The Black Moon Crisis began on May 25, 2986.  A small planetoid --
which we later learned was called Nemesis, appropriately enough --
materialized between Earth and the Moon, high over Crystal Tokyo.  
Perhaps, if there had been time, astronomers would have recognized it as
the planetoid to which many of the leaders of Earth's nations before the
Unification had gone into exile after the end of the War.  Or maybe it had
been warped so much by its two century exile into the Negaverse that it
was unrecognizable.

	The attack began two hours later.

	Hundreds of small fightercraft dropped down into Earth's
atmosphere, and began their assault on Crystal Tokyo.  The citizens of the
capitol headed to their emergency shelters and waited for the devastating
response of the city's magical defenses, fully expecting to see the
invaders blasted by the incredible light of the Silver Crystal.

	It didn't happen.

	Less than an hour after the attack, most of the city outside the
Palace complex had been blasted to rubble.  The Palace itself was being
shielded by a field of radiant energy generated by the four Inner Senshi.
Nobody knew where the Queen, the Prince, or the Crown Princess were, or if
they were even alive.

	The First Fleet of the Royal Space Force immediately launched an
assault on Nemesis, and were cut to ribbons.  Over sixty percent of the
capitol ships were annihilated, and an absurd number of Mobile Suits as
well.  Space Battleship Mihoshi, which had been crippled before it could
fire its core cannon, was able to retreat with what was left of the fleet
to Utopia Planitia.  Oddly, the Nemesis forces didn't pursue.

	That was the one odd thing about the Black Moon strategy.  They
were entirely focused on Crystal Tokyo.  The other major population
centers of Earth reported occasional sightings of scoutcraft, "spying out
the land", as it were, but they were left alone ... as long as they made
no attempt to engage.  The Australian sector forces made the fatal mistake
of shooting down one of the Black Moon's spies, prompting a retributory
bombardment from Nemesis that annihilated most of Sydney.

	Fortunately, their obsession made them dramatically resistant to
any offers to join forces with any of the other powers which had been
opposed to us.  The Venerian ambassador that was dispatched to negotiate
with "the undisputed new rulers of Earth" was teleported back to the
Corporate Board Room on Venus a few minutes after his arrival on Nemesis.

	In twenty seven pieces.  One by one.

	We never found out what happened to the Centauri ambassador.
Perhaps that's for the best.

	And that's how it lasted, for a month.  The Black Moon forces kept
testing the strength of the energy field, patroled the ruins of the city,
and seemed to be almost waiting for a sign.  They *were*, but no one knew
about that but the four people left in the Palace, and they weren't
talking.	

	It had been over a month since the invasion, over a month since
the sun had shone on Crystal Tokyo.  The Black Moon was generating a
shield high in the atmosphere that kept out the sunlight, and also
interfering with the weather to produce heavy cloud cover.  Snow in the
middle of summer.

	It was on June 27 that the final meeting of the Crystal Tokyo
Resistance Forces was held.

	I remember it very well.


                      An Inevitable Outcome Feature

                           Written and Directed
                           by C. Richard Davies

                        The Further Adventures Of
                              SHEILA TENKAI

                               Chapter One:
                          "Before Dawn; Descent"

(OP Sequence:  Images of Sheila -- of course -- Erica, Michelle, Ryouko
Mizuno, and the Inner Senshi flashing past in a frenetic, music videolike
atmosphere, while a sped-up version of Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything
For Love (But I Won't Do That)" plays.  The final image, over the lines 

   But I'll never stop dreaming of you every night of my life, no way.
   And I would do anything for love, oh I would do anything for love
   I would do anything for love, but I won't do that, no I won't do that.

is of Sheila, leaning against a picture window through which we can see
Twentieth Century Tokyo.  We pull away from the window to see that she is
standing a floor beneath where Erica and Michelle stand, holding each
other closely.)

	The ruler of the Crystal Realm for the duration of the crisis
eased herself into her chair, mindful of her leg, which had been broken
within a few days of the invasion's beginning.  She stared at the
assembled freedom fighters for a moment before she spoke.  I could guess
what she was thinking -- "Weren't there more people in this room a few
days ago?".  And there had been, but the last few days had been ... hard
on our personnel.

