Welcome to Gaia! ::

Earth.

It had been so strange when she first landed here. Everything looked so — so different. She heard of Earth, of course! But that had been a very, very long time ago…

This was nothing like what her star maps had said!

Ptolemy had walked up to the nearest door — all five feet of her with determination — and knocked. No regard to how it was midnight. No regard to how she didn’t know where this was. No regard to the fact that she was in her senshi form, either.

She was lucky in that regard. Extraordinary lucky that the door she knocked on belonged to a cat cafe called Nekosuke (though she hadn’t read the sign — it was hard to read when one hadn’t done it in millennia). More than lucky that it belonged to a certain knight of Cosmos and not someone else that would have been shocked out of their wits with what was on their doorstep.

Well, Yuri was quite a bit shocked. He’d ushered her in. Asked why she was transformed. Then was greeting with a head tilt like he’s just invited in a confused stray. Then she untransformed into Ptolemy. And after giving the young man a near heart attack, explained that she had just arrived on Earth.

After an exasperated explanation on why she couldn’t just go around telling anyone that, she was told she was ‘new here’, according to Erytheia, though she had protested that they were certainly not and were very, very old, in fact.

As Sailor Urania waited on the roof of the apartment above the cafe where she had been told to wait for another senshi like her, she kept thinking about what had been meant by ‘new’. She looked up at the moon with blue star-lit eyes as she felt the aura of another approach.

She could admit it had been a very long time since she had felt the power of another like her.

❂

While waiting for Alastor, she looked up at the moon and then down at a strand of her hair. It was still brown.

“Why? It’s starlight out. Oh,” she said as she looked up at the moon. “That is this planet’s moon. It reflects the light of its sun.”

She almost didn’t notice him as he arrived — so caught up was she in the mystery. What was it about the sun that made her hair change? It was a star, was it not?

“This planet’s sun! Is there something different about it?” She demanded of Alastor as if she had forgotten why she was waiting here. Then she blinked her starry eyes as if coming back to the situation at hand, slowly. “Oh! Um! Yes.”

She was already getting ahead of herself and she had hardly been here an hour!

“My name is Sailor Urania. I’m ‘new here’.”


❂

To her, it was strange hearing her own name again. The name of her world. It had been the last word she had heard another person speak before she had been put in stasis.

Why? Why had she been put in that crystal?

Because the world itself may come for you.

As she thought these words, she realized she did not know how long it had been since then.

“Yes! You can call me Ptolemy, if you want. Sorry about the question. I’m just used to much different skies.”

Perhaps that was an understatement. She was used to a much different world.

“Time? You said you had plenty of it. But what time is it now?” She suddenly turned to Alastor like she wanted to sit down, but had too much pent up energy to do so. “What year is it?”


❂

“Two-thousand. We used to use the same calendar as the Moon Kingdom on Urania, but our year follows the zodiac, There was even a clock in the Uranian castle that tracked the time… but that was destroyed…” She wanted to give a when to that, but couldn’t.

All she knew was that was past.

“Chaos?” There was something dark in her expression as if the sparkle had gone out of her eyes. And that is what happened, in a way. Some of the light was certainly out of them at the mention of Chaos. “It is here now, too? When I… when Chaos came to my world in the fallen stars… I had tried to find out from whence it came… but was unsuccessful.”

How long had she been asleep? What had happened in that time?

“They do not know of senshi here? Or have they just forgotten? What has Chaos done?”


❂

“Cosmos? She sent all the senshi here? To Earth? When —”

When their worlds died out.

Sailor Urania couldn’t bring herself to say that last part. It hurt too much and in a way she hadn’t expected. It was as if the floor had been taken out from under her feet.

And there was nothing in all her power to keep her from falling.

“The worlds… died. Was Chaos that powerful? My mother must have known that. That’s why she…” Tears started to form in her eyes. “… that’s why the queen put me in stasis and used the king’s last power to help her do so.”

She could barely bring herself to say the words mother and father. Their loss pained her too much. She had not known at the time why her mother had cast that spell. When it hit her, it was too late to ask why.

She must have known that she stood no chance as she was against Chaos.

She’d simply tried to save her daughter.

“My world. It’s shattered. It is as if many, many years have past and it has grown old. But it still lives.”


❂

“You have met others like me?” She replied as if she was indeed a unicorn, some creature that the world had long forgotten.

But, no, that was not it. There were still senshi, just on Earth and not in the stars. And if there were still sailor guardians in the world, there was still hope.

“How many senshi have you met here? And have all their worlds been touched by Chaos, too?” Urania tried to recall what Chaos had done to her world, but she had come back home so late, back then. But what of now?

“But you are speaking of the present.” Although, she still wasn’t quite sure how long there was between the past and the present time.
“When I awoke, not only did my world look like time had passed, but there was also a location that I could not access. — the Observatory. It as if a dark force keep me away from it.”


❂

“Senshi awoke here instead of on their own worlds?” For a moment, it seemed she was going to get sad again. She was processing the fact that Chaos had done quite a number on this solar system, after all, as well as literally everything else in the Galaxy, it seemed. But when one was about to give into despair of the situation, something else sparked inside of her.

Curiosity.

“I wonder why here — on Earth.” She emphasized, a curious lilt to her voice. “There must be something about this place that held off Chaos where the other worlds couldn’t.”

It took her a moment to come back to the conversation about her own world being thus distracted by cosmic mysteries.

“So, it’s been a thousand years, huh? Makes sense that my world is shattered, then. It hasn’t had the magic from the Castle in all that time. Castle Ourania was destroyed. It housed the Ward that prevented unwanted space debris from hitting Urania. It’s one of the complications that living in the main asteroid belt can bring. But the Observatory still stands. That houses the Veil. And that is the magic that makes the stars visible despite the sun on Urania. Which means…”

The light was beginning to come back into her eyes.

“…there must be something in the Observatory the dark force was trying to keep me from. The Veil is broken, yet the Observatory still stands. And that wouldn’t make sense without something interfering — you’re right, that’s got to be where the Chaos is located!”


❂

“I think there is something special about this place, too.” Urania said as she looked up at the stars. “I can’t wait to learn more about this planet.”

There was going to be quite a lot to learn.

“Well, that’s a plan, then. Find a Mauvian. Befriend some allies. And learn about Earth!”


❂