side and spit. As his hand wiped the bloodied spittle from his lip and dropped back to his side, he managed what sounded like a grumbled apology. The adrenaline was starting to wear off and, consequently, the sting in his cheek was growing ever more persistent; he was near total exhaustion and bordering on crankiness.

"You really don't have to do that?" Domey had very little sense of pride with his Negaverse career but he did, ultimately, fear punishment. If this was a test, he wasn't going to fail it. Unless it wasn't a test. Then, the little, selfish voice in the back of his mind said gently, what if?, and he added: "Unless you really want to, I guess, but I'm not.. I would just finish tomorrow if I had to?"

Domey let both shoulders slump a little just to ease the strain in his neck as he considered the other, younger man. He seldom felt completely incapable of judging someone and he wasn't sure if it was his lack of sleep or some quality that belonged to Jet. Maybe both? The hand he hadn't bloodied raised and finally rubbed at his tired eyes, obscuring the sight of the General so he didn't have to consider it anymore.

Domeykite didn’t have any reason not to trust Jet but his basic fear of all higher-ranking officers had his gut gnawing upon itself, threatening to consume what little reserve he had left in his tanks. Anxiety wasn’t worth passing out over and, in truth, he might not even be able to get home alone.

“No,” he admitted, shamefully, though he did his best to hide it. If he had to guess, he would have wagered that he had been a part of the army longer than the general being too kind to him at that moment. Not being able to teleport or enter the rift were both sore spots on his ambitious nature, even if he had little to no use of them with his ‘bare basic’ mentality. It just rubbed him the wrong way, was all.

“I guess that’s fair, though. I barely fought off a junkie so if one of those awful magical girls found me..”

His words trailed off under a shrug and he looked tiredly down the street in the direction of his apartment. Senshi could be anywhere - they didn’t lurk in the shadows and just haunt the local bars for foolish patrons. To be honest, apart from their overwhelming numbers and sometimes aggressive behavior toward the negaverse, he wasn’t entirely convinced to fight them beyond self preservation. It was less likely to be killed if he just avoided them completely.

He sighed, defeated, before he finally spoke.

“If you wouldn’t mind, General, my apartment building is on 10th and Freelou Ave. You can drop me off on 9th behind the old Sunoco.”

The hand curled around Jet’s arm tightened the moment he felt the first grip of teleportation take him, wrenching him about the middle with a cold death grip on his core. When he was redeposited on his feet in the mouth of the dusty alley, Domeykite’s teeth were grit to straining and he couldn’t help the look of annoyance that he shot at Jet - teleportation was his least favorite of all the Negaverse abilities.

Yet, whatever snap was poised on his tongue died the moment his lime eyes settled on Jet’s figure - swaying just slightly, even if he corrected himself.

s**t.

At once, the mossy haired man was conflicted. He would have never dared to tell Labyrinthite what to do but this gentler, younger kid reminded him a lot more of what the man used to be. He would have told Chase if he were pushing himself too hard, after all. Defeated by his own morality, he sighed and shoved both hands into his pockets, releasing his grip on the other man with a nervous gesture.

“Yeah, but - are you sure, uh, you’re alright to be out here?”

Inwardly, he was annoyed at having to second guess his openness with a superior just because they were a superior. ******** Negabullshit. He drew one hand out of his pocket and ran it up through his hair, ruffling the askew tresses up the back of his skull.

“I could get you some coffee or something, at least.”