IC Date: 10/28/2025

Tempesti opened her eyes to the many-hued light of dawn creeping through the library’s stained glass windows. She had, of course, left her camping stove in a less flammable area but the couches in this room seemed a more inviting place to place her bedroll than the hard stone of the Tower’s floors. Though she had her anxieties about sleeping atop the ancient furniture, it had proven a surprisingly comfortable alternative to her previous arrangement and its proximity to the books was a decided advantage over the rest of the Tower. She glanced at the small stack of volumes on the low stone table in front of the couch. Hours spent scouring their pages had yielded a disappointingly low number of exact matches for what she’d photographed in the greenhouse. It didn’t seem impossible that Elysia had obtained some off-world specimens for her research, or crossbred different species. Given the close but not quite close enough matches she’d found in the botany texts, the latter seemed like a definite possibility. Unfortunately, if that was true that meant that she would need to search for the previous senshi’s notes. She knew they existed, she just didn’t know where that half-mad girl had stashed them and her memories were most often not of the peaceful studying variety. As to why that was, she could only speculate that the painful memories left the strongest impressions. Which was less than fortunate for someone who had to recover them at inconvenient times. Tightening her braid, she stood, taking with her a few of the botanical guides she’d gathered the evening before.

It would be a lie to say that she was eager to make her way into Elysia’s private quarters, part of her worried that the memories would be too overwhelming up there. In the gilded cage where she’d spent so much of her short life. In a few months she’d be older than Elysia ever was. It wasn’t exactly something she enjoyed thinking of. That first memory she’d experienced on the beach outside the city. The moments before her last death. The cold determination. The terrifying absence of fear. The desire to die if it meant ending the war without losing what was left of her mind. No, she wasn’t in any hurry to experience anything like that again. But she wasn’t what was important. Elysia wasn’t what was important. This planet and all the life it supported, this planet of which she had been chosen to be the steward. That was what mattered. That was enough to drive her forward through the fear. That was the difference between her and Elysia. Hidden from the world and weaponized, denied the opportunity to truly embrace it. Elysia couldn’t see herself as anything but an extension of someone else’s will.
The living Tempesti refused to see herself that way. She belonged to the planet, yes, but her will was her own. Her choice to devote herself to this place was her own. And she would do whatever it took to see it thrive.