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Jade had been relatively quiet during Buddingtonite's tirade. Her gaze was set on ground, and expression on her face was serious, as she was thinking of her next move. She wondered would she look like being guilty or gunning or anything like that. Would she be believable?

From the corner of her eyes she saw Gunn approaching and as soon flames spread around, her feet started to move her as far from the fire as possible. Was that senshi insane? She could been killed! She, their supposed ally! Silently, she felt gratitude towards Buddy who let her to move behind him. Frantically looking around at her surroundings she continued walking backwards, her expression now genuinely alarmed.

Suddenly, she lost her balance and fell down on her bottom. For a moment, she closed her eyes tightly and let a gasp out, yet kept herself quiet. It had hurt but there was something more that had hurt more. And it was.... her pride.

However, words that came out from the general's mouth next sounded a bit... strange.... 'What are you planning now, general?' ...It was clear he was coming towards her direction. And there was something in that walk of his... something ominous.

Once, she closed her eyes and lt out a breath, trying to focus on the mission an keep the right state of mind on.

Remember, he is an enemy in this play...and you, you are his prey... So, act like a prey..

Now, if Buddingtonite had expected her to wait for him coming over, he would find himself surprised. Because his captive, his dear lieutenant in civilian disguise was now kicking the ground between them, giving her best to keep distance between them and trying stand up while her hands were still tied behind her back. She was trying to keep her focus on this attempt of escape and not look at him, fearing a little of herself giving a wrong impression and failing the mission. And failure, that was unaccepted.




(Sorry for double-quoting.)

Though she hadn't expected a Negaverse general to go after the pink-haired hostage, she realized that she should have for one of two reasons: first, he really wanted to hang on to his hostage, or second, the hostage was not actually a hostage. Senses already on high alert pinged still higher at Serpentine's swift reaction to the movement of the girl. So, one hostage temporarily freed, then recovered by the Negaverse. If it were her priority, Gunn would be upset.

A marble pinged off her head and she scowled, but otherwise disregarded it; if the Negaverser in question only had marbles, it'd be better to leave them to the lower-ranked or less experienced of the group. Gunn wasn't going to completely count out a Lieutenant as a threat, because that'd be stupid, but a Lieutenant who picked a specific fight with a senshi much stronger than they would last about twenty seconds in real time.

"Prove they're senshi," she shouted at Buddingtonite, over the flames and the sparking of the floodlight. "Give me a henshin pen, a real one, and maybe I'll stop!" She wouldn't. But if he really did want to resolve it peacefully, well, the pen would be evidence in his favor. She heard the ebb and flow of the battle around her, felt the curious lessening of her adrenaline and ire at another senshi's call, but part of discipline was continuing to fight even if she didn't particularly feel it anymore.

Off to the side, she saw Cybele intercept Empressite, the blue-haired lieutenant who'd been holding the hostage Gunn had thrown. The pale-colored senshi looked more than able to handle the Lieutenant (pinging as Super to Gunn's admittedly poorly honed senses) and besides that, Gunn had drawn attention of her own. The black-clad corrupted senshi was blowing flower petals at her, and though she tried to get out of range--she knew from Ares just how deadly harmless-looking attacks could be--she couldn't in time.

She felt… well, to say she didn't know the feeling of regret would be wrong. What she was uncertain about was what she felt regretful about. Throwing the senshi? Blowing up her senshiphone? (She'd need a new one, she guessed. Did those regenerate?) It was enough to give her pause, but training kicked in again and she hauled off to grab his outstretched arm. When she had a good grip, she yanked him towards her even as she dropped towards the ground, basically tripping him with her own body. With the enemy senshi off balance, she grabbed hold of his shoulders and threw him at the whip-wielding General (Serp).

With the senshi neutralized (for the moment, Gunn was sure he'd come back) she was free to--take a shoulder in the gut? The hit wasn't as effective as it could have been, with the dark-haired lieutenant (Cinnabar) backing off as soon as she made contact. By then, Gunn was on her guard; though Cinnabar grabbed for her wrist, Gunn yanked her arms close to her chest. "Oh no you don't, b***h," said Gunn, "two can play this ******** game." She shifted her weight smoothly to her back foot, aiming a kick at Cinnabar's midsection even before she finished talking.

It was clear to see that this plan was not going exactly to plan, and from where General Buddingtonite stood, it was clear that whatever control he had over this crowd was going to the dogs. Not that one could see the annoyance or panic in his gaze from this angle as he made his approach to Jade, but he figured that there'd still be time to get her out of here, or at least in a safer position before someone sought to bring the fight up to him.

To give the crazy fire senshi credit, she did bring up a decent point, but Buddingtonite would have none of it. Hell was breaking loose and considering that she had already unleashed an attack against not only the hostages, but the people below without a thought or care to her little stunt backfiring, it was clear that trying to 'prove' himself would have been a colossal waste of time. There was brave, and then there was just crazy, and Buddingtonite knew crazy, more than anyone else there. And thankfully, the need to provide 'proof' was deemed unnecessary when Cinnabar and Kerebos made their strikes against her. Which left him alone with Jade.

Jade was acting well on her part and if there was a moment, Buddingtonite would have showered her with praise. The look of fear on her face was almost genuine and it was almost enough to stop him, but he had to get her out of here, at least so that she could transform and defend herself. He rushed at her, grabbing the cloth at her chest and lifting her up with his bandaged hand, grunting as he did so. This had to be the hand he held her with, so that the other could reach in and dig out the starseed. Normally it wouldn't take much effort to lift her, but it took a little extra, and he had wondered why though only for a second. The moment Gra's hold tightened, he remembered where that energy went, and when he lifted Jade completely off her feet, he whispered harshly to her, before bringing his other hand towards her chest. "I'm terribly sorry about this, but scream... loudly... and play dead."

