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It was supposed to be a simple meet-up to stitch together their sturdy, though patchy pieces of a formerly strong friendship. The arrival of a ferocious Negaverse lieutenant forces Penelope to transform into Sailor Pasiphae. Overwhelmed while trying to protect Harper, Pasiphae is stabbed in the shoulder, and the situation turns grim. Fate intercedes via the scrappy guardian cat, Invidia, and Harper is revealed to be Sailor Nyx, the senshi of phantasmagoria. With the amount of White Moon allies growing, Lt. Mica accepts her victory of hospitalizing Pasiphae and leaves.

Seven twenty-nine in the evening. Harper watched the barn’s clock in the decaying sunlight further filtered through wood planks and dust motes with dread she could only imagine was akin to stage fright. Her grip on the well-worn broom handle tightened that much more. It certainly wasn’t regular fright – there was undoubtedly some excitement mixed in, but it was as though the excitement was excited itself and would bound to the other side of her brain when she would try to latch onto it. Every fiber of her being, new and old, was taught as the second hand completed its lap around the clock face, sliding the minute hand over the six. Part of herself – the foreign, possibly connected with space part – she could accuse of being outright eager. Since visiting Penelope in the hospital after her ‘awakening’ as a sailor soldier, Harper had only allowed herself to power up in seclusion. (And not often or for very long.) She used the self-limited time to explore her other body’s abilities, such as jumping straight up to a rooftop and a powerful physical strength that could lift several haybales up to the loft. The extraordinary powers were used for mundane or everyday tasks until they themselves felt less remarkable. Familiarity, Harper felt, was key to the double-life reconciliation. No matter what was done, however, the powers felt no less fascinating.

Magic was another matter. The fascination still applied – in tenfold – but save for a few fizzles in the beginning, magic went unused. She didn’t trust in it yet, mostly due to it not seeming to function quite right or not in the same way as Penelope’s. It wasn’t exactly tangible. The moment it was summoned, it fizzled out in a snaking mixture of sparkling gold dust and deep black smoke. She resigned to testing it on living targets, when a safe opportunity came up. Her grip on the broom shifted to another position, but remained tightly curled.

There was no avoiding it now, however. Harper had scheduled this outing after coming home from the relatively warm hospital visit with her reinstated best friend, when enough panic had run its course that the thought didn’t seem completely daunting. After all, who or what was she? Not in the esoteric sense – that was shunted off for delving into later – rather, in the sense that only weeks ago she had been a simple civilian. A civilian who followed conspiracy forums like other civilians, no less, and common – civilian – sense said that there couldn’t be these sorts of things plaguing Destiny City. Harper Rafferty wasn’t a police officer like her brother, not a perfect athlete, or a genius. She was a teenager in high school who worked part-time as a stable hand. Accomplishments she had prided herself on not long ago seemed paltry in the wake of discovering a magic, secret war and being told you have a place in it. And Penelope, for all of her intentions, obviously wanted to hide everything. Alone then; she would spare her friend. She would have to wait for her friend to heal anyway.

One thing was certain: she had to use this power to protect those still living oblivious from threats like that lieutenant. The ruthlessness in that person’s eyes didn’t even feel entirely human; – though, what was it to be simply human? – they felt dark. To waste this kind of power, no matter how much Harper doubted the cosmos for giving them to her, would be just as criminal. It was so daunting at the time, when she penciled it into her calendar like any other activity. The act itself took some of the edge off, much like familiarizing her body with its ribbon-wrapped changes. Her grip on the broom slacked, her fingertips only needed to lightly support the weathered wood. It was still daunting.

Tick.

Seven thirty-five. It was time to set aside normal things.

“Nyx Power, Make Up!”

