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Unfortunately, that anything the leering knight didn't sense knew how to take advantage of situations better than any needy, greedy teenage boy could ever hope to. At least this would be his very last bad decision.

There was scarcely a breath between the end of his pushy sentence and the crackling pop of energy somewhere close behind his looming shoulders. Almost simultaneously, two pale hands reacted in a quick strike as the one and only Ascendant General shot her pale, broken fingers deep into the subspace nestled between the Knight's shoulder blades. The second held his shoulder tight as she curled those wicked claws around his starseed and yanked, like she had a million times before. Her prize came free, thrumming with power where it twinkled in the palm of her hand, pulsing as surely as any heart.

As his eyes bulged and he began to slump, Alkaid's face rose above his shoulder to lock onto the Senshi whose only saving grace was the meat shield separating them.

"What do you think is out there, little lamb?" A resounding thud marked the total slump of the once Knight against the concrete next to her feet. As he hit the ground, his head lolled to the side, dragging a head of bronze curls against the gritty filth of the alley floor. The cruel smile on the china doll's lips was almost a sneer as a heeled to nudge his cheek bone, rocking his skull so his empty eyes stared up at Chara instead.

"Hm?"

At the first sign of Chara’s posture shifting, Alkaid let her playful ease fade and replaced it with purpose in an instant. Just as his fingers were within centimeters of grasping the crystal, it, along with the Ascendant General, disappeared as surely as she had first arrived. There was a lingering crackle of chaos energy in the air where she had been but her laugh, as it erupted in a deep, dark cackle, echoed through the alley from somewhere overhead now. He would have to be much faster if he aimed to beat a creature completely honed to their purpose.

“This doesn’t belong to you,” she taunted, leaning over the edge of the rooftop so that she could leer down at him instead. The cracked, white flesh of her hand unraveled from the starseed so that he could get a glimpse of the pulsing light where it was held between her thumb and forefinger, visible but out of reach. She could feel the energy as it thrummed against the pads of her fingers, singing to every atom of her being. The familiar need to consume was at war with her sudden interest in the fiesty little super senshi. If she ate it now, as she so badly wanted to do, he might give up and run for safety.

But what if he thought he could win it back? Did that fool matter so much?

The ascendant stepped back from the ledge so that the night cast shadows back across her pale skin, letting her sink comfortably into the hazy unknown that was Destiny City rooftops. He could and, she thought, would follow him if she didn’t use all her cards right away.

“If you can take it, you can have it.” She spoke, out of view. Of course, that meant he was going to have to put himself in the awkward position of getting up to the rooftop unharmed.

So he wanted to play.

There was a peculiar look of delight plastered across the ascendant's face as she withdrew to the opposite side of the building to wait for him, listening keenly to his scuffle up the side and doing her best to judge how much ground (or, rather, brick) he was making. She did appreciate ferocity like nothing else and fighting valiantly for a brother, well, that was something to admire, too. Those enemies she had favored in the past had all been wild and ferocious, battling to the death with Alkaid willingly if it meant destroying her or something she stood for. It had been a long time since she'd encountered Castor and longer still since Nemesis had last tried to kill her. While he wasn't either of those deadly creatures, not yet, he still had enough wrath to challenge her - she could see it in his eyes as they appeared above the window's ledge. That was enough to earn her interest but his next choice would be what decided how long that interest earned him.

With the starseed tucked out of sight, both of her arms snapped up so that she could hold her palms open wide above her head. The words had barely died on his lips when Alkaid's own rang out in response, "Ascendant's Barrage".

The words parted her lips and coaxed to life a pinpoint of light that rapidly began to swirl outward from its center. Faster than one could focus, it had burst to life at once and swelled to a great, glowing orb. All it took was the focus of her smoldering eyes upon his barreling form and the missiles peeled away from their center, crashing down upon him relentlessly and without err.

Another enemy might have tried to dodge his magic but not the Ascendant General - in fact, she rarely tried to dodge anything that wasn't an outright physical blow to her being. She remained in range of her own attack, unmoved, as he lobbed the chocolate pellets at her. True, it latched onto her hardened flesh and sank deep into the rivulets that marred her limbs but there was not much else it seemed to do. Like the crystal tendrils Pollux had launched on her, she absorbed too much of the simple, pure magic. That and it was much, much harder to sear flesh that had already been blazed to a crisp.

Her eyes rose quickly from the dark, gooey substance where it bubbled uselessly on her forearm and settled back on the broken and crippled figure of the Senshi. He couldn't handle another round of her attacks - she could see it in the way he could barely put his full weight on one leg - and that meant this was check mate.

He had failed.

"Those weren't my terms, little lamb."

With a wicked smile pulling her lips back away from her teeth, a second round of missiles began to orbit the glowing orb above her palm. Though a small shift suggested the sticky chocolate might have successfully locked a couple of her limbs in place, she was lucky enough to have been frozen in attack position. The moment she'd breathed the summons for her magic it had already been too late.

Would he figure that out? Well, maybe if he lived.

The missiles pealed away from her and crashed into him again, driving him back from his goal.

The hissed slurs made her laugh and the sound spilled from her cracked lips like an echo, laced with a wickedness only earned by someone taking pleasure in another’s misfortune. The gleam in her eyes was not wholly human and even Alkaid, who usually felt herself slipping into abnormal behavior, seemed completely unaware of just how predatory she seemed in the moment. In that second, she was a creature that might’ve devoured him whole had she one ounce less of humanity left to her.

It was a lucky thing, then, that she felt the weariness at the back of her thoughts. It made her laugh die to a knowing smile and she stepped back, away. That was the sign that she was still here - that conscious choice not to pursue - and she used that knowledge to draw herself back to her center, focusing on her game instead of what her instincts wanted so dearly.

“I win. Maybe next time, hm?”

Next time would be a little more dangerous for her but, she thought, no less fruitful for him.

The Ascendant parted her wicked smile around the starseed in her fingertips and swallowed it, letting the energy of his dead comrade fuel her to a comfortable enough energy level to grab the mental tether she felt toward her planet. Light years and light years away. Her smile was back in place as she teleported, snapping out of view and leaving only a residue of chaos smudged across the night air before him.

He survived, this time.