611/Inner Conflict: Sphere Joint

Inner Conflict: Sphere Joint
Date of Scene:	18 October 2023
Location:	Soryuu Shrine
Synopsis:	An end to one chapter. The beginning of another.
Cast of Characters:	Pyrite, Mamoru Chiba, Amanda Faust, Usagi Tsukino, Rei Hino
Tinyplot:	Inner Conflict

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Pyrite has posed:
    "Hey," calls a voice. It's still distant, still up that hill, at the top of the stairs, but it's also down here, with them. Himeko hesitates, and then reaches out a shaking hand to try to take Sailor Moon's free hand. She's much more scared than her determined face would tell.
    "I was just wondering..." the voice continues. "What exactly do you think a ghost is?"

    Hematite looks back, as they're walking, to the car that Amy made echo, and he frowns as he looks ahead of them again. "I wonder why the acoustics..." he trails off. "Where's Shiro?"

     "As for danger... As far as I can tell, there is something above us, high up the hill. I can't see it from here, but it can see us. While respecting the dead here is a good idea, especially if they died violently or with unresolved matters from life..." She will definitely have to come back here and perform purification ceremonies so that they can rest in peace. "...I don't think taking overly long to confront the one behind this is going to grant us any advantage."

    The oppressive feeling of death grows stronger as the party moves closer. Though dark, the trees don't start to look truly sickly until they reach the base of the steps. And though they are dense further up as well, they are also increasingly dead. And so is anything nearby. Things moving in the underbrush, strange mushrooms that look like bloody fingers, unexpected chittering of weird beasts, all of those also diminish as they climb the long staircase towards its apex. Until those still walking on the ground are stepping on a carpet of dead insects, squirrel skeletons, and similar long-dead things. Dry. Not even bacteria to break them down. A welcome mat to the shrine for dead gods, devoted to a Kami of Murder, who became something Other after long years of abandonment.
    "People frequently think of ghosts as the spirits of the deceased who have yet to move on... But I see it a different way."

    The oppressive feeling of death is overwhelming, is a heavy weight; there's a way that Hematite always deals with this, and he's sinking into it again. Usagi being there is making it a little harder to dissociate, but -- he manages it, he's quiet, he floats in the back of his awareness. Himeko is taking Usagi's other hand. Then she steps forward.
    Hematite does too, and-- his hand slackens in Usagi's grip and he takes another step forward (small bones crackle and crunch under his feet like dead leaves), and another (scorch marks are scuffed on the stone), and he puts his hands in his pockets and stands there facing what looks like his apprentice, but doesn't entirely feel like her. "Don't you know what I think?"

Pyrite has posed:
    "A ghost can be a lot of things. A memory, a daydream, a secret. Grief, anger, guilt." Beyond the waist-height stone wall surrounding the open, square-shaped temple grounds, the wreckage of the fight between a Dark General and a Nightmare Given Form are still evident. Fist marks. Craters. Broken masonry. Splintered wood. Strange long burn marks like a tentacle of acid slashed through the trees. Dead birds lie scattered around, killed in mid-air the moment they passed over the shrine.

    She's Sailor Moon - she has all this power, because others need her to help them. Questions are being posed, about the nature of ghosts and the dead and she doesn't have an answer.
    And then she sees who's on the throne, who's sitting beyond all that wreckage and all the tension goes out of her, and she smiles, warm and bright and excited, "Py-tan! It's you. Are you trying to figure out what you are? Does it have to be just one thing? Can't you be all of those things, and what Hemachan said too?"

    "But, in my experience, most times they're just what we want to see. Most times, a ghost is a wish." In the center of the temple grounds, just in front of the steps leading up to the wooden porch like area that borders the Soryuu Shrine on all sides, there is a throne or chair or something else fancy to sit on. And there are human skeletons scattered all over, though they belong to no human who has ever lived on this plane of reality.
    Sitting in the chair, there's a girl with dead, pale skin, slanted, half-narrowed red eyes with white pupils, long black hair, a black military uniform with a skirt, a sword at her side, one leg crossed over the other while her cheek rests lightly on the backs of her gloved hand... And a mysterious, barely-there, Mona Lisa smile.

    "I'm Sailor Mars... I'm Sailor Moon's friend and team mate. We would like to help you go to your loved ones. What is happening to this place, and the way it is affecting the city... It has put a lot of people in danger. You didn't mean to do that, but if this keeps going, then someone might get hurt." She takes a step forwards, trying to ignore the crunching sound and sensation of walking on dead things, and to hold out her gloved hand. "Would you let me help you?"

    "Move on... to what? Is there an afterlife??"
    Oh gods, there's an actual deathlord or something on her throne SURROUNDED BY HUMAN SKELETONS. That's a bit much, even for Amy! Adults can be scared of things too! She shrinks away a bit, suddenly wishing Hannah were here.
    "A wish... for what? You mean, Humanity's wish that there's something... after?"

