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Chione

Everything was a blur, but she knew that she had been knocked out of the way by Elsa, and the force of it had her almost falling to the floor, catching herself and crouching behind her brother. When the barrage of…of whatever was happening finished she slowly got up and looked at her brother, letting out a hiss as she saw the shard embedded in his shoulder. “Jesus ********, Elsa…you didn’t have to go and act the hero, you know…”

He got hurt because of her…and that was really…really nice. She’d have to have him over for dinner when this was over. Or…maybe she’d stop throwing things on his floor to piss him off…for a few days, at least. “Thanks.”

She let out a little squeak of surprise as something—someone slammed into her and she saw Acubens. So she had remembered her again. Cool.

“I’m fine—“

The words were hardly out of her mouth when she was pelted by some small pieces of glass, and then the queen was gone…and then Acubens was talking about something else again.

She moved closer to Elsa and sighed, reaching out and gently touching the shard embedded in his shoulder. “Want me to just yank it out, bro? I could, you know…and I could use my attack on you…that would chill it a little. And it would chill you, too, but hey. That’s the price of magic, I suppose.

Taran kept his eyes on Avior as the man knelt next to him; he had been sitting on the ground, though before he seemed to have had the strength to hold himself up. Now, he sat, resting his head against the wall. He was slouching a bit more than usual and, adrenaline faded, it seemed like it was an effort to even just keep himself awake and alert.

He replied to the man, and Acubens, “We don’t have time for that right now. Focus on recovering and restoring as much energy as you can. I will tell you, so far as I know, the crystals have shown no weakness to force or time. I haven’t had the opportunity to test many methods to weaken it, but,” he shrugged. “I don’t want you to waste your magic on me if it means it weakens you against her. You will need all of your strength.”

He glanced to Laverna and nodded. He drew in a breath as he took a moment to consider where to begin.

“Altea was not always a menace, I have to start there.”

His voice was soft and slow, not as if he were trying to conceal information but as if he was combing over his memories with a fondness he could not often grant. “Before all of this, she was everything you might have thought her to be, when you first arrived. Kindhearted and bright eyed and full of love. But that isn’t her, now.”

He pried himself from thoughts of whatever life they had shared before and tried to start towards the beginning. “I spent much of my time defending these worlds. Hers, and mine. Our marriage would have been political, had I not fallen in love with her before it was ever arranged. I traveled, between her planet, mine, and four others in this quadrant. I was off the planet when the plague hit her world, and when my own world was targeted. This was,” he seemed to strain his mind for a moment and then relented. “It was years ago. I was between worlds, searching for something that shouldn’t exist. I failed in my search, and I returned to my world—a dying world. The life had been sucked from everything. Survivors were few and far between. There were monsters—strange monsters, like someone had crushed glass and glued them back together. They were like ghosts. My planet was a husk of what it used to be—and it wasn’t the only one. There was a trail of them, I could follow it. Each one was the same as the last. I tracked everything back to her before I even knew what she was.”

He had to draw in a slow breath and force himself to keep going. His mouth was dry and his voice softened; he was forcing himself to speak while they still had time.

“Back then, I had feared her world was attacked. Like mine was. Planets that used to be ripe with life were devoid of anything. I ran into stragglers, I picked up their rumors. They had heard that her world—Solamnia—had been ravaged by plague—a dark sickness. There was nothing that could be done—it claimed more worlds than one, before it faded away. But the sickness that befall Solamnia was not the one that was spreading. Our worlds, our Quadrant, is in the Outskirts. I don’t know where you are from in the universe, but we’re in the Shadow. There are no suns, no stars. It’s easy for monsters to lurk and grow. Hence,” he tried to gesture to himself. “The need for protection. And more than monsters, I heard of a war—a war that wiped out life in most of the universe?”

He did not wait for confirmation before continuing, “It didn’t reach us. We have our dangers, but the asteroid belt surrounding our region has kept its fair share of trouble out. But the sickness,” he shook his head. “You couldn’t stop that. Solamnia was wiped out. Even now, it’s a planet of corpses. But Altea doesn’t know that. If you asked anyone, before, they would tell you of Altea’s love, her humility, but that’s not the woman you know. Not anymore. She found it.”

