Welcome to Gaia! ::

The pressures of running a multi-prisoner compound had begun to take their toll on Super Sailor Ares. She lived within the same dank walls that the captured Negas do. In many ways, she was a prisoner too, just to her own mad need for control and victory in this war.

Despite her raised chin and sharp stare, the teenager looked rough. Deep bags had taken shape beneath her eyes. Each time she looked in a mirror, Ares grimaced. Her skin was paler than usual. Her hair didn't have quite the same bounce. The skin on her knuckles had begun to scab over, even with accelerated senshi healing. She wore the battle scars proudly when addressing the Blood Moon, but privately, she layered them with salve and bandaged them with thick guaze like a prize-fighter.

And what was the prize?
Victory. Superiority. A renewed sense of purpose.

Ares knew these things to be true, but recently, she had begun to worry about the rest of the faction. Nemesis came to her daily with reports of weakened or questioning comrades. Some had attempted to feed the Negas outside of their scheduled diet. Others had offered them comfort outside of the strategy of interrogation. There was a even a report that one of her most troublesome cadets had brought Tanzanite a puppy. These were secrets of the Blood Moon that Ares fought to keep hidden. They needed to remain as a brave senshi face in the population. Soon, she hoped, they would bring that face to the citizens of Destiny City.

But that time was not now.

Within the compound, there were two rooms for relaxation. One was where most people congregated -- it was the room with food. The other was off in a far corner of the warehouse, and there was a leaky pipe that dripped brown water onto the uneven floor. There was the unmistakable odor of sulfur in the air. Normally, Ares avoided this place when she needed a break.

Today, though, she felt the all-consuming need to simply be alone with her thoughts, as scary as those thoughts could sometimes be.

As a civilian, Fallon has once prided herself on minced words and forced smiles. She believed that a person should always be polite, no matter the circumstance. There was a strict code of social conduct that the teenager stuck to, and she expected others to do the same. And yet, when Albali burst into the room spouting a blunt yet honest truth, Ares only felt comfort, not indignation.

Yes, this was what they needed. No sugar-coating. No hand-holding. They were the ******** Blood Moon Court.

Gray eyes blinked slowly. Ares had been standing beside a bench against the far wall when Albali entered. She eased slowly into the seat. There was a couch, too, but it looked dubious. Ares had the suspicion that it would make a wet squelch if she tried to sit on it.

The girl sighed, touched at her temple. "I can't," she said quietly. It wasn't a weak sound, more of a simple admission. "You know that I can't. Eventually, they will find us. Zirconia can only do so much, and she's already working herself to the bone. She's just one cat." This, too, was not something Ares would admit to just anyone. She was renowned for her unreasonably high expectations of others. To admit that one of their own had reached the end of his or her rope, let alone to say it with a note of pity and commiseration, was an alien sound coming from the Senshi of Smoke.

Ares relaxed back into the bench. "The Negas cannot live past the week," she said suddenly. "Each day they continue to live is another risk we take that they might be rescued by their compatriots. Alkaid was hot on my trail the one time I left the compound. And the others? Who knows what tiny cracks of information we have been slowly leaking to the Negaverse? They could be outside our door tonight." Worry flared in her voice. It was an emotion she tried to keep buried at all costs.

"We need to take our final measures now," she continued. "The lieutenants have already been wrung dry of their usefulness. Dioptase has just barely cracked, Uranophane is being uncooperative, Wolframite has been stoic, and Tanzanite... well, I honestly think she has gone crazy." Ares could hear the ranting of the Negaverse General in her head, the manic laughter. It was almost more chilling than facing her in battle. "I have one last plan at breaking them all. We'll hatch it in two days. If that doesn't not bring out the information we seek, then they will all be killed. Six less blips of Negaverse energy, six less opponents to face."

Even in her break time, Ares could not keep herself from focusing on the Blood Moon Court. It had become her purpose. She spoke of it as surely as she breathed. "And then we will move on to the next plan, to the next batch. I'd like to see us capture Zinkenite, and the pink-haired General. What was her name?" She rubbed at her forehead. "Oh, Serandite. We'll start at the throat of the beast. And then, with her forces disabled, we will come for Beryl herself." Something pinched in Ares' voice -- excitement, pride, drive.

Without her cause, she had nothing. Her parallel family was lost to her, save the three vestiges that remained alongside her. But Gaia and Laocoon had never been her closest allies, if one could even say that Ares had been close to anyone beyond comraderie in battle. Zirconia was a companion, sure, but Ares had never felt comfortable unloading all of herself to the guardian cat. The only person she had ever felt she could be open with was Princess Selene.

And she was dead.