	"All right," she said in an unusually calm voice.  "I guess
everyone's here that's going to be here."

	"Yes, your Majesty," agreed Sylia Stingray, an odd smile on her
face.

	"Awfergodsake, quit calling me that!" yelled Queen-Pro-Tem
Priscilla Serena Asagiri, Soldier of the Light and Defender of Humanity.

	Almost everyone got a chuckle out of that.  Maybe the two of them
had known that would happen, and that had been why they'd done it.  I
didn't laugh, or even crack a smile.  I was in no mood to listen to my
former lover's jokes while my *current* lover was missing, and possibly
in serious danger.

	The fact that Serenity had named Priss as her heir in the event
that both she and Small Lady were both incapacitated had come as a serious
shock to everyone concerned, especially the Palladin herself.  It had been
written into the Constitutional Acts not long after the former Knight
Sabre had been drawn out of suspension.  Theoretically, in order for her
to actually *hold* the throne, Priss would have had to have been confirmed
by a substantial majority of the population in a referrendum ... but under
the circumstances, we weren't really concerned with that.

	After the laughter died down, Priss looked at our "security".
"Are you completely certain about this place's wards?"

	Lina ran a hand through her unruly carrot-like hair, pushing it
out of her frustrated face.  "I'm as sure as I *can* be, given the
givens," she bit out in her kazoo-like voice.  "These baka don't play by
the rules I'm used to, any more than the Silver Queen does."  The
temporally and dimensionally stranded wizard, who had yet to become the
Inverted Wizard of Earth legend, was well-known for her frequent rants
about how magick wasn't supposed to work in the ways that Serenity and the
others made it work.  Most people just avoided her when she was in that
sort of a mood.

	"Right," Priss sighed.  "Okay, here's the way it lies.  We managed
to get a tight beam communication in and out of the Black Moon's jamming,
to the Space Force's temporary command center at Cheyenne.  Penda?"

	The resistance's communications officer, a middle-aged African
woman with bluish-white hair, stood up, and adressed us.  "The Space Force
has allied with all the space capable Martian Principalities.  The
Mercurians have also joined their forces, as have most of the Jovian
moons.  Jurai has sent a small fleet of White Star corvettes.  Apparently,
they've got troubles of their own, so that's all we can expect for the
time being."  She paused to let the idea sink in.  "So there's a rather
large armada in orbit over Graviton City, waiting for a signal from the
Queen."

	"In conjunction with the RSF command, we've come up with a plan
that has ..." Priss paused.  "No, I'm not gonna lie to you guys.  I don't
know whether this is the most idiotic plan that's ever been concieved, but
it comes damn close.  But apparently, it has *some* chance of success.
Bring up the display."

	A hologram of Nemesis, with a marker reading "THEORIZED STRUCTURE
OF PLANETOID, BASED ON SCANS" beneath it, materialized over the conference
room table.  "Apparently, the biggest mistake that Serenity made in
dealing with these bozos -- aside from not just offing them when they
refused to submit two centuries back --"  There was a lot of uncomfortable
rustling in the audience.  Priss' harder edge was a bit more disquieting
as a queen than it was when she was only a test pilot.  "-- was to hold
off on attacking them in the two hours after they defolded.  They were
basically helpless at that point."

	"Makes sense," Lina stated.  "Any kind of dimensional travel takes
a lot out of whatever's powering it.  I should know."

	Priss nodded.  "The problem is that we don't have a way to go back
in time and warn them.  Crystal Tokyo's Time Gate has been closed since
the beginning of the bombardment, and nobody's seen Sailor Pluto since
then either."  She paused.  "But there's another way."

	The detail drawing of Nemesis closed on the image of the single
large city on the planetoid, drawing in on a pair of pillars.  "The Black
Moon Family has a Time Gate of their own."

	As you might expect, this caused an uproar.

	"Just one damn minute!" I shouted, managing to express what
everyone in the room was feeling.  "If they can travel in time, then ...
then ..."

	"... then none of this should be happening, and they should simply
have gone back to just before the Unification War and prevented Serenity
from ever gaining power," Ritsuko interrupted.  I shot a look at my
"cousin" even as I nodded in agreement.  That had sounded suspiciously
prepared ...

