CW: Abuse, Slurs, Deadnaming, Intense Violence

It was a beautiful place for a graveyard.

The ground beneath our feet had become less sandy since we had left the twin rivers of Oblivion and Memory, and become something closer to a wasteland of cracked earth. Weathered cross-shaped headstones were embedded into the ground, without any identifying names or dates. A fog lapped up against our feet like we were wading through a swamp. It would have been terrifying as hell, save for one thing:

The butterflies.

Glowing, fluttering butterflies filled the skies above us, their pale wings of thin starlight flowing above us like a living river of illumination. As they came into view, I was left speechless and could only stop and watch their aerial dance above us.

The other senshi did the same, gaping at the vision above us, casting the graveyard in which we stood in a strangely comforting light.

“What are they?” asked Maya, quietly, as if she feared speaking would break the spell, but still unable to resist knowing the truth.

“Stars,” said Homura simply, holding up a hand. One of the butterflies landed upon her outstretched finger, and she brought it close.

“Uh… I’ll admit it’s been a while since I was in the astronomy club,” interjected Lani, stepping closer to see the light upon Homura’s fingertip. “But I don’t remember magical space butterflies as being part of the stellar lifecycle.”

Homura smiled faintly, raising up the butterfly to allow it to once again join the others. “You have to understand that stars are more than simply balls of burning hydrogen. We would not be standing in this place if that was the case. Yes, while the physical stars, the balls of gas inevitably explode into a supernova, collapse into a neutron star or black hole or shrink into a white dwarf… the death and life of a star is more than astrophysics, in the same way that the life and death of a person is more than biology.”

She stretched out her arms as if to embrace the massive, living river of lights. “Everything that we know and we are is built of stars. As stars give up their lives, they grant us the very building blocks of our existence. Hydrogen and helium eventually give way to heavier elements. Iron, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen… our world and our very bodies are forged of those lost stars.”

I reached out a hand to the lights above us, seeing the outline of my fingers against the backdrop of that sea of stars. It was an awe-inspiring view of the universe.

“When humanity looked up at the lights of the night sky for the very first time,” continued Homura, her voice carrying all around us with haunting, yet inescapable passion, “We did not see the physical makeup of those stars… we could not have known that these burning dynamos of hydrogen, most of the time, those stars were long dead and we were only just now receiving their light.” 

She broke into a wistful smile.

“Nevertheless, those stars gave us direction when we were lost, light in the face of darkness and wishes when hope was lost. We made them into constellations and shaped them into spirits and gods. We looked up to them and heard them calling to us, inspiring us to leave our own planet and one day join them.”

Her gaze returned to us, those lights still reflected, shimmering in her dark eyes. “Stars have given us not only matter, but meaning. What you see around you is the spirits of those stars… their essence… returning to its source to be reformed. This cycle of life and death.”

Her words faded into stillness for a moment longer before I decided to speak again. It was something I’d been considering the moment we’d stepped through that gate.

“You’ve died before, haven’t you?” I asked, uncertain of how to ask the question politely, “I guess all of the old senshi have at least once. Or at the very least… their previous incarnations did.”

Homura nodded.

“I mean… you all are immortal, more or less… being the undying souls of lunar royalty and everything… sustained by the Silver Millennium Crystal,” I continued, crossing my arms over my chest. “Even if you die, you still get reincarnated. Does that apply to us, too?”

“Nothing in this world can be completely destroyed,” replied Homura, “The conservation of energy and matter holds that things can only ever change form. They can never be annihilated.” 

“That… doesn’t really answer the question,” intoned Rita, stepping up beside me. “Yes or no? Please?”

“I cannot say that I am the same Homura or Sailor Saturn who lived ten thousand years ago,” she replied, turning to Rita. “Or even the same Homura who died a decade or so ago. But truthfully, none of us can say we are the same person we once were. Change is a part of life itself, after all… All I can say is that I am what matters of that person… and I would say that the same would hold for you. If your lives were lost in this fight, what mattered of you would still remain.”

