Zhonne rubbed at his nose with his dirty fingers as he crouched along the top of the scrap heap at the citadel edge. It was a land of ruin. The sector a dark and reddened place after the great war, largely left abandoned and forgotten by Nebari Prime. Dressed in his rags he eased along, wary of encountering other scavengers. His black eyes gazed down sadly from the wild thrash of his black hair as he searched for anything he could trade. He heard the scrounging of another and froze, searching for the source of the sounds before moving again. After a few moments he found himself gazing down at a young woman going through a pile of wires and junk until she sat squat and began to eat something, sneaking around glances. A control collar was around her neck.

Zhonne's eyes brightened with interest, his nostrils flaring as he tried to see or at least smell what she had found, though he already knew what it was. She looked up, her eyes meeting his wildly with her fingers to her mouth. He eased back but it he was already seen. He stared back, waiting to see what she would do. She curled her lip at him, seeming ill contented as she looked away with a scoff and continued to eat.

Zhonne leaped down, silent as she whirled away from the sound of his landing and ducked into the remains of a blown open ship. He crouched again to the hiding spot, searching hopefully for any scraps of food she might have left behind.

"Hey, that's mine!" she shouted as she came running back out and pushed him. "Get the frell away from here you tralk!"

Zhonne landed harshly into the wall of junk, staring at her without expression as a grunt escaped him from the wind that got knocked out of him. He held tightly to the small bag of food cubes. His face flinched as she rushed him to snatch the bag.

"Let go of it!" She demanded, pursing her lips with narrowed eyes as she drew back and knocked him across his jaw as hard as she could. He turned his head in the blow and then pushed her away from him by her shoulder, turning his gaze back to her wildly as she went falling to the ground.

She came to her hands and knees, shaking her head, her ash white hair flying. She drew to her knees, her black eyes lifting up from beneath her sharp brows and strands of hair. She tocked her head as she stood, eyeing him then from the corners of her eyes as she drew her arms back.

"We don't have to fight over this," she nearly cooed. "Look, just share. I found them first."

"They're mine," he spoke quietly as his eyes saddened again. "Don't you know how to get out of that collar?"

"What, this old thing?" She asked as she touched the control collar and then chuckled.

Zhonne blinked slowly, sighing deeply to himself as he drew to his knees and set the bag of food cubes in front of himself. "I'll show you how to pick the lock."

She knelt with him, snatching up the bag, smiling as she stuffed it into a tear in her coat. She curved her head to him with a wry smile. "You got anything else up your sleeves?"

"Nothing you're gonna get," he barely smiled as he reached out to her with a small metal stick and popped the lock on the control collar. It swung open, beginning to alarm madly. He quickly began to dismantle it, taking several of its small components for himself. The girl watched with mild interest.

"What are you going to do with that?"

"Trade it," he shrugged. "What are you doing in this sector?"

She tilted her head, her eyes shining suddenly as she parted her lips. "What are you doing in this sector?"

"It's here or a hundred cycles of turning me into the perfect Nebari," he muttered quietly. "I'm not likable, really. You can go now."

"Does that mean I can stay too?" She asked, smiling brightly as she turned her ear to her shoulder. "The name's Chiana. Listen, if I could get you things to pull the valuables out of, maybe ... you could split the difference with me. I need enough to ..."

"No," He shook his head, burying his face into his thrash of hair. "Why do you think I'm in the junk? I want nothing to do with trouble."

"Oh well, you're gonna get it no matter where you go aren't cha?" Chiana balked as she tried to peer beneath his bangs into his eyes. "So what do they want you for?"

Zhonne shrugged reluctantly with a slight twitch of his nostril. "I recited Nexina's Akethru's Horman in the greater citadel."

"That doesn't sound like much."

"Yeah," he barely smiled with a wince of his eyes as he looked to her. "But Akethru's was humanitarianly executed for writing it and I spoke it in the great square of the Establishment's doctorates. My name is Zhonne now, I dare not say what it was then. Apparently, two thousand cycles doesn't change Akethru's being forbidden."

"You can tell it to me," she spoke softly as she searched his eyes more gently. "What could this Akethru's have ever said to land you down here in this dump?"

"Provocation?" He offered with raised brows. "I don't think ... I want to repeat myself."

"C'mon," she nudged at his knee with her foot as she stole a food cube into her mouth and chewed. "I got caught stowaway on a ship to Sivar and the guy dumped me off to the joke they're calling authorities in this sector. At least I could say it was worth it if you'd tell me."

"You snurched my food cubes."

"Oh yeah," she nodded as she gaped at him with fascination. "I saw your name written all over them."

"You hit me," he stated gently as he searched her eyes with a solemn expression.

"You snurched my food cubes," she smiled with a quirk of her brow as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her crossed knees.

Zhonne sighed deeply again as he slowly blinked at the red dust of the ground between them. After very long moments he began to speak again in a gentle, though deeper voice:

I looked beyond the man. I looked deep into the soul of the deamon that called himself hatred, lust and all the things wallowed into that hezmana of Nebari nature. You will never vanquish them, Nebari Prime. Send him to shadows, cast him into the comfort of forgetting. Say you can extract him from my mind, his dark grasp of blood let. I will tell you the lie would be in the raping of my mind to take the deamon from me. Hezmana is your mask of greater good, where perfect is the sentient who attains life without experience, without sacrifice, without mistake, without shame or regret.

