Prologue:
Earth, Boston Metropolitan Area, 2065 AD (Serenity Year
-927, 2816 Years after the founding of Rome, Juraian Year
22229, Federal Year -1919)
"I see a bad moon rising. I see trouble on the ground..."
The radio played on in the background as Dr. Henry J. Wise,
Professor of Physics and Magic at MIT looked at the clock on
his desk and suddenly realized that he had forgotten to drop
his latest paper in the mail and that the mail went out in five
minutes. Given it was already two weeks later than he had
promised it to the New England Journal of Magic, he couldnšt
afford to make it even later than it was, especially since
Monday was Columbus Day and no mail would be delivered
or picked up.
He grabbed the envelope and ran like a mad dog through
the halls of the Fogg Center, then down the stairs because the
elevator was broken. Again. This time, it needed an
exorcism, but the Bishop already had a full slate and no one in
the department was qualified. In the last few years, the
number of evil spirit problems had risen dramatically, and no
one knew why.
No one except Henry J. Wise, who knew everything, at
least in his own mind. His latest paper was in fact a study of
this phenomenon, utilizing the latest advances in divination
techniques. With the help of a woman at Tokyo University,
Dr. Mei'ou Setsuna, the leading figure in the field of temporal
divinations, he had successfully tracked the likely cause of this
rise in evil spirit manifestations.
It was quite simple, really. The mana level was rising.
Ever since the event in 2034 that was still referred to simply as
The Miracle, the level of magic in the world had begun to rise
sharply. Ancient arts which had long yielded no results had
begun to flourish once more. By the mid 2050s, most
universities had established departments of magic, following
the lead of Tokyo University, which had established its
department, the first in the world, in 2043 AD.
Of course, anyone who wasn't blind could tell the mana
level was rising, and the Tomoe/Mei'ou/Udaigaku experiment
of the late 2050s had set the standard understanding of the
process. Yet the causes of the actual shift was unknown.
Why had it begun with a moment of magic of a level of
intensity not seen since then? How long would it last? Where
would it peak?
Henry J. Wise had the answers. His researches had
enabled him to create what he called the Time Sphere', a
powerful focus for temporal divinations, and with it, he
believed he had found the basis for both a mathematical and
metaphysical understanding of this process.
What had hampered understanding of the process was the
failure to understand that the revival of magical energies had
begun BEFORE the miracle. The Sailor Senshi were the key.
Most people believed that the Senshi had been a myth before
the Miracle and that the energies released had actually created
them from raw belief, the same way in which such entitites as
'John Bull',' Uncle Sam'', Justice', a'nd Br'er Rabbit' were
now sometimes encountered in the material world.
A combination of detective work and magic, however,
had uncovered enough proof for Henry J. Wise to conclude
that the Senshi had in fact been real, which meant that the
magical energies had not simply begun with a bang, but that
they had been rising for longer than anyone thought.
Reaching the ground floor, he sprinted across campus to
the campus post office. You'd think a leading figure in
temporal magic would be able to be on time for once, he
thought. Already he was getting tired, his breath coming far
faster than was comfortable. I should have studied magic to
slow my aging, he thought. Maybe I should try the Atlas
Magical Exericse program. He shook his head. That was a
petty use of power, unworthy of a true scholar. You
shouldn't get a better body just by having someone zap you.
You had to earn it. Magic always carried a price, anyway.
Lost in thought, he collided with someone he had not
expected to see running across the MIT campus. Her name
was Tomoe Hotaru, and she was the daughter of two of the
most respected figures in his own field, Drs. Tomoe and
Mei'ou. At least he thought she was their daughter. He
suspected Dr. Mei'ou might only be Hotaru's step-mother,
and her brother didn't look anything like her. At least he
thought the blond fellow he had met when he attended the last
International Temporal Magical Studies Conference in Japan
was her brother. The envelope he was clutching flew into the
air and somehow popped open, even though he thought he
had sealed it. Sheets of paper began to fly everywhere, and
they both scrambled to their feet and started trying to grab
them before the breeze could take them. Embarrasedly,
Hotaru said, "I'm sorry, Dr. Wise. I'm glad I found you,
though! I need your help!"
He smiled. "I'll be happy to help you, Tomoe-san, as
soon as I get this paper mailed. I'm running out of time!"
