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Anakeion was, as was her wont, ******** around mercilessly. So what was wrong with that? She'd done a pretense of a patrol tonight and she could get home faster if she stayed powered up instead of back into Amaris -- and aside from drunks getting handsy just because she looked like a Sexy Halloween costume (which...happened less in March, but it still happened, and her plans for St. Patrick's Day didn't include powering up at all - mostly they included friendship and a few minor instances of underage drinking, also smearing green facepaint all over her sister (before the drinking, of course)), there were no real problems as long as she was paying enough attention to sense auras. What were the odds of someone being smart enough to specifically stalk her and power up just to punch a Page? She was nothing, on the cosmic scale of things, but --

she should have hedged her bets a little further, shouldn't she, was her thought in retrospect.

Normally, Chrysocolla had better things to do, but she was tired and simultaneously on the rush of a lot of coffee, and ******** it she'd just sleep in tomorrow. She got away with a lot, really, because she was a dutiful Eternal and the staff all basically knew, and while she wouldn't do anything like ordering them around just because they might have been Lieutenants and Captains - they were still her teachers! - they'd cover for her when she was nursing bruises or didn't have time to complete an assignment.

Tonight was a night where she was angry. She was so, so angry, and she wanted to rip the hair out of someone's head until it littered the ground, she wanted to take someone's wrist and pull -- but she was just Poppy right now, and that's how she'd discovered Anakeion, brainlessly chitchatting away with a man running a gyros stand. She'd never seen a Knight of Castor before, and, well: if this wasn't a Knight, she'd power up and know immediately.

But she powered up, and that glittering aura was still there like a brainfreeze, and Chrysocolla gritted her teeth and smiled real wide as she swept around the corner to Anakeion, who didn't seem to be letting on that anything was wrong. "Sarah, you're supposed to be home by nine, mom's getting worried," she chided, taking the Page by the wrist and pulling with deceptive strength.

Oh s**t oh s**t oh s**t, Anakeion thought, pasting a weary smile on her face as the Corrupt pulled at her, barely not tugging her off her feet -- only going with her made it look any less suspicious, and she did, and --

The moment they'd turned the corner, out of earshot, Chrysocolla gripped Anakeion's wrist almost tight enough to crack it, and shoved her backwards against the wall. "You should know better," she snarled, and her voice was daggers, glittering in the light, "you should have stayed home."

She didn't get a chance to say much more, because Anakeion leaned back and punched her in the face with her free hand, shaking the formerly-clasped hand wildly as if that'd make it feel a little better. "Crazy b***h, what the <********> -" but Chrysocolla was on her again, her nose bleeding and her eyes dull, reaching up for her throat with one hand and the other going for her chest; and she kicked and spit but the Eternal was stronger than she looked. A lot stronger. And she was pinned straight against the wall, and she couldn't breathe -

"Stay still," Chrysocolla breathed, and there might have been tenderness in her eyes, once. Whatever was there instead, it was nothing like regret at all. "It hurts less."

The tiara hurt Chrysocolla more than it should have, absolutely; she winced and recoiled back a foot, biting her lip, and her focus fizzed out enough that her hand went from halfway into Anakeion's chest to blindly grabbing at open skin. (Her eyes had gone real bleary, with the hit, dazed and uncertain. Nothing like the child she might have been under her fuku; more like someone's half-idea of a monster that looked like a girl but was forgetting how. There was no distinct focus there, only that she could hurt Anakeion and she wanted to make the young woman hurt.) Sweat beaded down her forehead, and she palmed at her ear blindly, whimpering under her breath - it looked like some sort of migraine.

Her head was throbbing, pulsing; her vision was -- she didn't know. Something was wrong, something hurt so badly that the only way she could focus was to imagine how good it would be to go back to standing - not attacking as much as she was blindly scrabbling at Castor's neck, clawing at him

Anakeion waved and mouthed 'Hi boo.' It was really most of what she could do, considering there was a hand around her neck - and when he tackled Chrysocolla to the ground (and eugh, she felt kinda unclean now) she stumbled back and forth, gasping for air, clenching her fingers to try and summon her faux-weapon to her hand. It wouldn't come, why wouldn't it come, not that it'd help but she wanted the weight in her hand; wanted the familiar, wanted to help.

