Forgotten Forever by Kihin Ranno

Interlude - No Angel Came

“This isn’t a good idea.”

Neo Queen Serenity gave Mars the steady smile that had become her trademark. The wild grins of her youth were scarcely seen now, and they had each become accustomed to this quiet expression. She swept her arm around at the various servants scattering around the area and the shuttle that would take them to their destination. “I think it’s a little late for all that, Rei.”

Mars flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I’ve been against this since you first had this idea.”

“We all have,” Jupiter added, ignoring the raised eyebrows Mercury and Venus gave her.

“And isn’t it amazing how none of your protests have impacted me in the slightest?” Neo Queen Serenity said, laughing. A few of the servants slowed to listen to the sound – like crystal glasses clinking together at a party with diamond wine sloshing within.

King Endymion sighed slightly, winding his arm around his wife’s delicate shoulders. “You must admit, Usako, they have a point. Nemesis is and always will be dangerous territory.”

Jupiter nodded sharply, folding her arms across her chest. “And that’s independent of the part where we made it a place to house violent rebels.”

“They chose to go there.”

“Not one of their best decisions though,” Venus added.

Serenity nodded in agreement. “Nevertheless, while the planet holds the descendants of the exiles, it isn’t a prison of our making.”

Mercury shifted uncomfortably. “But since the planet reappeared, we have taken some measures to keep them from leaving.” She paused. “Though of course we know those won’t do much good.”

Neo Queen Serenity clasped her hands in front of her, her clear blue eyes losing their amusement, slipping into sobriety. “Listen to me, all of you. I know there have been some… reservations about this trip.”

Mars and Jupiter both made rude noises.

“But I maintain that we have no choice,” Neo Queen Serenity continued, undeterred. “I can’t say that I’m looking forward to the journey either, but I recognize the fact that it is necessary.”

For a moment, Mars’s harsh violet gaze softened. “You still think you can stop the war, don’t you?”

Neo Queen Serenity reached forward and grasped Mars’s hand tightly. “Until the first assault is launched, we can always stop the war.”

Now Mercury looked doubtful. “With all due respect, I know that the future isn’t set in stone, but frankly, I don’t see how this can be avoided short of eliminating Wiseman.”

“Which we already know isn’t possible without the strength of two crystals,” Venus murmured, not without some bitterness. She had tried for years to come up with a form of attack that could have the same impact without having to bring together two Ginzuishou. She had suggested that they might have had a chance – a very slim chance – had Saturn been with them, but the soldier of revolution had given her life to bring about the Great Ice a millennium before. They had wondered if she might be reborn, but they didn’t think it was likely. They had all remembered too late that Chibi-Usa had been most excited about seeing Hotaru when she journeyed back through time. They now realized it was because it was the only place she could see Hotaru.

Neo Queen Serenity nodded. “I know that’s what you believe. But I think if we can reach the right people, if we can somehow protect them from his poison, we have a chance. Now that Nemesis has drawn itself out of the shadows, we can go there and try to help those people. Those who wanted to return have, but for those who would rather brave that harsh terrain rather than be purified and live among us, we can help them. By doing that, yes, I hope we can stop the war.” She paused, hanging her head slightly. “And even if we can’t… I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t try.”

This all made them lapse into thoughtful silence. They ruminated over this for a moment, until Venus flashed a roguish grin. “If all you want is to know how you can make their lives better, you could just send me!”

Neo Queen Serenity patted the blonde’s shoulder. “Yes, dear, but you do have a tendency to embellish.”

Venus stuck her lower lip out. “You are an unkind and unfeeling tyrant.”

“So I’m told.”

“Didn’t we send spies three months ago when it first appeared to tell us that sort of thing?” Endymion asked.

“We have spies to alert us to security risks,” Mars corrected.

“I could have done that too,” Venus insisted.

Mars couldn’t stop the unbecoming laugh that escaped her lips. Now pinned under her leader’s unhappy gaze, she shrugged. “Minako, let’s be honest. Your idea of espionage is dressing in tight clothing, drinking martinis, and flirting shamelessly with every man who crosses your path.”

Indulging in some of her more childish behavior, Venus stuck her tongue out and then flounced over to the flight crew. A moment later, the other Senshi drifted off to attend to various duties before take off, leaving the King and Queen to themselves.

“It’s sweet of them to worry,” Neo Queen Serenity said in a voice that didn’t quite match her words.

Endymion chuckled. “But that doesn’t mean you have to like it.”

“No,” she agreed, laughing a little herself. She rested her head on his chest for a moment, seeming to absorb his strength. To the others, she always tried to remain in the guise of a capable monarch. Only in quiet moments such as this did she show him her vulnerability. “They act as though I’m going to be shot on sight.”

“To be fair, Usako, a great many people there aren’t too thrilled with you.”

“I know that,” she muttered. “But the real rebels have all died out. They’re not afraid of them because of their ideals; they’re afraid of them because of a priest who hasn’t even appeared last we heard. And I want to go there to stop his influence in the first place.”

Endymion leaned forward and kissed his wife on the forehead. “But it’s sweet of them to worry.”

“I suppose.”

He paused, frowning. “Is it sweet of me to worry too?”

She smiled up at him. “Darling, you invented the concept.”

“Good,” he said, not returning her grin. “Because I am worried.”

“Even though I’ll be well protected by you and all four of the Senshi,” she reminded him.

Endymion felt the muscles in his back seize up and clench painfully. “They couldn’t protect you from… him before.”

Her good nature fell away like water rolling off the skin. “Oh. So that’s what this is about.”

Endymion raked his free hand through his hair. “You can hardly blame me for being paranoid. I am the one that rescued… or maybe will rescue you from him.”

“If that even happens.”

He chose to ignore this point of hers. “I know what he can do to you, Usako. And I know what he wants. That scared me hundreds of years ago, and now that I’ve had time to think of it and to live a little more… it terrifies me now.”

She turned slightly and took his face into her hands. She was much taller than she had once been before the coronation. She no longer had to stand on tiptoe to hold him like this. He almost missed that about her, even if it was easier on his back.

“Mamo-chan,” she whispered, the seldom used nickname sending shivers up his spine. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“I know that,” he grumbled, although he still felt fully within his rights to blame the man all he wanted.

“He was confused, he needed love, and he turned to me because I’m a symbol,” she continued. “I don’t blame him; I never did. I wish you wouldn’t either.”

He lifted his hands to cover her own, skimming his fingers against her flesh, feeling her bones and her veins beneath the soft skin. “That’s a hard thing to ask.”

“I ask only because I know you can.”

Endymion winced slightly at her words. She always knew just what to say to him to get her way.

“We’re ready to go!” Jupiter called out. “Unless you want to change your mind?”

“No!” Serenity sang back. “Prepare to board.”

She turned back to her husband, still giving him that soft, steady smile. Then she turned her head and placed her lips against his own, kissing him so lightly it felt like feathers brushing against him. When she pulled away, he rested his forehead against her own.

“I just want you safe,” he whispered.

“I know, love,” she whispered back. “I know.”

They stood like that for a moment longer and then turned in the same movement to advance to the shuttle. They threaded their fingers so that their hands clasped as they strode forward, nodding politely as their subjects bowed in respect and bade them their fond farewells. They ascended the ramp behind the Senshi, their shoes clanging against the metal, a sound they seldom heard in their crystal ceiling. Then they turned and waved goodbye to the assembled press before drawing away into the craft.

Just before the shuttle doors closed, Serenity leaned over and said, “Besides, I’m sure Demando’s little more than twelve. How much trouble could he be?”

-----

Thus far, Endymion wasn’t willing to call the trip to Nemesis a stirring success.

Their reception had been somewhere between cold and lukewarm. The members of government, such as it was, had greeted them with plenty of enthusiasm, but Mars had bitterly noted this had a lot to do with their hopes of being reassigned. They had endured a day of meetings before Serenity had gotten stir crazy and began to speak directly to the people, driving each of her guardians up a separate wall. She had not been met with outright hostility as far as he knew, but he knew the looks in their eyes had hurt her.

To make matters worse, they weren’t hearing anything encouraging. Resources were much thinner than reports had indicated, and although Endymion didn’t have the facts and figures in front of him, he had no idea how they were going to get the money to improve the situation. Most of the funds from taxes went towards building Crystal Tokyo, and they could hardly justify taking money from exiles. Complaints of the weather were frequent, and Endymion knew those perhaps wore on her more than the others. The acid rain on Nemesis was deadly. When they had first learned of it, Serenity had happily recalled the controlled weather of the Silver Millennium and assumed she could do something similar. Unfortunately, through a combination of awakening memory and trial and error, they had realized that the only way to affect the weather was to have Serenity constantly present and working the magic to counteract the elements. Even she had been forced to admit that this wouldn’t be possible.

Now Endymion looked on his wife with a kind of sadness. She was tired. Exhausted from problems she didn’t know how to fix and from the extra energy she spent fending off the rain while she could. She needed to sleep, but before she’d consent to rest, she had insisted on meeting with the agents they had placed on the planet at the very beginning – the friends none of them had seen in years.

“Does my hair look all right?” Venus asked, running her fingers through the blonde locks.

With Venus’s back to them, no one felt the need to suppress the urge to roll their eyes.

“It’s fine, Minako,” Mercury murmured with diplomacy.

“Just like the other ten times you asked today,” Mars grumbled.

Jupiter reached over to the blonde from her seat at the table and pinched her elbow. “Trying to impress someone?” she asked, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

Venus scoffed and shook the brunette off. “Please. I am so over that.” She paused, fluffing her bangs. “But we’re all well aware they have a certain appreciation—"

Just then, a rapid but oddly syncopated knock echoed through the room. Both Venus and Serenity let out squeals that seemed at odds with their adult bodies, and his wife couldn’t stop herself from pushing past all of them to fling the door open.

In the doorway stood two women who couldn’t be more nondescript, each with varying shades of brown hair and eyes and wearing clothes drab enough to make them blend into the background without being completely unfashionable. But the roguish smile on the one and the elegant posture on the other would have branded them to anyone who had known them when their eyes had been blue and one had hair like the sea.

“Neo Queen Serenity,” the taller one said with a sweeping bow. “How may I be of service?”

Serenity let out another girlish yelp and threw herself at the pair. “Haruka! Michiru! I’ve missed you so much!”

With the queen of Earth hanging off her neck, Haruka gently maneuvered the trio into the room while Michiru surreptitiously pulled the door shut behind them. “We’ve missed you too, little queen.”

“You better have missed me too,” Venus called out scandalously enough to have Mars stomp on her foot.

Haruka gave her a wicked wink.

Michiru let out a wistful sigh. “How easy we fall into old patterns.” She began to circle the room, offering polite but genuine hugs to all, Haruka just one stop behind her. “Our apologies for not being able to set up a meeting before now. If we’d dropped out of sight on the first day of your visit, it might have looked suspicious.”

“Of course,” Endymion said as Haruka caught his hand in a firm shake. “Your safety is our top priority.”

Michiru gave him a sour look almost undetectable through her prim nature, but she refrained from comment.

“Before we get down to business,” Haruka said, glossing over the tiny bubble of tension between them, “what’s new in your neck of the galaxy?”

Each of them had something new to share with the pair. Endymion happily discussed Chibi-Usa for the better part of an hour, supplementing each story with a photo stored on a portable holographic projector. Mars, who met with Pluto on occasion, related how she was doing, although this news was understandably short. Jupiter gave them the news of her new restaurant chain, while Mercury related some of her latest findings in the experiments the research department was doing, most of it flying above all their heads. And Venus was more than happy to regale them with a number of stories regarding her latest failed relationships, though Endymion tuned out when it came to the sexual escapades out of habit.

Finally, they lapsed into a period of silence, and Haruka took that as her cue to begin the debriefing. She leaned back in her chair, cracking her knuckles loudly. “Well, as you can see, no black moons yet.”

“Thank Serenity,” his wife intoned, invoking the name of her mother, a curious habit she had developed after the Awakening. “And the Wiseman?”

“Not even a shadow in the mirror,” Michiru sighed, swirling the wine in her glass. “Which I find odd. We know Demando is alive, so it stands to reason that he ought to be appearing shortly.”

Endymion felt his shoulders ache from the tension that suddenly rose in his upper back.

