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For the first time in a long time it felt good to be Sailor Vulcan.

While Vanessa retained some doubts about whether she actually deserved to be a senshi, she was learning to forgive herself. Every impulse she'd had to punish herself upon donning the magical fuku had been dispelled by Tanzanite's claws. Sailor Vulcan wore the mark the General Queen had cut into her chest humbly. For her, it represented the darkness of Ares's ambition, and the mercy of the enemy.

By permitting Vulcan to live Tanzanite had given her a second chance.

It had taken time, but Vanessa had come to accept that the past could not be changed. She had to live with the consequences of the decisions that she'd made, and move on with her life. Ares, whom Super Van once had loved and admired as a hero, had broken her heart. But Vanessa's spirit was as strong as steel. Her will was her own.

She felt whole again.

It was late. The sun had retired hours ago, but Destiny City buzzed with the light of a thousand street lamps. Sailor Vulcan was aware of her reflection in the shining surface of a storefront window. She paused in her patrol long enough to examine herself, and all of the ways that her appearance had altered since she had upgraded to Super.

She liked what she saw.

A thoughtful smile found a home for itself on her lips. So far, the night had been uneventful. No screams pierced the air. Not a single youma had crept out of the darkness to seize her star seed. And there had not been a sign of any Negaverse agents.

Vulcan could not help being a little bored, but was ultimately glad to see that peace could still exist in Destiny City.

It wasn't the sudden presence of the Chaos agent at her back that caught Vulcan off guard. She'd felt that dark energy, heard those telltale footsteps, and taken pains to prepare herself for the inevitability of an attack. Before Leto's likeness appeared in the window Vulcan had shifted her weight, moving her feet subtly so that they were planted shoulder width apart. She resisted the urge to turn her hands into fists, and struggled madly with herself not to give away the fact that she knew a fight was coming.

Her pulse quickened. Her heart skipped a beat.

Vulcan held her breath, pretended to be transfixed by her own reflection, and waited.

One step. Two steps. Three steps. Four--

-- that face!

She had been ready to defend herself, but that didn't matter. The calm expression on Vulcan's face was warped suddenly by her shock. Her jaw popped open. For a moment, it was all the senshi could do to stare.

"Leto?"

The eyes that bore back into hers were not the honey colour that she remembered. They blazed an unfamiliar crimson, and inspired doubt in the conclusions Vulcan had drawn about the identity of the dark warrior that loomed behind her.

Still.

There could be no mistaking the Senshi of Camouflage for anybody other than who she was.

"What happened to you?" Vulcan turned to face her.

After the disaster of Operation ROTA and the subsequent meeting thereafter Sailor Vulcan had cut herself off from the Blood Moon Court. She'd left without giving any notice of resignation, and ignored every attempt the Blood Moon Court had made to contact her. The evening of Leto's transformation Sailor Vulcan had been somewhere else. She'd missed what was probably the most defining moment in the history of the Blood Moon Court, and was astonished now by the proof of what had taken place.

Leto had neither threatened nor hit her, but Vulcan's blood was up anyways. She took a deep breath to steady herself, and slowly came to understand the things Leto was telling her. Every word Leto uttered was punctuated by the backdrop of her dark energy. It weighed on Vulcan's conscious like an anvil, and left little room for disbelief.

Ares had corrupted.

And she'd taken others with her.

Something unnameable flashed in Vulcan's bright eyes. It looked like rage, but was more than that. Her fingers twitched, and then those hands balled into fists. Vulcan wanted to hit something, but was not prepared to strike Leto. She struggled to control her temper and was surprised, when she spoke, at the strength in her voice. It did not shake.

"I am fine."

This was a lie, and it was obvious. But Vulcan didn't care. She neglected Leto's questions, which she had no worthwhile answers for anyways, in favour of her own.

"What do you mean Ares saved you?"

Once upon a time Vulcan and Leto had fought side by side. As members of the Blood Moon Court they had shared in the celebration of victories, and the disgrace of failures. The nature of these experiences bound them together in a way that had marked them as comrades. They had not been especially close, but they had not needed to be. Vulcan had spent the last couple of months shunning everything that the Blood Moon Court had stood for-- but she felt the blow of this betrayal as though she were still one of them.

Maybe she was.

Vulcan didn't back down when Leto stepped forward. Her nostrils flared with contempt, and her fists curled tighter, but she could not bring herself to lash out.

Not yet.

The colour of Leto's eyes had changed, and so had the nature of her power, but Vulcan couldn't shake Kat's memory. They used to be allies.

