1770/B-Point: Twist the Knife

B-Point: Twist the Knife
Date of Scene:	05 July 2024
Location:	Dark Kingdom
Synopsis:	CW: Graphic death and aftermath. Sailors Moon and Jupiter, Cat Noir, Pulp Noir, and Tuxedo Kamen face off against Fem of the Doom and Gloom girls. Fem dies badly.
Cast of Characters:	Doom and Gloom Girls, Usagi Tsukino, Adrien Agreste, Mamoru Chiba, Hinote Kagari, Makoto Kino
Tinyplot:	Dark Kingdom Finale

---

Doom and Gloom Girls has posed:
The caves of the Dark Kingdom are a twisty mess of glistening walls that move, with hands and faces trying to reach or press out of the stone that looks like it should be solid, with stalactites that occasionally fall and try to impale the unwary, stalagmites that have eerily glowing crystals and unholy flora growing from their sides, growing from the bases of the walls and underlighting the awful hands and faces--

--and there are still bones here and there, but they aren't quite human anymore. Some are plants in the shapes of bones, curled up on shelves or artistically placed, some are bones that look nearly human but have too many extremely sharp teeth and far too many ribs and fingers, some are merely strangely shaped skulls that ought to be animal but are entirely unidentifiable...

And as this group of mahou collects, there's light up ahead, pink and glittering.

That should be good, right? Maybe it's Glimmer, maybe she's grown her resolve to armor her grief.

...

...it's not Glimmer.

Spread out in a wide cave with an echoing, cavernous ceiling, there's an army of glittering bright luminous pink skeletons, interspersed with what look like bright pink death traps -- spiked tiger pits, enormous hammers, a rocket, a truck of damocles hanging from a rope overhead...

And in a big pink light-construct comfy chair at the far end of the cavern, a darker pink-furred moth girl with a shortish cloud of ash-brown hair, scowling as she lounges.

"Like," she announces, unfolding from the comfy chair and waving it away into motes of sparkling pinkness that disperse in the air, "you killed two of the only people I even give a crap about? Don't give me that 'wah it wasn't me' junk, I don't care WHO actually did it, you're all the same to me. So I mean, like, you can just die here in the Dark Kingdom or whatever. No one will ever find your bodies."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The Dark Kingdom is the third-most eerie, awful place that Sailor Moon has ever been. The first, maybe forever, will be the burning, blood-covered streets of her own homeworld, her own capital city. The second is the Golden Kingdom, wreathed in flames of hatred and also actual fire, as civilians butchered each other in the frenzy of Metallia's power.

All things considered, that third place is pretty well-earned, given the hands that stretch, the mouths that silently screech, the bones that aren't bones, the bones thart are bones, and of course -

The guilt of living and the grief for those who no longer do.

Sailor Moon is grateful for Sailor Jupiter's presence, had run to her, dragging Tuxedo Kamen along when they found her in the dark.

When she saw the glowing pink lights, there was a hope that they'd found Glimmer.

That hope dies at the sight of the pink-furred moth girl, and as she gives her little speech, careless and callous and lazy and mourning the people who had killed her cousin and friends - a fire burns in her heart.

The tiara is shining before she even removes it from her forehead, discus of light jumping to her hand as she throws it furiously,

"Moon Tiara Action!"

Not Moon Healing, which purified, which soothed after the burn of corruption was gone. The tiara, instead, arching right for Fem, the tiara that cut and sheared.

"Then go ahead and join them!"

Adrien Agreste has posed:
Cat Noir had been broken away from the group for quite awhile and only now was he finding himself brought back together with some familiar, and not so familiar faces alike. He was difficult enough to miss even if he blended in the darkness--He had no need for a flash light or candle. While he had one with him he was saving it for when he was with a group, not knowing exactly how long the batteries would last. His own powers allowed him to see well enough in the darkness.

It's likely this and only this that has allowed him to skirt past the occasional issue that has come up. Rats were dealt with as they tried to catch him, a skeleton here or there that had been completely blind to his presence. Overall he was doing *well* for the fact that he had been down here and separated from the others so long.

