A more extravagant taste…

A more delectable fragrance…

A young man is late for an appointment, late for his future, but he takes the time to stop at his favourite tea parlor. Why…? The taste has ensnared him. What could be more decadent…?

And of course… mmm… a romantic encounter too scandalous to show…

Treat yourself today. You know you deserve it.

Advertisement, New Leaves Imperium

Dragan furrowed his brow as he felt Warm Cat shake her head. Muzazi wasn't in there? Was she lying? She'd been running for this place with everything she had, and now she was claiming her target wasn't present?

She didn't seem to be lying, but there was only so much Dragan could read of body language from the outline created by Aether. If she wasn't lying, then what the hell did he do now?

The Aether of the pursuing Detectives came back into his range. They'd finally reached the end of the line. Sweat trickled down the part of Dragan's head that still existed as he considered his options. From the shape of the grizzled Detective's Aether, Dragan could tell that he was moving his mouth.

If he concentrated, really worked for it… he was sure he could read those lips.

"Stop right there!" he was saying. Of course. Then, with a bit more satisfaction: "End of the line, both of you."

End of the line, huh? Dragan had thought that too. With Atoy Muzazi not being here, he'd thought he had no further recourse. No weapon to use, no route to escape through, no plan to execute… he didn't even have his eyes and his ears right now.

But he did have a weapon, didn't he?

He had a weapon pressed down against the floor, struggling to escape from his grip. Dragan smirked as he loosened his hold on Warm Cat, just a tad, and called out to everyone gathered.

"Think fast," he said.

With a flare of blue Aether, he whirled around and hurled Warm Cat in the direction of the gathered Detectives, releasing the Neverwire binding at the same time. From the shapes of their Aether, he saw it all --

-- he saw Warm Cat fly through the air, legs flailing --

-- he saw the Detectives step back, raising their Aether in defense --

-- and he saw, with grim satisfaction, the scarf around Warm Cat's neck slash once, lightning fast --

-- and send three heads falling down to the floor.

Immediately, Dragan's sight and hearing returned. He had no time to enjoy the sensation, however, as Warm Cat shot herself back towards him right after landing. Her face was twisted in rage and resentment. No doubt she intended to do far worse than just cut his head off.

Gemini World.

Warm Cat flew right through the space Dragan had previously occupied and into the open room. Her scarf dug itself into the ground to halt her momentum, she swung back around with her eyes full of fury, and --

-- and she received a devastating punch directly to the jaw.

Dragan was not the one who had thrown his fist. Instead, it was a man in a ruined long-coat, his skin glossy with sweat and suffering. It was a man with long black hair and cold grey eyes, dilated into feverishness.

It was Atoy Muzazi.

He'd been hiding in this room -- cloaking his Aether, no doubt -- and waiting to see who would come for him. Muzazi staggered to a halt as he realized the person he'd just knocked unconscious was someone he believed to be an ally.

"Olga?" he murmured, looking down at her prone form. "Oh no… I…"

Gemini World.

Dragan appeared a short distance behind Muzazi, his arms folded, looking down at Warm Cat -- well, it seemed her name was Olga. He whistled softly. "Really did a number on her. Is that okay?"

Muzazi whirled back around, reaching by reflex for a sword that was not there until he recognised Dragan's face.

"Dragan Hadrien…?" he muttered disbelievingly. "What are you doing here?"

"Good to see you too, Muzazi. I'm breaking you out, as you can see," Dragan said, before glancing down at Olga again. "Same can't be said for her."

Muzazi narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"She came here to kill you." Dragan broke it to him gently. "Whoever you're working for in the Supremacy? They're done with you. They want you silenced."

Muzazi stepped back, squatting down next to Olga and checking her pulse. Seemingly satisfied, he looked back up at Dragan. "That's quite the tale you tell. I'm not sure I believe you. How is it exactly you came to know about my predicament?"

"Long story."

