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There is no one else.

The words felt like a soft caress as they floated across Tanzanite's thoughts, soothing for one brief moment her always troubled mind. Paranoia followed the General-Queen those days, an unavoidable consequence of her own ambition. There was never a guarantee that Beryl was not planning another selfish scheme to recover her pathetic crush. Never any reassurance that Castor had not somehow perfected the use of his crystal. That one of her Generals would not defect. A million worries plagued Tanzanite's already frayed nerves, and now another had been added to the list.

One she had been waiting for.

She knelt upon the black stone with her forehead pressed against the monstrous mass of twisted metal that guarded Metallia's chamber. It was unbearably warm, and the metal hissed against her unnaturally cold skin. The scent of burning flesh filled her nostrils, but Tanzanite embraced the pain as one might the holy stigmata. It was the price she paid to commune with her deity. To feel a part of something far greater than herself. Her palms rested to either side, loosely gripping the door as she burned the last bits of fingerprints from her human hand.

“Of course, my Lady,” she whispered her acquiescence, bending to Metallia's will like hot steel beneath a blacksmith's hammer. It had been a long journey, and certainly a lonely one. What was once a human girl had been finely tuned into a deadly weapon, lacking the tangled web of emotions that caused most to stop short of true glory. Only one other had ever reminded her of herself, and there was the slightest twinge of giddy anticipation as Tanzanite turned the idea over in her mind.

Could they have even known what they had seen? Or what it meant if their reports were correct? Every cell in Tanzanite's body seemed to hum with dark energy, resonating with the darkly charged kingdom that cradled her like a child deep within the Earth's womb. Oh, but she had waited for this.

Tanzanite pulled her skin from the metal, black fibers knitting across the wounds like some supercharged fungus before she had even risen to her feet. It covered the patch of exposed muscle, a sickly gray in color, and within moments the pale pink skin had closed over it. Tanzanite turned from the door, and the sharp click, click, click of her heels upon the stone filled the cavern as she strode confidently out of the room.

And when you find her...? Marthozite's voice crept back into her thoughts, amusement in his tone.

“When I find her?”

What do you plan to do?

The smile that pulled one corner of her mouth up slighty further than the other was nothing short of malicious. There was a hunger in her eyes, the intense focus of a hound that had caught a scent.

“I'm going to rip her god damned head off.”

With great power...

“Shut up, Marthozite.”

But it was not the General-Queen who stepped onto the streets of Destiny City that night. For once, the winged figure of the Black Phoenix did not approach from the skies. There was no black blur to blot out the stars. In fact, they seemed to shine particularly brightly that evening, as though to taunt the women who dared convene beneath them. The transformation was quick and easy, practiced over time as she traveled in and out of the Rift. One moment, Tanzanite was striding through the halls of the Negaverse, and the next Aree Cadence stopped in the street below.

Her simple white dress looked rather nice, and were it not for the faintest tinge of black at her fingertips, she might have passed for a normal girl. There was nothing pompous about Tanzanite's human disguise. Her feet were bare and her hair was left loose, her slim figure shockingly out of place in the dirty and crowded streets of downtown Destiny City.

Looking up at Ares, Tanzanite saw only the things that made them so very different. Ares kept her power tightly controlled, locked away in a crystal and locked in a cage. Always close at hand, but under control. Tanzanite was a slave to hers, a floodgate that could be opened whenever Metallia so chose, but who had no real control. She would have gone for Ares throat right then and there, were her desire to survive just a little less dominant than her desire to kill.

Her smile was more a baring of sharp teeth, her wide eyes staring up.

“I do hate to say I told you so,” she said, the words sounding strange without the youma's fierce snarl echoing behind.

What, not who.

Never who.

Aree stood in that wind tunnel of humanity, the crowd parting like water around her. They were pushed away as through from the wrong magnetic pole, resuming their lives without ever knowing who or what they stood between. Perhaps nothing was more foreign to a human's starseed than the corrupt creature that lurked beneath Aree's slowly flaking skin.

Nothing, save Ares.

Aree could not pinpoint the nature of her energy signature. It was undeniably chaotic, certainly in the same spectrum as her own, but operating on an entirely different frequency. The power that leaked from Aree's body was wild and uncontrollable, a whirlpool of dark energy. Ares' was firm and controlled, as though those turbulent waters had been swept up and frozen into an impassable wall. An iceberg of power, the glowing crystal in it's fragile cage only the very tip of what Ares might now be capable of. It was an energy more foreign then her own, with the distinct edge that Tanzanite had come to recognize as parallel.