Mirrorwalking had given the Senshi of Smoke a significant advantage in this world. Sure, she might not have some fancy cellphone that connected her to the rest of her faction, but she could both walk and talk through mirrors. It seemed a much more elegant solution to the question of travel and communication, she thought, but with only the other parallels being able to access that power, Ares felt like her abilities with mirrors had been reduced in their usefulness, existing instead as some sort of parlor trick.

There were many days when she wished that those senshi surrounding her bore the same black fukus and mirror affinity that she did. Ares dreamed of a world of parallel soldiers just like her – as if the Black Kingdom had been fully merged with the White to create a hybrid senshi existence, taking the best of both worlds and dissolving their differences. But it was a dream, one that Ares needed to try to let go of before it consumed her -- much like this current Nega prison camp was consuming her.

She was, it would seem, a woman utterly consumed.

Ares didn’t sit up. She only lifted one hand to wave at the air. “No,” she said, a sullen chord ringing out. “I could take people one by one, maybe even a pair, through the mirror, but my energy has limits. According to Helicase, the General Kings and Queens are capable of teleporting at will, unlimited as far as they knew. I can’t match that. If they came, or if too many generals came, they would reach our forces before everyone could be whisked away through the mirrors.” The Senshi of Smoke appreciated what Albali was trying to do, but the fact was that the girl did not understand mirrorwalking.

Saying that much helped buy Ares time to respond to the second point that Albali had raised. This body was a shared one. Even as Fallon and Ares merged into one consciousness, it had seemed as of late that the powered side of the teenager had taken the upper hand. The things that had once made Fallon, well, Fallon had gradually begun to disappear. She no longer spent hours a day cooking, but instead dedicated her free time to training and strategy. She no longer threw fancy dinner parties weekly, but attended tedious Inner Sanctum meetings in their place. There was no arguing with what Albali was saying, and yet, Ares resented her for it.

“I am more than just a civilian,” she said, a hard edge in the words. “So I have to change. We all do. You couldn’t possibly understand my unique circumstances.”

Who could – aside from the only three parallels left alive? It was one thing to discover that you were a senshi. It was entirely another to learn that your soul had been thrust forcibly into the bottom of a human. There was nothing natural about Ares’ rebirth. She was a stranger in a strange land and a strange body. The loneliness that she experienced on a daily basis was so deep that she sometimes feared it might split her in two.

These were things she felt uncomfortable saying aloud. These were things she felt certain would make her weak. So instead, Ares merely dropped her eyes to the ground and said, “This is my body. This is my life. I know who I am, Albali. I have never questioned it. Do you question me now?” And then she fell silent.

Albali cared about Ares. That much was clear. The idea of someone caring for her outside of the parallel court was still a new concept to the Senshi of Smoke. While electrifying as a battle-leader, she had never had a knack for charm outside of the field. Other members of the Blood Moon Court hung out on weekends, went to parties, incorporated each other into their civilian lives. Ares didn’t. If someone was in her civilian life, it was only because she needed them for a tactical purpose. The only member in all of the faction that even knew her before she had become their leader was Scylla, and that friendship had been rocky at best as of late.

Outside of Scylla though, Albali was possibly the other person that knew her best, if only through virtue of learning more of the civilian side of her as opposed to the powered face that most others were offered. She listened quietly to the Senshi of Echoes’ criticism, face remaining as hard and stoic as ever. “Your rate of improvement could be better if you spent more time on the training field, but it’s your attention to detail and clerical skills that I value most. You are an asset to us off the battlefield. We just need to work on getting you up to par when it comes to combat,” she said, voice slipping into the same didactic tone it always did when she spoke to members about self-development.

To the rest of it, Ares wasn’t sure what to say. She had a mission, and she had to see it through, no matter the cost. “Albali, if I didn’t have the Blood Moon Court to fight for, I would be dead inside,” she said, eyes unwavering. “And as my friend, you should know that by now. Just like I know that I would never mistrust your loyalty.” One hand fell to her lap, smoothing the edge of her black skirt.

“I have to be strong for everyone,” she said. “You said it yourself – nobody else but me. If I fall, then this faction might fall, and I can’t see that happen. We do important work here, and beyond that, we do the kind of work that other senshi don’t have the strength to do. I can make sacrifices for victory.” Her eyes dulled, dark thoughts clouding her mind’s eye. “After this is over, after we kill the captured Negas, I will take a week to rest. No patrols, though I cannot stop training or miss any Inner Sanctum or Blood Moon meetings.” Ares glanced up to Albali. “You have my word, okay?”

Her mother.

Ares’ face reacted before she could control it, a frown creeping across her mouth. She furrowed her brow.

In a flash, her mind cartwheeled backward three weeks.