Physically, at least. Being alone in the dark, even able to see in the dark, was unnerving after the first hundred pathways or so that he'd taken looking for any sign of the marks that Naru had said she would leave along the way so that he could find them again. How they'd become split up he still didn't know. The Dark Kingdom was just like that, apparently.

Now he had light. Pink light. Pink skeletons. Pink traps. As he comes out of an exit into the area he pauses to blink a single time at the girl on the throne. "I sense a theme," he remarks dryly while reaching behind him to pull out his staff--

And a Tiara whizzes by causing him to blink in surprise, but also split into a wide grin of near relief. "Well, guess I'll skip being catty." That's really the only half-hearted pun he can offer before leaping toward some of the skeletons to start swinging the staff wide to take out as many as he can straight through the spine.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Tuxedo Kamen doesn't even say anything-- trailing along after Sailor Moon and Sailor Jupiter, filthy and maskless and capeless, bare hands, no hat, just a hidden reserve of power to pass on to Kunzite and a hidden fluffy keychain cat in his jacket, he's been silent.

Sailor Jupiter definitely got a hug when they ran into her, tight and relieved but filthy dirty with mud and salt and dust and blood. Mixed blessing, that hug.

He's still silent as he immediately throws a rose at the big pink truck hanging overhead. They're just constructs, they're made of light, they're magic, they can break--

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir arrives with the group, having stuck with Sailor Moon for the moment. At some point, he traded the handgun and flashlight for his Tommy Gun as they we're in a group and he was covering in case of more rat youmas or what have you.

That's when they run along the Moth Girl and her skeleton army and he starts blasting at the skeletons, with powerful pulses of water from the tommy gun as he spouts off. "Shut it mothballs." he says to the moth girl.

"Go join someone's insect collection." he mutters.

Makoto Kino has posed:
Makoto Kino might never admit, out loud, all the things she felt and thought when she realized she'd become separated from the others down in the catacombs of Paris.

It doesn't matter. What matters is that Sailor Moon found her again, or she found Sailor Moon, and oh, that was a big warm bear hug she met Usagi with when Sailor Moon dragged Tuxedo Kamen to meet her, and a matching one for Mamoru. What matters is what she missed, what she wasn't there to stop--

(or could she have done anything to stop it, if she had been there?)

--what matters is that their fight is far from over.

"Watch your step," she says, her voice too-calm and steady and her eyes sharp as glass tracking the flight of Sailor Moon's tiara. "Don't let her goad you.

She holds out both hands, spilling petals into the air. The wind that catches them rushes to spiral around the pink skeletons, pushing at them, herding them into groups for Cat Noir to more easily dispatch.

"Flower Hurricane!"

Doom and Gloom Girls has posed:
The glowing discus of Moon Tiara Action that comes winging toward the pink-furred DG Girl isn't ignored, but is taken about as seriously as everything else in the midst of her grief. She dives to one side, and the tiara clips her shoulder before exploding a section of wall behind her and boomeranging back to Moon.

"Nah," says Fem, a vicious little curl to her lip, a ragged edge of rage in her careless little syllable. The blood coming from her shoulder is red, dark on the pink fur, and it stops bleeding altogether too quickly, purple fire flickering up and healing it. There's a red flash in her eyes.

She waves a hand and sends one of the arrayed rockets hurtling towards Moon, purple-black fire jetting out the back of the pink construct, aiming to explode her into the space over one of the pit traps.

The truck hanging overhead shatters like glass, sparkling pink light raining down and coating the floor--

--which unfortunately makes the floor slippery.

The skeleton army swarms, reaching and grasping for Cat Noir, for Sailor Jupiter, even as he shatters them into bits when he slices through their spines with the staff, and even as she corrals them for him-- but there are more and more of them, and now the floor has glittering pink dust on it, making traction difficult-- every pink thing they break makes the floor more treacherous.

