Kept company only by the soft tapping echo of her shoes hitting the ground, Namaka remembered precisely why she had never really enjoyed being in Mirrorspace. The emptiness was… distressing. And she knew, even though others had done their best to keep the information from her, that somewhere, there was a chamber full of people trapped within mirrors. The senshi shivered at the thought. Yes, it was more than time she left this life. She didn’t know what would happen after, but she was sure it would be better than this weirdly awful, low key evil.

And yet, in spite of her aversion to Mirrorspace, something inside was calling to her, like a string tightening around her heart. Before she could leave, she had to follow that call. And hope that it wasn’t some sort of trick. She was fairly sure it was real, but well. Mirrorspace was so fluid, that caution was never a bad idea.

Deeper and deeper she went, ignoring the little ‘islands’ where she knew that Mirrorspace had tried very hard to give them something akin to homeworlds. But they aren’t real, she thought fiercely. They’re just pretty lies and I’m tired of them. That was the key, wasn’t it. She was tired of being a lie. She wanted to break free and fly.

“A pretty thought,” a familiar voice whispered at her shoulder. “But you’re the senshi of sharks, not flying fish.”

Spinning around, heart racing, Namaka found herself face to face with… herself?!? One hand clutching at her chest, she stared at her double and frowned. She had never smiled like that in her life. There was an ugly, sneering quality to the smile she saw.

It was a smile that would have graced her biological mother’s face right before the woman did something horrible.

The double rolled her eyes and snorted, “Oh please spare me. As if you’d never done anything misguided. We are our mother’s daughter, you know. We belong here, so why you thinking of leaving, eh?”

The double stalked forward and raised languid arms to drape them over Namaka’s shoulder as she leaned in to press their faces together.

“You’re so close to being great. Why leave? Because some silly haole said you looked like her dead friend? Oh please! And this hero nonsense running through your head is just childish. You know there’s no such thing. But if we stay here… Baby, the things we could do!”

The ugly light in the double’s eyes seemed to glow. And for a moment, Namaka wondered if she might be right. There was still so much she didn’t understand about leaving the Court. But she wasn’t happy here. And she was more than old enough to finally save herself from a bad situation. Unlike her mother, Namaka didn’t need to wait this time for someone else to save her.

She would be her own hero.

Stiffening in fury, the double hissed and dug her sharp fingers into Namaka’s shoulder.

“No! You’re not allowed to leave. This is where we belong!”

She might have said more, but Namaka wasn’t listening. Instead, she was drawing back her fist, already glowing with her magic and driving it into her double’s face. As the double shrieked in fury, Namaka realized that she hadn’t just punched her double, she’d punched through her double. But there was no blood, no viscera. Only broken and cracking mirror glass. As the double shattered and fell to literal pieces, Namaka caught sight of something that different look like glass shards. It looked an awful lot like how she’d heard a starseed described.

And as she stood staring at it, the pull she’d felt strengthened. Plucking up the reflective gem, she knew instinctively that this was what she’d come here for. Whatever it was, whatever it meant… This was what she needed.
She wasn’t allowed very long to muse over things as Mirrorspace seemed to surge and scream around her. Clutching the gem tightly, Namaka decided she could study it later. For now, she had to get out of her.

And as she ran for her life, she found herself laughing. She was leaving and she was never going to come back!