Title: Fairest One
Author: Starsea
Theme: "Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together." - Petrarch
Genre: Dark
Version: Anime
Rating: PG-13

It was difficult to look on her. Oh yes, she was beautiful. Her skin was white as snow (too white) and her lips were red as blood (did she bathe in it like that infamous countess?) and her hair was as black as ebony. It was long hair. What was wrong with that? She knew plenty of people with long hair. Her own hair, when let down, brushed her ankles. Yet, this hair... somehow it was alive. It wasn't just hair, it was a mass of shadow. It gleamed strangely, sucking the light out of the air.

"Am I not beautiful?" she said, her voice like nails on a blackboard. "Am I not divine?" White spindle fingers massaged the smooth cheeks. "Far fairer than you, little girl. The dark is always more beautiful than the light." Her eyes gleamed with yellow malice. "Everyone loved the White Moon. Everyone worshipped that silver bitch. But now... everybody will see me. They will worship me."

She stood up and Sailor Moon flinched back, feeling the chains on her legs and arms. "I will be the fairest of them all, Princess. Every mirror will reflect me. Every eye will worship me. I shall be cloaked in velvet darkness and the light will be reviled and shunned."

Sailor Moon swallowed on a dry throat. "You are not fair. Beauty comes from within. Inside... you're rotten and empty."

"SILENCE!" Nehelenia moved forward, the fangs gleaming at the side of her mouth. "If I cannot eradicate your beauty, I will take it... I will swallow it." She bent, drool slipping from her mouth. "I will be the fairest of them all."