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The quaint little neighborhood was calm and serene below him, the perfect picture of civilian comfort even with the man lingering above on the rooftops. Unfortunately, serenity never lasted long in Destiny City. In seconds, the world ripped open as a chaotic energy burst onto the scene, filling the area with a taint so strong it was almost suffocating. The General was right in one regard: Alkaid no longer had the element of surprise on her side.

For a moment she didn't move. The shadows of the residential area spilled over her, giving the exposed starseed in her chest a haunting glow as she stood atop the steeple of a simple, uninteresting civilian rooftop. She was a pale gargoyle, tucked among the shadows and searching for the answering energy of the General's aura. It wasn't hard to find him, a General's energy was still strong in the wake of her own. She turned towards his energy where it lay somewhere beyond the curve of the road. Instead of dropping down to street level she took advantage of the row of houses, leaping from one slanting roof to the next until she was sure he was hidden somewhere along the straight and narrow portion of the historic district and fairly close by.

She hadn't heard his words but even as something not-quite-human she understand the import of prompt arrivals to those that were. She dropped down to a small steeple, unknowingly adjacent to the roof he had claimed, though she suspected he had to at least be camouflaged within hearing range. His energy was so close and vast that she could no longer pinpoint a specific direction to go.

"Apologies if I'm late," she spoke out clear and confident, "the perception of time is quite unusual when you don't sleep." She did not choose to seek him out any farther, but rather stood still on the peak, letting her translucent cape settle around her shoulders and pool over the slanting rooftop. She, like the General, was fond of good vantage points and she was content to stand there until he made himself known.

Curiosity was certainly the most common reaction to her condition, right next to complete and utter horror. As her eyes drifted over Biscofite, she saw it lingering in his eyes before the onslaught of a careful examination began.

"How astute," she said softly, tilting her head just-so to the side as she in turn assessed or, well, re-assessed the man standing before her. She had not expected one of the brainless drones that others brought into the army these days but neither had she expected to find someone so capable of understanding the ins and outs of her being. Even if he did not know entirely what she was, he had still gotten much closer at a first glance than any other soul.

"I gave my star to Metallia - and she took it by pouring her power through me." One hand raised to flex the fingers in the air between them, showing him how the plates shifted and grated together across the palm. "The best way to describe it was being seared from the inside out, though it doesn't sound nearly as majestic when you say it that way." She dropped her hand with a small curl at the corner of her lips, a trickster's smirk she had developed in the aftermath of losing most of her virtuous qualities. She wasn't sure when she'd developed such a love of teasing.

"Boons?" she echoed after him now, pursing those same lips in a mockery of contemplation. Most of her emotions were just that - a mockery, an imitation of what a normal human might express. She had spent a very long time observing natural behavior - then twisted it to suit her needs. "I don't sleep, or eat. I need only energy to survive and obviously-" she paused here, sweeping a hand out toward the slumbering peace of Destiny City "-there is no shortage of that here."

Alkaid's eyes shifted away from the dark streets that stretched out beyond them and back to the General who had called her out for a meeting in the dead of night.

"Even then, ambushes would be mostly ineffective unless one could get all the way to arm's distance without my noticing and that is unlikely. If they dare magic from afar, I can absorb most of it. Magic is energy, it's my core." Her eyes had fallen now to the glove he was pulling off and it was her turn to be curious. Was he actually going to touch her? She wasn't someone that others cared to get very hands-on with anymore. How interesting.

Alkaid fell to silence the moment his fingers caught her brittle hand. She was aware of the gentler skin as one might be aware of a touch through a leather jacket - it was there, the pressure existed, but it was muffled by the damage caused to whatever nerves she had left. Where his fingers traced the edge of the china plates it produced a current, a shiver of electricty, that traveled the length of her arm to her spine.

No one touched her.

Her fingers flexed on impulse but she didn't withdraw her hand from his grasp. The Ascendant just let her face relax to a blankness, studying her observer as if she took as much interest in his motivations as he did in her unique nature.

"That's correct." Her words were short, lacking the playful humor she had sported just moments before. The air around them was charged, and not just because of her own energy crackling on the aura field that surrounded them. The bright, citrus eyes that had been concentrated on his face now dropped to the pressure he was applying to her hand. The plates were grinding together as they were crushed inward, producing a screech like a sharp point grating over glass. The teasing shock elicited from his once-gentle fingers increased until it was like a fire burning inside of her hand, pain she had come to recognize as her own energy protesting. The plates gave in and caved.

She forced her hand from his grasp with a grimace, though she had yet to speak. From the gaping holes in her hand leaked a visible energy - curling black smoke that dissipated just past her hand into the air around them. Then that grating sound returned and the plates of her hand pushed out, slowly, until they had repositioned themselves once more with a dull 'pop'. At once, the energy stream was cut off.