“Wow,” murmured Maya, awed.

“You could just say, ‘I don’t know’,” intoned Lani, a little impatiently.

“Okay… spooky girl time is done,” insisted Liv, “Can we keep moving?”

“Agreed… but watch it. Spooky or not, that’s my girlfriend,” warned Nao. “Keep moving… the castle should come into view soon.”

We pressed onward, and as we did so, the fog of the graveyards gave way to the Stellar Gardens.

All around us, despite the dead earth beneath, were fractal, crystalline, shimmering, starbursts. The butterflies were gathering around them, their lights melting into the crystal starbursts, sustaining them and filling them.

But all of this was mere backdrop to the building which lay before us…

Taller than anything back in Gotham City, a massive, cathedral-like building loomed over the horizon, its countless towers all centering around two central spires, sustaining a massive, black-tinged stellar crystal. Its many stained glass windows were cracked and pieces of the stonework had decayed or broken… but all the same it was awe-inspiring.

We moved forward, save for one of us.

Sailor Pallas, the smallest of the Sailor Quartet, stopped short, frowning at the ground in front of her. “This was her, wasn’t it?”

I looked over and the other members of Nao’s team had begun to congregate. In the center of their circle, there was a noticeable lump in the ground beneath them. A circle of stones had been piled around the edges of the mound.

A grave.

“Yeah…” said Nao, kneeling down to the spot, “This was where we… sorry, they buried Princess Kakyuu. Last survivor of Kinmoku. The brat, and all the Quartet had been so damned sure that they could help. Rushed in to save the day. Fuck… they couldn’t do anything… none of us could. They were too strong.”

Homura put a hand on her shoulder and she shook herself. 

“Sorry,” sighed Nao, standing up. “Bad memories.” She held out a hand to us. “There’s more of us now… and we’re stronger.” She chuckled, “Besides… we don’t have any evil senshi to fight this time around…”

“Uh… are you sure about that?” asked Rita, pointing to the crumbling castle before us.

In the light of the glowing star garden, I could see nine silhouettes outlined on the steps into the entrance. I peered out and, while I couldn’t make out features, I could easily see the outlines of Sailor senshi serafuku outfits.

“Oh fuck…” breathed Nao, shaking her head. “No… no, no, no, no.”

The silhouettes marched forward in lockstep with their leader, a Sailor senshi in pink taking the lead.

While her garb clearly matched that of Chibi Moon, Small Lady… the lost future daughter of Usagi… those eyes… the empty, void-filled eyes… were nothing close to either Nao or even basic humanity.

Those that followed her likewise carried the rough forms of the other senshi. Simulacra of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto… all moving like jerky marionettes to an invisible puppeteer. All of them, with empty, fathomless eyes.

It was like someone had taken the form of humans and replaced their eyeballs with gaping voids in reality itself. The uniform, unsettling smiles on their faces were something out of nightmares, a twisting of features that broke every single convention of what a smile was supposed to look like and what the human face was capable of even displaying.

And their forms… as they drew closer, I saw that there was something unnatural about them, aside from their missing eyes. They seemed to lack texture. They had an unnatural “smoothness” and the shadows on their body seemed… lacking. Simplified. Like we weren’t looking at humans, but projections.

“What… the actual… fuck…” gasped Liv.

Maya slid behind Lani in raw terror.

“Those aren’t the real senshi!” declared Juno, brandishing her bat.

“W-what are they?!” said Palas, stepping back in terror.

“Clearly, Chaos is still capable of creating duplicate senshi,” hissed Homura, raising her glaive.

“God, we’re really doing this again?” sighed the thing shaped like Chibi Sailor Moon, her voice hauntingly familiar and yet alien all the same as it came from the clone. “It was bad enough that Naoko couldn’t fucking finish her own shit, but now she’s drafting her fucking daughter?!”

