Sailor Mars

Mars Power, Make Up!
Using a simple red and gold pen bearing the insignia of Mars, the Princess of Mars, Rei Hino and Raen Mars have all been able to transform into Sailor Mars' first form when uttering this phrase. Known as the'Senshi of Fire and Passion', she is seen in a red, purple and white fuku, with a ruby set into a gold tiara on her forehead. The main body of her fuku is white, with the usual protective armour and gloves seen in her ensemble. The trim to her gloves is the same red as her high heels, lapels and skirt. She has a small, red broach in the centre of the violet bow found on the front of her fuku. The bow found at the top of her skirt, in the back, is the same colour as it, with a choker around her neck and two star-shaped earrings to match.

Fire Soul
Though there are usually some hand actions to go along with this, it has been proven time and time again that Sailor Mars need not be in any particular position to tap into this attack. She's heralded as an excellent ranged fighter, and this attack is a great example of why. By simply saying these words and concentrating, Sailor Mars can call a fireball to her hands to be sent towards the enemy - from time to time, during times of high-crisis, she has been known to be able to sustain the flow of fire long enough to create a steady channel. Unfortunately, that usually requires hanging onto something... and she is far from immune to her own power.

Akuryo Taisan
Given an ofuda, Sailor Mars has the ability to banish evil spirits from the possessed by muttering the nine words of 'power' and throwing the paper at their heads. Can be used as a civilian, or as Sailor Mars - though the latter tends to make it a bit more... crispy.

Burning Mandala
An upgrade from Fire Soul, Burning Mandala allows Sailor Mars to call on multiple, concentrated beams of fire, shooting them at enemies at will. The downside is that you get a smaller amount of flame - the upside is you can hit a lot faster, and a lot more often.

Mars Flame Sniper
During which Sailor Mars summons a bow and arrow made of fire. Her strongest attack, she uses this to both burn and pierce enemies. Another attribute to her skill as a ranged fighter - and, yet again, absolutely useless in hand-to-hand combat. Though we're sure it would be pretty damn devastating if you decided the best course of action would to be to stand close to her when she's already drawn the arrow in hopes of it not being able to harm you - it'll pierce all the same. And light you on fire.

History
If you want to talk titles, this is a girl who had plenty of them. She was announced to her entire community as Ariana Hasti Javaneh Parisa Kiana Sadaf Mas'ouda Darya Forough Shadiyah Yasmin Niyousha Ghazaleh Nudar Rihana Is-Artais, the Crown Princess of Mars and five-hundredth heir to the Martian throne. She would accumulate more titles with the passage of time - but we're already getting ahead of ourselves.

The Princess' mother was a well-known seer and, for all intents and purposes, a perfect Martian royal. The men she took to bed with her were just that, men she took to bed. She never married, as was custom, though she did conceive and carry to term two other children before her prodigy. The first two were boys, neither of which was named before she mercifully tossed them to the Eternal Fires. She had their fathers beheaded for producing such weak, useless offspring, and that was that.



You might think that such acts are cruel and unusual, but amongst the royalty of the Planet of War, this was standard practice. Men were good for fun in the bedroom, and as grunt labourers (be it on a battlefield or elsewhere). They were not to be made anything else. You also might think that this meant the Martian Queen accumulated fewer lovers over time - this was also wrong. She adopted more as time passed, finally conceiving with a general's fairly attractive underling before tossing him aside. He, more than she, eagerly anticipated the birth, wondering whether or not he would be spared. A boy would mean certain death - a girl would mean a child whom he would never meet or be allowed any claim to, but could be secretly proud of nonetheless.

The girl came with the passing of Day of Vulcan, screaming her way into the world. Her mother, as was tradition, slit her wrist and marked the girl's forehead with the symbol of Mars before immediately presenting the new babe, dangling her from the Martian palace's balcony, to her people. They cheered in the streets for weeks, months on end. And thus, their legacy continued.

Do not think for a second that Martian royalty is coddled. Whilst the girl might have later told others she wished for more excitement, there was nothing farther from the truth. Her mother spit on her when she was three, demanding she choose a slave as her own and snarling when the girl hesitated. She eventually picked an able-bodied young woman named Ukena via tossing the choosing rock at her feet with a frown. Even as a toddler, she knew that she was meant to be a serious, formidable pillar of strength for her people. It was ingrained into her the way the desert heat and sun was beat down on them.

She was five when her training truly began. She would be allowed four to six hours of sleep, no more, with the slave kept there to make sure she was woken every hour on the hour. It was a way of ensuring she learnt to be disturbed at the slightest noise, to strengthen her as a fighter. After all - you would be no good to your people should you die.

Her mother birthed two younger siblings for her, also girls, and 'forcibly aborted' any more that followed and were born male. At this point in time, however, she had already done her duty to the line and produced exactly what she had needed to - perfection in the form of the Crown Princess. Having others as a back-up was there just in case. And also because Martians did not believe in killing females, nor did they believe in contraceptives.

When she was seven, her instructor grabbed her by the back of her neck, and informed her that she would be paralysed for three days as a test of her will. And, with a simple injection of a small extraction of venom from the Ruth'wari spider (one of the many poisonous things indigenous to Mars), she was. She fought every single day to rise, placed before the Eternal Flame to gaze into it without being able to pay it the proper respects. During this time, her planet declared war on Jupiter, troops mobilising to the larger planet by the bucket full. They were a black and red horde under the sun, fighting because it was their duty to do so. She was free of the toxin long before they could come back, and vowed she would miss no other wars.

Years of sleepless nights soon lead to runs in the morning, training during the day, and fire worship at night. She learnt to respect the flame that gave her planet its passion and grace, bowing before even the slightest flickering of a candle as she was not yet worthy to take it upon herself to gaze into it for too long.

The myth surrounding the five-hundredth heir had been spread for generations, however, and she was continually tested. She assimilated into the army as best as any royal could, never allowed to attend the wars, but given plenty of opportunity to exert their dominance over others beneath them. She rose in the ranks like it was going out of style, and continued her schedule with as little sleep as could be possibly managed at her age.

She remembered, of course, the day she was presented to the Eternal Flame as its new master. They shoved several needles into it and, imbued with the power of its flame, they branded her. Ink was added to the deep grooves they made depicting the incantation of fire. It curled from the sensitive point between her neck and left shoulder around her back, dipping across her spine and, finally, curling into her right-side ribs. She was given several piercings as well, namely in her ears and, as was custom, in her navel to attach a ring to symbolise fertility.

She bled for a week straight.

The very day she turned thirteen, they sent their militant Flame master to the Moon, per instruction of Queen Serenity. Her mother was reluctant to let her go, warning her in advance that the other Princesses would be soft and worthless. She was not to associate with them more than she would need to, more than outside of the realm of having to work with them to protect the Moon Princess. And, in a parting blow, she informed her daughter that no Crown Princess of Mars had been anything less than the best - she would be the leader of whatever ragtag group of foreign Princesses they gave her, and that was that.

Having been taught nothing about foreign policies, of course, this was a bit of a culture shock. For starters, they demanded she put on more clothing the moment she landed on the Moon, scowling as they tried to cover her midriff and put her into shoes, of all things. The Lunarian guard seemed impressed, if only because they had never seen anyone who literally smelt of smoke and burnt like a fire to look at, hard eyes staring down each of them as she reluctantly put on the most humiliating attire she had ever seen - a dress - and prepared to meet this Moon Princess she was supposed to protect.