Oblivious, Jupiter shrugged. “It’s not like we ever had an exact timeline. Maybe the shriveled bastard doesn’t show up until the kid’s balls drop.”

Venus’s loud guffaw was interrupted by a hiccup.

Mercury subtly moved the drink away from her. “I hate to say it, but there’s still time. Demando was easily in his twenties when he attacked. How old is he now?”

“Fourteen.”

Venus leaned over to Jupiter and failed to whisper, “I expect they’ve dropped then.”

Jupiter patted her on the head. “Down, girl.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Endymion snapped with venom that surprised but did not unnerve him.

Uncomfortable silence settled around the room like a suffocating blanket. They all sobered with his temper, their looks respectful but not entirely cowed. But then, one never really cowed these women. Not anymore.

“Of course,” Venus said in the voice she usually used with the diplomats who didn’t want to stick their hand up her skirt, bowing her head in tandem with Jupiter.

Endymion dragged a hand down his face, pulling away the mask he often forget was there. “I’m sorry. This whole… business has me on edge.”

“I wonder why,” Haruka muttered dryly.

“I don’t like waiting,” Endymion returned sharply. “If there is something we can do about this, I want to do it. I don’t like sitting around watching for a sign of the Phantom. We know who will be responsible for this. We ought to be able to do something about that.”

Michiru’s eyes darkened behind her contacts. “I have advised that course of action on several occasions.”

Serenity’s demeanor changed, and she was no longer a friend, but a queen, and any person less than them would have trembled at her quiet rage. “I have told you, Michiru. That is not an option.” She turned her gaze to him. It ripped him apart from the inside. “I can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Would you rather we try to bring him home?” Jupiter asked sadly. “I can’t go through that again. None of us can.”

They all hung their heads for a moment. Some years before, they had tried to bring the children home, not wanting to punish the youth for the sins of the previous generation. Unfortunately, several parents had gotten together and strapped homemade bombs to their own children. Mercury had barely managed to pick up on it in time. A few moments earlier, and maybe they could have saved them, maybe they could have done more than throw up shields around the ones who carried the explosives to protect the others. None of them had ever forgiven themselves for those few moments that meant such a sacrifice.

They had not tried to remove anyone from Nemesis since.

“Our hands are tied,” Serenity murmured, her voice heavy with grief. “All we can do is try to counteract his influence as subtly as possible. We aren’t strong enough to defeat him, but maybe Demando and the others can be made strong enough to resist him.” She turned to Michiru and asked. “How are his violin lessons going?”

Michiru smiled ruefully. “Quite well. He has a gift.”

“Shit at running,” Haruka grumbled. “He always slows down for his brother.”

Serenity beamed at them now, her anger vanishing from her features like smoke in the wind. “There’s our hope.”

-----

The rest of the trip seemed to go by without incident. Serenity continued to gather information on what needed to be done to improve conditions, and she kept being disappointed by the limitations of her power. She took to clinging to Endymion in the dark comfort of the bedroom. She felt so small in his arms that he would sometimes wake up having forgotten how much she had changed over the years, and in the sleepy haze of morning, he almost didn’t recognize her.

She closed the visit with an address to the Nemesian people crafted by some of the best speech writers Venus had at her disposal. He heard her muttering in approval to herself at the warmth in the speech, the uplifting tone that was completely devoid of promises. He wondered when they’d all turned into politicians.

At the end of it, the listeners applauded, and Endymion had to turn away from the hope shining in their eyes. They might have hated Serenity, but they could not doubt her sincerity. She may have exiled them, but she had never lied to them. They believed her.

When Serenity stepped away from the podium, she gripped his arm like a lifeline. He felt her fingers tremble despite her vice-like grip. “We have to help them,” she whispered fiercely. “We have to. There has to be something we can do.”

He nodded, plastering a cool smile on his face. “I’ll set up the meetings to start reappropriating funds tomorrow.”

Her shoulders stooped for a moment, and he thought she might collapse against him in relief. But it passed quickly, and by the time they were in full view of the public again, she stood erect and proud, moving as though her feet did not quite touch the ground the same way theirs did.

Endymion looked out at the crowd held back by the members of the Crystal Guard that had accompanied them on this journey. They formed an imposing human wall around the perimeter, giving the royal couple and the Sailor Senshi plenty of room as they moved back to the shuttle that would bring them home. He scanned the crowd for a flash of green hair, for a pair of cruel eyes, for black earrings hanging from a pale ear. And he looked for a white prince who did not yet hate him, but who Endymion already loathed.

He didn’t know quite what to do when he saw Demando slipping past a guard distracted by an old woman slinging acerbic insults like mud. The boy was small for his age so the guard didn’t even feel the wind shift as Demando darted past. Endymion watched those thin boy limbs propelling him ever forward, watched his jaw clench, watched those bright violet eyes light up in a kind of gut-wrenching determination that made him feel ancient and terrified.

Without pausing to think, he pushed Serenity behind him and bellowed, “Jupiter!”

The green-clad soldier reacted to his call in an instant. Her head whipped around, her neck cracking. She saw the threat in an instant and moved to contain. She moved like a lioness, graceful and horrifying, an emerald blur on the shadowed lands. The other Senshi reacted to her movements, aiding without knowing why. Mars appeared at his side in an instant, ofunda drawn and heat radiating off her skin. Venus and Mercury helped to secure the perimeter, attempting to control the citizens shrieking at this display. Venus called in her chain and ice crystallized beneath Mercury’s feet. Endymion tried to watch them all as Jupiter closed in, finally focusing on her as she tackled Demando to the ground, winding one arm around his neck in a chokehold.

Serenity let out a furious shriek at his back and shook off their restraining hands. She pushed between Endymion and Mars, the white hot flare from her tiara preventing them from holding her back. She strode forward, each step seeming to make the ground roll beneath them like an earthquake’s beginning. With each movement, the crowd grew ever quieter until there was nothing but silence. Everyone’s attention turned to the trio at the center of it all: the queen, the solider, and the boy who would become a madman.

“Let him up,” Serenity ordered, her voice allowing no room for argument and absent of any echoes of her girlish beginnings. Jupiter hesitated only for the length of time it took her to blink before unwinding her arm and backing away from the prone teenager.

Serenity stood and waited for the boy to rise, but he stayed on the ground, drawing his knees to his chest. She sank to her knees, her gossamer wings fluttering with her graceful movements. She smoothed her hands over his shoulders until they cupped the young face. Her touch made him stronger, gave him back the bravery Jupiter had taken from him. Then he looked at her, those violet eyes crashing into those like the summer sky. Endymion watched every muscle in his face and saw the exact moment when the boy fell in love with his queen.

Mars growled to his right. Endymion didn’t think he could put it more succinctly.

“I apologize,” Serenity said, her voice soft like a caress but still echoing so that all could hear. “My friends can be somewhat… overzealous when it comes to protecting me.” She spared Jupiter a look Endymion knew was meant for them all. “I’m sure you have friends like that.”

Swallowing, Demando nodded slowly, awed by this queen he had been brought up to hate, awed by this angel who knelt beside him and spoke without pretense. Through his hatred, Endymion sympathized. He knew that feeling well.

Serenity smiled at him, and Demando looked grateful that he was already on the ground so that he wouldn’t topple from that kind radiance. “Perhaps you’re like that yourself.” She paused. “With a little brother perhaps.”

Demando’s jaw fell open. “I… yes. I have a brother. Saffir.”

“Great,” Mars muttered darkly. “Now he’s going to think she’s psychic.”

Endymion shook his head. “No. He thinks she’s a goddess.”

Mars paused. “If he really believes that, then he’s arrogant to love her.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Now then,” Serenity continued, removing her hands from his skin. He looked pained by the absence. “You obviously wanted to see me very badly to put yourself at risk like that. Would you like something from me?”

Endymion felt his chest tighten in agonizing anger at these words. Jealousy threatened to consume him even as logic told him that an adolescent was no threat to their union. But he couldn’t dismiss that supplication, nor could he forget the way Demando’s face lit up at her offer. Not for the first time, he wished he could give Haruka and Michiru permission to do what they had been suggesting since they had first agreed to this assignment.

After a moment, Demando ducked his head, remembering himself at last. “No, Your Grace. I don’t want anything. I just… I hoped to give you this.” He thrust his hand out, and Endymion saw the flash of color he had not noticed before. Thinking it was a jewel, he almost shouted in panic, but then he saw the awkward green curves and the broken stems.

Flowers. He’d wanted to give the queen flowers.

Serenity’s smile shifted as she gently took the plant from his small hands. “Thank you. They’re lovely.”

He licked his lips, those eyes focused on the ground now instead of her. “With the rain and the sun, flowers rarely grow here. When I found those this morning, I wanted to give them to you. For remembrance.”

Endymion watched his wife’s profile, watched her face begin to collapse in heartbreak. He turned away, unwilling to see this of all things. “Thank you. I will not forget this gift or the giver…”

“Demando.”

Finally, this confrontation between future enemies ended. The Crystal Guard escorted the boy back to the crowd while Serenity rose to her feet, refusing Jupiter’s aid. Then they all moved back to the shuttles, disappearing into the structures with far more haste than they had planned. No one wanted to stick around for fear that Serenity’s soothing would wear off, that outrage would spread through the crowd and cause an incident that would make the children’s bombs seem like a minor glitch.

Serenity kept her composure for those few minutes, her face stern but stoic at the same time. It was only when the door closed with a resounding clang that she broke, that frustration leeched over her features like a river overflowing. She curled her hands into fists around the blue flowers Demando had given her and hissed, “I can’t believe that just happened.”

Endymion stepped forward, taking responsibility for giving the order. “Usako—"

“No,” Serenity interrupted harshly. “I know you love me; I know you did it because you were worried. I appreciate that more than I can say, but I cannot believe that you reacted that way to a child.”

Mars, who never stepped down from a fight with her queen even while the others would tread lightly, laid her hands on her hips. “We didn’t react that way to a child. We reacted to Demando.”

“Who is a child!” Serenity snapped.

“He had something in his hand,” Jupiter murmured, a small growl in her tone. “I saw that, but I didn’t see what it was. I had to do something.”

“You could have called out a warning.”

Mercury stepped forward, ever the peacemaker. “It all happened very fast, and we’ve certainly been on edge this trip. When they saw it was Demando—"

“They overreacted,” Serenity surmised. “But it’s no excuse. You’re all supposed to know better than this. He could have been seriously hurt, to say nothing of the public reaction to this.” She turned then to Venus, silently voicing the question with a raised eyebrow.

For once, Venus didn’t look thrilled to be at the center of attention. “Well, I can’t be sure, but….” She sighed, her shoulders sagging. “It won’t be good for anyone but you. They’ll see you as a saint while we’re the real tyrants pulling the strings.”

Serenity quivered with barely suppressed fury. “Which is precisely the rhetoric Demando will use when and if he attacks.”

“Yes.”

Serenity took several deep breaths before saying, “I will forgive you all for this. You’re my family, and I love you, but I can’t quite look at you without wanting to scream. I’m going to go into my chamber to be alone. Don’t follow me.” She pressed the flowers into Jupiter’s hands. “For remembrance,” she said before sweeping out of the room, the door sliding shut behind her.

The five left in the room instantly leaned against something in the room for support.

“I hate it when she gets mad,” Venus said. “Thank God it doesn’t happen often, but I really, really don’t like it when she gets mad.”

“At least you didn’t really do anything,” Jupiter grumbled, glaring at the small bouquet. “You’re not the one who put a fourteen-year-old in a choke hold.”

Venus gave her a steadying smile. “No. I would have hog-tied him with the chain and not minded the sharp bits.”

“I would have just set him on fire,” Mars added. “Let’s face it: we all would have done the same thing.”

Mercury smirked. “Don’t lump me in with you people. I would have been perfectly reasonable about it.” She paused. “And frozen his feet.”

They each allowed themselves a chuckle, grateful for the soundproofing.

“I’m surprised she didn’t accuse us of immediately checking the flower for poisons,” Endymion said, casting a sly glance towards Mercury.

With a flick of her wrist, Mercury pulled out her mini-computer seemingly from midair and spun it around so that he could see the read out. Presumably, she’d performed it the moment she realized Demando was going to hand it to their queen. “It’s clear.”

Jupiter looked down at the flowers in her hand. “No reason to let these lovelies die out then,” she said, brushing her free hand against the petals. In an instant, the flowers straightened and blossomed beautifully. Endymion swore that they leaned towards her hand when she moved it away, as if they were aching for her touch.

