Back to the trendy kitchen, with its knickknacks displayed like knives on the walls. The dog howled its miseries in the other room. Faustite made quick work of climbing the counters to rip all the batteries from the clutches of their smoke detectors. They lined up neatly on the stove, each 12-volt bearing the same colors and manufacturer. Maybe she cherished that knowledge — that everything seen and unseen matched to one another. She must, for how all her little baubles carried color through the room.

He waited again as he waited before: restless and on edge. Tension sung through tired sinew. Apprehension sunk through thin ribs. He felt the passing seconds as stones in his pockets while he braved the tides of his intentions. Another moment, another rock. They dodged his grasping hands so effortlessly.

Abbott would be home soon. She preferred her clockwork hours spread through the week. She liked they way they formed a perfect, replicated curvature across her days. She leaned on that mundane inanity to float her as a functional human being, to pass her off as just another woman pursuing her ambitions. She was at least that, he recognized, but the fever that burned within her would cook her flesh and simmer her organs. She'd char her usefulness to the bone, all for a meager chance framed in a lack of perspective. Did he believe her? Faustite looked hard into the too-blurry reflection of the stainless steel stove. He wasn't certain — not yet. But the time to waver ended; he had but one choice if he wanted to assert himself over a livewire lieutenant.

So Faustite rummaged her pans single-handedly, his other arm braced protectively against his knee. He found a cast-iron frying pan of considerable weight, with a handle as sturdy as the bones of her old house. He straightened, shut the doors, and sidled himself near the pantry door where an alcove promised him shelter. Keys rattled their wordless protests in a distant lock. The dog barked and claws scrabbled ineffectually on wood.

She would be home soon, and the smoky smell of copper and moondust would greet her.

Amanda skittered past the door when she heard the lock moving, her stomach nearly touching the floor as she tried to stay out the sight of the stranger. As Abbot entered, she leaned down to greet the pup but, in seeing how low she was still crouching, she straightened her spine again and waited. The last time Amanda acted like this -- Ah… there it was… the stinging stench of smoke reached Abbot’s nose, filling her lungs with painful fire. She suppressed a cough, letting only a small sound of her throat clearing escape her lips. If he was here, then she could not let him have the upper hand. She wasn’t an idiot, she knew he was stronger, between his rank and his… deformity. Putrescent though it was, it still gave him an undeniable edge. Any advantage that she could take, she would.

Amanda shuffling worriedly at her feet, Abbot made her way to the kitchen.

As she rehearsed her script in her mind, she noticed the fog of smoke becoming thicker and thicker. Why hadn’t the detectors gone off? Each step sent her deeper and deeper into the haze of pollution until the urge to clear her lungs of the intrusion became too powerful. And once she coughed once, the endless torrent of hacking racked her frame. She fell against the wall to catch her balance, but it was no use. She slid down the surface of the drywall, her lungs wringing themselves out with each shattering cough only to be refilled by the next lungfull searching in vain for air. She had to calm herself, she realized as panic began to creep through her nerves. I need to be calm. Acclimate to the smoke. Small breaths to avoid choking. Clear the water from your eyes. Get up. Move! There was an intruder in her house and he was trying to smoke her out.

That would not stand.

Abbot hoisted herself up off the floor and pushed herself forward. Even when Amanda had had enough and retreated to a far, smokeless corner of the house, she pressed on. Each step was worse than the last, filling her lungs with soot and smoke, like tanks of pollution. She could feel them curling in on themselves like overcooked meat. By the time she reached the kitchen, her coughing was a constant sound accompanying her steps, announcing her entrance. So much for the upper hand. Faustite had robbed her of her air, robbed her of the comfort of her home… how did he even keep getting in? Abbot considered changing the locks, but in the end she decided that it wouldn’t do any good. He probably wasn’t even getting in that way.

Abbot rounded the corner to the kitchen and peered through the wall of smoke that had settled in the room. Through the haze, she could make out shapes like that of her dining table, her chairs, the feeble light trying to cut through the cloud of smoke… but nothing even vaguely human. But the smoke had gathered here like a smoggy epicenter and radiated outward… so he had to be here…

A cursory glance at the oven told her way the alarms hadn’t gone off. Son of a b***h. When she found him, she was going to rip the starseed out of his chest and eat it right in front of his eyes.

