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Time was running out.

Much as Athene didn't want to admit it, he knew that time was running out.

It had been pretty much a week and the only thing that so far they really had to run on were two things...

Firstly had been the overheard order to for those captured to be taken somewhere beginning with 'F', information that the teller had risked her life to give them.

The second had been a torn and dirty map with a red line going west. West as in mayhaps the western side of the city.

Neither had been much to go on, especially with time continuing to run and pass, however Liryn had said that the person with the map and the hotel worker badly injured which meant that maybe there was something in it. Or maybe he was just clutching at straws...

Either way Athene knew that he had to keep searching and not just because the Negaverse had taken people that he knew.

A part of it was guilt, he'd ended up missing the ball because of being out of town and no matter how much some would have said that he couldn't have know, it didn't stop a part of him from thinking that he should have put off his cousin and stayed up rather than going down to the family celebration for New Year's.

Another part was worry about why the Negaverse had targeted senshi and knights for capture.

The final part was dread - dread that they wouldn't make it in time - dread that the Negaverse would finish whatever they were planning and then start killing those they had taken...

After all he couldn't see the Negaverse holding onto those that they'd taken forever...

A chaos aura distracted him, faint but out there. Weak and around Lieutenant level. To be honest if not for the kidnappings Athene might have left it alone - but the kidnapping had happened so instead he found himself glancing sideways at the tabby bobtail perched on his shoulders as he asked his furry companion to hang on.

It took him a while, but eventually he managed to find the source of the chaos aura. Was in time to hear the Lieutenant talk about his treatment of the body lying dead... In time to hear him admit what he'd done with the starseed.

He froze for a moment, eyes horrified beneath his glasses as he stared at the Lieutenant, not noticing as Liryn slipped off his shoulders.

Once again it was the auras that drew Falias away from the familiar of his usual patrol beat.

He actually hadn't been planning to patrol at all, but encountering that General four nights after the New Year's eve party had disturbed him, particularly when he'd teleported away with the two kids.

He'd left behind a key labelled 'F' and some sort of ticket that looked kind of like some sort of a raffle ticket. When it seemed like no one else was interested in them Falias had scooped up both before turning his attention to helping out those with him with the youma.

What sort of sick ******** kidnapped kids?

It had been something that bothered him - enough so for him to be wandering restlessly when he'd picked up on the mix of auras.

There had been Order auras and Dark Mirror auras and, curiously enough, what felt to be an aura of around Lieutenant level.

Even so by the time Falias got there it seemed that he was the last to arrive.

Some of the faces he recognised - Sarras of course and then the Pink clad Squire from last time who like him had told the General to let the kids go. He recognised the Dark Mirror senshi too, skirting away from them his eyes drawn to the two two kids feeling a sense of relief that they were here and not wherever it was that the General had been planning to take them.

Then his eyes were drawn to dead body by the Lieutenant "What's going on?" He asked in general before directing his attention to the Lieutenant "And on that note what can you tell us about this" he pulled out the key. "One of your Generals dropped it." It was a long shot and he knew it however Falias figured that he might as well be in for the dollar if he was going for the dime.

The lieutenant's fuss struck Megrez somewhere, deep down. It was a pitiable sight, truly. Was he crying because he got caught, or because it was all too much for him and he was starting to snap under the pressure? She remembered when the war was too much for her, back when she had killed that first lieutenant. Perhaps it still was too much in a different way, but she wouldn't dare entertain those thoughts now. Something he said while panicking caught her attention, though. She knew two shes who glowed, one more so than the other. Her face stony in an attempt to conceal simmering rage, she grabbed the aggressive Cosmos Knight and ever-so-casually threw him off (more like pulled, but details). "What color was she glowing?" Starseeds are souls. Either Ganymede or Penthesilea was made to break a soul and keep it from ever being able to reform, recover, or reincarnate. I... I can't process it right now.

Glitnir, meanwhile, was creeping closer and closer to the body despite the lieutenant's pleas. The dead girl in the ball gown that was surely once lovely was an immensely tragic sight, and Glitnir's brain was sparking a million miles a minute trying to process the sight. Her eyes had been marred horribly. Acid, the lieutenant had said. And her starseed, her very soul, had been pulled out and destroyed. He vaguely remembered that woman's hand around his soul from his visions of that future, like someone putting their hand around your very being, made to coalesce into that point. Feeling defiant, he cautiously touched her cooling hand. "Oh, look, I'm touching her," he said nonchalantly. "Tell us what you know, or I'll start searching for an ID next."

Phact had been able to catch herself and stop when she realized no one was going to kill him...yet. With all the new faces, the senshi in white decided it was time to shut up and listen. Sidouer should have been appearing at any moment so she waited. Last thing she needed to do was react again in a way that could have caused her to over react.

Once was enough.

Closing her mouth, Phact listened. So the woman was dead. Bless her. Because from what Phact could see, the woman had lost something more than her life. Phact could even from this distance, see the affects that something had been used to take her eyes from her.

Wincing, the senshi turned away.

What grabbed her eyes now was something that had been dropped. A key?