A rush of magic and cosmic ribbons later and Harper Rafferty had transformed into the sailor suited as-of-yet-unproved-heroine, Sailor Nyx. She looked down at herself in continued amazement, checking that every bit of her uniform had once again stalwartly willed itself to appear from seeming nothingness. It always felt very right afterward, no matter the level of apprehension before raising her wand into the air. Everything fit perfectly – even the heeled shoes, though they gave her a wobble every now and again (and that is an impressively small amount when compared to any other such shoes she had worn). Reflecting on the bus ride into the city, it was as if the threads tying her to all of her worries had been cut along with her ties to her civilian self. If the passengers had known…

Harper couldn’t keep her hands off of the henshin pen, yet it nearly burned in her touch. Being akin to liquid magic, it probably could if it wanted. It was a lot of trust that sailor senshi put in their pens. Hopefully pens couldn’t read minds, too, or Harper’s was very forgiving. Maybe it knew something that she did not. Harper glanced out of the window to watch the usual stops go by on the route, said pen clutched in her hand that itself was stuffed into her pocket, in case the other patrons got too curious. The late night gaggle consisting of a business man, a buzzed hobo, and some women dressed for a lady’s night at some bar were not likely candidates for fellow senshi. A sigh masked her want to scream. Harper had thought this part would have been easier, seeing as she just had to sit on the thing as it carted her away to… Destiny, she supposed. She had to chuckle at that.

If the other passengers had known, they had an equal chance of stoning her as a witch of yore and shaking her hand. More of the former, these days, since the public began questioning whether senshi were fighting for the public or themselves, Harper included. Suspicious and curious as ever in such matters, she had refrained from making a judgment – it was hard to have stronger convictions about occurrences that could have also easily been Lovecraftian abominations or government experiments. It turns out that only half of those night marauders were terrorists, and it was not the ones who had buttbows. It was rather hilarious in hindsight, because she had never subscribed to the alien theories.

Now the deed was done, the newly born night air billowing through bows, ribbons, skirts, and all. And it was a liberation. Powering up at home, with the blinds drawn in her room when no one was home, or quietly at the barn when she had a solo shift could not compare to the feeling thumping through her blood on the rooftop this night. In retrospect, what she thought had been preparing her for this first patrol was more like a balm on her starseed. That’s what Penelope had called it – a starseed. A bit of the universe living within her. That had total made sense and none at all at the time, but Pene also said understanding would come with time. Sailor Nyx looked down on Destiny City, sprinkled with dots of lights and the muffled sounds of the nightlife. She wondered if there was a fight going on somewhere.

“Terrorists,” Nyx said quietly, mostly to simply hear her voice, to confirm that it hadn’t changed as well. That is what she probably looked like right now, at home among the fuzzy night photos and inexplicable lens-flares. It was the newest buzzword across the supernatural and theorists forums, plucked out of the political realm. She smirked, thinking about how her fellow forumites would froth with a cocktail of emotions if she could tell them that it was the side dressed like weird military personnel who were the bad guys. It would be much easier if everyone could sense the burning chaos that emanated from these beings.

Brown eyes narrowed. Once Nyx’s thoughts brushed over the idea, a mental beacon of alarm came to her attention. It had been sounding politely somewhere in her mind, she realizes, but now it permeated her senses.

“Okay, okay,” she hisses out loud, combining her voice with sheer willpower to edge the sensation back into its corner. “I get the picture! I’m going?” she offers, a little unsure of what exactly to offer. Thankfully, it obliged. So, this intuition served a much more useful purpose besides confirming the enemy was of Chaos; it was also a compass. Nyx smiled at the discovery. The feeling of accomplishment quickly bottomed out when she realized the compass was pointing straight down the side of the building on which she was blithely standing at the edge. Nyx took a wild leap back – surprised to have landed somewhat on her feet – just in time to avoid the monster’s devastating claws. The beast was unlike any animal on Earth, though it did have some resemblance to a bear. If bears had shoulders like a barrel, scythe-esque claws protruding five inches from their paws, and were dark blue. Those claws dug divots into the concrete as it lugged the rest of its body over the edge and up onto the roof. Nyx thanked whatever celestial happenstance that deigned the second half to be much smaller than the first.

A youma, then. Penelope told her she would run into these: monsters born of pure chaos to do the bidding of their masters. A fight with a youma was supposedly better than running across an officer, but Nyx would reserve judgment until she survived. Running was still an option if it turned out to be too strong, though not an option the sailor soldier gave much weight.

This youma was naturally off-balance and lumbering, but it only needed one good swipe to land in order to cause horrible damage. The splitting concrete was a testament, breaking as eagerly under the pressure as spring ice. With a guttural roar, the monstrosity propelled its ungainly body ahead with surprising speed, proving that its trunks-for-legs were weighed by muscle, each heavy landing of its paws sending fresh debris rumbling on the rooftop. s**t.