His enduring, obfuscating presence lent him one boon in exchange for his obvious presence: others choked and gave themselves away in his wake. The telltale hacking said just enough about her position -- that she was far and to the left, near and to the center, near again to the right -- and Faustite wound clockwork-tight under the song of adrenaline. Black fingers found the frying pan handle and gripped hard enough to bite into the rubberized seal. He moved slowly, toes-first in a tentative feel of the bare kitchen floor. A heavy scrape sounded. More coughing, with smoke reaching so deep into her throat that she sounded near to throwing up.

When he heard the scrapes of shoe against kitchen tile, the ticks of his heart beat from his ribcage down to his very fingernails. He felt certain, suddenly, that Abbott could hear him. That through all the smoke, she sensed the presence at the epicenter. She knew precisely where its origins lay. But as he crept toward the noise, pan held tight in his right hand, he caught sight of her faintest silhouette. He paused, breath roiling for escape.

Black eyes studied hard for some indications -- was he facing her front or her back? Would she stab him with a knife in hand? Or would he greet her with the business end of her favorite domestic affairs? He glanced toward the floor, saw her shoes pointed toward the stove.

He couldn't let himself think -- he swung.

As soon as Abbot realized that something had approached her from behind, there was blackness. It was an odd sensation, actually. The feeling of sharp agony for the blink of an eye, and then… nothing… Abbot suddenly felt like she was floating. Her body lost all kinesthesia, and she felt her limbs stretching. Like when she was half asleep and the world tilted in her twilight dreams. Were her eyes open or closed? She could feel her eyelids stretched open in surprise, but all she could see was blackness. Was it the smoke obfuscating her vision? Had she gone blind? The answer evaded her, but so did the alarm that could have followed that realization. Now that was curious.

The instant between the blow to her head and her body’s collision with the ground stretched on for an eternity, breeding endless questions with no answers and sudden strange realizations. This was an attack, she knew, as her knees hit the floor without sensation. From Faustite, given the smoke she understood as her torso crumpled to the side. And if she had listened to Harmonia in the first place none of this would have happened. Now that was a strange one. It had been a bug in her ear ever since Harmonia first brought up the idea of purification and she had refused to give it any thought but now, as infinity squeezed itself into a micro second, she couldn’t shut that bug up. It whispered to her in Harmonia’s voice about how this isn’t the way things are supposed to work. Poked at cracks in her facade. Taunted her with obvious flaws in the way that she functioned.

The floor jarred her without the sensation of pain. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Abbot knew that she needed to be concerned but in the end it was so hard and the fog surrounding her mind was so thick. She could feel something like sleep dragging on her eyelids and she was in no position to resist it. Who knew how much time had passed as she lay unconscious, but when her mind finally did return to her it did so with all of the grace and subtlety of a rhinoceros slamming itself into her. Suddenly the world was too bright and filled with too much… everything. She groaned but did not register the sound in her mind. Wait… had she made a sound? She couldn’t remember? Where was she? She struggled to make her eyes focus, and even in the brief moments that she could, she couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was seeing.

Anger boiled inside of her, twisting her expression almost comically. She was going to kill Faustite for sure for this one. Tie him up and eat him bit by bit. The only trick was going to be gaining back her sense of… anything.

She crumpled, clattered like a bag of old bones. No -- that clatter was the frying pan that fell out of his hand and startled him. Briefly, palms pressed to eyes and he heaved a steadying sigh. You have to do this. If not for her, then yourself. He spared himself no further moments.

First, he dragged the limp woman to the center of her tiled kitchen, and stepped over her to rifle through cupboard after cupboard for any sort of restraints. Appliance cords, string, electrical tape -- it didnt matter. So long as it could hold the thin bones of her wrists and pin her delicate ankles, the object wasn't important. Speed pressed him during his search, and he threw open half the kitchen in a feverish rush before he settled on two cords from different blenders. The longer he tied around Abbott's ankles, pulling it taut until it bit into her pale skin. He tied it, retied it, and spent the next precious seconds on restraining her wrists behind her back. Partway through, he realized he should've turned her onto her stomach for it. He finally did, and finished the job without further hitch.

Panic hammered a syncopated pace into his heart, one that left him guessing if he'd sooner suffer a heart attack than finish his plan. A cold sweat enveloped him like a kiss. His hands shook. His mouth went dry until a nauseating flood of saliva greeted his tongue.