Pyrite has posed:
    "My wish, is to create a story, about a girl named Himeko, who is alive and well in the current era. It needs to be a wish so big that it overflows its confines, and floods everything. Then I will live inside that wish, a ghost within a ghost, resurrected on her own terms. I've been laying the foundations all this time. Planting seeds that will start rumors, spread dreams, and create the fiction of my existence. A wish that big, however... An ocean is not enough. This must not be Himeko the Ocean anymore. I need to create Himeko the World."

    He faces Pyrite, and-- "But you've been using me. You've put bindings on me as surely as I've put them on you. I'm not going to let go of you."
    He warned her.
    Abruptly Hematite blips out of sight, cape and all, and there's a movement behind Pyrite's throne, at the entrance to the shrine proper--

    Sailor Moon moves.
    His is the flicker of teleportation, there and gone, appearing behind Pyrite, lunging for the shrine lurking behind her. He didn't tell her his plan. He didn't explain.
    She doesn't need him too. Himeko is in her arms, now, that older Himeko princess carried, tucked to her chest, not abandoned, even as Sailor Moon vaults forward, leaps over Pyrite's head, makes no effort to fight and every effort to push Hematite forward.

    This isn't the time to be hurt. No time to be selfish. The failed attempt to destroy the shrine that never actually happened because it was reversed instantly, is like a match being struck. Hematite teleports, Sailor Moon leaps, and Sailor Mars chants briefly before throwing her ofuda at the girl in the chair. If they're all heading for the shrine...

Pyrite has posed:
    Himeko explains her master plan. To rewrite reality, to wish herself back to life... or into existence as a mortal being.
    Amy considers this, holding a curled finger to her chin. "So what happens to everyone else in Himeko the World? You probably don't want to exist alone. Is the new world otherwise the same as the old?"

    Pyrite is right in front of Hematite when he teleports to the entrance of the shrine. It's difficult to escape from one's own shadow. She wraps her arms around her big brother, and her senpai, and hugs him. "That can not come out." she mutters before falling backwards, using Sailor Moon's push as momentum, and drags Hematite into his own shadow with her.
    Pyrite is still on her throne, which multiplies into several thrones as soon as the ofuda crosses the temple grounds. The ofuda lands on one of the thrones, shattering the illusion. She rises from her seat, and holds up her sword in its scabbard. The sword burns like the rising sun as it emerges, molten, and furious, but does not brighten the surroundings, just casts them in a hostile hue.
    "Test your fire, Mars, against a sword brought to Earth from somewhere else. This sword, of my divine ancestors... Forged on the Moon. Let us see which burns brighter."
    The Himeko in Sailor Moon's arms has had a moment spread across time to process everything. She hugs Sailor Moon as she rests in the senshi's arms. "I'll do my best. So you do your best too, okay?" She disappears.
    The small Himeko, the little Chibihime, moves to stand by Amy. She opens her red eyes suddenly.
    Chibihime is gone too. A second Pyrite stands there, but one in a white dress. "I understand." she says simply as she looks back at the darker Pyrite.
    Her red eyes gain vertical slit pupils as cat ears form in her hair and poke up out of her head.
    "Shiro is me."

    Blackness.

    And now we continue...

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Easier to dissociate, and isn't that also always what people want Mamoru to do? People want him to be things, whether or not he's able, willing, or prepared to be them, and he does his best. People want him to be able to do horrible things, or to be fine with so much death everywhere, or to exist so full of the dark energy that hurts so much all the time. Dissociating means he can do these things.

Not enough time or energy, because everybody needs. Everybody wants. Mamoru needs sleep, he needs time to himself, he needs time without stress, time with Usagi, with Kazuo, with the extremely short list of people that don't want him to be or do anything he's not or can't. He needs time to put himself back together. He doesn't have it. So, he dissociates, because it means he can operate without fixing himself. It doesn't matter if that means more maintenance will be necessary later, right?

Abruptly, it's not working; he's falling into his own shadow, pulled by his ghost-sister-apprentice, pulled by the little girl he's trying to save, to help, to find, to protect, pulled by the death curse that used to be satisfied with the idea of cutting him off from everything he loved so she could keep him forever, but now wants the world--

--good thing nobody knows, isn't it? How easy it would be to take that gold after stripping off the dark energy. How easy it would be to match that shard, that bright little light keeping company with that lost little pearl, by taking the rest of it and filling it with the ocean.

It's not easy.

He's not dissociating anymore.

"As long as that is in there, you're not whole, and it's--" he cries out as he starts to vanish, takes hold of the doorjamb, "--hurting you--!" and the wood is rotted, and he's gone with Pyrite to who knows where.

Except over there, in the lee of a gnarled and twisted husk of a tree, in its shadow, they stumble back out and he flings a hand out to steady himself for a second, breathing hard and teeth clenched and eyes red from unbidden tears of overwhelming emotion.

It lasts all of that one second, and then he takes a running teleport to the shrine door again.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy tries to hug the little Chibihime and hold her tight, protectively, but then suddenly, she's 'Shiro'.

    Things start... happening. But it's not exactly a fight, per se. They're not trying to just damage himeko. One of the... oppositional himekos is challenging Mars to a fight, Sailor Moon is charging and shoving and Hematite is teleporting around, an oppositional Himeko is *counter* teleporting Hematite away with shadows...