In retrospect, perhaps it was a bad idea for the designers to have placed her room across from the Princess of Venus'. Her planet had recently declared war on the golden planet, with more and more troops assembling to march towards their common goal of obliterating some of the men and/or women in the feeble thing's army as soon as was possible. She hated the symbol that lay above the neighbouring, golden door, much preferring the angry red of Mars emblazoned on her pewter and hematite archway. Her door was carved from black marble, insignia of Mars there as well. Inside, they had gone so far as to prepare something warm and dimly-lit to try and imitate the Martian palace. The Princess, for what it was worth, managed to appreciate their efforts as best as she could.

She did not appreciate that, over the scent of smoke and incense that lit her own room, the damned perfumes of Venus could be detected. She hated the girl without ever having met her.

She attended their first meeting in full royal Martian war attire, black chainmail and red plate. The dress they had forced her into earlier lay in shreds on the bed they had provided her, the Martian Princess proudly tilting her chin upwards as she stood with arms folded over her chest in a sign of confidence and relaxation. She met the Moon Princess briefly, and, within the course of a few months, was back home on Mars.

It was a short trip during which she was expected to announce to her people that she was going to be spending more time on the Moon yet. She resented the trip almost as much as she resented the one that would follow it. Her return to the Moon was filled with bitter promises that she would return to her homeland soon enough, with all the regal training she would need to inspire her people and her armies to follow her in her endeavours.

It would be years before she would revisit the deserts of the red planet again.

Her return brought with it an onslaught of people who magically wanted to befriend her. With the war of Mars and Venus laid to rest by none other than Queen Serenity herself, demanding peace given the fact that their Crown Princesses would need to work together, the world had seemingly ground to a standstill. She took up the mantle as Sailor Mars begrudgingly, and far preferred the sparring matches offered with weaponry and usual suits of armour as opposed to using their powers. Her fire was unpredictable at best, leaving her to nearly burn down the palace on more than one occasion as she often discharged too much of it from herself. She seemed particularly violent around the Princess of Venus, especially once the other girl was simply given the role as their leader. Though they ordered her to be second-in-command, wielding half of the control over the military and supposedly presenting friendly opposition to Venus' ideas, it wasn't enough.

She spent no time with any of them outside of what was required of her. In fact, Mars spent little time doing anything but sitting in front of the fires in her room and seeing, divining things from the smoke and flame as was her duty.

In a way, the fire readings seemed to calm her. She settled, and, with time, grew less outwardly cruel and more serious. She still glared daggers at Venus but, when asked to by Serenity, would spend a moment with her outside of trying to all but kill her in sparring matches. She felt herself soften, and tried to steel herself. Her dreams brought visions of encroaching darkness - it was not the time to falter. But it become so wild that it got to a point where it felt like her heart only beat around two people anymore, and neither were Martians. She tried to concentrate on her meditation, and saw nothing but them. Princess Serenity, whom she was meant to protect and had sworn her life (and an Eternal Vow, one of chastity and humility on Mars) to. And then Princess Venus who... frustrated her to no ends.

She buried the emotion and let it sit like a poison inside of her, then fifteen and incapable of understanding what any of it meant. She tried to put more distance between them as she felt her façade flicker and fade before the other girl. Though she still managed to retain her dignity by offering harsh critique of the other, her blows grew softer in sparring matches, and she found herself staring more than glaring. It was an awkward thing for any young teen to go through - let alone one who was supposed to take on the world.

Worse still was the boy from Earth, Jadeite, who followed her everywhere she went when she was forced down to the wild blue planet to watch Princess Serenity as she begged to see her lover, the Prince of Earth. As she stared at Venus from afar, he stared at her from as close as she would let him, with moony eyes that reflected something she couldn't have hoped to understand. He was more an annoyance than anything else, and she bitterly watched as Kunzite, the leader of the generals who had accompanied the Prince of Earth to the Moon, tried to romance the girl she had already decided to be her Venus.

Her hatred extended to everything down there. She disapproved of Jupiter and Mercury for falling so obviously for two of the generals, and disapproved even more of their Princess. She expressed concerns about him more than once, questioning the motives of the Earth as she thought of Kunzite possibly touching Venus. She did her best to keep the budding couple of Endymion and Serenity apart, threatened him with bodily harm should he ever do anything she could ever perceive as threatening, and watched them like a hawk even with Jadeite hanging over her shoulder. She turned him down time and time again, went so far as to call him a weak-minded and weak-hearted pathetic lump of flesh. He followed her like a hopeful puppy nonetheless, the way she slowly found herself following Venus.

Mercury fell shortly thereafter, succumbing to the darkness. She hadn't predicted it, too caught up in her personal issues to look beyond the Flame's Veil and divine anymore. It was the first time she had experienced guilt, though she never bothered to apologise to the fellow Princess whose life was torn asunder.

She was no good at comfort, either. News travelled quickly and, in the months that followed, Pluto fell. She felt nothing but numb, sitting in front of the fire and seeing only Venus the next night. She cursed her distraction, vowing to spend even less time with their leader. It was only when it fell two days later that she realised she had ignored a warning. Her gift had worked - she had confused it with the feeling beating in her chest.

She had felt for the girl as news of Venus' fall reached the Moon and spread like wildfire. She hadn't wanted their leader to find out that way - she tried her best to be the one. For all that she knew, the hate she had been trying to project for the other girl might have very well been returned. It would be easier to hear from a rival than a friend, correct? She pounded on the girl's chamber door, even if this was a moment of great personal weakness and, without anything sort of greeting, promptly told her her planet was gone when Venus opened the door.

She wasn't sure what she had expected to come of it. She was not one to comfort, but there was a lot of touching involved. Not on her part. She stood there, stiff and numb, and let things come to pass before slipping away wordlessly.

Uranus fell days later. The planets were going with no time in between now. She was nearing seventeen, staring her birthday in the face.

What greeted her come said birthday was a sharp pain between the eyes so intense she may as well have been shot. She recalled screaming so loudly that a chambermaid came rushing into her room, followed by the other soldiers. Her eyes teared as she rolled over in some combination of a grief she couldn't understand and a pain so intense she couldn't think. She managed to stand, clumsily knocking into everything and everyone in her way. Someone restrained her when she moved for the door, muttering something about how unwell she must have been. She was almost grateful to hardly remember the embarrassing experience at all when the pain faded to a numb ache at the base of her skull afterwards, tingling along her neck. She understood in a moment of clarity that this time, this time it was Mars.

She did what she needed to. She ran as soon as she was dressed, and in one of the most informal and disrespectful moments of her life, she hit the throne room. She still kneeled before Queen Serenity, and she half-demanded, half-begged to be allowed passage to Mars to join them in the fight. At seventeen, with her life still ahead of her and the Flame inside of her, she knew she had to be there. She had to prevent this.

Mars ran with everything she had, hitting the Martian portal like her own life depended on it.

She had expected a war. She was met with devastation, and quiet. The fellsteeds who were still passing on whinnied pathetically, smoke and flame of them fading as their lives were ended by whatever had taken them. The cities lay in ruins as she went from portal to portal trying to find something intact, going to the palace last. It lay in ruin, literally crumbled at her feet. The few people and steeds she found alive were either mangled or hurt nonetheless, though they greeted her with nothing short of absolute joy. They called her Queen - and she knew in that moment her mother was dead. She asked for her sisters, and received blank stares. She asked for her former maids, each by name, and the staring continued.

What was left of the Martian colony followed her back to the Moon, where she arrived exhausted and worn. Paler than she had ever appeared before, with large, red rims around her eyes from the days awake, she left everyone who remained at the teleporters and asked for a small tent city to be created for her people on the Moon - not as the Crown Princess, but as the Queen of her people. Queen Serenity assented on the condition that this would not impede her care of her daughter, and Ariana assured her it would not.

