Matthew Campbell wrote:

Mark Doherty wrote:

I'm Here to Help
by Mark Doherty(mdoherty@mailbox.uq.edu.au)

Chapter 3

Comments are always good to hear. Especially on an experiment like
this one.

Hey, since no one else is commenting on this, I thought I'd share a few
thoughts.

Me, too.

Previous parts are on my web page(http://www.tass.org/~mdoherty/index.html),
and at the Sailor Romance site. Or you can always e-mail me.

Read them.

Never before had I been so angry as at that moment. It was then that the
plan to 'purify' the people and to make Crystal Tokyo was announced, as

What does 'purifying' the people entail exactly?

A Final Solution.  According to nameless, the Black Moon clan did not leave
voluntarily, but was forcibly deported because they would not accept
Serenity's rule.

    - Entry in a small, half-burnt diary, which had been left in the
      ruins of Osaka. Dated, with an accuracy surprising for the time,
      2373.

You keep mentioning ruins and burned out buildings.  Yet at the same
time it seems like Serenity rules the entire world.  Is she just letting
everywhere except Crystal Tokyo go to hell?

                                * * *

That's a good question.  
 

He sighed, shook his head, and lowered his arm. "No, you're right. If
not me, then whom? There is no-one else to stop the madness of Serenity.
I cannot afford such selfishness." He leaned back against the tree again,

After a thousand years he still fights alone, eh?  Has he given up on
recruiting others or does no one else have any problem with Serenity?

The rebellion was crushed and all his friends were killed and/or deported.

The man blinked, watching the dwindling figure of the boy. "Not an attack."
he whispered. "Not a death or a horrible wrong. So much I have forgotten,
so much I wished I could forget. And yet, after over nine hundred years, I
still remember the time and place of my first kiss."

I really feel for poor 'nameless' here.  What do you say you let him
win and kill Serenity.  Yeah, that's it.  Do the unexpected and have
him actually win.  Time paradox?  He's not worried about some steenking
time paradox.

<Hums theme from _Terminator 2_>
 

The rebellion was over. My fellow rebels were either dead, exiled to space,
or, like Onyx, simply gone. Exile seemed to be my destiny too, after my
defeat at the final battle.

But I was too angry to let myself be exiled from my planet, after all that
had happened.

To think that at the mockery that was my 'trial'(more a public audience
with the 'Neo-queen'), they dared to act like exile was awe-inspiringly
merciful.

If being thrown off the planet that had born, raised, and supported you, if
being thrown off the planet that you fought time and time again to save and
protect, if being thrown off the planet that people died, DIED to help you
protect, if being thrown off your home planet, the planet you love is MERCY,
then by the GODS, never, EVER show any mercy to me AGAIN!

There's no mercy in planetary exile, none at all. To rip something as
precious as one's home from you is, as vulgar as the analogy is, like
rape of the soul.

It's the sort of thing I've come to expect from Serenity.

You *really* need to get someone else's POV in here sometime soon.  At
this point, I'm ready to join the rebellion myself.  'Nameless' paints
this horrible picture of Serenity, and without anyone to contradict, we
readers will assume he's totally correct.

For all we know, he may be right about her.  
 

    - Part of a set of journal entries kept in a small house in Western
      Europe. Dated from the late 2400s/early 2500s, the journals were
      severely age-damaged when found in 2761.

Is there some particular reason he abandons his journals everywhere?  If
he wants people to read them, just post some honest propaganda on the
internet.  If they're just for himself, why doesn't he store them
somewhere safe?

He seems to just write them down and leave them wherever.  It comes off as
forced, at least to me.

He slowly took off his sunglasses, placing them in his shirt's pocket.
"That was one of the few advantages of my long life. Not having to face
you all in the afterlife, of seeing the shame in your eyes..."

I'm not sure he should doubt himself this much.  A fanatic feels
absolute certainty in his cause, and thinks others should agree with
him.

Like I said, for all we know, he may be right.  Certainly his demeanor adds
credit to his claims.  Suppose Usagi has gone the way of Talia Winters, and
her body is inhabited by the spirit of an incredibly ancient and Vorlonlike
alien being.

Serenity, according to "nameless," wields absolute power.  She wields it with
great benevolence, but her words are Not To Be Questioned.  How many of us
would want to live under such a system of government?

The man winced, and whispered to his crystal "Gods, what a bunch of stupid
rubbish. Perhaps I should tell them to 'believe in the spirit of love' or
that 'good always triumphs over evil' while I'm at it. Still, what do you
think? All I need is some snappy clothes and a frontal lobotomy, and I
could be Endymion."