The fake Sailor Saturn cackled, its hollow eyes watching Nao with amusement. “I mean… I could understand why she’d send you to your deaths… after all… you’re just the replacement. You’re that annoying little disappointment who stole away her real daughter.” The false impression of her girlfriend stood a few feet away, watching Nao freeze in horror and fury with evident glee on its features. 

The fake Saturn cradled her chin. “Maybe she’s hoping that if I kill you, she can get her real daughter back.”

Nao roared in fury and while she swung her fist with perfect form and technique, the thing didn’t move like any human opponent.

The not-Chibi Moon rushed forward to intercept at blinding speed and caught Nao’s attack as if its arms and hands had suddenly been teleported into the correct places. Moving more like a machine than a human, it flipped her over its shoulder, slammed her onto the ground and stepped on her throat, all in one singular moment.

Everyone moved to help, but the thing held up its hand, turning its void-filled gaze to the rest of us. “One step closer and I crush her windpipe and let you watch her choke to death,” it said casually. “Wait your turn.”

Something about that voice… that high-pitched, annoying, childlike voice… it was familiar… The fake Saturn, too. They sounded… hauntingly familiar.

My eyes widened. I’d heard it before. Ages ago, on television and a VHS release. I couldn’t remember the name of the voice actresses, but I was almost dead certain that the voice was the same as the English dub of the anime. 

“Oh, it looks like someone finally caught a clue,” chirped the fake Sailor Moon, her voice oozing out of her lips with a cold cruelty I’d never thought I’d hear from my hero. The same voice which had been so kind, so real to me, now tinged with unbearable, alien malice. The shade strode up to me, quirking her head as she examined me.

She wasn’t the Sailor Moon that I knew. While her eyes were still empty holes in space, her features were perfect, blemishless and doll-like. Her hair, the yellow-gold blonde, was artfully arranged. And her outfit was a perfect match… all pointing to one thing.

We were fighting… cartoons?

“You see… after decades of worship and admiration, I don’t need sailor crystals or the souls of lost senshi or any of that shit,” Chaos Moon said, leaning in close to my face. “I can just pull the power out of your collective imaginations. All those years of hero worship by so many… created idols of unfathomable power. And the best part is that, as is so often the case, the ideal is so much better than the “real” thing.”

Chaos Moon hit me so hard, it registered less as an attack and more as a full-body agony. I couldn’t have dreamed of following the movement. It was all but instantaneous as one moment she was jeering at me and the next she planted her fist into my solar plexus.

My chest felt like it had been caved in. I felt my ribs crack. I struggled to breathe through the searing agony as I flew backwards and landed, hard, on my back. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was or who I was or anything beyond the searing red blur of pain. I pushed my mind through the torment, trying to force my brain to come back to the present and make sense of my swimming vision. It was only through intense focus that I didn’t pass out. 

The other senshi rushed to my defense, crying out in fury, but with a single sweep of her hand… a pulse of dark energy erupted from her fingertips, throwing them all back onto the ground as if it were an afterthought. They groaned as they struggled to recover. 

The gaze of the thing wearing the form of Sailor Moon lingered on me, kneeling down to get a better look at my suffering, another sickening chuckle crawling out of its throat. “Of course, not much about you is real, is it “Serena”?” my name came out of its mouth with a mocking lilt, “Naoko-chan apparently had the bright idea to slap some powers onto some suicidal tranny and throw her into the meat grinder. What a waste of power…” It smirked at me. “I mean, that’s all you’ve ever been good at, Cross. Just continuing to throw yourself into the grave as if it would give your life any real meaning.” 

“Chaos, I presume?” I coughed, flecks of blood coming from the effort.

“That’s the name you idiots call me… though it’s not particularly creative, if you ask me,” chirped Chaos Jupiter, circling around my body in amusement, “But it could have been worse… for instance, I could have been named, _____ like you.”

I froze, jerking back a step. The casual horror of hearing my deadname come out of her mouth was somehow even more painful than being punched in the chest at lightning speed. 