Fortunately for literally everyone, the water from Pulp Noir's tommy gun not only slams skeletons away and bursts them, it also washes the pink dust away from the floor, pushing it in waves and piling it up or washing it into the pit traps.

"Tch!" Fem says when she sees, and she sends another rocket hurtling at Pulp Noir to get him out of the picture. "UNO REVERSO! You join them! They'll beat you up in the afterlife!!"

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Being a Mahou's never been a game, but that's especially true now, when the other DG Girls have proven their deadliness, and so Sailor Moon's heart doesn't lurch, when she sees their enemy bleed red.

So what if she's human? She made a deal with Metallia. Her friends killed Chiyo and Bow and Rashmi and Chrono, set up Jolly to die in a sacrifice for their friends -

Light flickers. Her tiara reforms in her hands, and as the rocket blasts towards her, she holds it, holds it -

throws, when the rocket is passing near other constructs.

"Moon Tiara Action!"

That should, hopefully, handle the rocket, because Sailor Moon pivots towards Fem, Crescent Wand in her hand, and -

Fully slips on pink dust, foot launching forward and launching her forward, boots losing traction.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA she can't stop, she can't stop, but there's no time for comedy prat falls, so even as she slips, slides, and flails, an erratic sloppy circle-ish shape is carved into the air and -

"Moon Healing Escalation!"

The silver beams are sloppily shaped, but they're firing towards Fem all the same.

Makoto Kino has posed:
Maybe Sailor Jupiter would've hesitated at the sight of their enemy's red, red blood - human blood? - but there's no time for that now. She's always been sure on her feet, and with sparkling pink dust making every step a hazard she's rarely been more grateful for it. It takes her no time at all to go from stepping to sliding, almost skating across the floor to fire a burst of electricity at the second rocket when Fem sends it after Pulp Noir.

Then all her attention is diverted as Sailor Moon goes careening. Without a second thought, Sailor Jupiter lunges, a controlled skid across the floor to catch up to her fellow senshi and help steady her before she can end up in one of those pitfalls. "Careful!"

Adrien Agreste has posed:
"Always love it when a pretty girl gets me flowers!" Cat Noir quips at the assist from Jupiter helping to corral the skeletons together. The floor was getting slippery though. Whatever odd, twisted version of bone-glitter they were dusting into along with the remnants of that truck that had been hanging overhead did make for a slippery path. His stance widens bringing his center of gravity lower so that he doesn't end up sliding everywhere. It wasn't ice, but he treats it as such, and uses his staff to do most of the damage.

The waterblasts from Pulp's tommygun help. A few skeletons that were getting too close end up blasted away freeing up a path with better footing for the feline-themed boy to wade deeper yet. With a quick glance to the others, he calls out, "Get as many of them close to me as you can, and I can clear the way to Mini-Mothra!"

Big words for someone looking as if they were about to be swarmed, but he slams his staff against the ground between where the slippery pink glitterific mess is using it to pivot himself to swing around. It puts his back to one of the pitfall traps and the skeletons chasing after would hopefully follow.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir's attack seems highly effective. This makes him smile. What doesn't make him smile is the rocket coming for him. He grabs the top of his hat and draws his arm up and the rocket connects!? No...no it doesn't.

Because Sailor Jupiter zaps the rocket as he peeks out from under his arm, having gotten ready for a connection. He gives Jupiter a wave. "Thanks, Sparkplug." he says, with some affection as he levels his Tommy gun at the Moth Girl and starts firing at her properly now, and anything around her.

He'll start moving forward, carefully. He doesn't wanna fall into a trap!

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Ta-tap, the impossibly light click of dress shoes barely touching the uneven stone floor where Tuxedo Kamen lands and skates briefly: Mamoru's eyes widen as Sailor Moon comes sliding towards him at speed, and he drops to a (his other) knee to give himself the stability necessary on the slippery floor to catch Moon-- but Jupiter beats him to it, and so instead, he straight-up clutches a glowing fist to his chest and flings it out towards Fem immediately. "Tuxedo la Smoking Bomber!"

