A/N: I'm thinking about bringing back the Shintennou. Any thoughts? I'll make a poll. I already have a poll of who Serena should end up with, so please go check it out - it's on my profile.

The small town of Juuban had quickly spread the word - those girls Serena usually hangs out with had kicked her out of their friend group and were now free game. Her boyfriend was a cheating creep, and the guys who'd been flirting with Serena started to gather makeshift weapons ready to beat the man who dared to spit on the kind and thoughtful girl's love. Darien and the girls were going to have a rude awakening - no one in this town liked them, and Darien hadn't noticed it, but all of his 'side chicks,' had either been terrible people or from out of town. The girls, they were going to have a realization of a completely different level - they were going to see how it felt to be the victim, to feel powerless as people they believed like them tore them apart.

Serena was done defending them from the sharks, from now they had to sink or swim on their own.

Thinking about her future, Serena decided it would be a good idea to notify Luna and Artemis of these new developments - Serena had demanded that the two of them spend some time away from the scouts to figure things out. After all, she knew how shocking it was to meet your future child when you hadn't thought that far yet (Rini). However, circumstances changed and now she'd have to debrief them.

That night, she summoned her advisers to her and told them everything, trying to remain as objective as possible so as to allow them to draw their own conclusions and so she could tell where their true loyalties lay. Luna had been more partial to Serena's side, while Artemis, who'd always been extremely close to Mina decided that he would listen to the disgraced Scouts side of the story. He found it hard to believe that the girl he'd been with for more than 5 years could have turned out this badly, and Luna decided to go with him as moral support.

If you looked at the people of Juuban, you'd think they were preparing for war. In a way, they were - a war against the rotten girls that had invaded their town and systematically broke their little ball of sunshine. Sammy and Ken had called an unofficial town meeting to discuss the girls and their behavior in the last few years - three of them were still considered outsiders, and the fourth might as well be with how isolated she was from the rest of the community. The landlord of Darien Shield's building had also brought up his transgressions against the girl, showing security footage of the man bringing home random girls to his apartment at all times of the night, sometimes more than one. Seeing that, Ken was glad that Serena had never gone that far with the boy - he recognized symptoms of STIs in several of the girls that Darien brought with him.

From there the town started their plans, the first stage was to be the schools. The girls were all in universities now, all nearby (Serena and the scouts knew that this was so that they could fight youma more easily, while the citizens of Juuban thought that this was to hurt Serena more often - in a way, it was.) Therefore, they decided that they would expose some of the secrets that the girls and Darien had thought they were keeping so well. Honestly, if you want to keep secrets don't discuss them loudly in a crowded arcade, especially when there are hundreds of little ears willing to tell their parents and friends everything they hear.

It started small. A whisper here, a murmur there, 'isn't she the one who did Reika's boyfriend last week?' 'Wasn't he the rich man who goes after underage girls?' 'Didn't she get kicked out of class for arguing with the teacher?' On and on, little things that were whispered when the girls or Darien were around, all of them true.

Mina had been flirting with Andrew for three months, but he'd kept telling her that he had a girlfriend, even kissing said girlfriend in front of Mina to try to get her to stop. However, it had only made Mina more determined to have him, and so she asked him to go out for drinks with the rest of the scouts and her after the arcade closed for the night. He'd agreed, not seeing any problems with it but the next morning, he woke up without any memories of the night before, though he was naked and so was Mina beside him. Reika had walked in and broken up with him then and there. Andrew had been so sad for a while after that, and the Arcade had suffered for it - Serena had decided to work there for a while to let Andrew recover a bit. Andrew and Reika still weren't talking because of it though.

Darien - well, that was what happened, wasn't it? He'd started dating a fourteen-year-old while he was eighteen himself, something that many of the adults around them had been displeased about. Especially when just a few weeks before, he'd been taunting her for not being smart, calling the names that weren't very nice, or appropriate for a young girl like her to hear. Mothers had decided that they'd make a coalition to protect their children from him, telling their kids to stay away from the strange man wearing bright colors. Of course, this coalition had been started by Ikuko Tsukino as the chair - after all, she was extremely affected and knew the signs from her experience with Serena of what it would look like.

Lita and this was a big one, had been kicked out of school. Again. This time, the professors had refused to allow Amy to answer any of the questions and had taken away marks on the test when Amy had written her opinion of matters rather than their political significance in a political science course. The professor, who used to allow it, had mentioned several times that he only wanted facts for this test, that this wasn't an opinion piece and they were to write out the historical significance of the events. Lita had taken it as the professor bullying Amy and had started arguing with him about her mark, which had quickly led to her threatening him as she couldn't keep up with his words, using terms she didn't immediately understand. In the end, she'd been publicly arrested, injuring three officers and five innocents as she fought against the arrest.

