View source for Not easy having a good time (Hinoiri Kirara)

{{Cutscene Header
|Date of Scene=2023/12/17
|Location=Seattle space needle
|Synopsis=Sunbreaker arrives at Seattle and gets straight to work... Is there any surprise? And well... even with a song, sometimes even Sunbreaker can't decide what to do. On the upside, she's one step closer to figuring things out. Well... Downside, actually.
|Cast of Characters=131
}}
“It's not easy having yourself a good time,” Sunbreaker lightly sang to herself the moment she was outside the airport. She didn’t even wait for the others, she just teleported away. Fun? Fun was for other people. She had work to do. Commitments. It was always commitments. As far back as she could remember. Expectations to be met. Pressure to be held above.

Sunbreaker appeared over the tower in the city. Seattle. It was… pretty. She supposed. So crowded. How could they live like this? “Messing with these struts and fetters, making sure they don’t ruin my setters.”

Sunbreaker hovered again, performing her scans while she lingered over the tower. It was true though, wasn’t it? It was a little harder to see here but… how did they not know? No. Of course. OF COURSE! They COULDN’T know! They were from THIS world! They didn’t know HOW it was supposed to work! She almost laughed. It was so obvious a baby unicorn would have seen… but… that was hardly fair. Explain to a fish the concept of a cloud and they’d think you were insane. They had nothing to compare it to. They… weren’t… like back home.

No, they really weren’t. A lack of magic here had created… strange people. Not like home.

“Mock and shove me away at the same time,” Sunbreaker sang lightly. “Treated like something she’s forgotten. Abandoned, banished and now I’m rotten.”

“I'm not the loser tonight,” Sunbreaker sang through gritted teeth before disappearing and reappearing on the outer edges of the city. It should have been here… but it wasn’t. She then paused when she received a text. She glanced at her phone… but didn’t even read the message from Double Trouble. This was work. Always work. If she wanted to leave this planet, she had to earn it. If she wanted to ever return home. If she ever wanted to earn what was hers… Why did they always have to fight her? Once again she imagined herself, fighting those sparkle skirts. She lifted a hand over her chest. They hated her. They tried to kill her. Would that flash of light one day… be used to murder her? If she didn’t achieve what she wanted? It was Sailor Moon, right? Yes. It was always Sailor Moon...

… It certainly wouldn’t be used to save her, that was for certain. Nobody ever came for her. Nobody… would ever come for her...

“Don't wanna be a bad guy… I’m just so lonely you see… And you keep getting in my way…” It was so strange. Back home, nobody would extend a hoof to her. Nobody except Sora… She felt her heart beating a little harder and she lifted her hands up, clutching them to her chest. ‘Of course she’s talented, why else would the princess choose her?’ ‘Why, you could go into any field like this. A talent like yours is so rare.’ ‘If you focused, really applied yourself, you’d be top of the class before you knew it.’ But she’d become the top of the class. The best in every category. And nobody cared. No matter how hard she tried it only seemed to drive others away.

It drove Sora away.

Yet, here? So many hands were reaching for her and a part of her, deep down, wanted to take them. To just give in. To… let… them help her. To let them help her. To help them in kind. Usagi. Sayaka. Sailor Moon. Double Trouble. Did any of them actually truly care about her? Did any of them… actually… love her? “I can’t decide… why can’t I just run and hide? This place could probably be a heaven if I just let all my goals die. So I wonder why…”

“My heart feels dead inside,” Sunbreaker said, her hands lifting up to clutch her head. “It’s cold and hard and petrified! Why can’t you help me and not be so blind? Just this once please see my side!” Sunbreaker sang before teleporting away again.

Here she wasn’t the best. Sure, she got good grades. She stuck out a little. But that didn’t matter. People didn’t… hate her for it. In fact, there were so many talented faces, so many who rose above… she felt like she could make friends, companions, no matter where she went. Perhaps people who really did care for her. Like a siren call. It was like they really wanted you here… all she’d need to do is abandon everything she was. Everything she’d done. Everything she’d sacrificed all for. Give up everything that had made her who she was, leaving herself an empty husk for a spoonful of happiness she’d forever been denied.

“There’s no spell to convince people to like you…” Sunbreaker muttered before teleporting again, the tower coming with her. “Sora didn’t raise a quitter.” Her eyes narrowed when she saw a person down below toss their hot dog wrapper on the ground. Her hand glowed black for a moment and the wrapper lifted off the ground and flew through the air, bonking the person on the back of the head. “Hey you jerk, pick up your litter!”

Once again she teleported away. True enough, here it was. Another leyline. This couldn’t be possible, yet it was. If she was right, well… it explained so much. No wonder sparkle skirts kept popping up around Tokyo. Their little efforts to do ‘passive energy drain’ got only a trickle of energy. Why everyone continued to congregate together…

Why Obsidian would lose in the end. Not that she’d tell them that. “Pleasing everyone is something I was taught to do…” Nobody liked hearing bad news. They only wanted the good. This, though… “Working until my hooves felt crippled. Late night pastries I barely nibbled.”

Few would need to know. Fewer could appreciate it. For now? It suited her needs. She supposed Takashi could know. Definitely not the company as a whole, though. Not the ones who wanted to destroy the world. Maybe…

…

Maybe some of the Sparkle Skirts. Maybe Sailor Moon.

An image that had haunted her for so long. Sailor Moon, beaten. Bruised. Battered. Wounded by HER hand.

Shielding her. Protecting her. Why? WHY WHY WHY? WAS THIS WHY SHE HAD SORA’S LIGHT? WHY SHE ALWAYS HAUNTED HER? WHY SAILOR MOON SEEMED TO ALWAYS BE IN HER WAY?

“I've got to hand it to you, you've played by all this world’s rules. It took a fool to save me and now you've made me angry!” Sunbreaker yelled before flicking her wrist out. The tower flipped upside down before turning into a spike. She drove it deep, deep into the ground. That’s where it would remain, for now.

“I can't decide whether I should laugh or cry. To you this place is heaven, so you won’t miss me when I say goodbye. Don’t You see why?”

“My heart feels dead inside. It's cold and hard and petrified,” Sunbreaker disappeared and reappeared over the water this time. “Grab your swords and prepare your minds, I’ll soon release the tide!”

Sunbreaker sighed and looked towards the sun before closing her eyes, letting the warmth wash over her. “Oh I could show you all I made or feed you the best things I could bake, but you’ll always deny missing me when I’m gone…”

“You left me heartbroken and alive, but I’ll come back because I thrive! And you’ll see all that I’ve been dreaming...”

“That’s why…” Sunbreaker’s eyes opened and she looked back down, not even glancing at her phone when the next text came. Work first. Work always. There would be time later. One day. Maybe.

“I can't decide whether it’ll matter if I die… If I fail will I it be my final lesson? Will she even hang her head and cry? No, is it any wonder why… My heart feels dead inside... It’s cold and hard and petrified… Locked up tight and helpless tonight...”

Sunbreaker appeared over the tower again, this time landing on it. She snapped her fingers and more tiny towers appeared, sailing through the air and disappearing under the ground. It’d give her the information she’d need on these leylines. It’d take a while, but between the knowledge she was gaining, Project Eclipse and now the future of her ascension she can see coming…?

“I’ll take this world for a ride...”