    Well, maybe that's something she can do something about?

    The rocket launcher appears in her hands, finally. She fires... too high? The rocket flies over the thrones... and then breaks apart into a bunch of flares that land, scattered, in the area in front of the shrine.

    Now it should be rather hard for any shadows to be cast on the ground there, at least!

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Pyrite uses Sailor Moon's own efforts to stop Hematite in his tracks, throwing him back through shadows, and she cries out his name in panic - "HEMATITE!"

But he's gone, crying out an explanation for his actions, that there's something in the shrine they need to reach, and Sailor Moon has not been stopped by a Pyrite, and the Himeko in her arms has asked her to do her best, and Sailor Moon always does her best. She doesn't want to fight Himeko. She's never wanted to fight anyone, not really - she's always just wanted to live her life. But if the only way to protect everyone is to fight -

And over and over and over again, it becomes clearer and clearer that fighting is her only way out, and all that her power is good for -

"Moon Twilight Flash!"

Normally, the beam of moonlight would strike through what stood in it's path, flying free until it fizzled out, reaching hundreds of meters if a target failed to prevent itself. Normally, Sailor Moon wouldn't have cupped her own gloved hands a mere foot above her tiara, cating the beam - making it fracture into a flood of light all around her that provides shelter shelter for Hematite, who teleports back to his place behind her, going for the shrine entrance again. Amy's flare has blazed light around the shrine - and her own beam is a much more potent threat, given that Moon Twilight Flash was especially effective against ghosts and spirits.

"Pyrite! I know you want a miracle, but this isn't the way to get one!" The light can't burn through her gloves, but as long as she maintains the beam, she can't do anything else - flooding power and light and locking herself in place, vulnerable. But she can talk, at least. "We don't want to hurt you! But we can't let you do this!"

There had been the flash of a sword, and a challenge called, and Sailor Moon doesn't know if Sailor Mars can handle a sword - she'd break and run, if she had to, to protect her friend. But she's hoping she won't have to.

Rei Hino has posed:
    Sailor Mars was not trying to dispel this ghost, even if her understanding of what's going on is severely lacking. She definitely isn't about to fight her in this relatively small space with her friends nearby, all trying not to hurt this... Pyrite or Himeko or whichever she is. The fusion of two ghosts to produce a new one nearby, standing by Amy, is likewise well above Rei's paygrade as a shrine priestess. She isn't an occultist. She doesn't study these things. She just knows how to use spiritual power to purify an area, drive out a ghost, or harm evil spirits.

    But she follows the cue of Sailor Moon after a moment, looking back at the Pyrite with the Rising Sun sword. "...I'm not going to use fire on you. I'm not going to fight you. You're right, I wasn't told what's going on, and I may be ignorant. For that, I'm sorry. But I really do want to help you. So please, stop fighting us."

    As light from Sailor Moon and flares from Amy create an area of greater illumination, they also cast large shadows around the edges. Hopefully that won't become a problem they have to deal with.

    Instead, she just holds her hands together in a focusing position, and stares into the flares the way she would meditate in front of a fire, seeking answers and a way to connect to the spirit in front of her.

Pyrite has posed:
    Pyrite is frazzled when she reemerges from the shadows with Hematite, her long hair wild, her red eyes glowing fiercely, a lipcurl of utter disgust and anger on her face. Sure, there are flares, and Dangerous Light, but Pyrite has gotten so strong under Hematite's tutelage, and unlike when they fought before she has a conscious, intelligent, informed tactical mind behind her actions.
    So flames erupt at the entrance of the shrine. A dangerous move given how very flammable it is, but they might stall her teacher for just a moment, given the recently acquired dislike for fire she knows her big brother has. In that moment of pyrokinesis, the shadows made large by Sailor Moon and Puella Red streak down in multi-pointed shapes, like tree branches that bend, and split, and weave their way through the gaps where shadows just barely exist, threading the needle, until they connect to the scarce shadow produced by the flames that are a brighter source of light.
    The moment that hread of darkness connects, Pyrite is there, trying to pull him down again. "It does not have to be this way!" she calls out, her gloved hands clutching at Hematite.
    Likewise, skeletons emerge from the ground all around Sailor Moon, trying to grab onto her and drag her to the ground as well. They may be destroyed or damaged by the Moon Twilight Flash, but there are always more.
    The Pyrite facing Sailor Mars scowls. She doesn't put her sword away, the molten, brick-red and shifting-black continuing to eat illumination instead of creating it. Since Mars isn't fighting her, she begins swinging the sword, trying to suck up any light she can with the blade. The more of it she gets, not only do the surroundings become darker, but the blade seems to become more 'complete' in how much of it is red versus black.
    She isn't waiting for Mars to gain insight.
    The multiple thrones disappear and the Pyrite who had still been sitting levitates to her feet as she frowns at Amy and Light Pyrite. "Such fickle creatures you mortals are. You say one thing earnestly and then change your mind, or were lying from the start. How am I to ever trust any of you, when all you ever do is lie to me and abandon me. How can I believe I won't be forgotten or left behind, when that's the only thing any of you have ever done!" She yells these last words, the build-up of rage over centuries of mistreatment evident on her face.