He paused, not for emphasis, but for necessity. “The Chaos Seed I had been searching for. She reeks of it. I should have gotten it first,” he said bitterly, shaking his head and closing his eyes. “I could have stopped all of this if I had. But it preyed on her weakness. They always do. It must have found her when the sickness reached her planet. Her heart must have been open to the Chaos, and it sought her out. She must have been one of the last survivors on her world when it reached her. It strengthened her, made her more than what she could have ever hoped to be. But power like that comes with a cost, and I think she was too lost, too blind to see it. She got her world back.” He nodded to the castle around them. “But all the shard did was mirror what she had. This place isn’t real. She’s just too far gone to realize that she’s living a fantasy. Maybe it made her happy for a while. Maybe it gave her back her people for a while. But you can’t sustain an illusion of that magnitude without energy. So she turned to the other worlds.”

Worlds that weren’t hers. Worlds that were expendable, if it meant her subjects could live. Or, it seemed, what she thought were her subjects.

“Or so I’ve been able to piece together.” He said it with the confidence that implied it was more than just a theory. “It explains the dead worlds, all the way back to Solamnia. And it explains how this place has the energy to exist. But she absorbs more than just resources. She absorbs their life force. Everything that makes them unique, she takes, she replicates. And then she uses it for her own. This place, this Mirrorscape, just copies everything it comes in contact with. It made you, didn’t it?”

He eyed their uniforms. He seemed stony, suddenly. “…You get your power from it, don’t you?” he asked flatly.

He knew the answer. He was just so tired.

Reserving for Sinope

Eternal Sailor Tantalus

Tantalus had been still during the fight, frozen guiltily, with no idea what to do. He knew he was bleeding from multiple wounds from the Queens attacks, but none of them were serious; nothing had stuck, not really.

He hadn't felt so useless in a long time, but everyone else had been moving so fast and...he'd panicked and frozen up in a way he hadn't since before he'd gotten his lantern. He was supposed to be better, and he felt like he'd backslid years and miles in that moment.

A massive, powerful force, and for all his bravado before he hadn't even been able to raise a hand to fight.

"Leto," he said, desperately, moving to his Princess, "are you alright?"

He wanted to stick as close to her as possible, at this point.

Especially since Taran was talking, and...and he felt cold, suddenly, listening to what he described.

The descent he spoke of, the change in Altea - he could only imagine witnessing that happening to someone you love.d/ He thought, briefly, of Damocles, imagined him twisted and corrupted into something dark and cold and cruel, and he felt his heart break in half.

And then there was the rest. The arrival of a Chaos Seed that came to Altea when she was desperate. The arrival of the thing that became Mirrorspace.

The core of whatever it was that changed them, draped them in black and diaphanous overlays, made them able to walk through mirrors. He swallowed, and reached to grab Leto's hand, for reassurance.

"Leto...?" He asked, softly. "Did you ever hear...?" If anyone had known, surely, she would, or Remarque, they were Royals. "Does any of this sound familiar to you?"

Reserving for Logos!

Diadem, absorbing the madness that had just ensued, stilled at Taran's reaction to them being 'mirror' senshi. Anyone elses problems, objections, opinions, might as well have been a light breeze for all they seemed to catch her interest.

"...We...." She glanced over to Remarque, questioningly. "...We do... I mean do we?...I mean we use mirrors...?" She said slowly, theories, answers, awful answers rolling through her head. They weren't bad... right? Well... she wasn't sure they were good but they weren't... they weren't the negaverse. But the things he was talking about, the crushed glass, the stolen energy... they did take energy. And they'd seen the mirror space crumbling. Was that a symptom of Altea's growing weakness? Maybe in a terrible way she'd been right about the chrysalis phenomenon, but Diadem didn't want to find out what came out the other end.

"Remarque?" She asked, questioningly. What the hell did they do now? She couldn't imagine anyone in their right mind going to try and make amends with Altea, regardless of where their power came from. "This is bad isn't it?"

She'd wanted answers since the beginning, but she'd never, never wanted to be part of the problem. Never wanted to be related to the kind of terrible thing she'd seen in the Negaverse, the kind of corruption that made monsters out of normal people and made her wake up trying not to scream because she remembered terror and accidentally crushing someone to a wall with her car, trying to escape. They'd been an agent... but they were still dead. They were dead and she was alive, but...

She did not want to be a monster. She refused to be a monster.

Sailor Sadalsuud

Sadalsuud had listened in silence as Taran as he spoke to them in a soft voice about Queen Altea and the woman he described sounded like the woman that had saved them - like the woman who had given her the music box–

Or at least the woman that Sadalsuud had thought had saved them.