“You should know,” she said, he voice cutting through the din of humanity like a knife, “You did put an awful lot of time into making me, after all.”

Her eyes glowed softly, and the rush of people began to slow. The first dropped just beside her, his energy rolling like marbles across the pavement. The second only a few feet away, until one by one the people in the alley collapsed, and the air was alive with the ring of glass rolling across concrete. They met just in front of her, dozens of shimmering lights that merged into one brilliant, floating orb.

Ares was not the only one taking precautions, and Tanzanite had little concern for the discretion Beryl so often hid behind.

The use of her power made her skin crack and flake away, until the wings ripped from her back and the remains of her human body broke away like cracked plaster. She lifted from the sea of unconscious people; they would recover in time. The news would blame it on a sudden flu. Some new bacteria or airborne allergen. They would find a way to explain it all away, to pretend everything was okay and the world was perfect. No matter how many people went missing or how many bodies had been found, they always found a way to explain it.

Tanzanite hovered quietly several feet out from Ares., and looked at her. She looked nothing like a senshi should. Then again, she never had. Long before whatever had caused this corruption, Ares had been a black sheep. Tanzanite had seen it in the very first encounter, and she had come to know the darkness in Ares' heart perhaps better than anyone in the months that followed.

“I'm afraid my penchant for conversation was recently cut short,” Tanzanite said, her smile strangely out of place. “My delight in the company of others has decayed over time. One might say I have a burning desire to be left alone, really. Some might even brand me as a loner.”

Tanzanite's head fell back, and the Black Phoenix's inhuman cry echoed in her laughter. It lasted only a moment before her head snapped forward, that baleful stare settle upon Ares.

Their eyes matched.

She hated that.

“What is it, Ares? Do you have a General-King for me? A few lieutenants and a young but promising Captain? Strange," Tanzanite leaned to the left, then to the right, as though to check behind the senshi's newest royal, "I don't see them."

If Tanzanite wanted a battle, it would have started the moment she'd appeared.

Many terrible things could be said about Tanzanite, but she was not one to beat around the bush. From the day of her corruption she had taken to the battlefield with an unparalleled bloodlust. Ares knew that perhaps better than anyone. After the Blood Hill catastrophe, Tanzanite had hunted the woman as though she were a very rare and prized sort of prey. She had spent hours in wait, a cobra coiled upon the empty rooftops, waiting for that familiar energy signature to spark to life. Only when the Blood Moon leader had seemed to drop off of the face of the Earth entirely did she relent, only to find her here once again.

“I have a great many problems,” Tanzanite said, her voice cutting through the rain with it's unnatural echo, “My humanity is not one of them.”

The General-Queen was a reflection of her words. The rain pulled her hair down in twisting waves, made it hug her scalp in such a way that made that spiked crown seem slightly more ominous. Were she alone, she might have taken a moment to enjoy such a simple pleasure. To celebrate that she could still feel the water as it slammed into her pale skin. Now, there was no time for simple pleasures. Ares' words peaked her interest, as the woman surely must have known they would.

Where Ares' words were calm and composed, flowing to the measured cadence of a Presidential speech, Tanzanite's were barely restrained. They fell from her lips with little effort to hide the emotion behind them. While grief might no longer have been a part of her emotional spectrum, anger certainly was. It showed in the way her human voice took a back seat, the words coming out in a harsh rasp.

“Speak, then."

Had Ares come on bended knee, Tanzanite's response would have been to kick her square in the teeth. The strong did not find grace in the weak. They did not find beauty in forgiveness, or peace in redemption. Iron could only ever meet with iron without one or the other being forced to bend. Tanzanite might as well have been truly sculpted from it for all she moved, suspended in the air as though it was she who hung lifelessly from the marionette strings of the Moon overhead.

Only the wind and the rain moved her, wild hair and dark feathers snapping against the darkened sky. Tanzanite should have felt some kind of pleasure in hearing Ares recant her former loyalties, but between each word she heard the eerie echo of Dioptase's song, the hissing pain that filled Marthozite's last breath. The scar on her neck burned in reminder, but Tanzanite listened, and it was the apology that would finally lift her brow and give sound to her voice.