Pyrite has posed:
    Light Pyrite steps to the side, inbetween Amy and the Dark Pyrite. "To make Himeko the World, must do the same as did here. Became so big that no other souls could exist untless inside of Himeko the Ocean. Is why people do not live here. Can't, or lese they become one with me. To become a world, might not need whole planet. Might need only city. Still means all living must die."
    The angry Dark Pyrite floats down to touch the ground after hovering ever since she stood up. "Why does it matter' though? Sometimes dead is better. I did not get to choose when I died! It was a decision forced upon me. Now, when I have found out a way to fix everyone, so that there is no more sadness, no more pain, no more loneliness, no more despair, no more death, and everyone can be who and what they want, see lost loved ones, have a place for themselves, truly belong somewhere the way all of you separate existences, blind and deaf to each other, cannot comprehend: now everyone decides to come see what I'm up to? I was here for months after being told I would never be abandoned again. You have already broken your word if you say you won't leave me here alone! That you'll never let me go! That I'll be... S-safe and sound!"
    Her anger fades, her vehemence cools, as she fights back tears from a pain she cannot remember, and might never be able to understand, because so much of her was lost that only the echo of its source will ever be with her. She turns to look over her shoulder at Sailor Moon, eyes wet with red tears that have yet to spill. She frowns, as she thinks. "...Why are you all here suddenly anyway? Why now?"
    "You are making a body." Light Himeko answers. Dark Himeko whips around to look at her. "It is hurting people to do so. Scaring them. Scarring their minds and hearts. Then this place began to spread and--"
    "What in the Hell are you talking about?" Dark Himeko snaps, interrupting.
    Uh-oh.
    "Why would I need a physical body when I can live on for eternity as a ghost?" she asks, a mix of frustration and confusion on her face and in her voice.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy is told off as inconsistant. "What the hell?! They're here to help you, they're *not* just blasting you with purification attacks or whatever, and I'm helping them help you 'cuz I trust them. That's not inconsistant at *all*!"

    She wants to run over and help beat skeletons off Sailor Moon but uh, Dark Pyrite kind of *has* got her in conversation now. "I did not promise to stay. I did not promise you would be safe."

    She poofs the launcher away again. "You say dead is better. That you're going to fix everyone and bring about a transhumanist utopia. And I'm all for that! In theory. I've been dreaming about the day I could leave my body behind for the last *decade*. I got a better one by luck, but that doesn't mean I don't still want that for *everyone*."

    She points. "If bein' a ghost is so much better, *why are you so unhappy*? Where are all the other local ghosts, those who've died before and after you, enjoying their ghostly lives and hanging out?"

    Amy slumps a little. "...So, what, is there *another* side of you that's trying to steal body parts from people? Are they also keeping all the happy ghosts away from you?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Gngh!" is the frustrated and overwhelmingly furious/hurt/grieving Hematite makes as he's pulled down into his own flickering shadow once more, and this time when they emerge it's on the side of the shrine, and Mamoru's clinging desperately to Pyrite now, arms squeezed tight around her much smaller body, face buried in her hair.

His face is wet, and he's still-- he's still so angry-- he's so angry, he's SO angry. He doesn't disengage. He doesn't. "I'm still here, Himeko, I'm still here," he hisses. "I'm here. How much of you have I missed? Why won't you let me go in and get the rest of you?"

He isn't moving, they're sitting on his cape with his back to the shrine, and he's hugging her the way she was hugging him, and he looks up at the floating angry Dark Himeko and he shows his teeth. "All of you knows me! How could I leave you alone when you're in my shadow, in my head? I can't, I couldn't! Because you're with me! Let me go in there and stop her! Let her know I'm here, too--"

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Skeletons. Of course it had to be skeletons.

"Oh, I just knew all this scary stuff would happen! Skeletons, really, Himeko-chan?! Moon Twilight Flash!" Sailor Moon's voice pitches into a shriek as she abandons her strategy - just for a moment - to flash the beam of her attack in a wide circle, spinning about to ensure the blaze of concentrated moonlight can strike at the skeletal remains striking out at her. Her tiara is the better choice for mass destruction, but she's not sure it wouldn't bring the shrine down all around them, and that probably wouldn't be a good idea.

There are so many Pyrites all around, all of these Himekos's split from the whole, and she doesn't really understand it, how it works, how she can be in all these pieces, and she does feel horrible, down to her soul, that any of Himeko was here in the dark -

"You're asking us that, but you didn't tell us! You didn't say anything! Himeko-chan, how can we bring you out of the lonely place you're in if you don't tell anyone you're trapped? How can I help you if I don't know you're hurt?!"

Hematite is at her back, Hematite is demanding and hugging and hurting, but he is with Himeko now, maybe beyond her, for a bit - focusing on where he needs to be. She has to do her own part. "You can't just kill everyone because you were killed! If dead was better, you wouldn't want to live again! If it was better, you wouldn't need a miracle! Dead is dead, it's gone, it's - it's being somewhere where you can't really be with us and that's why we're trying to help!" That's why Hematite wants the Silver Crystal. So she can have a miracle. So she can live again, properly.

