[BAT] It Would Be So Easy

[TheMadHatter]

He could feel the sting of his split lip and the dozens of bruises that were going to cover his torso come tomorrow but it was worth it. One of the corrupted scumbags was going down and he was responsible for it all on his own. Not just a stupid youma or one of their corrupted civilians, no, an actual Negaverse agent was going to find out just how serious the Senshi were to ridding the universe of their pollution.

She’d put up a damn good fight but it hadn’t been enough. He was pissed and determined that none of them would ever beat him again. The senshi weren’t supposed to lose this war. They were the protectors and they had to keep the threat of Chaos from taking over earth no matter how much the Negaverse said otherwise. Even she’d tried to tell him how wrong he was but oh how wrong she had been.

He wasn’t the weakling that others used to think he was anymore.

Shifting his grip on the pipe he’d picked up he tried not to wince as it pulled something in his shoulder. This would be the end of it, of her, of any more death and destruction she could cause. All he had to do was bring the pipe down on her skull…  

[Ithiltari]

She wasn't entirely certain how it had come to this, to being covered in bruises and suffering from what was hopefully only a bruised rib. The pain of breathing was enough to make her breaths short and gaspy, all wit long since spent.

There was a vague flicker of pride as the Lieutenant's ice blue eyes tiredly took in her opponent's damage. It hadn't been enough, in the end, to halt what appeared the be the inevitable. She felt frustration at the fact that she hadn't been good enough, strong enough, to remove the threat this senshi posed. There was also the slow burn of rage at the same fact, that some freak who didn't belong here was about to end her with a pipe. The indignity of the whole thing had fueled her anger, and kept her fighting long past when she would normally have given up and fled; it was far too late now, slumped against a wall as she was.

Overwhelmingly, however, what she felt was sorrow. Sorrow that she'd failed, sorrow that she'd never get to do so many things. She up stared at the senshi, too proud to cry or beg for mercy, waiting silently for everything to end.  

[Krysin]

Sailor Nemesis was back on her regular patrol schedule. In the past this schedule had kept her motivated, knowing that she had to go out and cover a few blocks because she couldn't trust anyone else with the task. Sure, there were other senshi out patrolling, but she didn't believe anyone could get the job done as well as Nemesis could. Nowadays, Nemesis did not need a schedule to keep her motivated, she did not need a schedule to instill some sense of duty in her. She had grown a heap of that all by herself. Opening up her senses, she noted to the two energy signatures not far away. Normally she'd avoid another senshi, because goddamn did senshi like to talk. But, this senshi was with a Negaverser, and so... Nemesis was naturally a little curious.

There wasn't anything else that was interesting nearby, so why not check this scene out?

By the time she was nearing the scene, the battle was drawing to a conclusion. This was the point where the Negaverser would teleport away, the senshi would curse for letting them go or breath a sigh of relief. More often it was cursing for Nemesis, whether she was winning or losing. In her head, it was downright impossible for her to lose. She was Sailor ******** Nemesis. There was no need for further explanation, as she saw things. For some reason, the Negaverser wasn't disappearing into thin air. It was a weaker one, certainly, but that shouldn't mean they were allowed to miss some goddamn common sense. Most Negas didn't let themselves get beat so bad that they couldn't cower and run away.

The senshi was going to kill her, and while usually Nemesis would root this sort of thing on, the scene made her pause. Her pale hand curled into a fist, teeth grinding together with frustration. Well, <********>. Nemesis was waiting on baited breath to see if the Negaverser would gather the strength to run away, but it just wasn't happening. She wasn't going to pick herself up off of the cement floor and run away wounded. She was going to lay there and get herself killed, and all Nemesis could think was... What a waste.

This was the sort of thing she had told herself she needed to prevent. It was easier to think that she could protect all the weak in hope that once the main sources of evil were eliminated they would disperse and find a way to redeem themselves. Death would prevent this from happening. Their death would very likely tear another family apart, and while in the past Nemesis could give less than two shits about the Negaverse... she cared, in her own special way, to a particular degree, about their lives. They were nothing but pawns, nothing but the Negaverse's bitches being sent out into the battlefield to be slaughtered.

