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She had seen the girl on the battlefield, and had it not been the most chaotic and triumphant moment of her life, Tanzanite might have stopped. The resemblance was striking, enough so that if she hadn't seen the charred outline of her little sister's body, she might have held onto some fragment on hope that Bethany lived on in this violet-haired Lieutenant. Knowing the impossibility of such a thing, Tanzanite was still curious.

It had always been a point of hers to know every face in the Negaverse, and this newest recruit would be no exception. When the smoke had cleared and the ashes had been blown away, Tanzanite would go back to bury the bodies of those they had lost. Soon, atop the hill, four graves would be laid out in a neat row, and one of those small phoenixes would forever stand guard in the rubble.

The nice thing about youma was that they didn't get bored. They didn't get upset when they were to spend hours circling, for their other option was to return to the nothingness from which they'd come until called forth again.Their orders were their lives, and Tanzanite knew that the place would be guarded as though it contained the most precious of treasures.

“Fluorite,” Tanzanite's voice was surprisingly kind, even with the ethereal tone that echoed it, “I don't believe we've formally met. I apologize for the... unique terms of our first meeting."

Did she mean picking Fluorite up and carrying her around in the air? Probably.

Oddly enough, Fluorite shared many of those differences with the General Queen's long lost sister. Like the Lieutenant, Bethany had always been small. On many occasions they referred to one another more frequently as Sasquatch and Pipsqueak than their given names. They were fond memories, but they did not stick in the General Queen's thoughts as they once might have. They did not tug at her heartstrings or bring a fond smile to her face.

That life was no longer hers to cherish.

“It's alright,” she said, her voice full of reassurance, “It was not the Negaverse's fault, nor even the Blood Moon Court's. They cannot help their own vile nature. Like rabid dogs, they do not understand why they must put down, but that does not lessen the need for their eradication.”

The General-Queen rose from the mass of crystal and stone that has served as her seat, and the full effect of the youma within her was apparent. Her height on those spiked heels was intimidating. If one were to measure her toe to wing, they would be looking at a woman nearly eight feet tall with a wingspan just as wide.

Somehow, though, she managed to move with the same grace that had led Aree Cadence to a full scholarship at Crystal Academy. Her steps were slow and measured as she crossed the open room, coming to a halt before the kneeling Lieutenant. That black arm lowered to gently lift her to her feet.

”I led those soldiers in there, and I will be the one who carried the burden of their deaths. You did as you were ordered. You entered a death trap just for the chance to save her, and that commands respect. Thank you, Lieutenant."

“Duty,” whispered the woman who understood that word better all too well. Like Fluorite, she had taken to the life of a Negaverser with great aplomb. It had been her calling even before the night Charonite had stepped between her and a messy, self-inflicted death at the bottom of a twelve story fall. She had always felt destined for something greater than her own simple, impoverished life. In the Negaverse she had found that something, that specialness she had so desperately craved.

Tanzanite's eyes held a brief, passing pity as she looked down at Fluorite.

The hair really was just spot on.

“So it was, but not all commit to the cause we serve. Our own rulers have betrayed us.”

All of them... Marthozite whispered in her mind, but Tanzanite dared not say the words aloud. Though she defied their Queen openly behind closed doors, they had a tenuous agreement. Beryl would not needlessly throw their people at the senshi like cannon fodder, and Tanzanite would keep Beryl's dirty secrets under wraps. penly voicing dissent was not an option.

At least not yet.