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“I don't want to be here.” Jada told the flight attendant absently when she came to check on them as the plane prepared for landing in Destiny City. “It is a dying place.” the woman- barely older than Jada herself- stared for a moment and then smiled and told her to enjoy her stay. The passenger across the cabin from her- Jada had flown First Class on the way back from Switzerland so there were only a few seats in her area anyway- gave them both a wry smile. Circling above DC, Jada could see her hometown spread out and sparkling, a perfect gem. The flaw was on the inside. Around and around the plane circled, finally coming to a grinding halt on the airway. The other passengers slipped off first, followed by Vic.

Jada remained seated.

It was five minutes before she was asked again to go ahead and disembark the plane, and she shuffled off with the rest of the horde, sliding into the crowd. She was alone again; the guard had vanished into the mass of people. Vic had claimed the luggage. Jada shoved it in the taxi herself. Back in DC, she texted everyone on her phone list. Pictures and trinkets for all who want them. She sent the message and tucked her phone away in her pocket, listening to the radio as the cabbie shot off towards the address she provided him.

No one had been there to greet her as she got off the airplane, to tell her 'Welcome Home!' Nobody had known when she had left, and no one had known when she would be returning- or, in fact, if she would be returning. That was fine for her. The taxi driver was quiet when she didn't say anything in reply to his curious inquiries. A positive boost to her day- a cabbie who knew when to be quiet. He took his time not to jostle or throw her bags around in the trunk, and it gave her time to think, staring out the window as fixedly as though what she was looking at was the key to the Bigger Picture. It wasn't, of coure, and all she was able to see was the usual urban scenery.

The drive home was quick; the cabbie didn't like her antisocial silence anymore than she liked the annoying banjo music he had playing. The gates that barred her driveway opened as she pushed the button on her keys, and he drove in, admiring the wrapping driveway. The garage door was closed and all of her drapes were pulled shut. There were chalk drawings on the sidewalk, in blues and reds and greens. She pulled her bags from the taxi with the driver's aid, setting them on the wraparound porch, and sent him on his way. The door opened quietly, and inside was silence. No lights, and the air was almost stale.

Castor mewed at her, ribbons decorating his form. Windows were flung open, every drape on all floors pulled aside to let in the cool breeze. The cat was glued to her legs, trying to trip her constantly until she picked him up. Clothing was tossed in the hamper for washing, or labeled for dry cleaning. The maid would take care of that all; she organized her shoe collection to include her new purchases, tossing clothing that no longer struck her fancy into a bag for delivery to a goodwill.

Two hours later she checked her phone; it was still dark. No replies. How lonely.

Sailor Scylla had taken the time to wikipedia what she was going to see. Everyone knew there were asteroids, moons, planets and stars out there, after all; it was only know that she and her fellow senshi were realizing that they were more than just of chunks of rock floating through space. Well, they had technically always known that, but they'd never realized- or she hadn't... just what being a Senshi actually meant. Every star, she had been told by an excited Scout, every senshi had a place of their own power. All that Scylla had to do was listen, and it would call out to her, and she would be able to use that cell phone that the Guardian Cats had give her to go home.

Home.

When Jada had first pulled up the Asteroid 155 Scylla on her laptop, the thing that she had thought immediately was, 'How small!' Scylla was a main belt asteroid and only 49.5 kilometers in diameter, which translated to a bit under 25 miles around. And frankly, she had been a little disappointed. Well, there went her delusions that what home would be for her would be some grand place, with large palaces and a big body of water. Her home world, then, would only come out to about 780 miles- 1256 kilometers- of overall surface space, if she was doing the math right. "Scylla possesses a very dark carbon-rich surface with an albedo of 0,031. It moves between 2,0056 (Perihel) astronomical units to 3.5157 astronomical units (aphelion) in 4.587 years on an eccentric course around the sun. The course is bent 11,3906° against the ecliptic, the course eccentricity amounts to 0,2735...?" Uh-huh. "What the deuces does that mean?" Astronomy had never been her strongest subject.

Well, understanding or not, logic was a good place to start. Jada had always been more of a book-learner than someone who learned through flinging themselves into space. And remembering the logical side of things would keep her from imagining something terribly romantic once she saw her home. Romantic was the thought of miles of coastline with waters that were crystal clear, with large palaces of ivory and gold, and plenty of quaint little villages. Romantic was dramatic cliffsides, and miles of the greenest countryside anyone could wish to see. Yet Scylla couldn't remember if the place that this asteroid had once been was romantic or not. (Probably not, she decided; 780 miles wasn't all that big, comparing it to countries in the world. The size was somewhere between Martinique and the Faroe Islands. Her power came from a bundle of space dust!)