Well, ******** was all she could think at that moment. ********, ********, <********>. Her reputation as a heartless killer was totally about to get ******** the hell up. But, she couldn't just let this Nega die, not when there was a chance that the girl could salvage her life and redeem it in the future. There were countless Negaverse deaths that Nemesis wasn't around to prevent, but she was here now, and it was time to roll up her socks, put on her big girl panties, and do what she set out to do.

The game had changed for Sailor Nemesis, it had been in the process of change for a while now, only to reach this point where it was her last chance to turn back. She wouldn't. Nemesis was far too stubborn to begin with to allow herself to save face and turn away. "Goddammit," she growled underneath her breath. Nemesis moved quickly, coming up behind the fallen Negaverser. She wasn't about to attack a senshi for doing what they believed to be right. But, she wasn't going to sit back and let him kill this girl.

"Drop the pipe now, or I swear to all that is ******** good I will make you. Don't you dare lay another ******** hand on her." What was that wailing in the back of her head? Oh, that was the sound of her dignity and her reputation withering and dying.  

[TheMadHatter]

He had fully intended to do it, to take his first life and wipe one smear of the negaverse taint off the universe, but his arms jerked to a stop as another joined the scene and threatened him.

His eyes lifted from the cowering Negaverser and up to the intruder. he would have expected another of the tainted things to have appeared and try to stop him but a senshi?

"What?!" He stared at the girl for a moment. His arms lowered but he kept the pipe levled at the Senshi, still ready to deal with the Lieutenant when he was able to. "This is what we're here to do. Why are you stopping.... you're not one of the ones they've tainted too?" His voice darkened slightly as he watched the girl. She wasn't as dark looking as the tainted Senshi he'd met but he wouldn't put them past being tricky.  

[Ithiltari]

Selenite had closed her eyes by this point, tired and beyond ready to let it all end. She was swimming in an ocean of pain, words and voices flashing in and out of coherency. One word, however, penetrated - 'stop'. Was she...was she seriously being rescued? A low, somewhat hacking, laugh escaped her at the thought. Where the hell had they been earlier?

Cracking her eyes open once more to peer at the almost too late Negaverse officer who had come to her aid, the Lieutenant at first attributed the fuku and lack of otherwise menacing aura to the blows to her head she'd suffered earlier. This wasn't making a bit of sense, and she peered curiously at the senshi, almost crossing her eyes in an attempt to more clearly make her out.

Well, if senshi wanted to be weird, Selenite was prepared to let them. In this case. She didn't want to seem ungrateful by asking why she was being rescued by a senshi, so she kept her mouth shut.

For the moment.  

[Krysin]

Nemesis was already feeling... off her game, so to speak, and to have some stupid senshi asking her if she was corrupted only proved to encourage an angry tick at the corner of her nose. "Okay, are you ******** blind?" A finger pointed to the center of her chest, noting the definite lack of, well, oh, a hole in her chest. "Can you see my goddamned starseed? No. That's because I'm not 'tainted', as you call it. Do I feel ******** tainted? Am I exuding an evil ******** aura?" It was downright insulting to her pride as a senshi. Corrupted? No ******** way, and while Nemesis may be trying to save some of these scumbags, she certainly wasn't one of them. She'd rather die three times over than have to bend her a** over for Tanzanite to smack with her youma arm.

"We're here to prevent them from hurting innocent people, but that doesn't mean we have to go out of our ******** way to kill every last one of them. I do a thing called prioritizing. This b***h is low on that list. There are bigger fish to fry, and all that good s**t." She moved to stand in front of Selenite, and while normally she wouldn't trust a Negaverser at her back... this one was pretty indisposed. Nemesis was confident she could freak Selenite out by rotting her face off before the girl could manage any real damage.

