Note: I have noticed that the last lines of the scenes in memories have a tendency to become mysteriously un-italicized, oh well, just keep that in mind.

-Niamh

"…memories can be like wounds. They're not easily forgotten because they leave a scar as a constant reminder." "The Wishing Well" Charles De Lint

I think what he did to my face hurt most of all. Everything hurt, there were some things that caused more physical pain than the acid, but wounds heal and most scars can be hidden, but my face…It took a long time after that, for me to be able to cry again, I think the acid damaged my tear ducts or something. But now…now it seems like I cry all the time.

Things were getting worse, I could feel it, so could they. They looked at me as if they were watching some horrible disaster from a great distance. I could see the worry and the sadness that clouded their eyes when they came to me, I could hear the concern laced in their voices. I suppose it was a little like that for them, there was nothing they could do to make me better, no miraculous healing elixir. All they could do was watch and wait.

In truth, that was all I could do as well. The memories, the scars, refusing to be forgotten had taken control and all I could do was watch and wait until they had finished.

I found a job, nothing special, waitresing at a small café. The pay wasn't spectacular, but it was enough to pay for the rent in a small roach infested tenement building on the not so nice side of town. It was hard, the day I went to find an apartment. I was unused to worrying about finances and my search began far above my means.

I started in the nice part of town. The apartments there were all gorgeous, spacious, wonderfully decorated, and wildly expensive, so, reluctantly, I moved my search to the meaner sections of town. Even the apartments here were above my resources. I found myself increasingly embarrassed as I was forced to turn the realtors down. My hunt was then pressed into the parts of the town that were the most wretched. The search for housing then turned upside down. I found that I could (barely) afford the rooms here; the trouble now was finding one I could live in. The one I finally found wasn't so bad, I suppose. The roaches there were no larger than the roaches anywhere else (I had encountered ones the size of small dogs other places). The roof mostly kept the rain off my head and if I wrapped my self in a few blankets, it was almost warm. I was on the tenth floor of a building with no elevator, a building that more than a few miracles kept standing, but it was a room all my own, so I took what I could get.

At night, after ten hours of waiting tables, cleaning up spills and washing dishes, I dragged myself through the badly lit streets, struggled up the twenty flights of stairs and fell, exhausted, into my lumpy bed. I grew to be very self-centered there, I had to survive on my own and I didn't have time to worry about anyone else. Besides, it seemed that this place had it's own batch of super heroes and sailor moon was not needed. That was the one thing in my life at that time that I found myself thankful for. I knew that if I did nothing else I had to maintain a low profile, I could not let the scouts find me here, and I could not do that and fight in a colorful miniskirt at the same time.

It was a strange world I had landed myself in; not at all like the home I had left. The streets where teeming with inhabitants, not all of them human. There were pigs and turtles and god knew what else. It frightened me at first, to see so many strange things co-existing, I was worried, coming from a world full of racism and sexism and countless other detrimental –isms, that these creatures who where so different from each other, could not live in any sort of peace, but they did. Crime was relatively low, all things considered, and even in the section of town that I called home people had some semblance of safety.

I had mentioned the super heroes that inhabited this world; they were perhaps the ones to credit with this peace. They were warriors, men who fought for truth, justice and all that crap. I had not seen them, but they were spoken of as "golden warriors" fair-haired soldiers who carried a certain radiance about them. I had heard that these warriors had the ability to sense energy; I wondered if that wasn't the reason they started following me. I was walking home when I could feel one of them watching me, they followed me home and I could sense them through the night. I'm not sure how I knew it was them, it was simply a certainty that I had, someone was watching me and it was one of them. This went of to a few days before I got fed up.

I was walking home after a particularly long day at work when, under the soft orange glow of the streetlights, I was jumped by three men. I fought back as best I could, but I never did have any considerable strength while I was detransformed. The men dragged me back into the alley and began beating me senseless. Oddly enough this enraged me, if they were going to attack me they could at least take my money, then I would at least have a reason for it all. But they didn't seem at all interested in that, they just wanted the mindless violence. And through all of this some "golden warrior" sat in the shadows and watched silently, doing nothing. Finally I'd had enough. "Are you just going to lurk in the darkness forever, or are you going to give me a hand?" I yelled through already swollen lips. Just then I saw a bright light flash out of the corner and the men who had been beating me to a pulp a moment before fell to the ground. A man with sapphire eyes and improbable hair stepped from the shadows where the beam of light had been emitted. "Thanks." I said softly

"You could have handled them," he said.