Doom and Gloom Girls has posed:
Fem flinches away from the explosion of the first rocket into a giant hammer and a swath of skeletons, then from the explosion of the second rocket into more of her skeletons and the slide into another spiky-bottom pit trap.

"Dammit!" she says, and jumps up, her wings unfurling pale and creamy into the pink-lit darkness, skimming a current away from the sloppy Escalation but getting clipped by it as well, the burn of it stinging at her fuzzy leg, crackling--

"OW! JEEZ! Just-- just FALL already! I made those pit traps JUST FOR YOU and you're like, so ungrateful? I took time out of my day and spent effort getting skeletons to dig holes--" Fem complains, and Pulp Noir might recognise the same thing Tuxedo Kamen will: there's something wrong with her voice, something disconnected, something dissociated--

The skeletons do, indeed, continue to swarm after Jupiter and Cat Noir and Pulp Noir, now, too, even as Pulp Noir's latest attack water cannons Fem in the stomach.

The last two rockets go off at the same time, all bearing down on the Cat that's taking out so much of the skeleton army with the help of the others.

And the Smoking Bomber hits her in the leg in the same place as Escalation cleared out some of the dark energy, and the girl's eyes flare red again, and her back straightens while she's in the air, immense wings keeping her aloft. "BE GRATEFUL!" she cries out, waving her hands like a symphony as purple fire flares up and replaces pink fur with purple-black-red mottled hell-fur in the patch that was injured.

Her waving hands emit a tremendous pulse of brilliant pink light with the edges fired by that purple-black flame, just SHOVING the heroes toward the pit traps...

...which she hasn't noticed are rapidly filling with skeletons and rocket bits and pink glittering fake bone dust. It doesn't matter though!! She's pushing them AWAY!

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Slipping and sliding and yoinked from motion to stillness, and Sailor Moon's arms stop pinwheeling for fear of yoinking Sailor Jupiter along -

But then there's a force wall. And there's no point in worrying about yoinking, because -

They are shoved into the pit. Of uh, bones and rocket bits and dust.

Sailor Moon falls first, because that's comedy, the smallest on the bottom.

Also, she does a Wilhelm scream. Why?

To pretend she's DEAD!

Adrien Agreste has posed:
"Wow, Mini-Mothra there really has some felines about this situation!" Cat Noir moves back a step. Two. One foot is firm but the other he can feel the toe slip back on forcing him to grasp his staff tighter so that he doesn't slip back into the pit just yet. Skeletons WERE coming at him though, and apparently some ROCKETS too now, which causes him to finally just... Push off.

With a very flippant grin he leaps backward, staff in hand, and just hangs in the air before gravity takes him down with a yelp as he just vanishes into the pit and it's glitterific contents. 'Safely' out of range. Except for being IN the pit so far as can be seen.

Makoto Kino has posed:
Sailor Jupiter gets maybe a moment or two to regret a few of her recent choices, as the skeletons come swarming at her - and therefore also at Sailor Moon, since she charged so hastily to the other senshi's assistance--

And then it really stops mattering, because Fem lets loose with that massive pulse of pink like and purple darkness. Jupiter tries, for a heartbeat, to brace herself against it, and maybe she almost succeeded... but when Sailor Moon goes over the edge, the distraction unbalances her.

She does not actually land on Sailor Moon. Somehow. She makes one of those three-point Marvel movie landings instead, unsteadied by being on piles of pink bones and glittery dust and other debris.

"So," she says in a deadpan undertone. "We're in a pit. Now what?"

In all honesty, it's not very deep at this point. If she stands up straight she'll probably stick right out of it.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Literally the only thing that stops Tuxedo Kamen's miniature panic from turning into full-blown panic is that he knows in his bones that Sailor Moon isn't dead, despite the Wilhelm scream.

