THE FOUR LOVERS: HAPPINESS IS A PHOENIX
                      by Ninx

Prologue
 Two months before Endymion and Serenity were to married,
the darkness broke through the Outer planets.
 They'd seen it massing along the edges of the Sol system
for months before, nearly right after Priam had died.  It
had furtively danced along the edges of the Sol, as if
seeking some way into the system.
 However it happened, they found it.  And so a brutal war
was raged among the Outer planets of Saturn, Uranus, and
Neptune; sometimes, a detatchment of the Blackness would
reach for Pluto, yet knocked away by some repellant force
that the other planets didn't posess.  The Earth and the
Moon people watched with fear present in their hearts;
families had scattered all over the system, and many feared
for their kin that lived in the Outers.  And then the
wounded civilians trickled in from the front, giving a name
to their enemy--the Negaverse.
 The Seers of Red and Blue trembled at it; the Crystal muted
itself if the name was mentioned in its presence. Archivists
and scholars dug deep into their tects and found legends,
fearful legends, of its terror.  For some survivors of deep
space attacks had fluttered in from time to time to give
descriptions of what this was and what drove it, though they
thought the power of the Crystal would keep it at bay. 
However, something had happened that drove it onward toward
the Moon...something odd.  
 Yet before it would press for the Moon, after its defeat of
the Outers, it stopped.  It didn't even try to touch
Jupiter, nor swarm among the Asteroid Belt. 
It..just...sat...there.
 No one knew why.
 No one would ever have a clear reason, except for a person
inside the Negaverse.  And really, could you trust one of
them?  
 Yet the story, the true story, somehow made its way into
history, and goes as this:
 While the Negaverse sat frustrated outside the system, its
leader and driving power, called by many different names and
prefering none, searched.  And searched.  And searched.  For
its avatar, Queen Barium, had died by through 'friendly'
fire, and no one within the kingdom had been suitable to
take her place.  Yet the mystical forces it controlled told
it there was a powerful woman to take her place right here,
in the prize before it.  Finally, it found her.
 She was a servant girl of base origin, of fiery red hair
and dark eyes, with the characteristic fangs of her little
sect of family.  There was magic within her, crystalline
magic, that with the right enhancement could be put to
excellent use.  And lastly, she just shapely enough to be a
Queen; one must use all attributes to rule, after all.  
 The girl accepted the offer of rule posed to her by the
Darkness, and it rapidly swirled around her, enhancing her
in dark ways.  Lastly, the whispering shadow asked her,
"What shall they call you?"
 The woman took the name of the one she served, and so Queen
Beryl was born.  
 Now the Negaverse surged into the system, overwhelming
planet after planet and after a few struggles, putting to
rest that Senshi opposition.  It waited before attacking the
Inner Planets to gather energy, and also because of a defect
the new Queen had noticed--lack of leaders.  Youma warriors
were much too petty to lead anyone else, and she herself
could not command the large force of warrios.  So where were
they to get their Generals from?
 It was then that Queen Beryl remembered the Guard of Earth,
and its Generals.  To her ruler she presented this, and it
was then that a special power was bestowed upon her.  For as
Metallia said, "It takes too mcuh useful energy to turn a
person from good to evil.  However, if we peel away the
surface and paste it upon someone else...we get a carbon
copy with one difference: it serves us.  Add a few touches
here, a few there, and who needs the original character of
the subject?  We shall strip what we need, and discard what
we don't."
 And so upon Beryl, the Negaforce bestowed the golden, dangerous 
and brutal power of DiC.

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