I tell you the lie would be to say you are perfect in your greater good to deny me my nature, to extract my evil because you do not want to see how horrible you are. Because, you do not want to see, the things you have done in the darkness inside you. I looked beyond the man. I looked deep into the soul of his deamon. I walked across hezmana and I plea, do not take my memories from me. Do not content my life to suit your own ideals of who I should be. I drew the deamon on a wall and that wall you destroyed. Look for yourself, the evidence of your cleansing. Where I say to you Nebari Prime, your perfect greater good, I am a cleansed man for drawing that deamon from the very soul of hezmana, and mine are eyes that see. While you have cleansed the evidence of the darkness within you, it is because you must not look in your perfectness, you must be blind in order to believe yourself.

While I heal my ungodly wounds from the taste of my blood you have taken, you have chosen to be perfect by cleansing yourself of me. For one hundred cycles I have undergone the cleansing, as you see, as I am the evidence before you, you will never rid yourself of the abhorrent violence that lurks inside of you, that will not twist into your conformity, your safety in believing in your perfection.

You are the deamon, Nebari Prime. You are what you despised. While I am a cleansed man for shedding light into the dark, you have forsaken the great ideals we built upon, believing you could cleanse me by taking the darkness out of my being.

I tell you, if that was natural. It wouldn't be there to begin with.

****************************************

Chiana ran down the narrow alley with Zhonne, keeping up with him though he was a little faster and much lighter on his feet. He jumped to the top of a short wall without much thought and dashed up to the roof tops almost as if he could fly. She blinked at him, gaping as she struggled to climb the wall and balance along it up to the jags and cracks he used to get to the roof. He watched her with a quiet gaze as he crouched there with his hands pressed together between his thighs. She let out her breath to blow her strands of hair out of her eyes as she plopped down next to him.

"How do you do that?" She awed at him. "I've never seen anyone with those kind of moves."

"Sure you have," he offered as he turned to peer down the other side of the roof. "It's a feeling, Chiana. If it is big enough ..."

He cut his eyes to her with a wry smile. "Why do you think we can survive here? You must be fast when absolutely necessary, you must use those senses or perish."

"I can't climb like you."

"Yes, you can," he muttered. "You are Nebari."

"What are we going after anyway?" She came to him cautiously, gazing over the ruins below to try to see what had his interest.

"Sivar," he blinked slowly before pointing out to a dome shaped mound just beyond the edge of the citadel. Surrounding and over the mound were bits of junk, mostly ships, ground runners and gliders. "Unless you would care to fare your luck with the security here and their transports the only other option I can offer is to get one of those running for you."

"That looks like a Zygrent mound."

"It is," he nodded slightly. "But I know how to get around them."

"I have to get back," she spoke quietly as she turned her eyes to him from her strands of hair. "I don't - I don't know anything about leaping around and facing deamons. I'm from the South Walden Prime. We have rats - big rats, not this ... Zygrents. I think I'd rather stuff myself in a security transport's storage compartment."

"Why don't you tell me one now," Zhonne turned to her, delving into her eyes without expression, his own sad though not unpleasant. It was very easy to look into his eyes, calming.

Chiana looked away as she swallowed. "I don't know any philosophers." She laughed. "Mirin spray painted frell me hard on an Establishment security post once ..."

Zhonne seemed to smile as he sat with her and tucked his knees into his chest, wrapping his arms around them. "I've survived ten cycles of Zygrents swarming into this dump to eat us because I recited a philosopher. You're running Chiana. There must be something you believe - to stowaway so you could snurch my food cubes."

"We're just street rats like you," she barely muttered with a small wry smile at her palms she rested into her crossed legs.

"So much unsaid," Zhonne seemed to awe at her. "You make me wonder what oceans of everything lay beyond such a simple statement. Couldn't you just know a poem or a little story to tell. You know why I'm out here, why are you?"

"You're hardly a frelling criminal Zhonne," she smirked at him as she lifted her eyes from beneath her brows at him. "If anyone ought to be mind frelled it's the Establishment. But oh, I think they did that already."

Zhonne chuckled a crisp, boyish laughter over her sarcastic mannerism and the way she blinked, twisting her head in the statement. She smiled, narrowing her eyes in curiosity of him. "Alright, I'll tell you one if you can get that transport."

Zhonne smiled, the smile in his eyes as he raised his head. "I'll fly you myself."

Chiana tilted her head, wiping her tongue with her thumb and index finger before she began:

There was a mouse who lived in the setting sun. She danced there every evening, dreaming of days when the sun rises. Though there was talk about the night, it was a place she had not been because when the sun was done setting, the mouse would stop dancing, not to be seen again until the sun had reached to the west again.

One time came to pass where mouse decided she would stay to see the night even though it was forbidden. The night they said was supposed to be a terrible thing and if she went she could never come back. They would make her come back if she tried and take the - the deamon out of her mind. Never run with a philosopher they say, especially ones that recite ancients in the Establishment Square like an idiot and get tossed into the dump for it. Mouse had no place else to go though, things happened and she ran. She took her gypsie robes and carried into the night.

Mouse saw the stars in the sky above her. For the first time she saw the moon and the sheen of mystic blue milkyways. A cool wind swept through the night, whispering over the grasses she used to dance in. It seemed like the same place but it wasn't, it seemed like the same spot she danced in the setting sun but it was like another world, dangers and wonders entirely new. She danced in the night wind and sang to herself. Mouse, had fallen in love with those stars above her and dreamed of touching them. A dream forbidden except by philosopher scavengers hiding their food cubes in junk and degenerate punks who spray paint frell me hard on the mind cleanse police walls.

end