She listened quietly to Leto's speech, and was struck powerfully by the things that she said. Like Leto, Vulcan believed that it was wrong for them to have kidnapped and tortured the enemy. It startled her, to discover that Ares had drawn this conclusion.

And Vulcan felt strangely vindicated.

The mistakes the Blood Moon Court had made were not a reflection of the White Moon Senshi. They were a mark of the wickedness of Ares's ambition, and reinforced now by what she'd become, and by what she'd turned Leto into.

"I'm sorry that this has happened to you," Vulcan's voice was an apologetic murmur. She shook her head at the Senshi of Camouflage, and demonstrated a newfound sense of self control when she dropped her fists. It was hard for her. "Now. Get out of my way."

Once upon a time there wasn't anywhere Ares could go where Vulcan wouldn't have been willing to follow. There wasn't a word she could say, or an order she could give that the Senshi of Volcanoes wouldn't have tripped over herself to see realized. She was the blind follower that Leto claimed not to be. Leto was a leader, apparently. Leto was going to make a difference.

When Vulcan stared at Leto now, bright eyes shining with an unruly fire, she recognized the other senshi as the warrior she'd aspired to become.

But that part of Vulcan was gone.

It had perished in the wake of the Blood Moon Court's brutality, and been replaced by a personal steel. Leto could believe what she liked. Whatever Ares was up to, Vulcan didn't want any part of it. In her hero's heart Vanessa knew that there was only one path she could follow.

Her own.

Vulcan knew a challenged when it was staring her in the face. Leto was an Eternal. They were outmatched, but that wasn't what kept her from striking out. It was true, what Leto said. She could go around.

She stiffened visibly, lips pressing into a disdainful line, and started to turn.

But Leto kept talking, and Vulcan didn't like it. She couldn't speak for the rest of the Blood Moon Court, because she had not spoken to any of her teammates in months, but Vulcan was not broken. A snarl rumbled in the back of her throat, behind her teeth. She lifted her hands to Leto's shoulders and shoved her. Hard.

"I said MOVE!"

Leto's fist cracked against Vulcan's jaw. The Senshi of Volcanoes swore through her teeth, head rocking backwards from the force of the blow, mouth filling with the taste of blood. Her tongue ached with an acute pain, and Vulcan knew that she'd bitten it.

Leto's right hook was like pulling the trigger on a gun. Sailor Vulcan launched herself at the Vice Captain of the Dark Moon Court. She did not care where or how, but this new enemy had to pay for the blood that she'd drawn. Of the pair of them, Leto was stronger. She had more power.

But Vulcan cowered before no one. And Leto had pissed her the ******** off.

"Move THIS," she said, hands balling into fists, aiming a punch at Leto's gut.

But Vulcan didn't want to say goodbye.

Another senshi might have cared that she was outmatched. A smarter fighter would have recognized that Leto was the stronger adersary and high-tailed it out of there. As a girl, Vanessa had never learned how to pick her battles.

And taking hits had always excited her as much as giving them. She fought like a bull-- with more fury than sense, temper only increasing with the damage that she took. <********," Vulcan swore when Leto slammed her back into the window. She was unprepared for the knee that slammed into her ribs, and temporarily lost her breath. She groaned.

Vulcan grit her teeth and slammed her forehead into Leto's face.

The impact of her forehead meeting Leto's face made Vulcan cringe. Not with sympathy for the dark senshi's broken nose, but with pain. She reeled back against the window, watching through dazed eyes as Leto stumbled backwards, spewing blood and fury and cuss words. A smirk started across her face, despite the ache in her own skull, and Vulcan was in the process of shouting back when Leto said...

"... You aren't even worthy of being saved by Ares..."

The Senshi of Volcanoes stood up a little taller to hide the new hurt that she felt, golden eyes narrowing on Leto's bloodied face. While Vulcan did not think that she needed saving, Ares was a sensitive subject for her.

She would have followed Ares to the end of the earth, once.

But Ares had left her, and taken Leto instead. Vulcan knew that it made sense. It wasn't like she'd ever done a lot for the Blood Moon Court. Vulcan wasn't strong enough for a lot of the work Ares had required her senshi to perform. She'd turned away.

"Watch YOUR back," she snarled, slapping Leto's finger away from her chest. There was a small tremble in her voice. Vulcan pressed her lips together to contain the little bit of fear Leto's words provoked. She watched the other senshi disappear, heart rate returning slowly to normal, and then took a step in the other direction.

Head held high.