She giggled slightly. "Can't you just speed up time for
us, then? That'll give us plenty of time."
He took a moment to bang his head into a tree. He had
begun his career as a theoretical physicist, and he spent far
more time studying how magic worked than actually using it
as a result. Pulling the time orb, a shimmering ball that
seemed to have tiny stars living inside it, out of his pocket, he
chanted a few words and all of the world but him and Hotaru
slowed to a crawl. Without the orb, he would have had to
spend days gathering this much power, but with the time orb,
it was easy. Too easy, he thought. There were rumors,
rumors of creatures who hunted those who tampered with time
too much. He didn't want to learn the truth of the rumors.
There was no other way to get the paper submitted today,
though.
They could take their time, now. He laughed a little. As
he grabbed each paper, nearly frozen in place due to the time
differential, it slipped into sync with him. He said to Hotaru,
"What is the problem you need my help with?"
Hotaru took a deep breath as she continued collecting
papers. "Are you familiar with the Cronus project?"
"You mean that goofy Chronos project at Yale which is
trying to summon up the God of Time or some such crock?"
The fools don't understand that they'll only create a being
which conforms to their own preconceptions, Henry thought.
And if there was a God of Time, I doubt he'd want to explain
the mysteries of the universe to a bunch of college professors.
She laughed. "No, no, not that silly thing. The Cronus
project, here at MIT, in the High Energy Magic Building."
Her voice turned serious as she grabbed the last paper. "The
one that is allegedly building a particle acclerator that uses
magic so that you can power it with a D cell." She laughed in
a strangely bitter manner this time.
"Yes. It seems to work quite well, except that the spells
still have to be renewed far too often. Dr. Weissman gave me
a tour a few weeks ago. It has a lot of potential." Janet
Weissman is quite a brilliant scientist, he thought. I'm not
surprised she's risen so fast in our profession. I certainly
wouldn't have been heading any projects like that at that age.
She's only...28? He tried to remember.
They began heading for the post office. Hotaru said,
"The Cronus project is an effort to creating living magical
weapons. It may look like a particle acclearator, but it's
actually used to weaken dimensional barriers and bind various
kinds of spirits into people to try to turn them into superhuman
beings like the Sailor Senshi."
She must have been mindwiped by a conspiracy nut,
Henry thought. "Do you have any proof of this?" he asked as
they reached the post office. He sealed the envelope with a
small spell and stuffed the letter, which was pre-stamped, into
the slot.
She handed him a file of papers. He began to page
through them. They were a mixture of memos, letters on
government stationary, printed out emails, faxes, and other
forms of paper trail. If they weren't fake, it was clear that the
US Army was sponsoring this experiment. "Well, these look
real, but...why here? I mean, if you're going to do something
top secret like that, you don't do it in the middle of a
university. Not unless you're stupid."
"This is a MAGICAL experiment. You can't just do
magic anywhere you want. Even with your Time Orb, you'd
have a lot harder time doing what you've done," she pointed
around at the still seemingly 'slowed' world, "outside of a
major ley line nexus point. That's why Tokyo, Rome,
Boston, Canton, Lhasa and New Dehli are magical research
centers, while places like New York or London are not. They
could do the simpler stuff anywhere, but for what they've got
planned next..." She shuddered. "It could only be done in a
handful of powerful nexi, thank the heavens."
He broke the spell speeding up his and Hotaru's time,
and nodded quietly as he put away the orb. "I suppose you're
right. I don't truck with summoning spirits. Too dangerous,
unreliable, and unpredicatable. I don't see how you think I
can stop this, though. I'm a theoretician, not a superhero. I
know a few simple combat spells for dealing with muggers
and the like, but unless you need me to predict the likely level
of magic in the area at a certain time..." He headed out of the
post office, speaking quietly and leaving the postal woman
looking confused as to where he and Hotaru had come from.
"I really don't want to interfere with my own government,
either. I mean, what they're doing is dangerous, and stupid,
but it's not illegal, and the subjects are all volunteers according
to this."
"They plan to try to bind the..." She paused and took
another deep breath. "Binding small spirits isn't enough.
They plan to bind the Saturn Force to someone." Her voice
grew cold. "I will die before I allow that. They are meddling
with powers that should NOT be tampered with."
"The Saturn Force?"
