Born by Fire, Bathed in Moonlight

by RightBeforeYouDream

On Earth, Usagi is still struggling to accept the impending responsibility of Crystal Tokyo when a strange sickness threatens to alter her destiny once again. Across the Universe, Seiya discovers a new power, one that forces him to chose between his love...or possibly his life. (A bit AU, but based off the beloved manga)

7. To Be A Sailor Soldier: Part 1

p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The heat of the first sun was a warning on her back./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"It reminded her of what she had already known when she had left Nehreen hours ago: she was running out of time./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She had disregarded turning into her male form. There was no need for inefficiency. What she needed was her sailor powers. Magic seeped through her legs and into the muscles of her horse; beast turned into machine and the two were a slingshot of shadow: the inner palace, their target./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Cutting their travel time in half, the outline of the city came into view just before dawn. Her lids struggled against the weight of sleep but she pushed forward. It would be done today. It had to be done today. She would rest and then tell everyone the truth—all that she knew of it./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She had hoped to slip back to her quarters in the cover of night./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"That plan slipped away as gold streaks of sunlight greedily ate up the indigo sky./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Violet hues licked at the heels of Midnight's hooves as they slowed from a gallop to an important trot. Now, fully within the city's stone walls, she was forced to slow down. Desert sand turned to red earth that had flattened into road. Her mouth firmed into a frown./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She blamed the sun for being too quick, and not the exhaustion in her muscles, for her lateness. The space where her ribs converged, the place where one could best feel their own magic, was empty and aching. She knew her stamina had been temperamental ever since that scar had birthed onto her palm, but she hid that plain truth behind a cloud of anger and more training. Her back straightened and her chin lifted. Either way, there was no need for one of the highest court officials to be seen racing toward the palace before the dew had even dried from the leaves. It would look unbecoming./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"And yes, even with the bend of the moon still a sliver on the opposite horizon, there would be onlookers. The citizens of the Tankei Kingdom were a hardworking people. Many rose well before the end of night. Already, there was the quiet shuffle of those beginning their long day. Brightness replaced more shadow and that slender whisper of bodies at work gathered to a conversation./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The city was a collection of flat roofed dwellings. Square bases, varying in height, but all the color of wet red sand that sprung out of a ground of the same color. Small arched windows decorated north of single floor homes that were the most common structures of the city. Now and then a building would poke out of formation. Richer families had the funds to build a story or two closer to the ascending sun. From her position on the horse, Fighter could see over most of the houses for the next mile./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Squat houses were what most could afford. It was especially dense here on the edge, where real estate was far cheaper and the streets were not much more than alleyways separating the houses clinging to each other in the shades of early morning./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Fighter pressed her right leg into the ebony of Midnight's coat and led her onto the main road./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"From the skinny veins between homes, laborers shuffled out and joined the street's borders. Sleep still hung stiffly on their muscles, but they walked with purpose. Strong gruff women and men linked arms with each other, humming songs older than the rocks beneath them, gesturing reverently at Fighter, and then returning to hymn and movement, intent on quickly clearing the rubble left from the past war, but not too quickly that the work–and payment–would finish. They moved efficiently, equally comforted and disquieted by the fact that there was still so much to rebuild./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The song of the metropolis continued. She heard the sharp tenor of a tool against rubble in the process of being broken down, the bass grunt of a worker moving debris. As she and Midnight forged on, the chorus swelled with more voices./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Closer to the middle sector, it was common for dwellings to have two or even three floors. Still, it was no more than a leap between roofs. During their first missions, Healer and Maker had watched her skip from house to house, while they cornered petty thieves and lesser criminals from both directions on the ground./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The rich built upward because they could not build outward. Main roads bisected the city into perfectly even triangles. Kaykuu's ancestors had created the beginnings of the perfectly geometrical roads when the city was merely a bundle of huts with three points./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Power had to find a way to express itself. People flocked to that expression–and so sound swelled around the storied buildings. Bakers swung open their doors to lure customers with the smell of their sweet toil. Wild desert flowers splashed pinks and yellows on the red-brown canvas of clothing and jewelry stores. High servants carefully opened their ornate glass windows, beckoning in more morning to gently wake their