	"Correct," Sylia agreed.  "However, it is possible that they don't
realize that they can do that."  

	Allegedly, Sylia had gone so far as to basically interrogate Lady
Pluto at one point, when she believed that a time-traveller might be
involved in one of her cases.  The detective had more experience with
time travel than anyone else present, with the exception of Lina, who
repeatedly declined to discuss her own experiences.  It showed as she
continued.  "According to what we know of time travel, the past *cannot*
be changed, while the future is eternally amorphous, constantly changing
by what happens in what Pluto called, 'the now'.  The problem with this
theory is that it isn't logically consistent.  The year 3025, for example,
is simultaneously *our* future, 'the now' of those living then, and the
past of those living in the year 3026."

	"Optimist," muttered someone in the back of the room.

	Sylia ignored the mutterer.  "If I were to travel to 3025, and
observe, for example, a man finally dying as the result of an injury he
received the day after I had gone forward, according to the theory of time
travel as known to us at this point, it would be possible for me to then
return to that day, and prevent the injury.  But it would NOT be possible
for a person from that point in the future to travel back and do so."
A pause.  "But what if we were to both return, and cooperate?"

	Sylia gave us all a moment to work our way around the concept.  I
got it a moment after Ritsuko began to speak.  "Dr. Stingray --"

	"Ms."

	"Ms. Stingray, are you proposing that we use the timegate to go
back to a point just prior to the invasion, seize someone, and bring him
or her forward to show them what has occured because of it ... and then
return him/her to his/her original timeframe."

	"Correct," Sylia said with a short nod.  "According to our
intelligence, during the two hours after Nemesis defolded, it was
essentially dead in space.  Had the Royal Space Force launched an all-out
assault during that point, it would almost certainly have altered the
course of the invasion."

	"So here's the plan," Priss took over.  "The Armada will make a
diffuse assault on Nemesis, to provide cover for the insertion of a small
strike team, which will then seize the planetoid's timegate, go back in
time -- maybe a few months, maybe a couple years -- and snatch someone in
authority.  Ideally, the team will be able to use Crystal Tokyo's *own*
timegate to get back home."

	"Wait a minute," interjected a woman I didn't recognize.  "Doesn't
Lady Pluto prevent any attempts to use the timegate?"

	"We're hoping she'll understand that the survival of the human
race is at stake," Priss said dryly.  "But if she doesn't ..."

	Priss trailed off, and rubbed her forehead.  Maybe it was only my
imagination, but I thought I could see the beginnings of gray in her hair.
Like all humans of this age, she would enjoy a lifespan measured in scores
of years, if not longer due to her exposure to the power of the Silver
Crystal years ago.  But at that moment, she looked ... very old, and very
fragile, and for an exceedingly short interval, I wanted to hold her in my
arms so that she could rest.

	It passed, though, and a moment later she reminded us all that
steel is gray, too.  "It's important to realize that this is a suicide
mission, troops," she said quietly.  "If we're successful, there won't be
anywhere for you to come back to."  She paused.  "Under those
circumstances, anything goes.  Sailor Pluto is the guardian of the gates
of time, so commissioned by my predecessor and her predecessor before her.
Her job is to protect the timeline from unauthorized intrusion.  This is
an authorized intrusion.  If she prevents you from completing the mission,
remind her of this."  She fell silent for a moment.

	"If she won't stand aside after that, kill her."

	The entire room was silent after that.

	"Like I said," Priss said into the silence a moment later,
"anything goes."  She paused.  "It's a volunteer-only mission.  Seven 
operatives.  We'll need one qualified MS pilot, but other than that,
anyone who wants in can go."

	"You've got your pilot," said Noa Izumi, standing up as she did.

	Priss blinked.  "I thought you drove labors?"

	"I'm qualified to pilot light mobile suits and cutters.  That is
what we're using, right?"  Her face and tone were level.

	Priss smiled her crooked little grin.  "Yep."

	"Also, this sort of thing almost requires a thought controlled
mecha, right?"  Noa did a quick scan of the crowd.  "Last time I checked,
I had the highest synchro rating of anyone in the room."

	"Right.  Who else --"

	"Uh, just a minute," I said.

	"Yeah, Sheila?" Priss asked me.