"I cannot say for sure if it would be exactly the same
thing, or only something similar." She looked around, and
muttered something to herself in Japanese, then began
speaking in English again. "It seeks the destruction of all life.
Perhaps one person in a million could survive being bound to
it without instantly becoming a rampaging beast. Most of
those who survived would soon be mastered by it, and
become a nexus of destruction. Perhaps a few hundred of
those who walk upon this world could hold out for a few
decades. A tiny handful could last their natural lives...if they
never used it. If they succeed in this experiment, this city will
die, this entire world if their victim is not stopped soon
enough and is strong enough to survive the binding. Even
here, this node is only strong enough at certain times. I need
you to predict when the node will be ready for them to use it,
for that is when I must strike."
He stared at her. "How are you going to stop it by
yourself?" What she said sounded ludicrous, even to a mage
such as himself, but he knew that Tomoe Hotaru was not a
loon. Her father was a genius of dimensional and
transportation magic. Her mother was one of the five most
important figures in magical studies. She was close friends
with Dr. Mizuno Ami, probably the most respected and
famous doctor on Earth. Hotaru herself was a noted magical
healer, among her many talents. But how did she expect to
stop this by herself?
"It is my duty. I have resources of which I may not
speak." She looked pleadingly at him. "Will you help me?"
He sighed and gazed across the campus at the building.
I can't believe I'm doing this, he thought. "Yes, I'll help
you." I must be going mad in my old age, he thought. I'm
going to end up in jail for treason or something. Maybe she's
using magic to make me believe her. He couldn't really
believe that.
****************
He didn't end up in jail. Five days later, he woke up tied
to a table inside a long curving hallway he recognized as the
acclerator chamber. Three robed figures stood around him.
This has to be a nightmare, he thought, then he realized
Hotaru was tied to the table next to him. She looked like she
had been beaten. Her face was a mass of bruises. She
mumbled something incoherent.
He looked at the robed figures. "WHAT is the meaning
of this?"
"I'm sorry, Dr. Wise," said one of the figures, a purple
clad woman who he was now sure was Dr. Weissman. "You
were the only person she had told about this, and we can't
afford to let anyone know. Also, we needed sacrifices for
this, so your death will not be a complete waste."
"You won't get away with this!" he shouted
instinctively, though he knew they were doomed.
Hotaru woke up at that and looked at Henry, her face a
mask of horror. "I'm sorry. I managed to resist
interrogation, but then they just used cybertechnology to
download my mind and scanned through it for the info." Her
voice dipped a bit. "I'd forgotten how much science has
advanced as well as magic since the Miracle."
The Time Orb, he thought. Where is it? He couldn't
sense it near him. "What have you done with the Time Orb?"
A second robed figure, this one dressed in green, spoke
with a male voice. "We've stashed it for later study. Quite a
powerful item. I wouldn't have thought you capable of it." It
was Dr. Watts, one of Henry's old enemies. I never would
have thought he'd stoop to human sacrifice, though, Henry
thought.
"Certainly better than the tacky dime store trinkets you
brought to the last conference, Alfred. I suppose you'll try to
pass it off as your own now. I hope it malfunctions and sends
your head to the future without you." Henry stared at the
third figure, trying to deduce who it was. Whoever they
were, they were quite tall, and wearing orange.
Hotaru stared at them. She laughed weakly. "The Fates.
How quaint. They don't like to be mocked, you know."
"The so-called Fates are nothing more than shapings
formed by untrained mages' collective imaginations. They
have no power we have not given them." Purple Robes said.
"If we mock them, they cannot stop us."
Hotaru muttered, "Those whom the Gods would destroy,
they first make mad."
Green Robes laughed. "We haven't made you go mad
yet, although you were mad to think you could stop us, just as
those fools in the government were mad to think the weapons
we have made will serve them. Still, their money is quite
useful."
"You have submitted yourself to your own process,"
Hotaru said. It was not a question.
Henry gazed at them. She was right. At least, he could
tell they were enchanted. He lacked much talent for analyzing
auras without a lot of help from magical devices and manuals.
"Yes," Green Robes said.
Purple Robes said, "It is time." The other two began to
walk off down the angular hallways, while Purple Robes
pulled the Time Orb out of a pocket. "I must thank you for
your contribution, Dr. Wise. This will greatly strengthen the
power of our experiment by giving us far more time in which
to conduct it." She got out a cellular phone. "Is the subject
ready?" She listened to an answer only she could hear.