sleeping wards for private lessons. More people joined the street, stopping to nod at Fighter before moving on. The orchestra was at work and everyone had their part to play, eager to be a part at all, the echo of screams not too far tucked away in their memories. They busied themselves, because one could still hear the death cries, ever so faintly, if it was silent for too long./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Fighter observed all this as she and Midnight ascended to an elevated main road. The sound decreased as the crowds fell away. The High Path was an expressway of sorts for royal business that cut through the city, the shortest way to the palace. The children were not there to wave at her from the lower streets. She had always been fond of children. They were still curious as all new beings were, and liked to see her coming and going on Midnight, a horse with a coat so shiny they believed it carried night on its skin. She was disappointed to not see them. They were an uncommon occurrence on a planet where even low magic carriers easily lived to close to two centuries. She refocused. Her mind wandered too often these days. It was better to not have them there to slow her down. With the sun heating the hairs on her neck, she tried to keep a firm, yet friendly face as her mind shuffled, ordered, and reshuffled her thoughts again./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The muscle of her horse's regal neck relaxed. Already, they had cut through a city that was laid out in a perfect acute angle. It was the end of the middle sector. On the edge and downtown middle sector, the asymmetrical domino of houses traced formed packed lines. At the apex: where the royal grounds began, the road of cobbled rocks faded and rolling blue grass proudly took its place. A suburb sprung out abruptly./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Midnight, who was always wild and ready to run, eagerly tucked herself into her stable, almost kicking Fighter with a muscled hindleg as she closed the door behind her. Fighter had rode her hard, gripping her reins tight as if her memory was something that could be chased down./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Upon exiting the horse's home, a gardener smiled at her brightly. Sweat married Fighter's bangs to her forehead. Dirt, dust, and whatever Midnight had raced through, speckled her tall boots./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The gardener saw all this and smiled, ready for a story. Fighter had memories of her seeing the soldier in much worse conditions./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Touching her temple and then heart in one swooping motion in the way people of their land offered formal greetings, she smiled again, waiting to be acknowledged. Her light brown skin was covered in two swaths of olive silks wrapped around her ample breasts and firm buttocks. Her flat stomach was exposed with an amethyst jewel shining brightly in her navel. The water pot on her head lowered as she executed a graceful curtsy and again smiled a bright, easy smile, exposing a small gap between her two front teeth./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"A look flashed across her face and Fighter immediately remedied it with a firm nod and curved the right side of her mouth in what was her best attempt to display happiness. The girl's smile passed with a cloud. A wicked thought had passed through Fighter's mind and her sudden dislike for the woman almost frightened her. In the past, they had flirted shamelessly. If they crossed paths when daily training was done, a meal's length of time could be spent with the lady dining on Fighter's tales of her journeys. Fighter would brush a leaf off of her wine colored bangs or find some dirt or soil to pick at, even though the woman kept an incredibly clean body despite her profession. It was all fantasy as both knew that Sailor Soldiers on this planet took no lovers–temporary or otherwise./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Fighter had no time to stop and share the vestiges of her failed mission or spin another tale to a person who looked to her for brave truth. She didn't want to share a mutual sigh and lament with her on the tricky wilting of the witch's ivy. How nice it must be to wake up and have the hard part of your day be diagnosing why the sap flowers wouldn't fully bloom! Meanwhile, the mystery that was a thorn in her side was threatening to pierce through her psyche. She turned quickly so she wouldn't see the servant's eye darken at the dismissal and stalked towards her original target. Her dread in returning home was also what rushed her to it. It was her nature to attack the hard thing first. Directly./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She had to crane her head to see the palace. Everything in the area was easily demarcated by space and elevation. The cramped main city was just above sea level. This was followed by the homes of the palace workers, similar to city houses, but a standard three floors and honored with a roof decorated in bricks that stood upright and positioned with a gap between each other. A crown of sorts, each stone was ornately carved with the four petalled flower of the Tankei kingdom. A few crowns were missing jewels here and there, but it was no matter, it would be resolved in the coming days. In fact, many of the laborers were headed in this direction to complete such a task. Fighter looked ahead of the light refracting off of the delicate windows that glittered as the sun began to sparkle. She permitted herself a true smile. The subtle sienna of the city street, the cool cerulean of prairie surrounding the stables, they were all fragments of beauty that paled in comparison to the magnificent apex of the kingdom: the royal palace./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The gardener and her water pot were far enough behind her, so thankfully the kind plant lover could not see her nervously clenching and unclenching her fist. The first sun had thoroughly made