“Words,” the syllable fell from her mouth like a condemnation. She did not doubt Ares' sincerity. There was no mistaking that burning hatred for the White Moon and the princess who had all but destroyed their planet. It ran in Tanzanite's veins and made up the marrow of her bones, and she recognized the fire in Ares' voice. She was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, but not even that kindred spirit could make her betray the soldiers that had suffered at the hand of the Blood Moon Court.

“I don't care for your stars,” she began, a claw lifting to scrape away the strands of hair that clung to her cold, pale skin, “But I have claimed the first of them. Tell me why I should not continue until every one is nothing more than a burnt out shell. Until there is nothing left for you to claim.”

Tanzanite didn't want to hear it, but with recent revelations... well, she could not ignore Ares' claim. Not with the Knights reawakening and a dozen Eternals at their doorstep. How many of those might ascend, as Castor had? How many could they fight? The senshi were a barbarian horde of wretched magic, and Tanzanite knew better than to place her own vengeance above the goals of the Negaverse. If Ares and her Dark Mirror Court had the ability to help them, Tanzanite owed it to her own people to listen.

Still, she could not keep a sickened look from momentarily crossing her face.

“I collect my debts in blood, Ares, not words. I do not want your apology. I want to know what you can do for us.”

You do not have to destroy Earth to save it.

The words rattled around in Tanzanite's skull. She had never considered such a possibility. Since day once, their fight had seemed immensely difficult whenever not outright impossible. It had always felt to Tanzanite that they would have to fight tooth and nail for their planet, breaking it apart inch by inch and rebuilding it as they went like some dark terraforming process. All Ares wanted was what the senshi were entitled to, wasn't it? Tanzanite had always told them she cared little for their worlds. Their balls of fire and rock; dead and useless relics of a time long passed. If Ares felt she could bring life back to those worlds, Tanzanite would not stop her. As long as their planet was left in peace.

It was what she wanted most for the Negaverse, or so she thought nobly of her intentions. A day when Earth's army would not be necessary. A chance for them to never again have to fight, to return to a life she no longer had. There was no room for Ares in Tanzanite's perfect Earth, nor was there any room for herself.

Still, to make an alliance with Ares was to betray those the Blood Moon Court had so ruthlessly slaughtered. Tanzanite saw the power of Chaos in Ares' eyes, felt it's grip on her heart, but all she could hear was Dioptase's ghostly voice floating like a chorus upon the wind.

The right choice is very rarely the easy one, Marthozite warned, but did not elaborate. Neither choice felt easy, and nothing about the situation felt anything close to right. Nothing felt more wrong to Tanzanite than simply floating there as Ares spoke, when all she could focus on was the way her artery pulsed in her neck and how very much she would like to sink her claws into that tan skin and violently rip it out. The blackness began to creep in along the edges of her eyes, until those silver irises floated in an inky black pool.

Tanzanite was silent for a long moment, weighing her options with a blank stare. The Blood Moon Court had once been perhaps their greatest enemy among the senshi. Could the Dark Moon Court now become their strongest ally? They were outnumbered and outpowered.

This decision will affect them all. Are you so willing to sacrifice the lives of so many for the vengeance of so few? Marthozite's voice covered Metallia's words, silk-covered steel against which Tanzanite's will would obviously have no choice but to bend. Her anger surged as the General-King pushed her, and Tanzanite pushed back.

“It's her fault,” she hissed beneath her breath. She opened her lips to speak again, but fell silent as her spine went suddenly straight, every muscle rigid. Tanzanite's eyes widened for a brief moment, and began to clear as though the dark power were being choked out of her.

You will do this, Metallia pulled hard on Tanzanite's strings as she issued the command in a burning tone, forcing the Youma Queen to visibly wince.

“As you command,” she whispered, and turned that baleful stare back to Ares. “Keep your stars, and the lifeless husks of their planets.” Tanzanite spoke in a low voice, contempt thick in her tone, “Go live with your ghosts and leave us to our own. Mind your court to never forget what they've done. I will not, but if you can do as you say, the Negaverse welcomes your aid.”

Tanzanite's wings spread wide, and her body was ripped suddenly away on a gust of wind; a ragdoll enslaved to the powers of Earth. Even as her silhouette vanished, her warning words hung in the air.

“Betray us, Ares, and I will send every one of them to join Nehelenia in her grave.”