The Bar at the End of the Universe

What to say about her. What's happening to her now? Nothing. Very very few things of consequence or import. She's been enjoying class, playing pranks on the teachers, skipping around in the forest after school, watching the days go by.

She's grown a little... by an inch maybe. It's all enough that she's a little off guard... more so than usual.

It's Hotaru Tomoe who enters the bar now, sleeves pushed up, ready to work on arts and crafts for Wednesday morning. It's a little much - the apron, the rubber gloves *and* the goggles, but at least she's ready for whatever challenge paper pasting has to throw at her. When she walks into the bar, instead of the living room, she gasps and stares.

"Um..." she peels one rubber kitchen glove off, and shrugs, sighing. "Oh well."

It isn't a moment after she sighs that she gets a shiver - the presence of stars. And the whiff of the scent of that woman... but she shakes her head, quickly. "I don't want to think about that right now." There are more serious things in the world... and paper pasting is right at the top of her list for best distraction ever, followed shortly by the bar.

It doesn't take long for her to realize why the winged woman has been coming to her, speaking to her in riddles, showing her her deserted home near the rocky rings of Saturn, (the deep of space is very beautiful from there. That she doesn't mind at all).

However, she doesn't know, exactly, what the answer to the question the woman has been posing is. "Am I truly good? Do I truly belong to the light? ...Or..." the alternative is too terrible to consider beyond those first fleeting thoughts.

Those memories of being "The Feared One," the "Forbidden One," earned, as she did horrible things... but to cleanse, to renew. She was asked. That was her mission.

"This child, will she be Awakened again?..." her parents had discussed fearfully between themselves earlier this year, thinking she wouldn't listen. She was too young. She was Awake now, and the very first thing she had said to them, seeing the shock and brimming despair on their faces, was "I'm not the same person, anymore." She didn't say it to reassure them. And though she is not that person, that last resort to destroy evil, even if it destroyed... everything else along with her... she can't help but think that perhaps she should consider what the Singing Woman urges her to. That perhaps, this is not her true path.

She sits in a chair, askance from the fireplace.

She enters Milliways through the front door. She has an eager and expectant expression on as she looks around the room.
A Princess raised in light, belonging to darkness.
She doesn't see anyone who she was expecting to see, though, at first. Not a one.
She denies her heart. A pity.
Disappointed, she turns back around on her heel just a few steps into the room.

At the door she hesitates, bows her head, her dark hair falling forward to conceal her little face. Slowly, she turns back to the room to reveal a briefly darkened mood. At each step she takes away from the door that would lead her away from the bar, to the forest outside of her home in Tokyo, she seems to return more and more to herself - if distractedly.

She sits at a table with four chairs without attention, looks at the menu, looks away into the room. She seems not to know where to look, what to give her... Heart...to. Every couple of seconds she shifts her gaze from one thing to something else, impatiently.

It is your true Self. Give in, save your struggle. It's going to save you from the light, whether you will or won't.

She opens the door to Milliways, the little one, shuts it behind her with an "oomph."

...Okay, maybe she isn't that little. Not anymore. Maybe eight.

Anyway, she walks up to bar, clambors onto a bar stool, and asks for a green tea flavored boba tea. And thinks about stars, and what makes them so bright in the sky at night... (oh, the scientific answer she knows. Don't worry about explaining all of that to her. She's got it down, pat.)

{Previous to now... [whitetext] "That is what I miss."

[whitetext] "Why remember all of this now?"

"(calm in the destruction)?"}

There's a quick flash of violet light (over which Tomoe has no control), and Hotaru Tomoe is sitting in a chair in a corner of Milliways Bar.

She's wearing purple fuzzy slippers, jeans and a t-shirt.

She starts to stand, walk over to the bar, but rethinks it and stays seated. Instead she turns so she can find the bar door. But her eyes pass over the place where it should be a few times without stopping to focus on it.

After that, she turns to the table itself, pulls her knees up on the chair to her chin, and wraps her arms around her legs. Looks like she's choosing to be patient for now.

It's not so much the voice, the singing, or the mystery that bother little Hotaru Tomoe so much anymore.

It's the feeling, the memory. Like...

Just today, she was walking home, happy, and suddenly a memory filled her being as plain as reality,

walking home, sad. Wearing dark tights and dark long sleeves.

Having no friends, and misery...


It's the feeling, the memory, of...

Lying asleep. Lying cold, and asleep. Sleeping for... so long. Watching a civilization collapse.


She shakes those things off. "I'm a different person now..."


But it's the feeling. It's the memory of taking the stone staff of that cruel weapon in hand that comes to mind most often these days. It's the memory of reveling in the destruction even as she mourned the losses she was creating.
Or did she? Did she ever really mourn them?
The memories, and the intensity of the feeling when they come, disturb her.


She's standing on the grass by the lake outside of Milliways Bar. She's standing barefoot (despite the cold) and watching the dark waters lap against the lake's shore.


She is starting to feel that something is not right. What exactly that something is, she couldn't say just now.

[OOM]

She hears it, the strange song floating on the autumn breeze. "Mmf.." she turns over and tries to stay asleep. But it is persistent.

- Come... -

"Ugh..." Hotaru shifts over in bed again. She takes the pillow and puts it over her ears. But, in her mind it's still singing. Frustrated, Hotaru pulls her blankets up over her head.

It won't stop. A pressing, perserverant sound. Hotaru opens her eyes. She feels strange, as if she were wearing... a turtleneck... and wool pants...

And she sits up suddenly. And in a flash that dazzles her for less than a moment she finds herself standing in the middle of Milliways, fully clothed... in, yes, a turtleneck sweater and wool pants.

Hotaru brushes some of her black hair out of her eyes. Rubs her eyes, then, sleepily. She yawns.

What now.......


......Thirsty...

Stumbles over to the bar,

"Can I have... a cup of tea..."

It provides a cup of chamomile-peppermint tea and she fishes around in her pockets, knowing that if these are the same pants... there. A 500 Y note. She puts it on the bar surface. It gives her 320 back. Sleepily, she pockets the change.

She holds her cup of tea, and looks around. Nothing too unusual. She sighs deeply.

"Why am I here?" she asks aloud, rubbing one eye once more. She is so, so... so tired. Sullenly, she finds an out-of-the-way chair and plops down into it, and covers her ears with her little hands.

( OOM... just a little bit )

When the leaves settle, she sees the bar again. She shrugs and starts towards it.

Hotaru thought last night. Thought about her teleportations here. They are all so sudden, emotionally-charged. She sat, and she thought, in the water. And then she stood. And she started to walk. She walked into the woods outside of Milliways, much as she walked into the woods outside her home in Tokyo last night, before that woman transported her here.

Well, it was probably that woman.

...Come to think of it, she's heard her voice before every sudden instance of being brought to Milliways this month.

...What in the world is her deal?

She walked and walked, waiting for an answer to pop out at her from the bushes, perhaps. If not that, to 'pop' back home. That's how she got back home last time, after all. She walked, dripping wet for hours, then walked, being mostly dry a few more hours.

I have to find an answer here.

She spent most of the day on a branch in a tree, staring at the day as it passed her by. Then she hopped back to the ground, and decided it was time to head back, to the bar at least if not home, properly.

She hasn't eaten for a while, she smells like lake water, and she's more frustrated than before. At some point well before she reaches the bar, she transforms back into her own clothes. Some people might actually recognize her as Hotaru in her Sailor Suit in the bar. (certainly no stranger back on Earth ever does)

( OOM )

"---ing!" The world disappears in a flash of quick light.

She blinks. She's in Milliways.

She sighs. Exasperated.

[OOM: Alone, while the storm --]