Chapter Twelve - Pitfall

Eve took all of them right to the dismal room that held the silent Yamito. It was a strange progression for all of them since Eve's power was so deviously calm and lucid. It was almost warm as they appeared in the room. The prickling sensation of being transported dulled each of their senses a moment, but soon the décor of the room came quickly into focus and managed to wrench the breath out of everyone's throats.

What was left of Eve's acolytes was massacred around the room, their bodies propped up by poles or stones, but each one meticulously handled as if intended for display. Eve was the only one to grasp the meaning in all of it.

This was Kage's flower display. It was a horrid reminder that her general had gone completely mad, thus putting her into the difficult position she was in. Even if she could remove these senshi from her way to Yamito, they were, in all honesty, the only thing that could protect her from Kage. It was a disgusting little triangle.

"What is this? Did…did Kage do this?" Usagi asked quietly, her hand pressed against her breast due to the horror she saw. Although she had been picturing a far more beautiful reunion for her and Yamito, she had forgotten that reality included the insane along with the beautiful – sometimes superimposed. Feeling the breadth of her words finally getting out, she quickly looked to Makoto in realization that this atrocity was something done by the one she loved.

Makoto had fallen to her knees, staring with horrified eyes at the ground, for looking anywhere else would have reminded her that the brutality written on the walls was Kage's doing. She knew it. She could feel the anguish in his cries as each poor girl was shattered and broken. Whatever warmth she had felt because of their night together quickly flooded out of her throat with her pathetic voice. "It can't be…" she cried, covering her eyes from all of them at the shame of what Kage had done. The capacity for cruelty in his heart was as infinite as the capacity for love in hers. No matter how hard she tried now, she knew that there would be no easy solution for Kage. He could not just simply turn around and walk back to her.

His hands were soiled to the bone.

As all of the girls were sickened at the scene around them, Rei had slowly felt something creeping up her spine. It was the same quivering feeling that she had felt only in the presence of the one who had taken the power she possessed and immersed himself so deeply that there was no way she could tell where one stopped and the other began. Even before she began to turn, she knew that person was there. Feelings of utter chaos filled her being when she turned and found a lone figure aloft in a translucent mist. The dreams that had plagued her mind since his disappearance were strikingly accurate, but it was the same power of reality that stole away her romanticism of dreams. Yamito was right in front of her, real and waiting as if he had been doing so until she came. The beauty of him was something she had nearly forgotten and even the horror of the room around them simply melted away. She stepped towards him, unable to believe that only time had separated them until now. Her eyes had drained of any other reason but him and she carelessly reached out to touch his face.

"Is it really you?" she whispered, finding the feel of his skin surprisingly solid, as if to betray her expectations. Though he didn't stir, she still forced herself to believe the fact that what her fingers were touching was real, not some cruel dream that would force her to wake up in a cold bed with shadows as her only lover. It had been so long since she had felt her heart beating again. Yamito had become her calling in life.

Usagi, sensing that one of her friends had moved away, also pulled her eyes from the scene around them. The sickened feeling in her stomach was replaced by something very different; by something brought on upon seeing just how blindly Rei was staring up at Yamito. Even her own elation upon seeing Yamito had no substance when observing the desperate loneliness in Rei evaporating like the mysterious mist around them both.

As much as Usagi had been taken by Yamito, she could not begin to hope for the clarity she saw around them both. Rei, her best friend and most beloved comrade, was completely given to Yamito, for she saw it in every breathless movement in Rei's lips and every shallow cry in her eyes. Usagi exhaled deeply as she saw it – Rei's fragile attempts to understand just how much Kurobashi Yamito meant to her.

"It's gone…" Usagi heard it faintly, but could not look to Eve in time to get her reaction. Eve had been engrossed in the death around her; too engrossed to see that Rei had succeeded in touching Yamito. Now, after getting past her fear of becoming another flower to Kage, she saw there was no protection around the slumbering Scion any more. The one thing that had kept her from being with Yamito as Rei was had been removed, taken by the one person who's voice filled the room viciously.

"Welcome to my flower garden. It's perfect now. Everything I want is here…for my purpose," said the voice, accompanied by a crackle of white electricity at the other side of the room. All of the girls looked quickly, seeing a lone figure crouched down near the entrance to the room. Cascading lightning was running over the sword of celestial birth, lighting the calm look of Kage's face. His eyes were glowing. They had feasted in blood once more and robbed Makoto of her single saving grace. His hand clutched his sword tightly, sharing in the lightning that now ran all over his body, to metal and to stone. All of them could agree that he had never appeared as villainous as he appeared just then.

"It's time for me to end all things, to put this world into chaos. With one swipe of my God-granted power," he said, standing straight and placing his sword into the first position of his most powerful attack, "I will kill my enemy, my betrayer and…" Oddly, his eyes had been the one to betray him, looking disdainfully to the girl beyond all the others who had fallen to her knees in weeping for him. Makoto was staring back with wide eyes, unable to say anything to him after he had been so weak with her, letting his hate and power fall away so that she could simply hold him. The look in her eyes was so powerful that even Kage was unable to keep the word from slipping past his lips. "Love…"

It was nothing any of them expected, especially Makoto. After such a horrible thing, slaughtering innocent girls in a state of madness and truly enjoying it, hearing the word spoken from parched lips was a uniquely pitiful sound, for it was the true form of the word, stripped and resounding in its purity. Even Kage hesitated from his proclaimed deed, unable to break himself from the trance Makoto's devastated eyes cast on him.

