She remembered.
Laying awake in a bed not her own and under an unfamiliar ceiling in place she only knew from photos and occasional video, she remembered. Oppressive heat, eye-stinging ash. The way the molten rock had baked the ground beneath her moccasins so that each step taken was almost too much, scalding the bottoms of her feet. Dried mouth and seared sinuses. The Leopard-looking weirdo in charge of said abomination of a battle ground. She remembered the doe-eyed brunet senshi, so much larger than she at that point...but so ineffectual and weak. Atlas. Moonstone remembered him, remembered beating him into a corner, forcing the mint-and-white senshi to fight back or die.
She also remembered the man. She didn't know his name, but she had very nearly killed him too - Atlas had stopped her as she slammed her wooden mask into his yielding flesh repeatedly. The sound of snapping bones, the taste of flying blood coppery on her tongue, filling the back of her mouth with a flood of saliva to wash away the metallic taste. The way her stomach had briefly twisted, much like the battered man's leg, before she'd continued. Or had it been Atlas that saved the man? Had Atlas thrown himself between Moonstone and her selected prey?
A shard of memory broke from the surface, related but not what she wanted: The volcano rumbling, announcing eruption terrible and inexorable. The panic felt keenly with heaving breast, the suffocating cling of sweat-damp leather restricting her limbs; Moonstone could remember the feelings that had flown through her then with an odd sort of clarity, if not the events. Perhaps she could not recall if she had murdered the man or if he had been spared - she could remember that the senshi, Atlas, had survived. She remembered feeling disappointment, after. Days of it. Knowing she had let her superiors down by allowing the senshi to live, by not having collected that man's star-seed. So much wasted effort on her part, with nothing to show for it but a few burns - and now fragmented memories that often made no sense and sometimes jolted her from sleep, sweating and wild-eyed.
Moonstone remembered Alcyone. Coming for her. Revenge for Atlas. A flash of light, brilliantly blinding - then nothing. Why had the senshi let her go? Had someone come for her then? So many questions remained unanswered, so much of her old personality, hopes and dreams wiped completely within the space of a heartbeat.
She also remembered that there was a debt owed the Negaverse. A senshi's crystal. Moonstone would bring one and lay it at her Queen's feet if it was the last thing she did. I will not fail my Queen, I will not fail the Negaverse! Whether or not the Negaverse considered there a debt was not really of concern: it was a pressing thought, a compulsion that sent surges of anxiety through her when she thought on it. It will be harder here than in Destiny City, but not impossible. I will manage, but it must be tonight. Before the tourists return to the mainland.
Luminous green numbers floated in the dark by her head, reading the hour and minute. Ten became eleven before she deemed it the right time. Waiting for her aunt's household to settle for the night set already taught nerves bow-tight, but she had been at their house for long enough by then to know the little things that signified all were asleep and would not be up without some pressing cause. By ten after, Pandora had let chaos wash away the dark haired Haida girl and leave the hard-eyed captain Moonstone in her place. Fifteen after found her teleported outside and back in town where she could more easily find prey that would not be traced back to her family or Skidegate.
She was surprised when she felt it - a pull on her senses, grating like sandpaper over skin. Here? There's a senshi here? There wasn't a great deal of time to be surprised, for the senshi was moving towards her quick as a flash and in a direct line that seemed a bit of a suicide rush in Moonstone's estimation. Either the senshi was very new, very young...or they just didn't understand the danger that she represented. It made no matter, Moonstone would engage them in combat, win, and remove their star-seed as her well-earned prize. An effective strategy was needed, naturally, and she had decided that although senshi seemed to love the sound of their own voice almost as much as monologuing villains in cartoons, she was going to cut the green-haired girl's speech as short as possible. Using the element of surprise had worked for her before, perhaps this one would be so incapable that being interrupted would throw her off completely and allow Moonstone a quick and easy victory.
"In the name of I--HEY!" The senshi, a teenaged girl in a very basic uniform had started her spiel and was unprepared for the savage nature of Moonstone's immediate attack, the totem bat barely missing her pony-tailed head as she scrambled back. "You're-- HEY! You're supposed to let me--" High, low. Left. Sweep for the legs. Jump in with an overhead blow: The Captain's bat came down with a sickening crack to the senshi's right shoulder, dislocating it and likely breaking her clavicle in the process; the senshi screamed and jumped backwards to put space between them, opening her mouth again only to be cut of abruptly by the dark-haired Negaverse officer.
"Shut up and die!"
Senshi magic came swirling at Moonstone, slamming into her torso and pushing the young woman back so that her feet dug furrows into the earth below; it didn't knock the officer down much to her opponent's obvious dismay, but it did knock the wind out of her. Also, it seemed to click some sort of switch in Moonstone's brain; her expression turned hard and cold, feral, and she snarled as she launched herself at the now terrified senshi.
Some time later, when the false dawn made the world seem lighter, Moonstone realized she was still transformed. She was kneeling atop a battered body with a glittering star-seed cupped almost tenderly in her bloodied hands. A chill rose from beneath Moonstone, the senshi long since revered to her civilian self, stone cold and dead. "Oh." Knowing the violence wrought on the too-still form had come at her own hands was not as troubling as the fact that she could only vaguely recall having encountered her and could remember none of what had happened until she caught a glimpse of her blood-spattered face in the facets of the star-seed. Then memory and knowledge came seeping back in slowly, how she had fallen upon the girl savagely, given no quarter. How she had taken her star-seed, her life, with no thanks for the service she was doing by giving it up.
"I'm sorry." Moonstone banished the star-seed after apologizing to it, then pushed up to her feet. "Your sacrifice will have meaning, your soul will protect this world as you did not." Moonstone teleported back to her aunt's, washed her hands and face in the barn, and then powered down so that she could crawl back into bed, the gnawing anxiety that had been after her since she decided a debt was owed finally at rest.
The clock numerals changed only twice before Pandora drifted off to a deep and dreamless sleep.
WC: 1,281