its presence known in the sky, the second one was now too breaking past the horizon./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her muscles twitched at the presence of ancient magic. She reached out and slid slender fingers against the warm velvet of the enchanted cocoon protecting the inner palace grounds. She was close now./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She scrunched her eyes tight like a child tasting something sour, desperately willing her mind to search for a time before she woke up in the seers home. She remembered riding Midnight after just leaving the palace, transforming into her male body, and then her memory stopped abruptly. A painting stopped mid-stroke, the brush still in the gods' hands./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She knew that she had already spun a not-so-believable tale to even get permission to venture so far from the palace so close to Kakyuu's wedding. Her report would be even farther from the truth, as she didn't even have time, or remember the time it took to investigate the fake mission. She had lied before, often during missions executed for the greater good of Kinmoku, but she was becoming a liar. That would not do for the leader of one of the most powerful trios this side of the Milky Way. That was not who she was./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The shield rippled as it peeled back to form a sparkling frame around her body. The bulwark fused shut as she was enveloped by the embrace of true starlight: their sailor magic. In a shimmer of silver, she emerged on the other side: invisible to the world behind her./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her face looked refreshed, the black material of her uniform sparkled spotlessly./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The palace was built upon a mountain plateau. In front and below, the city lay in the embrace of its view. Lush and blooming gardens flanked both sides and at the rear walls prickly flora unfurled into desert and other lands thereafter, neatly protecting the castle from terrestrial invaders–not that it mattered when Evil Galaxia's soldiers came barreling in from above. Fighter wondered if they noted the four points of the cross-shaped building, like the petals on Kakyuu's forehead. Four points: for healing, for making, for fighting, and above all, for honor. But they did not infiltrate like they did on Earth. There was no patience. No reconnaissance. They learned nothing, took nothing, and destroyed most everything./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her scar throbbed, as it always did when she passed through the shield./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The thrum of power would be dizzying to the common Kinmoku citizen. Protection spells were sewn into the very earth, making the palace seem forever in the distance. Even to those within the barrier, without considerable power, the walls would forever be a far away mirage to an undiscerning eye./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Fighter's trained gaze disregarded the illusion. She allowed her body to be pulled by that same magic towards the paths that led to the inner court./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Rays of pure daylight splashed on the floating tiles that ascended towards the seat of Kinmoku's power. The clicks of her heels on the marbled rock echoed eerily throughout the field. Nehreen was a cacophony of merchants yelling, drunkards cursing, and performers shaking skinned hides hoping their sermon of a few coins clanging together would convert a stranger into a customer. Noise. The royal city of Tankei was a daily orchestra of well meaning, civilized people. Near the floating stairs, Fighter could hear neither. There was only the sweet sound of silence./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"After Chaos, Maker made their defenses twice as strong. No songbirds twittered in the distance. No creatures slithered amongst the ground. Anything that breathed had to have considerable magical strength–and be ordained by the royal family itself–to be able to enter these grounds./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"In the royal living quarters of the Tankei Royal Palace there was no room for weakness. The four arms of the palace reached in every direction, sitting taller than any building in the land on its throne of rock./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The city far below always had it in its view, to them, the palace was a landmark the vast majority would never see clearly nor closely as the magic moved around it./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The maze ended at a tall wall the color of wheat./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Warmth brushed against her skin./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"They were just ahead. She leaned her forehead against the cool rock as her palm flattened against the stone. She could feel them: Maker, Healer, her crown princess. Three pulses of power thrummed against her skin. Part of her wanted to run to them. To have Maker correct her. Healer tease her. Her princess comfort her./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her shoulders sagged with defeat. Another part wanted to return to Midnight and ride. Not to Nehreen, but to where she wasn't supposed to be. Somewhere else. Somewhere far. But she couldn't go, she couldn't abandon her princess, her fellow warriors, her duty, all because of…of whatever this was. She swore on her life that once reunited with Kakyuu, she would be strong enough so they would never be separated again./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She flicked her wrist and a flower bud emerged from the wall. Fighter opened and closed her hand. The bud bloomed into the same four petalled flower that resided on Kakyuu's forehead. Bisecting itself, it opened the wall to reveal a hallway. Fighter entered. The opening sealed shut as the petals closed. The bud sank into the wall leaving behind a smooth