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Aree bolted upright as she awoke, screaming her anger and frustration. The left side of her face was red and swollen, a few blisters springing up on her cheek and jaw. Her last minutes in Elysion had been a brutal few, and her hand lifted to cradle her burnt face. A handful of molten metal to her face, a punch, and a kick to the ribs had eliminated her as a combatant. Her last words in Elysion were her first back on earth, and she spoke them in a half-asleep whisper as consciousness returned.

“Kill them all.”

She blinked into the darkness, her eyes slowly adjusting. The room around her was the same, nothing out of place except the bluenette who laid beside her. Aree rested a hand upon Audrey's slumbering form, gently squeezing her shoulder as though needing to make certain she was really there. For a long moment, she simply watched; had she been there, watching over her the entire night?

Only when Audrey awoke did her hand casually slip away, coming to rest atop the other to hide her burnt features.

“I'm fine,” she murmured, slipping out of bed to stand. A bruise covered nearly half of her calf, and her shoulderblades looked as though she had scratched the skin practically off. <********. ********, ********, <********>."

“Ow, ********. Ow. ********. OW. ******** voice grew ever louder as the pain of her injuries set in. Though it hadn't been a hot as real metal should have been, it was enough to make the woman not open her eye for fear of finding out that she might be unable to see. She sat back down on the bed with a frown, and slowly pulled her hand from her face.

“I'm going to need to clean that. It's on the left side, it can get infected.” As opposed to her right side, in which the youma would have eventually taken over and healed it with enough energy. As it were, she was thankful that her unique physiology would keep it from scarring. Her face was the last part of her that did not bear some kind of scar, and she was not about to ruin it now.

“Ares and her ******** peons,” Aree spat the words, agitation clear in the way her muscles remained tense, “I swear to God Lina I am going to rip that woman's spine out.”

Aree was a pleasant person.

"Do we have any alcohol?"

“Both,” Aree managed amidst a continuing flurry of curse words. Her face stung something fierce, but at least she wasn't as bad off as some of the combatants she'd seen taking a beating on her way out. The pain was not what had the General swearing like a sailor, though. It was the fact that she had been eliminated so quickly. And by someone coming to Ares' defense, no less. Only having taken a hit for Painite gave her some sense of accomplishment.

It was, for lack of a better term, embarrassing. Her anger was eased only by the distraction of worry, the fear that perhaps one of her small team might not make it out alive. Bismuthite had thrown himself into the fray with everything he had, but Aree's worry for the new recruit eclipsed her pride. He was no use to them dead, and they had plenty of soldiers with less potential to be throwing out as senshi fodder.

“I'm not okay,” Aree said in the closest thing to a pout that she was capable of, “I need to be in there and I need to be fighting, not sitting on my a**.” She tried to stand, and the bluenette placed two hands upon her shoulders and pushed her back down. Aree almost protested, but the look Audrey gave her left no room for conversation. She was done for the night, and that was that.

Black-nailed fingers plucked a starseed from the case, and for a brief moment it sat shimmering in her open palm. To the senshi, it represented a life. For Aree, it represented her life. Unlike most of their dark army, Aree needed starseed energy to live off of, making the grim task of energy collecting infinitely more personal. She regarded it for only a second, a brief hint of regret in her eyes, before she tossed it back like a pill.

The reaction was predictable.

Her body doubled over, blackened fingertips curling into her dark tangle of hair. It was like watching an addict go through a sudden withdrawal, her body shuddering violently for a few minutes, every muscle tense. On the outside, within moments she was a shaking, sweating body curled into the fetal position on the bed. On the inside, it was a war for control, a struggle to suppress the power of the Negaverse and the hunger that came with it. Her eyes darkened, her right arm shifting between human and youma. While the two were now a single mind, the struggle for control still existed. It was a struggle just to stop, to be a human for a few brief and peaceful hours. Spines grew and retracted at her shoulder, and by the time it was all said done, she looked worse off than when they'd begun.

