The night was cold and unforgiving. The slick pavement sped by beneath bare feet. Fallon had lost her heels back in the alleyway. Her hair was disheveled, hanging in uneven wisps all about her head. Tears glittered in the air, a constant flow that refused to stop. Pain radiated in her limbs, but it was worse in her head, worse still in her heart.

The Blood Moon Court had betrayed their captain.

It was true that Ares had gone off course lately, perhaps in the eyes of the White Moon. When situations called for levity or mercy, she merely pressed harder. Forgiveness was a foreign concept to the battle weary warrior, as was retreat. In the face of loss, Ares simply resolved to do better next time. It was a dedication and perseverance that morphed into something akin to insanity. She would try over and over again to achieve a goal, even at the cost of herself and others. Her dedication was to purpose, not to people. This was a sacrifice she was willing to make, and instead of asking her Court to follow, Ares forced them down the path ahead. She dragged them, compelled them, forced them.

It was not the kind of leadership that the Black Kingdom usually subscribed to, but Ares had never been a true leader then. She was a warrior entrusted with great confidence and given crucial missions by a Queen who understood diplomacy and balance in a way that Ares had never been capable of doing herself. She was a tool, a weapon to be used. The politics and compromise had never been for her. Ares was a storm cloud that grew darker and darker until the lightning flashed and the rain spilled to the ground below. She had no patience for conversation or disagreement in the heat of the mission, especially now that she was one of the few parallels still in existence. If she died, who would carry their mission? Could the others charge forward without her? Would they lift the mantle in her place? Would they continue on like that until the White Moon destroyed them all? Until the only remnants of their great civilization lived and died on the tongues of those people who had watched them come to ruin?

The White Moon could not understand this burden. Ares was a member of a species going extinct. She was the final dragon circling the sky, accompanied only by Laocoon, Gaia, and Zirconia. If one of them fell in battle, then what? Who would tell their story? Would the Space Cauldron show mercy on her? Would it mend her starseed and place it back in another body? Or would it, sensing the wrongness, the strangeness of that parallel soul, merely cast it back out into the dead ether like a flawed creation unfit for second birth? These were the thoughts that brought Ares to tears. These were the fears that made her fists clench harder in battle. She did not fight for this life. She fought for the millions of next lives that were supposed to be ahead of her.

In the fall of the Black Kingdom, Ares tried to make a home in the Blood Moon Court. They had started so strongly, had done things that no other senshi group ever had. Even now, even as they fell apart, they were still the single most organized and effective branch of the senshi arm of power. Weren’t they? Through their efforts and Ares’ bravery, a General King had died. What had the other White Moon senshi done to earn this sort of respect and adulation?

Even when the Blood Moon Court succeeded, the voices of dissent still rose. When had they grown so unbearably loud? And how had Ares let it come to this point? Was she even capable of accepting the blame for this demise? Their democratic governing board had warped quickly to a military dictatorship under the direction of Eternal Sailor Ares. Even as she ran crying through the streets of Destiny City, Fallon could only see her actions as the necessary ones, as the only option that they had.

Everything they had done had been done for the betterment of senshikind. Ares felt certain of that. There was no other race more important to Ares. She lacked the compassion for civilians that many of the others shared and had always considered this a positive thing. While others let their hearts bleed for the plight of civilians, Ares simply counted numbers. Civilians were useful so long as they weren’t being corrupted or misinformed. They were territory to be conquered and ruled. Ares had always seen it this way and had been comfortable to let other senshi worry about their feelings and lives. Would Birhan Isat have accidentally killed a civilian? Likely not. But why did Ares’ actions make her a monster? She had not killed another senshi. She had not done something to compromise their mission. These were acts worthy of severe punishment. The loss of a single civilian -- an accident, no less -- hardly seemed to stack up in her mind.

What about all the civilians who would surely die now that an active eternal senshi had been removed from the game? Why didn’t her usurpers care about that? Or was this all a plot for Birhan Isat to oust her from power and assume the throne instead? Without Ares, the Blood Moon Court would need a new Captain, a new head of the Inner Sanctum.

As Fallon tried to put the pieces back together, she could only see the many convenient things that had lined up prior to this event. Birhan and Scylla had risen against her at the last meeting, a united front of dissent. Ares herself had appointed Birhan temporary head for the next mission because of that uprising in order to teach Birhan how difficult the leadership role could be. She hoped to teach the girl a lesson in humility, to educate her through failure.

