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In the wake of Dioptase’s death and Zirconia’s revelation, Ares became a woman possessed. She paced across the floor of Tanzanite’s cell as it emptied, stomping bloodied boot prints from one end to the other. She muttered to herself, the torch that hung at her side bouncing against her left leg. “Too soon,” she said, face contorting. “This was not the plan, not the plan.”

Surprises had never been welcome in Ares or Fallon’s life. This particular one threatened to tear down everything that the Blood Moon Court had been building up for months. Information sat heavy in their pockets, but Ares was hungry for more. She wanted to wring these Negas dry of their worth and then dispose of them to protect herself and her court from retaliation.

Now the Negaverse cavalry pounded at their doorstep. The small mercy was that the glow of senshi energy was still muffled by Zirconia. There was no telling if the Negas knew precisely where the safe house was located, even if they had made it to the general area. Ares only knew that they were close – and in large numbers. That was enough to set her skin on edge.

This was not a new feeling for the warrior senshi. She was just taking a longer time than usual converting that fear into adrenaline, and that adrenaline into power. It didn’t help that Tanzanite continued to whimper behind her over the corpse of Dioptase. Ares whipped around suddenly, snatching the dagger that killed the Captain on the ground from where she had stabbed it into the table. She extended the point at Tanzanite.

“A creature who brings destruction should not cry to see that destruction come back to them,” she said, voice low. “You asked for this. You asked for it the moment you raised a hand against your first senshi. You are a soldier, Tanzanite, just like I am a soldier. You can’t punch your monstrous claw through a teenager’s chest and then pretend like the same acts done by another are unspeakable.” Ares slashed the knife across the air in front of her, punctuating her words. “I gave Dioptase the same amount of pity, mercy, and caring that you have given to the river of dead bodies that churn in your wake. The same amount that you gave the senshi you dangled off a roof by her intestines, or the one whose head you bashed until it popped.”

Who was Ares trying to convince? She was a murderer, but Tanzanite had a knack for the gore that the Senshi of Smoke had not descended to in this life. Before Operation Rota, Ares had not tortured anyone in Destiny City, had not dragged out a death needlessly. Her kills were efficient, fast. She killed because it was a box on her to-do list that she needed to check.

“True warriors accept their deaths and the consequences for bringing death to others,” she continued, stabbing the knife back into the table and crossing to the far corner of the room. There was a bucket of coals with a long staff sticking out of it. Ares gripped the handle. “They don’t cry over hollow corpses like those tears will make any difference.” She pulled a long branding iron free. The end was a curved crescent: the insignia of the Blood Moon Court.

Ares had cried before over her comrades. She had cried many times, even over Rota. But she hid this side of herself as if it was something shameful, as if admitting that she missed those who had died were some sort of taboo. She expected Tanzanite to have the same guarded sense.

Her back faced Tanzanite. She rolled the burning end of the iron in the stones for another moment, let her eyes go hazy on it. “It is time for you to go away, Tanzanite,” she said, dragging the metal edge over the side of the bucket of your coals. “The universe will go on without you. The senshi will come back, all the ones you’ve killed, but you will not.” Death was not the end for a senshi. It never was. “You can answer to whatever god you’d like – but you will answer to me first.” Ares gritted her teeth against the words, tried to push the image of Hades’ gruesome death from her mind, forced herself to remember that it had all been a lie, that Hades had never been in Destiny City, that Ares was still lost to the Black Moon – and perhaps always would be.

With deliberate motion, Ares turned back to face the Negaverse General, lofting the glowing red crescent moon upward. She wanted it to be the last thing Tanzanite saw, the last thing before Ares’ own face snarled at her demise. The Captain of the Blood Moon Court crossed back to Tanzanite and forced her chair back upright, pulling her away from Dioptase’s corpse. She had no words left for General Tanzanite, only an end to a life.
This would be the end.

When Tanzanite lifted her chin, Ares saw only blood. There was the bright red of Dioptase's coating one side of her face, dried crimson scabbed over from previous injuries, and then the sickly black ooze pouring out of her mouth. Bits of white littered the stream of gore --- teeth? -- and then purple hunks of stone tumbled out afterward, clattering against the concrete floor.

Ares' blood ran cold. "No," she whispered, eyes widening.

Uranophane had given them a brief description of how these communicators worked after they caught her trying to use her own. The Captain had almost convinced a Mercenary to smash the thing, fearing it was some sort of dark energy bomb, but had been stopped at the last minute. Ares and the ISS had no idea what would happen if the communicator was smash -- but if Uranophane had wanted them to do it, it couldn't be a good thing.

If Tanzanite was willing to destroy her mouth just to smash it, Ares knew it had to be a very, very bad thing.