wall once again./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"At night, light orbs would hover over each shoulder to guide her. Instead, the balls of encapsulated flame remained on sandstone pillars that lined the walls. Every few feet the empty orbs looked at her disapprovingly from their position under the arched ceiling. She wished for the true night. On this day, she felt too alone, too exposed in the morning air, sneaking back like a disobedient child./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Luckily, she had almost arrived to her room. Her quarters were the vanguard of the inner palace, furthest from the princess, but closest to all enemies in case of attack./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"When Galaxia's soldiers came, she sensed them first. Afterall, she was the captain of the Starlights: considerably stronger than even the Earth's strongest senshi. She was battle tested over decades and decades of missions. Missions that had maintained peace on their planet, on their solar system. The Sailor Starlights were warriors of legend on their side of the galaxy./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Outside of their princess and Sailor Moon, one could argue that Fighter was offensively one of the strongest sailor scouts in their corner of the universe. She was their sword./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her finger curled over the raised ridge in her glove, over the scar. A sword that was sheathed. Absent-mindedly, her fingers grazed her temple. Images of Nehreen swirled in her mind like a kaleidoscope. Important. Fragmented. The whole picture painfully unclear./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She had wasted time wandering around in a lair of secrets. Wasted her last chance to get answers. And now she could see the bottom of the well of trust she had poured over a century into with her princess, with her sisters, with herself./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"If she was a sword, surely she was dull. This thought made the beginning of a whimper curl in her throat. Fighter clamped her lips and continued moving./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Reconstruction was almost completed. Yes, even amongst the now sparingly chipped pillars, the rare scorched walls, this was still a place of refuge./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"After long battles on the other side of the planet, on the other side of the galaxy, it was this cross, this place, this symbol of all that was good, that gave her strength, reason, and focus./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She traced her hands along the wall. Warm spices that wafted from the hall ahead of servants bearing breakfast. The golden crest of the first sun as it painted pastel violet over the fields during morning training. The perforated feel of sandstone on each wall. The warm kiss of their forever spring breeze. Home./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"With another step, she phased into her room. Much unlike the perfumes and powders of Healer's, and still different from the small library and curious inventions of Maker's, Fighter's room was one her own design./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Weapons she collected from across space filled all but one wall from ceiling to floor. Spears, swords, and daggers of all shapes and sizes comprised her small armory. The window, directly opposite the door, was an arched egress at the center of a railway of dark shelves. A constellation of poisons, some shining brilliantly like liquid jewels and others milky and gray, were neatly arranged side by side. Maker had made some of the deadliest elixirs in her collection./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Directly in front of that window, bits of what looked like tails, teeths, and other identifiable but otherwise nonessential body parts floated in clear jars on her desk. Once coveted for its efficacy and even more for their beauty were a deck of cards in a small golden box. They sat alongside burning incense that made the room smell like a sweet and tangy fruit./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"A massive bed of red velvet with a black veil canopy lay at the center of the room. She walked by all of her precious deadly things to sink into her ruby sheets. Her uniform shifted into a simple midnight blue slip before she hit the duvet./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"A smirk flittered onto her lips. Healer had called this bed vampiric. And true–surrounded by her weapons and poisons, the room more closely resembled a dungeon than sleeping quarters, but her bed was her safeplace. Her one luxury./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her head felt the uncomfortable lump of her journal underneath the pillow. What would she record in it? All she had was a smattering of loose ends that had tied themselves into even more complex knots. Healer wouldn't believe her tale, though maybe Maker might at least continue to pretend to believe whatever truth she could strain from the nonsense. Her brunette sister was terrible at convincing others of the act she put on. She was sweet and equally condescending in that way. She would nod and pat Fighter's shoulder in that abysmal way an owner would do to a pet who was simply too dumb to understand commands. It was equally hilarious as it was infuriating./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"At the thought of her sisters, her heart ached. Even if the truth sounded like lunacy, once they understood the drain she felt on her magic, realized how long she had kept this from them, she swallowed deeply. She would have to tell them…soon. Just after she got some rest. She would need it to calm her nerves, clear her head./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She was sure she would tell them, the substance and quantity of what she would say was still something she hadn't decided on. And the punishment that lay on the other side of her confession