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For Noctua, there was no energy draining tonight. She would work twice as hard tomorrow but... for right now... she would get as close to sleep as she dared. The din of the crowd around her was sufficient for drowning out... invasive thoughts as she loosened her grip on her imagination. The tide of darkness that ever threatened to overtake her ebbed and flowed with the excitement of the crowd. She could feel the bone chill of nightmare waters against her toes, tickling her with black tongues... she tried to ignore it. It was only her imagination, after all. Something in her brain not quite correct. Some doctors called it stress, other called it sleep apnea. Noctua never cared for a name. She cared for a cure. No one could give her one.

No one except Cinnabar.

The shadows around her took shapes she understood now, thanks to her. Once she understood them, she could fight them. She knew their names. Each youma birthed from the inky blackness of her nightmares had a weakness and she knew it. This knowledge made it easier to sleep. Morkhan was weak in the legs and could not run. Put distance between yourself and him. Arahk was vain, so flatter her. Yhenn was vicious, but rash. Think faster. Think harder. Live longer. She understood the youma that detested her but knew who she was. Knew whose she was. They would not harm her. This made something like sleep come easier to the sleepless senshi.

And it was almost upon her until the static charge of someone like Cinnabar shot up her back like a lightning bolt, sending her to her feet in an instant. Like Cinnabar but... different... somehow... she was drawn to it in a way unlike she was drawn to Cinnabar. Cinnabar was a light, forever humming and drawing her closer to its deadly luminescence but this... this was a call that resounded deep in her bones. This was every cell in her body reaching out to something so like herself that the molecules of her being longed to be merged... this was something so like her they may have been born of the same seed.

Noctua had never seen another corrupt senshi before. Not so... close. In passing, yes. As she hugged the shadows in the rift and above, the sailed past her like gray ships, never glancing her way. Their energy unfocused. Untamed. Untested. This senshi was... fundamentally different. But she kept her silence as close as she kept her shadows. With power came danger. She was weak, inexperienced, and still frightened of herself. If this man meant her harm... if he meant her harm then she would have no choice but to bleed.

As the new senshi advanced, Noctua retreated further into the steel spider web of the bleacher's scaffolding. Any obstacle between she and him was welcome. She didn't have anyone breathing down on her, but her own mentor had taught her to treat everything as an enemy -- a threat to her safety. If she couldn't take them down, that her only option was to flee or -- in this case -- make attack as difficult as possible. Maybe then her opponent would give up the fight. Still, as an added measure, Noctua drew her magic to her lips and held the spell on her tongue.

"I'm Noctua," she finally whispered after a long silence. "Of insomnia." The irony of her sphere never truly escaped her, but she felt it more keenly on the nights when she truly suffered from her own illness. Still, his kindness was not lost on her it was just... hard to translate. She halted her retreat at the feeling of it, though still poised to escape if need be.

And then his question. Did she need anything? Noctua could not stop the wry laughter that slid past her lips.

"Sleep," she answered simply, feeling all too keenly the weight of her waking nights. She felt like a shade, somewhere between this world and the next. How long had it been since her last night of sleep? Noctua couldn't recall. Still, she remained on high alert, very aware that this could have been a ploy to lower her guard. She had to be aware of what was happening, no matter how much it drained her.

"No, I don't need anything," she corrected finally. "I'm just... trying to get away."

If only it was only insomnia that haunted Noctua. She smiled wryly despite herself, ignoring the ink fingers tickling the back of her neck. She would give anything for it just to be nerves keeping her up at night or some nameless thing standing between her and sleep. But who would guess her particular affliction? Who even knew the name of her "illness" as her therapist called it. She hadn't even known that there was a title for her living nightmares until a few years ago. She had blindly hoped that having a name for the illness would give her power over it but... that had been a childish dream. The nightmares came stronger with a name to give them life. And she had breathed that life into them like cruel golems. She could hear their hollow footfalls when she was alone. Feel the rasp of their arms. Noctua would have killed for insomnia to have been her only problem when the sun went down.

Quota... Noctua had been slacking. She looked up at a booted ankle above her and sighed, reaching to siphon energy now that someone was watching. She supposed she should do her job, after all. Honestly, energy hadn't been the reason that she had come to the arena. But looking around now, it really was an easy gather. Ankles clad in canvas and leather surrounded her, making the flesh beneath numb to her light little fingers. Might as well...

"I've been... preoccupied," she confessed finally, drawing away once she had drained what she needed from the victim and paced towards Ochre to reach for another thickly booted ankle. "Nightmares have a habit of chasing me," she went on, sleeplessness preventing her from picking and choosing what she divulged, "but they tend to hide from others, so places like this protect me from them." The boot pulled away from her suddenly, but she didn't move to reclaim it. Instead she reached for another and drained there. "I've been told that stress makes sleep paralysis worse and well..." she made a grand gesture to herself, "I had thought that my affliction would be a boon to me now, but I can see that Chaos has taken advantage of that weakness." Anger bit at her voice as she spoke. "I haven't been able to sleep through the night since I was awakened. Nightmares are getting more corporeal. It's harder for me to tell what's real and what's not. I ran for miles from a youma that wasn't even there last week..."