	"I've got a couple questions about all this.  Number 1, how in
hell did you get this information on the Nemesis timegate?"

	Priss was silent, staring at me with those deep red eyes that you
could almost drown in ... I stopped myself from thinking along that path,
down which lay madness.

	"Answer 1," she replied in the same tone after a moment, "it was
on the data disc that Serenity left me, the same one with the military
command codes and ... other things."

	This provoked a mild uproar.  "WHAT?  How the hell did she --" I
shouted over it.

	"Answer 1 continued," Priss replied without raising her voice, "I
don't know."

	Very unsatisfied, I resumed after the room quieted.  "Number 2,
how in heaven's name are you going to launch a cutter from Crystal Tokyo?
The Black Moon have been shooting down every single aerospace craft that
comes near this place since they landed."

	*Now* Priss looked uncomfortable.  "Answer 2 ... is the other half
of the plan."  She coughed, probably to give herself time to gather her
thoughts.  "In conjunction with the RSF's assault on Nemesis, the remains
of the Planetary Defense Forces will be launching an attack on the Black
Moon's base here -- again, to cover both the launching of the strike team
in a cutter which will be deposited for us by the PDF ... and the
evacuation."

	"Evacuation?" Ritsuko asked, sounding confused ... too confused
for it to be an act.  I began to re-evaluate my earlier opinion of her.

	Priss was clearly not happy as she explained.  "The minute
Cheyenne discovered that I was alive, they started pressing to get 'My
Majesty' out of here and somewhere safe.  They wouldn't agree to any of
our plans without that consideration."  She let out a long exasperated
sigh.  "So I held out, and insisted that if they evacuate me, they
evacuate everyone else who wants to get out of Crystal Tokyo at the same
time.  They agreed."

	That provoked yet another uproar.

	"Pipe DOWN!" Priss roared.  Silence slowly descended.  "If you
think I'm happy about this, you're dead wrong.  I want to be right here,
at the front lines.  But ... god I never saw myself saying *this*," she
muttered, then resumed in a normal speaking voice.  "With Serenity gone,
my life doesn't belong to me anymore."

	She was silent for a long moment.  "They want to do the operation
tomorrow, at dawn.  Do we go along with it, or try and come up with
something else?"

	The debate began in earnest at that point.  As tempting as it was
to try and make a record of just who said what, I became convinced fairly
early on into it that I'd go nuts if I tried.  So I set down the data pad
into which I'd been entering the minutes of the meeting and rested my
fingers for the moment.

	Just then, a little kid, whom I immediately recognized as one of
Ritsuko's kids that was supposed be down in the nursery/infirmirary, came
trotting up to the door to the conference room. He scanned the chamber
until his eyes lit on me, and saw that I was staring back at him.  Then he
beckoned me to come over.  I got up and headed over to him.

	"Hi," I said softly, "you're Balthshazar, right?"  He was the
nervous one of Ritsuko's most recent parenting experience.

	He nodded.

	"What's up?"

	"Catty-sensei said I should come get you."

	I blinked.  "Did she say why?"

	"She ... she only said it wouldn't matter if you hurried or not."

	I was dumb.  I didn't think of the only reason that a doctor might
send a frightened little kid up to get me and tell me that it wasn't
important to hurry.

	Or maybe I just didn't want to think about ...

	"Okay," I said to Balthshazar, "then let's go down together?"

	I gave him a piggyback ride, even though he was a little too bulky
for that sort of thing.  He was actually smiling a little at the end of
it.  That made it worth it, I think.

	"Hey, Catty, what's happening?" I asked.

	She didn't look at me.  I was so stupid.  She smiled down at
Balthshazar.  "You did very well, Urawa-kun.  Now, go back and play with
your sibs, all right?"

	He bowed, and ran off in the direction of the noise of children
playing.  I watched him run for a bit, then turned back to see Catty
looking at me with the bleakest expression that I'd ever seen on her face.

	"Catty, what's --"

	"We found her, Sheila."

	My heart stopped.  "But ... why ... why wouldn't it matter if I
hurried ..."

	And I knew.

	Catty gently led me into the cold room, which had been used as a
cellar, where they'd put her.  She was laid out on a table, a towel draped
over the lower parts of her body.  I tried to not see the little bits
under the towel that hinted at *wrongness* about that body, gazing instead
at her face.

