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There were so many things to remember.

And so many things she didn't want to remember.

To the majority of the Negaverse, their General-Queen was still missing. There had been no announcement of her return, and too few officers had stumbled across her for word to spread. It was likely that was Alkaid's doing, as the Ascendant General seemed to have little interest in other people getting too close to Tanzanite in her present state. Hell, Tanzanite didn't want to be close to herself in her present state. She was growing stronger each day, remembering how her body worked, but she was still vulnerable.

Someone had already proven that by knocking her clear across the floor, and it showed in the way her back muscles shifted uncomfortably. They would show for only a moment, thick black bands that stretched across her back in a way that human muscles did not. A suit of skin wrapped around some pathetic thing trying to hold itself together. Any strength she had, any excess energy, was funneled into that process.

Yet Tanzanite still felt him from the moment he entered the Rift. The energy signal of a General-King could not be mistaken. The energy of a General-King she had made? No... she would've recognized him anywhere. Still, she could not spare the strength to move such a distance, and so she remained where she was among the stone and crystal, throwing the femur of some unfortunate dead person for Brise and Battu to fetch.

The two wolf-like youma were Tanzanite's only constant companions, and they numbered among the few who Tanzanite trusted.

It was a short list, and yet one upon with Zinkenite held a distinct place.

A friend, or the closest thing a creature like Tanzanite could ever have to it.

“Hello Zink.”

Not Zinkenite. Not General-King Zinkenite. Just... Zink. It was simply how Tanzanite had always known him. From the moment they'd met to the moment she'd shoved her hand through his chest and stopped him from the same fate as the howling, scratching creatures that lurked in the vast darkness around them. The same fate as the crippled young woman sitting there in front of him. Of course... it didn't matter now. The disease had spread, and she hadn't been there to stop it. Hybrids. Parahumans. Youma. The names didn't matter. The classifications didn't matter.

It had spread, and there wasn't a god damn thing she could do about it now.

Tanzanite was there now, though, and her plans for the future did not include sitting idly by and watching her planet slowly die. Her bare toes curled into the dust and ash that littered the stone floor, and one gray eye lifted to meet him. For some people, seeing Tanzanite in a human form – or.. something like it – would've been a shocking thing. Zinkenite, however, had known her since she was a lieutenant, when she was only a teenage girl trying to find her place.

When she was human.

He had been there in the days after she'd woken up screaming, convulsing, twisting on a crystal slab while the black phoenix wormed its way into her body. When she'd become a General. He fought alongside the rest of the Negaverse when they rescued what was left of Ares' captives, and hadn't abandoned her when the youma took a deeper hold.

What remained of her was something... in between. Alkaid had done well in teaching her to hide the brutally scarred side of her face beneath a sweeping layer of purple hair, but some things could not be hidden. Whatever she was, she looked up at her old friend with a smile and scooted over on the wide slab of rock to make room for him.

“It's only been a few days,” she said quietly, as though it was a perfectly normal thing to say, “I was going to find you, but we're still working on...”

Tanzanite looked down at her legs, where the skin was still slightly patchy and translucent, black bands of shifting muscle visible beneath. A majority of her body had finished its reconstruction, at least, so she was not quite as horribly disgusting as she'd been a week before.

“...this.”

He was the same man she remembered. Stoic and stern when necessary, but also capable of genuine kindness within their ranks. The Negaverse needed such leadership, because nothing would ever get done if everyone was a mass murdering psychopath. It was why she had chosen him, why they had chosen him, in a time before Laurelite alone ruled the Negaverse.

Now, from the little she knew, there were fewer of those among their numbers. While Tanzanite had always expected obedience within their military structure, and might've been counted among the more cruel Chaos faction members, she hadn't expected to return to a Negaverse eager to eager to torture and maim. Her own memories made her jaw clench at the idea, shifting the bands of scarred tissue from where Ares' brand had burnt though the side of her face.

Just ******** kill them was her way of doing things.

Would once again become her way of doing things.

There were few people Tanzanite would touch without the intent to murder them, but she held Zinkenite's had with a smile.

“I don't allow or disallow much these days, but our temperamental sun goddess seems to want me alive, so... I'm safe here.”

And only there.

Tanzanite's quiet laugh did not sound as though it belonged to the person from whom it came. She glanced once again down at the few remaining parts of her body that still needed to finish rebuilding. Small nodules shifted beneath her skin, pushing and pulling the right pieces back into place. It was a process she was eager to be done with.

“It's not selfish,” Tanzanite lied, though her smile did not betray it. In truth, she would've rather stayed in the dark nothingness of stasis, but she had been created to serve, and serve she would. Even as a lieutenant she had been inclined to force rather than anything else. As a General-Queen, well... by then she knew that a quick and certain death was a blessed thing, and she considered it a mercy. Now, as whatever she was, she wasn't entirely certain what she thought of death or mercy. Both seemed to evade her grasp as she lingered in the rift and thought about a great many things.

Mostly how she planned to kill a significant number of people and use their bodies to spell out a message like rocks on a deserted island. <******** YOU, it would say in big, bloody letters, and Prince Castor would know immediately who had done it. Tanzanite sighed happily at the thought.

Someday, she would regain what was rightfully hers, and oh the miracles she had planned for when she did.

“So,” she focused her attention back to the General-King at her side, “How is our little army doing?”

