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Why had he come? Before they had carefully arranged their meetings, meticulous detail paid to the time and place of where they would meet so that there were no patrols overlapping. No one would be able to notice that Albali was a traitor to the Order, those foolish senshi that were so painfully self-important that it disgusted her. People died and the enemy (who she wasn't sure was entirely an enemy of anything but the senshi), grew stronger and stronger while they bickered over what to do.

Fools.

Yet now Zinkenite was here, without warning, asking Albali if he wanted her to hold up to his end of their dangerous bargain. Why wouldn't she? Wary of his close proximity, the Senshi of Echoes took a few steps back, one for every one he advanced towards her. "I have never wanted anything but the attention of my Queen. That was our trade." And he was going to go back on it.

You didn't have to be a genius to see that Zinkenite had no intention of talking to Princess Ares about her. Had he ever intended to? Perhaps, when she had been nothing more than an interesting, somewhat intriguing traitor to the 'cause'. But, as she'd suspected, she'd become too interesting.

"I trust you remember that."

Fists clenched at her sides as the General King verbally listed her sins at a volume that any nearby could hear if they tried. Why did her motivations matter? She was paying for his assistance. He didn't need to know why. "Why should I tell you? I've paid you for your assistance, General King. My motivations are my own, though I think we have already spoken once of my loyalty to my Queen."

Frustrated, it stopped her retreat enough that the young British woman was clenching her hands, speaking through gritted teeth. "I have sworn to serve her and it has been her opinion I best serve from this line. I respectfully disagree. It is to that purpose that I have engaged your services, in hopes that your rank will put weight to the opinion." Certainly Albali could not convince Ares. Zinkenite could, perhaps, if he threatened the queen with Albali's usefulness in another way.

Impotent fury filled her so that she all but choked on it. Relying on others, being incapable of fending for herself, it was mortifying. "I serve my Queen. No other."

Albali, too preoccupied with keeping away from those dangerous hands that could end her life with a rapid snatch-and-grab maneuver, did not notice they were in a place secluded from all but the most prying of eyes. Insulting Ares was perhaps the quickest way to put the Senshi of Echoes into a defensive, indignant frame of mind. "You think that I am loyal to Ares simply because of our friendship? You know nothing about the leader she is." Pressing her lips together, Albali discarded reason for a moment to make him understand something.

"In the entire history of the senshi, no one has been more successful against your organization than my Queen. She captured your members, made them tell us their secrets, and we would have succeeded in eliminating them all if others hadn't gotten in the way of her goals. Why would I follow anyone less successful than she has been?" It was logical, it was practical, why didn't anyone understand?!

It made her shudder deep inside, the way he called her precious. Albali did not want him to think of her as precious. Did not want to think of her as something that needed saving, rescuing, or his handouts. "All I want is for you to uphold your end of our bargain. When you do, I am confident I will be again able to serve in a proper fashion." A cornered animal was dangerous and it was now that Albali realized she'd been backed into a corner.

A dark one.

Was this another dream? A nightmare conjured up by doubts? Fingers reached down and pinched hard at the back of her wrist, feeling the pain shoot through her nerves. It was real. Zinkenite had somehow pieced together parts of the puzzle that had been Albali's strange alliance with him, why she had persisted on the side of Order when she so desperately wished to be a member of the Dark Mirror Court.

Perhaps, her mind pointed out, you were not as clever at concealing the realities of your situation as you had thought. It would not be the first time that Albali had out-thought her own self. Anyone she had fought, and Zinkenite was one of those, knew that her power was useless on its own. All she had to work with were quick feet and a quicker mind but there were others with quick minds that were more useful.

Was this the end of her? No! She was too young to die!

Eyes narrowed and tried to find her way out, deciding that if she was going to go down, she would go down swinging. Never let it be said that when the time came, Sailor Albali took her perhaps well-deserved betrayal with meek acceptance. Not her! Not ever!

A fist swung out at his face even as her whole body was thrown into the movement. If he could get down, if she could get over him, she could escape.

No!

Everything in Albali cried out against what was happening to her, yet she struggled in vain. All of her magical star power, all four inches of height difference that she and the General King had, was nothing in the face of what he was. Zinkenite was so far above her in power that she was nothing more than a plaything, the true puzzle she had called herself. Albali had been the Rubik's Cube for him to figure out and now that he had her where he wanted her, the game was ready to be put aside.

She thought she had understood pain. Hadn't that been why the crescent moon of her Court was branded into her flesh with a hot iron? She'd bled for the Blood Moon, wept for them, lived for nothing but her Queen. Now it was all going to be taken from her because she had been too clever. Too clever by far and it was going to consume her.

Yet though her body fought, her mind told her to accept it. It was a thing that had to happen and the more she fought the harder it would be. The more it would hurt. How anything could hurt worse than the feeling of those long fingers inside of her most private heart of hearts she didn't know.

Albali burned.

Tears tracked down her cheeks, her mind turned towards accepting her fate, but it was a hard battle. So very hard. Fallon! She thought, once, a scream out into the darkness for the meticulous woman she had loved.

Then she thought of nothing at all.

It was like coming out of a long tunnel where there had been nothing but white noise, a high whistle in her ears that days later the woman would have been able to identify as her screaming inside of her mind from the pain of it. That calm voice echoed in her ears, like it was unreal, and so she answered with the first thing that came to mind. Everything felt numb, overused, exhausted.

"My name is Eilian. I don't know who you're looking for but you've got the wrong person." Without the support of hands pushing her against the wall, the Super Senshi fell to her knees. Her fuku had been altered; what had once been white was now black, the gem in the center of her tiara blown away to expose the black hole of a Chaos-touched Senshi. Where a purple diamond had been in the center of her chest, now there was nothing but a black hole.

These were not things she would notice until much later for as far as the girl kneeling in front of the General King in exhaustion was concerned, she was nothing more than an ordinary music student in Destiny City. Some spark lit her eyes, her head lifted. "Where am I?" Up to Zinkenite's masked face. "Who are you?" Fear.

Looking at Zac like he had utterly lost his mind the only thing that rang even remotely familiar was 'terrorists that plagued the city'. "Oh sweet Newton you're one of those damned gang members aren't you?" Thankfully there was enough instinct left there that the moment the young woman became truly upset, her powered form drained away to reveal nothing more than the girl who had been Eilian Halpan.

No one who knew her would have recognized her yet there would have been a sense of familiarity. She looked like the friend of a friend, perhaps the cousin of an acquaintance to anyone that would have been familiar with the youngest of the Welsh Halpans.

Dizzy as she tried to stand, to stagger away, she waved Zac off. "Listen, I don't know what kind of weird games you gang people play but I am not interested! Now either help me home or go away." How had she gotten here? What happened to all those weird ribbons?

Oh ******** was she really involved in this? Why couldn't she remember?

Help her home he did, prodding towards helping the young woman accept that she was being saved, that she was involved in whatever was going on. However when she threw up all over his shoes, nothing more was said about the matter. Eilian was deposited in her apartment with the warning that she would not look the same to herself in the morning, that others would not recognize her, and she should call him when her head stopped hurting.

Falling into bed she finally agreed to do call him, simply to get him to stop. Before he had even closed the front door behind himself, the last member of the Blood Moon Court, now a senshi of the Dark Kingdom, was fast asleep.