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Arms stretched up towards the sky and a grunt turned into a sigh of relief as the vertebra cracked in Sailor Albali's back, releasing the tension that had built up there. The senshi was on her way home for the night after another rigorous training spar with one of her higher-powered BMC comrades. It didn't help that after speaking to Sailor Ares earlier that week she was waiting and hesitating around every corner.

The ISS had either come to a ruling about her and were going to ambush her in the middle of the night when she was aching like this, or they hadn't said anything yet and this tension was foolish. Albali was willing to take the former more than the latter because if there was one thing intolerable, it was the idea she was being foolish.

So absorbed in her thoughts was the first-rank senshi that she didn't even see the youma until she was twenty feet away from it. It didn't look happy to see her and Albali shared the sentiment. Almost perfectly. "Oh ******** me. Not now!"

Apparently no, it was going to be now, and she was rightly ********. Ribbons trailing behind the senshi were shredded by claws and lost as they were torn from her fuku as she dodged the initial lunge and kept running. Looking back was silly now that she could feel the youma. All that mattered was getting far enough away that she could turn.

Normally this was about the time that Sailor Albali panicked due to her lack of attack and the fact that kicking the hell out of a youma did little damage to it initially. But tonight she was incredibly lucky. "Albali Total Recall!" Hands were held out in front of her and almost glowed with the power flowing through them. That power started to sizzle as soon as it touched the youma and Albali desperately tried to avoid those claws.

Tonight, she'd been sparring with Sailor Nemesis.

Flesh sizzled away from bone and then when she felt it was time, a foot kicked out at the damn wings. Wings were bad. Wings were trouble, even more so than claws that could tear through skin and rip her limb from limb.

Wings meant she was defenseless.

No, she wasn't going to let it catch her. There was a moment of frozen horror as Albali realized that its nose was in its hands, panicking at realizing how truly monstrous these youma really were. She had to take it out. Throwing a rock in the opposite direction of where the senshi had landed when thrown from the beastie's back, she waited for his head to turn. There was only going to be one chance to do this and it had to be fast.

Weeks of training and practice came down to the one moment when Sailor Albali took one step, two, and vaulted onto the thing's head. Both of her feet came down on it with a sickening CRUNCH but it continued to flail. All of her years of dance brought her to the point of Riverdancing on the thick skull of a single youma that wasn't very strong and certainly wasn't any stronger than she was!

"I'm going to dance you to your death, you b*****d!" The ribbons that circled up over her knees were usually tricolored were now deeply soaked in blood and other things. She'd prove to them all. You didn't have to be a damn magical fairy from a faroff star to protect yourself and everything else. She was a damn good senshi!

Coughing, eyes watering, Albali stepped away from the sodden mess that had been a youma and tried to wave the smoke away from her face. What little voice she could rasp out was just as bitchy as she was feeling in that moment, probably unwisely so. "You Negaverse guys are all just really big babies. Hiding behind your little doggie and now that it's dead I'm worth your time? Sure thing."

That was bravado that lasted roughly until she sent out her senses and realized what the hell was waiting for her. "s**t." More coughing and a wariness now crept in behind the fact that she was probably now royally screwed. A General. She was up against a ******** General of the Negaverse after coming away from a sparring match with nothing more than ********, she took a fighting stance.

It would have succeeded and perhaps that night Sailor Albali would have died. Thankfully for the Blood Moon Court mercenary, however, she had had two people watching her from the rooftops. General Zinkenite was her predator...and Lina Knight her savior. Even as he'd lunged out she had leapt from where she had been calmly watching that weak little senshi splatter youma brains all over the street to get between them.

It resulted in Zink's foot connecting solidly with her left arm and side pushing her off-balance with a hiss and a hand hitting the pavement. Without even looking at the senshi behind her or worrying even a little bit about what the idiot was two seconds from doing (a kick? at Zink?), Lina spoke. "Turn directly around and run. Don't stop until you get back wherever the hell it is you came from. I'll handle this."