If Noctua had been any more awake, she might have been able to quell the irritation welling in her stomach. And even if she couldn't do that, she would have been able to control herself a little better had she had at least an hour of sleep under her belt before she came out. But she didn't. So her expression melted into anger and a shadow fell hard over her face. How dare he. How dare this stranger presume to tell her what to do. Powerful though he may be, he was not her commanding officer and so had no place telling her what she should and should not be doing. It didn't even matter that her logical mind whispered that he was only trying to help. He was only giving suggestions to get healthier. Unfortunately for that mind and Ochre himself, that small voice was drowned out by the banshee screaming of her unchecked emotions.

"So you presume that since I am magical in nature all of my afflictions must also be magical," she hissed, drawing backward again?" There was nothing to filter her anger or the words that had been steeped in it. "Sleep paralysis is a natural condition exacerbated by stress," as though he should just know that off-handedly. "I haven't had a good night's sleep since puberty set in. And this," she gestured to herself, sweeping a hand over her front, "has only made it worse. Whatever it is inside of me, whatever they pumped into my soul has made my life ten thousand times worse. I haven't slept in days from the stress of all of this. Everything that I am expected to do. What kind of a righteous faction takes children from their beds -- "

She stopped suddenly, out of breath. It took her a moment to find energy again, having used it all in her little tantrum. When she came back to herself, her voice had softened.

"My commanding officer," she whispered. "My commanding officer wants nothing more to do with me." Addiction, Cinnabar had said. Something about starseeds and black outs. First Chaos had taken her sleep from her. Then it had taken the one thing she cared about on this side.

"But I suppose had Chaos not found me, then Order would have. Either way, I'd be like this." Noctua had felt it before, but she'd never really said it out loud. The truth of it, however, reignited the flame of her anger. This anger was different, somehow, than the one she had felt before. When Ochre had presumed to know her, it had been personal offense. A wildfire that blazed like the sun, but burned out just as quickly. This one felt... toxic. As it laid words on her tongue, Noctua tasted its bile and felt the venom sinking into her bones. "So the first thing that I'm going to do," she whispered, her voice her own but her words belonging to someone else, "is I'm going to rip the starseeds out of every single white moon Senshi that I can find." She approached him then, with soft, measured steps. "And then, when I am standing on a pile of rotting corpses, I am going to do the same to every wretched soul on this side." Closer now, close enough that he could see the dark bruises like black half-moons under her eyes. As she spoke, her voice grew louder and louder. "And then I'm going to burn this world and every noisy, wicked, vile, cancerous soul left within it," she slammed her hands against the metal scaffolding before her, clinging to the bars separating she and Ochre. "And then I am going to blessed sleep on the ashes."

Noctua reacted as though Ochre's hands were acid. Immediately, she wailed, wrenching back against his grip, but failing. The curse fo her affliction was an inherent weakness. But what she lacked in strength she made up for in sound, however drowned out it was by the cheering of the crowd. As she twisted and pulled against Ochre grip, her rage grew hotter. He was touching her. He was touching her. No one touched Noctua. She despised being touched. Her flesh was too sensitive. Everything was too sensitive. Her eyes, her ears, her skin, everything.

"I loved her," she wailed suddenly, slamming her whole body against the scaffolding before her, not knowing or not caring that people would feel the vibrations of her collision. "I would have burned the world for her. I would have died for her and she tossed me away like I was nothing to her!" Nevermind that Cinnabar had her reasons. Nevermind that, logically, they were good reasons. Nevermind that Cinnabar had passed her off to someone else equally as qualified to lead because she wanted to protect Noctua and the rest of her team. It didn't matter. Noctua slumped against the bars then, last stores of her physical energies gone. She still wouldn't sleep but she would no longer be able to hold herself upright for long periods of time. Her only option would be to teleport home and lay in bed, waiting for the shadows to overtake her until the sun rose once again.

"Tell them if you want. I don't care. They took my sleep and then they took Cinnabar from me." Cinnabar had, to her credit, suggested other commanding officers but... Noctua did not want them. Noctua did not love the other generals. She had not devoted herself to them. They were not worthy of her devotion. "There is no one left for me here. The Chaos will do what it wants with me, but I will take as many with me as possible before they do... I loved this place once. I fell on bended knee for Laurelite when she was reborn. I whispered poetry and ballads for her while she spoke. It betrayed me." What kind of help could a faction that ripped away what she loved? Would it give her something else to devote herself to, only to have it ripped away again?

"The absolute worst part about all of this," she sobbed against the cold metal, "Is that I still love this place. Which makes the pain of this loss that much sharper." If she didn't love her station so much, would she be as angry with what had happened? Would she care at all? Or would she have rolled with the punches and just let it all happen? It was impossible to say at that moment, but Noctua felt that she knew herself well enough to predict that she wouldn't have cared at all. Commanding Officer or no, without love, there was no devotion. Without devotion, there could be no betrayal. Without betrayal, there would have been no rage, after all.