It had been the night when she came home to shower, and unknown to her, her mother had slipped in to confront her about sneaking out of the house. What Iva had found instead was the true horror of her daughter’s life – cuts, scars, bruises from battles. Fallon tried to explain it away, but her mother went on a crusade. She was going to force Fallon back to France, force her to leave everything that she had built behind, force her back into those damned counseling sessions. Her mother, through blind love, was going to turn Sailor Ares back into the little girl with OCD who could not control herself.

Standing there, Fallon saw no other option but to reveal herself. She hoped to explain things to her mother, to help her see that her daughter had good reason to sneak out and be evasive. Quietly, she even hoped that her mother might be proud of the work that she was doing. Her daughter was a champion for Earth. Her daughter was going to save Destiny City.

Instead, Iva tried to call the police.

What could Ares do? She had finally admitted the truth to her mother, and the woman had reacted with fear, suspicion, and distrust. This was a loose end that the Senshi of Smoke could not allow to hang. And so Fallon Novette-Naim had to make the most painful decision of her life:

She had to terrify her mother into silence.

As her mother fled, trying desperately to call the police or scream for help, Ares pursued her, walking through mirror after mirror, pulling out phone lines, and bolting any hope of escape. Her mother was crying and trembling by the time she finally stopped running. It took every ounce of will within Ares to maintain the façade she had built, to fix her face with rage, to raise her fist against her mother, to say the words: “Tell anyone, and I will kill you without thought.” It was like chewing on nails.

Iva trembled, body shaking uncontrollably. “You’re not my daughter,” she hissed. “You’re a terrorist. You’re a murderer! YOU’RE NOT MY DAUGHTER!” Her words were cut short by strong, biting slap to the face. The impact was too strong. The cuff at Ares’ wrist slashed her mother’s cheek wide open.

It was only then that Iva relented. Ares explained the conditions of their arrangement in slow, painful detail. Iva was to tell no one of her secret. If she did, the Senshi of Smoke promised a swift death. To clarify her point, Ares dragged Iva through the mirror, dropping her squarely on the carpet of their living room in France. They had crossed an ocean, and it had taken less than a minute. If Iva had doubted the resolve of the senshi before, she didn’t now.

Weeping, Iva nodded, signing away her better judgment to save her own life. There would be no end to the cash flow to Fallon’s bank account. The lease on her mother’s condo in Destiny City would be changed to Fallon’s name, though her parents would continue to pay it. As far as everyone in DC was concerned, Iva had decided to go back to France, nothing more, nothing less. Ares would check in with her each week until she was certain the woman would keep to her word. She warned Iva that if she moved or destroyed a single mirror in that house, or tried to run, it would be a forfeit of her life. Ares stayed in France long enough to repeat the show with her father. Both of her parents crumbled. Both gave in to her demands.

The people who had raised her now looked as though they didn’t know her at all.

Then, just as she had come, Sailor Ares disappeared back through the mirror. She stumbled out of it, sprawling on the carpet of her mother’s condo in Destiny City. Her fuku dissolved away as the teenage girl let the uncontrollable sobbing wrack her frame. That day, she had killed something within, something she would never be able to get back, or repair. Her mother saw her as a monster and so she had become one. Of all the things that Ares had taken away from the civilian inside, this was, by far, the most striking.

It was that event that had irrevocably changed Fallon. She had, in the span of three hours, killed the only family she had left outside of the Blood Moon Court. In her wake, there was a sea of broken families, lost connections. First the Black Moon Kingdom. Then the colony in Destiny City. Now, her parents. All she had was within these prison walls. All she had was her mission and the Blood Moon Court.

Gray eyes had gone misty, tears pooled at the corners. Her brow furrowed deeper. She would not allow herself to cry in front of Albali. “Iva won’t be interfering in my life anymore,” she said calmly. It was the only answer she felt strong enough to deliver.

Albali didn’t prod, and in that moment, Ares appreciated this about her more than words could possibly express. The choice to turn her parents into her obedient, fear-driven puppets had sucked out part of her soul. The family that she had was lost. All of Fallon’s friends were senshi now, save Audrey who was, as far as she knew, a normal civilian caught up in this tangle of fate. Most of those friends were Blood Moon senshi at that. The only thing that marked Fallon as more than just a temporary space between transformations was her heartbeat. She planned to drop out of Crystal Academy before the year was over. Graduation was not in the cards for Fallon Novette-Naim; perhaps it never had been.

Talking to the Senshi of Echoes, though, she felt like she was speaking with a true friend, not just a fellow soldier. “I know, Albali,” she said sternly, the words giving away no hint of affection or even approval. It was the formal stiffness that Ares always wore as a cloak, her walls up against the world.

As Sailor Albali moved to leave, Ares stopped her with a raised hand. “I will need your help with something, Albali. It is our final attempt to unlock the mouths of our prisoners – but this is not clean work. I need to know that you will stand by me even when others falter.” Her eyes were flat, cool.