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It was interesting that the Captain wasn't teleporting out of Scylla's merciless grip. Scylla knew they could, so either this one was proud, confident, or weak. The Eternal's heels clicked on the concrete, unheard over the howling of the Blood Moon. Her limbs writhed over the captain, and even as the woman tried to cut her way out of them, they remained, instead oozing their green ichor-like blood over the Captain's uniform.

There was true pity only briefly on Scylla's face as she stepped around the Captain, taking the syringe and a cloth from the cadet and stepping up behind Dioptase. "I'm sorry." she breathed against the other woman's ear. "I'll try and be gentle, but this may sting a little." The needle slid home into the foreign captain's neck, and the cloth went over Diop's mouth. After a few moments of struggling, the Captain went still, and the limbs released the unconscious female into the care of the Blood Moon cadet.

All over the cement battlefield-- a playground, for gods sake-- combat raged on. Smoke declared where Ares and Tanzanite were, and the purple eyes of the Mercenary gauged who best to assist in the cleanup of this bloody little setup.

Requiem had been waiting. She had managed to sneak off after Tanzanite had slammed her down to the ground, getting ready for the second wave. When she saw Ares's smoke as a cue, she hurried on in, a tiny little rag in hand and leapt behind the choking General Tanzanite. She wrapped her arm around the General and placed the chloroformed rag as close to the General's face as possible, trying to cover her nose and mouth until she passes out.

When the smoke cleared, Tanzanite was left with an empty syringe sticking out of her neck. Ares stood slowly, blood streaming down her thigh from an earlier wound. She let the General crawl for a moment and then brought her boot down on the girl's human hand with a sickening crunch. "GET ROTA'S KILLER," she demanded, a painted nail pointing accusatorially at Bismuthite. Requiem was there, easing Tanzanite into darkness with a chloroform rag. She didn't notice the pink-haired Nega escaping. There were other matters at hand.

With a wave of her hand, the senshi signaled for Requiem to step back. She had something to say to Tanzanite. Ares crouched to the cement, wrenching Tanzanite's head up by a fistful of purple hair. "I'm going to let you live, General Tanzanite,” she sneered, lips mere inches from her ear. “But only long enough to watch your precious Negaverse be destroyed.” With a flash of her arm, the Senshi of Smoke slammed Tanzanite's face into the cement.

"Watch the arm!" she commanded fiercely to Requiem. "It isn't affected by the toxin. Get a tarp. We need to bind it." The rest of the combatants were left to their targets. Ares needed to secure Tanzanite and get her out of here before the cavalry arrived.

The escape of Alkaid would be something Ares could talk to Birhan about later.

Gunn was inches away from her goal when suddenly, there was a knife and chain in her way. She scrambled back, the needle went flying, and Gunn was nursing a gash on the upper side of her arm. Seriously? Seriously? Gunn looked over to the black-clad Negaverser and was gratified to see him going down under an invisible Blood Moon's chloroform.

Then she looked after the pink-clad Negaverser--where was he?

The frustrated sound that game from Gunn's throat was nothing near the laughter of before. That little b***h! that little b***h she was going to rip his throat out next time she saw him he was going to die--

For now, someone had escaped, and she could hear another ISS member shouting for everyone to flee. "Leto, get gone," she shouted, "Take the prisoner." Prisoner. It was bitter in her mouth. She'd missed the one she wanted to catch the most, the one she was responsible for. With that, she fled, taking to the rooftops.

Requiem took haste in securing a tarp to trap Tanzanite's arm as quickly as possible. Tanzanite was not a normal human, she had a ******** youma for an arm, and who knew how long they would be able to keep her down for. She hurried and tore off some tarp from one of the closed off buildings and hurried over to Tanzanite's near unconscious body. She wrestled with the arm, doing her best to wrap it up and hold it shut. There wasn't any string, but she attempted to tie it in a knot to subdue it.

"Do you think this will hold?" she asked to Ares.

Ares slid up beside Requiem. She struggled to put the tarp over Arm, but it thrashed wildly, managing to stab Ares in the arm with a long spine. Swearing, Ares helped the cadet wrap Arm in the tarp, but it wasn't going to last.

In an act of desperation, Ares clamped both hands down on the inky black appendage where it peeked out from the tarp. "Ares Smothering Blast!" she shouted. The thing had once broken in two after a strike from Chronos' crown -- how would it like smoke? The blast ricocheted into Ares and Requiem's face. It had no affect on the Senshi of Smoke, but her smaller counterpart would probably not appreciate it.

When the smoke cleared, Arm continued to twitch. It chirruped a series of unnatural sounds and then went suddenly limp. Ares found Requiem's eyes and then shrugged. "Let's not question it now. Help me get her up." Using her waist sash to tie it off, the Captain of the Blood Moon made short work of binding Tanzanite.

With a grunt, she heaved the Nega over her shoulder. "Requiem. Watch the arm. I don't like surprises!" This was her role to play. Together with Requiem, Ares carried the Negaverse General off into the darkness at a run. Everyone had been given a different route to follow just in case they ran into trouble. This one was hers.

Whatever happened after she left the battlefield was up to her comrades.

Being knocked to the ground had rattled Uranophane's ears with entirely too much noise for that to be the only thing that was going on. Not that there wasn't plenty going on already. There were allies and enemies at each other's throats in every direction she could think to look. However, there had been a definite shift in the activity between the moment her back slammed into the asphalt of the court and the moment she'd headbutted Lyra and shuffled her way out from underneath her.

More footsteps. More voices.

More senshi.

Too many -- there were too many, the thought feverishly mantra'd itself between the Captain's ears as she tried to lose Lyra, doing her best to counter and step away while she skirted through all the commotion in search of a familiar face. Helicase. Wolframite. Tanzanite. Anyone. They had to get out of here. They were outnumbered, and they'd been outnumbered on purpose. Had any of the others pieced it together? She should have seen figures disappearing, felt power signatures vanishing -- they should have been retreating, her voice should have been carrying.

So many should-haves. So much useless, pointless hindsight. She should have expected that the likes of General Tanzanite would be the one to lead her into a trap. But of all the ways she could think the situation could have played out better, none of them did a damn thing to change the one they were actually in.

There was not a damn thing she could do. Uranophane realized this. And the moment that knowledge crossed her mind, the cacaphony around her dulled into meaningless, white static that tickled the ears but didn't quite reach the brain. One by one, a series of falling figures caught her gaze, each time a mass of skirts and bows closing on them like a pack of frilly wolves. She made a break for it, her boots digging into the ground in a desperate bid to set at least one of her comrades free, but it was already too late.

Color disappeared from her surroundings, then shadows, then shape.

She was next.

The smoke destroyed the sky and the basketball court and the ground beneath her feet, and turned the air into something that burned her eyes and assaulted her lungs. Her clipboard appeared in her hands, and she vainly swiped at it, but it only served to stir it around a bit instead of blowing it away.

She was last.

Uranophane wasn't quite sure what exactly had happened, and she couldn't begin to guess what awaited her next. Probably pain. Likely death. However, there was a single thought in her mind that persisted through the smoke and the chaos, and stayed firmly there even as the needle was driven in her neck and the rest of her thoughts melted erratically, disjointedly away. The noise and panic and confusion slipped into a slimy, inky abyss -- she could just make out her hand twitching in front of her -- and then her only comfort was her own mental voice, slugglishy expressing that final thought before it, too, faded away:

I failed.

I'm sorry.