Dr. Wise looked at the lines on the floor. Painted lines
ran across the floor. During his tour, he had been told they
marked the lines of the magnetic fields to guide the particles,
but he recognized them for what they were. The accelerator
was a giant hermetic circle, with a summoning chamber in the
middle. Inside the double lines, those performing the rite
would be safe as long as nothing broke the line.
Purple Robes put away the cellular and began to chant.
They could hear the two others chanting, and Hotaru and
Henry could both feel the magical energies coursing through
the hallway. For a moment, Hotaru suddenly went taut, then
relaxed, a grim expression on her face. "Dr. Wise, are you
familiar with the DeGrund experiment?"
Why is she asking me about that right now? He thought
a moment. "The one where they demonstrated how to seal off
part of a person's memory so that nothing can find it?"
"And it returns on a time delay or at a preset time."
He nodded.
"Well, now I know it works." Suddenly, she snapped
the ropes binding her. Purple Robes, still holding up the Time
Orb, stared at her. "I only wish I'd done it AFTER I brought
you into this, so they couldn't have found you in my head."
Purple Robes kept chanting; the hallway was starting to
darken as all the light in it was sucked into the Orb. There
was nothing she could do to stop her captives, for in a ritual
such as this, any disruption would be disastrous.
She didn't have to stop. A few seconds later, some of
the darkness formed itself into a human shape. "I will stop
her!" It announced with a whiny voice. It grabbed Hotaru
before she could move any further, wrapping cords of
darkness around her. "Any last words, child?"
"Yes." Hotaru said. "SATURN ETERNAL POWER!"
Everyone except Purple Robes froze and stared at her as
purple energy swirled around her, transforming her into
Eternal Sailor Saturn. As her wings formed, they shattered
the black cords. The Silence Glaive appeared in her hands,
and she brought it down on the shadowman's head. He
quietly passed out.
The glow that surrounded her and the glow from the
Time Orb were the only lights left in the room. Henry J. Wise
stared in shock. Mei'ou-san will die when she finds out about
this, Henry thought. The Silence Glaive swung around,
slicing the ropes that bound Henry, then moving up to strike at
the Orb in one fluid motion.
The time spent untying Henry was just enough time for
Purple Robes to dodge backwards, pressing up against the
wall of the central chamber. She finished her chant, and an
unearthly scream cut through the chamber from the room just
beyond the wall. Howls and gibbering filled the air and the
walls began to bulge outward.
Purple Robes stared. "What is this?"
"You fool! You have not summoned a spirit! You've
opened a HIGHWAY for them!" Saturn's face was livid with
rage. "You thought you could use the powers of darkness,
but those who truck with the powers that hunger for souls all
eventualy feed that hunger!"
Purple Robes tried to leap back into the protective ring,
but she couldn't get through the inner circle, which stopped
her as surely as a solid barrier. The wall burst open and
darkness swallowed up Purple Robes. Saturn swore loudly
and grabbed Henry J. Wise. He shouted, "No! My time
orb!"
"You wouldn't last two seconds against that thing!"
The blackness surged and ebbed, trying to find a
weakness in the Hermetic circle. There were no weaknesses.
Saturn said, "I've never studied these things...how long can
this circle hold it?"
"Theoretically, forever, but all it would take is a tiny
dollop of paint to damage the circle and let it out. Plus, if it is
actually a gateway..." He trailed off.
"Go on?"
"I don't want to give it any ideas. The barrier doesn't
stop sound."
The voice echoed in their heads. It sounded almost
artificial, like a demonic speak and spell. I WILL SCOURGE
THIS WORLD. YOU CANNOT STOP ME.
"You won't get out!" Saturn shouted. "I'll guard this
place until eternity passes away if I have to!"
THAT WILL NOT BE NECESSARY. The following
laughter was strangely metallic and triumphant.
"I will do what I have to!"
DID YOU THINK THIS WAS THE ONLY PLACE
WHERE FOOLS TRIED THIS EXPERIMENT? I THINK
THIS TIME...I'LL TRY AN ICE AGE. OH, DR. WISE.
THANKS FOR THE ORB. MY CHILD WILL MAKE
GOOD USE OF IT.
