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In an evaluation of various techniques for a next-generation search for neutrino-less double beta decay, I arrived, quite unexpectedly, at the conclusion that a specific high-pressure xenon gas TPC may offer an optimum combination of excellent energy resolution and event reconstruction, critical performance factors for background rejection. The optimum energy resolution appears achievable through the use of a proportional scintillation readout method, similar to that used in recent WIMP searches with liquid xenon (LXe). Xenon exhibits a rich phenomenology, especially evident in LXe, where anomalously large fluctuations between scintillation and ionization exist. These fluctuations are absent in high-pressure xenon gas (HPXe) at practical densities such as ~20 bar. Since the WIMP searches exploit the ratio of scintillation to ionization to discriminate nuclear and electron recoil events, HPXe should, from this perspective, offer much superior rejection of gamma backgrounds in a xenon-based WIMP search. If this scenario is correct, two identical HPXe TPCs differing only in isotopic content may provide significantly more robust evidence for the existence of either signal. In this case, the arguably optimum detector for next generation searches at the few hundred kg level, for both purposes, is the same high-pressure xenon gas (HPXe) TPC.