	The midnight of her hair hung loosely on her face, the bangs
forming the little heart that had been so popular so popular a fashion
amongst the younger set of Crystal Tokyo.  Her eyes were closed, of
course.  And its animation, its laughter, and everything else about her
face that I'd loved was gone.

	She was gone.

	"Misa-chan," I said.

	I became aware of tears on my cheek.

	It was my last conscious thought for quite some time.

	I regained consciousness lying on a table in the infirmary,
strapped down with my head full of fuzz.  Catty was applying something to
a part of her arm where the flesh covering had been torn away.  She didn't
meet my eyes.  "I was ... compelled to give you a sedative.  You were
behaving quite irrationally."

	"How?" I asked.

	"I don't understand the question," she lied.

	"How?" I repeated, staring at her.

	"Sheila, it --"

	"How?" I asked, beginning to feel a bit put out.

	"No, Sheila.  I --"

	"How?" I demanded angrily.

	"Please."

	"HOW?"

	"Sheila, you don't WANT --"

	I snapped the straps that were holding my left arm down, grabbed
her arm that wasn't in the process of regrowing its covering, and applied
a gentle grasp.  "You have an obligation to inform me, as her designated
next-of-kin, of the circumstances of her death.  Please tell me how my
lover was killed," I said in a nice, calm tone.

	She stared at me with a sad, hurt expression for a moment, then
closed her eyes.  When they opened --

	Human beings can pretend to not feel emotions, but only true
sociopaths really don't.  However, since emotional capability in 
artificial intelligences is a function of a certain *specific* part of the
brain, and since androids of Catty's type can shut down certain parts of
their brain without impairing their functions, they can be, if they choose
to be, completely emotionless.  Catty had never done so to the best of my
knowledge, as she believed it detrimental to her formation of an effective
bedside manner.

	I deserved what happened next.

	-- her eyes were cold.  "You are causing damage to my arm.  Please
stop."

	I let go of her arm.  She considered her wrist, making brief
comments in the odd language that she used at times.  The language of her
first creators.

	After a moment, she began to speak as though she were reading from
a medical examination.

	A minute later, I asked her to stop.

	Another minute later, I was begging her to stop.

	Then the tears came again, and she simply raised her voice to make
sure that I could hear over them.

	She ended it, closed her eyes, and then opened them with a sick,
heartbroken expression.  "I ... I am sorry," she whispered, turning away.

	I don't know how it was that I heard that.  I was too busy sobbing
in anguish over what they'd done to her.  What they were doing to us.

	A week before, not long before Misa had gone missing, I'd awakened
from a nightmare where we had finally defeated or driven off the Black
Moon, only to discover that they hadn't just caused a solar eclipse over
the planet, they'd found a way to kill the sun, and we would be facing an
eternity of cold darkness.

	That was how I felt right then.

	I don't know how long I sobbed before I felt the strong but gentle
arms holding me.  Her scent hadn't changed much over the fifty years
since it had all gone wrong.

	It's strange.  Whenever I cry alone, it lasts a long while, but I
generally find myself feeling only a little bit weaker than when someone
holds me as I cry, which causes me to feel very weak at the end, but
doesn't last very long.  I don't know why that is.

	Anyway, after a few moments, I could pull away and look up at her.
Those gorgeous red-brown eyes, the ones you could drown in, were looking
at me with so much ... gentleness ... that I could almost believe that she
really was related to the Queen somehow.

	I found myself reaching up with half-formed images of kissing her
on my mind ... but she stopped me.  "You'll regret it," she said.

	I nodded.  If she and I could ever have made it work ... I had
sabotaged any way it could happen, a long time ago.

	"She ... she seemed like a good person," Priss said, taking a step
back.  "And she --"

	"-- was selfish, lazy, and slovenly ... and I've never felt closer
to heaven than when I was in her arms," I said quietly.

	She nodded.  "She loved you a lot.  I could tell.  She --"

	"I want in on the mission."

	Priss closed her eyes, muttered "No one ever interrupts Serenity,
why do they do it to *me*?", and then glared at me.  "I was gonna say, she
wouldn't have wanted you to throw your life away on a suicide mission."