was something she hadn't even dared to consider. She had never been seriously punished, nor had she immediately recalled the last time a senshi was demoted in her readings. The end of a senshi's term came one way: death./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She didn't know what was going on, though it was known that the what was going on for months. Shame tangled with fear in a mess that made her feel like something she had never felt in her whole sailor existence: a coward. Dishonor was a fate worse than death./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Fighter, you complete fool./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The full force of morning pierced through the window and the light of now two suns cast a golden beam into her room. From the elevated ground of the castle, she could see square roofs of the multitude of homes that formed the city. People–millions of them–living, rebuilding, moving forward. She remembered the day before she left this planet for Earth. How eerie it was seeing the town in total darkness. No day, no night, only gray ash drowning the sky./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her fingers closed against the raised texture of her scar, a haggard smile that stretched the width of her palm./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The first time she lost control was months ago, on a scouting mission./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"After Chaos, the highest priority of the Tankei Kingdom was restoring order. People were brought back to life with the memories of their moments before death still intact. They remembered the suffering and pain. In search of anything that would offer protection from what had truly been hell they looked back to their old gods, to Kakyuu and the Starlights, to the whispers of the Silver Savior./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The gods were infinite. An explanation to the ineffable gift of life and the indiscernible curse of death. Immediately Kakyuu ordered the temples to be rebuilt. She was wise enough to know she wasn't a god, even though many on their planet believed she was the closest human to it./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Something stirred within Fighter at that thought. She wasn't particularly religious. But she had met a goddess. Someone who had enough power to actually protect everyone they held dear. Her eyes narrowed. If she was stronger then, Kakyuu would have never had to flee. Maybe even her current condition could have been avoided. And now it was that condition she would lay at the altar of Kakyuu's feet, begging for her highness's forgiveness for incurring it and fearing her ire for hiding it./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Crown-Princess Kakyuu was a being who had lived and lost just like they all had. A beautiful creature who would make mistakes and couldn't afford people to worship her, to think of her past reproach and worse–lose hope in their future if they lost hope in her. She was wise enough to know all this. On the very day they returned to Kinmoku, she had wasted no time giving these orders:/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""They must know we are trying, and that there are areas where we will fail. There will still be poverty, corruption, sickness, but we are working, working hard to make sure there is less and less of it."/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Chaos was gone, but the scars left on the people's minds were not. Even in the light air of their forever spring, the air felt heavy with doubt. Doubt that peace didn't have enough kindling to endure, outright fear that the fire that had breathed back life within them would surely be snuffed out./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Kakyuu was right, as always. After returning to Kinmoku, her princess did not sleep for the first eight days. Kakyuu did not let herself escape into the arms of her newly reborn parents, or languish in the embrace of her lover, the luckiest man in all of Kinmoku. She worked. She honed her magic. She ruled, and Fighter glowed just by being in her orbit./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Fighter worked alongside her sifting through paperwork, politics, and proofreading her speeches. It felt like the beginning of her official service when she first realized the royal's political mind was even more beautiful than her body./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The people did not get to see her up close, and thus needed other powers to believe in. They needed their old gods, and to worship them in their old places. That's why the palace construction was so delayed. The temples were first priority. They were on sacred grounds. Grounds where magic flowed powerfully and often wildly. It was best to keep them regulated, to let the priests, seers, and worshippers find community again and thus have some semblance of order in a world thrown so far from it./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"It was there at the fire temple, one of the first temples that Chaos had destroyed in its takeover, that Fighter was assigned to complete a realignment ceremony./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The fire temple lay in the heart of Rhysta./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Rhysta, the city of pilgrims, worshippers, and those who serviced them, was located in a consecrated valley. It was surrounded by five desert mountains, the claws of the fire god himself, as the people believed it. Kakyuu said it was good to believe, to be grounded in things bigger than oneself, and so Fighter believed for her./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Ridiculously, the scorching mornings and freezing nights never stopped the throngs of the people who came to see the miracle of the place. For in the middle of it all: the mountains, the desert, lay an oasis of water so cold that a constant cloud of steam rolled over the valley from where it banked against the hot