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Elysion was a drug.

After the battle that had been fought here, Ares had dreamed of the place where Chibimoon had led them, a path that brought them straight into an ambush. She had lost one of her own that day -- Sailor Rota -- and she intended to atone for the young cadet's life until her very last breath. When she closed her eyes, visions of the paradisal gardens flooded her senses. It felt alien to her; she entrusted her sleeping state to Tartaros. To be in the hands of another unconscious dreamscape was unsettling.

That night, as her mind drifted in and out of focus, the thoughts of Elysion brought the Senshi of Smoke into its reality. She stood in a clearing, pink butterflies encircling her before carrying off again. In this place, it seemed as if no battle had ever been waged at all.

"I did not realize animals had a capacity for control," she said firmly. Ares did not believe Tanzanite, not for a second. Her hand remained locked firmly on the wrought-iron torch on her side, the other clenching to a fist. The senshi was a warhawk, but she wasn't stupid. Tanzanite was far stronger than she was. Without a tactical advantage on her side, Ares would not win against her. "Are you just taking a moment to smell the flowers then? Do you miss the stain of blood on them?" She maintained her distance, firm in her stance. Quietly, Ares felt a pang of longing for the thrill of battle. She was not accustomed to meeting her foe in this way. This was a politican's role; this was not her.

"Them," Ares echoed.

Them -- but not you? Was Ares not to be counted among those who would ruin Elysion in the eyes of Tanzanite? She allowed a pregnant pause to pass. "Elysion is protected by a senshi. It is a place for senshi." But not for me, she thought idly. Ares was a paradise of the White Moon. Her presence here was a strange, alien one. Helios had known it the moment she laid eyes on her.

The words echoed in her mind: GET OUT.

Ares understood why Helios might react negatively to her. She did, after all, whole-heartedly support the imprisonment of the Gatekeeper in a golden cage in a time long past. Nehelenia had been different then; they had all been different. But Ares had moved on from that existence. Why couldn't Helios? What was a little past-imprisonment among allies, right? The thought brought a subtle sparkle to her eyes. Nehelenia had caused mayhem back then. She had turned the White Moon on its head.

Gray eyes landed on the gnarled youma arm, and the smile faded. "The universe belongs to the senshi, you know. This planet is simply a single celestial body within it." The comment was idle, off-hand. Ares had seen much of the parallel universe. The Black Earth had been a capital, but she never regarded it as anything of particular value. In the White Kingdom, it seemed much more significant.

Strange.

"Ask Helios about that," Ares said sharply. "The Space Cauldron passed his soul to a senshi. Even so, Helios is a magical being, one that has historically sided with the senshi through it all." Her thumb traced the hard edge of her torch. "The man has taste."

In truth, Ares did not care much for Helios -- bad blood and all. But she considered herself more aligned with him than with Beryl and her soldiers. They both supported the senshi, even if they differed over politics.

Despite the tension in the air, the pink glow of the sky bore down on the pair of soldiers in bright, beaming rays. The lush grass stood in stark contrast to the muted colors of both the senshi and Nega's uniforms. They stood out like beacons on an otherwise picaresque landscape.

For a moment, Ares considered Tanzanite's words. There was sense there. The senshi could own every inch of the universe, leaving the Negas to the Earth. It would be a Nega reservation. A little pocket of existence where they could live and kill as they pleased without affecting the senshi at all. Ares was certainly not of this land, even if Fallon was. Her home was Ares -- a planet through the mirror, sister to Mars of this universe. Would she miss this place with its flaws?

But such logic could not be trusted. There was no way the Negaverse would stop at the Earth. There was no way they would allow themselves to be cordoned off in a great celestial pen and throw away the key. The Negaverse subsisted on Chaos. There could be no peace.

Ares narrowed her eyes. "And what about the civilians you slaughter? They are born of the Earth. They are here because it is their home. Yet you torment them. You mutilate them. I have watched you punch through the chest of a teenage girl." Wind stirred her face, a long strand obscuring her eyes for an instant.

"Without people on it, Earth is just dirt. When you kill the life here, when you suck the energy from people and stack their bodies in mass graves, you kill the heartbeat of the planet you claim to fight for." A sneer crossed her lips. "Now tell me again how the senshi hurt the planet. Explain to me what we do to terrorize the citizens and kill them before they have a chance to fight back. The senshi responded to the first shot -- and your side fired it."

