Super Sailor Taranis and Sailor Magellan would never learn what happened the night that Daniela Rymner lost her starseed, falling cold with death before the senshi of sand’s very eyes. Perhaps even General Linarite, then only a captain, would also never learn the full story of how a very dead teenage girl had her life restored, seemingly by some otherworldly miracle. No one would know, as these things often happen, but one girl...

Super Sailor Ans had never been one to participate in the affairs of other senshi. She did not attend meetings, she did not go on patrol, she hardly ever did anything but choose specific people to save: namely, her family. A year of being a senshi showed her transform into an even stronger one, but even then, Sailor Ans was reclusive at best, hardly leaving her neighborhood at night. It was no wonder that her small suburb had seen no major travesties, no inexplicable deaths on her watch.

The night that Sailor Magellan died, Ans made an exception.

The events surrounding Tartaros had put the girl on edge. Her own fiancee, Aidan, was one of the ones affected by the sudden sleep sickness, which forced the young sailor to split her time between home and the hospital. She heard whispers of a meeting going down in the industrial district and was on her way there, hope held taut in her chest, when a blue-haired Negaverse captain materialized down the alleyway from her. Sailor Ans fully intended to avoid the trouble -- she was a very cautious girl -- but before she could step away, she watched in horror as Linarite pulled a starseed from the chest of a pale-haired senshi.

Dark brown eyes widened to see the second senshi that rounded the corner, clutching the dying body and screaming. It was as if she could see herself in his position, clutching her fiancee’s limp lifeless form. Ans was not aware what moved her. Perhaps she would have done nothing. Perhaps she would have just rushed home to be with her mother, or maybe back to the hospital to curl up in bed by the boy that she loved. But as fate would have it, the teleportation employed by the Negaverse captain did not carry her as far as she may have liked. Ans saw her reappear on a roof a block away, clutching the starseed to her chest and panting.

Before Ans was sure of it, she was moving, scaling the side of the building just as Sailor Taranis let out another heart-breaking moan of defeat. She staggered across the roofing tiles, trying to remain quiet. Silence had always been easy for her. Her power was a whispered word, and suddenly she was moving as if she was a part of the night itself, undetectable, unseen even to Captain Linarite. The Nega felt a sudden blow to her side, the starseed flying from her fingertips and pitching over the side of the roof. Ans dove after it before the Nega even had a chance to shout.

In the falling rain, Ans disappeared, leaving Captain Linarite to issue her own angry cries into the empty air. She ran back to the alleyway where she had seen the boy and girl, but they were gone. Sailor Ans tried to track them, tried to sense the dual auras of positive energy, but it wasn’t until she heard gunshots that she was even able to track down where the two had run off to at all.

The dark-haired girl watched as Taranis burst out of the hospital, dodging a rain of bullets. He was crying. From where she stood, Ans could see a girl on a hospital bed. The same shade of hair. It had to be... her, didn’t it? She waited as long as she could, waited until the cops came and left, until the perimeter was secured, until normal hospital procedure resumed. She wasn’t sure how long a starseed could be separated from a body and still be reintroduced. Only when she was certain her presence would not be alarming did she change back into Monica Bradford, clad in the simple blue scrubs of a hospital volunteer.

It took her fifteen minutes to check in and find the bed of Daniela Rymner. Monica produced the starseed from her pocket and watched as it lazily wafted into the chest of the girl whose death she had just witnessed. It had been an hour. That seemed like a long time -- too long? She sat there for another hour, stroking the girl’s hand and waiting for some sign of brain activity. It got late, and the attending came in, asked her to leave.

Having done all she could, Monica made one stop at her fiancee’s room and whispered to him of what she had done that night, of the life she might have saved. Aidan knew of her greatest secret and had always wanted her to do more, to take more risks. For him, she had. Monica kissed him on the forehead and whispered, “Come back to me. We’ll be together again.” And then she left. Aidan’s heart monitor slowly beeped in the background, echoing every step away from him that she took. He had been like this since Tartaros. And, as fate would have it, he would never wake up from that sleep sickness. Monica didn’t know it yet, but she would soon.

When she stepped outside, Monica craned her neck up to the glittering night sky. It was a blanket of darkness pricked by orbs of glowing light, hope in the blackness. Would that girl survive? Would Aidan survive? And what did any of it mean? She hadn’t understood her own existence for as long as she had been a senshi. Most days she doubted she ever would. Locked in the hazy dream state, she did not sense the two Negaverse agents approaching until they were already upon her. One snapped her neck. The other stole her starseed.

Where Magellan and Taranis survived, Monica and Aidan didn’t.

So it goes.