She threw herself into the creation of the tent city as more planets fell, finding she no longer cared as she spent days, weeks nailing and pounding everything together again. She rebuilt what she could, and they saved what few steeds remained. Her own stayed stabled at the royal palace, if only because it had grown attached to whatever had been brought from Venus. The Martians set up a blacksmith, a training ring full of their most able-bodied, fighting from morning until nightfall, when they would retire. There was no song or dance. And, as the last of the planets fell, they grew as sombre as their Queen.

The day came where she sat before her fire and saw it - death on the horizon. They were dead. They were going to be dead the next day. The irony was that it was three hours before one of the bigger balls the Moon had held recently. She wondered vaguely if the Neptunian or Plutonian Princesses she had heard so much about and yet never truly met had informed them of what she knew then.

Mars bothered to wear a dress and do her hair, every bit the lady they had hoped she would be as she descended the stairs after being announced into the ball. Her eyes sought out Venus', and instead found Mercury's. In what was her greatest moment of personal weakness, she pulled the girl to the side, glancing awkwardly back to the ballroom from the balcony she had found before offering her a piece of advice. She wanted her to enjoy the night - they were slotted for death the next day. She wasn't sure how she took it. Ariana caught a flash of golden hair and, for the first time in her life, she smiled, leaned in to Mercury, and offered her an awkward, one-armed hug. Her exact parting words were something along the lines of, "I have to go... there's something I've been meaning to deal with for years now."

Though yanking Venus out of the ball to give her her real name and confess that she had been in love with her was a little bit awkward, she felt it went as well as it could.

Amazingly, she felt alright the next morning, preparing to die. She mounted her steed and did her best to inspire her Martians, leading them into battle against the onslaught of men-turned-monsters. It was a hard fight, and she felt Mercury fall without seeing or hearing her go. It was a silent passing, one she offered a quick nod of her head to. She would say a prayer for her, if there was time.

But the pain that ripped through her next was more than a flash, Serenity taking her own life over the grief of losing Endymion. She howled with rage, cutting down more of the enemy than she had thought she would be able as she loosed flaming arrows from horseback, keeping herself at a good range as was Martian custom. She wasn't sure which she felt next - Jupiter or Venus, they were so close together. But the moment Venus died, in a way, so did she.

She saw her head fly over the battlefield, and that was all it took. She might not have been able to ask for an eternity with Venus, but she could certainly make the bastard responsible bleed and burn for his sins. She raced off in the direction she had seen the dismembered head come from, leaping from her steed as she ran inside to chase down whomever had been responsible. She had assumed Kunzite - and she found Jadeite. Or rather, he found her.

To write how they died would do both a disservice. To say that they killed one another is really all that needs to be said. It's an abrupt ending to what was otherwise a very tumultuous and scattered life, torn between duty and emotion. It's also the end of the Silver Millennium, with the last soldiers dying around them and the life leaving Mars as it left the blonde man she had already despised so much.

Personality
The Princess (and later, Queen) of Mars was known for a few things. Whilst her prowess in the field of battle was known across the kingdoms, it was her psychic ability that truly made her stand out. As she moved to take her mother's place as holder of the Eternal Flame, she took on the hopes and aspirations of her people. Young though she was (it was Martian custom), she began to make informed political decisions in order to guide her people. There was never a point in time in which fear was an option - everything she did, she did with a fervour.

She was known amongst those who had the pleasure of seeing more of her than a passing glimpse in the media for being almost supernaturally brave. Her troops would later comment that it seemed like she expected to die, and embraced the thought with every fight that came and went. And, when the day would finish and everybody was still standing tall, she would square her shoulders, smirk, and nod her head once in her declaration of victory.

Ariana was also known for having opinions - ones that you were going to hear about, one way or another. Whether it came from her mouth or her fists, she was certainly never one to censor herself. She knew what message she wanted to convey, and in her world, there was very little room for lack of clarity. A no was never a yes in disguise. Birds flew, they did not crawl. There was nothing she said that did not make absolute sense in some reality of another. She was honest and direct to a fault, never bothering to mince words even with those she did like (and they were few and far between).

Believe it or not, she was loving and thoughtful - unfortunately, she was also a Martian. She dulled herself down, forcibly calm or just plain serious in nearly every social situation she was presented with. When the others looked to her for friendship, she rarely supplied them with little beyond a stare or some piece of criticism. What she meant as advice was usually taken as harsh nitpitcking. She couldn't imagine why they would like her, truth be told. And yet, they did.

She supported the others in her own way, a quieter pillar of support when they needed her to be there to listen. She refrained from rolling her eyes when they cried, though oftentimes asked them what good it would do. She found it difficult to express emotions such as love, and instead backed those she trusted or cared for in the only way she truly knew - combat.

She was not well-known for her jokes.

The Martian heir was dedicated to everything she attempted, thrusting herself into her work like it was the only thing she had. She sorely hated the idea of failure, and wrote it off as something that simply wasn't an option more often than not. She vowed not to be made useless, even after the fall of her planet.

The only real issue with that is that the select few things she chose to live for were as likely to die as anyone else, and when they did, she was prone to fighting recklessly. She could care about so many things, and once they were removed, so was she. She felt detached in her final moments, to say the least.

Relationships
The Martian Princess' relationships could be described as distant and tumultuous at best. She oftentimes did her very best to keep people at an arm's length, if not further (a blade was certainly better than an arm). But, as you may have derived, it was impossible for even the generally higher-than-thou Martian to keep from forming solid bonds with those she was exposed to on a daily basis. Though she never developed any love, or even a liking for their advisors or Queen, she grew attached to her fellow inner senshi and Princesses in spite of all odds.

Princess Mercury received little to no respect in their early years, if only because that might have been how Mars greeted most people when she was younger. Throughout the course of time, though she disapproved of the girl's relationship with Zoisite, the pair became as close to open friends as Mars was with nearly anybody. Well, save for Princess Serenity, of course, who managed to worm her way into the fiery girl's heart without so much as batting an eye. Though she never openly admitted to liking either of them, she bent easily to Serenity's whims in her later years, to the point where she would attend balls in full gowns just because the Moon Princess had asked her to.

There were others on opposite ends of the spectrum, however. Endymion and Kunzite in particular garnered a good deal of her hatred, as she generally greeted them with no small amounts of dislike. She refused to communicate at all with Kunzite, settling instead on glaring at him (see more information about Princess Venus for this), whereas she was so unimpressed by Endymion she would go as far to tell him this - to his face, a number of times. From what she could tell, the feeling was mutual.

She spoke as little with Princess Jupiter, Artemis and Luna as she possibly could, if only because her limited circle of people had already expanded far too much for her tastes. She had only ever intended to include her sisters, given the titles of Princess of each of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Having to include others was beyond aggravating - it was an insult.

Above all else, however, was the way she felt about Princess Venus. Perhaps one of her greatest shames, she fell in love with the girl (whose room smelt far too strongly of perfumes, and who had stolen leadership from her). Though she presented herself as a rival to the other Princess, she did little in the way of actually slowing her down. She argued when the opportunity presented itself, and she certainly never went out of her way to be kind. But she snuck a lot of looks she could only hope nobody noticed, and she certainly didn't bother to hide her affection for the blonde on their last night alive.

Let it be known that Mars blames a good deal of people for Venus' death - Jadeite and Serenity most of all.

History
Rei Hino was never really given a chance at a normal life. In retrospect, it was likely for the best - that which didn't kill her only made the girl stronger in a lot of ways. At the tender age of three, she could already understand what "Daddy's busy, but I'm sure he'll be back later this week" meant. Admittedly, though it's hard for a toddler to understand politics, Takashi Hino was far less involved in his job at that stage of her life than he would become shortly thereafter.