A stray leaf landed on her shoulder. She brushed it away casually. “You kill for pleasure,” Ares said. “I can see it in your eyes.” It wasn’t a rebuke, just a statement. The way that Tanzanite killed had a flourish to it, a touch of drama. She could go for a simple kill if she wanted, but that was not her choice. Her particular style of battle was a grotesque one, perhaps a side effect of her hideous arm. The Senshi of Smoke let her eyes linger on the arm for a moment before raising back up to meet Tanzanite’s gaze.

One arm propped up on her hip, cupping the hard curve of her bodice. “The senshi did not elect to be on this planet. This is where the Cosmos tossed our souls.” Ares, of course, was a strange outlier in this equation. She had most certainly not been born to this planet but had instead had her energy thrust into it through unnatural means. “We belong here as much as you do. The White Moon senshi are not grotesque perversions of humanity. They were created naturally, through the natural pattern of life and rebirth.” To a senshi, this was a natural concept at least. Ares saw Tanzanite as a bastardization of a civilian. She saw the other senshi as special beings lovingly created by the Space Cauldron and put here for a specific purpose.

The senshi tilted her head up in indignation. “None of it matters now. Once war is started, it must be finished. We fight for victory because our lives are at stake. When you and your polluted kind are all dead and burned, the planet will keep spinning, and we will still be here. Your soul will die and stay dead. Ours will carry on through the ages, through time itself.” One painted nail tapped on her hip. “There is only one Tanzanite. You began here and will end here. But me? I will exist forever.” A slight tremor rattled the last note of her words. Ares was not entirely certain what would happen to her soul when it came time for her to die here. Would it still enter the cycle of rebirth in the White Kingdom? Or would the Space Cauldron shirk it off as some unknown other, leaving her trapped in cosmic limbo forever?

“Face it, General Tanzanite,” she sneered. “The senshi can never be stopped. You cut one down, and another is reborn. Your queen is the only real trouble. If we end her, we break the cycle.” Ares waved a hand dismissively. “You are an annoyance, not a threat.” The senshi was grand-standing. It was the thing to do in a stand-off such as this – but she believed in the truth of her words. Even if the Negas somehow won (which was clearly impossible), the senshi would simply return again.

The senshi had no end. Defeat was imminent for the Negaverse. Of this, Ares was certain.

Mass corruption of all senshi.

Ares stood in silence until Tanzanite finished. For all the horrors of the General on the battlefield, there was almost something worse about her tongue. She managed to both make sense and be utterly unhinged. The Senshi of Smoke could understand the logic of what she was trying to do, but it didn't mean the plan didn't bother her fundamentally.

The senshi had felt the pull of Chaos before. She had followed a Corrupted Queen. She knew what it felt like and how it felt when it was gone. There was no fear in her eyes at the threat from the Negaverse General, just caution. Unfortunately, Ares had no intention of allowing the Negaverse to remain alive so long as she had the will to stop them. They would not be given the opportunity to attempt this plan, if it could even be done.

What was more troubling than Tanzanite's threat to all senshi was her grim impression of Ares. You're just like me. She stilled, allowing a pregnant pause to lapse between them.

Then the parallel senshi tilted her head to one side. "Words are useless," she said lowly. "Words are for those who are too weak to fight. Wars aren't won with words." Behind Tanzanite, the hazy pink of the sky began to brighten. Tongues of yellow light licked up the horizon in wavering beams.

Ares slapped her torch against her palm, booted feet finding their traction in the flawless green stalks of grass. "No sense putting this off longer," she said. Her eyes narrowed to thin gray slits.

The Super Senshi and General soared toward each other as the pinkish haze of the sky brightened to dawn. Tanzanite's arm grazed the bracer on Ares' right wrist, and then they were both gone, zapped out from Elysion just as the world rolled back into the light of day. A pleasant, warm wind whipped through the now-empty field. The only sign that the two had been there at all was the dim impressions of their boots left behind in the grass. The wind stirred again, and the grass mended, bending back upright as green and as fresh as it had always been.

Back in her bed at Crystal Academy, Fallon covered her hands with her eyes and tried to silence the persistent words of the Negaverse General still ringing in her head:

You're just like me.