She had said it so clearly. Everyone now knew, whether I wanted them to or not, the name I’d left behind. And there would be no escaping that. My identity had been irreversibly tarnished by this fucking monster.

“Aww… does someone not like hearing their real name,_____ ?” sneered Chaos Moon, grinning with those unnaturally symmetrical teeth, “I mean, technically your full name is ___________ ______ Moore, I suppose, but it was _____  to your friends, right? I mean… if you had friends of course. Having friends would require you to have the capacity to think of other people than yourself, _____.”

Every single repetition was salt in the wounds. A violation of my identity.

Chaos Moon reached down and wrapped her grip around my neck. Her hands were as cold as ice. Their contact burned as all heat was enveloped by their touch. “Look at you… you really think this is like the cartoons? That with hope and love and all that bullshit that you’d be able to defeat the elemental force of Chaos itself?! Naoko barely fought me to a standstill and she was more than you and your pretenders will ever be.”

“MARS BLAZING FIRESTORM!” roared Maya, her voice wavering, but dedicated. She had just barely gotten to her knees. A wave of flame and heat rushed at the Chaos Senshi.

“Mercury Aqua Rhapsody,” the Chaos Mercury said lazily, as a watery harp materialized into her hands and with her strumming it, a wall of water met the flames as it surged up from the ground. The attacks met and exploded into a wall of steam.

“Mercury Freezing Hailstorm!” growled Lani, raising their hands. The steam quickly condensed into frozen daggers which flew at the Chaos Senshi.

“Chronos Typhoon,” snorted Chaos Pluto, a roaring tempest tearing at us from her Garnet Rod as she contemptuously pointed it at us. All the other senshi were not only knocked over and driven back, a chorus of cries made it clear that Lani’s daggers had been turned against everyone.

“This is just pathetic,” sighed Chaos Chibi Moon, still crushing the life out of Nao with her heel on her throat. “What a waste of time.”

“MOON HEALING ESCALATION!” I shouted, as hard as I could, nearly tearing my throat in the process. The sound of my voice followed a brilliant wave of rainbow light erupting from my Moon Kaleidoscope which washed over the area. I felt my strength begin to return, and from my position on the ground, I saw that the other senshi likewise had been renewed. 

In contrast, the Chaos Senshi flickered, as if their hologram-like forms had been briefly interrupted through a bad connection. Next to me, Nao took the opportunity to slip away from her doppelganger and found her feet and took a stance.

She shot me a glance. “Sailor Planets Attack. Combined.”

I nodded, calling out to my team. “ALL TOGETHER!” I shouted. The senshi of both teams rushed forward, their energies blazing as all of us put our hands forward.

We’d never gotten the chance to properly practice this. I had only briefly mentioned that it was an option for us. It was a desperate moment, but I knew that with all of my friends by my side, that we would be able to pull it off.

“SAILOR…”

We all held out our hands. A crescent shape, lined up, as all of us poured all of our energy into a single point.

“PLANETS…”

The energies mixed together and fused, as they became a blinding, swirling rainbow of unstoppable energy.

“ATTACK!”

With a combined effort, we heaved the mass of energy into the shadowy things, as the light of that orb lit up the night. Beside us, Nao and her senshi did the same, launching the same shimmering force of raw energy. The twin orbs danced and twirled around one another as they sped towards the fake senshi. I knew that, in spite of all that doubt, we would almost certainly-

“CHAOS PLANETS ATTACK!”

There was a blinding detonation as the forces collided. It was like being at ground zero of a technicolor atomic bomb. I was forced off my feet and I felt everyone else fall to the ground beside me. My vision was whited out and my ears rang from the sheer force of the explosion. I wasn’t sure how long it had been, but when my senses finally resolved themselves, I uneasily rolled onto my stomach to force myself upright.

At first, my hope swelled in my chest. That regardless of whatever these Chaos senshi had accomplished, it hadn’t been enough. I could see no sign of them…

But as my vision cleared, and the dust cast up by the impact did the same, I saw with a miserable horror that the fake sailor scouts were still standing, arms defiantly crossed over their chests.