"We didn't know! I didn't know! When I saw you were two people, I didn't know what was happening, but I figured, you would tell me what you needed me to know! I thought, okay, there's two now! Two is good! Well - there's a lot more than two, and I don't know how many there are, but we'll help -" wait. R
Hey. Wait.

"...you're not the one setting all those youkai loose and messing with bones and houses and innocent mangaka?"

Rei Hino has posed:
    Sailor Mars gets the tiny bit of insight she needs, and focuses on the Pyrite wielding that sword. "Pyrite!" she calls out. Once she has the attention of at least one of them, she meets their eyes and asks a single question based on what she saw. A hand, on Himeko's/Pyrite's left shoulder, still wreathed in malice. "Who told you that we abandoned you?" There's someone standing behind Pyrite, and it's not Hematite. Who would bother spreading lies in the mind of a child's ghost? Someone from Obsidian? One of these people seeking the end of the world? Is this Pyrite being used to cause an apocalypse by a different entity entirely?

    "Please. Just answer that one question." she pleads, her violet eyes squinted, as if she could see the ghost so hidden that even a ghost can't see it.

Pyrite has posed:
    When Hematite grabs Pyrite and hugs her, no longer trying to go into the shrine, she is no longer resisting. She is limp, almost like a rag doll. Her tears are running down her cheeks too. Black as soot, staining her cheeks as they pass. Her head is back, her gaze directed upwards into the sky that is always night because she still doesn't know what the sky above the ocean of her soul looks like.
    "I want to believe you. But everyone has said the same thing. You must be true to yourself before you can be true to me." Her arms raise up to hug Hematite back. "Let go of your darkness, so I can let go of mine. Be yourself, so I can be me too. Stop conforming to what others need, so I can stop wishing for you to tell me what you need me to be..." She puts her face in the side of Hematite's neck, not worrying if her sooty tears stain him.
    The Pyrite debating with Amy, Light Pyrite, and Sailor Moon looks very confused. More and more of her anger is leaving her to be replaced with the consternation of a child trying to figure out why the key they're holding doesn't work, despite having seen someone else use the key just fine, not realizing they're either holding the wrong key or trying to open the wrong lock.
    The Dark Pyrite with her sword stops slashing, the skeletons from Yomi that haven't been destroyed by Sailor Moon slip back into the ground as though it's mud and not cracked stone tiles. Unconsciously, her right hand moves to her left shoulder at Sailor Mars' question, anxiety, fear, and dawning understanding showing in her features as space around her starts to constrict, so that it seems as though she moving further away from everyone without actually moving backwards. "I don't know what you're talking about!" Then she throws her sword down, and it stabs into the ground. Her eyes blaze brightly suddenly, unspilled tears turning into spouts of steam and fire. "Where are all the other ghosts?" she asks acidly. Then she seems to grab the space she has constrained and pulls it apart. "They're right HERE!"
    Reality is torn open, revealing another layer, one that most living people never see. Shards of everything, like moth scales, or silver dust, float upwards continuously into a spiral that circulates through this twilight space. They're in the ocean, but they can breathe. All around them, silver-gray figures are standing, ringing the shrine and temple grounds but not getting in the way, watching. Waiting to see the outcome.
    "They're waiting for the world I can give them!" She's back to yelling as she points at the ghosts and glares at Amy and Light Pyrite. "I promised I could fix them, that they would never have to die, that they would never grow old or get sick! I promise them that... That they wouldn't have to be like me! I want better for them than that!" Her anger turns to raw emotion and pleading, as she tries to get the living people to understand. She turns towards Sailor Moon. One of the Dark Pyrites has vanished. The one who was trying to explain to Amy and Light Pyrite.
    "I know what it feels like! I know why it hurts to have that choice taken! To be condemned to abandonment over and over! No one alive today would remember me from when I was alive! No one alive today even knew I existed!" Her arms wrap around herself as she curls into a ball in mid-air. "It hurts so much! Of course I would spare others that if I could! Wouldn't you!?" She seems to be addressing everyone in general now.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Dust, everywhere. Amy conjures the cutest firefighter outfit she can in order to have a gas mask and then she's plunged into the 'ocean', and the mask falls off and the clothes are cumbersome and she realizes she can breathe, somehow, and she switches to her default Puella Magi outfit.

    Amy looks around at the ghosts. Tries to see if she can make out details. Do ghosts remember who they are? Who knows! She doesn't know how all this works!

    She nods along at the explanation. Pyrite wants to help the other ghosts, she made promises she believed she could do that she's trying to keep, she wants better for them than for herself, and she doesn't want to take so long that they're forgotten.

    "...Of course." She states, plainly. She approaches the nearest ghost, holds out a hand to see if they can touch. "...Everyone... deserves that."

    Amy looks at the ghost, she looks down at the tiles, she considers.

    "...What can you give them, right now? They've got eachother, and you." She looks to Pyrite. "You all know eachother. And sometimes... we're forgotten. Or we have to start over in a new place. Make new friends. That loss hurts, but... you don't need the whole world in here, for that. You take a city, you cut off the people visiting there. You take the whole planet, you cut off the people from other worlds stranded here."

