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It took Bo Hanley two hours and forty-five minutes to find his henshin pen that night before leaving the house. He couldn't remember the last time he used it, and it wasn't like Derp left him with any instructions for its care. His room wasn't even disastrously messy, more like disastrously disorganized. The search was lengthened each time Bo found something that captivated his interest -- an old movie ticket, a photo he forgot about, an unopened bottle of Sobe, a handful of mosaic tiles from his failed collage attempt.

By the time Bo collapsed on the couch of the apartment he shared with Noel (who was likely out chasing tail at that hour), he had forgotten entirely about why he was looking for it at all. His hand slipped into the couch cushions for the remote, but came up holding a lint-covered henshin pen. "Victory!" he announced to his empty apartment. There was a melted MnM crushed to one side of it. Bo picked it off with a chipped nail, and declaring it A-OK for action, he hoisted it above his head and with a mighty roar -- he promptly realized he forgot what to say.

After a few moments of trying out potential calls to action (Power Up Time! Magic Power! Neso Make-Up! Make Neso Up with Power!), the senshi managed to transform into, well, his senshi form.



Sailor Neso exited his apartment in full fuku without thought. It was an older building without security cameras, and the hallway was thankfully empty -- not that Neso realized any of this. He did not consider how royally stupid it was to exit his own apartment in full fuku. He was what some people might call a "complete idiot."

Out on the street, Neso looked left. Then he looked right.

He had no idea where to go, or what to do. Or if this was a good idea at all. His senshi side had been dormant for a long time, and Sailor Neso had no idea if he was hallucinating his sudden need to step up to his responsibility, or if he had a good reason to be standing in the middle of the street in his fantastic cape and short-shorts like he was waiting for the bus to Fantasy Fest in the Florida Keys.

Across the street from where Neso was standing, a clear trash bag was caught by a gust of wind. It sailed up into the air in a swooping arc before beginning its slow flutter downward. Another gust drew it back into the air, and again it fell. So beautiful...

It was one of those days when it was a minute away from raining and there was this electricity in the air, he could almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with him. Like a little kid begging him to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day he realized there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted him to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world he felt like he couldn't take it, like his heart was going to cave in.

Then someone punched him in the shoulder.

Sailor Neso turned to look at the drunken man in the kilt. He didn't look annoyed, just surprised. "I like your kilt," he said.

And that was it.

Sailor Neso had no idea what he was the senshi of. Was that supposed to be innate? He didn't even know how to use his power, or what it was, or even that he had one. Derp hadn't mentioned any of that. Derp hadn't mentioned a lot of things. Good thing Neso didn't mind. He couldn't fault her for that. Being a guardian cat was probably a tough gig, too tough for him.

Where Derp had failed, however, someone else had come through. It had been a dream, hadn't it? Neso thought it was, but it felt so real. It felt like everything that was said was true, but when he woke up, his memory was hazy, like he was looking at himself through a shroud. There had been other dreams he'd had that felt real enough to confuse him. He once dreamed that he was pregnant, and when he woke up, he bought a pregnancy test just to be safe. You never knew if the spirits were trying to communicate with you. Better safe than sorry, no matter how weirdly the clerk might have looked at you when you asked: "Where are the male pregnancy tests, please?"

The person in his dream had told him who he was. He had told him a lot of things, things the guardian cat never mentioned. Neso just wasn't sure if it was a hallucination from eating beef jerky and mint tea before bed, or something that deserved his honest attention.

"I'm Neso. And I think I'm the Senshi of Summer. This cool little cat never mentioned that part, but, uh, I had this dream. You know -- one of those existential-like things? Yeah, so I had this dream. And, um... I'm looking for someone named Chronos." Was any of that helpful? Neso didn't know. He wasn't the most self-aware kid in the world.

In that dream world, he had felt something else though... something real. It was an echo of his past reverberating outward like sound waves off a chime, or ripples on a pond.

Bo shrugged. "I'm Neso," he agreed. Being agreeable was kind of his thing. So were hugs (and mint tea, coincidentally).

When Andeon lifted all 6 feet, 5 inches of him up into the air, Bo laughed and said, "You're stronger than you look. For a man in a skirt." The spin was fun too, and for a moment, Bo thought of taking a series of photographs while spinning in a circle. Would it capture that child-like feeling of glee? Would it communicate that in the image?

The image of a pale girl with seafoam hair and kind pink eyes drifted into his head. She was garbed in white, glowing really, and had the most magnificent pair of pink wings. She stood there in his mind wrapped in a gossamer mist, but she wasn't smiling. This seemed unnatural, like a fish flying through the air. Chronos didn't wear sadness well. She was a creature born to be happy, of that Neso was absolutely certain.

A voice, deep and male, said her name in his head: "Princess Chronos" -- and it was not his own. It was a voice he knew from a time that he had forgotten, a voice that he never expected to hear again.

The dream where Eon came to him had not been one that Neso had expected. He hardly remembered his past life, even though he could feel it in his bones just as surely as he knew the boy before him was his Gemini Bromance partner from long ago. The night that he dreamed of Eon, just that last night, Neso had been forced to realize the inherent responsibility in being who he was. Where Derp had failed him, Eon had not. Now he knew that he needed to do -- and that was be there for Princess Chronos.

Wide blue eyes beamed over to the other senshi. "Well, it's good luck that you're here. Now take me to the Princess!" He pointed in one direction, then faltered. "No, really, I don't know where to find her." The two boys took a detour to get a bow for Neso's head, but off they went -- ready to reconnect the Princess of the Zodiacs with one of her four loving handmaidens.

It was the start of another life, a life that Neso wasn't sure he was entirely prepared for.