“You morons don’t seem to get it,” intoned Chaos Mercury, clicking her tongue against her teeth.

“We carry the idealized power of the Sailor Scouts. The real Sailor Scouts couldn’t stand up to us, even if they tried,” snorted Chaos Uranus, cracking their fists. “You will never be able to measure up to the power of those who worship you. Compared to you, we’re goddesses,”

“Be reasonable,” sighed Chaos Mars, tapping her feet impatiently. “The real senshi spent years cultivating their powers. Hell, half of you aren’t even real senshi… just a bunch of jumped-up wannabees.”

I gritted my teeth as I struggled to get upright. Every ounce of my body was fighting me. Spitting out a gob of blood, I heaved out the words through my aching throat.

“Moon. Crisis. Power… MAKE UP!”

It wasn’t an immediate transformation. It was an agonizing moment of hesitation as my powers began to slowly resolve themselves. My power was drawn from all the others. And their own hopes were fading, the same as my own. That Sailor Planets Attack had nearly completely drained us. We were, all of us, running on fumes.

But my friends, my team… my family… they were able to give me this much. My form, Super Sailor Moon, resolved itself. My blade, my sword, resolved itself into an elegant, basket-hilt cavalry saber, curved like a crescent moon, with shimmering crystals inlaid within. The four precious gemstones of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. It shimmered with light as I brought it to bear.

Chaos Moon sighed, shaking her head as she intoned, “Chaos Moon Eternal, Make up!”

A flash of black lightning crashed into the ground and the impact nearly sent me tumbling backwards again as the force of a shockwave rolled out around us. The air became static-charged and difficult to breathe as a pressure weighed down upon us.

“Do you understand now?” asked Chaos Moon, now clad in an outfit of blackest night, with accents of deep blues and purples like a bruise. Dark wings, like those of a crow, erupted from her back, fluttering softly like ash dancing through a hot wind. In her hands, a staff, carved out of ebony, rested on her shoulder, upon which rested a cold iron heart-shaped hoop. Within it, pulsed the hungry void of what I was certain was a black hole.

“Do you get it yet?!” she called out, walking closer, and with every step doubling the pressure of her presence. The others cried out in agony and only with the fragile power of Super Sailor Moon was I able to remain upright, “You are not the heroes here! You do not have plot armor! You are not going to be saved by a man in a tuxedo! There is no eleventh hour superpower you are going to be able to pull out of your ass! You are done! You are fragile little cockroaches that are only making yourselves more annoying. Just fucking die already and stop wasting our time!”

I gritted my teeth. I recognized her power. Or at least, its pure equivalent. Eternal Sailor Moon. The true, unleashed power of Queen Serenity herself. The power that had stopped Chaos the last time.

And now it was being wielded against us.

Another step forward from her, and I felt my knees give out with a crack. 

No… I couldn’t believe that this power was hers alone. No matter what, I was still Sailor Moon. I needed this power. And I was certain that if I called upon it, it would come to me.

Through gritted teeth, I tried to speak. “Moon… Eternal… Make… UP!”

Nothing happened. Not a flicker of power answered my call. Not even a hint that I might have been able to summon the power of Eternal Sailor Moon with more concentration.

The power, simply put… was not mine to call upon.

Chaos Moon laughed, a high, cold cackle. “Oh look at you,” she sneered, “You actually thought that would work? Did you forget? You are not Queen Serenity, _____. You are Sailor Moon in name only. A pale imitation. A fake senshi and a fake woman. Did you really think you were the hero here? This power, the one you can barely stand up against? This is the kind of power a real hero has. It’s not about believing in yourself or love or any of that other bullshit, _____. It’s the fact that Naoko is a reincarnated Lunar goddess and you’re just some fucking tranny with delusions of grandeur.”