    Amy blinks. "What do you do about criminals? People who hurt eachother? Hell, what happens when someone's friend is, like, a jerk to their other friend and now they can't all get along together? You gonna split ghosts in two, give everyone the... the best version of everyone they know? Fragment off seperate oceans? How does that even work? How does Utopia *work*, even if you've cured all illnesses and aging and given everyone perfect bodies?"

    "What's done is done." She makes a sweeping gesture. "These people are already dead. Already here. You're already giving them better than the loneliness you endured, right?"

    She stretches her arms, hands held together over her hed, then holds a curled finger to her chin. "You know. Everyone *here* will know everyone *else*. They won't be alone. Maybe, with more than a human lifetime to work with, you can actually come up with solutions to all those problems, and then draw more people into your perfect world. But until then..."

    Amy takes a breath and begins to pace. "I don't know. It feels wrong to tell you, that if this gets any bigger, the heroes will come, wielding combined power you can't stand against. It's... *wrong*, that fear of others' strength ever hold you back from doing what you think is right. I want a happy ending for everyone, but I'm just one person! I don't *have* the answer, or I'd be out there telling everybody about it!"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Hematite doesn't care about sooty tears soaking into his black and grey uniform, he doesn't care. He just holds this baby ghost he loves so much, and he looks at Sailor Moon's back for a moment, standing between him and this Himeko, and that yelling, that fighting-- and he looks back down at Himeko. "How?" he whispers to her. "How do I let go of the darkness? Don't I need it to save them? I need to save them too..."

It must be a rhetorical question. (It's not a rhetorical question.) Holding limp ragdoll Himeko in his arms, with her arms around him too, Hematite pushes himself up the wall by the power of slippery silk cape and leg day. "Riventon said just shoot it all at a magical girl but I think that's a little tone-deaf, right?" he murmurs to her, then sniffs and turns his head, lifting one shoulder to partly wipe his face off on it.

By the time he's made it to his feet and Usagi's splattered all the skellies and the skellies have gone back under the tiles, the other Pyrite's ripped open the world. "Oh," he says, "oh. Yes. I understand. Don't you remember, Himeko? Don't you remember why we work? Don't you remember what you're still holding? I understand. You took my pain, once, and you held it close, and it was like yours. Let us help you with yours. Let me hold it for you-- and let them go."

His face screws up, he tries not to cry. "Let them go, and I'll-- I'll try to-- I can't let my Shitennou go, but I can hold your pain until I can let go of the darkness. Let these people go. They won't hurt anymore that way either."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The Pyrite they're facing is looking more and more confused. Less and less like she wants to fight them, and more like she's listening, maybe. Sailor Moon is taking that as a good sign, especially the awful skeletons stop rising up under her feet, trying to claw and grab and hack at her. She thinks they might be getting somewhere, even.

And then Pyrite spouts fire from her eyes and tears through reality and there are - so many -

It's like before she was dreaming, maybe, seeing the world without seeing it, and now everything is in ultra HD 4K, the world crisp and clear and the depths of the everything all around. They are in shadow, in twilight, and shards spill up, spiral around them as if in a current, and all around are figures of silver-grey. Watching. Waiting.

The dead, wondering if they'll join them.

Sailor Moon's heart clenches. She looks at them with pity. All these lives. All these souls. Everyone -

"You shouldn't have done that, Himeko-chan," she says softly, gently. She steps closer. She isn't trying to fight. Her hand doesn't fly to her tiara. "You can't promise them that."

That they would never die, that they would never grow old or sick - well. Maybe they won't do any of that other stuff, because they are dead. They're dead, nothing but dead people, who won't grow or change or or move away from home or get married or lose their jobs, just dead people, caught and lingering in the tide of this darkening ocean.

Amy is saying things, things that don't make sense to Usagi. Things about Utopia's and problems and splitting people and oceans and details that sound like they belong in a book, or in a classroom. She doesn't get it. It's not what matters to her.

"If sparing them is killing them Himeko-chan - I wouldn't. I couldn't. I don't want people to suffer, but it's part of life, isn't it? I wouldn't know you, if I didn't hurt first. I wouldn't have met you at all, if I was the same Usagi that didn't know about magic, that girl who was never afraid for her life and never had anyone try to kill her. You know about bad things happening, better than maybe anyone, but... if we just made it so bad things couldn't happen, we'd make it so good things couldn't happen, either."

Rei Hino has posed:
    "Before anything else," Sailor Mars says after having the world torn up to show her a layer below what she thought was reality, and taking a moment to test the ground and the air and make sure she isn't actually in the ocean somewhere, "That mark on you, of somebody else's hand, needs to be wiped away. I'm not an expert in these matters. But the enormous amount of rage and hate and fear and the joy gained through cruelty upon those who have wronged you... I can feel all of that coming from that handprint. I can't think of any better term for something like that than 'a curse'." She glances towards Hematite, and then to Sailor Moon, then back to Hematite.