"What?"

"I've been watching you for three days, you could have handled them."

I looked at him incredulously. "Look" I said, "I'm tired, and all I want to do now is drag myself home and crawl into bed. So thank you anyway, even if you refuse to be thanked. Goodbye." I turned to leave.

"Your hurt." He said.

Reluctantly I turned around. "Your observant." I said sarcastically. The man gave me a smirk that sent chills down my spine.

"Come on." He said, extending a hand to me. "I'll take you to my place, there are people who can help you there."

I looked at him, my distrust apparent in my eyes, but, as he had said, he had been watching me for three days now, if he had wanted to do something wouldn't he have already done it? I took his hand reluctantly, and then he did something I did not expect. He pulled me in close so that I was pressed against his chest.

"I-"

A soft chuckle rumbled in his chest. Something akin to a shiver ran up my spine, but whether it was pleasure or fear that incited this reaction I did not know. In a moment we were in the air, it took my breath away to see the blue-green beauty of this world, but soon we were flying too quickly for me to see anything at all. I slammed my eyes shut as a wave of nausea hit me and willed it to pass, it would not do to vomit all over this man's chest. Suddenly I felt my feet touch solid ground again and the journey that was traveled at light speed yet seemed to last forever was over and I opened my eyes.

I had been taken to one of the largest, and the most oddly shaped houses I had ever seen. It squatted low on the ground like a bubble on the surface of a pond and seemed to be made almost entirely of concrete. The man who had brought me there was already waiting impatiently in the doorway and I hurried to him.

I walked briskly through the gigantic building, following the man with impossible hair and an even stranger name. He had told it to me on the flight over, Trunks, I think it was, I wondered what on earth his mother had been thinking. We stopped finally when we reached what seemed to be some sort of medical wing. I was instructed to sit on a table as the man, Trunks, left to get somebody.

When he returned my throat tightened and my heart raced, following him was a blue haired woman in a white lab coat. 'Shit' I thought. But a moment later I realized that this woman was not the Mercurial scout. The woman examined me, patched me up and directed me to a room where I was to lie down and rest.

I did not rest, as much as I needed it I could not sleep. The bed in my horrible apartment was hard and more than a little lumpy, this bed however, was soft and downy. It was as if I were sleeping in the clouds. The problem was, I kept waking up just as soon as I had fallen asleep, afraid I would plummet to the ground.

The next morning I was introduced to Trunks' friends, the "golden warriors" I mentioned earlier. They called themselves "earth's special forces" I thought it sounded a little ridiculous, but I suppose it wasn't any sillier that running around in miniskirts and calling yourself a "scout".

"This is Usagi." Trunks said, "She's that girl we were talking about."

I suppose I should have been offended at being referred to as 'that girl', but, in truth, I wasn't paying any attention. I looked around in awe at the men; my earlier disdain for the golden fighters had all but vanished. These men absolutely radiated power, I had no way to sense their strength, no computer like Ami's, but I could feel it humming in the room.

"Not very powerful, is she?" One of them said.

"No." Trunks said simply, "she wouldn't stand against Freiza or the like, but I would guess she could hold her own against your regular crooks." This confused me; he knew that was wrong, he had seen those guys beat me to a bloody pulp.

The short man who had spoken earlier snorted indignantly, his eyes flashing. "Lot of good that'll do us."

Trunks shrugged, "you told me to watch her, so I did."

"We never told you to bring her here!" the man yelled vehemently. The men's anger rose and with it their power, its hum was almost unbearable now and I struggled to not stuff my fingers in my ears. Most of the men in the room glared angrily at each other, all except for two, one a short, bald man, the other tall and green stood in the back of the room looking on confused. I grew frightened as their anger flared higher; with a sense of fatalism I put my hand on Trunks' arm.

"Hey" I said, "calm down".

In his anger Trunks flung his arm out and I went flying into the wall. That seemed to diffuse the situation as well as anything could have. The two men who had been standing in the back rushed forward to help me up. Another two, a father and son as I remembered, came forward as well, their anger mostly faded from their eyes. "Are you alright?" the younger one asked.

"Yeah," I said, lifting a hand to my head, where a not so dull ache pounded. "Just got the wind knock out of me." While these four fussed over me the shorter one, whose hair stood straight up on his head, stalked out of the room. Trunks still stood in the center, his rage not yet dissipated, I swore I could feel it coursing through the air, but the others seemed not to notice.

This man frightened me; I would have to watch him.