OSI - Epic Sailor Yarashiel

For

About the Redesign
I was really looking forward to this round because I wanted to re-imagine Sailor Yarashiel after I did the ancient version round! My inspirations included, of course, that image:



I used the feather motif (itself inspired from some Byzantine angel art) to make winged shoulders. I also wanted to stay true to Yarashiel's original design in spirit:

  

So I kept elements like the corset and the cut-out sides, the line down the side of the gloves, the angelic script details, little wings on the head and boots, the bodysuit skirt and stockings. The eye on the back of the gloves was always intended from the start as part of a Super or Eternal fuku.

I played around with other elements: the front bow became the transparent blue inside the top, changing the boots from round to pointy, and I opened up the helm to make something with more visible face. It wasn't an intentional inspiration (I've never played the games) but it came out looking a little like Assassin's Creed, no? The cloth around her head is actually inspired by an old senshi of mine, Sailor Sculptor:



Oh gods that is so old. XDDDD

The back is only a rough render because I did not have time to do it fully, but I wanted to show what it looked like anyway. ^^

How It Would Come to Pass

As Sailor Yarashiel pulled the knife from Verminus Knight's chest, all aspect of the god faded, leaving nothing but the human shell of the man who had been the last of the Romanus Senshi. He looked like the sort of person you expect to hand you a latte at Starbucks, not a battle-hardened warrior. Hard to believe he had brought down three angels and a bevy of other gods and goddesses on his own. His last words still rang in her ears: "Thank you." Who says thank you to the person who kills you?

"Yara."

Yarashiel tilted her head slightly in response. "Omni. I got Verminus. What do you think he is? Arab?"

Her cohort, Omniel Knight, exhaled through his nose. "Indian, actually." Omniel wiped a mixture of blood and sweat from his forehead and sheathed his Heavenly Spike.

"You recognize him?" she asked. Omniel offered no answer. Yarashiel rolled her eyes at him. Maybe all the senshi with the knight title got together to meet at some secret clubhouse or something. "Whatever. I guess that's all of them." She reached down and placed her hand on Verminus's chest, extracting his starseed. It floated into the air above Verminus's body, shining brilliantly and acting as a beacon to the other ten senshi who made up the Corpus Corps. They really should have named it the Kickass Alliance, thought Yarashiel. Such a wasted opportunity. On the bright side, with such horribly geeky allies, she was the coolest team member by a landslide.

The twelve of them circled Verminus's starseed and lifted their hands to their own chests. After so many repetitions, revealing their own starseeds was an act of ease, like slipping out of a silken bathrobe. Seeing her own starseed outside her chest no longer filled Yarashiel with the feeling of dread and unease as it had the first dozen times and she no longer worried one of the others would stab her in the back and take hers for their own. They had been through too much together.

One by one, they went around and linked their starseeds to the target. "By the power of Yarashiel!" she intoned when her turn came. Omniel was last.

"By the power of Omniel!"

Verminus's starseed pulsed with light and shattered, the shards splitting and joining the twelve starseeds of the Corps. Yarashiel felt a surge of power.

She was about to suggest they head to Starbucks -- Verminus's corpse had given her the idea -- when her starseed started to slip away from her body instead of towards it. Panic rose instantly in Yarashiel's throat. "Omni!" she choked out, and saw his starseed doing the same. In fact, all twelve of their starseeds were starting to pull together like magnets.

"I don't think you should fight it!" she heard Omniel yell. "Let go!"

"But--"

Yarashiel didn't have the chance to object further. The twelve starseeds flew together in the middle of the circle, crashing with a sound like chimes. Suddenly their crystalline structures began to expand, spikes and facets unfolding too fast for the eye to follow, forming into a giant crystal pillar. Yarashiel felt a tingling and watched as her hands suddenly shifted to energy form, as if she were transforming. The same thing was happening to the others.

"Take my hand!" Omniel (or was it Alden now? at what point does the transforming human become a senshi?) was reaching for her and she grabbed hold of him, extending her other hand towards Lady Hera.

The twelve rose up into the air, circling the pillar, a rainbow kaleidoscope of energy. Yarashiel watched the ground disappear below her. Up and up they went, Central Park disappearing below them. The city skyscrapers disappeared into the mist of clouds. The sky darkened above them, as if twilight were approaching.

At last they came to their journey's end: the top of the pillar. The sphere of the earth curved away beneath them and above them hung a canopy of stars. The light of the sun was terribly bright here, but somehow it did not hurt Yarashiel's eyes. As their feet touched down on the surface of the crystal pillar, the light of transformation receded.

They were changed. Yarashiel stared across at what she knew had to be Ma'ew Tefnut, but everything about Tefnut's costume had changed. The Egyptian Senshi of Moisture looked resplendent in a large golden headdress that sparkled with drops of dew. Sailor Lacerta's costume bristled with thousands of long, thin spikes from her shoulders, chest, and head.

Yarashiel looked down at her own hands. Her gloves were fingerless, displaying blue nails, with golden eyes on the back of each hand, and her boots were suddenly pounds lighter than they had been. The air tickled her face. Her face! Her helmet was gone! She felt the piece of cloth and metal band around her head.

"What the hell?" Yarashiel asked, looking accusingly at Omniel.

He smiled. "I think we've ascended."


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In Sailor Myth, part of the goal is to form a pantheon and become the new gods of the earth. This would be Yarashiel's senshi form as an Angelic Deity: Epic Sailor Yarashiel. Epic is a power level past Eternal which can only be unlocked by forming the pantheon.

As much as I love her helmet and metal boots, Yarashiel's attaining this form would indicate that she (and her allies) had won the war between senshi, so this is a peacetime outfit that doesn't have the armor elements of her base fuku.