Another wild, strafing leap kept Sailor Nyx out of striking distance and almost launched herself over the edge in the process. Pain bloomed out from her shoulder instead, where it had slammed into a large air conditioning unit. She had little time to dwell on wounds, counting her blessings that she was still on her feet as the youma was roared again. Her eyes strained to focus on its position: it teetered over the edge as she had almost done, at least showing weakness in its ability to stop. Still, this was a losing game. Simply being able to react to this thing soon would not be enough. What had gone so wrong?! Going out alone, for one, she instantly chided herself. Stupid, stupid mistakes. How did the others do it?

Magic.

Her starseed sang it in a language she was learning to understand. Magic.

“Nyx—“ But there was no time.

She gasped at the sudden rumbling beneath her feet, snapping her from her thoughts back into what could be generously called battle. This time, dodging was actually slamming herself into the air conditioning unit, rolling along its side to narrowly avoid a pitch-black claw. She did fall this time, skidding along the uneven concrete that drew blood now and would bruise later, but her scream was swallowed by the sound of twisting metal and a monstrous bellow. Hope drew her eyes wide and gave her strength, for this time, the youma had plunged through the unit. Encased. Its muzzle continued to roar fiercely from the other end, and its claws thrashed against screeching metal and sparking wires – not dead, certainly, but it was a chance.

Gathering herself in a burst of adrenalin and likely something supernatural, Nyx pushed off of the torn concrete and into the youma’s backside. Metal groaned and gave; the unit teetered on what remained of its bearings, with the maw of the deep alleyway beckoning it downward. Electrical wires went dead as they snapped like whips. She repeated the action without a thought.

After the youma exploded into dust among the twisted remains, Sailor Nyx looked at her scraped, slightly shaking, bleeding hands. Capable hands.

Pft, magic.

Whoever invented grout could have done the world a favor and made it easier to clean. Or someone could have improved upon it by now, surely. Could grout be scotchguarded? Harper was willing to find out. Such thoughts circling her head were the norm towards the end of cleaning a particularly messy kitchen. She gave the old countertop a final swipe with her rag and stepped back. A smirk wound its way onto her face at the sight of the sparkling tiles, pristine white ceramic sink, and wooden floors only marked by their own knots. During these bouts of heavy cleaning – when the house falls a bit behind on its usual spotlessness and into an almost unrecognizable state of slight clutter – Harper always vowed herself to one cause or another, be it grout or banning orange-scented anything or whatever had annoyed her most particularly during the present task. And then, at the end, she would proudly look at what she had wrought and promptly forget all about it. The amnesia did not itself stem from any feeling of persevering over hardship – rather, she could no longer motivate herself enough to continue caring about inventing a cake-scented industrial cleaner. Until the next time. All in all, it was a proper punishment.

The kitchen finally looked itself again, everything scrubbed down to the last microbe and put in its proper place. Mother had a deadline coming up and an idea had struck her at nearly the last moment; it was an inspired twist to an old story that Harper loved. However, it meant that Father would be cooking, which always meant hearty and messily constructed meals. But oh, were they delicious.

It also meant that the usual distribution of chores was thrown off. Which ultimately had landed Harper with a kitchen covered in a week’s worth of the aforementioned hearty and messily constructed meals. There was a feeling beyond personal satisfaction as she figuratively and literally washed her hands of the whole event.

Harper tossed the disinfectant-laden rag into the dirty bin, which she would unload into the wash as soon as the other cycle finished, and retreated to her room. Curtis peeked out from her mound of nesting litter at the slight squeak of the door, knowing that she could easily con her owner out of a treat. Played like a fiddle.

Without another action, Harper bonelessly flopped onto her bed. A brown eye watched Curtis nibble on her dried banana chip, content, while at the same time her mind was many miles away and days into the past. It sees someone’s life end instantly, completely unprovoked, at the hands of a Negaverse general. It sees hands phasing through chests. The meeting hall go up in flames. She blinked roughly and the visions were gone, leaving only Curtis settling back into her nest.

It was worth it for these times – quiet, so drastically different times. Times where she knew that her family and friends were safe. Her mother and father would be home soon; her brother will visit to celebrate the book being finished. It was no longer her choice to be a civilian like that, as she had arrived at that meeting. Being a part of her family could no longer be these retrospectively simple tasks - they involved risking life and limb. It was literally a baptism of fire, and she would continue to fight her way out of the flames.