“They really are beautiful,” Venus commented, leaning over to get a closer look. “Hard to believe where they come from.”

They each nodded gravely, glancing out the window to take one last look at the harsh Nemesian landscape before the shuttles lifted off and left the tenth planet behind for good.

Now if only Demando could leave Serenity behind.

-----

It seemed an eternity before they reached the Earth once again. The moment they stepped off the shuttle, the four Senshi had stumbled off to get what sleep they could, brightening only at the warm good nights Serenity gave them before they left. Then the queen entwined her arm with Endymion’s, and the pair strode off to their own quarters. His heart felt lighter knowing that her anger had lifted.

They both instinctively paused at their daughter’s crib. She was sleeping soundly – she was a remarkably good sleeper, which Serenity often boasted was one of her contributions to her daughter. She had her tiny body curled around the stuffed rabbit Endymion had gotten for her when she had been just hours hold. Her sugar pink hair stood out against her white sheets like smeared icing off a fallen cupcake. She’d been born with a full head of hair that had nearly given the midwife assisting Mercury a heart attack.

Serenity reached forward and brushed her fingers through that hair. Chibi-Usa didn’t even stir. Endymion wondered if now she dreamed that butterflies were dancing in her hair.

“I’ve missed her,” she confided sadly. “It kills me to think that she might feel neglected in a few years time.”

Endymion wrapped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. “We can only do what we can, for her and for our people. She’ll understand.”

“But when?” Serenity asked.

He knew better than to answer her.

“I’ve been thinking about that ever since she was born,” Serenity confessed. “I feel like I’ve been trying to love her more because of it. The others have to keep reminding me that she won’t remember this anyway.” She closed her eyes, resting her forehead on the crib. “And then I think of what she might go through, of what will happen if we can’t stop the Black Moon. Does every mother look at her child and feel her heart break every second of every day?”

Endymion instinctively pulled his wife into a tight embrace, reveling in the feeling of her skin against his neck. Being on Nemesis had reminded him how easy it would be to lose her. He didn’t think he had ever loved Earth more than this moment, knowing it would shield her better than the prisoner’s planet.

“She’ll be fine,” he whispered. “We’ll raise her to be strong.” He paused. “And a little spoiled.”

She couldn’t help but chuckle. “I blame that entirely on you. She’s already got you wrapped around that little finger.”

“What can I say? It’s an adorable finger.”

She laughed again, quiet silver bells that soothed the ache in his chest. He held her closer, brushing his lips against her forehead.

“It was hard for you, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Seeing him as a child.”

He nodded. “I know him only as a man, and I think of him that way. I couldn’t… I couldn’t change my feelings just because he was a boy.”

He could tell she wanted to debate this, but she let it pass in her fatigue. “I can’t believe that he’ll one day become a monster. I looked into his eyes up close when I was with him. I saw some familiar things – his devotion and his fire – but none of the madness. None of the obsession that will destroy him.”

“You can thank the Death Phantom for that,” Endymion muttered.

“I wanted to bring him with us,” she said. “I wanted to gather him in my arms and carry him away from that horrible place so badly. It killed me to let him go.”

“I know.”

“Is there anything we can do? Anything we can really do to stop the Black Moon?”

Endymion sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I wish I could say that improving Nemesis and having Haruka and Michiru there will help, but… I don’t know. I think all we can do is keep trying.”

Serenity nodded and pulled away from him. Then she pulled those same blue flowers from nothing, holding them to her chest. “Did he want me to remember him or Nemesis?”

“I think it began with the planet,” Endymion said, “and it ended with him.”

“Yes. I think you’re right.”

Then Serenity laid those flowers by the crib, knowing that Jupiter’s magic would keep them blooming for days without water. And Endymion knew that eventually, Serenity would dry them and keep them by her always, to remember the planet, the boy, and the future she hoped to prevent.

They turned and retreated to their bedchamber, where they would make love and hold on to one another throughout the night. They would dream of a little girl with hair like sugar and a little boy pale as the moon. And only their limbs entwined with one another would keep those dreams from becoming nightmares about a woman dressed in black, a grown man with violence in his violet eyes, and the creature who would own them both.

-----Three Years Later-----

Serenity and Endymion quickly hurried through the palace, doing their best to look calm. All things considered, Endymion thought she was doing admirably. He felt certain that every servant and every guard could read the panic on his face as they wound their way through countless halls and corridors so no one could track their movements with any accuracy.

Finally, they slipped into the secret areas of their palace. They immediately increased their pace and wiped their placid looks from their faces. They took the last few turns at a dead run.

In all the years they had been undercover on Nemesis, Haruka and Michiru had never taken advantage of the emergency getaway. They had been involved in riots and Haruka’s arm had been irrevocably scarred from a sudden downpour of acid rain the year before, but they had never ventured home. But a few minutes earlier, Mercury had spread the word that the shuttle was entering Earth’s airspace and would be arriving shortly.

It seemed to take an eternity before they arrived at the secret landing site. The Sailor Senshi were already assembled, circling around Haruka anxiously, Mercury hurriedly looking over her injured arm. Endymion felt his stomach turn at the mottled flesh, but he forced himself not to show it. After all, she was lucky to have survived.

“What happened?” Serenity called out, rushing forward and throwing her arms around the other woman’s neck. “Is Michiru all right?”

“Michiru’s fine, considering,” Haruka said after a moment’s hesitation.

“Considering what?” Mars snarled. Clandestine meetings like these always put her on edge.

Haruka gave her a withering look, but quickly pressed forward. “It’s the Death Phantom. He’s arrived.”

Because Jupiter was closest, she was the one who caught Serenity as she toppled backwards.

“It’s starting,” Mercury whispered dejectedly, squeezing Haruka’s arm. “Have mercy on us all, it’s starting.”

While the rest of them floundered and dealt with the shock, Venus remained remarkably grounded. There was steel in her gaze when she said, “Demando?”

Haruka sighed, pushing her flawless hand through her light brown hair that now fell to the middle of her back. “Not good… Michiru and I have done what we can, but there’s only so much we can do now. We’d hoped to have his loyalty solidified before Wiseman’s arrival, but now that he’s here, he’s exploiting the doubts and magnifying them.” She turned her gaze to Endymion. “Michiru found a few pictures of Serenity in his violin case. When he caught her looking at them, he tried to hit her.”

“Bet that didn’t turn out too well for him,” Jupiter remarked dryly.

“Not really, no.”

“Is Demando a lost cause then?” Endymion asked, struggling to keep the hope out of his voice.

Haruka shook her head. “Maybe. We’ll keep trying, but it looks like we’ve had far more luck with Saffir than his brother. He’s suspicious of the Wiseman.”

Serenity moaned miserably. “We tried to change things, but it’s like all we’ve done is set things up to occur just as we knew they would.”

Mars moved closer and laid a hand on her elbow. “To be fair, Pluto did warn us that might be the case.”

Serenity nodded dejectedly. “You’re right. I just didn’t want to listen.”

Folding her arms across her chest, Venus spoke up again. “If there’s little hope in deterring Demando at this point, I doubt it’s going to change. You’ve been reporting more and more unrest over the past few months. Things are coming to a head over there. I’m pulling you out.”

Haruka’s amiable if worried gaze instantly hardened to stone. “You can’t do that.”

Venus raised an eyebrow in silent challenge.

“Maybe we can’t change Demando’s ideology, but we have a chance at the people around him, like Saffir,” Haruka elaborated. “If his other advisors don’t trust the Wiseman, then maybe they can convince Demando to back down.” She paused. “Or maybe they can handle the problem more directly.”

Serenity’s jawline sharpened. “If it comes to that, you keep him safe and you get him out of there.”

Haruka frowned but refrained from comment.

“Why are you talking about it like she’s staying?” Venus asked. “She’s not staying.”

Serenity sighed, waving her hands. “I’m inclined to side with you, Minako, but I also know there’s no ordering Haruka around when she sinks her teeth in to something.”

Venus turned a light shade of pink as Haruka gave her smug look. “I can certainly keep her from going back by tying her down.”

Haruka gnashed her teeth and reached into her pocket. “I wasn’t going to tell you this since I know exactly how over you’ll react, but if you're actually going to try and kidnap me, I’d just as soon deal with the fallout.” She pulled out a portable holographic projector and keyed in a few commands. Then she held out her palm as the image flickered into being.

Endymion didn’t recognize the woman in the picture at first. Her eyes were grey now and her hair black as ebony, cropped into a stylish bob and razor straight. It took him a minute to notice the slight upward tilt of her face, the delicate bone structure, the elegant smirk on her painted lips.

Venus realized it at the same moment he did, and more importantly, they all noticed the black tattoo etched on to her skin.

“IDIOT!” she shrieked, her voice echoing off the hangar walls like an oncoming storm. “Both of you! I cannot believe you did that without consulting me.”

Haruka shrugged, her calm only feeding the blonde’s temper. “We knew you’d say no.”

“Of course she’d say no,” Mars ground out, offering a united front with her leader. “It’s madness. It’s suicide.”

“I think we know how to not get ourselves killed. We’ve been doing it for awhile now.”

Mercury looked faintly green. “Why did she change her identity? Why not stay the same?”

Haruka sighed. “Demando knows we’re not exactly in line with his zealotry. If we suddenly did an about face and pledged ourselves to the rebels, he’d know something was up. So we had to get new identities.” She turned to Mercury. “I’m going to need you to make sure they’re solid by the way.”

“I really don’t think that’s necessary,” Venus snapped, “because I’m going to kill you.”

“Minako, I care about these people!” Haruka shouted, her temper snapping like a rubber band stretched too far. “I’ve lived among them for years. I have friends there. There are people there I want to protect from Demando and the Death Phantom and yes, even from us, and if I have to join them in order to bring them down, then damn it, I’ll do it.”

Venus held her body taut, unable to keep her limbs from shaking. Her blue eyes crackled, but Endymion knew there was nothing she could say to that. There was nothing any of them could say to that.

“How can we help you?” he asked, defeated.

“Stay out of our way,” Haruka said darkly. “It’s for the best.”

Serenity nodded slowly. “I expect this means we won’t receive updates as often.”

“I doubt it.”

She inclined her head. “Very well. Ami, set Haruka up with the identification she needs. The rest of you return to your duties. It will look odd if we’re all absent too long.” Then the queen turned and swept out of the room. He saw the water sparkling in her eyes and felt his heart sink as she left him, making her grief his own.

He stood there for a moment, listening to the others move away from the area, their voices hushed and sorrowful. Finally, when he thought he was alone, he let out a long sigh, feeling the weight of their situation push against his spine, threatening to crush him.

“Shouldn’t you go after her?”

He spun and saw Venus staring at him, her eyes cold like a knife. He swallowed. “No. She’ll want to be alone for awhile.” He paused. “Or maybe I need to be alone for awhile.”

She looked tempted to comment. He thought he saw her literally bite her tongue.

“You knew that putting Haruka in this kind of situation was a bad idea,” he reminded her.

The look she gave him felt like a whip slashing against him. “If you’ll recall, I was against sending Haruka and Michiru for that very reason.”

“There was no one else.”

Her eyes traveled up and down his frame. She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I can think of a few alternatives.”

She moved away from him, the sound of her retreat echoing in the hangar. He waited until he was sure she was gone, and then he shivered. The room felt impossibly cold.

Endymion turned and left to seek out his wife and offer what comfort he was able now that he felt he could.

-----

Weeks passed without word from either Haruka or Michiru. They could only assume that Haruka had joined the Black Moon rebels and that they were safe in spite of sleeping with vipers. No one was sleeping well, and Endymion had begun to notice the Senshi halting their conversations when he or Serenity entered the room. He tried not to resent it.

So when one day he saw Mercury, Jupiter, and Mars huddled around the fountain in the garden, he did not feel the need to reveal his presence. He simply pulled back into the shadows and listened, praying that none of them sensed his presence.

“You’re sure Pluto hasn’t said anything?” Mercury sighed, rubbing the dark circles beneath her eyes.

“Pluto says things,” Mars reminded her bitterly. “The real question is whether she says anything that makes a damn bit of sense.”

Jupiter tightened her ponytail. “I’m going to assume that’s a no.”

“You have no idea.”