For the first six years of the young girl's life, her mother was her everything. She was her best friend in the way that most mothers dream of becoming with their daughters, with the eager young girl spilling her long-winded stories about playschool and other such nonsense. They visited her grandfather (she understood that she had no grandmother because she had gotten sick just before Rei was born, but that was the extent of what she knew about death or heaven) from time to time, which she really enjoyed, and otherwise, they spent their days together. Whether it was going to the park or staying in to learn some new craft or skill on a rainy day, there was never a moment that she felt unloved. By the time she was fourteen, she was still referencing these years as the best of her life.

Though there are many things in the world a little girl wouldn't understand (and should never have to), Rei was unwittingly about to be faced with a good deal of them at once. Her mother was hospitalized following a short fall down the stairs one day, where the little girl had tried in vain to shake her awake. The trip had been so tiny, she was sure even she wouldn't have been hurt by it - but there laid her mother, completely and totally dead to the world.

She spent the next three months in the hospital with a failing heart. It was congenital, he said - the same thing that had taken Rei's grandmother lived within her mother. Her father made frequent appearances in the hospital, inquiring as to her condition, but spending little time with the daughter who looked so much like her. Instead, Rei's grandfather spent the days with her, making their time together trips away from the shrine as often as he could afford to get away. He pleaded with the girl's father on a number of occasions, only to find his granddaughter returned to him within an hour or two of the man making an attempt to know her, apparently fed up (or just incapable of looking at her for any longer).

Her mother's death hit the girl hard. She remembered begging her papa to spend time together, only to have her things hastily packed and shuffled into a limousine. She was dropped off with no warning at her grandfather's shrine, where the driver who unloaded her things informed her she was going to be living from then on. Distressed, she beat on the car door until her hands hurt from it, calling for a father who wouldn't open the door once she had been shuffled out.

It was strange, perhaps, but she understood hate before she ever knew many other emotions. And, as she watched the long, black car roll away, Rei knew she hated her father. More than anything else in the world, she hated him.

Her grandfather did the best with what he had, following her father's wishes and sending Rei to a Catholic school, and otherwise allowing her to participate in activities around the shrine. For years, he thought that perhaps the way the other children shied away from her would be something that would pass. The adults all enjoyed her, to a point, though their offspring never seemed to. She found it difficult to make friends, possibly because nobody really appreciated it when you announced that their kindergarten boyfriend was going to 'dump' them the next day, or that the ring they'd lost was under the fourth tree in the courtyard, where the crows had hidden it. She seemed to know more than she could have possibly known - something that she carried with her as she grew.

With a heavy heart, the only man left in Rei's life tried to arrange for things for her to do. She had the energy and, shockingly enough, the dedication. He decided then that she would be allowed to train as a miko at the shrine, on the condition she continued on with her Catholic schooling with an open mind, if only for her father's sake.

She agreed in a heartbeat, and immediately picked her side. That was one thing about her, even as a young schoolgirl - Rei knew what she wanted, and once she had it in her mind that she was meant for something, she didn't give up. She would stay true to the Shinto faith - but she had no qualms about keeping an open mind at her Catholic school.

They, however, seemed to have a number of problems with her.

Rei's first memory of school was that other girls could be downright mean. Though she found it difficult to even attempt to make friends, they seemed to take it to a whole new level. Some whispered cruel rumours that she was a witch, whilst others simply frowned on the fact that she came from a Shinto shrine. Regardless of what it was? She went through school friendless.

It took a good deal of time, but after enough harsh words and little to no reaction, they gave up. And, in time, so did she. Come the age of eleven, she knew better than to try to befriend her peers, staying to herself in class and outside as well. Though she participated in the archery club, she showed minimal interest in doing anything with the group afterwards.

It was amazing, however, what puberty could do for you. Though she spent a couple of years as an awkward, gangly preteen, the moment she hit thirteen, Rei had people practically begging to be her friend. Apparently, aloof paired with pretty meant popular. Even if you had no friends. She never understood it, and (if we're being honest), she never tried all that hard to get it.

She remained the same inside, in spite of her changing physical appearance, all the while grew less and less responsive to her father's annual attempts to reconnect. The only other times she seemed to matter to him, were when his political career brought up the fact that he had a daughter. She would be forced into a cute dress and some heels and jewellery and makeup, and shoved out onto his arm so that he could act the part of the doting father. So long as she kept her mouth shut and didn't mention that she didn't even live with the man, much less like him, he would promise her they could spend time apart at her leisure.

It became more about her, and less about him, really. She skipped a press conference with him one night, though he sent numerous aides and had his secretary telephone. She regretted it almost instantly, when the paparazzi found her on her walk to school in the morning and asked so many questions it nearly made her dizzy. She regretted it less when her father was upset about some of the answers she had given.

Come fourteen, she was what you might expect of any pretty, popular, rich girl - kind of a snob. She made no attempt to get to know other people, and expected the same of them. It held true for nearly everyone she knew - nearly.

One Usagi Tsukino followed her home from the bus stop during her walk home from school. She hadn't known it, when she had remained distant and the other girl had bounced around the shrine wanting to know her, but it was the beginning of her life.

She awoke shortly thereafter as Sailor Mars, remembering little spurts here and there of who she was and had been during the Silver Millennium. The majority of her memories, however, stayed locked, much to her frustration. She killed Jadeite, and something within her took it as an all too delicious victory. More girls fell in with them, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and the two advisors (cats), Luna and Artemis. Each seemed to push her farther out of her comfort zone, and each poke sent her scuttling back into her routine like a turtle into her shell.

The year wasn't all bad, however. Yuuichirou Kumada, though annoying and completely obsessed, was a welcome helper around the shrine. Her grandfather was getting older, and with her newfound senshi duties, it became more and more difficult to keep up the lives she had been leading beforehand. She developed feelings for each of the girls in turn, some stronger than others.

It really shouldn't have been hard for anyone to see the way she looked at Minako Aino like her life finally made sense at fourteen. Like she could see the way everything was going to go, and the only futures she could think of involved the blonde girl. But, from what she gathered, Minako was interested in boys, volleyball, sleep, and manga - four things that were most decidedly not her. So, Rei did what any girl who hated the idea of being hurt more than anything else in the world might have done.

She buried the feelings and developed a bond with her similar to best friendship.

And, for the most part, it worked. She was used to dealing with temptation and the like, and being constantly faced with Minako day after day became a routine thing. She learnt how to act around her, treated her like she would any of the other girls, if only slightly more close. It was how things continued for years, up until the point where she was barely sixteen and absolutely terrified of the notion that they were all going to die again. Her fire readings had predicted death for all of them - and having done this thing before when Metallia had taken them one by one. It shouldn't have been surprising that she and Minako were the last two. It also shouldn't have been surprising that the blonde, as their leader, was the one to comfort her. They never had to talk about it again, but she always appreciated the comfort there.

For the record, they did both die. It was fated - but Usagi survived and so, not for the first time, Hino Rei had life breathed back into her corpse. She remembered everything and, according to some, took it the hardest along with Minako. As the second-in-command and leader, it was expected that they would be upset.

She cried, openly, for the first time since her mother had died then, apologising for days, weeks on end for letting their Princess down until the point where Usagi had to tell her if she said she was sorry one more time, she was going to hit her.

Rei put in a valiant effort to transfer schools at that point, only to have her father intervene, reminding her about the money he gave her grandfather for taking care of her to his exact specifications. He would not have his daughter attending any public school. She tried to pull rank, but barely sixteen, she simply wasn't old enough to manage it. She kept her grades up, and practically ran to Juuban everyday to make sure all of her friends were still there as she had left them in the morning, alive.

Nobody could have been entirely sure when it happened but, sensing her stress, Yuuichirou stepped in to try to fill a void bigger than himself. She caved in in spite of herself, dating the man (then nineteen). It wasn't something she told her friends for weeks on end, until the day he decided to kiss her in front of all of them. She blushed furiously and informed the girls it was none of their business, and avoided Minako's eyes.

