It was rainy, stormy Thursday night and the twenty-year-old Haley Jones was home alone. Her parents had taken the bus out of state to join the massive protests in New York, but Haley couldn’t volunteer to attend with them. It wasn’t that she had less faith in her causes; it was that she had other causes that took priority.

She was a Sailor Senshi, and if the recent events had taught her anything: that meant something. It meant that she needed to change her priorities. She needed to learn how to fight and how to defend the public so that the evil agents of the Negaverse no longer terrorize the people of Destiny City, the people of Earth. It was a cause much greater than any cause she could have imagined herself being a part of, and the reality of that situation had been slowly sinking in.

Thanks to the magical healing properties of the Virgo Outpost, she had fully physically recovered from the traumatic near-death experience at the hands of two agents of the Negaverse. Thanks to Soldier Virgo, she was still alive.

Haley had done her best to not think about all that had happened. Whenever she started to remember the events, her pain, her forfeit into death, she turned to her drugs to alleviate the anxieties. Marijuana was a common clutch for Haley, always available as a fallback for a pick-me-up, and she sure as hell needed one these days.

She sat on the kitchen island with her bong in her lap and lighter in her hand, took a long hit and exhaled into the room. She was hungry and staring at the fruit bowl on the adjacent counter, debating which fruit to take.

Screw it. She’ll eat them all.

She put down the bong, hopped off the counter and picked out a few fruit. She had just grabbed a knife from the holder to start slicing her snack when she was startled by a creaking noise from behind her.

Haley turned to around as the lightning flashed and thunder rolled, the figure of a short purple-haired girl stood in her room.

It was the Negaverse agent. She was in her house.

Haley froze, scared. The lightning flashed again, thunder boomed, and the figure was gone. Her heart was racing – it was just a hallucination. She was seeing things. She was stressed, that was all. Right?

She turned back to slicing her fruit, cutting an apple into wedges with the sharp blade, much like the one the agent had used to stab her. Over and over again.

She stopped. She wasn’t high enough, clearly. She turned back to her bong to take another hit, but instead of seeing the bong her counter she found the Negaverse Captain, sitting proudly with a smug look on her face.

“Hello, Saior Aster,” the Captain said.

There was a still silence in the room, percussion of the moment kept only by drops of rain beating on the roof and the heavy pounding of Haley’s heart. Her hands were clammy, her stomach in knots. It felt difficult to breathe.

“How did you find me?” Haley asked.

“The Negaverse will always find you. You’re never safe.”

“I will stop you,” her voice shook with fear and inconfidence.

“You can’t stop me,” the Captain taunted. “You don’t have what it takes. You can’t kill me. Not like I can kill you.”

“Stop it.”

“There is no room for love in war.”

“Stop it.”

“You will never be able to stop me.”

“STOP IT.”

“You couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“SHUT UP!” Haley swung the knife into the Captain’s chest. The glass of the bong shattered as Haley’s swing knocked it to the ground, but instead Haley watched as the Captain fell to the floor. As the bong water spread in a puddle on the floor, Haley watched as the Captain’s blood spilled and made a mess.

The hallucination stopped and Haley Jones had realized what she had done.

Sure, it was just a hallucination. It wasn’t real. But she thought it was. She thought she had killed. And she then knew just how capable of killing she really was.

“I’m going to be sick,” she said, turning to the kitchen sink, feeling an urge to vomit. Her stomach was ready to leap out of her, her heart ready to burst out of her chest. She needed her bong then more than ever – her anxiety was unbearable.

Was Virgo right? Did she need to accept responsibility and prepare herself to kill? Did she have to force herself to be capable of murder?

Or worse, was she already capable?

She wasn’t able to puke, but she was able to cry as she sunk down to the floor, sitting in the puddle of bong water mixed with shards of glass, weeping with trembling hands to cover face.

She missed the days without responsibility, when she never had to decide between duty and values. When she never had to accept sacrifice to her beliefs. When she never thought she’d be capable of killing.

The girl who always wanted to see a change had finally found a change, but in her mind, it wasn’t for the better.