Then, in a matter of a week, Ares was without a pen, leaving Birhan clearly at the helm of the Blood Moon Court. Had this all been calculated? Had Ares grossly misunderstood Birhan’s penchant for cunning, greed, and betrayal? And Scylla? Jada? Was Gunn in on it, or was she just a pawn carrying out the responsibilities of her position within their ranks? These events snapped together too nicely, fit too perfectly, for Ares to see it as an accident. In her pained heart, she told herself it had to be true. What other answer could there be? It had been subterfuge.

Unlike the others, Ares would never understand why her destruction of that civilian was a matter of consequence. She was unable to see it from their perspective and had never really been capable of it. The actions taken against her could only be explained as a military coup, not an attempt to save Ares from herself. There would be no convincing the girl otherwise.

Bare feet slapped against the ground. Fallon felt every crack, every bit of broken glass. Warmth flushed across her toes. She had been cut. She could feel it with each step, but the pain was the only thing keeping her conscious. The stress of the past few months had compounded in this single action -- and Fallon was losing her sanity. She did not know how to live without being Ares. Their existences had fused, and without that henshin pen constantly within her reach, Fallon felt incomplete. She felt more natural when in henshin than she did in her own civilian skin. The time she spent before her soul shared its space with Ares’ was quickly forgotten. Her own memories were blurred and fused by the endless stream of the Senshi of Smoke’s long and varied life.

In the low moonlight, mirrors that once hung like portals between one space and the next now merely reflected a tear-stained face and torn prom dress. At each corner, she saw herself glimmering in the surface of mirrors. It made the trek from that dim alleyway to her shared condo that much worse. A mirror was endlessness to her. Now it was merely a flat, unreachable surface.

One more street, and Fallon could make out the doorway to the building where she shared a condo with Devi Gellner. Crystal Academy had sent the letter for her expulsion one day before prom. Fallon had chosen not to tell anyone. How could she? It hardly mattered. Her time was better spent with the Blood Moon Court. This was what she told herself when the letter came. This was how she coped. Without her pen, Fallon had to face days spent doing nothing, hours of a wasted life. How many hours were in a month? Fallon could barely stand the thought of a few hours without the ability to henshin.

The door opened with a start. Fallon spilled inside, shutting it quickly behind her. Tears still fell from her eyes, but she was too tired to sob. Her exhaustion had boiled down to a pure, white hot sadness that threatened to explode forth once more for her at any second. The carpet was soft beneath her feet. Each step she took left a bloodied, mud-stained footprint trailing behind her.

Fallon paused briefly at the stairs leading up to the next floor where Devi slept. Her hand tightened on the railing until the knuckles turned white. Was Devi in on it? Did the freshly promoted Mercenary know of the plan? The thought of her roommate betraying her made Fallon murderous. For a brief flash, she envisioned herself flying to the kitchen, grabbing some sort of weapon, and then forcing Devi to hand over her own henshin pen. If only she could use it. If only she could be useful once more.

The image slipped from her mind. Fallon released her grip on the railing. She wasn’t ready to face Devi. She couldn’t look her in the eye yet, not like this. But she would have answers. They would all answer to her, she swore to herself, no matter how long it took. With one last glance up into the darkness at the top of the stairs, Fallon walked deeper into the house, pausing to cross into her bedroom. The door closed silently behind her. The gale of emotion had reached its eye; this was the calm intermission.

Standing barefoot on the carpet in front of her vanity, Fallon stared at herself for a few choking gasps and then dissolved once more into the tears that had been falling freely since the moment the henshin pen left her hands. It was as if all the pain and hardship she had endured in her life had condensed at once, and her body had no option other than explode. Her legs burned from running, and her stomach was bruised from Gunn’s blow. Her lips were cracked and chapped. All at once, Fallon was painfully aware of the mortality of her body. Without the power of Ares at her fingertips, she was little more than a rotting meat machine, a fixed point on a timeline, a flickering flame destined to one day be snuffed out.

The realization forced a tiny, weak sound out of her. One hand pressed against the mirror’s surface. The fingers of that hand splayed out to caress the cool, smooth sheen. “Please,” she whispered, leaning forward to rest her forehead against the coolness, “please speak to me.” But no voice came. There was no customary ripple of magic that turned a hard reflection into a transportive liquid capable of carrying her across time and space. Fallon had seen the edges of the universe. How could someone turn back from that? It was as if a floodlight had illuminated every corner of her brain and then been swiftly shut off -- but there, burned into her memory, rested that fiery image of a world without end or limit. It was a thing of beauty before; now it haunted her.