And so it went until they graduated and all began to take their separate paths. In a way, she was almost disappointed, seeing even less of some of the girls than she had before. The absence of Mamoru, who had always been like a brother (from another mother) to her, was one that struck her particularly hard. He promised skype dates from his place in America, however, and he adhered to them well. The girls would camp out at the shrine during plotted calls, waking up early in the morning to accept incomings from Mamoru, and drill him about life in America. Well, some drilled, some dozed, and Rei mostly offered sardonic quips here and there as was appropriate.

It was a compromise that worked well - minus the part where during one such call, the girls were introduced to Zacharie Sauveterre and Johannes Schermer. The former stared at Ami like he'd seen an angel (and vice versa), the latter? The latter stared at Rei, and then ran to throw up. For what it was worth, she simply stood up from her computer, and went to have morning tea in the kitchen.

How they wound up being friends out of that mess was a bit of a mystery. From what she recalled, it required actually sleeping with Yuuichirou for the first time and feeling like she couldn't have been more low, catching his call one morning and thinking she didn't exactly have much to lose. Johannes apologised, profusely, and in true Rei fashion, she forgave - eventually. The short talks helped her start to remember, more than just how he had killed her the life before. She slowly remembered being the one who had ignored him, who had been outwardly cruel in the past life. She apologised as well, though he seemed reluctant to take it.

Yuuichirou's jealousy over her frequent chats with the South African became a problem. He would rage for hours on end about fidelity, and, as per normal, she would rage right back that he was being unreasonable, overreacting. Their fights got worse, and Usagi's requests that she go out drinking with them got more tempting.

She hadn't really expected to sleep with Minako.

She also hadn't expected it to hurt half as badly as it did. She was quick to kick her out and quicker to avoid her still. She cut down on the amount she was talking to Johannes, suddenly not the free-spirited young woman who was allowed to have a mind of her own anymore, but the doting girlfriend willing to bend and break for her boyfriend. Yuuichirou calmed, and the pair of them resumed what was apparently a normal relationship. She made it pretty clear to Minako, she was sure - it was a one-time thing. It couldn't happen again.

But it's hard to be someone you're not, and it's even harder when you've just pushed yourself back to the bottom of a hole you'd spent years climbing back out of. Rei, as subdued as she had become, was still a fiery thing who despised the idea of belonging to and existing solely for a man. Her talks with Johannes increased and, with time, she slowly got over her own guilt and began speaking to Minako again. She had missed her best friend, and she wasn't willing to compromise who she was for the sake of appeasing a man she admittedly wasn't in love with.

That isn't to say that she broke up with him - in fact, things continued as they had before from that point on. Otherwise normal.

Personality
It would not be entirely correct to say that Rei was a shadow of her former self - if anything, most of her friends would have told you that she glowed far more brilliantly than the brooding, serious Princess that came before her. Though she was still passionate about her work, and still held little respect for men, she knew the value that was forgiveness. And, though she found it hard, she eventually worked through her issues with most of the people in her life, if only because she agreed with the mentality that life was too short to spend hating someone. Her father became the only exception to this rule. Though he made several attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter after her grandfather's passing, her only message to him concluded that he need not worry about her any longer - she was a burden he would never have to carry. His funeral was one she did not bother to attend.

For years, she was ostricized for being 'weird' or 'different'. She grew to hate the concept of being the outcast, instead turning to shun others as a younger teen. When the other senshi found her, she was a stubborn, aloof girl with hopes and dreams easily squashed by the notion that she could stay at a temple forever. She would get frustrated or upset easily with people who pushed her too far out of her comfort zone, oftentimes storming back to the shrine to meditate on things in order to clear her head.

She threw herself into her studies and her hobbies like they were the only things she trusted, feeding her two crows on the daily. The girls in her life were add-ons, extras. Outside of her grandfather, she considered her contact with other people to be something she should be keeping to a minimum. The fear of being hurt as badly as she had been by her father or mother helped her keep others at an arm's length.

For all that she was a serious, stubborn girl, however, she was also a gentler soul than Princess Mars. She enjoyed playing video games, shopping, playing her guitar, and spending time with her friends. There was little she wouldn't do for the few who worked their way into her heart (and reluctantly, she let them stay there, always a bit nervous of the impending hurt if any of them would ever turn on her). She didn't trust easily, but she did wholly, once she reached a point where it was allowed.

Rei was the girl who provided the witty banter during fights ("maybe you shouldn't have eaten that last cinnamon bun, you're moving a little slow tonight"), keeping the mood light with a sharp tongue and quick mind. She enjoyed the playful spats she occasionally had with others, whether it was over her manga du jour (and she had a lot of manga, let me tell you), or simply nothing at all. It made her feel young, which she hardly had as a child growing up.

Relationships
To say that Rei remained a friendless husk of a girl would be wholly inaccurate. She loved each of the girls (and most of their boyfriends, truth be told) in a way that she'd never loved before having met them. It isn't hard to imagine, given her friendless past. Whilst it took time, she eventually formed solid relationships with each of them, finding the easiest to bond with out the gate was Ami Mizuno. It wasn't so much that the other girl was even particularly like her as it was that she seemed to come equipped knowing how to respect a person's personal space, and valued moments of silence. What started because of such a base, however, blossomed into a friendship wherein they often became the only two studying during their little get togethers (see more on the other three below), and were capable of holding actual conversations. Rei never did understand why, but she had nearly always thought of the girl-genius as a younger sister.

As much as she would have initially hated to admit it, Usagi Tsukino was the next of the four girls to break down her walls. The unfortunate part was that she made it almost impossible to rebuild them opening Rei to a world full of potential hurt.

Makoto Kino impressed her daily and, between the pair of them, they became a machine made for teasing the others. Makoto's far more innocent jibes and bad puns matched Rei's sharp tongue well, and though she never said as much, she was grateful to the unwitting peacemaker of their group. When all of the others were fighting, Makoto's ability to filter their spats with a cheery grin and slap on the back was always appreciated.

What was not necessarily always appreciated, however, was how Minako Aino seemed to have a penchant for getting her into trouble. Between the day that she appeared at her school (and wound up getting Rei possessed by a demon living in a damn well) up until the point in time that they were seventeen, the girls flirted and otherwise bickered as you might expect any teen crushes to do. At fifteen, Rei had made the executive decision to date 'Yuuichirou Kumada''' in an attempt to forget the Goddess of Love and Beauty. She never ceased to regret how she lead him on for two years of what must have seemed to even the least observant member of their group a lacklustre relationship. The pair didn't remain friends afterwards, when she broke up with him over his jealous fits over her talking with Johannes LASTNAMELESA!, and she could have cared less. After dating Johannes for only a week, she found herself single for the first time in nearly three years - and approaching eighteen.

Nobody could really tell you how or why, but after years of avoiding the topic, Minako and Rei fell back together. They held onto all the quirks that had made their relationship what it had been through middle and high school, living out the rest of their lives as fairly cool aunts to the daughters their friends seemed to positively punch out once Crystal Tokyo came.

Rei and Hotaru Tomoe in particular became close through Rei's awkward best-friendship with Johannes, the pair naming her the godmother of their child (Keiko). She maintained a steady relationship with Minako until the day she died, the pair eventually having children of their own - Risa and Hikari being Rei's twins. They were six 'years' younger than most of the other girls, but it gave them plenty of cousins and playmates willing to spend time with them, and they were never lonely.

History
There are a few things that go without saying on Mars. The first, is that if you are female, your life will be consecrated to carrying children and raising them until such a point in time that you have another. The second ties in closely with this, that being that the moment your new child arrives, the first must leave to fend for themselves. There isn't time or compassion on Mars, not enough to allow a woman to be torn by two young babes. If you can walk and run and bite, you're old enough to take care of yourself.