"These soldiers were innocent at one point too. So, back the ******** down, or in the Name of Nemesis, I will break you down, bit by bit." She wasn't afraid of a fight, Nemesis had survived this long by learning how to be damned good in a fight. However, fighting another senshi was... not her forte. It probably wasn't good to have people on the same side tearing into one another, but Nemesis wasn't going to sit back and let this senshi bash the lieutenant's head in with a bat.

It'd make a mess on the pavement.  

[TheMadHatter]

No she didn't feel tainted but that didn't mean anything. She could have been one on their way there. He had no idea how the Negaverse even tainted the senshi and he wouldn't just ignore the possibility that they got them to work for them a bit first. Traitors happened on every side in any war.

"You might be here to prevent them from hurting innocents. I'm here to wipe every last bit of darkness that taints them from the universe. Which includes them." As far as he knew killing them was really the only way to get rid of the corruption. "If you haven't noticed i can't exactly take on the 'bigger fish' on my own." He couldn't really with Denebola's help either. At least not the big fish he wanted to fry.

He shook his head at her last statement. Were there senshi that were still that deluded? "She might have been innocent once but she made her choice. She continues to fight for them so she is innocent no longer. Letting her go means she will just keep trying to hurt people and keep feeding energy into the Negaverse. How do you find that acceptable?"

Selenite was, for the moment, forgotten in his confusion as to why his own side could have so many who were so blind to the truth.  

[Ithiltari]

The interesting philosophical debate was being mostly ignored by Selenite, even though it directly concerned her fate. She was far more concerned at this point about slowly working her way up into, well, leaning against a wall for support. It wasn't quite standing, but it wasn't the same overly vulnerable position she'd been in moments before. One arm was clenched tightly against her ribs as she silently swore to herself. If only she could teleport. That would solve, oh, most of her problems at the moment.

Tuning back into the conversation, the bluenette looked with some interest at the more powerful senshi, wondering what her answer would be. If she was going to try to see things from the senshi's point of view, she'd likely have supported her never sufficiently to be damned attacker's stance.

It was, after all, the preferred Negaverse method for dealing with senshi.  

[Krysin]

"I was too, at one point. I grew up, I stopped being a stupid c**t and blindly murdering anyone who fell into my path." She made it seem like her choice was the better road, something to hold over the other senshi's head. Nemesis likely believed that to be the case, too. Every senshi had a different opinion on how to go about fighting this war, and most were content to not rub their opinion in other faces or argue about it. However, Nemesis was just the person to let everyone know that her way was right, and their way was wrong. She wasn't going to stand by and let him kill a Negaverser, not if she could prevent it. Because, ******** it, if she was going to save Selenite, she was going to commit to this new idea that nearly every life deserved a second chance.

There really was no turning back, as far as she saw it.

"Then you practice on the weak ones, try not to get yourself killed, and don't kill them. If you do, I will ******** find out, and I will make you so ******** miserable. I've had guts spilling into my open palms enough time to know just exactly how to make you regret every time you broke open a Negaverser's thick skull." It was mostly talk... mostly. Nemesis was known for being unable to keep her mouth shut. She argued brashly, challenged even more brashly because she had every confidence in herself and her abilities. Nemesis definitely teetered on the side of overconfidence, but she was oblivious to this fact.

"You need to step back and take some time to think about the fact that it's likely some or most of these Negaverse agents don't have much of a ******** choice but to do their job. What do you think will happen to the weak ones, the followers, when their leaders are cut down? They'll wander off on their merry little way to hopefully never harm another human again, and if they do that is when I will kill them. Allow them that chance to be normal again. Or be a heartless murderer for all I ******** care, have fun living with the ******** guilt, if you live long enough to feel it." She spoke a lot, but throughout her words she failed to reveal what true personal motivation she had for protecting Selenite right then. Nemesis wasn't in the sharing mood.