His arms pinwheel and he gets knocked back, sliding along the floor, buffeted by the pink energy wave-- and he sees Cat Noir and Sailor Moon and Sailor Jupiter in the pit and contrives to fall in without falling on.

He doesn't scream though.

Instead he hurriedly presses a rose into Sailor Moon's hands and whispers urgently, "Bow broke her henshin with one of these, and charged it to explode. Like you do."

A beat, and a shaky little laugh. "Please don't hug the explosive though."

Doom and Gloom Girls has posed:
Fem pauses in the sudden silence. There are pink light-construct skeletons jumping around and rattling and pointing wordlessly into the pit trap where the heroes fell, excitedly clattering, so it's not quite silence, but it's silent enough.

She lands and listens.

"Ohmigod I didn't think you'd actually do what I said??" she says in disbelief, and starts creeping closer to the pit trap. "Youko, Takako," she whispers, "I think I got them? Like, I think I really did it...? I got them for you??"

Her hands charge up bright pink, though, she doesn't trust this. She makes a few skeletons jump in after them and rattle around down there in the... in the honestly suspiciously shallow pit, hm.

Makoto Kino has posed:
There is a hasty, whispered conference at the bottom of the bone pit. Information, and a magical rose, exchanged; a plan thrown together. Two words are all Sailor Jupiter requires. Four, at the most.

Trusting Tuxedo Kamen and Cat Noir to manage the skeletons crowding into the confined space, she shifts from her combat crouch into a stabler position, braced and kneeling, hands free. Lacing her fingers together, she holds her hands out and down, poised like a sling offered to Sailor Moon.

And when the Senshi of the Moon is ready, when she trusts her weight to Jupiter's waiting hands...

With a powerful surge of motion, Sailor Jupiter hoists Sailor Moon high into the air, flinging her clear out of the pit and over the circled skeletons on a ballistic trajectory aimed right at Fem.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Honestly Tuxedo Kamen's not entirely sure what to do about the pink skeletons starting to crowd them, are they still supposed to be pretending to be dead while the fastball special gets set up? He sort of-- grabs their ankles, unsure of what else to do.

Once Usagi's launched, though, he shoves at them, taking another rose out and stabbing through two of them, kicking another one away, watching to see what happens outside the pit--

Adrien Agreste has posed:
Cat Noir didn't even land fully in the pit. He didn't need to: That staff of his could extend and grow as needed, so he ends up a few feet off the ground grasping onto it. Of course the 'ground' was subjective here given the pits had filled up quite nicely with a bunch of fight-detris and skeletons that were destroyed.

Plus a few extra for oomph.

"If that doesn't work," he offers quietly to the plotters, "I can Cataclysm but I only get one shot." This he warns of as he drops down to his feet finally and starts to, as quietly as possible, take out the kneebaps of the skeletons by swinging his staff behind their legs so they tumble down. Lots of bone rattling but not so much in the fighty noises department. So far.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Somehow, she managed to avoid getting squished, and as Sailor Jupiter lands beside her, in a perfect hero pose, and Chat Noir lands on his feet like, well, a cat, and Tuxedo Kamen lands on feet -

In normal circumstances, she would want to know why everyone else was able to land on their feet, but she landed on her face. But these are not normal circumstances, and they're safe and in the pit and the enemy hopefully thinks they all died, because she screamed, because that's what people do when they fall -

And Mamoru has pressed a rose to her hand.

Bow... she clenches her fist around the rose, and nods, just once, throat tight.

"I know what to do." It's a just a whisper, because she can hear the enemy speaking, and she thinks they're dead, and - And she turns her head, looking right at Sailor Jupiter, then to Cat Noir, and finally back to Tuxedo Kamen, worse for wear and standing strong and -

"Throw me."

This, to Sailor Jupiter, who doesn't need to hear anything else.

Sailor Moon steps onto her laced fingers, and flies not of her own power.