sand./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Heat. Cold. Fog. Land that bore no fruit and thus fed no animals. People flocked to it. They came to see the song of nature's paradoxes. A contradiction of forces that often killed those ill prepared to make the journey./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Over an oasis that could fit no more than one hundred, a temple was built that could house one thousand. Blinding white rockbone was mined from the nearby mountains./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"In the midst of building the largest sanctuary on the planet they found it: the talisman. It only confirmed the purity of their cause. A strong magic wielder had enchanted it and decreed it was a gift from the gods. Suspended over their holy edifice, it was a siphon for the magic that gushed from the land and created the terrible conditions. The days cooled, the nights warmed. Weather changed from outright deadly to mildly dangerous. The ancient books, mostly burned after Chaos, but being rewritten from memory, called that talisman the Night's Tear: for even darkness had empathy for those of the light. It was an obelisk that glowed red within the gaze of the moon and shined the purest black in the eyes of the suns. It funneled the magic of the surroundings and by touching it, the holy ones were given a small portion of its power to amplify their work./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Underneath the floating jewel, spiraling out from the oasis and temple like an intricate mandala, the visitors became citizens and the population grew. Lesser temples and other places of worship were carved into the dunes below: a sacred city. When their world was ending, the tear's inner flame was snuffed and the obelisk fell, killing hundreds of those who worshiped underneath./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"It was a holy place for over two thousand years. Evil Sailor Galaxia and her soldiers came and destroyed it in less than an hour. They made martyrs of many that day./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"When Fighter approached the grounds to begin her work, the place was untouched since the attacks. The pool was dry. The temple has a decayed skeleton, cleaved in two by a holy talisman that appeared like no more than a giant piece of glass./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"In the aftermath of destruction, she could feel resilience of magic galloping through the area. She had left Midnight a safe distance away. Even though the horse was magically reinforced, raw power created burning sparks in the air and heat so dry it drank the air from her lungs. The priestesses had not returned to the temple after Chaos. Understandably. It was still too dangerous to be far from cities, far away from the rule of law, and too close to the uncontrolled element./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Saliva dried into a paste in her mouth, choking her. With this much magic untamed, seeping from the ground, swirling in the air, the weather rebelled against the land./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"WIth the talisman was only a few steps away: a meteor shower began./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Golden pellets burst from swirling clouds in sheets of rock and light. It rained sun. Creating a protective barrier for herself, Fighter's body was encased in a glow of red. Her own power was too much for the already unbalanced area, she would have to work quickly./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She sprinted to the top of the Night's Tear, considerably taller than her even on its side, forcing herself to balance as her heel skittered on the smooth service when she arrived at the center. Carefully, she knelt at the middle of the stone, pellets of rock bouncing off her barrier./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her reflection shook in the conductor's glassy exterior as like called to like. Pebbles chimed against the hard surface, singing as they /Her magic curled at her fingertips./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"This assignment marked her as the leader of the Starlights. Fire was everything in Kinmoku. It was the element that had started it all. It was said a millennium ago that Kinmoku was born of a meteor—a fireball—that had smashed against a lone asteroid. The collision produced organic materials that started life. The force of impact set the planet on a course that pushed it into a new galaxy where they found their two suns, and gave them their moon./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She found the center of the structure and knelt, expanding her force field. Power. She could feel the hum of it in the air, in her bones, beneath her feet. She placed her palm on the heated surface and felt the vibration. The slab sang to her. The old gods missed their worshippers./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""By fire's light", she started and continued in a language only spoken by the royal family, its guard, and the high priests. A language that was born from the sound of a meteor hitting space rock. A guttural tongue that curled the lips and was spoken from the stomach. Like a flame being stoked, her voice grew louder in song, in command. Her chin rose. Her eyes rolled back with her head./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She raised her right hand and the meteor shower paused. Each rock stood suspended in the air like golden snowflakes./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Star Serious Rebirth!"