It began with a bang.

Or, more precisely, an explosion. At least, that is how it will be remembered. The day an entire battle station was taken out by a single woman.

She marched slowly, her head hung, between five soldiers. She too wore a uniform, but it did not fit properly. It certainly did not belong to her. There was a faint hint of lightly colored tresses beneath the cap, but it was difficult to tell exactly what color her hair was. Her hands were manacled before her, the bonds encasing her arms almost all the way to the elbow. Her eyes were almost invisible, partially because of her lowered head and partially because of pale bangs hanging over them. But, she was smiling, smiling like a Cheshire cat who knew some cosmic secret no one else did.

The soldiers surrounding her were stopped by one of their superior officers, who questioned them about their prisoner. No one seemed to know her name or how she had infiltrated the base, but it was known that she was caught laying out bombs in strategic places along the hull. The entire ship had been searched, but no one yet had turned up any other sets of explosives. The officer caught her chin and made her look up at him. "Where are the other bombs?" he demanded.

She smiled, perhaps a bit too wide, almost insanely gleeful, certainly a little madly. "Bakana," she chided softly, almost too softly to be heard, "I am the other bomb."

A long staff seemed to just appear before her; mostly likely it had been hidden folded up inside the manacles and only now extended; and she set it sharply down on the ground before her. Faintly she seemed to be whispering something.

Then the entire base exploded. Not a piece at the time, or anything like that, but the entire station at once. Whatever her "bomb" was, it was extremely powerful.

"Man, oh, man, whatever that was, I want one of those!" a violet-eyed pilot with a long chestnut braid remarked rather loudly.

"Omae o koroso."

"You say the nicest things, Heero."

She smiled brilliantly. It had worked - and worked beautifully at that. She stared at the staff held before her. Vaguely she remembered that it was never supposed to be used for this kind of wanton destruction - none of her powers were - but rules changed with the times. These days were so very violent; she had to be as well to survive alone and to complete her self-imposed mission.

"Koibito...," she whispered to the globe on top of the staff. "I miss you."

Demo. . . she was still the guardian of the stars and she still had a lot of work to do. . .

Only a few more to go. . . They had to pay for what they had dared to do.