The boy who came before the girl with bright violet eyes was hastily shoved away by her brown-eyed mother, chased off like all children were on the planet after such an event. She cradled her infant, wailing loud into the day in spite of the ever-present threat of monsters, and she felt pride for the first time in her life. After six boys, at the tender age of sixteen, it was not difficult to understand why Drin was so pleased for a girl. Why this would be her life's accomplishment, knowing that she would be a perfect thing who could not bring harm to others as harm had been brought to her.

Raen was not her mother's first child, but she would be her last.

From the earliest that she can remember, she recalls being sheltered. It is unusual on Mars, a place where bonds are usually so fragile and tentative, to see such a thing. The very real threat of abandonment if it suits one of the two of you, or of one of you dying, often leaves their kind hesitant to be more than accepting of another's presence. But they were close, and it was difficult to imagine that that would be all they were to be.

She learnt from her mother, who still withheld the right of naming her on the off-chance her growing toddler would have something happen to her. She was still soft, though quickly shedding the little baby fat Martians were born with. She had learnt to stop crying for milk when there was simply none that Drin had to give, and for that, the young woman was thankful. She was too fragile herself to have continued to deal with the way the little girl and her bright eyes would cry for hours on end when she was hungry.

Of course, having a perfect child did not mean that Drin was immune. When her girl was still just a babe herself, perhaps two or so, a man found them sleeping together under a rock near the base of one of the volcanoes that made their home. He dragged the small child away in spite of her screams, little arms aching as he picked her up by the wrists and threw her like a used rag, crawling in on top of the screaming mother left behind. The toddler suffered no broken bones, but the bumps and bruises along her legs made her sniffle, rubbing the affected areas with tiny palms and trying not to cry whilst she listened to the sounds of her mother being tortured.

In some cruel twist of fate, it became her first memory, no matter how traumatizing. She could tell you about how, without her mother's body wrapped around hers, she felt so cold that she shivered and trembled even hours after the bloodied woman darted out and hastily snatched her back. The older girl's lip trembled like she was a mirror of her daughter, running a hand through the child's hair over and over again as she tried to rock the pair of them back to sleep. Whether it was meant to console the aching babe or herself was a question too advanced for a toddler. Raen accepted that it made her feel better, for whatever reason, and found sleep again that night. Drin laid awake for hours, and prayed for no more children. Seven in fewer years had been more than enough.

Things like this happened when they weren't careful, or sometimes without any reason at all. As she finally reached the size a four year old was expected to be, she stopped growing, staring up at her mother as if to ask for guidance whenever faced with other children, or adults of their own kind. It was the most normal a relationship like theirs could be, as the woman did everything she could think of to prevent further pregnancy (going so far as to throw herself gut-first onto rocks, again and again, until everything bled or something cracked). She remembers her mother now as a continually sickly woman, but one who survived her childhood nonetheless.

She became an adept little fighter, learning to thrash and mingle with the other children at the bases of her volcanoes. She liked the warmth they sometimes provided, and particularly enjoyed being able to growl and bite and practice for the days when she would need to hunt herself food. Her mother had provided her with the scraps of a dress she had made from the hide of some beast or another, all scavenged materials with rips for arm and neck holes, but she wore it proudly. It was the first thing that was ever hers, and she liked the feeling.

Having things was a rare privilege on Mars.

Her name came during some scuffling, growling fight with a slightly larger girl. With her teeth sunk into the girl's shoulder, drawing blood as the larger girl's mother kicked her away with a foot in her gut. She yelped and, with everything she could possibly have, the four year old glared. She was told to leave, and called Bright Eyes in the process. Raen.

With the girl's blood still running in her mouth, she excitedly popped over to her own mother, bloodied for other reasons, and informed her about how she had been given a title. Drin smiled and wiped the red stains from her daughter's mouth, insisting that she most certainly had the brightest eyes on all of Mars, and never once questioning why she wasn't named after anything to do with her teeth. She had marvelled over her daughter's eyes for years - she didn't need to wonder why her name had been about them.

That night under their rock, she could count four things as her possessions, and hers exclusively. The rock they slept under, her makeshift dress, her mother, and now, her name. She swelled with a pride she didn't know anyone could feel, and wondered if her mother ever felt that way, too, before falling asleep.

For the next two years, things proceeded as such. She generally woke up alone there under their rock, with her mother out hunting for some food for the pair of them. Six years old, however, and the morning hunger was becoming enough to overwhelm her. She was teething, and would be over the next couple of years, her mother had expressed. Her teeth were growing longer and sharper, and Raen almost constantly wanted to be chewing something. When food was a rare commodity, something she sometimes went days without, it is understandable why she might have gone off in search of her mother that fateful morning, scenting after her with flared nostrils and a careful ear.

But her trail was faint, and soon enough, the little girl was lost, calling for her with some careful little noises, and nothing more. She wandered aimlessly as the sun rapidly crossed the sky above in the short days that Mars endured. Something in the air smelt off, but it was unlike anything else she had ever been exposed to. She ignored it, wary of the sounds around her, and instead focused on the rumble in her stomach.