/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Fragments converged to her hand and a cylinder formed a solid beam of golden flame. Light spread from her palm to consume her entire body. Fire baptized her. Her blue eyes glazed platinum./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"From behind the glowing eyes: Seiya looked out./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Since the day he had returned to this planet, he had done nothing but look. Most would be awed to bear witness to this ancient ceremony–even if it was through another's eyes. But what use was magic? What use was witnessing all of this if he had no one to share it with? He had tried to get Fighter's attention from the moment they landed on Kinmoku. Screamed. Cried. Prayed to anything. Cursed at everything. Screamed again. Emptied his brain for any way to get a reaction from Sailor Star Fighter–and nothing. He could see and hear through her eyes. He could piece together a few memories of her century of life, but it amounted to nothing. He was a ghost./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Seiya saw the golden cloudburst before him and disregarded sight, focusing instead on sound. He had that ear for music, and ears held onto memories eyes never could. The patter of rock reminded him of the march of rain on concrete. It carried him back to that solemn day on the rooftop./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He shuddered in the fog of the realm where he was kept–a place where he could sprint for hours only to be back where he started once he stopped./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The beauty of a meteor shower escaped him. His mind was already far away replaying memories that seemed like another life, or a lifetime ago, or both. Memories like water slipping through his hands. He tortured himself with them, if only to slow the leaking./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"That rooftop. He could smell the strawberry of her shampoo, reactivated in the wet. The mew of her whimper. The squelch of her loafers on the ground. The hunch of her shoulders, the feel of her damp golden hair that swung down to her delicate clavicle. He even remembered the flavor of pain in her blue eyes that gripped his heart. A feeling of aching more clear than one could ever feel for themselves. Worry: a shovel used to bury oneself deep and slow./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He had wanted to squeeze her so close that he could absorb her. Had wanted to lift her off the roof and to his home planet, away from all the responsibility that dragged her to a pit of despair./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her cheek was so cold in the warmth of his palm./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Am I not good enough?/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She had never answered him./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Loss. All she knew was loss. He focused back on that image. Was her school uniform green? Or maybe blue? Blue like those sad eyes?/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He couldn't remember. His head was full of the sound of rain. The sound was clear. The image blurry./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He was losing her too./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"When he went to blink the tears away, he wasn't looking through Fighter's eyes, but his own. He was in the movie he had been watching for his fragment of forever./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He and a large structure were both floating upright. The beam of light turned into a pillar of fire around him and this black object, yet his body felt cool, lighter than it ever had before. He saw his reflection in its darkness. He took in his long flowing hair, tall and toned body, his manhood. Naked and beautiful like a statue. This was different. It wasn't like when he was on Earth: in the male form of a Sailor Scout. He felt free and yet incredibly finite. He felt human./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He reached out to touch his reflection, unable to believe he finally had form. "How-"/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Before he could even fully form the sentence his body reverted and Sailor Star Fighter, feeling as though she was suddenly waking from a trance, reemerged./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her magic had spiked and then sputtered out, sending her plummeting to the ground below. Her back slammed into freezing water that immediately soaked through her hair and uniform. Even though the water was no more than a few inches she gasped at the shock of the temperature. Orienting herself quickly, she felt her body loosen with relief. She was in water. The pool had returned./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Above her, the obelisk had arrived at its rightful place in the sky. Her mission was complete./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She took stock of her injuries. There was a dull pain in her back. Her spine had cracked and realigned immediately after impact. She had never been so affected by a ceremony before, though an attempt alone had been known to kill even seasoned holy workers. She braced her hands to sit up and gagged in pain as her right arm buckled under her weight. The glove of her sailor uniform was burned from wrist to elbow with just a ring of fabric left on her bicep./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Injury wasn't unusual when dealing with fire magic. Faithful and faithless both agreed: it was dangerous. It was an element that gave all or nothing of itself at the slightest variance. She had fasted and cleansed herself in a sacred pool before coming. If fire magic sensed any impurity within the wielder, nothing would stop it from attempting to burn it out. Sin was flint before it./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She could recall no offense to warrant this. However, this was not like the slight tenderness she usually felt at the end of a ceremony./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"As a Sailor Starlight, she was one of the strongest soldiers in the galaxy. She had lived over a century and stopped aging in her early twenties. Usually her wounds, inflicted by lesser magic, healed before she was even cognisant of the pain./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her eyes moved to examine the cause of the hurt. At the