She had continued to listen as he had talked his job of protecting Solamnia and the other planets within the quadrant–

And then he had talked of monsters and she had found herself paling as a sick feeling pooled in her stomach - because the 'monsters' he was describing sounded awfully familiar - too familiar.

Because the mirrorwraiths - they kind of looked like that didn't they - or at least they did after they had collected enough energy.

And there was more, as he talked of a Altea finding a chaos seed and whilst she didn't know what a chaos seed was, it was kind of hard to miss that it was bad - very bad.

And the sick feeling only intensified as he talked about a mirrorscape - a mirrorscape that replicated things.

An illusion - something that wasn't real.

"He's talking about us isn't he" she said to Sinope, voice trembling on the words although it wasn't a question and her green eyes didn't meet his eyes "And the wraiths."

Nor did they meet Taran's, even as some of the other's spoke to him and asked him questions - at least not at first, but eventually she found herself asking "Why?" And her green eyes were as dull as her voice as Sadalsuud finally looked over to stare at Taran "Why would you help us if you think we're just like her?"

Because whilst he hadn't actually said the words out loud, he thought so didn't he?

Eternal Sailor Remarque

Remarque had been silent since Altea’s departure; he had sustained minimal damage, no more than a few tears in his clothes. If he had any real injuries, his adrenaline had numbed him to any pain. His temper had flared, though he’d managed to force himself to stay quiet. For Taran’s monologue, he’d simply stood quietly, caught his breath, and clenched and unclenched his hands into fists at his side.

The information was conflicting; on one hand, he had wanted to know where their powers came from. He had wanted to know more than just ‘Ares’. He wanted to know everything he could.

Understanding the power was the key to strengthening it.

But.

There were parts of Taran’s speech that irritated him. He wasn’t sure if he felt as though any questions had been answered—or, at least, he had so many new questions that it drowned out any resolution to the old ones.

He still didn’t even know if they should be trusting Taran—or if he wasn’t just still trying to utilize him towards his own goal. But, he looked too weak to be much of a threat, and Remarque couldn't fathom what sort of trap he could have been setting that would have benefited him.

Remarque listened to what had been said, and glanced to Kiuchi first, and then Diadem, after they addressed him.

They knew they got their power from Chaos—a Chaos different than the Negaverse. He liked to think that theirs was better, more controllable—but if they did get their energy from the same source as Altea, where would they be if she were trying to command them?

…Would they have listened to her, if she arrived with Ares? When the Court was freshly formed?

Even now, without Ares, Remarque couldn’t imagine there was a way to truly confirm what had happened. There were similarities, but he wasn’t going to put his faith in any one theory. At least, not yet.

“No,” he answered sternly, with great conviction. “It’s not bad. No worse than anything we’ve faced before, at least. Regardless of where her power comes from—where our powers come from—we wouldn’t be Dark Mirror Senshi if we weren’t all born with that power already inside of us. No matter what happens, no one can strip that from us.”

Not even the mirror.

“We don’t have many options right now, though. If Altea intends to target Earth, we’ll stop her.” He scanned the face of the Dark Mirror Senshi in the room. He didn’t like the idea of speaking so openly in front of Taran, but if Altea destroyed Earth, the Dark Mirror Senshi wouldn’t have been able to last for too long afterwards. Not without proper food or sleep, or medical attention. Even if he wasn’t wholeheartedly set on protecting Earth—and the people he cared about— from her, he wouldn’t have just sat idly by and waited to die.

When he spoke, there was only confidence; he never let any doubt or question slip into his voice. Not just for appearance’s sake but for the rest of the Court, for those who felt lost or powerless. There were too many new Senshi here, untouched by war; he wasn’t going to be responsible for diminishing morale, so he stood tall and brushed off his uniform, as if Altea’s crystals had been a mere inconvenience.

“Altea fled, like a frightened animal. If she had the strength to fight us, she would have done it here, now—or, when we first arrived. Instead, she tried to poison us.” Her, or this place, it didn’t matter. “If she was only using us to find her next target, we’ll stop her. And once we've neutralized the threat, we'll find how Altea planned to get to Earth, and we'll get home. ”

It wasn’t a question; it was an obligation, and he gave no impression that he thought there was any chance of failure.

He made certain to say ‘stop’—not kill. It did not escape him that there were those among their ranks that would have been repulsed by the idea of killing another living being and, even he, had not ever killed someone. If there was a chance to stop her without killing her, perhaps it was worth considering, if they had time.

But, then, if what Taran said about Altea was true—did she even count as someone, or was she just a monster?