Atia tapped her pencil against her desk. She wasn't thinking about the blank test in front of her; she was too busy thinking of other things. Suddenly Darien kicked her sharply in the foot, and she jumped ever so slightly. She glanced up at the clock, and her eyes widened. Five minutes?! But moments ago she'd had fifty minutes! She hadn't meant to daydream that long...

Within moments she had every question on the first two pages done and found herself staring at the last page. The only question at the top of the page had her stumped. Some psychology class! she groaned inwardly.

'Who are you?' the question read.

Her pencil tapped the paper, then drew back, then touched it again, then drew back. She continued until Darien kicked her foot again. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye, she knew. How could she possibly say who she was when she wasn't sure herself? She put the only thing she knew to put -

'I am who I have always been, who I always will be. I am I.'

The bell rang. Atia glanced over at Darien's paper and saw a page-full to backside essay. She smiled as they both stood and handed in their tests. Darien stretched with a groan. "My hand is killing me. Did you even get done?"

"Yes, I did; thanks. I didn't realize it was so late."

"Not a prob." He slung his briefcase over his shoulder. "Boy, I'm glad tomorrow's Friday." He fumbled in his pockets and produced his keys, then tucked them back in, a precaution to make sure they were still there. "I'm going to skip study hall today; I'm glad I have the option."

"What are you going to do?" Atia inquired as they walked down the hall.

"I'm going to watch your gym class."

"Oh, really?" Atia asked with a smile. "Watch me make a fool of myself, hm?"

Before Darien could reply, Amara ran up behind him and clamped her hands over his eyes. Darien yelped and stopped in surprise. "Verrrry funny, Amara!"

"How'd you know it was me?" Amara chuckled, dropping her hands.

"Who else I know is still here on Thursday afternoons?"

"He does have a point," Michelle laughed.

Five minutes later Atia and Amara found themselves standing with the other group of college students that shared their gym class. The teacher announced it a free day, surprising them all. Atia immediately looked over at the un-even bars.

"You're kidding?" Amara said flatly, following her gaze.

"Not at all." Atia jogged to the contraption and dusted her hands in the powdered chalk, then walked back to the beginning runway. Kneeling down into a runner's stretch, she lurched off down the small track and jumped onto the spring, grabbed the lowest bar as her hands came in contact with it.

She spun around a couple of times, releasing the speed from her sprint. When her feet pointed towards the sky again, she turned around on her hands, then dropped her legs in a straddle split, toes touching the bar, and swung around again. With an extra push, she swung herself back up and turned back around, then dropped and jumped for the high bar.

After a another couple of minutes of jumping between the bars, she did a full layout off and landed without a wobble to find, feet neatly side by side and arms to the sides, wrists down and fingers splayed, as though finishing at a competition.

The moment her arms came down, though, she grabbed her left wrist and rubbed it ruefully, a funny look of surprise on her face. She looked up to find the rest of the class staring at her in shock, and she giggled, a teardrop forming by her head. "I used to be a gymnast." There were various forms of acknowledgement, then the students went about their business. Atia exhaled a mushroom, then stared at her wrist again. Funny; she didn't remember turning it wrong.

She strode over to her duffel bag and pulled out a wrist brace, strapped it on quietly. "Atia! That was amazing!" Darien crowed, walking over to her.

"Thanks." Atia smiled. "I love the bars."

"That's easy to tell." Amara walked up to her as well. "You looked like a pro up there."

Atia smiled again. The paleness she felt in her face was covered by a light blush of excursion. "What's that?" she asked, pointing at a stretch of long rubber mat.

"That? It's a tumble track, I think. Yeah, that's it." Darien watched her somewhat intently.

"Oh." Atia blinked, then walked over to it. She would've felt better in a leotard, but running pants and her T-shirt would have to do. She tucked the T-shirt in, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath, holding it. She could feel her hammering heart slow, her tension flow to the palms of her hands and the arches of her feet. Opening her eyes, she ran seven fast strides, then launched into a cascade of gymnastics moves.

She didn't feel what she was doing; it came naturally. She closed her eyes and let the tension in her hands and feet direct her. She had done this so long ago, only it hadn't been for fun then. It had been hard training, tactics to save her life. Now...

Atia felt herself slowing down, then doing a front aerial and landing in the splits. Her eyes flew open at the hard impact of ground, and she stared ahead for a moment before standing. Her hand came up and touched her chest, over her heart; it was racing again. Again she willed it to slow. Again she willed her tension away. She stared at her hands.

They were no longer white from chalk and were quite red. Her right pointer finger had a scratch on it; she sucked on it ruefully for a moment, enough to make it stop bleeding, and let it fall to her side, glancing back down the track behind her. "How far I've come."

*

Trista grabbed Atia's wrist and pointed at bright flash of fire. "There. Transform."