“She’s always been vague about this era on a good day,” Mercury admitted. She had taken off her boots and dipped her feet into the fountain water. She swished her ankles back and forth, splashing some water onto the ground. “I’d hoped maybe she was waiting until we were closer to the invasion…. Then again, perhaps now she’ll be more inclined to keep to herself.”

Jupiter crouched down by a flower bush and began running her fingertips along the leaves, stroking them with loving hands. They stirred beneath her touch, hungry for it. “I guess we can’t really expect her to do more than she can. She warned us about consciously meddling with things, and look what happened? We’ve set ourselves up for exactly what we were trying to prevent.”

Mars reached down and plucked a weed, twirling it between her fingers. “I don’t think we can blame ourselves for that. From what I’ve been able to glean from the fire, our path is inevitable.”

Mercury’s and Jupiter’s faces fell. “So there’s nothing we can do to stop the war?” the former asked.

Mars scoffed and tossed the weed into the fountain. It erupted into flames just before it slipped beneath the water, no doubt forming a pile of ash at the bottom. “I have no idea. I think the way we’ve gone up to this point and everything that’s happened – I think that’s what we couldn’t prevent. As for the war itself, I don’t know. The smoke’s too thick for me to see through.”

Jupiter smirked. “Why, Rei, that was almost poetic.”

Mars made a face, but refrained from acerbic comment.

“I have faith in Haruka and Michiru,” Mercury maintained. “I really do.”

“So does Usagi,” Jupiter remarked. “I don’t think Venus is so optimistic.”

“She’s hopeful,” Mars corrected. “She just knows she has to expect the worst so we can do something about it.”

Mercury and Jupiter nodded gravely.

“Every logical impulse in my body speaks against it,” Mercury continued. “But in my heart, I have faith.”

Jupiter straightened and stretched her back muscles. “If faith were enough to stop this war, Usagi would have brought the Phantom to his knees long ago.”

Mars frowned, staring at the spot where she’d tossed the burning weed. “I want things to change, but I can’t help but remember Pluto’s warnings… and I wonder if maybe some things aren’t meant to change.”

“Nonsense,” Mercury said. “Everything changes.”

“Usagi and Mamoru didn’t.”

The other two paused, momentarily taken aback.

“Usagi’s changed,” Jupiter maintained. “She’s grown up a lot.”

Mars sighed and wandered away from the group. “I didn’t mean individually.”

Sensing the conversation had come to an end and worried he might be detected, Endymion retreated, storing their words in his mind so that he could reflect on them later.

-----

With a groan of frustration, Serenity tossed Haruka and Michiru’s sparse report away from her with contempt. “I can’t believe it. I just… can’t believe it!”

Endymion glanced up from his stack of financial papers, frowning. “Has something gone wrong? Should I get the others?”

“No,” Serenity insisted, holding her face in her hands. “It’s nothing that can’t wait for the meeting tomorrow. I just… Reading these is discouraging.”

Pulling his reading glasses away, Endymion rose to his feet and went to sit beside his wife on the couch. She leaned into him in an instant, molding her body to his familiar angles. “Tell me.”

Exhaling deeply, she began.

“Wiseman has somehow managed to convince those who have taken the mark – which is most of the population by the way – that they did not come by it willingly. They think we… branded them. Just like we’re—" she cut off sharply, unable to make the comparison, however false.

“Nazis,” Endymion surmised.

Serenity nodded and fought the urge to be ill. “Those who have not taken the mark have apparently been marked as traitors to the Black Moon. Apparently, they’ve taken to… pushing them out of the shelters when the rains come.”

Now Endymion had to swallow down the bile that rose in his throat. “My God.”

“Haruka and Michiru have already implemented a way to get them out using the emergency escape route,” Serenity continued. “It risks their exposure, but I don’t see what else we can do. We can’t leave those people there. Some have already died or been maimed. I can’t let them stay there knowing what could happen to them.”

“What will you do with them?”

“I don’t know. I’m hoping one of the others will know,” Serenity confessed.

Endymion shook his head. “Shouldn’t the government we put in place be monitoring this?”

“Several members of that government have turned zealots themselves,” Serenity informed him, slapping her hand against the papers. “They resent the fact that they were assigned there in the first place, and since we neglected to reassign them—"

“No one else would go!” Endymion snapped. “No one would volunteer even with the increase in pay.”

“I know,” Serenity assured him, patting his leg. “And those who aren’t willing to turn on us so overtly have received a payoff. Or at least that’s what Michiru thinks. Frankly, I’m inclined to agree if they’re turning a blind eye to slaughter.”

Endymion rubbed the bridge of his nose vigorously, sensing an oncoming migraine. “This is horrible.”

“It’s going to get worse,” she murmured. “He’s old enough to fight us now, so that means it’s going to get worse.”

He embraced her fiercely, drawing her ever closer and holding on tightly enough to bruise. She didn’t shrink away from him, didn’t even wince at his force. Instead she held on with equal strength, leaving purple finger marks in her wake.

They didn’t let go for a long time, rocked by what they knew now and what they guessed was to come.

-----

It was only days later that the first attack came.

The battle was not the full scale attack that would come in the years ahead. The crystal defended Crystal Tokyo well, and only small squadrons could hope to penetrate its barriers, and only at the cost of many droids in order for them to get clear. This was small, concentrated, and happened only so that the White Moon knew that they had problems of a grave nature to face. The battle was just a taste of what was to come, a skirmish that would mark the beginning of a war that would span the boundaries of time.

A group of only ten droids attacked a shopping center at peak hours. They did little more than harass customers – if one’s definition of harass extended to shooting lasers over their heads. There no casualties. If the Black Moon truly wanted to rule, they knew they would have to contain the number of civilian deaths. They had to display their power but not use it in tyranny. They had to be feared and respected if not loved.

The Sailor Senshi had arrived shortly afterwards, and with their appearance, came the Akayashi sisters.

They were young, younger than they remembered and too young to be fighting in such a war. At a guess, the youngest, Cooan, was around fourteen, the same age as they had been when they had gone against Beryl all those years before. They didn’t miss the irony of the situation and ventured a guess that the young girls had been sent on purpose to make them less willing to kill.

It had worked.

All four of Serenity’s guardians had held back when fighting against these children. They sought to capture, not kill, but all four of the sisters were too slippery for such maneuvers. When Venus did manage to ensnare one in her chain or Jupiter caught one in a choke hold, the other three attacked with vicious determination. No matter how they bickered with each other – and they had bickered even in battle – they always united against a common enemy.

When the droids were dispatched, the sisters vanished, and the Senshi came home, nursing a number of wounds and very bruised egos. There had been no fatalities and minor injuries. Although they had not won in the traditional sense of the world, they were forced to consider it a victory.

It was the first in a long line of such victories.

-----

Endymion had just experienced the distinct displeasure of running into Chibi-Usa’s nanny while she was in a snit for the very first time. He had always dismissed Chibi-Usa’s pouting and tantrums about her as folly, but after being on the receiving end of one of her glares, he could sympathize.

Although why the woman felt the need to glower at him when she was the one who had lost his daughter was beyond him.

He would have been worried if he hadn’t guessed where she must have gone. The nanny had claimed she had searched every area of the palace, but Endymion knew there were several she didn’t have access to. He doubted Chibi-Usa would venture into most of them, but he knew of one she was destined to visit, and at four-years-old, he thought she was right on schedule.

He had left the blustering woman to her own devices while he had leisurely gone in search for his daughter. It did not take him very long at all to reach the ornate door nestled at the end of a hall many servants instinctively avoided. He couldn’t be sure if they simply wanted to resist the temptation of going through the forbidden doorway or if something about it unsettled them. Either way, he was going to have to mention something about the layer of dust covering the hall.

He paused at the door, running his fingers against the phases of the moon carved into the doorway. The circles were so perfect that he doubted they had been made by a human hand. He wondered if they had been created at all or if they had simply always been there, just like the woman who waited behind the door.

Before he became lost in his own musings, Endymion raised his hand and gently pushed the door open. A moment later, he stepped into a vast area that existed out of space and time. It was boundless and without a distinguishing mark. The world seemed grey and shadowed here. It remained menacing although he knew better than to be afraid. Still, it would have been foolish not to be the least bit wary. This was the stomping ground of gods.

A second later, a sugar pink blur filled his vision. He beamed down at his daughter and said, “Someone owes their nanny a very good apology.”

Ignoring the half-hearted admonishment, Chibi-Usa let out a bright squeal and bounded forward like her namesake. She leapt into his arms, and he caught her easily. She barely weighed anything despite her tendency to overindulge in sweets. He held her tightly, smiling as she nestled against his chest.

“Daddy, I never knew this door was here!” she chattered happily. “Did you know this door was here? And did you know about Puu? She’s my new friend.” Chibi-Usa twisted around, and Endymion had to struggle to set her down without dropping her. “Puu! Puu, come out! I want you to meet my daddy!”

Like a mirage stepping out of the desert, she appeared. She was taller than most women, but he knew instinctively that she would have been imposing at Venus’s height. Her tanned skin stood out dark against the white mist, setting off her dark costume. She looked as though she had been born from shadow and nightshade. Her eyes and lips were the color of merlot while hair like deep emeralds cascaded down her back. He would have known her anywhere, could have never forgotten her, but still he felt the need to catalogue these features. He had not seen her since the formation of his court. Mars acted as their liaison.

“Pluto,” Endymion said politely.

She inclined her head respectfully, her elegant hands wound around her staff. “King.”

Chibi-Usa wrinkled her nose in distaste. “That’s not his name.”

Pluto smiled at her, and for a moment, Endymion could forget how easy it would be for her to destroy them all. “It’s his title, Small Lady.”

“Not my name either,” she grumbled, but neither of them missed the slight blush of pleasure that bloomed on her apple cheeks.

“Chibi-Usa,” Endymion began, lifting his gaze to the ageless woman some distance away, “I think you’d better go find your nanny. She’s very worried about you.”

Chibi-Usa pouted. “She’ll get snarly.”

“You did run off without telling her.”

“Because she was growly!”

Endymion decided it was best not to ask what the difference between snarly and growly was. He swiped a hand at one of her pigtails. “Go. You can come back tomorrow, if you tell us where you’re going.”

Chibi-Usa’s frown vanished as though she had never done anything but smile. “Do you mean it, Papa?”

“Have I ever lied?”

Shrieking with delight, Chibi-Usa threw her arms around his knees and squeezed. She ran from them an instant later, calling out a bright good-bye to her new friend, using the nickname Endymion had nearly forgotten about.

The moment the child closed the door behind her, Pluto’s stoic expression slipped into something with sharper edges. “You have lied to her, Endymion.”

He cringed inwardly, either at the truth of it or at the use of the name he rarely heard outside of public circles. “Only for her own good.”

“Many have said that,” Pluto murmured, striding through the swirling fog. “Many have been mistaken.”

Endymion had no desire to engage in the wordplay Pluto made her bread and butter by. “You know why I’ve stayed.”

She nodded coolly. “And you know it’s futile.”

He sighed. “Pluto—"

“No,” she interrupted harshly, crimson eyes flashing like a splinter of glass floating in the wine. “You’ve grown too used to deference, Endymion. You’re too used to getting your way, so you push me. But you forget how long I have done this. I am the mountain; you are the wind that will blow until it dies.”

Endymion straightened, taken aback by her words.

She raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I… no one’s talked to me like that for a long time.”

Pluto snorted. “How have you managed to escape Mars’s tongue lashings for so long?”

He laughed dryly, shaking his head. “No, that’s different. The other Senshi, they don’t hold back when they’re annoyed, but… they rarely ever think before they speak. It cuts, make no mistake, but it’s different with you.”

“I am different from them.”

“Yes,” he muttered. “I suppose you are.”

She paused, pushing a lock of hunter green hair behind her delicate ear. “Will you cease in pestering me about the future now?”

“I hadn’t even started,” he reminded her. “But yes. I won’t ask anyway. There’s not much I can do about Mars.”

“That’s unfortunate for us all,” Pluto muttered, looking tempted to roll her eyes.

Endymion looked at her softly, exposing his underbelly. “We’re afraid for the future. I’m afraid for my daughter. You can hardly blame us.”

“That makes it worse,” she informed him plainly. “If I could blame you, I wouldn’t feel guilty about it.”

His throat felt very dry all of a sudden. He swallowed. “I know it’s your job.”

