~ Streets of Gold ~

"I was just like you when I was your age. Did I ever tell you that? I had such a sense of wonder, always looking up at the stars, knowing deep in my heart of hearts that I had a kinship with each one of those distant points of light. When the divine spark within me fully reignited, I knew who I really was. My memories of my past incarnation came flooding back to me in a single searing burst of revelation! My true identity was Sailor Olympia, the planet of the same name made flesh, the personification of the fourth planet from the star Eos.

We are luminous beings, daughter, not merely flesh and bone. We Sailor Guardians are bright, immortal children of the stars! If our fleshly bodies are destroyed or otherwise made unable to live on past even the heightened limits of our resilience, we return to the cosmic source to be reborn again and again until the stars themselves grow cold and weary and our thoughts turn again to the beginning..."

****

In the early morning hours of mid-June, the still-dark and star-studded sky was streaked with the meteoric remains of what was once a comet which only a few days prior had passed between Earth and its close moon. Tidal forces from the combined gravity tore the nucleus of rock, iron, and ice apart while orbital defense systems blasted most of the larger chunks into ever smaller ones. However, so many were the pieces of debris which would penetrate the atmosphere of the planet that it took a mighty flash of holy might from Neo-Queen Serenity, the wise and just ruler of the Sol System, to mitigate the threat completely, resulting in a long-lived lightshow which attracted nightly sky watchers.

The hulking mass of debris was the remains of an ancient warship, or rather the aft section, which had long ago crashed onto the surface of the comet on its egress from the inner regions of the system over seven thousand years prior. It was these pieces of debris which would reach the surface of Earth, scorched by the heat of reentry which had been powerless to completely vaporize. A series of impact craters on the beach of Chiba Bay marked where the ancient spacecraft had fallen from space and crashed to Earth, miraculously missing the people who had gathered there to watch the shooting stars, although there were only a few injuries from collateral damage during the scattering of the witnesses when the first small pieces of debris peppered the coastal sea.

"Do you see that?" asked a man, excitedly pointing out a still-smoking hole in the ground with twisted, blackened metal cresting the rim of the crater it rested within.

"What is that? A satellite?" asked a woman, still shaken up by the loud, violent impact.

"That's too big to be a satellite." answered another who was helping a young man to his feet after being knocked prone.

Indeed, the spacecraft fragment was hundreds of meters in size with what seemed to be entire corridors still intact and perhaps even still-sealed rooms. It had come to rest at a shallow angle in a furrow which quickly flooded with seawater leading up to the rapidly freezing crater in the middle of the beach. Extremely cold vapors leaked from unknown sources deep within, giving the impression that the ruined corridors, which were oriented almost sideways due to the way the hulking mass of ancient machinery had crash-landed, were akin to the lair of some mythical cold-spewing beast. To complete the bizarre aesthetic, frost gradually built up around a broken hose and what few vents in certain areas which could be seen from outside creating a ghostly fog which sank to the floor of the crater, shrouding the flash-frozen seawater which had leaked into the sand therein from the nearby ocean.

Police and other emergency personnel were starting to arrive on the scene as people had formed a tight, crowded circle around the crater. A few brave people approached close enough to shine whatever light sources they had on hand to illuminate the wreckage and see what they could of the strange object which had interrupted their sky-watching. There was a dull, bluish-violet glimmer of light peeking out and slowly pulsing from within the mangled heap of debris.

"What is that?" asked a woman shining a small, bright flashlight at the glowing object tucked within.

What the light illuminated within the huge, shadowy wreck of twisted, otherworldly metal was what appeared to be shards of glass, a bluish liquid oozing out into the sand at the bottom of the crater, webs of frayed and torn wires, and loose objects of various shapes and sizes. The source of the somewhat faint glow somewhere within the derelict was uncertain, but it was beginning to arouse interest from the onlookers after it had been pointed out. The ghostly glow was diffused in a vaguely eerie way by the chilling vapors which curled and undulated along the walls which had effectively become floors due to the steep angle the wreckage had come to rest at.

"Hey, I think something is written here. Does anyone recognize the script?" asked a man, pointing at the scorched hull's outer surface.

Two-thirds of the outer hull plating had symbols which looked like letters in some strange, alien alphabet. None of those surrounding the crater, however, could read it. It distantly resembled Greek, but each letter was round, giving the script a unique characteristic not seen on Earth in millennia. Each letter was as large as a Human male, considering the size fragment of wrecked warship and some were partially obscured by carbon scoring. To any who might be able to read the old script used by the "gods" of ancient times, the letters would spell out "SMDF DEJ-2401 Ad Astra".