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Albali held out her arm to the other senshi, allowing her to inspect the shallow cuts there. "I probably shouldn't have had you tear up the underside of my arm. My family's going to think I've taken razorblades to my skin. Bad enough that I've been quiet of late!" She was trying to laugh off the situation, misdirect it away from why she had been there, confirming at least somewhat that she wasn't insane. "I would never want to be what Lyra became when she walked into their arms willingly. She isn't even herself anymore, utterly alien like a broken doll." Her disgust for the situation was clear.

To the accusations that she preferred to be one of the Dark Mirror, she had little to say. Allowing the silence to stretch as the young woman searched for the words, she tried to speak very carefully. Almost she succeeded in speaking without emotion but it was in vain; she felt too strongly about Ares. "Fallon was my best friend. We had a very special relationship and I miss her very much. Her clarity of purpose, her leadership ability, they were all leagues above anything I have seen otherwise." Lips quirked a bit, a grimace of pain on the bitterness of truth. "Yet I was left behind. Logic says I wouldn't be too very keen to join with someone who didn't want me." Which was why she struggled with it so much; it was utterly illogical. It made no sense.

Madness never did.

Albali tried to prevent the snort but it was too late, the sound hovering between them in the night air. "I guess the Serenity Remnant isn't as good a substitute for order as you were hoping? Though there is one thing that girl does right when it's sitting down and keeping her mouth shut. She has no place here. So many of us have no place in this damn war." Certainly Albali felt that she was one of them! She had been rather content to be a student, to have her own easy cares and gentle woes. Certainly she never asked for this. Certainly she didn't want this!

Stress was showing in the way she started to pace back and forth like a caged thing, fingers tapping lightly against her thigh in consideration. "There are always options. You can always throw your pen in a drawer, forget you even know how to use it. You can move out of Destiny City somewhere far away and pretend that the newscasters are making it all up. You could even petition the Negaverse to make all of your cares go away. Perhaps, if you can find my Qu..Ares," she hastily amended, "she will make you one of her mirror soldiers. There are options. They're just not easy. Nothing in this cursed existence of ours is easy." Grumbling, she went suddenly still, trying to wrestle internally with control and starting to win. "Sometimes I wonder if the fanatically religious were right. There's a Hell, we're living in it."

Albali was very opinionated.

Looking down at the light hand on her shoulder, the surprise was evident. Albali had never before spoken much to MuCephei but she understood a part of the fear that was this woman's reality. It was, at this point, rather undeniable that Eilian would far prefer the company of a soft female companion to that of a male one. Grandchildren were not likely and for that her parents would shoot through the roof with abject horror, then fury. Often she joked privately to herself that to demonstrate that she was an alien magical warrior from another time and place would be far easier than to spring something more known, and more feared, onto them.

"That's the heart of the problem for all of us these days, is that all of this isn't black and white anymore. When we started out it was. They were bad, they were evil, they had to be stopped. But now the bad and the evil are our friends, are our families, are those we love and care about." Hesitating for a moment, when she spoke, her voice was firm. "I cannot see Ares as doing anything more than what she thinks is right for all of us. She has never, ever, waivered from any goal she's set. I can't think that she would somehow be so very changed as to not think that this was what we needed. But I am too weak to be of use to her and thus I am left behind." Pulling away from the dark-haired senshi's grip now the Senshi of Echoes ripped strips off of her bow to start binding up her arm.

"All I know is that I'm alone in this. The only time I was never not alone was when I had Ares' path to follow. I don't know anything else."

Interesting that Mu wouldn't even waste time offering to help Albali be no longer alone in her fight. Obviously if there was someone that she thought would be able to fight by her side, there wouldn't be this conundrum on the part of the violet-haired warrior. The best metaphor she had was one that she didn't want to use at all, yet it was like being locked out of heaven. Knotting the ribbon about her arm the Welsh girl looked up with a rather charming grin. "That's the idea, anyway. I figure I've wasted enough time chasing smoke that it's time to focus more on other things." Like courting a General-King to plead your case, campaigning among the ranks of the Dark Mirror Court themselves, quietly sitting in the background to betray the senshi.

"Have you ever done that weird space phone thing? It's rather eye-opening and life-changing to be sure. I found the strangest things there, trying to make sense of them, but it seems I'm not the only one who is interested in learning." Meaningfully she glanced back over her shoulder, pulling hair out of her face with a scowl. "Well, one out of roughly ten thousand isn't much of a loss. Plus he'll have to actually strike a deal with me to figure out more of it." Seeing that MuCephei was somewhat surprised at that, she shrugged.

"He bet a fiddle of gold against my soul."

Little s**t was probably something they both could easily agree on, bringing a much needed laugh from the Echoes girl. "I would think that's a good thing. I saw Tanzanite before, during, and after she went utterly insane from what we did to her. It also gave me a healthy respect for Nemesis that she didn't really earn by force of personality so much as willingness to be gruesome." Even thinking about it now her stomach heaved and turned, fingers pressing over her eyes briefly to toss that memory away. "Less insanity means a more predictable adversary. The more Order they have the less Chaos they will be. That's logical." Nothing could truly defy logic.

Nothing ever.

Looking at the hand she looked rather like she wanted to take it, and the offer, but something painful was stopping her. "Can I bring a notebook? I haven't documented any other world but my own and would love the chance to compare and contrast the differences." Of course; someone offers to take you to their magical world of blood and all you want to do is take pictures, take notes, and maybe sell them on the black market.

Though she was starting to like MuCephei so there was at least hesitance when thinking about that last one. "It'd be so fantastic."

Albali never, ever argued against what had been done to the Negaverse officers captured in Operation ROTA. Not once, not ever. Certainly MuCephei wasn't going to draw her into a debate about it, allowing them both to sling recrimination for something that had passed. It was done, it was over, it had not worked out and now their hands were all stained red with guilty blood. Better to have done it for the right reasons than for pure cruelty, wasn't it? Sometimes she wondered but again...never would she question Ares.

It just wasn't built into her.

Shrugging it all of with the smile her mother had taught her to throw off as a toddler, the Senshi of Echoes dissembled. "That's quite alright. Didn't hurt me to ask or you to deny, now did it?" Though there was true regret in the lines of Albali's movement as her hand came up to rest lightly in the other woman's. There was still her memory, which was rather strong, and perhaps there would be time to slip a few artifacts into her fuku somewhere when the Senshi of Blood wasn't looking. It surprised her somewhat, at how avaricious and light-fingered she'd become over the past few years, yet the bargaining chips were absolutely necessary.

Sailor Albali was becoming a corrupt human being, without even having the benefit (or excuse?) of Chaos.