“It’s my life.”

He nodded slowly. “Of course.”

He turned to leave, his pale cape billowing out behind him.

“Endymion.”

He almost didn’t turn around.

“If you wanted to come by yourself,” Pluto said with uncharacteristic caution. “I wouldn’t mind.”

He smiled widely. “I’d like that.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Then do as you please.”

He left her then, pleased by the invitation, but all the more vexed by his ignorance. Even a visit to the Guardian of Time would not shed light on the impending disasters. Even she could not tell him if Haruka or Michiru were alive; even she could not tell him if Demando’s obsession with his wife wavered. She might have known, or she might have been just as unsure as he.

But she might have known, and although he was smiling in her presence, it would tear him up inside.

-----Four Years Later-----

The Sailor Senshi, Serenity, and Endymion gathered in the Council Room to discuss the last in a surprisingly long list of reports that Haruka and Michiru had managed to send over the past few months. Endymion not only found it odd that they had managed to smuggle that many out, but that they had managed to compile that many when in reality, there wasn’t much happening. Meanwhile, the Senshi were being run ragged by a string of pointless battles between them and the Akayashi sisters. Endymion didn’t know if it was youth or sheer insolence that gave them their energy, but between trying (and failing) to capture the four girls and fending off attacks from droids who grew increasingly more competent, none of the Sailor Senshi were at their peak.

“They’re stuck,” Venus surmised unhappily.

“Essentially, yes,” Serenity agreed. “We ought to have anticipated this possibility.”

Mars snorted. “We were too busy putting together emergency extraction scenarios.”

“But they know the attack is coming,” Mercury interrupted tersely. Endymion noticed her eyes looked clouded over, as if she wasn’t truly there. He wondered how many tactical operations she was forming in her head while they went back and forth on this.

“They haven’t been explicitly told of course,” Endymion answered, steepling his fingers. “But they know enough about war to recognize the signs. Droid production is up, more meetings between Demando and the Wiseman are happening. It can’t be anything else.”

“And they’ve stepped up… executions,” Serenity murmured sadly. “They broke every bone in a woman’s body, one by one, beginning with her fingers.” She paused. “At least that’s how they started.”

Jupiter hung her head. “How can we let this go on?”

Venus sighed. “We’ve run the scenarios time and again, Mako. We can’t risk attacking them on their home ground. Haruka and Michiru only know so much about their own defenses, and Nemesis is too unpredictable. They could just hole up their citadel and wait for the rain to kill us.”

“So we just sit here and let people die?” Jupiter demanded.

“Unless you can control the weather, which you can’t.”

Serenity’s eyes turned a frosty blue. “I can.”

“And then what power do you have left for defense?” Mars asked. “We can’t have our greatest asset busy acting like a glorified umbrella.”

Serenity arched her back like a cornered cat. “Don’t talk about me like a commodity!”

“That’s my job,” Mars reminded her harshly. “The one you gave me.”

“Stop it!” Mercury hissed, becoming well and truly present for the first time in a few minutes. “We won’t accomplish anything by squabbling with each other.”

Serenity and Mars both remained tense for another minute or so before mutually agreeing to relax. The queen let out a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry. I’m worried about them, but there’s no sense in me taking it out on you.”

Mars nodded. “I know.”

“We should pull them out,” Jupiter voiced.

Venus laughed mirthlessly. “I wish I knew how many times we’d said that over the years.”

“They won’t come,” Mercury recalled sadly. “They’ve been in more and more danger with each passing day, but no matter what we say, they won’t come home.”

Jupiter fidgeted. “We could do a bang and burn.”

“What’s the difference between that and staging an attack on Nemesis?” Endymion asked.

“None whatsoever,” Venus growled in frustration. “If we lifted them out like that, we’d be lucky to make it out in one piece without Haruka and Michiru in tow.”

Mars shook her head. “We’d have to attack them just to get them to come with us.”

Serenity groaned, pillowing her head in arms. “Don’t. Please, don’t.”

They Senshi stared at her crumpled form for a moment, her grief unmistakable. Endymion waved them off, knowing it was now up to him to do something for her.

Mercury was the first to get to her feet. “Venus, I think we ought to discuss some new tactical maneuvers I want to employ.” Then she gently took the reluctant blonde by the elbow and led her away. Mercury threw an impatient look over her shoulder.

Jupiter’s shoulders sagged in defeat but stood anyway. “I should run some more training exercises with the guards. Last thing we need is one of the rebels wandering around the halls because they can’t protect their left side.”

The three women stared down at Mars, who stubbornly remained seated. It seemed an eternity before she threw her hands up and started muttering about target practice and the army under her command. Endymion could only hope that she did not intend to use them for target practice.

When the four were gone, Endymion pulled his chair closer to his wife. “Is this all about Haruka and Michiru?”

Serenity shook her head without lifting it. “There’s something I didn’t tell them.”

He paused. “There’s something above their security clearance?”

“It’s got nothing to do with that,” she said, straightening. “It’s about Rubeus.”

Endymion cringed. His memories of fighting against Rubeus in the 20th century were not clear and often overshadowed by his angst at being apart from Usagi. However, there had always been something unsettling in his eyes and the way he carried himself. It wasn’t simple arrogance, nor was it hatred for the White Moon. The only way he could think of to describe it was a love for violence. He’d sometimes wondered if the man got off on the scent of blood.

“What about him?”

Serenity called in a disturbingly thick stack of papers and pushed them over to him. “This is only what they’ve chosen to tell me. I can tell by their tone that there’s more, much more, that they don’t want me to know.”

Endymion’s eyes skimmed over the first page, and he felt ill. Despite the nausea, he pressed forward, scanning over every line in the hopes of absorbing all the atrocities quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. It seemed like there was blood in the ink. The paper almost smelled of death. He couldn’t shake that feeling even as he told himself that the pages had been printed here, that they had never been near the planet Nemesis or Rubeus’s cruel hands. He read of the senseless killings, the torture, the maiming. He scanned a list of names that if laid end-to-end would be at least as long as his arm. They were all women. They were all suicides. He didn’t have to see the word to know what had happened so that they made that choice.

He turned the stack of pages over and felt grateful for the blankness of the opposite side, as if that somehow erased the words he had just read. He glanced over at Serenity and saw her hands folded together as if in desperate prayer.

“That man is going to go after my daughter,” she whispered fiercely. “That man.”

Endymion fought back the bile in his throat. “Oh, God.”

“I gave Haruka and Michiru the kill order a few months ago.”

Endymion blinked, staring at her in shock. “But you—"

“I believe in Saffir’s goodness,” Serenity continued. “I pity Esmeraude’s hopeless attraction. I want to save Demando from himself and from the Wiseman. But Rubeus is not a man and he is not a monster. He is something else, something that I can’t heal.” She swallowed. “And I won’t have him anywhere near my daughter.”

He reached over and grasped her hand. “Why haven’t they done it yet?”

“They haven’t been able to get to him,” Serenity said, clutching back. “But they’re on the lookout. They’ll find a way. They’ll find a way to do it without getting caught. I know they will.”

Endymion didn’t say anything. He just kept holding on.

-----

After receiving word from her tutors, Endymion once again made the long trek down the silver doorway he had become increasingly familiar with over the past four years. It was so used to his presence now that it opened of its own accord once his shadow grazed the metal. He didn’t even have to slow his pace before crossing the threshold.

He pushed through the wall of mist and fog, and once he could see again, he found her. She was sitting at a table with the Time Guardian, munching on a cookie and ignoring the tea that had been offered with it. When she saw him, she frowned, her bright red eyes narrowing in distaste.

“I know it’s time for grammar lessons. I don’t care. I hate grammar.”

He smiled indulgently. “I know, Chibi-Usa, but that doesn’t mean you can skip your lesson.”

She pouted at him, a perfect imitation of her mother. “I don’t see why I have to learn it anyway. Everyone knows what I mean. Why do I have to say it correctly?”

Endymion’s smile widened, wondering just how much Mercury would sputter in response to this point. “Chibi-Usa…”

She deflated. “Fine. I’ll go.” She paused, raising her eyebrows hopefully. “In five minutes?”

He thought back to seven years before when Serenity had accused him of spoiling their daughter. He hadn’t denied it then. He decided as long as it was common knowledge, he might as well live up to it. “Very well.”

“Tea, Endymion?” Pluto asked, waving her hand. The mist swirled around an empty spot on the table, and when it cleared, a cup of piping hot tea appeared. He didn’t doubt that it had the perfect amounts of lemon and honey for it to be to his liking.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he answered, sitting down in his chair.

“Small Lady was just about to tell me about the project she was assigned before she slipped out of her studies,” Pluto said with just a hint of gentle reprimand.

Chibi-Usa stuck her tongue out briefly before turning to her father, ruby-red eyes bright with excitement. “I actually don’t mind this one, Papa. Ms. Hatahori said she wants me to put together a family tree. I know all about Ikuko-mama, Kenji-papa, and Uncle Shingo of course – and then there’s Queen Serenity, but Ms. Hatahori said I didn’t have to include her – but I have to ask you about your mommy and daddy.”

Endymion paused in mid-sip, furrowing his brow. He recognized this assignment for what it was. Hatahori had no interest in having Chibi-Usa do a creative project; she wanted to find out about the progeny behind the royal family. Specifically his progeny. It had always been a veiled history for the public. What knowledge he did have of his parents was his. He had no interest in sharing it with the world.

He glanced up at Pluto, sensing that she might understand this reluctance as well as the inappropriate nature of Hatahori’s request. He was surprised to find her lips purse and her eyes trained to her own tea cup.

“Papa?”

Endymion forced a smile and turned to his daughter. “I’ll have to give it some thought, munchkin. In the meantime, I believe your five minutes are up.”

Chibi-Usa opened her mouth to protest, but a stern look from her father silenced it before she began. She groaned in exasperation but got up obediently, kissing both Endymion and Pluto on the cheek. Then she flounced off, muttering once again about the pointlessness nature of the upcoming lesson.

Endymion took a long sip from his rapidly cooling tea. “Just once I wish she’d come to see you when she didn’t have something else to do. I don’t appreciate being scolded by the hired help.”

Pluto smiled. “But what fun would it be if there were not something forbidden about seeing me?”

“She’s coming to the Fourth Dimension. Isn’t that enough?”

“You can hardly expect a seven-year-old to understand the ins and outs of time travel.”

He paused. “But you have told her some things. Haven’t you?”

She paused, centering her tea cup in the saucer. “Enough.”

“It’s coming soon,” he muttered gravely.

Pluto gave him a grimly amused look. “I know, Endymion.”

“Of course you do,” he sighed, rubbing at his tired eyes.

“But I do not know the particulars, so please, don’t ask.”

“I know better at this point,” Endymion admitted. He paused, smirking. “Though if Mars or Venus knew how often I came here, I think they’d insist I use thumbscrews to get it out of you.”

Pluto nodded. “Mars has threatened as much when she comes by. She was an interesting choice for a liaison.”

“I think Venus hoped you could be strong-armed,” Endymion guessed. He drained his tea and straightened. “Much as I’d like to stay and talk, I have quite a lot to attend to. None of it good.”

Pluto said nothing, her eyes drifting from his eyes to the communicator he wore on his wrist. A moment later, it beeped. The pitch of the tone let him know this was intended for all the Senshi and both the royal company. The blue light let him know who sent it.

Ignoring Pluto for the time being, Endymion brought the comm link to his wrist and pushed the flashing blue button. A moment later, a projection of Mercury appeared, hovering over his hand. She was crying.

“Ami? What’s wrong?” Jupiter asked over the line.

“You all need to come to the communications room,” Mercury answered softly. “Now.”

A second later, the image disappeared and the silence in the fourth dimension ruled like a tyrant.

Pale and shaking, Endymion lowered his arm, staring at Pluto’s dark eyes. “I thought you said you didn’t know the particulars.”

Her face, lovely and vexing, remained as impassive as ever and impossible to read. She took one last sip of her tea. Her hands trembled. Then with a sharp wave of her hand, the fog rolled in again, taking the table and everything else back to where it had come from. She stood and the chair was swallowed as well.

“I do not know all of the particulars.”

Endymion stared for only a moment. Then he turned on his heel and ran away from the gates and their keeper, racing towards Mercury and whatever truth she would tell them.