The Indian Summer of that age of Mankind came to an
end. It was time for Fall, and with Fall comes Winter, a
winter that lasted nigh upon a thousand years. But Winter is
not the end of all things, for with Spring, the year, and life,
are born anew.
***********************
Black Moon Rising
Chapter 1: Up from the Wreckage
by John Biles
***********************
Earth, Ruins of Crystal Tokyo, SY 1532 (4524 AD, 5276
Years after the founding of Rome, Juraian Year 24688,
Federal Year 538)
Arcadia N'goya walked down the street, which was
thankfully clean of shards of crystal, unlike much of the ruins
of the once great city of Crystal Tokyo. It had been destroyed
before she was born, for she was only sixteen and Crystal
Tokyo had been laid waste by the last of the Usurpers, the so
called 'Emperor Demand II', who had claimed to be the child
of the legendary Queen Serenity I, and the equally legendary
Emperor Demand of Earth. Well, they weren't entirely
legendary, but the stories that surrounded both of them were a
complete crock, in Arcadia's opinion. Ending an ice age in a
single day. Healing thousands with a word. Inaugurating an
age of peace and plenty in which none went hungry or sick.
Demand as Serenity's secret lover. Them falling out.
Demand dueling Serenity to the death and swearing he would
one day return to bring her down. His followers taking him
away to Avalon to be healed. Yeah, right.
Arcadia had grown up rich, but she hadn't grown up in
an ivory tower. Even on Sirius, a rather wealthy world, you
hadn't had to go very far from her neighborhood to find
poverty and hunger. She had studied history, and it was a
trail of backstabbings and betrayals, murder, hatred and death.
It didn't matter if you studied the history of the now collapsed
Solar or Juraiian empires or the history of her homeland, the
Federal League. Lust, wealth, and power were what drove
human history. It made her sick.
She tossed her head, and long shoulder-length purple
hair whipped about. Arcadia was proud of her hair, but in the
heat of summer, it got to be an annoyance at times, trapping
heat and getting into her eyes. Realizing she was falling
behind, she sprinted ahead, being glad she was wearing pants
and a shirt rather than the dresses that her mother constantly
tried to force on her. She was an excellent runner, and both of
the people she was following looked like they would have had
trouble outrunning a dying cow.
One of them, a tall portly man with an ugly, honest face
turned and smiled at her. "I hope you stay long enough for
the Fall Races, Arcadia. I think you'd win easily." His name
was Makoto Gelbenwald, and he was Earth's greatest trader,
although you wouldn't have guessed it from his rough wool
clothing or the fact that he, his wife, and Arcadia were
walking a mile and a half from the space port to the old
Imperial Palace of the Solar Empire. Once, the inhabitants of
this palace had ruled one of the three greatest empires in the
Galaxy. Now, it was home to a cooperative of farmers,
scholars, and traders. It wasn't even the capital of Earth, to
the extent that Earth had a capital. That honor had fallen to the
city of Sanctus Rei, in the middle of the continent once known
as 'North America', but now commonly called simply the
Granary. It had been spared the damages of the Wars of
Succession because it supplied 60% of the planet's food
supply, and if that was devastaed, the planet would have
become uninhabitable.
Makoto's wife wasn't much prettier than he was, with a
nose like a pig, and legs like tree trunks. All in all, Arcadia
thought she looked rather like a male body-builder without
body hair. She had the most beautiful hair that Arcadia had
ever seen, though. It was long and white, going down to just
above her buttocks, and seemed to sparkle, as if it was made
of crystal. Rita didn't bother with makeup, but she lavished
attention on her hair, and Arcadia would have almost given her
right arm to learn how she made it sparkle like that. Rita was
carrying all their luggage, except for one bag that Makoto was
hauling. Arcadia had tried to carry her own, but Rita had
insisted on it. She was the strongest woman Arcadia had ever
met. Magically strong. That was her talent. All the people of
Earth seemed to have some sort of innate magical ability now.
Arcadia had briefly studied this phenomenon in her magical
theory class. Some worlds, like Earth, Juraii, Telmar, and
Finis Astra were locuses of magical energy on the Galactic
scale. These worlds produced the strongest weilders of
magic. Those historians who accepted the old legends about
the Crystal Millenium claimed this was the explanation for the
wonders claimed about that period, but Arcadia couldn't buy
it. Rita and Makoto are rich, she thought, but they live worse
off than many poor people on my homeworld. They'd be rich
if people on this world could pull the kind of stunts that people
did all the time according to those legends.
