"So instead of having to become a youma, please kill me!"

She's lived this too many times to think he's not serious. This boy would rather throw his life away than to live as she has lived, reborn within the Darkness. Mercury glances away. She's lived this too many times to be disturbed, and yet something inside her won't be quiet. He's led her to the same place, she notes, a secluded side street, as if he was hoping to keep bystanders away.

"Youma Bunbo," she addresses him, "If there's a future you don't want to see, then fight to make the one you want."

Before he can even answer, there's a sound of mocking laughter. Zoisite arrives, and extracts the warrior youma reincarnated inside this pacifistic human boy. It's enormous, like a giant machine, fitted with razors for arms. The yellow rainbow crystal sealed within the monster carries a faint glow as it emerges. She reaches for it, but just then, the shitennou orders the youma to attack the sailor senshi.

Incredibly, impossibly, it attacks Zoisite instead. It rears back to its full, massive height and throws itself at its target. Even Mercury takes in a sharp breath of surprise at the boy who managed to retain his human mind even in a youma's form. The force of the blow knocks the crystal from the general's hands, and she recovers herself to spring forward and snatch it up.

She doesn't fully understand it herself, but in that moment, Mercury becomes conscious that she wants it to end differently this time.

(ooc: waking life version of events from several ic years ago here. characters replying will be able to help it diverge and change the ending.)