Grasping at the flesh stretched tightly over little bones there, she decided to search for her own meal, using her hands and feet to look for any forgotten scraps in the dirt and rock. It was then that she saw it, green and wilting just ahead in the distance. Whilst flowers were not unheard of on Mars, most vegetation was rare, and difficult to come by. But she knew that it was food, and she knew she could eat it if she could get to it.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">With all the speed she had, the little girl hurled herself onto the flower, hands clasping around its soft stem and giving a firm tug, her mouth around the top of it even before it came loose from the Earth. But the noise of her scuffle had masked something else, and she heard the men around her too late.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">One picked her up by the waist, making some odd noise or another (she would later come to recognize it as laughter) as she struggled against his arms, turning to sink her teeth into the hard, silver skin he wore, and whining pitifully when it was too hard to bite properly. She scratched and fought nonetheless, growling and calling for her mother with desperate yaps as the men carried her off.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">The place they took her smelt weird, like everything had been made to shine. It stung her nose, the smell of disinfectant, and soon, other things stung, too. The Mercurian doctors on board of the airship she was forced onto were as cold and calculating as their instruments. She remembers that none of them had warm hands or faces. They felt like the dead men, women, kids she had occasionally stumbled across - cold and hard. They terrified her, and she cried and fought against them until they sent her to sleep to make it easier.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Where she woke up was a different world entirely - literally.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> This world shone blue and green and colourful and so different from everything she knew that Raen's jaw literally dropped. She was kept carefully nestled between several of the big men, but the idea of running seemed so foolish then. After all, she had no idea where she was. Nothing smelt or sounded familiar. Nothing was familiar.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Faced with the reality that she was far from her volcanic home on Mars, the little girl turned to the guard on her right and shouted for her mother, waiting to see if he understood. When he didn't, she tried the one behind her, the one on her left, the one leading them all. They would spare her a glance, but none answered in plain Martian. There were no growls of understanding, no body language that betrayed they knew what she was talking about. They said things in their deep, odd voices back and forth, things she strained to hear and found only sounded like garbling rubbish in the process.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">She was given away, then, to a woman with bright eyes, and a man who was wearing an expression on his face similar to the woman's. They had things for her, things upon things, including a new box and two other children for playmates. She wondered if they had taken them as well, and spent her first night locked in the box they wanted her to sleep in, waiting for them to attack her.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">The people on Earth were giants, for the most part, with the fair-haired girl in her home a good deal larger than she was. She spent her time sizing her up, trying to make her play with her, and being confused whenever the girl would cry. She would skirt away then, wild eyes staring at the large people as she tried to avoid having them pick her up again.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">And so they started training her. At the very least, it felt like training. They would tempt her close with food, and she would grab as much as she could and take it to a corner to eat, growling and snapping at anyone who came near. They had a lot more food than Raen had ever seen before in her life, oftentimes using the chairs around their home to climb up to the cabinets and whatnot to get herself the food.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Until, of course, the day she was caught. Mrs. Deva's cry of surprise resulted in a quick scream from her Martian foster child, and her tumbling from the precious climb she had made to the hard floor beneath. To Raen's credit, though she cradled her newly broken arm and sniffled, she did not cry. She didn't bawl or throw a fit - not until she was touched, anyway. Then she growled and snapped and thrashed like it was her job, using her three good limbs to fight the concerned woman off.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">The man who was to become her father was able to carry the biting child, suffering some marks that actually required stitches in good humour. They were at the hospital anyway, he had commented with a shrug, taking them as battle scars as their new little girl was sedated to have her arm set and placed in a child's cast.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> It came off six weeks later, but she remembered the period as one of the worst of her life. Not only did she hurt, but they had done something to make her useless on top of it. If anyone had tried to attack her, she was down an entire limb! And she didn't know what they were saying… they could have been plotting anything. Raen understood that they talked a lot, after all, and talking didn't usually end well for her.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Slowly but surely, she made it her mission to understand them. The wanting helped a lot, as did the reluctant bigger girl they had paired her with. Ushriya, she learnt her name was. It was far too long to have been considered suitable for a Martian, but she could appreciate her help and her position as a potential playmate nonetheless. Ushriya would point upwards to the blue expanse above them, so unlike the sepia tones, the light reds and the greys that hung above Mars, and she would say 'sky'. And, slowly, Raen would learn that she was meant to say it back. That the blue above them was sky.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Ushriya's mother, in the meantime, took to schooling the girl. She tried with language the hardest, for the obvious reasons, working with her limited Martian vocabulary. She cried the day that the girl didn't understand love by any means. Not if she drew hearts, not if she tried to hold her (to which she was always pushed back), not if she tried to blow a kiss. Love could not be understood.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> But minus small hiccoughs of these sorts, things between the ages of six and seven went nearly perfectly for the tiny Martian girl and her new home. That was, until the day she understood the language well enough to express that she already had a mother.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">She never clearly understood why she had done it. Some part of her likes to think it was innocent, that she had only been trying to tell these people who had been making strides with her something about herself. She only had four things - her dress, which had been destroyed after her capture; her name, which they already knew; the rock, which stayed on Mars; and her mother.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">They reported it immediately. They wanted the girl to have no reason to resent them, that if this was a mistake, they had done everything they could to prevent it. Unfortunately, though her grip on the Terrestrial language had improved considerably, Raen was still nowhere near fluent.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">She didn't understand why the new parents seemed so sad, or why she was taken away again and plopped back onto her home of Mars out of the blue. She went skirting off for her mother, only to find something actually tied around her neck and midsection. The sights, smells and sounds of the place filled her with an aching sort of nostalgia, everything so distantly familiar after a year of food that she had almost forgotten this place.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">The man she lead around for days on end got bored and hungry pretty damn fast. She understood that he was complaining, but not why. She had shown him beasts he could kill if he wanted food. This was Mars. They hadn't been attacked or anything, so it was going pretty well!

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">But Mars had changed in the ways such a planet would be expected to. She found one of the wise women in the volcanic clans, remembering that her mother had always urged her to trust them, and them alone, and demanded the whereabouts of her only true parent. The man who had been entertaining her visions beforehand grunted at the little girl, stiff, terse as he bared his teeth in warning. She was an interruption he had not anticipated, and it was obvious to nearly everyone involved. Save for, perhaps, the man holding the two leashes they had attached to her, to keep her from getting lost.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> The woman touched two fingers to her forehead, and frowned in dismay. Sadness, grief. It wasn't something foreign to any Martian, no matter how young. Raen knew before she said it, but the word still hit her in the chest like a bullet. Dead.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">The thought of being an orphan made her reel, sent with pitiful, large tears in her eyes to her rear on the rocky ground beneath, legs curling under her. Her Jovian guard seemed confused, eyes flitting between the woman he had assumed was her mother, and the young man who had turned to her, muttering something in their languages.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> " Bright Eyes, " he had commented, the girl's name the only part the Jovian recognized as they continued to discuss something beyond him. Raen understood, of course. " Special? " he had asked.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> The woman, elderly for a Martian in that she had to have been at least twenty-one, nodded. " Destined for things beyond seeing. " It confused her to no end, particularly when the man simply nodded once, and stood up, snarling and roaring at the Jovian behind her like he had made up his mind about some very important detail. He instructed her in conversation with the Jovian, who suffered through Raen's broken Terrestrial, her informing him that the man they had found was her father. That he was upset that she had gone missing.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Wary though she was of all men, she couldn't help but drink in the familiarity of his scent, so distinctly like smoke and sweat, as he hastily ripped her from her bonds in order to pick her up, cradling Raen to his nude chest. The guard, unsure what to do, radioed back that they had found a father.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">It was here that a dilemma was faced. The girl seemed receptive to this man, and from the behaviours they had observed in her, she shouldn't have, wouldn't have unless she did know him. Stranger still, she seemed content on Mars, like it was in her veins.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">They took her from him, making her tell him she would be back. Every year, until she was grown, at least. Every year, she would come back for him.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Her parents on Earth were informed of the deal, though neither knew how to handle that her mother had been dead. They didn't know how to offer their condolences to the girl, and so, none were exchanged. They gave her an entire packet of raw bacon that night, though they usually insisted on cooking the food before she got into it, and she picked at it as ravenously as ever, at the table, her her two siblings there.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Ushriya, for what it was worth, seemed to brighten around her after her return from Mars. She wasn't sure why the girl had changed, didn't understand if this was some sort of natural progressions she was supposed to follow, too, but didn't bother to dwell on it much longer. She got better at things - better at Terrestrial, better about her new family offering her brief touches, about trying to bond with her. Though she was still awkward in public, she didn't snap at the butcher's whenever they walked by. She didn't trying to take food from other people, and she actually allowed their mother to hold her hand.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Though she still returned to Mars during the summer, she was becoming kind of a normal person. Even when she would come back with sunken, haunted eyes and the same too-thin frame she had sported the first time the Deva's met her, they worked around it. For nine years a month, Raen Mars had a family. For the other three, she had a man telling her that it was important she knew her roots. That it was important she understood what had happened to them, in case she ever had the opportunity to share those ideals with anyone down there, on Earth. She made a point to never tell him that it wouldn't have ended well.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">She entered public school with Ushriya when they were both ten. The other girl seemed excited for a year finally spent with her 'sister', though Raen was more than a touch sceptical. Perhaps it had something to do with the way a broken collarbone had forced her right arm into a sling, but she wasn't feeling quite up to trying new things. She also was too attached to Ushriya to ever deny her. It started young, her absolute, undying devotion to the other girl, and she tried her best that day. She sat near the back in her first class, and from morning until noon, four other girls who had picked seats around her mocked, taunted, and generally agitated the Martian. When the bell rang, signalling the end of her torture, Raen simply stood up and used her left arm to flip her desk upside-down before disappearing for the rest of the day.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">When she was still missing come dinnertime, the Deva's went to the school looking for her. They found the girl curled up in the bottom of an empty locker, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. Mrs. Deva did not bother to explain to her that hiding in lockers could not solve her problems - only that she should know that final bell meant she could go home with Ushriya.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">School didn't get much better, but Raen certainly got better at ignoring the ignorance and fear that seemed to follow her like a helpless puppy.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">The summer she was turning twelve came, and she left for Mars as she had any other year - but taller. She had grown in more ways than one, however, and it would have been foolish to say that the men of her home planet didn't take notice. Unfortunately, she didn't.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> She went to spend her first night under her rock, finding a small child curled up there instead. Another Martian orphan, she growled and literally hauled the tiny girl from her place, crawling in underneath after a moment and making it feel more like her own again. The sounds of whimpering roused her, made Raen huff and turn from her usual place facing inwards underneath of the rock to reach out and grab the child close to her. Body warmth was crucial on Mars. She clutched the child to her, and the girl shook and trembled until her chills vanished and she relaxed, grateful for an older woman to spend the night with.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">She was woken up in a scene that was all too familiar, the child in front of her dragged out by her arms, and a man crawling under the rock after her. Raen fought like someone had lit her on fire, and received more than a few scrapes and bruises for it. In the end, everything happened anyway. She was helpless to stop it, and the child she had taken in for the night didn't dare come back after being beaten away from her. She sobbed herself back to sleep when it was done, the summer following as more of the same.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Her return home was more bleak than it usually was. She came two days late, barely in time for school, and simply went to her room and laid face-down in her bed. She tried to find comfort in the fact that, on Earth, no one would hurt her in such a way. She cried for hours on end into her pillow, until her head hurt and she had no more tears to give.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Things only seemed to get worse after that. The next summer, she found herself pregnant and alone up on Mars. She hadn't known until she was miscarrying - the pain was indescribable. School and life on Earth continued as it always had, and her world on Mars stayed her own. Ushriya was told that she left each year for summer camp. The hid her on-Earth miscarriage at fifteen well enough. Well, in the sense that Raen was fairly certain her sister just assumed she was fooling around with boys. She didn't care. The only real change seemed to be that Shingoro grew more fiercely protective of her after the fact, as though he thought that he could keep her safe from whatever monster had caused such a thing to happen.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">She lost track around the third miscarriage, the same summer that she arrived and discovered the man who had treated her as a father had died. Unsure how to feel, and without anything left to connect her, she went home with her lip split wide open. It was a lesser injury - she could take it. Gratefully.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Raen had assumed her senior year would go as planned. Her brother and father would keep their secondary roles in her family life, Ushriya would continue to be her best and only friend, and their mother would continue to dote on her three children. That was what she had assumed.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Instead, the year had been a whirlwind of studies, looking at brochures for different universities, and being told she needed to know what she wanted to do with her life. The voices that had begun talking to her when she had known the man who had cared for her on Mars had died only intensified, demanding things of her that she couldn't hope to understand. She was pulled on a tour of the local university, almost drowning in how many people there were as she stayed close to her family, drawing on the four of them for comfort and support. She knew she would attend the university with Ushriya the following year - she just had no idea that it would be her freshman year as an undeclared science student that would see the most changes in her life since she had originally been plucked from Mars.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Though she would never tell you, looking back on it, Raen would remark that meeting Amina in the park the spring before she left for Mars that summer had likely been the best thing that had ever happened to her. It wasn't even so much that she was officially smitten with the girl as it was that she loved her eyes, her smell, and could stand to be near her. She tentatively formed something of a friendship before dropping out of her life, graduating in the top bracket of their class, and going to Mars without telling her foster family that the man she had claimed to be her father had died.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">She came back with a set of broken ribs, and no more hope than before - just an urge to seek out Amina. It took weeks to find her, stumbling instead across Ota, Michaela, learning that Ushriya was Sailor Moon… a torrent of things she couldn't understand, but knew had to be fate. By the time she found Amina again, there were already things set in motion to trap her.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> She had no choice in becoming Sailor Mars - but it certainly doesn't mean she's accepted that destiny yet, at all. She's torn between more than just two cultures now; she's being ripped between who she was, and who she's supposed to be. Somewhere in between, she likes to think that maybe (just maybe) there's a girl named Raen Mars still in there.

