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 Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 2:48 pm
Pyrrhus’s grip on the knife he’d driven into the Captain’s chest was steady and strong. The man below him was still alive—he could hear wet gasps coming out of him, and he weakly reached up, digging his nails into Pyrrhus’s arm like that was going to stop what was happening.
Pyrrhus sighed. He’d ruminated so much on his inability to just finish it, and now when he tried to, he couldn’t even do it in one shot. His skills were getting dull, apparently.
The rain was still pouring, making his hair stick to his shoulders, and washing away the blood seeping out of the wound.
As if anything could wash away the centuries of blood on his hands. As if washing it away would bring back the dead girl in her frilly brown-and-pink fuku, still looking more ready for a tea party than for war.
He pulled the knife out. Drove it in a second time, with a sick, wet splash.
This time, the wet gasping stopped.
And Pyrrhus could feel one of the Negaverse’s Senshi nearby.
Well. If he was very unlucky—or very lucky, depending on the perspective he took—it might be a two for one sort of night.
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 2:50 pm
Tyndareus had been cycling through various emotions ever since Pyrrhus had taken him to his planet. He'd needed to keep up appearances—easy enough, for a man like him, who was accustomed to lying and saving face—so he was out, collecting this week's quota of energy. He felt the aura of an Order Super Senshi nearby. Felt a Captain. Felt the Captain wink out. Blood going cold, he turned and sprinted that way, skidding into the alley and gawking at the—the corpse—the Captain who would never breathe again—he'd seen many corpses in his time, made many corpses in his time, but seeing someone from his own organization dead still twinged at his heartstrings. Did more, with exactly who was kneeling over the corpse with a knife. He barely noticed the second corpse in the alley, focus zeroed in on Pyrrhus. "What. The ********," he said, unable to say anything else.
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 2:52 pm
Ah. <******** all the people to find him over the corpse of a Captain he’d very clearly just got done executing, of course it had to be Tyndareus. Anyone else, Pyrrhus would have had a much easier time handling, but this was—it was different.
It wasn’t like he was ashamed of what he’d done. There was another corpse in the alley, and the Captain beneath him had done far worse to her than he’d done in retaliation. Someday, the starseed Chaos had twisted would get another chance. Part of Pyrrhus felt like that was undeserved, but he wasn’t Cosmos. He didn’t get to decide that.
But Tyndareus was still one of them. Might have known this man as something other than a piece of garbage who ate souls for fun. And that might make things. Well, complicated seemed like a word for it.
“Do you actually want to know why,” Pyrrhus asked, though his tone sounded more flat and exhausted than actually like a question, and he had very notably not actually moved to look at Tyndareus, “or was that more of a rhetorical question.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 2:54 pm
Tyndareus crossed his arms. "Well, I'm still deciding," he said, shifting his feet. He took a moment to take in the whole scene again, to try to look at this with less emotion. He needed to have a clear head. There was still a second corpse in the alley. He looked closer. A ******** order senshi. He could guess her starseed was stolen. But then, why hadn't Pyrrhus simply returned it? "How did she die," he asked flatly, jerking his chin toward the dead order senshi. "I thought returning the starseed saved their sorry asses." Could he probably be less hostile? Indeed, probably. Was he going to be? Not until he heard everything.
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 2:55 pm
Pyrrhus did let go of the knife, and stand up off the dead Captain. Theoretically, he’d prefer to at least somewhat deescalate the situation, though he was still definitely on edge and more than prepared to let it escalate right the ******** back if he had to.
Or maybe he wanted to go home, put his face down on a table, and try to ******** process what he’d just witnessed.
He’d seen plenty of death. Caused plenty of death. But seeing a life—every potential life attached to that starssed—utterly destroyed? That was different. He almost couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Whoever that poor dead girl had been, she should have had another chance. But that had been taken from her.
“Hard to recover the starseed when some piece of s**t,” he nudged the corpse with the toe of his boot, “eats it like a piece of candy because he can’t handle being punched in a fight he started.” He paused, briefly. “Do you know what it means, to destroy a starseed?”
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 2:55 pm
Well. Damn. It clearly meant something more than Tyndareus truly knew, if Pyrrhus was asking him this.
"Well. When one of us eats a starseed, it heals us, gives us a strength and speed boost. Usually, it helps us get out of sticky situations. That's why many of us carry one or two in our subspaces, just in case. I'm guessing he ate that one right in front of you."
He tilted his head, watching Pyrrhus carefully. "I suppose you have a grander idea of what it means?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 2:59 pm
Us.
Had Tyndareus eaten one, himself? Or was that more of a general us? Pyrrhus wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. The thought of it made him feel ill.
“I suppose I should ask another question,” he said, and there was something almost thoughtful in his tone. “Do you know what a starseed is? What it truly is. What you’re plucking from a chest when you reach in and take one.”
It was probably to Chaos’s advantage to keep its people ignorant. To ensure they didn’t know what they were really doing. Maybe some of them wouldn’t care. Maybe some would.
“I know I told you that your starseed is the same as the last Tyndareus, and every one before.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 3:00 pm
It had been a long time since anything had truly made him feel like he needed to immediately vacate the premises and find the nearest toilet to release an upset gut into. He supposed he was due for one of those moments.
Because the longer he thought about that, as the silence stretched, the more the missing puzzle pieces slowly put themselves together, creating a horrifying picture.
"You meant it is literally the same starseed," he said slowly. "That my starseed is exactly the same one. Not just similar, or got the same powers. Literally, this was in another body a thousand years ago."
He inhaled sharply.
"And it powers the life within a person's body just as much as blood does. But if it's removed and eaten, it…" His mind blanked briefly.
