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Slow steps were the only ones that he could be certain of. Self-preservation dictated that he should not enter this room. Logic dictated that one did not put yourself into harms way, that you didn’t put a gun to your temple and dare a madman to pull the trigger.
Choices however, were slim. If he did not make this walk of his own accord, he would make it at her beck and call and that would be worse. It would give her that extra thing to be angry over and he would not feed the anger any more than he had to.

A deep breath and he clenched his hands again for a moment, then realized that his bare fingers were thick and tacky with half drying blood from the cuts he had irritated, the glove peeled uncomfortably at his palm. He’d almost forgotten it so lost in anticipation he’d become. He let a breath of air escape him, a soft almost sigh. He moved forward as briskly as his trembling legs would carry him, out of fear that otherwise, he would not make those last few steps.

As soon as he was clearly in view of her he dropped to a knee, he could swear that there were marks of a thousand ground into the crystal, a spot more highly polished by far too many knees bent in fear, those who had gone before and were now nameless… lost.
What histories were they missing beyond what the General Queen had dredged up from the depths of the rift?

His heart rate lifted, thundering so hard in his chest he thought she must very nearly be able to see it pounding against the cage of his ribs. Her expression, like a cobra waiting to strike, surely she must already know of his failure to look so stormy. The best he could do would be to offer up what things he did have. Information, a safe captain, nothing –lost- to the Blood Moon Court whom had already taken too much… it would not sooth her, he knew that already but he must at the least try.

“”No Senshi my queen, but information we did not have before…and we kept them from gaining another of our own. We also found that Ares was not –with- them this time, I don’t believe that could be normal, she is too invested I think, too driven for it not to be strange that she wasn’t there” He kept his eyes down, no names, just what he could offer.

“Sailor Birhan seems to have lead the mission, we have found the nature of her powers as well, which means that further encounters can be tailored to that information.” He was trying hard to keep his eyes from darting to that staff, but the gaze wandered all the same. Nervous twitches that rose to it, or slid to its base only to be returned to the trailing hem of her gown like a scolded child.

He braced himself for the worst, or tried, it was hard to prepare for a mercurial temper. God only knew he thought the woman must hate him already, even if he had succeeded he had been the one to ‘bond’ to the Crimson Crystal she had ordered retrieved. He had gone out of the way to pull Lyra from the clutches of the Blood Moon only to add her to the ranks of the Negaverse. Now this, now he had gone out meaning to capture a senshi, had had his own hands on her and let her go.

It took everything he had not to blindly try and teleport away. The hand drifting towards the mirror took his whole attention for the moment and then… then she changed her course as sudden as lightning and he didn’t know why. His heart thundered in his chest and he had to lift his chin, wide eyed to meet her furious autumn gaze. “M…Madam.” He fumbled for the words, for Diplomacy… hell he fumbled for English, tripping over the words the way he’d have tripped over his own feet if he succumbed to the brutal instinct to run that had taken a firm hold in the back of his mind. Tugging with such ferocity and intensity that his feet shifted before he caught himself.

“I thought if we…” He started and then stopped “If we had the information on enough of them we could… eliminate a maximum number without depleting our already low count of Soldiers or…wasting your, valuable energy… “ He staggered over the small flattery like an obstacle course, alien in his mouth and as hard as chewing glass. “It was presumptuous of me… “ His mouth was dry as he said the words. His fingers curled tight into the daggers pain in his hand, small crimson droplets falling to give new offence to the floor like some small tribute to the blood lust in her eyes.

Kill them, with your own hand. The words fell like stones into a well, down into the dark to finally strike once they seemed to have been lost utterly from sight. He swallowed hard trying to choke down the objections that rose all too eagerly where before he had lost all power of speech. To kill his own Captain, to kill anyone for a –single- failure and replace them with… untrained, wet behind the ear fresh recruits who would be treated as nothing more than cannon fodder.

Could she really not see the flaw with that logic? Couldn’t she see what they would do if they knew? Was she really so powerful that she could afford –not- to care about the faith and loyalty of the people who served her?

His eyes darted sideways chasing after the long nails that pressed against his cheek, wondering if he was likely to join Wolframite in the ranks of loosing an eye. He wouldn’t even have done it in service to the Dark Kingdom… it would just be a mark of humiliation and failure for her to toy with and nothing more. It would be… just like him.

“Madam…” He said by way of an answer. It was not a ‘yes’ but neither had he refused, he’d acknowledged her demands and it was the most earnest he could be at that moment.
“For…the good of the kingdom I hope they will not be so foolish.” He said fighting against the edge of a stammer. Could he have soothed her? Might he walk free safely?

He shivered under her touch, the discrepancies between her gentle touch and the piercing gaze was unnerving. Ironic perhaps that even in his civilian life he created a similar effect, if nowhere near so intimidating. The touch was almost… motherly. That alone bred an instinctive distrust in him. How often had his own mother touched his face gently and then broken something, or hit…someone.

A cobra, a snake or a spider… something poisonous and predatory, that was the air she gave off. Something vaguely spoiled and accustomed to violence without repercussion. Someone quite assured of having his or her own way. Childish but so dangerous, and then she lifted him like he was nothing. A terrifying display of strength that made him gasp, she yanked him through the air like a toy she was done with and threw.

He expected to hit the doors, very much doubted they would have the courtesy to open for his passage but the shock of passing through them was very nearly as bad. A Parlor trick for her amusement that left gravity to take hold and tug him down to skid over the floor and finally dispense of the last of the momentum granted as he thudded against the pillar in the center of the room. A grotesque monument to ‘love’ and its rewards, the former General King and her one time host, locked forever in stone.

It took him a moment to recover the breath that had exploded out of him on impact, the dizziness and disorientation. The burning aches in his shoulder where it had taken the focus of the impact against the crystalline pillar. He should be glad he supposed, that he didn’t seem to have broken anything. Mad… she was mad.

Even now the parting threat shook him like an earthquake, it shook him to the roots. It was somehow one thing to have been afraid when he walked in, to have expected anger and perhaps immediate physical damage but to hear it. To be treated in such a way as though he were nothing but her doll to be toyed with and cast aside.

He felt helpless in a way that he had not for years, hands bound by the sheer magnitude of her power and her madness. He could not blackmail her, could not arrange some unfortunate accident based around some propensity to fetch coffee from a certain shop at an approximate time. For the first time in a long while he truly felt he had nothing to defend himself with, which made it seem all the more inevitable.

Shock turned to anger, anger was captured hastily and placed in its particular emotional ‘box’ before it could lash out and make things all the worse. He knew… he understood how Lina must have felt, helpless to the tides of the mercurial queen. Small wonder that Castor and his offers had been so persuasive. It offered some poisonous sliver of hope though it lacked any certainty. Running at that moment seemed so easy that he felt his stomach twist into a knot. He could go to… whom, anyone at all? Did it matter?

He could not give up what she had; too many faces too many people. He couldn’t abandon them out of fear. At least he told him self that over and over in a quiet mantra. It would mean only that the Queen turned her anger to the next target; it might be someone as powerful as Tanzanite, or as fresh as Zircon. What of Lyra…what of his team? “There must be a way…” He whispered to whatever might be listening. Whatever thoughts bubbled up from the dark depths of his mind though was joined by an expression he would ordinarily seek to hide above all others. Fear seasoned the icy blue, perhaps a sign of reason. Only a madman would have remained unaffected. There was the inkling, there the seed of a plan but he could not do this alone… he might not be able to at all.

Victory, success, had never been so important.