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Ladon had been running most of his life, and it started from trying to protect himself. Years of experience made him good at it. He could go for miles. He ran from what would hurt him, and he ran when he didn’t want to think about something. He ran till he was exhausted and then ran some more. Tonight was the same and was different. He had a destination.

Panting in the hallway of the apartment complex, Lieutenant Wolframite could barely suck in enough air as his heart frantically hammered through his system, painfully pulling at his sides. Sweat glistened on his brow among the caked-on blood that was plastered on his forehead and clothes. Not his. Hands on his knees, he started at the floor, frozen, gasping, cold. A soft, spring drizzle had started outside, and he could hear the little patter of rain echoing through the hallway between his harsh breathes.

His mind had been on autopilot, running a blur of city streets with only one purpose – to get to Charonite. He thought about calling Linarite, his captain, but his fingers had shook too much to pull out his phone, and he couldn’t even see the numbers to text her from the stinging in his eyes. Reaching up, he wiped the back of his arm across his face, saying that he had to collect himself. The moment he had stopped running, stopped scaling the steps because he couldn’t even stop long enough to take the elevator, when he finally stopped here, he started to find the images and feelings he was running away from flooding his brain again.

Fresh red and glowing blue.

Trimmed fingernails dug into his knees as he gasped for air, clenching his teeth as he tried to keep himself focused. 10….9….8… He tried calming himself enough to do what he had to, but it sounded more like time was running out. Now that he wasn’t running, he felt the dread of what he had to do. Reporting. Reliving what he just saw only seconds ago? Minutes ago? How long had it been?

It was almost funny how he thought that it was impolite to be knocking at this hour. He even had the ridiculous notion of waiting till the morning when it was more appropriate, but then he knew that he wouldn’t be able to say what he needed unless it was now. He needed to say this. It was the only reason he was alive.

He wiped his mouth, tasting grime, salt, blood, and tears all mixed in, and it all tasted like salt. Hesitantly, he reached up and knocked, feeling that with each thudding of his fist, his heart jolted in turn. Boom. Boom. Boom.

He hoped they were home. ….They had to be home……he didn’t know what he’d do if they weren’t at home….please...be home….

The General-King read the panic in his wife's voice. There was one thing that he was really good for, and that was emergencies: he was pulling a wifebeater over his head and ricocheting into the main room of their apartment in five seconds flat. He looked at his Lieutenant and gauged everything in another handful of seconds, culminating in: "Sit down. Now."

Wolframite was shepherded by both his Queen and his General-King to the couch (it had a lot of cushions, not something you'd expect in the secret headquarters of the Negaverse). Gunn Killingworth was seating him down with amazingly unimpatient hands as he himself sat on the coffee table, one thumb reaching out as Ladon flinched -- "Hold still. It's fine," said Charonite, and eased up one of his eyelids with a thumbpad. Then the other. What he was looking for, he didn't say.

Ladon's eyes were red-rimmed, the pupils flicking around in fear but tracking normally. There was barely concealed rage in Charonite's voice as he dropped his hand. It trembled in his voice, snappish, was in his knuckles as he draped his arms over his knees. "Ursula, could you get a towel -- what the ******** happened, Lieutenant?"

The fetched towel was transferred into her husband's hand, Ursula's eyes wide as the lieutenant finished his message.

Strike one.

Her blood ran cold at that, the words repeating themselves in the back of her mind. Amber had just been made into a Captain. She'd had such promise - all of them had. And now all of them were dead and they were dead because...

Oh god.

The shocked expressing on her face faded, replaced with a coldness Ladon had never seen before. The dead teenagers were quickly forgotten. This wasn't about them. This wasn't about the lieutenants, the captain, it wasn't about any of them.

It was about her.

"What else did he say?"

Ladon's eyes shifted from the General-King to his Queen, who had moved to sit beside him on the couch. She was staring directly into his eyes, concern replaced with demand - a demand for answers.

"What else did he tell you, Wolframite. Did he mention Black Lady?"

Narrowed eyes glanced briefly over to meet with the General-King's, then returned to the lieutenant. Charonite was still unaware of the fight that had occurred days prior between the two women. Her wounds had been written off as an 'unfortunate encounter' and no more questions had been asked. But if this had to do with her...well, the figurative cat was going to be let out of its bag, soon enough.

"Where was this? Do you know if he's still there?"

He had no idea what ‘Strike One’ meant, but he had been hoping that it would be significant to the other two. He wanted to know that there was some reason, some motivation behind what had happened, and that the two of them would find the fact he was here, with this message, valuable. When he noticed they were confused, he wondered if he got the message wrong. Quickly, he went back, as much as he didn’t want to, to what Wiseman said. It was a simple message, one that the blue-eyed man had stressed.

“No. All he said was that I was supposed to tell my you, my boss, what I said, and that you’d know what it meant. Just Strike One. He didn’t mention anything else. I'm not sure if he's there…I didn’t stay long..” When the message was given, he knew he wasn’t supposed to stick around, and it was a message that was to be delivered on the double. After what he saw, he wasn’t going to test the man’s patience as the message was the only reason he let him live. With the way he just killed off an entire Negaverse team, he knew he wouldn’t have cared if he was on the list too as long as he had someone to repeat what he said.

Since he had nothing else to offer, he felt partly responsible for not being as useful in figuring out what it meant, and he kept his eyes on Nealite more and more. The look on her face seemed to say she was on the verge of finding out the meaning to the two-word warning, or at least an idea.