Worse off, but alive. The wounds on her right side had been claimed by the youma, thin black fibers weaving the wounds closed right before their eyes. The right, while it would heal faster than an average person, was still in serious need of attention. Aree grabbed the bottle of vodka, twisted the cap off, and threw back the first shot.

“Alright. Ready.”

Starseeds and vodka, breakfast of champions.

Audrey was giving her the same speech she'd heard a dozen times from the bluenette, and Aree responded by drinking more. The next half hour was dominated by cursing and fussing, with Audrey having to slap Aree's hand away from her own injuries on several occasions. Aree was good at a lot of things. Fighting. Talking s**t. Making threats.

Taking care of herself was not on the list.

“I swear to ******** raptor jesus if you do that one more time I am going to – ow! <********>” Aree swore as Audrey upended the bottle right over her burnt face, washing away her protests and words as the alcohol seared the skin. She glared, took another swig, and shoved the vodka bottle at Audrey.

“Drink it,” she said flatly, and it was not a request, “I'm going to feel less guilty about punching you in the face in ten minutes if you're drunk.”

Tanzanite had a very special way of showing gratitude.

Audrey mentioned Elzo, and Aree got that look on her face. It wasn't that she had any reason to dislike Elzo, really. He had been perfectly kind to her, and from what she'd heard he treated Audrey with the respect and love that Aree felt was called for. Still, the idea of any Negaverse agent dating? The thought of a General dating someone was difficult for Tanzanite to grasp. How did one balance a devotion to the Negaverse with the demands of a human life? For Tanzanite, who now found it harder to keep the power of the Negaverse out of her than to hold it in, it was a mystery.

It was difficult to remember a time where she had to worry about people outside of the Negaverse.

“I will punch you wherever I want to punch you,” Aree responded, hissing as her brief smile brought a new wave of pain to the blistered side of her face. Aree had always had a strange sense of humor, but added to the unique dynamic of her relationship with Linarite and, well, there was no telling if she was serious or not.

“It's vodka, Audrey, and I drink it because it makes me stop thinking about ripping out Sailor Scylla's bowels and using them to hang Ares from a ******** tree.”

Which was her current plan for the next time they entered Elysion. She took the bottle back, took another swig, and gave a slight wince at the taste. Aree might have been only half human, but that half was still a twenty-one year old woman with little drinking experience.

What would Charonite have said, if he could see them now? Two Generals, one bribing the other with alcohol to get her to stop messing with the various burns, gashes, and scrapes. If he had lived to see them fighting for Elysion, girls he had known as little more than teenagers. Hell, what would Ursula have said if she could see the girl she had been friends with and the girl she hated just then?

Aree put the thought out of her head and took another drink.

Unlike Audrey, it would take more than a few shots to get Aree drunk, as her body burned through the alcohol as quickly as it burned through any other calories. There was a reason the woman had been so slim since her acquisition of her youma symbiont. However, she watched as Audrey descended rapidly into the telltale giggles of inebriation.

“I think she's a senshi,” she said at last, as though it explained something. Were she with anyone but Audrey, she might have doubted their understanding of what she meant.

But this? This was Audrey Collins, and if understanding Aree Cadence's opinions on the senshi was a college major, Audrey would have had a double doctorate by now.

“Yes, I'm drinking,” Aree smiled softly, “But I'm afraid my body doesn't quite function like yours anymore. Or anyone's, really.”

Aree Cadence could have eaten several thousands calories in a day and not have gained a pound. Her body no longer functioned on proteins and fats, but on the energy obtained from starseeds and draining. It made things simple and yet complicated at the same time. It saved a lot of time and a lot of money, but the woman left a trail of bodies in her wake that would have made even hardened Negaverser cringe.

But not Audrey.

Audrey had never judged her for what she had to do to survive. She'd never looked at Aree Cadence as though she were some kind of monster. Even as blackened fingertips rested in that blue hair, Audrey simply looked up at Aree as though she were... just Aree. Just another normal young woman who had not just come out of a bloody battle.

“Come on, drunkie,” she said with a smile, lifting Audrey up by an arm as though she were light as a feather, “let's get you to bed.”