He didn't want to finish connecting the dots he knew his mind had already accepted.
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 3:01 pm
”I was not speaking in metaphor, no,” Pyrrhus confirmed. “Literally. A single soul, passed across the millennia. One guardian for one planet, reincarnated over and over to protect their people and their home.”
He nodded to the dead girl.
“Destroying a starseed ends that. Forever. Whoever she was, whatever planet she was bound to? Will never have another Senshi. And I don’t even want to think about what would happen to a world under those circumstances. So if I lost my temper a little, seeing that happen right before my eyes, you’ll forgive me. Such an atrocity was unheard of, in my time. But your comrade did it so casually—”
He was trembling, he realized suddenly. Literally shaking with rage.
“He will get another life, someday, because I am not capable of doing what you can. She will not.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 3:08 pm
"...So that planet is permanently dead. Forever."
Nausea hit him like a truck, but he forced it back down, trying to keep breathing. That went against everything the Negaverse actually stood for, didn't you? You can't protect Earth from aliens if they have no ******** home to go back to.
"And so is her soul."
All the emotion curdling in his gut, making him sick, has to go somewhere, so he strides closer and kicks the dead Captain in the head for something to do.
"I didn't know," he whispers hoarsely. "I haven't done it myself, but that's not… That's not what we were supposed to be for. I thought, I don't know, eventually the energy would be shat out or something."
Less than eloquent response, but he didn't have any bandwidth to be eloquent right now.
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 3:09 pm
”I would assume so, yes.” Pyrrhus would not sugarcoat it; Tyndareus’s Negaverse masters would do enough of that, he was sure. “Destroyed in an instant, to benefit someone else.”
He was—so, so very furious. At himself, at the dead man, at the Negaverse and Chaos as a whole for what it had done and what it would continue to do. At his own powerlessness to do anything about it.
“I suppose that makes sense.” Pyrrhus said. “And no one was ever going to tell you otherwise. But no. That’s not how it works. Once a starseed is shattered, it’s gone.” He supposed he couldn’t be entirely confident of that. It wasn’t as if it was a common occurrence.
“So, there’s my explanation. I witnessed an atrocity that should never happen, and I put down the person that caused it. And if I’m honest, I don’t care if he knew what he was doing or not.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 3:09 pm
I don't care if he knew what he was doing or not.
The simple sentence sucker-punched him.
I don't care if he knew what he was doing or not.
That dead Captain could very well have been Tyndareus.
He was just lucky that Pyrrhus had some kind of previous connection to Tyndareus. That Pyrrhus might actually hesitate before murdering him. Because Pyrrhus might care if Tyndareus knew what he was doing or not.
"And if he didn't?" he challenged, eyes fiery. "I sincerely doubt many of us know the actual truth. If anyone knows it, it's not in our ******** databases, Pyrrhus. The higher-ups probably don't allow it to be put into the databases. You…"
He snarled, turning to punch a wall and pretend it was Pyrrhus's face. "I'm sorry that he killed an entire line of a person. That the entire planet is dead forever. That's horrific. But to say you don't care if he knew or not? What about me?"
He turned back to Pyrrhus, shaking. "What if someone else decided that about me? Killed me, just like you did that Captain? You want me to come back to the Order side because of some relationship we had back when your Tyndareus was alive. What if someone wanted the same for him?"
He emphasized his point by jerking his thumb to the dead Captain.
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 3:10 pm
Ah. Pyrrhus supposed he should have expected that to touch a nerve. Maybe it was easier, anyway. Maybe that made sense.
“If he didn’t, he still ate a soul to heal himself, which ought to be considered a monstrous act anyway. Would you consume a human heart, if you thought it would make you stronger?” Perhaps it wasn’t exactly one to one, but it was close enough as far as he was concerned.
He didn’t flinch, when Tyndareus’s fist slammed into the wall. It could as easily have been him, and he probably would have taken the hit just the same.
“And if someone decided that for you, I would hunt them down and make them pay or die in the attempt. If someone wants to do the same for him, I welcome it. Not the first nor last time I’ve been on the other side of someone seeking vengeance.”
Probably that sounded strange, to someone who had grown up on a world that didn’t celebrate blood feuds and intrigue and murder as central to its identity. Alas.
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 3:14 pm
Tyndareus couldn't even formulate a response to the question he'd been asked. Didn't have time to think about it. Because what Pyrrhus suggested was so patently absurd, he started laughing. Almost maniacally.
"Vengeance? You think—" He cut himself off with another peal of near-hysterical laughter. "Vengeance. As if that's normal to think about. Most people on Earth don't go around killing people who pissed them off, Pyrrhus!"
His laughter began to wind down and he cradled half his face in his smarting hand. "His loved ones are just going to grieve and move on. Most people aren't like us, Pyrrhus. And frankly, if someone does kill me, I don't want you seeking vengeance. Getting your stupid self killed because I got my stupid self killed is the last thing I would ever want from you."
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Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 3:14 pm
Pyrrhus found himself taken entirely aback. Of all the reactions he’d expected, laughing in his face wasn’t one of them.
“It’s normal to me, yes! It’s how my entire life worked, for decades, until everything was upended by my world being destroyed. My own cousin spent most of our lives trying to kill me because she was angry I was the Senshi instead of her. I’ve fought people who wanted me dead for far lesser slights.”
He huffed, quietly. “And in any case, it’s not—it would be the only thing I could do.” Imnolu thought he was better than the rivers of blood he left behind. Imnolu was, in this particular thing, wrong. “Obviously I’d rather that not happen. It would be a little anticlimactic to live for a thousand years, centuries beyond what I should have, and die because you pissed off the wrong person and I had to make them pay.”
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