I forced the full power of all my energy into my body. I felt everything within me scream in protest, but I wasn’t going to face this bitch kneeling. Even if it killed me, I would die standing. With shaking legs, I stood upright, head unbowed, staring at her with unrelenting fury.

“Oh look at you!” she squealed poisonously, “Still fighting the inevitable! It’s cute… if a little pathetic. I mean… I suppose it’s only to be expected you’d pretend to be a hero to the very end. Especially when you’re still pretending to be a woman as it is.”

She stepped closer and leaned right up next to me. The pressure was agonizing and all around me, I could hear my teammates screaming in pain from the weight brought on by this living goddess of Chaos and Destruction. I could feel her cold, empty breath wash over me as she spoke, whispering into my ear. “So much to carry… wouldn’t it be easier just to give up? Give in? Let go? Why do you keep tormenting yourself like this? When the world has made it so very clear to you that it doesn’t want you to exist?”

“L-love…” I hissed, my lungs on fire with the effort of speaking. “B-b-because… of… love.”

“Awwww… how cute,” she hissed, licking the side of my shivering cheek. Again, with the coldness of her body, it burned and her saliva was like acid as it hissed on contact with my skin. “And is your love going to save you and your friends? What can your sweet little love do right now when you’re literally unable to bear the weight of my presence?”

“This,” I hissed, as I wrenched my arm out from behind my back and stabbed her in her empty, void-filled eyeball with the rose Toru gave me.

The shriek that erupted from her was nothing resembling human. It was a scream too high pitched to be properly felt by human ears. It was the shrill scream of a dying star collapsing inward on itself, the high, scraping, shearing sound of entropy’s agony.

Her eyeball oozed out that pitch black oil as it fell onto the ground beneath us. The rose’s tip was razor sharp and even if she tried to pull it free, the thorns would do more damage on their departure. The pressure she was exerting died immediately, as all of her existence was enveloped in pain.

Not waiting for it to return, I raised Jess’s power ring, forcing all of its remaining energy into my fist and with the searing emerald light engulfing my hand, I smashed her head with a right hook. There was a crack of impact that dented the thing like it had been made of plastic.

The thing looked up at me, spitting black ooze from its bleeding, malformed mouth. “You-”

I didn’t wait for it to speak. I slammed my blade into her stomach, twisted it, and bisected it in half, with a spray of void-tinged oil spraying in all directions.

The oozing, tar-filled fake flopped down onto the ground. And the rest of the Chaos Senshi rushed forward to attack, trying to avenge their fallen comrade.

“So you were right!” I laughed, wiping the flecks of oil off my cheeks. “We’re not the heroes here! We’re a bunch of clueless morons desperately trying to tread water. We’re not like the cartoons or the comics… not at all! But that’s just the thing… we’re not bound by those expectations, either. We aren’t about to fight fair or play by the rules!” I kicked at Chaos Jupiter, nailing her in the stomach and driving the knuckleguard into her chin with a crack. “I get it now! The only reason you have any power at all is because we tried to play the game your way. Just standing there and throwing attacks at one another like we were playing tennis… This isn’t a fucking anime! THIS IS A BRAWL, MOTHERFUCKERS! NOW LET US SHOW YOU A REAL FIGHT!”

I swept Chaos Jupter off her feet and slammed my blade into its ichor-filled skull. “COME ON, EVERYONE! TIME TO LET LOOSE AND FIGHT LIKE SENSHI!”

Shaking off the pressure of Chaos Moon, the others leaped into the fray.

Lani, surging forward on their board, created spikes of ice to impale the Chaos Scouts, pinning them to the spot. Rita wrapped her Venus chain around the neck of Chaos Venus, wrenching her by the neck to the ground. Liv stomped a foot down onto the chain and set down a jolt of electricity along the links of the chain, vaporizing the fake Venus into a smoking heap of charcoal.  Maya, screaming in fury, unleashed a flame so hot, it turned the ground around the Chaos Senshi to glass, blackening their flesh as it washed over them. 