The fact that this was a Blood Moon senshi had Lina's stomach rolling but she couldn't let Zink kill anyone. She wouldn't let him kill any more senshi who hadn't really done anything other than what they were supposed to. Killing youma was their job and she'd killed more than a few since swapping sides. She didn't deserve to die for that.

Hearing feet retreat behind her the dimly-glowing Knight of Mercury rose up and coughed. "Hello again."

Albali had done exactly what the woman in glowing black had told her to do without hesitation. If asked about it later she wouldn't have been able to say why. Maybe it was because she was covered to the knees in gore, or because Zinkenite was a general, or she just really didn't want to get between whatever the hell was going on there.

Halfway back towards Crystal, Albali simply powered down and looked at her denim-covered legs. Not a bit of gore to be seen. How convenient. There was a slightly hysterical giggle that slipped past her lips, the side affect of brushing perhaps too close to death than she would like to admit. Ares was right -- she had to power up and soon.

Back in the dissipating smoke cloud Lina stood tall and proud. As tall as she could be anyway, which was somewhat taller than the general she looked down on with a faint smile. She hadn't seen the naked hope on his face through the smoke for her eyes had burned and watered like her throat. The scouter could see his figure through the smoke but not much else and it certainly didn't protect her.

"Lina. Linarite is gone now. Besides, I've always preferred the nickname. Interesting how my Negaverse identity was so close to the mark. Do you think he knew?" Conversational, that was how she was sounding. It was a real moment of curiosity for her. "Do you think somewhere there's a place with your name. Zion maybe? You don't strike me as Jewish though." Ramble ramble, don't hesitate.

Would he try to kill her now?

The smile broke even wider though it was absolutely a smile for herself and herself only before it was turned onto Zink. "It's funny how we see things. You see yourself as free and I can tell you I've never felt freer in my life. There's nobody watching what I do, nobody watching where I go. I can go home and not worry that I'll be snatched from my shared bed in the middle of the night. I don't have to go to sleep and wonder if tonight she'll kill me." Arms reached for the sky and a delighted, perhaps slightly mad, laugh echoed in the street.

"I'm free of her!" Another moment for herself before arms lowered and she dimmed. "My regrets? Oh I have them. Lots of them. You're one of 'em. Tanz." Shoulders rolled and shrugged when he questioned her about Zion. "You draw your power from the stones in the Earth or that's my guess about why we aren't all named sporadically. I'm named from a tree. A sacred tree that grows in a grove on a faraway planet." Eyes were distant as she remembered and smiled.

"Who knows where you really get your power. Maybe you aren't anything more than a poor kid who got drawn into something you had no business with. Maybe not." There was a moment where she wanted to reach out, looked like she was about to, and decided against it. "I miss you."

Had he been weaker, Lina would have wrapped her arms around the obviously hurting Zinkenite and hugged him. She would have soothed his anger and his fears as best she could, like she always had, before sending him back out into the cold, cruel world they all had to live in. But she couldn't forget that a General of the Negaverse had the power to corrupt. If he truly thought that she was safer with them in the darkness then he would do anything he could to drag her back down.

Including taking advantage of innocent comfort. But it was caused by her so was it really right for her to comfort him? Was it really innocent? The turbulence and questions hadn't died with Linarite and even now her head was throbbing with the implications of it all.

Wasn't anything easy?

No. Not anything worth having.

"You couldn't have saved me from her." It was the truth. Maybe now Tanz could have shielded her from Beryl's temper and her cruel games but for how long? How long until the harpy's resentment grew and she reached out to snuff the life of her blue-haired toy? "If Cosmos hadn't done what she did I would be dead right now. I asked him to kill me and he was going to do that." Well aware that she was on the edge of gushing romantically about Castor, Lina stopped and sighed.

"I wish I could have taken you all with me. I wish you'd all come. I don't like to beg."