Rita smiled at Arcadia. "I bet she'll win the Great
Tournament as well. You remember what happened to those
people who tried to rob her on Barnard III, right?"
Makoto laughed. "They don't let you fight dirty in the
Great Tournament, Rita. That's why you've never won." He
jumped out of arm's reach, even though she had both arms
full, so Arcadia slugged him instead.
Makoto fell down, laughing. "See? She'll crush them."
He turned to Arcadia as he got up. "How did you learn to
fight so well?"
"I've always been a scrapper, and Dad had me trained
after some people tried to hold my older brother for ransom. I
made black belt before I left home." Arcadia was proud of her
fighting skills too. She could beat any two of her brothers and
sisters at once, and they'd all been trained by the Sensei her
father had hired. I wonder if I'll ever see them again, she
thought, and sighed.
"What's wrong?" Rita asked, her voice softer than its
usual boisterous level. "Missing your folks?"
Arcadia jumped. Sometimes she thought those two were
psychic. "Yeah. But until I get those maniacs off my trail, I
can't even think about going back." Damn Black Moon
Cultists, ranting about how I bear the mark of Serenity and
have to be destroyed. One day, I'll make them pay, she
thought.
* * *
It had started on her sixteenth birthday. She had gone to
bed with dark black hair and woken up with purple hair.
She'd grown to like it, despite the trouble it had brought her,
but at the time, it had been a shock. It had to be Sammy's
fault, she had thought, so she kicked his ass before he finally
managed to get out of his mouth that he didn't know what was
going on. He had shaved her head once, when they were both
much younger after she had spray-painted his dog green, but
that was only retaliation for him and his friends doing a
dramatic performance of segments of her diary at her tenth
birthday party. Sammy was two years older than her, but he
acted like he was half her age most of the time.
By the time school was over, she'd gotten over her anger.
Most of her friends had actually liked the color, although it
was so bright that it looked strange in contrast to her dark
brown skin. Almost everyone on Sirius had dark skin, dark
hair, and dark eyes, so many dyed their hair or wore colored
contacts simply to stand out, especially if they thought they
were being rebellious.
Her birthday party had been when everything went to
pieces. Her boyfriend, Tony Pacarri had been in a bad mood,
and she had been trying to get him to stop moping around and
wrecking the party when there had been an explosion at the
front gate and a skimmer full of people with black crescent
moons on their foreheads had driven into the middle of the
party and started to mow down all her friends and the family's
servants. Sammy had been cut in half by a monofilament
whip. Her aunt Traci had simply been run over. Her parents
had just gone into the house to get her presents or they would
have died as well. Tony died, throwing himself in front of a
blast to save her.
That had been the final straw, along with seeing a second
skimmer full of maniacs coming through the gate. She had
lost it completely, screaming so loudly that she was surprised
her own eardrums hadn't burst. Her screaming had been
followed by an explosion that had flipped over the second
skimmer and vaporized the first one. She didn't know what
had caused it, but the inhabitants of the second skimmer had
come after her, and she had run, and run, and run.
The Black Moon cultists had seemed to have infinite
resources and an uncanny knack for finding her. She had fled
world to world, spending her parent's money like water. That
was part of the problem. Every time she made a credit
transaction, she fired off a signal to anyone monitoring her
family's accounts, but she had no other way to get money.
The fact that money was still there was reassuring. Accounts
got closed if you died, which meant that at least one of her
parents was alive.
Finally, on Altair II, she had successfully stowed away
on a ship, Makoto and Rita's ship. They had been
sympathetic, and offered to hire her, so she could earn some
money and stop having to send up financial 'kill me here'
signals everywhere. She had accepted. They might be setting
her up for something, but she was tired of running, tired of
suspecting everyone would betray her, desperate to find
somewhere to call home for a while.
* * *
Makoto nodded. "Well, they'll never find you here." He
shook his head. "I'd always thought those people had all been
killed after Demand was defeated. I suppose we should have
known they wouldn't all live on one planet to make it easy to
find them."
Rita sighed. "Well, causing their sun to go nova wasn't
exactly a good idea either." She shuddered. "No wonder they
called Serenity XVIII the mad queen."