Personality
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> There's a quiet to Raen that makes sense. It is more in her very nature than in how she behaves, but it's obvious. She has nothing to say to anyone. That isn't to say she never speaks, or uses her vocal cords - she does. Growls tend to be on of her primary methods of communication, the very Martian noise representing contentment (over big, bloody, raw steaks, generally speaking, or a good belly rub/hair petting), surprise, rage... just about anything you can imagine. It tends to take on a different tone depending on the emotion fuelling it.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">In spite of years on Earth, she retains a bit of her accent. It isn't anywhere near as thick as it was when she was a child, but years of being shipped to and fro between her planets have left her incapable of truly claiming either one as her home. Most of her traits are shared in this way, and it often leaves her unsure how she's meant to react to any given situation. Most things make her uncomfortable or some manner of agitated, whether they scare her or plain old weird her out.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">As for making friends? She's not the best. It isn't that she's antisocial or shy so much as it is that she sucks in nearly every social situation presented to her. Being a Martian is usually considered to be rather similar to being a monster, and the majority of people seem unable to overcome the stigma. It's easier to limit her interactions and hope that nobody takes issue with her simply existing. Of course, people still do. She's learnt to ignore most of them, but it's not hard to get under Raen's skin.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">The exception to every rule regarding social situations, of course, is Ushriya. She's fiercely loyal to the girl (as she would be to any friends, if she had many), to the point where she's more than possessive. She's not used to having things - but she's shared food with Ushriya, and for that matter, shared her life with her. For all intents and purposes, she considers her sister hers, much in the way she thinks of her name as her own, or her bedroom. There are some things people cannot touch, and her sister is one of them. Not without bringing one hell of an angry Martian down on them, teeth, growls, claws and all.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Of course, sometimes that loyalty drags her through a spot of trouble. Her sister's well-known for getting into situations that could be described as less-than-desirable, and though Raen generally knows it's a bad idea to blindly follow her, she does it anyway. She refuses to let her most important person go anywhere without her, or at the very least, doesn't like it when she does. She respects her space in the same way she likes to think Ushriya would respect hers, but that's the extent of it.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She enjoys the things she loves with a passion, like food. She's constantly starving, a byproduct of years where food was so scarce she sometimes went upwards of three days without. She still remembers hunger so severe she could have sworn she wouldn't ever see food again. It's kind of manifested into an odd sort of gluttony now, where she eats everything in sight. She loves meat in particular, raw steak and bacon her favourite, but food of any kind will work.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">It'd probably be the same way with people - again, if she had people she cared about all that much. Of course, with so many of the senshi waltzing into her life now, it's becoming harder not to care.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> She's being pushed out of her comfort zone, and she hates it. Everything in Raen inherently hates change, from Mars to Earth and Earth to Mars. Being Sailor Mars, and thinking that not only is she not her own person, but there are two people inside who make her her is a strange concept, and one she doesn't care to face often. She can't sort out which feelings are real anymore, whether or not she likes Amina, whether or not she and Ota actually get along. She's lost a sense of self, and she feels empty.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal">Beyond confusion about who she is (or was) and destiny, however, are the dreams. The Princess of Mars, Ariana, talks to her often, with Rei coming into play here and there. She remembers bits and pieces, but not all that much - and lately, she's been seeing other things, too. She might not understand what the future means now, but Raen is one of the two seers on the team. It's kind of her job to see anything the future holds, terrifying or otherwise, and prepare accordingly.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> She's skittish, however, and talking to others usually results in some very flat one-liners. It makes talking about your problems hard, and it definitely makes facing the reactions of people harder when you do open up. It doesn't help that she's stubborn enough to think she could handle it by herself.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> And stubborn enough to hate you forever if you cross her. Raen doesn't forgive easily, and it takes even longer to make her forget. She's not very good at passive aggressive, either - just aggressive.