    "Maybe his... 'Darkness' can be thrown away if you throw away that curse too." she suggests. This is ten-billion percent outside of her bailiwick, but so is being Sailor Mars. This entire Senshi thing has really just been a bunch of teenage girls playing it by ear and figuring things out along the way, often by the seats of their pants--err, skirts! It feels like... While failure is possible, if they continue to have faith in each other, continue to feel and share love, as long as they never decide it's better to get rid of someone because of what they might become than to help them become who and what they truly want to be... They'll find some way to make it through.

    It's still a tall order, and Rei doesn't know if she can maintain that kind of spiritual integrity and strength of will all the time. But that's what friends are for, right? She steps forwards, actually walking onto the temple grounds themselves, beyond the threshold, for the first time since coming up here. She knows it's Pyrite's domain, can feel it on her skin and in her bones, but before she can be trusted... She has to show trust in turn. Like a kitten who has been abused and abandoned, learning to trust again will take time. Time, and a lot of scratches on Rei's part.

    It's funny how she thought her duty was to exorcise evil spirits, but now she's trying to just help one stay long enough to realize she is loved instead.

    "You don't have to hurt alone anymore." she says. It cannot compare to Pyrite's pain, but she also knows isolation and loneliness, and how you can grow so accustomed to it that you don't realize you're hurting until someone holds out a hand.

Pyrite has posed:
    "Send it back to where it came from," is the quiet answer from Pyrite. Light Pyrite is gone. When did she disappear? Now there's just two remaining. The one held by Hematite, and the one floating in the air in a ball. "You are stronger and brighter than you give yourself credit for. You have never needed Darkness to save your friends or to find love or not to be alone anymore. Send it back. If she doesn't like it, she can take it up with you in person... With everyone who supports you standing alongside."
    The ghosts regard Amy as she approaches, but their attention is on what's happening on the temple grounds themselves. This is a decision about their own fates going forwards. Whether they are old, young, male, female, whether they died by sickness, or violence, or self-harm, or accident, or if they just stopped existing as people one day and became ghosts because they were too deep in Himeko the Ocean to be anything else, they are all still here because a ghost with the strength to do so bound them all together.
    Pyrite sniffles as she floats in the air, her sword's red glow flickering and fading, the blade turning black gradually, until it burns out entirely, and disappears. Someone else is already wielding it, somewhere else. A talisman, for a separate purpose than Himeko's version. Her hand goes to her left shoulder again. "Who can remove such a curse?" She has no answers for Amy's many questions. None of them really matter. If the world is her, then it all would work as she wanted it to. And how she wanted it to work was for nobody to ever have to be alone or forgotten or unloved ever again. Isn't that good enough?
    She peeks a look at the Puella Magi, and then scans over to Sailor Moon. "I am bound by my contract, and my promises. I cannot break them."
    Right after she says this, the limp Pyrite in Hematite's arms, who has become just Himeko again, says quietly, but loud enough to be heard, "I voluntarily rescind the contract formed between my soul and that of the one called Hematite."
    Pyrite jolts in shock and unfolds from her little ball, as she turns to stare at her other self, at Himeko. "What are you doing?" she asks raggedly.
    Himeko just looks at Pyrite, and says, "I voluntarily rescind all claim to any soul other than my own."
    Pyrite hunches over, arms wrapped around herself, in pain, as a little black shape emerges from her, lands quietly on the ground, and scoots out of the temple grounds into the area outside. Shiro sits down, and alongside the other ghosts, watches to see the outcome.
    "No! Shiro, please!" Pyrite yells, reaching out towards the black cat, panic and tears the only thing on her face now, no more anger, or resentment, or anything else. "Don't leave me, please! You don't have to go!" She drops out of the air, to land on her knees, like her ability to fly was just cut off.
    The ghosts all around begin to turn and leave, wandering off into the silvery twilight, and vanishing. Wherever they're going, Pyrite no longer has a say in it.
    "No, please, pleae, no! Everyone, I can still make it work! I can keep my promise!" Sitting up on her knees, arms hanging limply at her sides, she can only cry and scream after all the souls who are moving on. She folds her hands together over her chest, hugging them close, shaking and convulsing in an emotional break-down. "Please don't, I need you! You're the only ones I have left!!"
    Then Shiro stands, turns, and pads away into the darkness too.
    "SHIRO, NO! I NEED YOU! DON'T GO! I'LL BE ALL ALONE AGAIN! I CAN DO BETTER, I PROMISE! PLEase...!" She hunches over fully, sobbing in a ball on the ground.
    Once again, she is the only ghost haunting the Soryuu Shrine.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    > I cannot break them.
    "Ain't that a mood." Amy comments.

    She's not sure, at first, what happens next. But then she realizes: Himeko let the ghosts go, showing trust in them. And they can't be blamed for wanting to leave, but at the same time... Will not a single one stay? That's just too sad.

    And Himeko is already a ghost. No matter how bad she feels, there is *no* escape, not even the saddest and most desperate last resort. There can only be endless pain. Amy's throat tightens a bit, but... she's somehow able to retain enough emotional distance not to break down crying herself. She's not sure if she *wants* to, but before she's even thought about it, she's thinking 'damn that's sad' rather than breaking down.

