When her eyes opened, she groaned at where she was. She didn't want to be here.

"M'lady, you're awake," a familiar said in relief.

"Atlanta. How did I get here?" she asked tiredly, folding her hands over her stomach.

"Lady Autumn brought you back, of course." The white mare that was speaking to her walked around, hooves making gentle clicking sounds. "You have been healed of your black-out spells, she said." The beautiful unicorn turned to look at her.

"Yes."

"She also told me the predicament of the senshi." The blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "And of your own."

"Atlanta, I told you about that already!" she groaned, gently probing her ribs for soreness. There was, of course, none.

"Of your cousin LaVear?"

The woman's hand collapsed against her side. "Atlanta, please, no more talk of the enemy."

"Yes, m'lady." The unicorn lifted a front hoof and tapped the ground with it. "Loki sends his apologies for your leg. He-" She was cut off as a high-pitched scream of a wild cat echoed through the room. "If you'll pardon me, Lady Solar..."

"Yes yes, go ahead," she said, waving a hand. When the unicorn had cantered out of the room, she sat up and swung her legs over the bed. Lifting her silky white dress, she saw no bruising from the flag incident and stood up.

Lady Solar walked over to a shimmering ball and stared at it. There was Autumn, talking to Rini. Trista was riding the roan gelding again and looked up, as though sensing her, and smiled. Darien was on a date with Serena. Michelle and Amara were playing music, which halted momentarily at her passing. The other four girls were shopping. Luna, Artemis, and Diana were at the arcade, monitoring things as she was. She watched the two older felines' tails fluff at her prescience.

Taking a deep breath, she reached in her heart for her cousins. Her hands on the shimmering globe before her, she poured all her heart, mind, and soul song into it, desperately trying to find them. She was rewarded with their far away voices. She could not make out their words, but their voices were enough, for she hadn't heard them in over a thousand years. Tears ran down her face and struck the globe. Quite suddenly she could see her cousins. They stopped talking immediately.

*

Ocean felt it first, a faint lingering of her cousin's being. She thought nothing of it; that happened a lot when she was missing her. But then, all of a sudden, she saw Sky's eyes widen as she looked behind her. Whirling around, she saw a faint apparition of Atia. The blonde walked up to Ocean, then up to Atia.

Her outstretched hand went right through the fog. "Atia. You're alive, aren't you? God, I want to come home!"

She must've looked puzzled, for Ocean walked up to them and added, "Serenity said we cannot come back until we've felt the pain of a thousand knives in our hearts."

Lady Solar opened her mouth, but she couldn't get anything out. She shook her head and lifted her hands, trying futile to make them work into hand signals. "We...need...your...help..."

Suddenly a dark tidal wave rose up and drowned over the hologram. When it settled into a thick black pool, then sizzled into nothing, the two cousins knew she was gone.

*

Lady Solar shrieked as her powers backfired and all but kicked her back to the Solar Orbit. The explosion through her hands sent her falling back and caused her to land on her backside - hard. She stared at the globe in dismay and saw black.

Shaking her head, she stood. "Enough is enough." In a roar of purple flame, she vanished.

*

The horse Trista was riding didn't seem to mind the sudden eruption of flame that reared up at its left side. Trista stared at it as Atia materialized. "Where were you?" she asked breathlessly, jumping from the saddle and meeting her friend half-way in an embrace.

"Autumn sent me to the Orbit."

"Damn; she had us all believing you went back to Gastadylia for the past two weeks."

"TWO WEEKS?!" The horse did mind the sound and reared up in alarm. "I'VE BEEN GONE FOR TWO WEEKS?!"

"Calm down!" Trista pleaded, grabbing her friend's shoulders. "Yes, you've been gone for two weeks. Autumn said that unicorn of yours kept you under a complete healing sleep the entire time. There's been no attacks, okay? We're all alive. We're fine."

*

Autumn and Rini were lying on their backs, watching the sunset, when Rini spoke up. "She's not in Gastadylia, is she?"

The brunette closed her eyes briefly. "No. No, she's not."

"What is the Solar Orbit, Autumn? Why does the unicorn call her 'm'lady'? Please tell me."

The other was silent for a moment, then sat up quietly. "The Solar Orbit is an invisible orbit that surrounds the solar system and lies just beyond Pluto. Only, it's not really an orbit; it's a huge stretch of land. Like an elongated and stretched out planet, I guess.

"Anyway, Atia used to live there before she became the princess. You see, she had another life and another role - she was Lady Solar, the Protector. Of course no one knew she existed, but she didn't mind. It was her role to defend the planets and keep bad things out of the solar system. Which she did.

"Atlanta and the wolves are just three examples of the different kind of life on that Orbit. See, Atia collects mythical animals and animals that really shouldn't exist. She gets them from all across the universe and brings them back to the Orbit. She has quite an...extensive...collection.

"They call her by royalty titles because, in every aspect, she is royalty. A long time ago, before the Silver Millennium, she was the most powerful being ever to exist anywhere. She's known wherever life exists. Nothing could defeat her." Autumn shook her head. "Nothing."

"So, what happened to her powers?" Rini inquired.

"She doesn't know." Autumn stared up at the sky. "One day, she wanted to try something different, to become part of a real live family. She thought it wouldn't last very long, but once she started...she couldn't tear herself away from it. Well, let me try that again. She decided to be born into a family, so she made herself become reborn. When she was born, she still had her memories and retrained her ability to be like an adult. She had some powers, too. She never used them much until she became a sailor. Even so, she found she didn't have her powers anymore. I mean, strong ones yes, but not her universal ones. She doesn't know how to get them back." Rini saw tears in her eyes. "And if she doesn't figure it out in a hurry, she'll have to fight Sebradon without them - or die trying."

*

Atia shook her bangs out of her eyes and ran her gaze over the parchment, then scribbled something down on a piece of paper. The thing vanished, and as she watched her moving hand, she grabbed another scroll and glanced at it. She wrote something else down, then read what she was writing.

What she saw made her face flush with anger, and her fingers tightened threateningly around her pen, and her other fist balled. With a shout of rage, she jumped to her feet, slamming her chair to the ground.

"Think," she whispered, trying to make her suddenly surfaced temper go away. "Just think. If you can't have your powers to fall back on, at least you can your physical condition. That's it. Just...work out." As she had been talking, she'd been grabbing her keys and heading out the door. She jogged down the steps of her apartment and opened the main door. "And maybe you can work on anger management as you do so."