"NO!" she screamed.

The branding iron flashed forward. Ares buried it in the gaping maw of Tanzanite's mouth, nostrils flaring at the General's skin began to singe and cook. Her lips fused together on the sides, smoke hissed and curled around the shape of her frenzied screaming. All of the pain in the world would not undone what had just happened, what Tanzanite had just done -- how had she done it? Where did it come from?

Ares tore the branding iron out of Tanzanite's mouth with a guttural scream, tossing it to the opposite side of the room. She had to warn them; she had to warn them all. With a click of boots, the Senshi of Smoke turned on her heel and dove through the mirror behind her, rushing to warn every single Blood Moon senshi of what had happened as the Negaverse auras blipped and popped closer and closer.

There was no time to exchange words with Tanzanite. There wasn't even time to find someone else to stay behind with the General of the Negaverse. She was left alone with Dioptase's body, still breathing -- if only barely.

A battle was upon them all.

It happened too quickly for Tanzanite to really register the pain.

Of course, being half out of your mind helped.

She felt the screams tear out of her throat, wordless cries from a mouth no longer capable of forming words. By the time Ares ripped the brand from her mouth, Tanzanite was fortunate to still be able to breath through the mangled opening. Her tongue was red and swollen, every breath a searing fire that scorched the already blistering wounds. Where the brand touched her lips, blisters sprang up in, and blood gushed forth.

And somehow... it was worth it.

She stared at the prone, lifeless form of Stephanie Leclerc, her swollen eyes all cried out. Soon enough, not even the youma's unparalleled need to survive would keep her broken, beaten body from finally, blissfully dying. She was only moments from it. Hell, she could feel it. She could feel the agony of each organ slowly giving up, her heart slowing to a crawl. She leaned forward, and caught a glimpse of her own face in the reflective pool of Dioptase's blood.

There, Tanzanite could finally see the monster others had always seemed to find in her. Her face was unrecognizable, a misshaped lump of swollen flesh and burnt skin. She looked like something out of a horror film, any semblance of beauty or power had fled, and left behind the empty, hollow, agonized monster Ares had always accused her of being. Somehow, that monster found the strength to lift her head and straighten her spine. The strength to die with some minor scrap of dignity.

It was too late for Captain Dioptase.

It was too late for General Tanzanite.

But perhaps their deaths might have some meaning, if only the Negaverse moved fast enough.

Tanzanite turned her face towards the blinding light of the halogen lamp as she felt a heavy hand settle upon her shoulder. There, she saw the Angel of Death in the dark-skinned features of General-King Marthozite.

Marthozite.

Never had Tanzanite been so grateful to any one person. Not when she had awoken from the brink of death to find Charonite's hand clamped over her mouth, not when she had woken from Elysion to find Linarite lying beside her. Never had Tanzanite looked upon something with the respect and gratitude with which her bruised, swollen eyes looked upon General-King Marthozite. Never had she felt more pride than when she heard his voice quietly speak her name.

Her true name.

Never Aree, as Laurelite addressed her. Not 'General' or 'officer', but Tanzanite. Forever, utterly, irrevocably Tanzanite.

She would have cried, had her body and her pride allowed her to, but all the woman could do was look up at him with those grateful eyes as her body took in that energy. It was not enough. No amount of energy would ever again be enough to sate her thirst for the death and destruction of the abominations who had ended Dioptase's life, and had so nearly ended her own. It was not nearly enough, but it made the open burns on Tanzanite's leg heal over into gnarled, angry red scars.

Her scarred mouth murmured a soft, muffled, “Thank you,” and never had any words sounded so utterly sincere. She tried to stand, faltered, and fell against the General-King with a pained sound. Even so, it was impressive that she could walk at all. The swollen, purple mass of her face healed only on the right side, the side dominated by the youma's presence and power. The left was still unrecognizable, and even the healed side bore bruises and scars as it uncaved it's own cheekbone.

But there, in that blackened socket, the cold silver eyes of General Tanzanite burned with fury.

Every limb felt heavy and sluggish, and her eyelids might as well have been made of lead. For only a brief moment, she tried to stand on her own, before her body fell forward against the General-King's chest again, requiring his support a moment longer before her legs were capable of supporting her own weight.

Even then, she did not trust herself to take her hand off of his arm.

Cowards. Even as the solid metal pierced through that delicate empty area between Marthozite's shoulder blades, this was his only thought. It had never really meant anything to the General-King that most of those fighting this war were in fact children. He was a child when he had been torn from his mother's arms and put to work corralling the other children of his village to move or to die. Children had to grow up eventually and when you killed someone you were a man; you were expected to follow a man's laws of battle.