    "...Damn." She'd hug Himeko, but someone else is probably going to do it first, and Hematite (and by extension, Sailor Moon kinda) are her family after all. "No one deserves this, kid. You... were trying to help."

    ...

    "...But there isn't *no one* who cares about you. We're here, after all." She looks at Hematite. "What do we need to do to get her that miracle?" Then she looks away, a hand rubbing the back of her head. "Oh right, you said, that one's a family matter... Well I mean c'mon, it's not like I can see this and *not help*, come on..."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I'll send it back," says Hematite in a near-whisper, "I never wanted it. I'll need help to do it, but--" he looks at Usagi, and he gives her a somewhat puffy-faced smile, lopsided and affectionate and so tired. "But I'll have help."

And then Pyrite's explaining her bindings, and then Himeko in his arms speaks up, and Mamoru jerks in shock, and there's a different kind of pain, and he starts breathing faster, as worried as Pyrite for a moment-- and then they're all leaving, they're all leaving, even Shiro, and Hematite's heart breaks for her all over again. Here in her ocean, above the abyss, not nearly as deeply as he's gone, he can't--

No. He can.

"You don't need a contract to be my sister, do you?" he asks in a small voice. "You don't need a contract to love me like I love you, right? I won't let go of you, Himeko Soryuu, I'm Chiba Mamoru and I--" He sniffs, then laughs, and it's damp. "I have some abandonment issues too, maybe, huh? I won't leave you behind if you don't want to stay. Come with me, but only if you want to. And please don't leave me. Please. I'll visit again, lots, if you would rather stay here--"

He takes a breath, and another, and he steps forward, and he's abreast of Usagi, and he drops his henshin.

Right here in the middle of a ghost ocean in a seriously haunted shrine, in front of Amy Faust and Sailor Mars, trusting that he'll be safe, he's suddenly Darien Shields--

No, not with that posture, not with that gentleness in his face. Mamoru, in his terrible school uniform.

And then he looks at Amy. "Sometimes the best help you can give," he says tiredly, "is to step back. I know you don't want to hear that, but unless you can find the Silver Crystal and give it to Sailor Moon, here, then there really isn't anything you should do about that. But you can hug, I'm out of arms."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
They leave.

They all leave.

Himeko does what no one else could have, and releases these souls, every last one of them, these bound souls held and promised something that no one could give, offered what no one could want, and -

When even the little cat walks away, Sailor Moon flinches.

She is moving, almost at the same time that Hematite is, and not for the little Himeko, the one who released everyone, the one who tore at her own soul to do what was best for everyone else. No, she moves for Pyrite, who sobs alone on the ground. She kneels beside her.

She gives her a hug, tugging the balled up heap of a girl into her arms.

"You don't need to do better, Pyrite," she says, "You're not alone. You've got Hemachan -"

And of course, in that moment, he isn't Hemachan, anymore. He's got the face of Darien Shields, Usagi's boyfriend, but he's not Darien, either. He's Mamoru Chiba, and he's vulnerable and human and in the middle of an ocean of ghosts in a haunted shrine -

Her eye twitches.

"You've got Mamochan, even though he's sometimes the dumbest pretty boy who ever lived," she murmurs into Pyrite's hair, because oh yes, this is a full hug, pulled into the arms, face tucked into shoulder, kind of hug.

"I told you, didn't I? There will be a miracle. We will make it happen. When we find the Silver Crystal, I'll make you whole again."

Rei-chan, please don't kill her!

Rei Hino has posed:
    Sailor Mars stands by, helplessly. She winces as the procession of spirits depart, and feels a pang of hurt in her heart when even the cat goes... But she... Isn't sure what to do here. Comforting words would be hollow. The best she can do right now, is to follow Sailor Moon out, exchanging a look with Amy, of the anxiety of being unable to help even though she wants to. She does pause once she leaves the temple grounds, and look back over her shoulder at that deep darkness within the shrine's entrance.

    Unfinished business. she hears Pyrite's voice say in her head, from a different time, in a different place.

    Mars shivers. Something in the back of her mind tells her she know who Pyrite has unfinished business with... And they met many thousands of years ago.

Pyrite has posed:
    "No... No contract needed to be your sister. No contract to love. A different type of bond, that." she says, as she is lifted up by her big brother. Smiling tiredly and looking up with half-closed eyes. She's so sleepy suddenly. But she feels much more peaceful than she has in a long time.
    Pyrite is still a ball of hurt, and a hug is more than welcome. From Sailor Moon, from Puella Red, from Sailor Mars, or all of them at once, even though she is emotionally spiked and volatile. She wants to be close to others, but is afraid of hurting them. The Hedgehog's Dillema, some call it. She weighs almost nothing. Senshi strength isn't needed to carry her out of here.
    She gives a red-eyed look of apology towards Amy for... Some reason. Maybe not being able to give her the future she said she was looking forward to. Maybe just sorry in general. There's a lot of things she feels guilty for, even if not all of them are her fault. She has her own ghosts haunting her.
    And, it appears, a curse on her left shoulder.
    Everyone leaves as they arrived. Two versions of the same girl, two Senshi, one Puella Magi, and one Big Brother.
    And minus one cat.