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She'd never seen the inside of Gunn Killingworth's apartment before, one of the clone housing arrangements teachers from Hillworth got. It was startlingly spartan; there was a couch which looked chronically unused. There was a kitchen unit, which was tidy, totally devoid of the normal human rubbish that evidenced somebody actually dwelling there. A closed door lead away to ostensibly where Charonite slept, though whether or not he slept at all was still up for evidence. There were no decorations on the walls; no TV; one of the windows was open a crack where, as she looked, the General-King sat on a chair smoking.

There was an ashtray. That was the height of the trash: an ashtray, which looked extremely full. Actually, there were two ashtrays, both perched on the windowsill. They looked as though they belonged to the Olympic Cigarette Smoking Club.

"Afternoon," he corrected her. "You've been asleep all god damned day."

She was still in pain; but her wounds were bandaged up. Obviously when she was unconscious, Charonite had gone over her -- which was an embarrassing thing to think about.

"No," said the General-King, "I knew. She's been ******** babying Castor since day one -- I have my own ******** theories." Whatever they were, he didn't elaborate on them. "I'm surprised that even as Captain he ******** you over, but with Astraea in tow -- well, she's made her own funeral there."

He tapped ash into one of the not-overflowing ashtrays. "If she's going to god damned show up whenever he's in the least bit of trouble, I'm just going to snap his ******** neck the next time I see him. She's desperate. She never let herself out this much before. Desperate or ******** egotistical. That ******** cat. I hate that ******** cat."

Charonite looked weary. She could see the bruises underneath his eyes of no sleep; he was sitting there in his gym slacks and a wifebeater, dreadlocks pulled away back into a rough ponytail, the sunglasses sitting next to the little Vesuvius ashtrays. He sounded angry -- when didn't he -- and he wasn't looking at her.

"There's only one ******** way to beat her," he said. "Just one. I've always known it was just the god damned one and I hate being penned in -- this is what always had to happen, Ursula. Just the one ******** thing. If there was only one way to do something -- even if that one way meant a huge amount of god damned risk -- what would you do?"

It was the first time he looked at her. He stood up, grated his cigarette down into the ashtray, and folded his arms as he beheld her: didn't give her a chewing-out for losing, again, which meant that something was up. Something huge was up. The last time he'd hauled her around by the hair, he'd been that angry -- and he was still angry, she could tell; but there was something different behind it.

"You really have no ******** idea," he said. "Not a ******** clue. And yet you're devoted anyway. For the good of the Negaverse," he parroted. "You have to do what it takes to get the job done, sir. -- So, Captain? What if you died? What if you gave your ******** life for the Negaverse? That's the second greatest god damn honour you could ever have: first best is giving someone else's life, all right, Captain?"

He even looked agitated. He said: "Would you die, Ursula?"

He didn't respond, which was enough to make anyone's heart sink.

Charonite instead reached down with an outstretched hand, silent, the wake of the silence after her request sinking all around them -- helped her to stand, his mouth in a tight line, saying nothing. Revealing nothing. His pale grey eyes betrayed no reaction to her request, and he sure wasn't kissing her, was the thing.

And then, when she stood, they popped! through the teleport into Negaverse subspace -- his silence still a held breath, rather than a flat refusal, though she had to wonder at this point if he was ignoring her. Hand-in-hand, the leader of the Shitennou lead her through the equally silent throne room to the room to the side that she knew well by now -- knew, except for the part where it was now totally trashed, the stone table at the center in pieces all over the floor. Dents in the walls. Rubble.

But the glowing crystal with the object inside was there, as it ever had been there, and they were picking their way over the broken remnants of his temper.

After a while, he spoke: "This is everything I have been working towards and everything I've been ******** protecting," he said. "Everything. Everything we ever worked towards. Back in the days when there were only four of us, and I wasn't even ******** awake -- "

Charonite shook himself out of his impatient reverie, and said: "Doesn't god damned matter. I tried it with the two corrupteds. They're both so god damned up to their eyeballs in Negaverse power that it takes one hell of a spell to hide it -- a hundred times more than you. A thousand."