Charonite returned with the first-aid kit and proceeded to wiping the blood off his forehead, and he watched him as he told him the location near the docks where it had all happened. The smell of alcohol was making it hard to concentrate.

Captain Nealite and the General-King stared at each other. Charonite was still. He was supernaturally still. Something was obviously going on that Ladon didn't know, but all the Negaverse head did was turn back to him with a face as impassive as a blank piece of paper. No simple lover's tiff. No lover's tiff included the deaths of a young girl and her equally youthful Lieutenant team, anyway. There were people dead. There were people dead.

"Will I be discussing a decision of my Queen's," he said, nigh-on reasonable, "or a decision of Captain Nealite's?" The blood was all gone. It left rust-red smears on the antiseptic wipe. Attention was back on Ladon. His tone was formal and clipped. "Lieutenant, you did all you could tonight. Thank you for your valour. Wiseman isn't an opponent any of you had a chance in hell of facing."

That had been obvious enough.

"Help him get cleaned up," said Charonite, wipe dropped on the coffeetable as he stood up. Unlike Wiseman, he was physically imposing: tall and broad-shouldered, muscular, pure sinew. And yet Wiseman and his blue eyes were more nightmare fuel than the leader of the Negaverse at his shouting worst might ever be now. "I'll deal with the bodies. Take him back when he's ready, Captain, then return here."

Not so much as a goddamn. Charonite popped out of sight in the blur of a teleport, never waiting for his wife's answer.

She continued to stare at the area formerly occupied by her husband and it wasn't until the young voice spoke up, breaking her trance, that she looked away.

Eyes met and Ladon waited for his answer. He waited for the reassurance that no, his two heroes would get their revenge on this murderer, that they would take on this menace with as much hatred and power as they fought the senshi with - perhaps even more.

But that reassurance never came. Instead, she moved closer and picked up the towel, finishing the job the General-King had left her to do. Her hand was still shaking, her face had paled, but she quietly and efficiently assisted the teenager in straightening himself up.

Finally, the silence was broken. "It will be dealt with, darling."

One hand moved up to ruffle his hair, an annoyance he was growing more accustomed to, every time he found himself in the Queen's presence. She wouldn't let Wiseman strike again, would she?

Offering the water bottle to him, she gently took hold of his arm and raised them both off of the couch.

"C'mon now, let's get you home."

In a blink, they were gone, Ladon soon delivered back into the comfort of his own home, or what comfort there was left, considering Wiseman was still out and roaming the streets. The Negaverse had been the hunters, preying on the senshi. Now there was a larger predator, possibly hunting them. Sleep would not come easily tonight.

After bidding him a curt good night and half-heartedly echoing Charonite's praise, she returned to the apartment. It only took seconds before she fell back onto the couch, pulling her knees up to her chest. Her mouth had busied itself with chewing on her bottom lip, her hands locking themselves together around her legs as she waited.

And she waited.

His stare drove daggers into her, the tone of his voice forcing her to press back against the couch even further than she already was, her back attempting to fuse itself with the fabric.

She closed her eyes tightly, willing the guilt to go away, wishing she could just wake up from this nightmare...

And then she smiled.

"It's a discussion with me, Charonite."

Eyes opened again, but they were different. She still looked like Captain Nealite, but something had changed, something was different.

The woman who had balled herself up on the couch was now spreading herself out, relaxing her legs over the cushions as though she were attempting to make herself comfortable, settling herself in for a drawn-out discussion.

She probably was.

Eyes glanced over at the forgotten laptop, staring at the screensaver as it blinked across the screen.

"As it was said before - your agreement was not broken. I, on the other hand, made no such agreement. You did not consult me, you did not speak with me - you made a decision that was not yours to make."

One hand moved up, carelessly flipping back long waves of orange, "So when I saw Serenity, I did what I felt needed to be done. You, of all my officers, know what Serenity means to me."

An eyebrow lifted as her gaze returned to his face, a small smile finding its way across her lips.

"Oh, don't look at me like that, Mortalitas," she chided, almost playfully, "Kunzite would have understood."

The smile fled within moments, a sour expression taking its place.

"How dare you."

The voice was low, nearly a hiss, "How dare you address me as though I was under you."

Her hands had curled into fists, the knuckles white. Her words were coming out through gritted teeth, an obvious sign that the Queen's unruly temper was becoming dangerously close to being set off. "May I remind you, my General-King, that Zoisite chose to disrespect me and met a fate worthy of his insubordination not by the hands of the senshi, but by my own?"

Nothing was said for several moments, both individuals wrestling with their tempers. Then, more quietly, "I am well aware of the power we're dealing with, Charonite. There is a reason I am still Queen and a reason I have survived for as long as I have. I've died before - I don't plan on doing so again."

Her head tilted slightly, staring at the newly made dent in the wall. She wasn't the only one who had a temper, but walls weren't typically on the receiving end of her anger. "If you must know, I did have Serenity in my grasp. I chose to let her go. She's useless. Worthless. Nothing like her mother was. I want to know why Wiseman is using her, I want to know what he's up to."

More silence, more thinking. Her temper had been surprisingly tamed down by this point, considering the bold words of her last remaining General-King. "I won't have you wasting any more of my officers by having them run away from everything you're scared of. If they're not powerful enough to take on a Cavalier, then make them powerful. We have several teams - make use of them. This is a war, General, causalities are to be expected."

One hand moved to rest on her stomach, pale fingers gently running across the surface of the dress. "And besides, darling, it's not those children you should be worried about."

The smile had returned, more venomous than ever.