Soldier

NAME:	Sailor Ceres
ELEMENT:	Air

Powers

Attacks Used by Sailor Ceres

• Amazoness Jungle Arrow - A joint energy attack performed by the Sailor Quartet.
• Pink Lady's Freezing Kiss - A joint attack performed by the Sailor Quartet and Sailor Neo Moon that can freeze enemies.
• Pelting Winds - Another version of a power she used as CereCere, Sailor Ceres releases a barrage of small blasts of wind, which are not necessarily harmful on their own, but function as excellent crowd control.
• Sweet Breeze Perfume - This ability was corrupted while she was CereCere, but is in its pure and original state now. You'd think this was harmless and foolish. You'd be wrong. Drawing from her affinity for flowers and breezes alike, Sailor Ceres brings a delightful scent in on the wind, one that can distract enemies and even lull weak or unsuspecting ones into slumber or hypnosis.
• Gale Shear Slice - Sailor Ceres forms a large blade of wind, to bludgeon or slice at opponents.
• Boreal Cloak Brace - A defensive ability, Ceres summons wind around herself and those close to her in order to protect. It is most effective against projectiles or opponents approaching, but less effective against energy attacks.

Abilities of Sailor Ceres

• Atmokinesis - Sailor Ceres has control over wind and air as part of the power of her Sailor Crystal. She can control, create, or stop gusts of wind of minor and moderate strength. When transformed, she has the capacity for limited, wingless flight and with some concentration can lift others on currents of air, as well. In all her states, she has never been hurt falling off of anything, no matter how high. She can cushion the fall of someone near her if she has sufficient reaction time, too. In transformed and untransformed states, currents of air seem to react to her presence and her moods, but this is localized enough that does not extend to weather control or weather creation.
• Dream Affinity - Her time with the Dead Moon may not have left her with any tangible powers to affect dreams, but she does have a better awareness than most of when something to do with Dreams or the Dreaming is afoot.
• Trapeze Master, Circus Freak - A physical ability and not a mystical one. Zeffy still retains most of her performance skills from the Dead Moon Circus, including impeccable balance and an utter lack of any fear of heights. She's more athletic than her small frame lets on, especially in acrobatics. Also, she's unusually good at pool (a fact that she'll use to pool shark people in the 21st century now and again). And, okay, maybe her willingness to do trapeze acts without a safety net is more of a magical power, but sssshh.

History

She's always liked that one speech in Hamlet about sleeping and death.

Of course, Ceres' experiences of sleep in the long scope of her long life are atypical. She doesn't remember anything from before the Dead Moon found her and her sisters, as their Sailor Crystals slumbered in the Amazon, awaiting the one who would call to them. Rudely wrenched out of their correct time and place, they became pawns for the Dead Moon. She remembers the Circus with a shudder, when she was entirely given over to the service of Nehelenia and her evil agenda, and when she confronted the Sailor Guardians. She doesn't like to talk about that time much, at least not when she's in a good mood.

When she's in a mischievous mood, though--and that happens often enough!--she's been known to joke about it, to joke that there was more freedom in the Circus than in the Palace. In moments of frustration and challenge, when she's given all she thinks she can, "running away to join the circus" is a darker threat coming from her than it would be from anyone else.

But after the Circus? A thousand years and then some passed in deep and dreaming sleep. Her true awakening came fifteen hundred years later, called by the light that was meant for her and her sisters to follow and pledge themselves to. They awoke out of their long slumber when their Princess needed them once more, and swore their service to her.

She had to find her footing as a person, outside her identity as Sailor Ceres and outside her past as a trapeze-swinging dream-stealing minion of evil. Luckily, she's had half a millennium to do it, and much of that a peaceful, idyllic time. Zeferina experimented with performance, with fashion, with anything that highlighted her marvelous beauty and sparkle and wit; but she always came back to digging in the grubby dirt and nurturing plants. Other people point to the dirt underneath her carefully manicured nails as a contradiction; Zeferina isn't inclined to take criticism from anyone, though, and she thinks it all makes perfect sense. Appreciate beauty and life in all its forms, right? In her own time, she started and maintained an expansive garden in the Crystal Palace, and several more in the city beyond. In many ways, she adjusted marvelously to palace life, as someone who loved and still loves being pampered and falls easily into aristocratic airs and the fanciest things in life. But her flippant streak and independence have caused their fair share of problems.

She and her Sisters, of course, have a bond that runs so deep that Ceres couldn't truly explain it if she wanted to, but over the centuries she found herself growing close to the light that had drawn her out of slumber for real--Sailor Neo Moon, Cidney, not her sister but also, manifestly a sister, a part of her, a larger stellar body that she orbits and protects. She'll tease her sisters and bicker with them and go to any length possibly short of pulling each others' pigtails--she won't tease Cidney in the same way, most of the time, but she is deeply dedicated to her Princess and prides herself on always giving the future Serenity the unvarnished truth because if the chief of your Sailor Guardians and the person who's supposed to serve as a body double for you in times of need isn't going to do it, who is?

When peace crumbled in her own time, and the threat of the Dark Alliance loomed, Ceres volunteered to go back into the past and try to repair whatever had broken. In fact, she was under no circumstances going to consider letting her Princess go without her! And what an adventure! What a lark! She just had to put a cheerful spin on it. But adjusting to living another life in another time over the past few months has been strange for her. She kept her head down while they were keeping their presence a secret, getting a job in a florist's shop and rather enjoying the lack of notoriety and fame here in 2031--nobody recognized Princess Small Lady Serenity, because she hadn't been born, which meant nobody recognized the Leader of her Guardians, which meant Zeffy was significantly more free to play around than she had been in her own time. But as the months have gone on, stress has started building for her, and that's really putting a crimp in her "time vacation" style: what on Earth are they supposed to do now?

Writing Sample

In the 41st Century, someone would already have gotten wind of the fact that Lady Ceres was climbing trees again, and a Palace assistant would have been dispatched to politely, persistently, and doggedly request that she come down. (It was a "request" only in that they always very politely said please, but no matter what you told them, they'd just keep asking until you felt like going insane. So it was a request de jure, but not a request de facto, a facet of public and political life that Zeferina was very accustomed to by now.)

In the 21st Century, nobody who mattered gave a hoot, and that was something Zeferina liked quite a lot. Of course, she was just an anonymous nobody in the 21st Century, or near enough to it, and so when she found a really fantastic tree in a public park in Crystal City, whose magnolia blossoms were just coming into the height of their bloom at the top, there was no reason whatsoever not to climb it right up to the very, very top and breathe in the scent and feel the wind rushing all around her.

This had to be what heaven felt like.

"Hey, lady," came a voice below her. Zeferina cracked one eye open. A small child craning his neck up at her was not, in fact, heavenly at all, but there he was. He shouted again. "Hey! Lady, why are you up at the top of the tree?"

"To see the flowers," she responded--it was true, after all--and then, leaning precariously to look down at him, "Do you want to take a look too?"

The child considered her. Kids were tricky like that. Was he thinking? Had he gotten distracted? Finally, "Isn't that dangerous?"

"Well, of course it's dangerous, but life wouldn't be any fun if you never did any dangerous things at all, would it?"