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Exquisite white leapt in dashes across his sight, timelapsed nanoseconds drawn out in afterimage across milliseconds. Thraen didn't feel the push, his body rolling, or where he came to a stop on his side curled protectively around what felt like a molten faucet instead of an arm. Orient. Move. Can't vomit, mouth is sand.

At least he wasn't drooling, for as ragged as breath forced in and out of a enamel-grinding grimace. His right arm was cradled inward against his stomach, left palm found and pressed down to push up to the Dying Gaul. He could read where the wound had struck finally, in focus, not her heart. Not her heart nor her aorta. Then the eternal senshi gathered his legs under himself and stood. Press her. Magic? Not yet. One more...something, distract her to catch her in it. Then finish it. One or the other of us while we have the chance. Pin her down.

There was the body, barrel chested and ragdoll, who's seed she'd stolen at the first to easy hand. It wasn't far at all from him, from where she'd pushed him. Thraen grabbed the back of the man's shirt and lifted, hucked the heavy weight of the bar-goer back at the General responsible for it. A body to it's accuser with it's weight of guilt.

The captain took to patrol routes automatically while his mind reeled over the coming decisions. Umber found himself in a unique position with recent events, one that foretold an augmentation in how the Negaverse dealt with difficult cases. Little doubt remained in his mind over whether he should relay this information to Laurelite, but he found some concern over turning that information over too soon. He found so little time to study his recent findings and how they impacted his brother; what if he explained the use of this organism much too soon, and after dispersing them among the lieutenant populace, they found that the host could live only a month while under the thrall of the creature? Revealing what he knew demanded more care than he was used to.

Meanderings sent him toward the derelict sections of town, ancient carcasses strewn between streets and grown into the ground as hollows for the decomposers to call home. Umber filtered through these old bones with ease, navigating them with a practiced ease developed in the forests outside the city. He cared little for where he went, so long as he went. He passed the remains of an old movie theater that he remembered perusing with a exploration-inclined friend. That friend is dead now, he reminded himself, when his gaze chanced toward the first door they picked open.

I haven't asked myself how I feel about that. The thought came unexpectedly - unwanted.

His communicator crackled to life in its rasping rattled with an urgent voice that he recognized immediately. Xenotime-

There's not time. She cut off. Starting into a run, Umber tried to reorient toward the first patrol route she trained him on - one she said she frequented. The crystal weighed in his palm immediately, and he held it to mouth while he shot up overhangs, gutters, and parapets. "Xenotime, do you read? Can you give me your location?" He cut the transmission abruptly to save energy.

The deep black spread of a general's signature encroached on the edges of his range, and he beelined for it in hopes of discovering her. Alongside it came an equally strong, blistering brightness belonging to their enemy. Even if it wasn't Xenotime, he may encroach upon a similarly dire situation. And yet, as he crowned the steeple of another roof and bore down on its sloped side, he recognized the familiar purple and green that composed his general's uniform.

Not far, he noted a blonde senshi with an obvious fracture in the arm. He did not yet look exhausted.

Umber shifted into a slide straight off the roof, which imparted him with enough inertia to hit the ground some feet away from a car. Red stained Xenotime's chest, and the marked wheeze in her breathing confirmed a lung injury. It might be collapsed. I could take his starseed while he's distracted with her, but he may still have access to magic. He's also an eternal. I don't have the time to crunch odds against her survival, either.

Finally the captain chose to dart for his general rather than the eternal. If he could make it to her in time, then the massive expenditure in teleporting them both would be sustainable.

Umber's voice, faint, off somewhere to her right. The crystal that had flown from her fingers. She didn't have time to look for it, or to answer. He would find her, or he wouldn't, but her attention returned in full to the senshi of gardens as he started striding towards her. Tall and rigid, Xenotime could have almost believed the lie, but she saw that slight sheen of sweet, the pallor in milky skin. A slight waver, the careful inhale and exhale of breath. It was a lie. A mask. A facade. Nothing but bravado and the sort of relentlessness she could have admired if it was almost anyone else she'd been facing.

A dog left to worry at a splintering bone.

Her breath crackled in her chest when she breathed, too shallow, insufficient. Wheezing as she pulled her legs free from the body he'd thrown at her. It's like suffocation.. Slow and terrible, each labored breath more ineffectual then the last. It was making her lightheaded, and that was nothing to the fierce throb. That grinding ache that made it difficult to think, difficult to move.

But she felt her captain's aura as it appeared on the edge of her senses, racing closer. It was only a matter of seconds now, a minute at the most. Thraen had sensed him too, she could see it in his bloody face.

Then he was there, boots smacking into the pavement as he hit the ground, and the general's face pulled in an awful smile as silver eyes slid from Umber to Thraen. Now you die. Or so she thought, assuming her ruthless, overly practical captain would go for the senshi, eliminating the threat. Instead he started towards her.

The senshi's words cut, stole the smile from blood touched lips, and she snarled back at him. pushing into the pavement to get her legs back under her so she could rise unsteadily to her feet. And the world spun, her vision running briefly to darkness. Can't breath. "Kill him..." It was barely a croak, and she coughed again, blood splattering against the concrete. "Kill him!" A little stronger, cracked and creaking, and she hand to throw a hand out against the wall beside her to keep her balance.