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{R} - Two girl show

{!} - Magical cat ID, 102 - Awakening

A stray cat tells Fleur that she is really Sailor Cybele, a magical defender of Justice. Nice!

{R} - I'm TOTALLY A FAN

Fleur apparently has a fan! An adorable if slightly annoying fan. They talk about acting and writing a little.

{R}- Armor is Complicated

Cybele discovers knights, gets a little encouragement, and decides rooftops are not the place for her.

{B}-Wrong Place, Wrong Time

This Negaverser is only sweet until Cybele decides she'd not joining him...

{R}- That Still Small Voice



Another discussion. Cybele decides she has no idea who to trust.

{R}- Flower Power

Cybele pretends everything is ok, but isn't very convincing...

At least she got to hunt something, for once.

Solo- Breaking Character

She wasn’t supposed to exist.

Somehow, though, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at her reflection. It looked innocent. Tame. A girl in a soft cotton T-shirt and shorts, getting ready for bed maybe, hair still slightly damp from the shower. Even the gauze bandage on her shoulder didn’t look so bad. She’d hurt herself in gym class, maybe. No, just on some fairly safe adventure. It was summer vacation. There were tears in her eyes, still, but that was excusable as well. She was a teenage girl, after all. Emotions were normal. She pressed her hand against her chest, gently. Maybe a broken heart?

Nobody believed that story, though. They had found her in the aftermath of the carnival, injured and covered in grime. The paramedics had decided she was going to live and had handed her and the bandages she was now wearing to her parents. There had been a heartfelt reunion, filled with tears of gratitude that she was alive and lies. She’d been injured somehow, she couldn’t quite remember, then managed to hide. Tomorrow, she would have to convince them she didn’t need a psychologist. She didn’t want to lie that much.

She couldn’t have died, she told herself instead. Cybele was the one fighting monsters and failing, the one demanding to be killed and almost being obeyed. Fleur should have vanished, ceased to exist, that was all. Cybele was the one who should have died. Cybele was the one in danger.

She wasn’t Cybele.

Only that didn’t make the screams in her head go away. The bodies… she could still see them. Cruel breath on her face, someone touching her soul, people falling one by one, blood, creatures clawing at her… The tears started flowing down her face again as one by one the images came into her mind. Others, too, from before the carnival. There were hands on her shoulders, inches from where she now knew her soul was. There were dark figures towering over her, one after another. Then the hands found her throat. It was another time she could have died, though at least that time she hadn’t failed anybody else. No. Not her. Cybele.

She wasn’t Cybele.

She’d scrubbed herself three times, using half a bottle of body wash and even more shampoo. The water had slowly turned from a awful mess of mud and blood to beautifully crystal clear, holding only tears. They hadn’t stopped stinging her face, but a sweet smell had begun to pervade the air. She could be a little normal at least. Even her clothes would probably survive, as her fuku had absorbed the worst of the filth. No, Cybele’s fuku.

She wasn’t Cybele. If she wasn’t Cybele, it was easier to pretend everything was ok. It was possible to pretend she had escaped instead of have been spared. It was possible to spend a few moments not overwhelmed by the fact that she was useless. Fleur was supposed to be useless.

That was what Cybele was for. But Cybele was being pretty useless as well, and either way she wasn’t going to lie to herself anymore. She stopped touching her chest, feeling the heart that was still somehow gently thrumming inside her chest, and maybe her soul as well. Hesitantly, she crossed her room to pick up the object she couldn’t deny, the object that bridged the gap. Her henshin pen. Fleur’s, and Cybele’s as well, because…

She was Cybele.

Then she threw the pen back into the pen back into the bag with a harsh sob, because this time there was no way to deny the fact that she couldn’t save anyone. This time there wasn’t any excuse, however weak, to why she shouldn’t be dead.

Word Count: 625