There was no cry of pain nor did his hand grip Tanzanite any tighter in the moment that Ares' torch pierced the body of the General-King. Merely a grunt of pain as it went in and another as it was removed in a spray of blood. Too much blood. The hand not supporting the ravaged general shot out against the wall and Eden felt the warmth sliding down his back beneath the uniform. If there had been power remaining he might have been able to staunch the flow somewhat but now? Now he couldn't even teleport. Everything had been given to get the young woman back on her feet.

"We need to go. Now." If they could get free of this labyrinth towards the receiving group he had positioned at the entrance of the warehouse compound it would be perfectly alright. Laurelite could be called in a heartbeat though he himself had no communicator and if she were not already present he would have been extremely disappointed in his comrade. Supporting each other the pair moved for the door and the blood kept flowing.

Far too much blood.

It was pitiable and wrong in so many ways that the poor tortured young woman should have to also support his wounded weight as they moved through the sprawling basement levels of the warehouse compound. The idea had somewhat occurred to him that perhaps Tanzanite's life could be taken to spare his own -- a thought not at all out of place for the ice cold Marthozite. There were only two problems with this:

One, he'd come here with the intent to deliver her and the others from harm. To then kill her was to be somewhat demoralizing. It could hardly be said that somehow these cowardly b***h senshi could have figured out how to remove a star seed. Two was that Tanzanite was perhaps the most dangerous of souls to consume. She was not quite human any longer and two lives resided within her one body. Eden had always been rather in love with his cause.

But never the tools of it. He would never willingly join himself to the youma monsters of the Negaverse. She had been given this gift of second life most unwillingly and given the choice he would rather rip it from his body than accept. There was living and there was surviving. He never wanted to survive. He wanted to live.

It seemed rather dire as Tanzanite howled with angry frenzy and even through the smoky haze of blood loss was her General-King able to take a step forward. "I will do it." It was not a thing to be ashamed of; three star seeds of great power could not undo weeks of torture and malnourishment. But he was not so weak.

Reaching out to what seemed to be the most likely door his hand closed around the handle and yanked with his remaining strength. Both Marthozite and the door came rattling to the ground and he nodded with an ashen face of pain. "There. They are that way." This weakness was infuriating! Oh but the cowardly b***h would pay when he was whole again!

"And we will never hide." Hiding was worse than taking a cheap shot at an opponent from behind and something that Marthozite would never stoop to. For all that he was an agent of the underworld Negaverse he had always operated with a sense of honor and chivalry that many might have called archaic. He simply had sneered at them and called them all savages in that fluid voice of his before taking the lives from their chests. Just because a man waged war did not make him a monster.

It made him practical and powerful.

Eden Tshombe had been born in a poor Congolese town where his mother had desperately tried to make ends meet for his four brothers and sisters. His father had been killed years previous and though he had been too young to know at the time, his youngest sibling was only a half relation. It was a cruel reality for the women in his sphere of the world and it had happened again when he was thirteen -- this time to his eldest sister as well. He had tried to fight and been beaten within an inch of his life.

Eden had learned and had grown into a man learning these lessons of how to get by -- how to survive. One day the glorious Queen had appeared to him and told the young man that if he would only give her his strength and his loyalty, she would change his world so that this reality was under his control and he could shape it as he wished. That had been when he was sixteen and now, nearly thirty, his family lived in relative comfort in Kinshasa.

When he died, they would receive a large sum of money. Ever the realist, there was actually a fairly large life insurance policy for Eden. As he lay bleeding his life onto cold concrete, senshi trying to beat the door down, there was really only one option. One of them would have to take the life of the other to walk out and save the rest. It was not only his life at stake and it was undeniable at this point.

He was losing too much blood. The wound was fatal and without immediate attention he would die. Tanzanite's life alone would not sustain him past perhaps a single teleport -- thus abandoning all of his officers to the mercy of these cheapshot senshi and Maker only would know what would become of him for consuming the youma life.

"Tanzanite." She looked over from the door with sunken eyes and he forced her to meet his own. There was nothing that needed to be said once their eyes met, she understood what he wished and what needed to be done. But it did not mean the young woman was going to accept.

"No. I won't." Her hand was still in his and she tried to draw back from that single moment of trusting intimacy but he would not release her. Hands held tightly until the struggle slowed. There was not a lot of time to fight and she was well aware of it. There was more to this than just a moment in a storage room with the stain of red growing beneath their bodies and the world was fraying dark at the edges. He would not succumb. It was his life and he was going to live.

But he would not survive.

"Tanzanite." One last time, his rich voice filled with the deepest of meanings and the richest of inflections. She could not argue. "I have not misjudged you." She could do what others would not and was willing more than he thought any other might have been to do this thing. To grant his final wish, though he would not voice it.