"Now this is interesting." She whispered, stepping closer to give it a better look.

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His cries made her close her eyes for a moment. He was struggling both physically and mentally. Phact didn't know if it was for what he did or for his hatred of those who stood around them. One thing was for sure...

Her feet guided her towards him. When she was close enough, she dropped down and her hand came back with a resounding crack

She aimed straight for his face, slapping him. "Enough!" Her voice was harsh, filled with anger and annoyance though her eyes looked sad. "Hate us all you want. Curse the fact we are here but little good that will do you now! You chose this path and if you are not having regrets, then grow up and deal with them they way you need to." Tears were running down her face at this point. He was their only chance and the others, Phact worried, only meant to kill him out of rage. Thus why she stepped in.

"You can't tell us anything, fine." Her eyes shot back to the others around her daring them to strike unless he struck them first. "Then why don't you show us. Because I hate to say it but you are already in too deep. So from where things stand, your choices appear limited." Phact was fighting back the rage as she tried to keep logic going. Killing him meant they lost their edge, their one easy chance to keep going. Otherwise they would be searching for days, weeks....they didn't have that kind of time. Acurcis didn't have that kind of time.

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Sarras hoped that the two that pried him off had to work good and hard for it, because he did not appreciate the sentiment what so ever. He reasoned with himself that he had allowed himself to be pulled off, and not that he could not fight back the senshi and the feline. Eventually, they pulled him off, and before he could turn around a berate them for interfering, the lieutenant rambled on and tried to flee, only to collapse to the ground, hands in his head. He wasn't going anywhere in this condition...

And then Phact slapped him, and Sarras didn't bother to hide the short laugh at the sight. "Justly deserved..." he muttered, but grew very serious when Palatine grilled him. She looked ready to spit fire, and he knew better than to try and get in the middle of that. If anyone here had a reason to want this lieutenant dead, it'd be her, without contest, and Sarras would happily hold him down again for her.

"You best answer her question," Sarras said, drawing closer to them and cracking his knuckles loudly. He didn't care what was going on in that head of his, and he was determined to push back anyone that tried to stop either him or Palatine, or anyone else that wanted to extract answers from this guy. "Now. Where are the prisoners! Speak!"

Canopus could not stop the tears from flowing down her cheeks and she found it hard to watch the scene play out before her. She was terribly conflicted, and part of her wanted to help the lieutenant, speak up for him when the rest of the group tore into him, but... she couldn't.

She wanted to think that there was remorse there, that maybe they could have helped him, like how Kairatos was helped, or that Wasp senshi in the previous fall. But he was digging his grave deeper and deeper, and it was when he grabbed his own head that she found herself finally pushing himself to her feet, leaving the body of his victim, and moving towards him. When Phact, Palatine and Sarras addressed him with anger, she tried a different tactic, fearing it would not only fail, but earn the ire of those around her.

"Please... please, can't you see that this is wrong? There might be help for you, but not if you keep going on like this. I can't stop them, but you can," Canopus said softly, meek, even in her own ears. Why was she even speaking to him like this and not turning away was beyond her, but she couldn't leave without saying she tried. "Tell us where they are... before this stupid war claims more victims! Please!"

Fear spiked in Iduna again and she froze, green eyes wide like saucers. The adults were getting loud, getting threatening, and stepped behind the other two kids. It was like a fight with her parents; someone slapped, the other person tried to run and couldn't, someone yelled. She winced every time someone rose their voice or threatened the poor man. Her own 'side' was just as bad as the 'bad guys'. He may hate them, but he probably hated himself more. She knew she did when her parents yelled at her.

Iduna's fear and bubbling need to stop the yelling spurred her to place herself between the crying bad guy and the rest of the group.

"STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!!!" she screamed in all of her high pitched glory. "YOU'RE JUST AS BAD AS THEY ARE YOU STUPID ADULTS!"

This was either going to work, or she'd be labeled (as always) as an emotional little girl and pushed out of the way "for her own safety."

Perdita was mildly disturbed by the scene on the rooftop, though this unease was not caused by anything one might typically expect. Rather than being disturbed by what some of the gathered Senshi and Knights intended to do to the Lieutenant, she was disturbed by her own thoughts on the subject.

She watched the scene unfolding before her with interest. People died, there was nothing anyone could do to avoid that, and the sooner people got over it the better off they'd be. People died in times of war in particular, and this was a war. It stood to reason that this Lieutenant might die at some point, likely at the hands of his enemies.

Perhaps now.

And Perdita saw it not as abomination, but as a fact of life. An eye for and eye, so they said. The life of one Lieutenant who'd obviously done some truly despicable things was less valuable in her eyes than the lives of the dead girl and the Senshi and Knights who remained in captivity.

Was it wrong to think that?

“Quiet,” she told the little girl who was shouting, the one who'd spoken to Oberon just moments ago. “He made a choice to kill that girl and feed her starseed to another Senshi. Choices have consequences. These ones they took are people's children, aren't they? If something happened to you, would you blame your family and friends for taking matters into their own hands? What else can we do? Turn him over to the authorities?”