the three lights.

[mooneternal]

The sound of an expertly played piano fills the air, its tune something akin to the rushing wind... And then the sounds of a violin, its strings lovingly caressed, taking the listener down, somehow, to the depths of the deepest seas... The lights come on in a flash -- its a concert.

"It's Haruka!" someone exclaimed.

"She's so cool!" Usagi agreed, unable to take her eyes off of the pair. The music that had just filled the concert hall drifted away, as the musicians took their bows and accepted the applause that washed over from the crowds, just as someone screamed...

"It's the Three Lights!"

"Huh? Where?!" Usagi cried, looking around furiously, "I can't see! Where's my binoculars?!" No way was she going to miss the biggest concert of the century!! The Three Lights, the hugest pop group to come to Tokyo!

Comments

[mooneternal]

Her eyes widened as Sailor Iron Mouse seemed to implode in front of their eyes, vanishing almost instantly into a cloud of ash, as a thick golden bracelet clanged to the floor. It settled for only a moment before it also disappeared.

Sailormoon whipped her head in the direction she was sure the attack had come from.

"Who are you?!" someone cried. Was it her? The only thing she was sure of was a poundng between her ears.

Their faces... She'd seen them somewhere before, hadn't she?!

[waterfell]

She'd like to say they're outsiders and that the galaxy has no need of more sailor senshi anyway. She'd like to say they're cowards who couldn't even defend what was their own, who didn't even fight to their last to do that, who fled instead of an honorable death in battle when the final moment came.

Yes, Mercury knows the Sailor Starlights. But she has also known them as capable of the feat they've just performed: eradicating the enemy that she, too, despises. She holds her tongue.

Mercury turns to Sailor Moon instead. "Do you know them?" she asks, and though her face gives nothing away, there seems to be an expectation of a yes, of the other girl putting her finger on that tentative familiarity.

[mooneternal]

"I don't... I don't know," she replied honestly, her eyes searching the place where they stood, thinking somehow the more she focused on them, the more she'd be able to remember... something!

But only a pain in her head reigned. Sailormoon sank to her knees, her hands pressing against her ears as the more she concentrated. "Who are those three?!"

[waterfell]

"They're sailor senshi." Mercury offered no more than that. Even when she relented enough to give more, she said nothing of why they were here. "Sailor senshi from across the galaxy."

Hadn't Usagi felt it? No, perhaps she hadn't; even Mercury recalled Venus' frustration with Usagi's slowness to develop those senshi senses. Or perhaps she had felt it, now that she had a frame of reference for it: the unmistakable aura of stars and planets.

"However," she adds. "The one they just destroyed for you was also a sailor senshi." There was some grim satisfaction and dark pleasure in being the one to show Usagi the truth: she could no longer naively assume that 'senshi' means 'comrade'.

She never could.