Moments of hesitation were the springboards for acts of deceit. Not ready to give herself to death at the hands of a maddened scion, Eve leapt back and away from them all, casting her hand out into the crowd of distracted enemies. Sparkles sprayed from her hand, casting minute crystal through the air and onto the skin of each of them. Within a moment, a great crystal made of perfectly white sheen encased each of the girls, freezing them into the position they had been caught in. Having used their natures to best them, Eve stood behind the crystals, most notably Makoto's, and peeked out at the broken Scion. "So, my love, it is not the madness of the mind that has weakened you, but the madness of the heart? Who could ever love a pathetic imp such as you? You are a crying child laying the on the dusty grave of a sister that you couldn't protect!" she hissed. It was Eve's turn to get even with him. No one had ever instilled a fear in her as he did, for not even the Fates could predict just what he would do. Seeing the anger surge in his eyes, she laughed softly and leaned against Makoto's crystal, looking at her frozen expression and wilting heart. "You were so blind to this poor girl. Look at the power of her love for you. My crystal barely contains it." Indeed, the crystal itself was shaking, flexing at the girl trapped inside. All of the crystals were, though Eve found it strategically sound to remain behind Makoto's.

"Kage…"

The voice startled both of them, for Makoto's desire was powerfully enough to move through the crystal and call out into the tepid air. Eve, hiding just how magnificent that fact was out of jealously and rejection, laughed bitterly and knocked her knuckles against the crystal. "How perfectly pathetic, to love someone incapable of the same."

Kage was enraged now, his power manifested by the energy raging around his sword and body. Whatever he felt for Makoto aside, Eve was mocking him and harbored the power inside that had destroyed his life. That wasn't something he would forgive easily. "You bitch. What makes you think this changes anything? Now no one can stop me from carving you up like a roasted pig," he growled, moving his sword into a standard attack position.

Of course, that fact was very real to Eve and she couldn't deny the fear still inside of her. However, there was one more move she had to accomplish before everything would be hers. "My poor, poor general. You sell me short. I made a promise to you and I fully intend to fulfill that promise."

Moving her hand to the side, a glowing tear began to open in the wall opposite of them both, revealing a tumult of brown metallic light and energy imposed across a black void. It was the kind of place that no sane person would ever consider, yet the two figures that appeared in the tear froze Kage's expression.

"My my, we finally meet again, Kage-chan. You do remember us, don't you?" said the first figure, pushing back long beautiful strands of hair from his face.

"By the look on your face, I think you do. Do you know how long we've been stuck in this hell waiting for you?" said the second. He was more of a sturdy figure, waving casually to Kage with a clenched hand. Both of them were wearing the Acrolyth Scion uniforms that had once been seen on Kage, and even the girls locked in the crystals knew who they were by mere sight and association.

Kage's body had tightened, his face clenched in pure and utter hatred. If his bones broke and eyes purged from his stance, no one could have questioned why. There was such a hate burning in his eyes that no shade of his madness could have rivaled it. "You two…" It was all he could say, for it was a wonder what force in existence could have kept him back as long as he could.

The Legendary Scion of Neptune and Uranus were the two figures in all known existence that Kage sought after in his revenge. It was cruel and a work of genius for Eve to reveal them now, for Kage has completely lost all of his senses and had no merit of self control any longer. He couldn't even say their names, for they had lost any semblance of humanity when they had brutally killed Yamamori Mika. This past that haunted Kage every moment, waking or not, was presented to him by a devilishly smiling Eve. Not even Makoto's crying expression could pry his eyes off of them.

The only sound he could produce now was a howling scream, one produced by the sorrow, agony and madness created in the lapse of love or hope. Kage charged straight at the tear, uncaring whether or not he would return from it. As desperately as Makoto yearned for it, not one glance strayed from his targets or his revenge. In reality, he had not changed at all. It was a hard truth to come to terms with.

"Oh, here he comes," the Scion of Neptune said and retreated farther back into the realm. The Scion of Uranus grinned, glad that their purpose in serving Anubis would finally come to pass. This was their penance and their freedom. Years of suffering and waiting would finally be repaid with the death of a single Scion. Because of this, both of them looked eager to face the enraged Kage.

With a flash, Kage disappeared into the tear and it all disappeared, leaving the room void of any movement aside from the simple laughter of Eve. She was happy. No, she was elated. Things had proved to be simpler than predicted, for Kage was still as linear as she had hoped. He had even removed the last barrier from her prize, leaving a helpless Yamito to be preyed upon even as his beloved Rei was a breath away. Irony, it seemed, was in the distance between two lovers.

Looking away from all of the trapped girls, save for the passionately defensive Rei, Eve hugged herself lightly and mused at just how silly she looked. Rei's eyes were on fire, her arms were pulled back and every inch of her beautiful body was poised in order to protect her love to the very end. "Perhaps," Eve whispered, moving forward to place a hand on Rei's crystal, "I will make love to him before I destroy you. I want to see the hollowing cries in your eyes as you see him taken from you. How could a stupid girl like you ever hope to truly be loved by him? He is a seraphim, you know – an ascended being that will go beyond with world. You couldn't have had him anyway. But I, my dear fool, will ascend with him." Eve seemed very pleased with this prospect, for her plan was coming together nicely. Even if Kage were to defeat his opponents, he was trapped inside of that realm forever. Yamito would awaken to find all of the crystals shattered and their occupants destroyed. Kage would fit the blame, yet remain unreachable to Yamito. All elements of his life would be wiped out, save for the consoling whisper of a goddess. The cycle of hate and revenge would begin all over again.

Then, they would move on together, ascending to a new realm and existing together as one. It was Eve's great plan. With each of the senshi trapped in the crystals, it was the plan that would earn no interference – only simple deceit.