"You're thinking too hard about it." She closed and opened her fingers, as if testing the strength of the plates, then let her eyes drift back up to him. The playful banter was gone, replaced by a stony face that said she was entirely aware of the gravity of his curiosity now. "It is not how I am like a youma, or how they are like me, but how we are all collectively like her. Our need for energy is a reflection of her own. We have been made in her image."

"As for my planet? It is connected to a star and what greater source of energy could there be in this universe?" She shrugged her shoulders as if it were the most natural conclusion in the world. Her words were delivered with a matter-of-fact air, as if she were speaking truths she had known her entire life. This was her existence, it simply was. Seldom did she find a need to question it. "I like to think that a youma can't stomach the taint of Serenity's touch which, unfortunately, exists in all of us until we are reborn among Metallia's flames."

Alkaid tilted her head at him again, like a predator that had need to recalculate the strengths of its prey. Or, perhaps, recalculate its status as such all together. He was no fool. "Why do you have such an interest in the whims of her creations, Bischofite?"

The blankness on Alkaid's face was broken by a small curve of her lips as he admitted to the dark desire. He had spoken of an existence stronger than humanity and it made her smile, even if he seemed apprehensive about sharing it.

"That's a dangerous path you're seeking, but I have to say it's an honorable one - at least by the terms of this army. Not that honor is why you're seeking it, of course." She tucked her hands behind her back, just above the wings protruding behind her hips, and laced the fingers together. Her gaze lingered on him, from his demeanor to the expression on his face. "The first woman I ever knew to take that road became the most influential soldier I've ever known. She led me down my own path to Metallia's favor, my mentor of a sort."

Tanzanite had never truly been anyone's mentor - she had commanded and expected results. One could follow or be lost and Alkaid had learned to fall in line. Though few memories caused her pleasure anymore, those where she had been under the Phoenix's command were always recalled fondly.

"But you've caught me, I'm afraid. My stomach is as hardened as my heart." The smile on her lips grew, widened nearly to a leer now. It wasn't gentle, but dark, giving a glimpse to the feral nature that always lurked just beneath her poker face. Her fingers unlaced from where she'd positioned them and she brought one hand up to tap lightly against the broken flesh over her heart. The hardened skin produced a 'c***k, c***k' to drive home her point. "I eat starseeds by the dozen. There is no room left for empathy, though I do my best job of mimicry."

She took a sideways step on the roof now, attempting to see him from a different angle and take in everything about the ambitious man she had never even noticed among the ranks. She never noticed much about their soldiers anymore - they were all the same little bags of flesh and bone. The bright eyes swept from the dark locks down to the soles of his shoes, then back up again. She would not forget this face now.

"You will have to sacrifice more than you can ever imagine. If I thought it would change your mind, I wouldn't tell you, but I doubt that it will." The smile had faltered now, into a pensive purse of her lips. She'd spoken more about her own nature to him than she had anyone else, save Hematite, to date. It was peculiar to know that she was as much a mystery as the youma he pursued. "I'm afraid I don't have much else to share that would help you, though. Senshi aren't privy to much knowledge about Youma - nor they about us, I expect."

Alkaid turned to watch him as he brushed past her, staring at his back where he stood clutching himself at the edge of the rooftop.

What were her aims?

For a moment she said nothing, letting silence stretch out between them just as he had. She did not have an answer for him and empty words were just that. The silence began to grow uncomfortable before she finally turned and walked forward to take a place beside him. She stood at his side, a stone gargoyle, feeling little of the chill even as it made her cape billow gently behind her.

"This city is all I've ever known." Her bright eyes scanned the fronts of stores that were familiar but strange to her all at once. It happened, sometimes. She was sure it was deja vu produced from a time before she had been inducted into the dark kingdom, when she was a girl that had been entirely forgotten to even herself. Once, she had wondered who that girl was, who she had been before. Now there was nothing to look forward to but the future, and the end. "I will die here, for a final time, one day. Perhaps when we face this new parasite that has infested these streets, perhaps not for a very long time, but that death has to count. It will be the last."

Alkaid broke her gaze from the street below, settling it on him once more. He had a great mind, it was true, but even now she was reminded that he was bound by one inescapable truth - he was human. Human lives came and went in the blink of an eye and there would always be someone there, ready to replace a General. Someone more ambitious, someone that might accomplish a goal he had abandoned already.

What a pity.

"I have nothing else to pursue but this war. No family, no friends, no past or future. I will die alone and this war will be my last stand. I have committed everything to stripping this earth of the Senshi presence, every last one of them." Despite the finality in her tone, there was only commitment to be heard in the words. No regret. No despair. Whatever it had taken, Alkaid was at peace with her choice. "If you're going to die, Bischofite, make it count."

She shifted then, slipping forward from the roof to land in a graceful flutter of cape and hair on the street below them. "If you live through it, you know how to find me."