"Tell it, then," Muzazi raised an eyebrow.

Dragan rolled his eyes. "Seriously? This isn't exactly the best theater for that kind of thing. There'll be more security here any minute."

Muzazi's eyes were cold, and a spark of silver Aether ran through his hair. "You're good at speaking quickly. I'm sure you'll manage."

Looking at Muzazi's face, with the promise of hostility not so far away, Dragan couldn't help but think back to the events on Panacea -- to the last time they'd spoken, face to face.

"If only you'd never existed…"

Typical. For once in his life, Dragan had decided to do something out of the goodness of his heart, and he got nothing but resentment for it. He opened his mouth to speak. There wasn't time to explain fully, but maybe the cliff notes would satisfy him.

"Well," he said. "You see --"

"Silencio."

The blue Aether buzzing around Dragan ceased, and the silver Aether coursing around Muzazi died. The door to the room slammed shut, sealing them inside and plunging the chamber into complete darkness -- but only for a moment.

A bright white light flicked on, revealing a room beyond, an observation chamber set to watch over the torture that must have taken place here. Sitting there, hands on her lap, smiling like a saint, was Gertrude Hearth. The Humilist Apexbishop.

"The Supremacy sent this young man, then, hm?" she purred, cocking her head. "How very interesting. Well, then… shall we begin?"

"You did it?" Jean Lyons asked kindly, looking into the eyes of his unfortunate victim. "Walk me through how you did it, then."

The young man nodded in a daze. The two of them stood in the cramped confines of a custodian’s closet, just off to the side of this fellow's on-site accommodations. If they remained here too long, it would ordinarily look suspicious on security footage, but Jean had already dealt with that.

"I went to my usual workspace to prepare the tea leaves…" the young man mumbled. "I swapped some of the leaves with the ones you gave me… the machine scanned them for toxins… came back all clear… came back here…"

Jean smiled, patting his accomplice on the head. "Very good," he said. "Very good indeed." As he made physical contact, he made sure to drain just a tad more of his target's will, prepping him to receive further orders.

"Now," he continued. "Very soon, the alarm to this place will go off. Once it does, I would like for you to kill yourself with whatever is on hand -- after making sure you're in a place where your body won't be found for some time. If the alarm doesn't go off for any reason, I would like you to instead go home and kill yourself after writing a suicide note about all your woes in life. The particulars are up to you, of course. Understand?"

The young man was shaking in instinctive terror, but he nodded all the same. Jean's orders interfaced directly with the subconscious: once you were in his grasp, there was no resisting him.

Jean nodded gratefully. "Well, thank you for your service. I'll be off."

Without another word, he turned and strolled out of the closet, adjusting his custodian's cap as he went. With the way things were going, though, even he couldn't resist whistling a jaunty tune as he began his exodus from the complex.

He'd won, after all.

Gertrude Hearth had first met Death when she was a child.

At that time, she had been nothing -- just another stray vermin, crawling over the planet of Pendulum. If events had unfolded just a little bit differently, she would have spent her whole life there, rotting away over the years into a senile hag and -- after that -- a rancid corpse.

But Pendulum was a special place.

Each night, at the stroke of midnight, a red light would sweep over the surface of the planet. Nobody knew from where that light originated, or for what reason it existed -- but when it touched a conscious being, they would immediately die. Basic animals and plants would go unharmed, but without fail humans would perish, their hearts instantly stopping.

For this reason, the people of Pendulum lived underground, in great subterranean cities that never knew sunlight or fresh air. Gertrude had always despised that place, wondering why in the world anyone would choose to live on such an accursed rock. Apparently, her ancestors had been granted the planet begrudgingly for their contributions in the Thousand Revolutions, and now poverty and lack of infrastructure made it difficult to leave.

What was not difficult on Pendulum, however, was eliminating the unwanted.