“Oh come on, I've dealt with worse,” Tanzanite smiled, because it was extremely true and the process didn't actually hurt. It just looked and felt generally unpleasant, “I appreciate the sympathy, Zink, you've always shown me far more kindness than I deserve.”

Another thing Tanzanite knew to be true. Her loyalty to the Negaverse didn't make her any less of a cannibalistic murderer, and it seemed she had vanished when they needed her the most. Some people seemed to revere her, and in the time since her disappearance, her legacy had grown far beyond what she felt to be fair. The truth was so much more... complicated, and it seemed the minor details had been lost to history.

“Ah, yes,” the former General-Queen tried not to let her underlying anger show, and absolutely failed to do so, “The half-youma. Parahumans? I'm afraid the exact wording eludes me. They had a seminar, you know, a youma seminar.”

Tanzanite drummed her claws against the rock, her agitation rather obvious. It was never supposed to be this way, but she forced out a laugh made of sheer willpower.

“It was... surprisingly informative. I was previously unaware that our relationship with youma had become so...”

Horrific? Insane? Awful?

“...intimate.”

Tanzanite shook her head, eager to change the subject. The idea that people would ever want that... it frustrated and perplexed her.

“I don't believe She would have allowed it, even were the option available,” she responded, looking down at a limb that did not exist, but she could still feel it. The youma lurking where her heart should've been, holding her starseed together, made sure of it. It would not be forgotten. It would not be kept suppressed forever. The black phoenix was bonded to her purely to serve Metallia's interest, and all that had happened since then was just... pure curiosity.

“Howlite was there, when Metallia...,” the parahuman waved a hand, not particularly eager to recount those past six years, or the event that preceded them. What would she even say? There was no way to explain what had happened, other than sheer stubbornness of the phoenix youma. There was no way to tell an old friend that the worst part of it all was dying, but being brought back.

Tanzanite's body may have been torn apart and put back together, but whatever repairs had been made did well in reconstructing that confident grin. She looked sideways at her counterpart.

“It sounds like we have quite a bit of work to do.”

It must have simply been the way the old friends were enamored with one another's presence that allowed her to get so close without a raised head, without so much as Tanzanite's typical screech of unabashed salutations the second she felt her over flowing energy erupt into the world around her. It had made her worried at first not to get a reaction, with as weak as the woman was she could not always feel her against the massive energy that composed the rift itself, but she could feel... someone else.

If she had been able to hold breath, she would have released it the moment she rounded a corner and came face to face with her peculiar charge and the only other sovereign that had earned a tender place in her heart. She didn't smile, not quite, but the flood of energy pulsing around her starseed might as well have turned to butterflies and danced for him. She had something small and white dangling in her fingertips but she ignored it for the sake of a polite, delicate dip of her head in greeting.

"General King Zinkenite, what a lovely surprise."

And she meant it, even if her voice was as emotionless as ever. She remembered him recently, lurking in the crowd of those that had gathered to help Haumea seek his purpose. The tower had been her discovery, the town beyond it her greatest feat, but she had left it up to him to seek out his own glory- she could not want for him more than he wanted it himself and putting those pieces together, truly fighting for the right to be Ascendant, well. He had wanted it enough, in the end. She was proud.

"I see you've found her." She stepped closer, posturing before the pair of them where they were speaking, then held out what she had brought back with her. From her hands dangled an eyepatch, white and pristine; it was almost too innocent for the scarred, twisted thing that Tanzanite had become but there was something appealing in dressing her unassuming colors. It was a lie, one that could never truly hide the ferocity she knew the woman was dying to unleash upon the world, but the contrast was her own small joke. She settled her eyes on the singular, gray one staring back at her.

"Forgive my interruption, but I managed to convince a lieutenant to sew this for you."

Alkaid received a similar dip of the head as she had offered, an inclination intoning respect for her, and all that she had done, and given up.
“it’s good to see you again, perhaps more favorable circumstances as well, I was…I admit surprised at our last meeting.” He admitted.

“But I did find her, yes, I caught a hint of her energy, I could scarcely believe I wasn’t imagining it.”

“Think of it this way.” He offered, gently taking the eye patch and carefully stretching it out so that he could help get it into place, hopefully without scrunching up any hair, or… snapping a bit of elastic and stinging them both.

“We could get you, say, a small pet, a tarantula. It could live behind your eye patch, and you could terrify people by letting it start to crawl out on command. Don’t think of it as much as…concealment, think of it as a … strategic opportunity to terrorize, and one more companion.”

While the two of them spoke, Tanzanite continued to fidget with the eyepatch, tugging at the bands now and again as she tried to find some comfortable way of wearing it. It affirmed what Tanzanite already knew to be true.

Be alive sucked.

They discussed their last encounter while Tanzanite pulled her bangs under the band. Then over the band. Then over the top band and under the bottom one. Then vice versa. Then both on top but with a small bit tucked just a little bit under the-

“God DAMNIT!”

Tanzanite ripped the thing off, stomped angrily on it, and kicked it off somewhere into the distance. Or she tried, at least. The soft fabric snagged on one of her clawed toes, until she was cursing under her breath and snatching the thing off of her foot.

“It sure as ******** wasn't me,” she grumbled.

She would've been perfectly fine down there as an eternal organic Rubik's cube.