-----

When Endymion reached the communications room, he nearly choked on the overwhelming grief filling the room. Technicians were sprawled on the floor as if struck down physically, holding each other and sobbing quietly. Venus and Serenity were crouched near them, trying to coax and soothe those who were most hysterical. At the center of it all stood Mercury, the one who had grown strong since her first days as a Senshi. He saw her stooped over, clinging to Jupiter like the green soldier was all that kept her up right, saw her gasping for breath as tears streamed down her face. In that moment, he wondered what had happened and if it had broken her back to what she had once been.

“What happened?” he demanded sharply, striding past the civilians briskly, ignoring their half-hearted attempts at bowing.

Jupiter looked at him with naked relief. “Thank God you’re here. She won’t tell us. She said she’d only show it once more.”

Mercury shook her head, whimpering. “I wish I’d never seen it. I wish it had never come to me.”

Mars stepped forward, looking ready to shake the woman into cooperating. But she stopped and collected herself, taking a long breath to settle her frazzled nerves. Then she finished crossing to Mercury. She shouldered some of the weight for Jupiter and with soft, amethyst eyes, said, “You don’t have to do it alone.”

It seemed to take a lot out of Mercury not to embrace the fire soldier right then and there. With Jupiter and Mars’s help, Mercury hobbled over to the control panel. In the same moment, both Venus and Serenity rose, each of them moving to flank him. They each turned their eyes to the viewing screen, but out of their peripheral vision, they saw every one of the technicians shield their eyes. They weren’t strong enough to move, but they also were not strong enough to watch again.

With trembling hands, Mercury pushed the button.

In an instant, the static vanished and Rubeus’s eyes filled the screen. Endymion reached for his wife at the same moment she reached for him. He suddenly thought he knew what this message might be. He had never been a religious man, but he was overwhelmed now by the urge to pray, though he wouldn’t have known what to ask for.

“Greetings, White Moon,” Rubeus began, his voice souring the taste in the air. “I hope all is well with you there. Pleasant weather?” He smiled, his teeth glinting like a knife. “Pleasantries aside, I decided to create this little video postcard to let you know what we’re up to. I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

He stepped aside, and Serenity shrieked. For behind him, clear as anything, were Haruka and Michiru. Or at least what was left of them. The picture was terrifyingly exact and showed every cut and bruise, every twisted limb, every bit of mutilated flesh. Endymion recognized Haruka’s arm damaged by the rain of Nemesis. It was resting against her ankle as if carelessly tossed aside.

“Oh, God,” Mars breathed, backing away from the screen. “They’re breathing. I can see them breathing.”

Jupiter retched and fought to swallow it down.

“I trust you know these two lovely ladies,” Rubeus mused, striding back into view. Now they could see the blood that coated his skin from wrist to elbow, the red stains on his trademark camouflage. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I certainly know them very well.”

Serenity covered her mouth with her hand, choking.

“Monster,” Venus hissed with venom.

“I didn’t always, though,” Rubeus continue. “You see, once I thought these little darlings were just two of many revolutionaries fighting for the greater good. Not terribly important, not even very bright, but nice little worker bees that would eventually help us bring you to your knees.” He paused, sighing blissfully. “So imagine my surprise when they tried to kill me three days ago.”

Endymion curled his fists, his mind swimming. Three days. He had been doing this for three days, and they’d survived.

He’d never felt more sorry for anyone in his life.

“For the first day, they wouldn’t tell me anything,” he informed them. “Of course I assumed they were trying to undermine us, but I had to find out how widespread their taint was. But they were good little soldiers. Wouldn’t even give me their name, rank, and serial numbers. On the second day, they were more pliable.” He gestured at Haruka’s disfigured form. “This one in particular got very chatty when I had some fun with her friend over there.”

Letting Mercury go, Jupiter raised both of her fists and crashed them into the control panel. The picture flickered remained. Mercury sank to her knees, resting her head on Jupiter’s thigh.

“And then on the third day, they told me something very interesting indeed. I don’t think they meant to, you understand, but at some point, people tend to get delirious with pain.” He paused, his eyes lighting up in malicious glee. “They told me that you sent them. You Senshi and your king and queen. And they said that the assassination plot came from the very top.” He shook his head, chuckling. “To think. You’ve had spies here for years, and we never knew. Such good little spies. They even accepted your brand.” He reached down and pulled Michiru’s head up by her hair, revealing that a chunk of her forehead had been carved away. She let out a moan that sounded scarcely human. “You may have meant these to humiliate us, but we wear them now as a mark of pride.”

Mars howled in frustration. “We didn’t put them there, you son of a bitch! It wasn’t us!”

“I can’t even begin to think of how long they’ve been here,” Rubeus continued, dropping Michiru. Her head bobbed like a ragdoll. “How many other identities? How many things did they hear? How much do you know? And think of how much more they could have learned! We probably would never have known who they were if you’d just let me be.”

He stopped, the amusement suddenly gone, and all that remained was murderous rage. “But you didn’t, did you?”

He lifted both arms then and what seemed like thousands of purple, glowing wires grew from his hands. Then, sweeping his hands about like he conducted an orchestra, he pushed them through the hair.

And they all watched as they cut through what remained of Haruka and Michiru.

Serenity threw herself into his chest, keening like a ghost in search of her lover. Endymion looked at the others, watching them watch the screen, unwilling to see the slaughter himself. It did not take very long for Jupiter to slide down next to Mercury, for her to take the smaller woman in her arms and hold her like that embrace would anchor her to sanity. Soon afterwards, Mars turned her back on the display, her spine rigid and her body shaking with barely suppressed rage. Only Venus kept watching, only Venus refused to turn away. She sensed his eyes, and all she said was, “They deserve a witness.”

Finally, the sounds of butchering flesh stopped. Haruka and Michiru had never screamed, had never audibly showed their pain. They hadn’t wanted their friends to know the precise moment they had died. With the killing done with, Endymion forced himself to look back. He saw that they had reached out for each other, grasping one another by the hand in their last moments, just as they had always done.

Rubeus crushed their hands beneath his foot. That made Venus turn away.

“You have made a very large mistake, White Moon,” Rubeus told them plainly. “I hope you’re ready. Because we’re coming.”

With that, the screen faded to black and it was done.

The silence in the room held for an interminably long time. For a small portion of eternity, they each mourned Haruka and Michiru in silence. They had always known that sacrifices had to be made, even if it meant themselves. They grieved for that knowledge and for their loss.

Finally, Serenity let out another cry that cut him to the bone. “What have I done?”

Venus blinked, eyes wide. “You gave the order.” It was not a question.

She nodded miserably. “They’re better than him. I know they are. This shouldn’t have happened.”

Venus’s joints locked up, and she opened and closed her mouth three times. “And you shouldn’t have made that kind of decision without us.”

Serenity sobbed, clinging to Endymion, her nails scratching at his neck.

“What do we do now?” Jupiter asked, her voice hollow. “What do we do?”

Before anyone could answer, the palace shook as if the Earth churned beneath its foundations. Then an alarm began to wail and red lights flashed. Shaking off her anguish, Mercury leapt to her feet and manned the control panel, activating the multiple cameras placed around the grounds. The screen filled with multiple images, but they all seemed like copies of one another. Droids on the ground. Ships in the air. Black lightning in the sky.

“We get revenge,” Mars said, turning on her heel. She raised her communicator to her mouth and began barking orders. Jupiter was not far behind her, doing the same.

Serenity pushed him away, panicked. “Chibi-Usa! Where is she?”

Endymion nearly lost his balance although he didn’t move. It was happening. It was really happening. “She was with Pluto. I sent her back to her tutor.”

“I’ll find her,” Venus promised hastily, giving her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “Collect yourself and be ready. We don’t know what’s changed,” she warned before fleeing the room.

Serenity paused, floundering for a moment. Then her posture changed and her eyes became more focused. Without a word to either him or Mercury, she went after Venus, the sound of her exit echoing in the halls.

“Usako!” he shouted, starting to run after her, but Mercury grabbed his elbow. He turned and when he saw the look on her face, he wondered how he had ever thought that she might be broken.

“I know you want to help her, but there’s no time,” Mercury said in a tone that managed to be both gentle and brusque. “I’ve been working on some new weapons, but I haven’t had the chance to train the other technicians. I’m the only one who knows how they work. But someone needs to stay here and man the communications systems. My people can’t do it. You know how, so you have to.”

He started to protest, but then he looked at the communications staff. The execution of Haruka and Michiru, who they had known at least distantly, had rocked them, and now the battle was pushing them over the edge. Those who hadn’t fled were completely crazed. He watched as one staffer’s pants darkened as he urinated himself.

Endymion swore but nodded. “Go. I’ll handle this. Go.”

Mercury looked at him grateful and then jogged away, a blue streak against the white.

Frustrated but hopeless to change the situation, Endymion turned back to the communication panel. He laid his hands on the buttons and crystals, running his hands over them to manipulate the cameras and open up communication links, giving and receiving orders as if he did this every other day. And from his post in that room, he saw everything.

-----

Venus felt like a salmon swimming upstream as she pushed back the tide of frantic palace workers fleeing for the safety zones. Venus wished that she could go back in time now and redesign the layout of the palace so that they were placed differently. They had known this day was coming; that was why they had built the things to begin with. But she ought of have realized the inevitability that at least one of them would have to run in this direction if only to see how drastically things changed.

She leapt and twisted, pushed and maneuvered, fighting her way through the masses. Finally, she reached the area of the palace where all their living quarters were housed. Those corridors remained blissfully empty. She pushed herself to her limits, running all out to reach the King and Queen’s chambers. It was placed at the very back of the palace, which, while tactically sound, now seemed like yet another in a string of bad decisions.

“Please still be there, little one,” Venus whispered fervently. “Please let that have changed.”

She rounded the corner and kicked the doors of their chambers in. She knew the room was empty before she even took a good look around. She swallowed her curse and then stalked in further, walking directly to the other thing she sought. When she found it, she did not know whether to be disappointed or elated.

The Ginzuishou, the crystal that Chibi-Usa was meant to take from them, had vanished. That meant all of their defenses were down, so the alarm hadn’t been about the attack after all. Somehow, they’d happened simultaneously.

She wondered just how closely the Wiseman was watching.

Venus took a deep breath, trying to regulate her pounding heart. “We changed nothing,” she said wretchedly. “Haruka and Michiru died, and nothing changed.” Her shoulders hunched and her eyes began to burn. “And I sent them there.”

She felt as though she might be swallowed by her grief when the sound of shattering glass broke her concentration. She spun, shocked to see an orange and yellow droid glaring at her from the broken window. Part of her wanted to ask it how it had gotten past the shield. Another part wanted to simply blow it to smithereens and return to other matters.

But the third part, and the strongest part, could not stop thinking of the friends she had lost. And that part wanted to do nothing but rip that thing limb from limb.

She let out a war cry that hadn’t been used for two thousand years and rushed the droid. She leapt at it, caught it around the metal neck, and pushed, sending them both into the raging battle below.

-----

After she left the communication center, Mercury teleported to the palace roof where she had set up a number of her latest weapons innovations. It was hardly her preferred scientific endeavor, but she understood the necessity of their predicament. And like anything she set her mind to, she had succeeded with ease.

A number of soldiers who doubled as technological experts were already manning a number of rail guns, cannons, and a variety of other weapons that she had managed to explain to them. The energy ray on the other hand, one of her greatest advancements, stood untouched, the set up so foreign and so exact that no one had attempted to figure it out on their own.

She strode forward, the wind from the aircraft surging into battle whipping her cropped hair around her ears. She tapped the soldier she knew was the quickest study, knowing that she probably wouldn’t be able to stay for very long. “I need you to watch how I do this so you can take over!” she shouted into his ear, her voice barely carrying above the din.

He nodded sharply and ordered one of his subordinates to take over at his post. Then he followed her to the energy gun, watching as she swung herself into the set attached to the device. Calling it an energy “gun” was a bit of a misnomer; because it was a prototype, the weapon was bigger than most of the canons they had. Its design and make-up were crude and hurried. Mercury had been consumed by a sense of growing dread in her work, and although Mars’s fire readings were inconclusive and Pluto’s warnings were increasingly vague, she had sensed that she was running out of time. As a result, she’d created a deadly but incredibly finicky weapon. One wrong move was liable to blow them all skyward. A few more days and she would have been able to work the kinks out of it.