Black eyes fell on her mute form. Look at her. Look at her face. Her hands. Her feet. Look at all these parts of her that you're scarring in the name of the Negaverse. Your goals aren't different. She seeks the same path to annihilation and you deign to discipline her for it. This is the blind leading the blind deeper into the cave. It's painting a portrait of a pacifist with blood.

But you'd think on it forever if you could. It's so much easier than making the mark. Wrenching his gaze away, Faustite summoned his cell phone to hand. The Safari app sat open after the lock screen, blaring its information out to the smoke, and he sat it on the kitchen counter. Cracked open the windows. Opened the freezer. There, two trays of ice cubes greeted him. Full. How domestic.

A full tray was emptied into a Carex ice bag found in one of the cupboards. A knife was selected out of her too-expensive butcher's block -- a chef's knife with a firm handle and a long, smooth blade. He carried the pair back to her before he heard the groan.

Before she found herself too enamored with the idea of moving, Faustite sat astride the small of her back. Reaching, he could barely slip the hand towel off the front of the stove. "You're very disobedient." He spoke surely, but the tremor in his voice betrayed his nerves for the task. "Breaking a captain's finger. Refusing to listen to reason. To orders. Wasting time with that senshi when we could've started training her by now." With his free palm clutching the back of her head, Faustite pressed the ice bag to her right ear. "I'll train you better this time."

Words… a voice filtered through to her, garbled like sound through water. Abbot struggled to grab onto the words and make sense of them but to no avail. The meaning of it all slipped through her finger. Somewhere irritation bit at her, but it took too long for the sensation to reach her mind and by them all of the acid from the feeling had drifted away leaving nothing but the impression that she should feel something. Had she been asleep? No, sleep lifted off of her like a film, leaving sparse residue behind, easily washed off with the routine on the morning. This was like a hot, wet blanket draped over her like a cadaver. It was like putting on tights when your legs were still wet. Everything fought her when she tried to shake off the sticky, clinging slime off of her mind. If she tried too hard, her hand got stuck, and even when she did succeed and made a clear patch to see through, more impenetrable muck slide over that precious space she had and fouled it.

It was with great struggle and force of will that Abbot finally pried her own eyes open, though that was all. Her brain still refused to recognize what she was seeing. That infuriating haze still bogged her thoughts down and made it impossible to think. The blanket on top of her was getting possibly heavy, growing in heft with each passing second. Something dug into her side and should have caused pain but like emotion, the physical sensation too took long to process and by the time it did it was too late. Abbot tried to make a sound, and she might have, she wasn’t sure. Maybe there was someone there that could help her? Maybe… Maybe…

It was slow, but Abbot began to realize certain things around her. The flooring under her cheek was her own. As was the oven that she saw before her. So she was home. The window was open, and the winter chill was beginning to reach her, though she still had difficulty processing the sensation. The haze that was making it hard to see was smoke… real smoke… and it was coming from above her. Which meant that the blanket covering her was no blanket at all but instead…

Abbot’s laugh came out groggy and strange, like her voice had gone untouched for weeks. She swallowed hard around a strange lump in her throat and went to slip her hands under herself so that she could stand again. Except that no matter how hard she pulled, her arms wouldn’t move. Sometimes she would wake up in strange positions and need to untangle herself… but this time she was on her stomach and her arms were clearly behind her… even her legs seemed immobilized… with that same infuriating slowness, realization oozed through her mind, fighting the grogginess all the way.

“What do you plan to do now, Captain,” she asked, her voice hoarse and dry. “How do you intend to train me.” Another bout of cruel laughter slid from her lips as she taunted the Captain, even from her position beneath him and pinned to the floor.

Faustite fell silent when he committed to his work. Her question was left unanswered; hierarchy made whole through the captain's quietude. Abbott wanted to consider him worthless -- a gouge in the Negaverse's record in greater pursuits -- and the later months left him to ponder if she was truly wrong. He knew his poor track of accomplishments; he could recite them with hardly a thought. Was he adding to that list now? Cutting into solidarity? Would he be the one cited for a traitor?

With the blade shaking in his right hand, he parsed hair away from her ear with his left. Beneath flame hair poked a pale ridge -- docile and innocent, defenseless, demure. Such a delicate thing. Weariness chased the thought.

Non ducor. Duco.

But can unwilling followers a leader make?