sight, agony sprung forth, silver rimmed her eyes./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The skin on her forearm had puckered and peeled into a purple and black mess. The muscle had shrunk from the heat and snapped the bone creating a mangled ruin at her wrist. She inhaled swiftly and submerged her full forearm under water, the healing pool would fasten her own powers./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She had performed this type of ritual numerous times over their lands. Realigning magic, reconnecting the land with its talisman was a part of her sacred duty. She had never had a reaction like this./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her hand was already reforming. The skin went from a sunset red to its normal tanned color within seconds. Her gnarled finger untwisted. Her nails regrew. The magic from her Sailor Uniform wound the fibers of her glove down her arm like vines. Yet before the enchanted black cloth could cover her right palm, she saw it. From her pinky to thumb, with the width just thicker than her headband was something she hadn't seen on her body since before her first transformation—a scar./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"****/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;" /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She should have reported it then, right after the fire temple. She should have returned to the castle and laid her palm at Kakyuu's feet. Instead, she held it over her heart, and swore not to add another burden to the mountain that had grown before the throne./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"And even more, the seer had muddled what little she thought she knew. Seers could not lie. It was the price of their gift along with their sight, the balance the gods had created. So when Pazmir spoke, her voice was clear and sure. Her eyes held no deception. And yet, Fighter knew./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"It was obvious that this was not their first conversation. Pazmir's heart was closed when she spoke to her. Her words were measured and curt. The woman with eyes like sunset and skin like soil had revealed her true nature by shielding her words: her loyalty lay with someone else. And yet Fighter knew in her heart she could trust her./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Rest assured, you will find the answers you seek soon," she had said./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"It all made no sense. She pawed at the softness of her blankets. Her mind bent under the fatigue of the unknown. But how could she rest? When she found Midnight on the edge of the city, something in her just knew the horse would be there. This was the horse she used on every mission, and yet, the mare licked her neck like she hadn't seen her all day. Missed her, when she was clearly fed that same night./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Fighter had the power to pull cards too. But she could not see into the future. She could see only the paths that directly affected her own life. It was how she had sent hints to Usagi about the danger of Galaxia./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Immediately after the first encounter at the temple, she had rushed to her private quarters and consulted her cards. Using the same deck that she had used when slipping cards into the Tsukino mailbox, she pulled a card onto the small desk table./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"It was blank./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She drew another./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Also blank./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The whole deck was blank./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She could transform, still had most of her super strength, was still for all intents and purposes the Sailor Star Fighter she had been for over one hundred years and yet she seemed a visitor in her own body. Her cards did not answer her. Chunks of her past were missing, and with it, she knew her future was slipping away like Rhystan sand through her fists./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The second sun had risen and now the day had truly begun. Pazmir's words rang in her head. Swinging her legs over the edge of her bed, she recreated her window and opened the box containing the cards./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Her fingers glided over the smooth silvery black of the card. Maybe they would finally answer her call./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She flipped the first card with her breath, a ball in her throat./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Blank./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"An old part of her felt the urge to take the box and smash it in two. Instead, she exhaled and turned to the window. The second sun's appearance signaled the beginning of the day, and the complete disappearance of their moon. A single moon that if you looked closely strung along three waif-like satellites planets. On the smallest one, a body barely considered more than an asteroid, she had been born./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Fighter cut her eyes at the sky smiling through the window and the opening disappeared into the wall. True darkness enclosed the room once again./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"There was no use thinking about a past uglier than any of the possibilities of her future./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"She looked down to glare at the cards as if her stare could will images back to their vacant surface. A ragged, exasperated breath escaped her as she dropped down into the chair. Her head slid down onto the cool surface of the desk. She would sleep, just briefly, and then empty out her heart before the day was done./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"This secret was a weed she would no longer water./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"END OF PART 1/p