But they didn’t have a few more days.

“Watch what I do,” she instructed. “Watch and do it exactly as I do it or it won’t work.”

“You mean do it right, or it’ll kill me,” he deadpanned.

She redirected her concentration to the task at hand; it was better not to focus on the death of individuals at the moment. “Watch,” she said again.

She reached forward to the small control panel at her right. She pulled the lever to start and then chose the appropriate setting. Then it came time to flip a few more switches and turn a few more dials. Finally, the gun emitted a loud whine to signal it was charging. She reached down and turned a crank that raised them up, and then grasped two handles on either side of the barrel to aim the gun upwards. She found a section of sky almost completely devoid of their own aerial combatants, and she raised her wrist to her lips.

“Aerial sector five, get clear. I repeat. Aerial sector five, get clear. I’m coming your way.”

“Roger that,” the pilots chorused almost in the same breath. Then they all turned or dived to evacuate, leaving the hovering jeweled spacecraft wide open for her attack.

“Firing!” she shouted, flipping the final switch. A thick beam of white-blue light shot out of the cannon, barreling directly into the craft on the far left. It froze instantly and plummeted to the ground. Before the others could retreat to safety, Mercury swung it around, taking out as many of the craft as she could. Their mechanisms iced over, and useless, they too fell, jetting towards the Earth, landing directly in an area crawling with nothing but droids, crushing them beneath their weight and impaling them on their crystallized green spikes.

The soldiers around her let out a triumphant whoop. “That thing can really do some damage,” her preferred soldier marveled, his eyes glazed over in desire.

Despite its uses, Mercury couldn’t help but feel pride in her work. “Let’s try some fire power.” She repeated the process, this time changing only the setting for the kind of energy it would give out. Then she redirected her aim to the ground and the advancing second wave of droids. Her canon turned them into ash.

The celebration that followed that hit was cut short by a black laser impacting the shield above their heads. Unprepared, Mercury tumbled out of her seat, and quick reflexes kept her from falling. She looked up at the now glowing forcefield above their heads.

“It will hold,” Mercury assured everyone. “I designed it for that. It will hold.”

The others didn’t look convinced.

Mercury turned to go back to the fight when she heard Serenity’s voice crying out above the cacophony of war. She pulled out her mini-computer and quickly keyed in the commands to gain access to the palace’s security videos, selecting the one she wanted in an instant. She saw Serenity stumbling out of the palace, struggling to keep her balance. Her cry was intelligible above the noise, but Mercury read her lips and recognized the princess’s name.

She tucked the computer away solemnly and turned to face the soldier. She blinked in surprise to find he was already in position, keying in the commands in the correct order. She smiled with satisfaction.

He tipped an imaginary hat at her. “Go to it.”

“Thank you,” she said, reaching forward and clasping his arm. “Umino.”

He winked behind his glasses and then returned to the fight. Mercury stayed behind for only a moment longer before turning and racing to the palace steps. She had always known what was coming, and now that she’d seen her queen, she knew she didn’t have any time to waste.

-----

Once they had finished spouting off the order to initiate the counterattack, neither Mars nor Jupiter had wasted any time. They teleported midstep, reappearing directly at the front lines. Then they threw themselves into the fray.

As usual, Mars favored her fire power over direct physical combat. She took out wave after wave of droids with her pyrokinetic dance. Red and orange walls, towering infernos, cyclones of heat. They all slammed into their opponents, turning them to so much dust, and leaving nothing but scorched jewels behind. They were so blackened that the inverted crescent wasn’t even remotely visible anymore.

And still, they kept coming.

Jupiter, on the other hand, indulged in a little hand-to-hand, sending off bolts of thunder and green energy only when she had to keep from being overwhelmed. She moved her leg in a crescent shape, slamming her heel into the head of a kneeling droid. She punched overhead, she punched toward the ground, she punched in every conceivable direction until they fell. Then she finished the kill with a flash of lightning. But always she turned, her limbs flying, working out her rage through movement rather than raw power.

And still, they kept coming.

Mars slammed her back in Jupiter’s. “There’s so many,” she gasped. “How are there this many?”

“Saffir’s been busy,” Jupiter groused, watching her elemental dragon swallow a group of advancing droids. “Apparently he doesn’t eat, sleep, or fuck.”

She could just picture the face Mars made when she said, “In a bad mood, are we?”

“How did you guess?”

They spun together, unleashing their grief and rage with fire and lightning. They burned and they vanquished, they decimated and they slaughtered. They fought hard for only a little while, but they killed so many.

And still, they kept coming.

“I really wish I could kick Saffir’s ass for this,” Jupiter remarked bitterly.

Mars was about to respond when they heard Serenity’s call. They snapped to attention and looked towards the palace, which they had unknowingly advanced away from in the short time they had been fighting. They couldn’t quite hear her, but they knew only one thing would lead her away from the palace. Only one little girl who couldn’t protect herself in all this chaos.

“It’s all happening just like we saw a thousand years ago,” Jupiter murmured sadly. “What was the point of it? What was the God damn point of any of it?”

She thought of Haruka and Michiru and wanted to scream.

Mars caught her hand and dragged her forward. “Philosophy later. Serenity now.”

Now in possession of a task, Jupiter momentarily set aside the loss of her friends and threw herself into battle with new vigor. Together, she and Mars cut down as many droids as they could to get back to their queen, taking care not to cause any friendly fire. They pushed forward, their eyes ever on Serenity, as piles of dust formed at their feet.

And still, they kept coming.

-----

“Chibi-Usa!” Serenity called desperately, staggering down the steps of the palace. The ground shook beneath her as if infuriated by this assault. Explosions resounded all around her. A part of the palace crumbled and fell to the ground, crystal, glittering dust flying into the air around her. She pressed on, covering her face with her hand until it passed. Then she took a deep breath of smoke-filled air and shouted, “Chibi-Usa!”

She came to a halt as an all-too familiar violet flash sprang up before her eyes. She had seen it time and again when the Akayashi sisters came calling, but she knew before the body materialized that no woman faced her now.

Her heart broke all over again when she set eyes on him. He was no longer the sweet, fumbling boy he had been seven years earlier. He had grown into a man in age if not in temperament, and he gazed at her with eyes that swam with lust. He suspended his body in mid-air, staring down at her, staking his claim by trying to assert his dominance.

She pitied that assumption and mourned the fact that he would never learn that she was too much for him, that her love was to powerful to be claimed.

She narrowed her eyes in rage, curling her fists. “How dare you come here, Prince Demando,” she whispered, knowing that he could hear even with the war that surrounded them. “This is my home.”

For all his obsession for her, Demando could not help but sneer. “Can you blame us for wanting Earth after you exiled us to that forgotten wasteland in the shadows? Can you blame my lust for this green land with rain that nourishes instead of destroys?”

She shook her head. “I never sent you there, just like I never gave you those marks.”

His eyes softened, but the malevolent desire remained. “I know, my darling Queen. I know that was your husband’s decision. Not yours.”

The crystal was gone. Serenity had sensed the moment it had vanished almost in the same instant the attack had come. But even without the Ginzuishou, she still had plenty of power. She couldn’t heal Demando, but she could do what she must to turn back the tide of this battle. She would fight to spare him just as she would fight to protect her home, her people, and her family. She lifted her arms above her head, spiraling into herself and gathering her power to her.

She would never know just where the blast came from.

-----

Mars and Jupiter barely made it to the palace steps in time. Mars sensed the enormous dark energy at her back but had no time to turn around to see who threw it. Without knowing where the power came from, without ever having done it before, she raised her hands and released magic foreign to the hands so used to fire. She saw Jupiter mimic her actions, saw the same translucent energy seep out of her gloved fingers. A moment later, Venus and Mercury appeared, completing the circle. And just before Serenity’s body would have been destroyed by that blast, the crystal swarmed around her, locking her in the coffin that would be her prison for the foreseeable future.

Mars turned at Demando’s howl of sorrow and rage. If she had not been so busy strengthening the crystal, she would have happily attacked him. Before they finished, he vanished, leaving her itching to kill something without wires and metal.

Finally, their task done, the Senshi lowered their arms. They had no business stopping, but they couldn’t help but stare at what they had done. Mars walked forward gingerly, laying a tentative hand on the jagged crystal, looking at the queen so serenely posed from within. She looked like a doll or a wax figure, not a living thing.

“Were we in time?” she asked roughly, her voice rasping. “Is she—"

“Yes,” Mercury assured her, already putting the computer away again. “Her vitals are fine. She’s just… asleep.”

“Nothing changed,” Mars murmured, echoing Jupiter’s words from a few minutes before. “All that work, and she’s still gone.”

Jupiter opened her mouth to speak when that damn purple light colored their features. Mars shouted in pain as a thousand explosions went off around them. She didn’t move, using her body as a shield for her queen. Venus had to pull her down, shouting that Serenity was already protected.

When it was over, they were each badly battered from the assault. Prostrate on the ground, they each turned to see who had attacked them, and Mars saw red. Not because of the Akayashi sisters lined up in their colorful row. Not because of the smug look on Cooan’s irritatingly young face. But because of Rubeus at its center, a smile twisted onto his bloodthirsty lips.

Mars snarled and moved to attack in the same instant the others did, but a joint bolt of power from Cooan, Beruche, and Petz laid them flat again. Stunned and disoriented, Mars could only listen to what followed.

“Get inside,” Rubeus ordered just loud enough for them to hear. “Get the Rabbit.”

Then they all vanished in a group teleport, revealing the wall of droids behind them. The mindless drones surged forward, an impenetrable wall ready to crash down.

None of them were well enough now to fight. Physically, they should have stayed down. But the memory of the fallen ones, the sorrow of the sleeping queen, and the endangered princess, drove them each to their feet before the droids hit. No one gave the order for the attack. No one even suggested it. They simply knew what must be done, and all four of them twirled in mirrored choreography, the dance of destruction.

“SAILOR PLANET ATTACK!”

For the briefest of moments, multi-colored lights flew forward. They spiraled in the air, twisting together, cutting through the air like neon. Then the light flattened out and mowed all of the droids down, destroying an innumerable amount of them while passing through the Crystal Guard and the Army of Earth, leaving their soldiers without a scratch.

The Sailor Senshi allowed themselves three seconds before springing into action.

“I’ll take the East Wing route,” Venus murmured harshly.

“We’re sure she’ll go there?” Jupiter asked, already staggering up the stairs.

Mars just snorted, heading west. “Nothing else has gone any differently. Why should that?”

“Besides,” Mercury added, bringing up the rear, “where else can she go?”

-----

Endymion hung his head as he watched the clear crystal form to shield his wife’s body from the blast. He had known this might happen, had realized from talking with Pluto that all their efforts might be in vain. But he had hoped with every cell in his body that he might save her from that long sleep. He could think of nothing more terrible for her then being trapped in slumber while her family fought around her. He had wanted her awake and with him through whatever came for them.

And he wanted Haruka and Michiru with him too.

He squeezed his eyes shut as every muscle in his body tensed. He hadn’t been able to properly mourn them, hadn’t been able to make sense of their death. And now his wife would sleep for who knew how long, and when she woke, her grief would be fresh and raw while his was a dull ache. War was never fair. He knew that. But they seemed to be shouldering more than their fair share.

White noise assaulted his ears, pulling him straight as if there was a string tied to his spine. At first he thought perhaps Umino had set the energy gun to a noise beam, but then he saw the static on the wide screen. Puzzled, he leaned forward and fiddled with a number of the dials.

Then Demando’s face – over and over again Demando’s face – filled every inch of the screen. Hundreds of twisted, violet eyes bore into him. Endymion was so shocked and enraged that he almost didn’t notice Demando’s lips moving, almost didn’t hear his voice.

“Good-bye, Endymion.”

Light overwhelmed his senses. Endymion shouted, throwing himself as far away from the panel as possible, covering his eyes with his cloak. But no amount of shielding could have protected him from the power that came through the computer screen. It crashed into his body, a tidal wave of energy. He drowned in it as it burned him, and he froze as it scorched. He felt bones shatter, felt his skin split open. His head felt as though it had been run over by a truck.

Finally, the assault passed. He struggled to get to his knees, and once there, found he couldn’t hold himself up and collapsed again. He turned his head to screen and was shocked to discover it hadn’t been destroyed. The video continued to play unabated as if nothing had ever happened.

