Mars was interesting to work out, especially considering her vastly different portrayals between the manga and first anime. Balancing aloofness with temper was a challenge, and I hope I pulled it off. Because really, Rei might have the most to be upset about and hurt by in her personal life; given her father's actions she's got good cause to doubt men and relationships in general and there's probably plenty of anger about what she's had to go through.

I don't own Sailor Moon in any way, shape, form, or part.


Rei Hino has had to seriously consider that she may tend towards abusive relationships, and the possibility scares her like nothing else in the world.

This is because she is not delusional enough to believe that she would always (if ever) be the victim in such cases.

She covered the cycle of abuse in her school's psychology class, and she thinks she fits the symptoms frighteningly well.

It disgusts her to ever consider it, but Rei Hino may well be her father's daughter.

Takashi Hino is not a soft man. In fact, his daughter has at times compared his heart to a lump of coal. He ignores those he has no use for, stoically holds his ground in the face of those above him, and verbally tears apart those who are unwise or unlucky enough to stumble into his path. Rei's epiphany came during one of her worse beratings of Usagi's bad habits, when she realized a little too late that she had used almost verbatim a few phrases she had heard her father throw around during his rants, both at her or about his political opponent of the month.

It prompted one of the only apologies Rei has ever deigned to utter, which so caught Usagi by surprise that she insisted Ami spend the next half hour scanning Rei for some form of Nega-minion mind-control. It embarrassed Rei enough that she ended up breaking her private resolution to better hold her temper that very evening, to her (absolutely top-secret) shame.

Nor is her princess and first real friend the only relationship where she is frightened of her own actions. An exasperated comment from Yuichirou about how she thinks he can never do anything right prompted another review of her own actions that left Rei upset with herself. She would hate to admit it aloud, but truthfully Yuichirou does a pretty good job at the Shrine.

Not as good as her, obviously, but she has a decade more experience than him, on top of the fact that he has no latent spiritual abilities. It needs to be said that he always tries, and while he may be occasionally inept the work always gets done in the end. He actually makes for a relatively good apprentice, and eases the workload enough that she doesn't feel guilty about having a social life.

She's tried to be nicer to him, including agreeing to one (somewhat awkward) date when he off-handedly asked her out during Golden Week. If nothing else, the look on his face when she told him to be ready by six, and that he'd better have shaved if he valued his life, would have made it a worthwhile endeavor.

And to her pleasant surprise, it wasn't a half-bad experience in the least. The restaurant was classy enough for her tastes without being oppressive, they had the chance to talk about their lives before meeting each other, and the night ended with a walk through the park.

Miraculously, there wasn't even a youma attack to interrupt them halfway through. Perhaps she had been a bit unfair in judging all men to be like her father and Kaido.

Which wasn't to say that it was perfect, either. His eyes kept slipping to her neckline during dinner, and several of his unthinking comments made her want to start off her response by slapping him, and see where her fury took her. In fact, she ended up forgoing the good-night kiss on the cheek she'd planned—not just out of a sense of punishment, but also because she didn't want him to realize that she'd kept from lashing out at him by biting her lip hard enough to draw blood.

Still, the fact that he'd stiffened up when she took his arm or pulled him into a hug was a little upsetting. She was a girl, dammit, and it wasn't like she actually posed a threat to him! Well, Sailor Mars could fry him in under three seconds, but if it ever came down to a fight Yuichirou Kumada was a head taller and fifteen kilograms heavier than Rei Hino, and it wasn't because he was fat; while not ripped, he had a surprising amount of muscle even before he started doing more intensive work at the Shrine.

He was scared of her, and that she might hurt him, and even though Kaido had never hit her and her father only once she knew how children usually reacted to touch when they had been hurt before. His home life wasn't the happiest, she gathered, but there had been none of that ingrained reaction when he first arrived at the temple—it was all her.

She'd been so preoccupied with this problem that she'd turned it into a school report, discussing how abusive relationships were so often played for comedy purposes in entertainment media—Love Hina, Ranma ½, some elements of Naruto and Slayers as well as half a dozen other series she read—and what effects that might be having on their societal perceptions of violence. She got an A+, but no personal closure on the subject, and her temper was not easy to keep reigned in.

She still snapped at Usagi, and she still waved the broom at Yuichirou, but she was aware enough now to catch herself half of the time, and feel repentant whenever she didn't.

Rei also has a new resolution. The next time she sees her father, she's not going to waste time sniping and arguing if she can help it. Instead she's going to ask about his childhood, and her other grandparents, and what it was that made him who he is.

Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.


Realistic? Or at least accurate? She has a lot of defense mechanisms that risk turning into the kind of attack mechanisms she originally defended herself against. Sort of like the porcupines' dilemma. The spines act as a wonderful defense for keeping away enemies, but they keep away friends as well.

Next up is Jupiter and her...well, I had to get a bit creative for her, but I think I pulled it off.