A fresh sob split her chest. Fallon sagged to the ground, one hand still gripping feebly at the mirror. “Selene, help me,” she said, the words catching in her throat. No, not Selene. The girl needed more than that. “Nehelenia. Nehelenia. Nehelenia.” She said the name like a chant echoing through her memories. But no one came. The ruler of her endless timeline was dead -- perhaps this time for good. The Queen of the Black Moon had destroyed her own crystal. No one could survive that. No crystal, no starseed, no ruler.

The fact was a cruel one, and it brought another wave of weeping sobs. The world that she knew in her timeless memories was growing more distant with each passing second. No matter how many times she passed through mirrorspace, Ares was not Nehelenia. She could not do what the Queen did, even at full strength, even with every other parallel standing beside her in perfect unity. Neither she nor Gaia nor Laocoon nor Zirconia could communicate across the parallel existences, and they certainly could not bring the remaining cavaliers or senshi into this White Kingdom.

The White Moon longed for their Serenity, their savior -- but Ares had known hers, had stood beside her in battle, had laughed with her, had grown up and died over and over again alongside her Queen. Nehelenia had always been there. She had never left them, never abandoned them. She was the one constant that Ares had in her life.

And now she was dead.

Ares did not know how to deal with that. She had tried to mend her broken heart by building a new family and a new purpose. After she had cried to the point of exhaustion, Ares had done what she did best: pulled herself up by her own bootstraps and returned with added fervor. The parallels were an incomplete puzzle. The normal ranks did not apply. There was no Ouranos here to speak up for the Outers -- there were no Outers anymore. They were behind the mirror, lost forever. And Aphrodite and Hector? Dead. Perhaps forever. Ares had only Gaia, Laocoon, and Zirconia. They were a tiny fragment of a thriving world, cast adrift in an unfamiliar land. They were an invading army forced to assimilate. It hurt her heart.

Did the White Moon know what it was like to experience such loss? Their feeble memories, those broken past lives, were almost a blessing. Most of them would never know what they had lost. They might go to barren planets and wonder what had once flourished there, but they would never know, not truly, not how the parallels did.

Ares could close her eyes and picture the shores of the Planet Ares. She could see the great Spartan columns lifting out of the cliff face. The clouds hung like plumes of smoke high ahead, breaking up the orange and pink of the sunset sky. She envisioned the faces of the people of her planet, how they regarded her with reverence, respect, and gratitude. She remembered every battle, every laugh, every tear, every good day, and every bad. The weight of those memories was crushing her. It was a phantom limb. Someone had cut off her hand, but she could still feel it there, tingling, always there to remind her of the things she would never have again. How could any member of the White Moon possibly understand how she felt? There were days when Ares feared Gaia and Laocoon might not even understand her. Without them and their guardian cat, she would be reduced to nothingness.

Did Birhan and Gunn and Scylla realize what they had done? The only time Ares felt at peace was when she was sliding through the mirrorspace. Sometimes she would delay, holding herself in that fuzzy, hazy space for as long as her powers would allow. Ares would allow herself to fantasize, if only briefly, that she might emerge on the other side in the heart of Nehelenia’s Castle on the Black Moon. The Court would be there, eyes warm, mouths wide. All of her past transgressions would be forgiven and they would embrace her as a lost daughter returned home finally. Without her henshin pen, Ares would be denied the last vestige of her soul, of her home. They had taken it away from her. It felt like they had killed her family all over again.

And worse still, they used her own words to do it.

What was one civilian in the grand scheme? Sometimes a forest had to burn to bear fresh foliage. Ares would gladly give her life to further her mission. She had been willing to do it on that battlefield when Tanzanite emerged as a General Queen and began to lay waste to their ranks. Why did her sacrifices not earn her a degree of acceptance?

Her cold countenance was necessary. If she let that hurt and loss and sadness in for a moment, Ares would not be able to go on. She would end her life. She would join her fallen comrades in the darkness and be glad for it. But she could not do that until she finished what Nehelenia started. That was what a soldier did. No matter how many warriors fell around them, they fought on. They knew how to sacrifice personal feelings for the greater mission and purpose.

Ares killed a civilian in cold blood, accident or not. It was collateral damage. It was not grounds for imprisoning her in this weak, human frame. Ares was an alien -- and she loved that about herself. Earth was a limited, boring place. Ares had the stars. Ares had endlessness.

Had. All of her potential was locked away in a single pen held by senshi she had once hoped to mold into replacements for her old kingdom.

Fallon rose up from the carpet, staring hard at the mirror before her. Tilting her chin up, she tried to set the hard look in her eyes that was always there at Ares. Magenta irises stared back. Magenta. Tremors of fury rested in her limbs. Fallon turned to her door, left her room, and began to walk slowly up toward Devorah’s bedroom. She would have answers.

And she would have them tonight.