Atia looked away, then looked at Trista. "Solar System Power!!" Trista's eyes widened as Atia's eyes became unseeing, blind to the world. When the transformation was complete, she looked at Trista, sapphire teardrop shimmering. The light died, and Solar's eyes became normal.

"It's that crystal." Trista tapped it. Solar's eyes crossed as she attempted to look up at it. "When it shines, you can't remember."

"But I've always had that crystal and never had that problem." Solar's deft fingers removed the jewel from its position. She held it in her hand, rolled it over. "It's the same as it's always been."

"Give to Mercury and let her scan it with her computer. Pluto Planet Power!!"

"But, Pluto, I..." her voice faltered. "I still don't remember, and I'm not even wearing the damn thing!"

"Give it time, Solar," Pluto said gently, laying a hand on her friend's arm. "Come on. They'll be waiting."

As they ran, stride for stride, Solar shook her head and scratched her forehead. The dangling crystal beads itched with nothing to hold them down. "Gerah!" In a fit of anger, she pulled the things out of her hair and stuffed them into her fist. She shook her bangs out of her eyes.

They arrived just in time to dodge a cyclone frenzy of fire. "LaVear!" Pluto shrieked, and Solar echoed the cry as they saw the pink-haired girl before them.

"LaVear, God no, wake up!" Solar cried, looking horrified.

The enemy girl stared at Solar and Pluto, her upside-down heart vanishing for a moment. "Princess...cousin-"

"LaVear, please!" Solar looked near tears, cutting her off just before her name was spoken. "Oh, wake up!"

"Trista..." the girl's voice trailed off, then black flames cannoned up around her, and when they vanished, the black heart was still there. The girl shot fire again, and Solar barely managed to dodge it.

"No, LaVear, stop!"

"Don't do this!"

"Please!" Solar and Pluto's voices chorused their plea.

LaVear laughed wickedly. "Sorry, girls! Times are changing!" She struck out yet again and managed to get Destruction, who jumped before an astonished Mini Moon.

The senshi, minus Pluto and Solar, struggled to fight her, but they couldn't land a mark on her.

"Solar, please, help us! She's kicking our butts!" Sailor Moon shouted, running up to her.

"She's my cousin! I can't kill my cousin!"

"She'll kill you and us all if you don't stop her!"

"Solar!" LaVear sauntered up to her. "Come on, you and me. Let's go." Solar stared up at her. Her eyes...they weren't right...they were black...LaVear's eyes were dark blue. Tears gathered at the edges of her eyes. With one deft movement, LaVear grabbed her arm and hauled the sailor to her feet.

"LaVear, no! Have you forgotten everything? Everything we worked for in the past?" Solar instinctively blocked a punch, then a kick. "Don't you remember me? Or Trista, Lia, Sky, Giallia, Demetrie, Tier, Savah, or even Tatanya? What about your sister? Have you forgotten Ocean? LaVear, please, stop!"

At Ocean's name, the girl froze, one hand secure on Solar's arm and the other inches from her face. With a cry, the pink-haired enemy stumbled back. "Cousin, Trista...please, forgive me..."

Solar's eyes widened as a freak streak of red lightning raced from the sky and struck LaVear where she stood. "Oh, no...no...LaVear!!" she screamed, cringing away from the giant shadow eagle that erupted inches from her face.

The force of the bird's arrival threw her, Sailor Moon, and Pluto back, and Pluto yelped as she crashed into an oak tree. Solar grabbed Sailor Moon and pulled herself and the leader to one side as the bird's wing flapped up and cannoned into the air.

"Mercury!" The blue-haired girl hurried to her. "Analyze this and look for anything abnormal." Solar thrust the sapphire teardrop into the younger one's hand, and she dropped the crystal beads to the ground. "Worthless," she muttered, then jumped to her feet. "Senshi! Form up in a circle, spread out, back! On the count of three, shoot to the sky! One...two...wait for it...three!"

There was an ear-shattering shriek, and the bird exploded into a cloud of black fog, then was all but blown away. It was gone.

"Solar!" Mercury said urgently, hurrying up to her. "This jewel...my computer..." Solar grabbed both and stared at the frantically flashing screen.

"'Nakeha quarin oaask?'" she murmured aloud. Her eyes widened, and she thrust the computer back into Mercury's hands, then reared her left arm, hand holding the crystal, up and threw it back towards the ground, releasing the jewel. It shattered violently into the ground, sending blue shards everywhere. Upon hitting the ground, the shards turned black and smoked heavily, then suddenly vanished. Solar glared up at the sky. "I know you're there! You're going to pay for this, Sebradon! You're going to pay!"

Suddenly a voice laughed, cackling around them. "That's what you think, Sailor Solar. I have somebody...very dear...to you in my company. She's just dying to see you and Trista again..."