The others weren't doing well either, the Hikawa Shrine that Rei's family had had for generations was going bankrupt from lack of people coming again. Before it hadn't been so bad, they'd been breaking even, then making more than ever when Rei's powers were there - she'd been selling charms and predictions on the side so that she could make her more lavish purchases, but even her side business wasn't doing well anymore. Rei's grandfather had been ashamed of what his granddaughter had become, and had stopped putting as much effort into the shrine as he'd used to. Before, Serena would encourage others to visit the shrine every so often, to donate a little change and donated quite a bit herself. That all stopped - everyone who ever came now only left hateful messages and graffiti, they were all done with Rei's high and mighty act.

Amy was suffering as well - her teachers, even the ones who'd liked her, had been getting more and more irritated as they tried to teach their lessons as she'd always try to correct them on things - very few times they were actually wrong, however, Amy was always self-righteous and tried to prove everything. In the maths lessons, she tried to make proofs that the professor was using an inefficient method, or they were completely wrong. She didn't even allow others in her lessons to give answers, raising her hand and screaming the answer before the teacher could even fully ask the question. Obviously, this didn't bode well for her - if all the professors hate you, how will you get a good job? The girl hadn't been thinking, obviously, as she tried to outshine everyone else in her lessons - and when your classes held up to 150 students including her, that was a lot of enemies to make.

Overall, the people of Juuban were making life hell for Serena's ex-friends. While they were doing this, Serena was deciding what she wanted to do - what she had to do, her next steps. The future had been thrown apart, her destiny was now on shambles - what was she going to do now, now she didn't know what she had to work towards, no goals to aim for. She had her outer scouts now, protecting her until she could find proper replacements for the inner scouts.

Serena was often found sleeping now, whenever she wasn't in bed or studying - in the case of an attack, she would leave, fight the monsters with the outers, then go back to her home and go back to sleep. Dry, rinse and repeat - every day.

The cycle eventually broke with her starting to work at the Crown arcade after Andrew and Reika broke up, in which she realized that she wasn't the only victim of these people - she wasn't the only person who was suffering. She started turning her life around - Amy wanted her to be smarter? Then she'd prove her intelligence and study harder. Trista was happy to help her and was smarter than Amy would ever be and much more patient in her teaching methods as well. Mina and Rei wanted her to be more polished and poise? Michelle had no issues with teaching her the manners of the upper class and had always been much better with diplomacy than Mina and Rei. Lita thought she was useless? First of all - she was the one who finished all the monsters they fought and had beaten Galaxia on her own while they were too busy swooning over the Starlights. She was still going to work out with Haruka though, after all, there is always someone stronger than you. Pride before the fall, and all that.

The next morning, Serena woke up feeling different. She didn't look in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, nor did she pay attention to her surroundings. She merely got up and started going through the motions of life, brushing her hair, packing her bag, changing into her uniform, etc. She also packed for work - Andrew was still out of it from being drugged by Mina, and was still drowning in self-loathing. She didn't notice her mother's gaping at her, nor did she notice that her father and brother were looking at her strangely. She merely grabbed her breakfast, ate it sedately, and then left for school, quietly saying goodbye before she was out the door.

She didn't pay attention as she walked sedately to school - it was still early, and she didn't think much about the attention she gathered. She was currently a student of Celeste University, the same one that Trista was studying at right now. Trista had vouched for her, as had many of the teachers in Juuban High School. They hadn't even accepted Amy, which Serena now took as a blessing as it meant that she didn't have to stay in the same vicinity as the stuck-up girl.

When she finally did see herself, she had to stop and stare for a bit. Her hair… her hair had turned the pearlescent white it'd been on the moon. Serena was shocked - that wasn't supposed to happen so fast, was it? She didn't have any frame of reference, but just yesterday it'd been her usual sunny blonde, hadn't it? Could this… could this be in direct correlation between what happened with the Inners? Serena took a deep breath and continued walking. She didn't need the Inner Scouts. Not as they are, maybe after they'd been replaced but not now. She had the Outers and was strong enough to walk away from those toxic relationships. Because that was what they were - toxic relationships, she just hadn't realized it until she'd left them. Is this how abused partners felt? This new sense of freedom, but also the feeling of confusion, since it was all so new and confusing, and different. Should she feel happy to be free? Sad at the loss of companionship? Was there something wrong with her that made them feel this way towards her?

Serena shoved those thoughts away in favor of going to her class - forensic psychology. Probably not the best, but maybe it would help her understand the Inners a bit a better if she took a scientific and completely unbiased view of what happened.