Clutching her phone to her chest, Cruithne did her best to breathe normally. All I have to do is concentrate and push a button on the phone. Easy. I can do the thing.

Taking another deep breath, the chibi senshi of lavender opened her eyes and stared up at the nighttime sky. Please, Lady, she prayed silently. Please let this work. I need this. Snapping her phone open, she thought of her home planet, focusing her whole being on it and jabbed her thumb into the button on her phone. Even as she felt the magic or whatever work, she had to smother a tiny giggle. She was phoning home. She was friggin’ E.T.

Before she had a chance to panic, she felt her feet touch solid earth and her blue eyes flew open. She was still breathing. And she was most definitely not on Earth! Feeling her knees wobble a little, she sank down and sat on a handy rock. She’d done it. She’d made it to her planet.

Now what do I do?

That thought brought a fresh burst of panic. As she looked around and saw ruins and withered plant life, Cruithne wondered what good it actually did to be here. Other than being able to say that she’d visited outer space.

“Well, I might as well look around, right?” she asked herself. Getting to her feet, she inspected the rock she’d been sitting on, realizing that is was a little too symmetrical to be a natural shape. Brushing her fingertips against it, she gently swept the dust of ages from the worn carvings and knelt to better examine them. Though worn, she could recognize the carvings as being purely decorative. Flowers, vines and abstract shapes. They were pretty as was the purple veined stone they were etched into.

Standing, she absently brushed the dust from her skirt. Clearly the ancient war had not left this place alone. The longer she was there, the sadder she felt. This had once been a beautiful place, she decided. If she used her imagination, she could find that beauty hidden amidst the rubble. Really, she could almost hear a trickle of water if she concentrated. Then, her eyes went wide as she realized that she was, indeed, hearing water moving somewhere close by. Holding her breath, she listened, cupping her hands around her ears to help her focus. Yes, it was a real sound! Moving carefully and oh, so slowly, she followed it and eventually came to a tiny hollow nestled in the middle of a crumbling bower. From within bubbled a tiny, tired spring. The water was cloudy and sank back into the parched earth almost as quickly as it came out. But yet…

Gnawing on her lip, Cruithne pulled and pushed at some of the rock around the spring, trying to clear it away. She felt, with a great certainty, that it needed to be cleared. As she worked, she picked up a ghostly trace of pipe music and blinked.

Glancing up, she caught a shimmering, ghostly vision of a little boy laughing and running up to the spring and then kneeling beside her. For a moment, he seemed so solid that she wanted to reach out and touch his damp hair. She blinked again and the boy as well as the music were gone. Oh, this was too odd. Grunting, she tugged and pushed one particularly large rock away and the spring burbled up a little stronger than before. Scrubbing the back of one gloved hand across her eyes, she smiled.

It wasn’t much, but she was happy to do this small service for her old home. Ignoring the dirty that now coated her, she sat beside the trickle of water and closed her eyes. Again, she heard music and she sat upright, trying to figure out where it was coming from. And then she gasped. The spring was whole again. A bubbling, strong source of clean, clear water surrounded by lush greenery and tiny, white flowers. Circling the spring were three statues, each a graceful female holding small water urns against their hips. Scrambling to her feet, Cruithne darted to get a better look at one of them, only to have the vision fade once more. Still, she went and examined the place where she thought she’d seen a statue.

And sure enough, nestled within the dirt and dead plantlife was what was left of a stone pedestal. Was she remembering things? Or simply imagining them due to mental and emotional strain? Wandering slowly back to the source of the spring, she glanced down at the tiny, muddy puddle when the unbidden thought came: I wonder if the Oasis looked this bad after I set fire to it…

Before she had a chance to even wonder where such a strange thought had come from, Cruithne doubled over in pain, clutching her head as wave upon wave of memory and experiences that were yet to be hit her.

She saw herself tossed unceremoniously through a large, dark mirror by a strange brunette, saw Chariklo and Amytis standing by, watching anxiously. Heard herself scream as her starseed was altered in ways she didn’t understand.

Beside the lifespring of her home world, Cruithne fell to the ground, limbs flailing and seizing as each new, strange memory hit her brain, threatening to overwhelm her. She saw the energy donation centers, felt impotent rage that she couldn’t do something to bring an end to their evil. Saw a dusky, glowing princess using her magic to heal the wounded that the war had left behind. The memories told her that she knew this Princess as Ida, that she knew her even as Cruithne’s mind protested that she hadn’t ever seen this person before.

Other memories surfaced, though the chibi senshi’s mind did it’s best to block them out, to protect her from the crushing waves. A large, dark furred cat who deigned to let her cuddle him sometimes, a pretty, glittering Knight with terrible scars on her face. A giant of a Knight pulling Chariklo and a tarry, horrifying corpse away from a battlefield. Herself playing with two tiny babies that she knew somehow belonged to Chariklo and Amytis.

Eyes screwed shut, Cruithne began to scream as the memory of terrible emotional and physical pain assailed her. She felt herself being torn apart as she fought against impossible odds, knowing that she was going to die and unable to do anything about it.

Still screaming and twitching, Cruithne’s eyes flew open as she stared unseeing at her ruined homeworld. Before her horrified eyes, visions of future atrocities continued to dance, pulling her into their madness.

Soon, she was one, long, unending scream or horror and pain.