He didn't place her hand on the crystal, as he had done before. Instead he turned to look at her, and he hesitated -- visually hesitated. The General-King never hesitated. He had never hesitated with her before.

"This will kill you."

He had hesitated?

"This will ******** kill you, Captain, and you'd sell it for a kiss?"

Obviously he was filled with contempt with the idea. It had backfired on her. "That's your price? A kiss? You barter away -- ******** -- everything -- for a kiss?"

But before she could expect, God only knew, a backhand? With a literal hand or words? -- he had hesitated again. And then he reached out to touch a lock of stray orange hair at the side of her face, not tucking it away, just touching it, as though he wanted to see what it felt like underneath his fingers.

"A kiss?"

I would trade it all for a kiss from you.

There was the look of vague, unfamiliar befuddlement on Charonite's face. And then -- suddenly -- there was the realisation, a long time coming, like a lightning bolt straight from Heaven. For somebody who was so clever, the General-King had been fairly ******** stupid over the worst-kept secret that the Negaverse had to hold. Apparently he'd never seen it. Apparently he'd never known.

And then there was the greatest disappointment ever:

He kissed her on the forehead.

Charonite tilted her head up, and he kissed her on the forehead. She was a full head shorter than he was (well, who wasn't?) and he brushed his lips over her temple -- brief. Agonizingly brief. Bittersweet.

"Ursula," he said, "you have no ******** idea how to bargain."

And then he tilted her chin up and kissed her on the lips.

The General-King tasted arrestingly of nicotine. It was a little like kissing an ashtray. But apart from that -- he was kissing her, his fingers brushing past her hair and grasping it as he'd done before in anger -- fisting his hand in it, kissing her with all the thoroughness that he hadn't addressed her forehead with. He was kissing her.

There was, again, a pause where -- for a moment -- she thought he might say something; but then he didn't. He was guiding her hand towards the crystal, and then the other, and this time her fingers sank in to the cold depths. Up to her elbow, shoulder, and then -- he pressed on the small of her back, and Nealite was absorbed into the crystal.

If she'd known the experiences of Tisiphone and Nova, she would have immediately recognised that this was different. This time, the skeleton locked deep within the rock embraced her -- wrapped its bony dry arms around her and held her within them.

Then the pain began.

It was a little like the pain she'd experienced upon her promotion -- except that pain was a pinprick in comparison to this pain. She was being taken over. Something was sliding in next to her consciousness and reworking her body entirely, flaying her skin to pieces, growing a new one. Taking every muscle and discarding it as useless. Taking her body: accepting it, grudgingly, for what it was, a human shell, and remaking it. The power was intense. The power was incredible. It was fire underneath her skin, an inferno of it, making her into a charred corpse and then rebirthing her in the next moment.

The crystal exploded.

The General-King threw one arm up against the barrage -- didn't stumble, but watched as what had formerly been inside fell down in a pile of dead, dry bones at the feet of -- Ursula --

-- no, not quite. Not quite, anymore.



He sank to one knee without even having to think about it, head bowed. Not even feeling the triumph, yet, the triumph would come later. Kneeled in the wake of her, lifting the hem of his dress to her mouth, pressing a kiss against the fabric before dropping it.

"Your majesty, I await your orders."

Queen Beryl.

The General-King rose to his feet. The way he looked at her now was utterly different -- and he'd never looked at her before like that; never looked at anyone before like that; he took her hand and he pressed her palm to his mouth, never taking his eyes off her, slowly alight now with exultation as he kissed the base of each finger. Pressed his lips to each fingertip. Didn't bother to agree with her -- just took her in his arms and then kissed her in a field of crushed crystal fragments and bones.

"As you say," he said, but then light of who the General-King was shone through, because he said "damn it," and kissed her as though it was a worthy replacement for oxygen. He wound her arms around his neck, and his around her fragile waist: and then they were kissing with a vengeance as though they'd been told that it would be banned the next day.