"Ha!" Actually, the sound Solar made was beyond putting into words, sounding more like the cry of a baby bird being choked or someone being punched in the gut. She looked ready to faint, one hand over her mouth. "He can't. There's n-no way."

Suddenly man materialized beside Solar. "Anything is possible, love."

"No. No, it can't be." Solar whirled to face him, staring at him with near-tears and hate-filled eyes.

"Ah, but it is." The man grabbed her lift wrist. Solar shrieked involuntarily in pain, trying to break way from his grasp. "Listen to me and listen to me good, Princess Saturn. I will do whatever it takes to kill the senshi. Once I do that, I'll search all reaches of life until I find your cousins, and then I'll bring all five of you together, and then I'm going to torture each one of you until you tell me where that damned Silver Crystal is!"

"Never!" Solar's free hand came up and sharply slapped his face. He released her in surprise, and Solar jumped up to grab the tree branch above her head, then swung back to sit on it. "You'll never kill them and as sure to hell you'll never find Ocean and Sky!"

"Anything's possible, princess. Anything."

Something about the way he said that made her pale. "Leave, Sebradon. You're on my turf now."

He chuckled. "It won't be your turf for long. I leave you with this one, simple task - if you show me the Silver Imperium Crystal before two months, I'll let all of you live."

Solar leaned over and held out the palm of her hand. There was a pale flash of light, and what appeared to be the Silver Crystal flashed into being. Sebradon's eyes widened, and Solar smirked. "Is this it? This shiny rock is all you want? No, Sebradon; I don't believe you." As he lunged for it, it vanished from her hand in a white puff of smoke.

"You son of a-" his right arm contracted, then spiraled out a ball of fire. Solar jumped out of the tree but was rewarded by a hail of splinters. Suddenly all Solar could see was black. When she saw again, it was just in time to dodge another blast of fire. Sebradon was about to strike at her again when he stopped and frowned. "In a split second, you've changed. But...how?"

Solar took a step back. "You're the one who has changed, Sebradon." Her voice, although with an icy edge, was different somehow. "Kawine malosa taa!!" With that, Sebradon involuntarily froze, staring at her incredulously. "It's just a spell. Certainly you remember my spells?" There was a flash of light around her. When it vanished, she was no longer a sailor scout but something different. [If you've ever seen the Scorpian King...well, you know what I mean.]

"Sorceress!" Sebradon spat.

"Very good." The woman that was once Solar pointed at him. "Thing of evil, be gone!" Sebradon vanished with a shout of fury and surprise. The woman looked at herself where the splinters had rained and saw red blood trickling down her side. "Shit."

"Now who are you?" Uranus asked evenly.

The woman didn't even look up. "I am the Sorceress of Saturn."

"How can you be a princess and a sorceress?" Neptune inquired skeptically.

"When you have three older siblings and a twin, it's very easy to do."

"What was wrong with the sapphire?" Mercury asked.

"It was bespelled. Triggered to make me forget when I'm not a sailor. And it was doing a hell good job of that, too!" she spat angrily, but her anger was not directed at the senshi. Beside her, the tree blazed furiously. The woman snapped her fingers, and it went out like a light. The blood and cuts up her side vanished, as did the injuries on the senshi from the pink-haired LaVear's attack.

The Sorceress flashed into Solar, who sank to her knees, staring up at the full moon. "How long it's been." A hand touched her shoulder, and she looked up at Pluto. "What are we going to do?"

"Kick his ass, of course. He brought back LaVear - who knows who else he'll bring back for us to fight!"

"You don't mean-"

"Yes. If he brings Serenity back, then we're done for."

"He wants the Crystal." Sailor Moon clutched her brooch. "You showed it to him, but it never left me."

"It was a duplicate, a hologram. It didn't really exist."

"You didn't give it to him," she whispered.

"Of course not."

"With all of his power, he cannot sense the Crystal?" Jupiter rose an eyebrow.

"I've hidden it from him with my powers, just like I've hidden Ocean and Sky from myself." Her fists clenched. "He doesn't want the Crystal. He was lying. He was trying to trick me into trying to save our lives, but it was a lie."

"Earlier...when we destroyed the bird...how did you know what you were doing?" Mars's question made her smile, ever so faintly.

"In the past, I trained all of you. That was one of the defense attacks that I taught you and my army."

"Now who are you?" Uranus asked again, never loosing her edge.

"The head of the Saturn army and the trainer of the prince and princesses of the Silver Millennium. As I said before, I am many people."

"You are a princess, a sailor scout, a sorceress, a trainer, an army captain, a guardian, a protector. But you are also a normal person between all this. I'd be more interested to learn about her than I would be about any of the others, for she is new to all of us, I'm sure," Uranus mused.

Solar smiled. "More so than you think."

The moonlight struck Solar and Pluto, almost making them glow. It was in that moment that senshi realized they were different, different from them and any other people they knew.