Nao leaped forward, smashing heads open with her Moon Kaleidoscope, watching them explode into dust with glee. Homura, twirling her glaive over her head, decapitated her Chaos doppelganger.  Sailor Palas formed water duplicates, and squealed with joy as she made them dogpile the Chaos Senshi, drowning them, filling their bodies, and exploding them from within. Juno savagely swung her electrified bat, watching the Chaos Senshi fry and explode under her wild, swinging impacts. Vesta bisected a pair of them by throwing a twin set of flaming rings, setting them ablaze as they passed. And Ceres, wielding a pair of thorn whips, wrapped them up and wrenched their fake flesh off their bodies as the thorns tore into them.

Black, oozing void pooled around the twisted, burned, broken, mangled remains of the fake Senshi.

“See… you forgot,” I said, gasping for air as the fatigue caught up with me. “Maybe we’re not as strong… and we’re definitely not the kind of heroes you see in cartoons… but the thing is, we still fight to win you goo-filled piece of shit!”

The ooze, in response, began to coalesce. Beginning to reform into human shapes.

“FUCK!” gasped Liv, stomping her booted feet. “Why the fuck won’t these fuckers give up!?”

“Mars Blazing Firestorm!” shouted Maya, projecting another concentrated burst of flame. The ooze bubbled and hissed under the heat, turning back into a tarry mess… but the moment the flames gave out, the oily mess once again continued to reform.

“What’s the call, Serena?” asked Lani, looking to me for direction. “We can’t do this forever.”

“God damn it…,” panted Rita, shaking her head. “Why won’t they fucking die already?!”

I pressed my lips together, glancing over to Nao. I knew the answer… and I had a feeling she did too. She had a pale, unpleasant look on her face, as if she were going to be sick.

“Please… no…” Nao begged, shaking her head. “We can’t…”

“We… both know that this isn’t the real fight,” I said bitterly. “Chaos is stalling us. If we’re going to end this, it has to be on their turf. In the Galaxy Cauldron.”

“Fuck…” hissed Nao, slamming her Kaleidoscope into the ground, “Shit…”

“She’s right, Nao-chan,” said Homura, grabbing her by the shoulders. “You two are both Sailor Moon. You are the only ones with the power to banish Chaos. For good. We can hold these things back. But you two need to go. Now!”

Nao, tears seeping down her cheek, pressed her lips against Homura’s. They embraced for a tortured yet tender moment before breaking apart, nodding to the other senshi. “None of you are allowed to die… you hear me? If I catch any of you fuckers dropping dead, I’m going to bring you back just to kick your asses!” She wiped at her eyes, sniffling as she did so. “So… live, goddamn it!”

“You got it, Boss!” snapped Juno, saluting her.

“We’ll do our best!” squeaked out Palas.

“We shall eagerly await your return,” said Vesta, with a bow.

“We will fight with everything we are! We will never give up or give in! WE ARE SAILOR SCOUTS AND SAILOR SCOUTS NEVER SAY DIE!” screamed out Ceres, before falling silent, blushing furiously.

I blinked in shock, but I was grateful to see that Ceres had begun to find her voice.

“Fuck it,” sighed Liv, shrugging. “Well, if it’s going to be like that…” she grabbed Maya by the waist, pulled her against her body and drew her into a kiss.

Maya, to her credit, only froze up for a moment before she returned the kiss with equal fervor.

“Uh… I’m glad you two are having fun…” hissed Lani, holding their hands out as they covered the black ooze with freezing vapor. “But maybe we can get back to fighting this shit before I pass out? Please?!”

Rita cracked her knuckles, turning to glance at me as she approached the still-regenerating Chaos ooze. “I know you two can do this… but don’t keep us waiting, okay?”

I nodded, and we traded hugs for a moment before I let her go, turning to Nao.

There wasn’t anything else to say. As our teams continued to pile abuse on the Chaos Senshi, me and Nao rushed into the castle looming before us.

And to the true heart of Chaos.