But that was the art of Demando’s cruelty.

Gritting his teeth, Endymion forced his eyes to remain open and held on to his tenuous grip on consciousness, watching the remainder of the battle unfold at the forbidden doorway.

-----

Despite the fact that she hadn’t taken the most direct route, despite the fact that droids had poured in to block her path, and despite the fact that her left knee exploded with every step, Venus arrived at the door to the Fourth Dimension before the other Senshi. She did not, however, get there before Rubeus and the Akayashi sisters.

Rubeus had just finished throwing an attack at the door while the sisters remained off to the side, ready to charge if the doors fell in or snatch Chibi-Usa if she tried to bolt. He hunched over, hands on his knees and panting wildly. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she imagined them well enough. She saw them in her mind just as she had seen them on the screen while he tortured and murdered Haruka and Michiru. She saw every movement, every grimace as she had watched every tiny cut he had inflicted on their bodies. She had watched it all and said that they deserved a witness, but that wasn’t entirely true.

She wanted to see everything so that her fury would be unstoppable, so that she could rip him apart with her bare hands with no mercy and no remorse.

Venus didn’t slow her pace as she burst into the hallway, rushing past the four sisters in a gold blur. She leapt on Rubeus without thinking, driving her thumbs into his eyes and sending small bursts of power from her tiara into his body. He bellowed in murderous rage and pain and tossed her off as if she weighed nothing at all. She performed an artful flip in the air, landing lightly on her good leg.

She looked at him with unshielded hatred. “You’ve taken enough from us today,” she whispered, fighting to hold back the tears he would taunt as being weakness. “You won’t take our princess.”

Moments later, Mercury, Jupiter, and Mars appeared from the routes they had taken, flanking her left and right. Venus basked in their god-like ferocity, drawing strength from the power of their grief. They were outnumbered, but she felt confident now that this they could change. They could make sure Rubeus and the sisters never made it to Tokyo in the past. They could kill them before they got the chance.

Rubeus’s blood come to a boil as his senses sharpened for the kill. Blue fire spring from Cooan’s fingertips. Beruche’s braid swayed back and forth, blown by an unseen wind that chilled them to the bone. Lightning the color of night crackled around Petz’s palms. Karaberas cracked her whip in vexation, itching to lash it against an unexposed back.

“Go,” Venus said.

The four Senshi charged at the same moment their five opponents launched their respective attacks. Explosions sounded off the corridor as Rubeus unleashed his power, while Cooan’s fire and Petz’s lightning filled the hallway. Mars and Jupiter answered with their own elements, cutting those powers down and pushing through for the kill. Mercury and Beruche squared off in a corner, and soon the whole area was covered in a sheet of fine ice. Venus deftly avoided Karaberas’s relentless whip and then landed a kick in her midsection, bruising a rib and propelling her into a wall.

The struggle between the groups seemed endless. They changed partners time and again, spinning left and right to avoid the assault and to launch their own in equal measure. The scent of blood filled the air, fine mists and sprays decorating the once pristine walls. By all accounts, none of them should have been able to stay on their feet, but they fought on and on, desperate to make the first kill.

Finally, Venus managed to lay Beruche out, giving her a moment to breathe. She turned to see how the others were faring and saw Rubeus reaching for Jupiter’s head. She knew in an instant what he was going to do, envisioned him twisting her head around until her neck snapped, and she screamed.

Before taking aim and before even considering what she was about to do, Venus let her Love-Me Chain fly from her outstretched fingers. The gold metal sang as it shot through the air, a straight, taut line – a missile strike. She watched as the chain failed to wrap around his shoulders, a tactic she usually favored. She watched as it drove through the right side of his chest, mere inches away from his heart.

He let out a guttural croak as the wind from the now collapsed lung rushed out of his throat. In an instant, all four of his subordinates stopped what they were doing, shouting, “Master Rubeus!” with various pitches and inflections. They rushed forward as he fell back, supported by their thin, muscular arms.

Venus held on to the chain and watched as he stared at her with unrestrained hatred, the likes of which she knew he had never looked at her with before. And in that moment, she realized at least one thing had changed.

“Retreat,” Rubeus hissed in disgust. Within moments, purple light sprang up around them and all five retreated to the Black Moon stronghold, wherever that may have been. Venus’s chain fell to the floor with a clatter, dripping with blood black and shining red, like the edges of a nebula.

A few inches. Just a few inches from his heart and it would have been over.

“Mercury,” Mars whispered quietly, “go see if Chibi-Usa made it out.”

Venus felt their eyes on her, concerned and maybe a little afraid. She didn’t want to think of how she looked. Crazed and thwarted she assumed.

A few inches. Just a few inches to the left.

Mercury never made it into the fourth dimension. Just before she laid her palm against the battered door, it swung open and Pluto stood on the threshold. Her crimson eyes were shadowed with ghosts of the past and whispers of the future.

“Small Lady,” Jupiter blurted, reverting to the title in front of the Guardian. “Is she all right?”

Pluto’s lips were pressed tightly together, and her nod was stiff, but it didn’t change the answer. Chibi-Usa was safe. She had retreated to the safe harbor of their past, and no one would touch her there. Rubeus and the others would chase her all they wanted, but they would never have her. Their past selves would make sure of that. The others sagged in relief. Venus remained at attention.

“A few inches,” she said to Pluto. “Just a few inches to the left.”

“I know,” Pluto said in the midnight velvet voice they had come to know so well. But with a face she did not recognize, an expression alien to the soldier of time. It took Venus a moment in her bloody haze to realize what it was.

Confusion. Which meant that in point of fact, Pluto did not know.

Venus had neither the time nor the desire to untangle that mystery.

“Come on,” Mars said, her voice surprisingly gentle as she laid a soft hand to the small of Venus’s back. “We have to get to the crystal tower. We have to form the shield.”

Venus didn’t move.

“Minako,” Mars said with a bit more force. “He’ll get what’s coming.”

“But not from me,” she whispered, truly sorry for it.

“No,” Mars agreed. “Not from any of us.”

Venus longed to rail against that injustice, but Mars was right. Duty had to come before vengeance. People were dying, and the only thing that would save them was the shield that would surround the Crystal Palace. Mercury had designed it to let their allies in and out, but it would annihilate any Black Moon Rebels who dared to brush against it. It was their final, desperate defense, and the only one they truly had. Without the power of the Ginzuishou behind them, there was little they could do to defend the city before it collapsed.

And so Venus moved, running for the last time with her three sister-soldiers, running for the keep and the crystal tower, running towards the future and the destiny she had hoped to avoid.

In a few steps, she’d forgotten all about Pluto and that strange look on her face.

-----

Endymion gazed longingly at the body of his wife, yearning to look into her eyes almost as much as he yearned to be able to lay his hand on her crystal cage. He turned to briefly look at his hand, his heart sinking at its continued translucence and then turned back to Serenity again. Not needing to sleep, eat, or rest, he had stood constant vigil for the past forty-eight hours.

He had woken up one day after the Sailor Senshi retreated to the palace’s inner sanctum to form a ring around the tower that would defend the palace from further attack. They were hidden deep beneath the Earth, and though he knew where they were, he would not have been able to enter. Only the four Senshi were allowed in that place. Not even his wife could have gone there had she had the power to move.

He clutched the non-existent staff in his non-existent hand.

All their efforts had been in vain. Oh, yes. Some things had changed, but none of them for the better. As best as he had been able to tell a thousand years earlier, Demando had not fallen in love with Serenity until the moment he chose to attack her. He had looked into those eyes, seen her defiance, and craved her. That, Endymion now realized, had been the real reason why he had sent Rubeus back into the past. He may have built up other logistical motives, but in reality, he had suspected that Sailor Moon and Serenity were one in the same. He could not have Serenity due to his own transgressions, so he had wanted her younger self. His search for his daughter had been nothing more than collateral, leverage to get what he wanted. This time around, they had fixed it so that Demando loved Serenity from the time he was fourteen, giving him years to nurture the obsession that threatened to bring them to their knees.

So Demando had not attacked her. But still, Serenity fell. Still she slept, trapped in the crystal chamber that kept her alive but kept them apart. Still she slept, unaware of the passage of time.

He grieved for her loss as if she had died, but it felt like a death. For that matter, he felt like he had died. Palace staff and the rest of Crystal Tokyo had been shuttled off to the safe houses far away from the battle grounds. The surviving warriors remained at the palace, but they never ventured inside. They were distrustful of the barrier and remained poised and ready to fight back the onslaught should it ever weaken. The Senshi were in the keep. His wife slept. And he wandered around without body and without form, a ghost haunting the remnants of his past.

For the first time in his life, Endymion felt truly helpless. There was nothing he could do. Without a body, he could not act no matter how sharp his mind was. He was trapped in a medically induced coma, his body too weak to heal in a wakeful state. All he could do was stand vigil. All he could do was wait.

He had no idea when his past self would arrive with the Sailor Senshi, Sailor Moon, and his precious daughter. Mamoru had not been able to discern that much from the brief time he had walked these halls, solid and whole. But he would wait for them all the same. He would not move from this spot until he sensed their presence in this time. Then he would lead them back to the palace, then he would tell them what he knew, then he would take back his daughter and know what it felt like to want nothing more than to hold her in his arms and be unable.

He tried to tell himself that they could not have changed that much. He tried to tell himself that it had been worth the risk to actively alter the future. He tried to tell himself that Haruka and Michiru’s sacrifice had been worth something, that somehow their deaths had brought some good into the world. He tried to tell himself that their actions would not somehow prevent the past and future from colliding. But with each passing second, minute, hour, and day, his hope would wane just a little bit.

He did not know what he would do if no angel came.




AUTHOR’S NOTES

You know, if I had known that it would take me all of two days to finish the first draft of this chapter, I would have written this damn thing a year ago. Then again, I doubt I could have written this a year ago, so it’s probably moot.

I am so very sorry that this took a year to come to life. 2008 was just… really crappy. I got almost nothing done in fandom, and I’d really prefer to just forget about how depressingly unproductive I was. But! Now I am back in the saddle so to speak and I’m pretty sure I’ve written more in the past three months than all of 2008. So yay.

Now then, for those of you who are confused by some of the changes in this chapter, although me to explain my theory of time for you because though I allude to it in the interlude, I’m not sure how coherent it is. For that matter, I’m not sure how coherent this will be, but we’re going to give it a go.

For argument’s sake, let us say that the story of Crystal Tokyo has happened three times. The first time, only the first season happened. Sailor Moon and company did not know they would one day form Crystal Tokyo, so imagine their surprise when they’re off ruling the world. And imagine that they have absolutely no idea that Demando and the Black Moon even exist so when that future comes, that’s all new to them.

Then Rubeus and the sisters go back into the past and the events basically play out as they did in the anime. However, for the future Chibi-Usa continually comes from, S, SuperS, and Stars never happen, so Hotaru and the other Outer Senshi, minus Pluto of course, aren’t around because they had no reason to be around. Sailor Moon and company go through R and the subsequent seasons until the Great Ice happens again and Crystal Tokyo is created.

So this is the third time it’s happened in the infinite number time cycles. Now they know what’s going to happen, so they try to prevent it. So that’s why minor things, like Demando not actually attacking Serenity, everybody calling the princess Chibi-Usa, and Rubeus being all blood thirsty for Minako, come to pass. And this time, they have the Outer Senshi at their disposal, so they use them. (For those who are wondering about Hotaru by the way, I feel like the Senshi of Death would have an aversion to immortality and going against the circle of life and all that jazz, so she opts not to be reborn while Sailor Moon is beginning the events that will culminate in the reawakening of Tokyo.) My kinder explanation of where the Outers are usually tends to be that they’re off doing their job and guarding the outer realms of the solar system. However, I’m kind of a cruel person, so I went with this. xD

And that’s pretty much where we are with this interlude. Hopefully that made some small measure of sense.

Thanks as always to my loverly beta, Yumeko, for agreeing to put up with my twisty, twisty plotlines and rambling emails as precursors to these chapters ridden with typos and plot holes. And another big thank you to all my readers, especially Kasey who never lets me forget that I’m the only one who actually knows what’s going to happen and it’s not fair to leave everyone hanging. On that note, I sincerely hope that it is not another year before I update this again. Happy trails!



Coming Soon – Part Eleven: Sinner/Saint

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