Two policemen had to drag Megrez out of the hotel. She must have said that she knew how to get home from there or something equally disarming, for they had left her alone after a while. She didn’t remember; her ejection from the hotel was incredibly blurry. Right now, she was sitting in the middle of some grassy area (the courtyard, maybe?), waiting for the world around her to stop spinning and come into focus.

Soon, the blurriness of her mind settled, and she stood up. What was she doing here? What had happened?

Ah, right. She knew what had happened. The sight of Penthesilea limp in the Corrupt’s arms careened back into her conscious mind, and she felt her heart skip a beat. She had sworn to never let anyone take the people she loved from her after those dark visions. She knew that, in that terrible future, the Negaverse had taken Penthesilea by force, turned her into a monster wearing her friend’s skin. The vision flashed back in front of her, and for a moment, she felt the straps tying her to the table and Corrupt Penthesilea’s soft, wicked hands touching her, stroking her, pulling on her. “No,” she said to no one. “No no no no.” Megrez remembered that Penthe had told her that a General-Queen had gone for her starseed and was unable to touch it. If they couldn’t grab her starseed, they couldn’t corrupt her, so wouldn’t she be okay?

No. There were other ways to kill a person besides taking their starseed. She remembered Cybele telling her of the execution that she did not live to see. If there were transcended (that’s what they were called at the time, wasn’t it? Yes, she remembered that the kind senshi at the hospital was one. Ida.) at that execution, surely they just killed them all the same, disabling the body and hoping to catch the soul another time. It made sense; they would not be able to take Penthesilea for themselves, so they would make sure no one could have her. They would kill her.

It was going to happen all over again. The precise machinations would be different, but the outcome would be the same: Megrez would lose one she loved. Her stomach lurched, and tears sprang to her eyes before she crumbled to the ground on all fours with a cry of grief. She felt so empty in that future after having lost everything. If it happened again, it would kill her. The grief inside her underwent a drastic reaction, her sobbing transforming into a screech of rage. She sprang up, ran to the nearest tree, and tore a sizable branch off, snapping it and throwing the pieces on the ground before stomping on them. She would find the Negaverse members responsible for all that had happened tonight and break them, tear them apart, destroy them.

That Corrupt who had captured Penthesilea seemed to have a history with her. Megrez had been fortunate to not gain any strong or persistent nemeses over the course of her senshi career, but it made sense that Penthe would. If that woman took advantage of Penthesilea’s weakened state to try and break her or worse, Megrez would be beside herself. She would never forgive herself, or the black-clad monster. She would find that woman, douse her in gasoline, throw a match at her, and then piss on the ashes! That woman would not make one of her loved ones disappear again! Never!

Terrible visions filled Megrez’s head of tearing the Corrupt’s head off and bouncing it off the wall like a handball, of slashing her to pieces with whatever sharp object she could get her hands on, of burning, burning, burning everything with her rage.

The branch had become too small to break any further, and when Megrez exited that portion of the reverie, she had been banging on the tree and kicking it, like she could knock it over, pick it up, and use it to bash some poor Negaverse officer to a splatter of blood on the sidewalk.

With a scream, she sank to her knees as something else came to her mind. She was letting hate fill her again. If she focused too much on killing the Corrupt, she might lose Penthesilea in the chaos. This was not how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to have love in her heart, and that would ward off Chaos. Trembling and heaving with broken sobs, Megrez let herself fall onto her back, spread eagle in front of the tree. It was too much, it was all too much. If she didn’t find some way to save Penthesilea and bring her home in her arms, she would break under the strain. She felt like she would splinter to bits in body, mind, and soul, right here, right now. It was like Kerberos had said: love alone was not a cure-all.

But if her love for the world and its people and her people couldn’t save her and everyone else, what could?