Standing, Jada shut her laptop and lay it on the end of her bed; her left arm reached out and grabbed her car keys from the nightstand. It would take half an hour at the least to get to the place where she would feel safe enough to even attempt this crazy stunt. Human beings in space, from other planets? Possessed by souls that had lived and walked on other planets? Or rather, the reincarnation of these souls, who had nowhere else to go but Earth. She would say 'bah' if she didn't feel somewhere in her gut that it were true. That Earth could potentially be the last place for them to make a stand against… what? She stomped out to her car, got in, and drove. Chamberlyn Manor was quiet and dark inside; she flipped on lightswitches as she went, lighting the entire house as bright as it had been when she lived here before. The house felt gaping, like she was being swallowed whole. Oddly, it wasn't her bedroom that she went to, but her father's study. She locked the door behind her, examining the room; it was windowless, secure, and it still carried the scent of Michael's cologne when she sat down in his oversized leather chair. This was where Jada had grown up, and this was where she felt safe. And no one would find it strange that Jada was here, it was her family's house, after all. This was her home now, no matter what she would see when she went to this other place. In some ways, being told her soul had lived before made her feel like she'd been told she was adopted. That this wasn't her home, the people who loved her weren't her real family. It was as Sailor Scylla that she pulled open her cellphone, placing her fingers on the keys lightly and closed her eyes.

Listen.

Purple eyes opened to a sight that made nausea rise in her throat. The world, from where she stood, was wasteland and nothing but in every direction. The air was dry, cold, and dozens of other celestial bodies hung in the sky, countless. Incredible; an asteroid with a legitimately breathable atmosphere. But more than that... she spun in a circle, staring around at the scenery. She was standing on what had probably once been a beach, based on some of the erosion; rocks led up towards a small entrance in the side of the cliff. Quite neatly so, like it had maybe been a walking path once, though it widened in the middle. A gazebo to be there, perhaps, overlooking the water? And the rock trail led up, further into the rocks. There had probably been a clearer path once, sloughed away by whatever had destroyed this- her- world.

The rocks seemed to rise for miles into the air around her, windworn as a canyon. She slid down from her odd little perch, hissing as a few pebbles sprang loose and sent her tumbling down faster. She moved toward the path that was there, not really certain where to be heading. All there was was emptiness, and the realization that all around her were the things that granted her power. Relics, antiquated ruins. She clambered up onto the path, following it carefully as it started to rise into the air. There weren't any handholds, but most beach docks didn't have them; stone was also a wise choice for a dock in some cases, as it held better than wooden docks in worse weather.

It was all one piece, she noticed, watching the ground so she wouldn't trip or fall off. Halfway up she paused, letting herself flop into the dirt for a break. 780 miles was a lot, when you were the only person in it. She closed her eyes, listening to the overwhelming. Andromache! It was the whisper of another voice, and she shot into a sitting position, looking around. For one moment, she was floating on glistening waters the clear crystal of the Caribbean. Andromache! The voice, one more time. She blinked, unable to believe what she saw, and when her eyes opened it was gone. Ugh, she was such a romantic. A fleeting fancy, perhaps, to see the landscape changed. Yet something about the brief sight inspired her, and she pressed to her feet, trudging the rest of the way to where the gazebo had once stood, in her mind. As she got closer the slope slanted uncomfortably, but there were little rocks on it that she could use as handholds to pull herself up the rest of the way, weathered and worn down by time.

As she got closer to the gazebo garden, she could see what looked like a balcony peeking over the edge of the cliffside, higher up in the air than she could comfortably make for the moment. It was too steep from here. But she took note of that balcony, to see if she could go there, next time, instead of here. Then again, maybe at the end of the path was a door, that had been closed by time? She might be able to pry it open, if she didn't get exhausted. How strange that the path was rounded on both sides rather than just one. What kind of weather had Scylla had?

At last- at last!- Sailor Scylla was Queen of what she surveyed, trying to imagine how the view had been from the gazebo. First one way, then the next. Her brows furrowed, and she followed the paths that spilled out in each direction, and then the two that seemed to climb the side of the rockface, parallel to each other as two arms. Which was, she realized, staring more closely at the ground, exactly what they were. It was not a rock that Sailor Scylla was standing on when she decreed herself Master of all that she viewed.

It was a fossil. The fossil of a... Scylla swallowed, looking at her 'world' in a new light. What she had mistaken for paths were not paths at all, but arms; twelve tentacles, to be more precise, each as wide across at their narrowest visible points as a full-size bed.

She was standing on the fossil of what she could only assume to be the Kraken.