"No," Anakeion said quietly, raspy, her voice still finding itself -- "no. No, I'm not -" and she coughed and winced and gasped, half-doubled over -- "I'm not leaving, I'm not going to be useless - I'm not -" there were hot and angry tears in her eyes, blurring her vision, and she wiped them away.

Chrysocolla wasn't rational. She would think back on this, later, and know she hadn't been rational, that she should have run as soon as she was capable; against a Royal she was nothing without the drive to break and kill and maim. And she didn't have that, not really, not naturally. But her vision was shifting blobs of color, and her nails came away from Castor's neck red - her breathing was horribly staggered, desperate, gasping. She kicked and pushed at him, half-blind but trying to strip his armor away so she could -- so she could -- so she could reach they'd be so proud they'd be so proud --

"Get -- get the ******** away from him, you crazy b***h!" Anakeion roared, her pillar finally summoning to her hand, because ******** anything logical, ******** that, she wasn't going to be useless in a real fight and have someone else get hurt for her -- but it was different, in her hands. Heavier, longer, glass. And very suddenly, like a wave of cold air from her wrists - to her shoulders - up and down her torso, everything was different.



After all, she wasn't Anakeion Page anymore.

Anakeion gripped her staff in her hands like she'd been born to do it, and the ice crackled from under her fingers all the way up her forearms, and she felt strong (and Amynta crackled in her veins, the vision of the staff smashing into a monster until it laid still with a cracked carapace she'd had once at her wonder, and the huff she'd had of see, that's how you do it, children. So very strong. So very capable).

Chrysocolla wasn't coherent enough, not in these ten seconds, to notice a difference -- but for a second she stilled, one hand reaching out for Castor's wing, lips gaped slightly open. But then it was gone again, and she fought like a wild animal, teeth and nail.

"Amynta -" the rest of the thought is lost, but she remembers, she remembers. Castor's eyes, and her staff bloodied and darkened with soot, and the ground - still-fragile - cracking as she swung the staff down, asymmetrical, the cracks spread. It was for training, but she'd been too late again, too late to -

"Anakeion," had been someone else's rephrasing, in another memory. "Run." The snow had driven it all to white and white and white -

There was a grim look in Anakeion's eyes as she brought her ice-cased staff into Chrysocolla's ribs and heard no crack, not yet, because even as confused as the corrupt was she'd still tried to roll away when Castor pulled away. But Chrysocolla's eyes unfocused and she gasped, and then Anakeion came at the girl with her collar of bruises again - and that time, there was a popping noise that felt like it took the whole alley up, and if the squire felt bad nothing in her face showed it at all.

Chrysocolla retched but nothing came out but air, and she scrabbled at the ground to pull herself to her feet - her eyes half-focused, cloudy with pain; her gloves catching and tearing on loose stones, leaving scraps of black fabric behind. She stumbled backwards, her face colorless, clutching desperately at her side - trying not to move too much, trying to keep the rib (fracture, her mind supplied, one or two or three, sharp pain) in one place so it wouldn't need to be reset -- not the hospital, no, if she could just focus long enough for the infirmary -- but. Not yet. Not yet.

She looked at Castor with clear eyes, for a second, and she looked terrified and tiny and in pain; so, so confused about what she was doing and where she was, like she was drowning.

She backed away.

And Anakeion stepped forward, her knuckles clenched-white even under the layer of frost. "Get out of here," she said, voice surprisingly level. "If you don't, you'll die."

Anakeion hugged her prince right back, brow furrowed, patting him on the back as she slumped a little into him as soon as the imminent threat was gone: she'd been so terrified, with Chrysocolla's hand on her throat, and now that she was in no worry of death it was all rushing back. She coughed a couple of times, trying to return full motion to her throat -- oh well. It'd happen eventually, wouldn't it?

"Hey," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "I didn't run into that, alright? ******** -" cough, cough - "stalked me, I was just buying street food in costume." She ran a hand up his neck, sympathetic, not caring her fingers came away bloody. "You need to get that taken care of, first, though. Then we can talk about my decisions. I'm not the one bleeding right now."