Gertrude didn't remember exactly what her family had done to earn their collective execution. She had only been nine at the time, and as such was not privy to the affairs of adults. Perhaps her parents or older siblings had indeed committed some dire offense, or perhaps they were just judged undesirable for their dirty blood. The result was the same: exile from the city, sentenced to walk without possession across the surface of Pendulum.

It was called exile, but it was obviously execution. They'd be doomed to death by midnight that very same day.

It had been cold on Pendulum's surface. Gertrude remembered that cold more than anything else: sometimes, even now, she'd feel it brush against her skin in the dead of night. It was rare for anyone to go to the surface other than lumber crews, and so it was the first time Gertrude had seen it. Forests, stretching as far as the eye could see, utterly untouched by human civilization.

Memories from there blurred into each other, lubricated by fear and the feral instinct for survival. They had tried to dig at first, perhaps, hoping they could create a big enough hole that the deathwave would pass over them. With nothing but their hands to dig, though, that plan had come to an end quickly.

They'd run.

They'd fought.

They'd hid.

They'd killed.

By the time Gertrude's memories became clear again, she was in the dark, curled into a ball, shivering in terror. She didn't know how, but at some point in her fugue state she'd found herself in a natural cave, a crack in the earth leading deep underground, deep enough that the deathwave simply passed her by. All she could see of the outside world was a sliver of moonlight far above, framed by a vague silhouette of rocks.

As time went on in the cave, the long hours stretching her terror to its limits, Gertrude saw the silhouette change. Indistinct rocks became a human figure.

A girl, around her same age, with pale skin and heavy black feathered wings. The eyes of that girl looked down at her like she was trash. Gertrude had once heard a story about a girl like this, and as she looked up at the dark angel she whispered the name:

"Silencio. Silencio."

She wandered out of the cave the next day and was quickly found by a lumber crew, the only survivor of her family. The elders of the city were uncertain what to do with her: she'd been sentenced to implicit death, to be sure, but a girl who'd survived the unsurvivable was a powerful symbol. In the end, she was simply given to a new family, raised as their daughter, placed back into society.

But she did not forget the terror of being cast out, and she did not forget the humiliation of Death looking down at you.

Gertude Hearth learned one thing from her ordeal: the universe was an ocean, and the only way to stay afloat was to make a raft of your fellow man. No matter what the means, no matter how low you had to sink, it was worth it if it kept you breathing.

That lesson had brought her to the very peak of the Humilist sect. It had allowed her to destroy any enemies in her path, to pull allies into her orbit, to bring the world to heel around her. Now she was the one who looked down at the foolish and the immature.

Three of those specimens now stood before her, on the other side of heavily reinforced glass. A Cogitant with silver hair, an unconscious girl with a red scarf, and the black-haired swordsman she'd originally captured. Before she'd revealed herself, two of them had revealed their names.

"Dragan Hadrien and 'Muzazi", hm…?" she purred, sipping at her cup of tea. "Those aren't familiar names to me, but the Supremacy? Now that is interesting."

The Cogitant's -- Dragan Hadrien's -- eyes flicked around the room. It was quite amusing to see him try to puzzle out some escape from his current situation. Like a rat in a maze.

"I'm afraid that the entirety of that room is within the range of my Silencio," she sighed with mock-sympathy. "The very space around you has taken on the properties of Neverwire. There's no escaping it."

"If you seek to contain me," growled Muzazi, glancing at the ruined chair. "You'll need to do better than this."

Gertrude huffed. "Don't flatter yourself. You broke out of that because I allowed you to break out of it. Now that you've served your purpose as bait, I'm not going to be as accommodating."

"So what now?" Dragan called out, stepping forward, up to the glass. He glared at her through the clear surface. "You've got us. What exactly are you planning to do? You really think you can keep us around you or in Neverwire forever?"

Gertrude frowned. While the young man had an adorable face, she truly didn't like the defiance in those bright blue eyes. Perhaps she'd have them extracted in a jar.