	"The hell she wouldn't," I answered calmly.  "And besides ... if
we pull it off, she'll be alive, right?"

	"That's a *huge* fucking 'if'!"

	"I want in on the mission," I repeated.

	She stared at me for a long moment ... and then sighed.  "You're
in.  I'll tell Noa."  A brief pause.  "She's in charge, Sheila.  If she
tells you to do something, and it means not being able to scotch a Droid,
you do it, got me?"

	"I'll follow your example," I muttered.

	"Don't jerk me around!" she shouted, grabbing my shoulders.  "The
point of this exercise is *not* to die for Crystal Tokyo!  It is to get in
to the timegate so that *nobody* HAS to die for Crystal Tokyo!"  She
released me, breathing heavily.

	Very softly, she said, "Your mom hates me enough without you
getting killed on my watch."

	For a moment, I did nothing.  Then I nodded.

	"All right," she breathed.  "Do you want to hold the funeral
service before the mission takes off?"

	I shook my head.  "Are you really going to evacuate to Northam?"

	She nodded.

	I tried several times before the words came out.  "She wanted her
ashes to be spread over the San Andreas Fault.  If ... if the mission
doesn't pull off, would you --"

	"Right," she said.  Then, "Try to get some rest.  The balloon goes
up in just over eight hours."

	I nodded, lay down on the table, and closed my eyes.  I felt her
staring at me for a few moments, then heard her turn and walk away, the
door open, and close.

	The mission began at dawn.

	But there would be no dawn.

	I didn't sleep that night.

                             To Be Continued

(ED Sequence:  A reworking of "Heart Moving", the first Sailor Moon ED, 
over a red tinted background. We see a female figure whose hair is tied
back in a long ponytail kneeling beneath a tree, as a wind blows her
ponytail back at varying degrees of speed.)

Author's Notes

	Well *that* will do nothing to improve my reputation as a
"darkfic" writer.

	All right, in case it's not witheringly obvious, the next chapter
will see the mission that the Crystal Tokyo Resistance is attempting fail
*dramatically*, scattering the group throughout time.  Sheila will wind up
in Tokyo during her parents' lifetime, before she was born.

	I'd like to state right off the bat that while I have dropped
Sheila down a deep, dark hole, I fully intend to give her the chance to
climb out again.  As Priss realizes, Sheila is going in on this mission
without any regard for her own life.  Ultimately, the experiences she's
going to have will teach her just how precious and important her life
really is.

	Sheila is visually based on three key figures -- Eiko Megami,
better known as A-Ko; Hikaru Shidou, of the Magical Knights Rayearth; and
various images of Nikki Purvis, aka Jet Wolf of alt.fan.sailor-moon, that
have been drawn by those who admire her spirit.  Spiritually, she has
similarities to Rabby of Gall Force (and her "successors". ) and
Gabrielle, the "companion" of the Warrior Princess Xena.

	Her late girlfriend is visually based on Misato Katsuragi of Neon
Genesis Evangelion.  You may view what happened to her as my reaction to
the events of the conclusion of that story, or not, as you so choose.

	"Sailor Moon" was created by Naoko Takeuchi and brought to North
America by DiC.  "Bubblegum Crisis" was created by Toshimichi Suzuki and
others and brought to North America by AnimEigo.  "Mobile Police Patlabor"
was created by Yuuki Masami and brought to North America by U.S. Manga
Corps, Manga Video, and Viz Communications.  (BUY THE MANGA!)  "The
Slayers" was created by Hajime Kanzaka and brought to North America by
Software Sculptors.  "Gall Force" was created by Hideki Kakinuma and
brought to North America by U.S. Manga Corps.  I think I got everyone but
the cameos.  Sheila Tenkai and Ritsuko Urawa were created by Chris Davies,
deriving inspiration from a variety of sources.  This story, while
incorporating elements from these and other films and magazines, is
copyright 1997 by Chris Davies.

	Nobody sue me, okay?

Chris Davies, Advocate for Darkness, Part-Time Champion of Light.
"Damn it all, how am I supposed to sit here and wallow in self-pity and
disgust with all this racket going on?" -- Yuusaku Godai, Maison Ikkoku.
http://www.ualberta.ca/~cdavies/hmpage.html