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Angel woke slowly, feeling the effects of the energy drain of the night before. His eyes still caked with sleep, he stood and stretched, batting them until his vision was no longer fuzzy.

Hugo had stayed that night, for the drain had done a number on him too, and was lying in between a large rock and a wall. Quite funny, Angel mused, because the rock no longer looked like it was part of a cave. Instead, the thing looked like an icecicle, where Hugo's icy breath had taken its toll. He glanced around, noting that Eclipse must have woken before he, because where they had left her the night before was empty, and there were slight sounds coming from nearer the cave's entrance.

Muffled sounds... Angel started towards the front of the cave. The closer he got, the more the sounds became clearer. She was crying...

Angel quickened his pace, stopping when she came into view. She had her back to him, hunched over what remained of his sister. He winced.

The sister I killed...

He walked up to her slowly, his padded feet making very little to no sound on the cavern floor. As he approached her... he began to realize...

Something wasn't right.

He took a step back a she turned her head to face him, her eyes glowing in a deep blood red. He had failed to notice that her markings had all but disappeared again, the surefire way of showing that she was no longer Eclipse.

The Shadow...

"You killed her," mouthed the darkened face as she tried to stop the flow of tears. "Your own sister," she hissed.
Angel's face fell and he began to back away. What was going on? This evil side of Eclipse was actually mourning his loss, too?

She spat at him. "You killed my own soul."

Angel stumbled back to a sit as Shadow continued to advance, the tears trickling down her fur as her eyes continued to glow brighter. "What?" Twilight was his sister...

"My daughter!" She shrieked. "My own flesh and blood!"

"No..."

"She was your sister," she snarled. "Shiroi was her father, and I was her mother."

"My father would have never--" he faltered, not truly knowing. Would he have done something like that?

"No," she commented. "I took over Mlu during her conception and so the child became my seed." She snarled again, screaming, "And you killed her!" Her eyes pierced through him to the bone, looking not at him but into him as she spat, "You really are just like your father."

He took a step back, a bit confused by this as he felt the strange coldness within him begin to rise. He trembled, realizing what this feeling had brought on the last time it occurred, and he really didn't want it to happen again.
The Shadow edged closer, faint tears welling in her otherwise cold, ruby eyes , her face twisting into hatred. "He made me this way," she mumbled as she thrust out her paw to grasp his neck, claws brushing through his fur.

He shuddered, the coldness inside him growing. No more… he thought. He sat there as she grew closer, clenching her claws tightly around his neck as he closed his eyes, not wanting to provoke the darkness within himself. He couldn't let it grow.

There was a faint scratching noise, and then a blast of cold air. She screamed. Fearing that his other self may have taken control again, he opened his eyes, only to find that the Shadow had been thrust away from him by some kind of ice attack. He glanced in the direction it had come from to find Hugo, standing at the ready to fire another blast. With a few leaps, Hugo was beside Angel. The ground around him began to frost over with tiny ice crystals, and a bitter wind surrounded him. Angel could only step back in surprise.

"I don't know who in the hell you think you are," the Shadow sneered as she made herself rise, the hate in her cold eyes building, the hint of tears almost gone, "but you have no place in this fight."

Hugo glanced over at Angel, a questioning look in his eyes; hoping that there was a way to rid Eclipse of this monster. Angel just shook his head.

"Oh…" commented Shadow. "I see."

Angel and Hugo looked at her, confusion crossing their faces.

"You and Eclipse… were old friends," she grinned.

"How… does she know this?" stammered Hugo.

"She can read Eclipse's memories," Angel commented, resuming the ready stance Hugo had given up on. "Don't let her get to you."

"Why ever did you leave her?" She began to advance on them both. "All alone like that…"

Hugo took a few steps back in frightened frustration. "It… it wasn't like that!"

"Hugo!" Angel snapped. "Freeze her where she stands!"

"But she…"

"Right now she's not Eclipse… just do it!"

The Shadow's ears perked as Hugo readied himself for the attack. Leaping to dodge the first blast, she bared her claws again and ran towards them, like a large cat chasing her prey. Angel rushed forward toward her as Hugo fired a second blast, knocking her into it. The blast froze both of their bodies in place, their heads their only free part.
"Angel…" Hugo ran over to them both, frozen in their block of ice. The Shadow had her back to the floor, captured in mid-fall, swinging at Angel, while he was caught in a leap, his paws on her shoulders to pin her to the ground. It would have been a funny sight, if not for the situation.

"It's fine, Hugo," he commented, wriggling his neck uneasily from within the ice. "Now we just have to wait for Eclipse to come back."

Hugo sat and watched the two, Shadow squirming in her frozen prison as best she could, snarling at the fact she had gotten trapped so easily. Angel seemed to go to sleep, or just contemplating to some extent as the Shadow began to speak to him.

"Your mother was weak, you know."

Angel's ears twitched and his relaxed face changed to a disturbed one. "My mother was the strongest eon I ever knew."

"That's because you never saw her the way I did," she smirked, beginning to shake and chatter from the cold.

"This one has those same weak thoughts running through her head."

Angel's ears just twitched in an agitated response.

"Your mother was glad to die."

Angel's eyes opened in a rage, beginning to feel the coldness flow through him… not just from the block of ice that surrounded them. "Stop talking about my mother!" he screamed at her, and Hugo stood in shock. Angel's eyes had glowed red in color for a moment, and Hugo was afraid for a moment that he would have to deal with them both. The Shadow smiled, and gave a shaken laugh through the sound of her teeth chattering.

Angel calmed himself and the coldness within him weakened, yet remained. "Twilight was not your daughter," he murmured. Shadow stopped laughing.

"Like hell she wasn't," Shadow sneered. "I already told you why. Not only that - did the fact that she had no rings not strike you as odd? I'm the only one who could have given her that trait."

"She still wasn't yours," he commented coolly, glaring at her. "She cared for her family. She had a heart. That was something you could have never given her - something my mother did."

Shadow snarled, and mumbled something in a strange dialect to him, before tossing her head back and screaming. The scream was dark at first, but got more shrill and painful, then panicked. Angel looked down through the ice at her, noting that her rings were growing more prominent in color, and motioned for Hugo to go check on her. The scream stopped as Hugo neared her face, her eyes were closed and tears were running down her cheeks. They flashed open, and she stared at Hugo for a moment, frightened.

"What's going on?" she questioned, terrified. "Why can't I move?" Hugo found he couldn't say a thing.

"Eclipse?" Angel spoke, and she brought her head back up to see the ice, and find that Angel was frozen above her. "It's okay now… Hugo, could you start up a fire?" Angel gave a small chuckle. "We're going to want to get out of this ice now."