His instrument cut through their collective quiet. It ringed her listening silence in rose red, deep in its flourish, and from that swift descent came his prize. Furled just as petals, the conch and helices. He wasted no time; the knife clattered uselessly and in its place was an inverted baggie. His reward forged its own petaled trail until chill stopped its spread. Quickly he sealed it away, though Abbott's life began to stain his fingers.

His hands trembled terribly, his mind fat with numb and dazed with drive. Gauze next -- or was it ice? No, the menstrual pad to cover first in an irony of colonial proportions. Blood soaked the filmy packing until thick and weighty, a veritable presence in hand. A second came, equally fat with cotton, laden with gelled antibiotic which he wrapped in gauze against her head. He worked quickly; tremble and shudder and strife coalesced into a sense of foreboding. Iron cloyed the nose like a pervasive perfume. He gagged on it, his lack of meal his only savior.

By the finish, a thin layer of sweat haunted him. Burned against his skin. A rattled hand reached for his burden, bloodied as it was.

When he tried to speak again, his sins weighed his tongue down until he couldn't muster the muscle. A few swallows of hair chased enough of his transgressions to speak again. "Corrupt her and you'll have it back. Four days." He already decided to write it down; Hopeite would be remiss among her bed of petals. Surely she'd choke on the beauty too much to understand him.

What a shame, what a pity. A poor leader he would make.

At first Hopeite didn’t feel anything but the sensation of something happening to her. It was curious, actually, and Abbot’s mind worked automatically trying to puzzle out what the feeling was. A pulling and a sort of tugging, like when Abbot was two minutes too late with Amanda’s breakfast and she was tugging on sheets still wrapped around her body. It wasn’t until the recognition that something was running down her cheek registered in her mind that sensation began to filter back to life.

At first it was just a small smarting sensation, like a small cut or a scrape. Abbot held her breath and waited for the feeling to die back down and for things to return to normal but… the pain didn't go away. It got worse. Somehow. Slowly at first, like maybe the wound was larger than she anticipated. Had she fallen on something and cut herself? With each passing moment the cut seemed to feel deeper and deeper and Abbot could hear herself whimpering as the sensation grew and grew. Something was being pressed to her ear for a moment and then was pulled away. Something similar was wrapped around her skull and then -- only then -- did the scent reach her.

She couldn’t put her finger on it at first, not really. Metallic in nature, and yet somehow biological. Had he spilled something?

No.

Hopeite opened her eyes finally, heavy and sandy from her forced repose, and gazed out at the ever expanding pool of crimson around her head. The pain reached a deafening crescendo matched and perhaps exceeded by frantic, madly panicked wails. She tried to raise her hand to the source of the pain, to feel for damage and assess a situation that she could not readily see, but her wrists fought uselessly against the bounds the held her and instead she writhed in the pool of her own blood, choking and gagging as she drew breath laden with droplets and blobs of the quickly coagulating fluid.

She only distantly registered his direction, mind too groggy and simultaneously alarmingly awake. Corrupt her? Corrupt who? What did he mean by that? The memories came in time though Abbot’s panic refused to subside from her body, coiling her muscles tightly into painful tracks of tension for several more minutes before it gave way to loud, moist sobbing.

Faustite waited no longer than necessary. She writhed, sounding off her pain, and the harried captain left her to it. Quickly he rose, darting for the kitchen sink. Water wormed its way around his hands as it parted from him all her stains. Petals bloomed once more at the bottom of stainless steel, forming a pseudoromantic bed. He watched them circle the drain and die. The noise pollution of their too-sharp smell still cloyed his nose.

What he fazed out poorly was then punctured by his phone's buzzing announcement. Never-clean-enough fingers reached through the first toweling, second toweling, and third to reach a pristine iPhone. Rowan texted, he realized. Rowan texted and Faustite was to swap spots with Elex imminently. Because this couldn't happen at a better time. When is a date sweeter than after cutting away a part of someone's life. These were the moments you signed up for, weren't they, Schörl? Faustite bit his cruel sourness into a thin line of his lips, and said none of it to the girl now squirming on the floor.

Text sent, he pocketed the device. He kept the towel still wrapped about his hand, then tossed it into the bloodfilth in which Abbott writhed. What little distraction that bought him was used to loose the cord from her hands. "Don't get up too fast." Faustite left the cord at her feet to slow her down -- to remind her of lifeblood lost and pressure stymied.

He left with a breath; the gather of snakes in his stomach hadn't yet made their nest.