Then, he wrapped his good arm around her body in an almost sensual manner, and with his bandaged hand, he plunged his hands deep into her chest. It would hurt, she would scream, and he steeled himself for it, laughing loudly so that he could drown out her pain when she screamed. He didn't want to hurt her, but... he had to put on a good show.

Except the pain wasn't an act. Neither hers, nor his.

“Buddingtonite!!”

Ganymede had the sort of voice that grated on the nerves. Not high pitched in that sickeningly sweet quality many girls her age tended to be cursed with, but it had the habit of testing people. Lower in pitch, sultry and seductive in a way that occasionally came off as surprising when issued from such a young, fresh looking face, Ganymede was nonetheless unintentionally loud. Even in her quiet moments her voice carried farther than she meant it to.

Of course, in situations such as this, she'd learned to use that to her advantage. She could bellow with the power and ferocity of someone twice her size. The General's name carried over the shouting and skirmishes that preceded her. To anyone else it might not have seemed entirely threatening, but to this man, she hoped, it might be enough to give him pause.

She landed on a nearby rooftop, coming to a stop by the familiar figures of Europa and Leda as her voice echoed over the expanse between buildings. Her heart rate was up from the run over, her veins coursing with adrenaline. Almost unnoticeable were the frequent tremors of building anxiety. She felt keyed up, unnecessarily high strung, and the scene atop the department store wasn't helping matters in the least.

“Buddingtonite!!” she called again. He was just a little too close to a figure that, from this vantage point, looked to be a civilian (Jade) for her comfort. The movement of his hand toward her chest was rather unmistakable. “You pull her starseed and you know what'll happen! Tormenting kids not enough for you these days, is it?”

There was something about this entire set-up that didn't seem quite right to her. Hostages were, after all, a common theme with the Negaverse.

“You think this is a trap?” Ganymede said with a quick look toward Europa and Leda. “It feels like a trap. The city being out of power is bad enough. This is too convenient.”

Lyceum was a little more than freaked out by the show that was being put on. She jumped slightly when one of their own started setting fires with nothing, magic of course, but still it was odd to see. This was all a lot to take in, this sort of thing probably happened often enough, but she had never been apart of it. She was currently cursing her curiosity while wondering if she was being shown more of the truth. She already had so much to think about where the code was concerned and now this.

A civilian was thrown, fighting was breaking out and other's were going up to help. A shout of the general's name already confirmed what she knew. It really was Buddy on that roof and what was he doing now? She acted, her feet moving before she really really realized it and she found her self up on the roof (???), to the side and behind Ganymede a bit.

"Buddy," she started trying to sound calm but her voice was shaking moving a little closer, "this isn't like you right? This isn't what you do. You're about recruitment. That's what you said ... infiltration. I don't know what going on, but stop, please just stop."

It hardly sounded calm at all after seeing his hand in the girls chest and the other seeming to think that he was going to pull her starseed out, instead it was rushed and panicked. She probably sounded very naive, and at the very least it was obvious that she had talked to him, that she knew him. That she might be a problem.

She took a step back and looked to Ganymede her expression still frantic, a woman totally out of her element, "A trap ..."

So her fist made contact, great. But apparently something had caught her opponent's attention and her fist only made contact with Cybele's side. Not as effective as it could have been had she hit
as she had intended. A miscalculation. And one Empressite would remember and work on, so that it wouldn't happen again.

After the ineffective punch, she backed up swiftly, expecting the other's retaliation to come in the form of another punch, so she didn't want to be too close.

She wasn't expecting the kick, so when her leg lashed out, Empressite had miliseconds to react. To back up too much would lead to the edge of the building where one wrong move could toss her over the edge (she was still new enough a lieutenant she didn't know how fast injuries healed, or if she could survive such a fall, what her limits were – all important pieces of information she would need to learn before being involved in a battle like this again), but still she wasn't about to absorb the full impact of the kick. So she jumped straight up. But it wasn't fast enough, and her ankles caught the full strength of the kick, and she fell – hard – rolling as she hit the rooftop.

The impact drove the air out of her lungs. Her ribs ached – damn it, they had not been long healed from the last injury – and she knew the ankle was more than likely dislocated, possibly broken. The smart thing to do would be to get up and withdraw, she could do so without fear of reprisal or being labled a coward, but … she just couldn't bring herself to do so.

Steeling her nerves, knowing that to move was going to hurt like hell, she got to her feet.

Acubens felt the order aura coming as she crept along the side of the building. Night and nights of trying to track down or else keep an eye out for Bsichofite had forced her to keep her senses sharply atuned for anyone approaching. She didn't turn around, but nodded as Andronicus announced her presence.

"Good," she muttered under her, painfully aware of how her heels clacked on the pavement. "We're going to need all the help we can get." Her words were almost drowned out by how sharply her footwear sounded off of the empty walls around them. The sound cut through her nerves as definitely as it did the silence around her. This wouldn't do. It gave her position away and right now she wasn't looking for a fight, she was just looking for some answers. She signaled to Andronicus that she would be halting with her raised hands and stooped to remove her shoes. No real need for them right now, so she set them aside and left them. They would reappear on her body when she powered up next anyway, the same as her costume always repaired and cleaned itself.

"Try to silence anything you can. We're running recon right now, not offense," she whispered back to the knight behind her.