She'd been careless, she understood that now. She'd been so focused on Giovanni's provocations that she'd neglected to realize there could be other parties involved. Sowing discord would benefit the Supremacy tremendously, too… but now that she knew of their involvement, she could take steps against it.

She was still in control.

"I'm more than aware I can't hold you forever," she said calmly, standing up from her seat. "But I don't need to. I've collected more interrogation devices than the one back there. I'll break the three of you before long, find out what I need to know, and bury you. Perhaps if you're cooperative I'll even kill you before that."

Muzazi glared. "You'll find yourself disappointed, witch."

Dragan tapped an inquisitive finger against the glass, clearly testing its density. "You're confident in that, huh?" he said. "It's still two against one -- from what I've seen of the situation, you don't want other people in your organization to know about this whole mess. I'm willing to bet the three guys back there were the only backup you had."

Such an irritating child. Gertrude's eyelid twitched. "I can flood that room with sleeping gas with the tap of a button," she said patiently. "You can run your mouth all you like, but it will only make me win faster. I have nothing but confidence."

"You might be on your own here," Dragan went on. "But we're not alone. People will come for us."

Gertrude smirked. "Oh, I hope so. The more idiots walk into the slaughterhouse, the more --"

Bang.

The glass was painted red.

Gertrude blinked. "Huh?"

Dragan widened his eyes. "What?" he breathed.

Slowly, on the other side of the glass, Gertrude Hearth looked down at herself. Her eyes widened, and as she opened her mouth to speak, blood dribbled from the corners of her lips. As she stepped back, her legs shook beneath her.

Gertrude's stomach had exploded outwards. The front of her torso was a cavity of red, her shattered ribs open like the lid of a treasure chest. Pulped organs slipped free of their resting place and dropped down to the floor.

As Gertrude opened her mouth again, trying to say something -- perhaps to negotiate against the death that had come for her -- the only thing that came from it was smoke.

She fell back, slipping on her blood, and never stood again.

Muzazi stared in silence, his face twisted uncomprehendingly. Dragan imagined his own face looked much the same.

"What the fuck?" he muttered.

Jean Lyons flipped the stator again, the small silver coin landing peculiarly slowly onto the back of his palm. It landed on the Supreme Seal, the coat of arms intertwined with a powerful fist. That made flip number two-hundred and twenty-three.

More than enough to replenish the stocks this little maneuver had cost him.

Storefronts flickered by as the taxi took him down the streets, away from the Humilist complex. He always enjoyed a peaceful drive, especially when he wasn't the one behind the wheel. A dynamic environment outside the window did wonders for one's thought process.

He'd felt the recoil when he'd used his ability. His observation of Hearth's power on the night Muzazi had been taken had been accurate, then. If the Aether was activated from outside the area of effect, then it would still work even if the target was inside Gertrude's power.

It was true that Jean's ability was to drain people's willpower by touching them -- but that was only the power in his right hand. The power stored in his left hand drained something completely different.

"Here should be fine," he called out to the taxi driver. "Thanks for the ride."

"No problem, boss," the driver said, pulling up and putting the car into hover. "Hope ya choose us again in the future."

Jean scanned his grace token, paying for the ride -- and then, before getting out, handed the driver the coin he'd been flipping.

"Tip for you," he said. "It's an antique. Might sell for a little bit."

The driver turned it around in his hand, a bemused look on his face, but accepted it all the same. Jean left quickly after that. Even if the man thought the gesture was odd, he wouldn't live to voice that suspicion.

An hour later, as he was about to end his shift, his taxi would suddenly explode. His body, along with anything on his person, would be destroyed by the blast. Jean had already arranged for the passenger records to be wiped, too. The fact that he'd gone to the Humilist complex tonight would utterly disappear from this world.

As Jean walked the rest of the way back, hands plunged into his pockets, he couldn't help but have a spring in his step.

One down. Two to go.