Poor Fem will only just barely get a chance to see her coming, a blur of blue and red and gold, and hear her voice as she cries out -

"Moon Rose -"

No throwing this rose. There's too much at stake, and the enemy can fly. The DG Girls have taken too many of her people, she's not risking anything else -

And the rose glows as Sailor Moon's fist sinks into Fem's gut, pointed stem driven into her gut. Blood, hot and sticky, gushes over her bare hand. Sailor Moon's full weight slams into Fem, and she grabs her, holds her, even as the henshin breaks, even as her wings start to vanish -

"I'm sorry about your friends!" And the thing is, she really does sound sorry. There's pain in her voice, raw, aching. There are tears in her eyes, as she stares at the other girl, face to face, unable and unwilling to look away as those eyes go wide with pain and shock.

But the tears aren't for Fem. Aren't for the girl with the rose in her gut, the girl who doesn't have a henshin anymore, hits the ground first. Sailor Moon holds the rose in place, even through the collision, cosmic energy, love made power, flowing into it. It glows, glows, glows, filled with that power, too much to be called back, even if she dared, even if she was willing to risk that the henshin was broken for good.

Sailor Moon sucks a deep breath in and chucks the girl as far as she can, Mamoru's voice ringing in her ears - don't hug the explosive.

"Brass Knuckles."

The rose detonates. There's an explosion, that Sailor Moon doesn't look at - she doesn't want to see what that magic does to a person, to flesh. Her bangs hang in her eyes.

"But I'm not that sorry," she murmurs. The tears weren't for Fem. But they still fall.

Doom and Gloom Girls has posed:
There's a blue and red and gold blur and words, yelled out, and Fem's eyes snap to glowing bright red in less than a heartbeat's time, but it's not - quite - enough. It's not quite enough time for Metallia to jerk Fem out of the way, and in that span of less than an elevated heartbeat there's a rose embedded high in Fem's pink furred abdomen and she's staggered back a few feet and almost knocked over.

It's absolutely not Fem driving anymore, because a slithering voice comes out of her throat despite the intense pain that must cause with what's probably a pierced diaphragm and all the wind knocked out of her, bleeding on Sailor Moon as Moon offers her condolences:

"You think that would be good enough for this fool of a girl? Murderer--" and Metallia laughs and it's a horrifying grating wheeze.

The henshin does break, the wings vanish, and it's just a surprisingly wide-eyed girl with a cloud of wavy ash-brown hair staring in shock as the rose begins to glow brighter and brighter. She makes a choked little sound before Metallia's back in her eyes trying to take the rose with its hooks out of her gut, and then Moon shoves her away, throws her away, and finishes her incantation.

The detonation is epic, gold and silver light and glowing petals all exploding at once; it spins the girl around, and no one sees-- thank goodness no one sees--

--as Metallia tries to knit the girl back together, tries to bring back the henshin and make a jerking puppet out of her, tries to pull the pieces back in and make a glowing purple-black fire patch up and down her front, but there's not enough left to support that, and the demon abandons her collapsing host.

When the light constructs all break and fade away to nothing, it's darker in the cavern, now lit only by what light the mahoujin have and the eerie greenish glow coming from phosphorescent rock crystal in the cursed walls.

It's darker and the growing pool of blood from what's left of the spattered nightmare scene of Mika Harada's death is black on the stone floor.

No one can see, other than the back of the girl in a school uniform, cloud of fluffy hair strangely untouched on the side of her not pressed to the bloody floor.

Makoto Kino has posed:
Standing at her full height, Makoto is just tall enough that she can see out of the pit. With all the skeletons crowded around, she can only kind of see the results of her throw... which might be just as well. There are things she can't think about right now, not if she's going to be of any help to anyone else.

And in any case, there's not a lot of time to really process much, because with Fem gone all her constructs are disappearing. Including the mass of junk they're standing on. She gets, really, just enough time to realize there's a problem and act on it by, uh

seizing Cat Noir and just kind of yeeting him up out of the suddenly much deeper pit.

In the wake of this, there's a dull thud that may or may not be Sailor Jupiter landing on her butt, and an annoyed sound.