Hahahahahaha. :)  I love this guy.  Does he have something personal
against Endymion, or is he just unable to respect someone calling
himself Tuxedo Kamen.

He seems to despise him for taking up with Serenity immediately after Sailor
Moon's "death."

Sailor Moon threw her glowing tiara, disintegrating the youma.

"Huh, and they thought they had moral grounds to call me a killer? Still,

Good point.

Yes.

He couldn't stop laughing. He sat in the shadows of a building's roof,
letting the humour wash over him. "The... the look on her face!" he gasped,
between chortles. "Oh mercy, I haven't laughed like this in centuries!
Hahaa! Let's see her find a way to get even for this one!"

He really doesn't hate Rei, does he?  He hates Serenity and fights Rei
out of necessity, but he really doesn't hate her.

He may dislike her on a personal level, but he hasn't accused her of anything.
 
 

"...temple girl. He starts to approach her, but no! First, she whisks
away to fight, and he follows, ready to defend her from harm, finally
doing that duty tonight." Usagi gasped from her long supposition.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, Odango-atama!"

Obviously she hasn't heard this:  "Five cute girls fight evil in short skirts."

The man watched as a gigantic illusion of Jadeite appeared over the city,
challenging the Senshi to a fight at Narita airport. "Gods. That has to be
the stupidest waste of mystical energy I've seen in centuries."

Rather than attributing Jaedite's actions to stupidity, as so many
others have done, it might have been interesting to see 'Nameless'
present a brilliant rationalization for why Jaedite acted as he did.

Fine.  YOU come up with one.
 

He turned, and walked away from the fight. "Huh, to see all that energy
being wasted in such an unbelievably crass display of macho desperation.
It's enough to make me want to cry. I need to get away from this foolishness
for a while."

You know, this makes me look back on that episode with a whole new eye.
 Why the heck was Jaedite acting like that, anyway.  Just saying he's
stupid doesn't cut it.

Um... The writers are stupid?
 

+++++++++++++++++

Two days later, in a small village in northern Scotland, a green-haired
man approached the mayor, and, in slightly accented but otherwise perfect
English, said "I heard from the papers that you have a werewolf terrorising
this place. I can bet no-one believed you, no-one took you seriously."

"I believe you. I take you seriously. And I'm here to help you."

*This* is a vacation?  Say if he's still performing heroic deeds like
this in the future, how can the Senshi convince themselves he's so
totally evil?

Maybe... He described his lost love, Sapphire, as having "lycanthrope-like
abilities."  Perhaps he's looking for her.

I read a history book from Crystal Tokyo yesterday. It was heavily biased
in their side's favour, although that's no surprise. Still, I was
surprised to find that they allowed that maybe we rebels weren't
'completely' bad, that 'maybe', 'conceivably' we were actually fighting
because we thought our cause was right.

I suppose there's no way he's going to make it to the four weird
sisters.  Too bad.
        Let me make a few last general comments.  You need to explain
more on exactly why he hates Serenity.  Just give some concrete examples
of things she's done.  Also, is he the only rebel left in the future?

This is from chapter 2:

I was there at the final fights. 
I may have collapsed, completely drained of energy, before the very final
moments, but I was there. I saw the streets overrun with unnatural 
creatures, I saw friends and enemies unite against the common foe, I saw 
Sailor Moon die. I saw the enemy's master gloating, wreathed in flames. 
Flames!

The opponent, despite its vast power, had shown no ability or aptitude
to wield ice. It was a creature of fire, for pity's sake! It claimed to 
have been born out of a sun. It makes no sense that it would use ice as 
its final desperate blow, as the legends that have sprung up about the 
final fight claim.

On the other hand, it would have made perfect sense for Serenity to do it.
The Ginzuisho gave her the power, and ice is an enemy of flame. Since the
enemy's master had underlings attacking throughout the world, it might have
made sense to Serenity to utilise such a desperate attack. But for the
enemy to do it? No, no I really don't think so. I am not quite gullible
enough to believe that.

I'd like to know how he does at recruiting others to his cause.  How is
he viewed by those outside Crystal Tokyo.  A devil?  A hero?  Or
somewhere in between.  Finally, we really need another POV.  I'm
beginning to hate Serenity myself, simply because if 'Nameless' (who
obviously has a large core of decency beneath his obession) hates her,
well there must be some merit to his viewpoint.  That's why I'm asking
about the opinions of those outside Crystal Tokyo.  They're likely to
come closest to the truth.

He makes some good, hard-to-refute points.  I must admit, though, that I
always felt queasy at the idea of Sailor Moon ruling the world, like something
out of Pinky and The Brain.

-- David.