A beat. Another. Then a low, hollow whistling sound, like a breath blown out steadily over the mouth of the world's biggest bottle, as a wind from nowhere gusts up out of the hole in the ground in a tight spiral. Soon enough, Sailor Jupiter floats into view, hair and fuku ruffling wildly, haloed around the edges with a bright green glow.

"Everybody okay?" she asks, only a little disgruntled.

Adrien Agreste has posed:
Cat Noir watches with a grim nod as Sailor Moon tells Jupiter to throw her. It was a solid plan. He was backup, but he'd seen Sailor Moon fight often enough that he knew this was a strong choice. Besides that... He didn't know what had happened, exactly, but the talk and they walk they looked he would guess they'd lost some from their side.

He might not be the sharpest at making plans himself, but he was observant.

Speaking of observant, a quick glance at the skeletons and the pit traps and--- "Wait she said she had the skeletons *dig* these--"

The thought dies quickly as the skeletons start to vanish beneath his feet. Just in time for Jupiter to catch the back of his collar and yeet him out of the hole. Oddly this was not an unusual event for Cat as he flies into the air tucking into a roll to land on his feet again.

He *could* have just used his staff to launch him out, and was about to but he could also live with a save from a friend.

"I know I'm a cat, but I didn't realize I was a ragdoll," he quips hoping, trying, to lighten the mood just a bit. A quick nod comes as he stands dusting his chest and side off with quick claps of his hands. "No worse for the wear here," he attests only to look around at all of them with a worried expression. "You guys... Haven't seen Naru recently, have you? I lost her awhile ago." Quite awhile.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
While Sailor Jupiter's calling up the wind, after she's thrown Cat Noir out of the rapidly emptying pit, Tuxedo Kamen vaults out of it on his own power -- and he looks at Sailor Moon's back, and he looks opposite her at the crumpled figure on the floor, and he makes the deliberate decision to go to Usagi first, enveloping her in an almost crushingly tight hug, kissing the top of her head.

"I have to make sure," he whispers to her, rose already carefully in hand, not scraping against Usagi-- "I'm sure, but I have to make sure. I'll be right back, okay? Then we can leave."

And he slips away, feet tapping so lightly on the stone floor of the cavern, bringing a rose-shaped misericorde to the fallen Fem. He's probably the only one here who won't throw up on seeing what's become of her, and after he crouches for a second with his bare hand touching her neck, he's already coming back.

"I'm fine," Mamoru answers Makoto automatically, briefly putting his hand on the back of her shoulder as he walks back to Usagi, and he shakes his head at Cat Noir. "I haven't seen her since... since... for a couple of hours. She's probably fine."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Sailor Moon stands frozen stock-still, staring at the twitching, contorting body of a girl in a school uniform, horribly, guiltily grateful that it's not her own school uniform, that the real girl behind the moth isn't someone she knows -

Blood drip, drip, drips from her gloveless hand. The color is too dark to be a perfect match to the glove that's drawn up to her elbow, the spatter not reaching as far, but sticky, cooling substance has painted nearly the whole of her hand with color.

The constructs break. Sailor Jupiter saves Chat Noir and then herself from the pit, Mamoru vaults himself out, and she barely reacts when Mamoru hugs her.

She squeezes her eyes shut, when he goes to check the body, and somehow, somehow it's that final confirmation that makes the queasy, sick feeling in her stomach tilt.

She runs to the edge of the pit, drops to her knees, and vomits messily over the edge.

The look in her eyes. Shocked, disbelieving.

The warmth of her body, of her blood, as Sailor Moon shoved her way, knowing what was coming, knowing what would happen -

The spray of blood, and thank every god the light blocked the view of everything else that happened to her.

She cries, while she does, great, gulping, hiccupping sobs as she spits and pants and tries to forget the look in her eyes, tries not to panic at the mention of Naru, who she hasn't seen even once since -

"At this point," she pants, voice ragged, "No news is good news."