Arcadia began to hear faint music coming from
somewhere ahead. "Is there a concert going on? I hear really
loud music."
Rita smiled. "The Imperial Palace sings at this hour,
though not as beautifully as it once did. It's some ancient
spell, or maybe a property of the crystal it's made from." She
shrugged. "Isn't it beautiful?"
Arcadia listened to the music, closing her eyes as she
walked. It called her onwards, made her want to dance and
sing, to become part of the music. Words began to drift
through her mind, a song she had never heard, but always
known. Her fingers worked, as if she was playing a
keyboard, another of her talents. Her oldest brother had been
the really talented one, but she had enjoyed it greatly. She
tried to fix the notes in her mind.
Footsteps broke her reverie, and then the sound of
luggage falling. She panicked and moved immediately into a
combat position. I'm not safe, even hiding on one of
humanity's pimples, she thought.
She was wrong. A tall skinny woman with short white
hair cut like a boy's was hugging Rita, who was blathering
incoherently about strangling people who made her drop
things. Her hair sparkled like Rita's in the sun, and her skin
was pale, far paler than Arcadia was used to. She released her
embrace of Rita, then hugged Makoto, who laughed.
"Marcus, you're getting to be as strong as your mother."
Marcus, Arcadia thought. Why would anyone give a
girl a boy's name? Marcus grinned at Makoto and said, with a
boy's voice, "Mom will still boot me into the atmosphere
when we get home, though." Marcus stepped away from
Makoto and Arcadia finally got a good look at him. Marcus
was clearly male, or else a rather skillful cross-dresser. For
one thing, he had facial hair, namely a rather feeble attempt at
a mustache. Still, with a little work, he probably could have
passed as female. He saw Arcadia, and his eyes widened like
a viper had bitten him. Or as if he had been handed a million
Sirian Gorchmarks. Or both. "Uh...hi." he said.
Rita laughed loudly. "Arcadia, this is my son, Marcus
Gelbenwald. Marcus, this is Arcadia Ritsalia Trebendal
N'goya. She is your father's new apprentice."
Marcus cocked his head at his father, who nodded and
winked. Marcus blushed and babbled, "N...nice to
beat..meet. Meet you."
Arcadia laughed. Maybe he's smitten with my beauty.
Tossing her hair for effect, she stepped forward and shook his
hand. He's not bad looking himself, she thought, even
though he looks like he's been bathing in bleach. He had
orange eyes, she noticed, when she got close to him. "Nice to
meet you. I promise I'll only beat you if you deserve it."
Rita laughed, her usual loud guffaw that Arcadia kept
expecting to cause some of the surrounding buildings to
shatter. They were worse damaged here than near the
spaceport. "I wouldn't be so sure. Marcus won the Great
Tournament in his age bracket last year. He's flimsy as a
stick, but he fights well." She and Marcus finished picking up
the dropped luggage and they started on their way.
Arcadia listened quietly as they caught up on what had
happened in their absence and discussed people she had never
heard of. Mostly, she just followed them and listened to the
beautiful music. She felt like she was melting, as if all the
defenses she had built for herself were being destroyed by the
notes, striking the barriers in her soul one by one.
They topped a rise and entered a huge plaza. Unlike the
rest of the city, the plaza had clearly been repaired, for it was
undamaged in the midst of devastation. It was perhaps a
quarter mile in diameter, with five equally spaced broad
boulevards leading away from it, and in the center of it stood a
huge palace of crystal, reaching to the sky. It too bore signs
of clumsy repairs, for while the tallest towers were blackened
and destroyed, the lower levels seemed far too intact, given
that it had been carpetbombed along with the rest of the city
during the last days of the Solar Empire.
For a moment, she could see it as it once had been, the
seventh wonder of the Galaxy, a building that had reached
thousands of feet into the sky, literally grown from crystal by
magics of surpassing might. She'd never really believed that,
but seeing it, she knew it had to be true. Either that, or it had
somehow been carved from one giant hunk of crystal and
transported there, which would have required carving out the
heart of a mountain and moving it.
Her imagination restored the surrounding buildings to
their splendour and filled them with people. Vehicles,
animals, humans, and aliens bustled through the streets. And
through it all was the beautiful music, the song that was the
soul of Crystal Tokyo. Sweet scents filled the air with the
memory of her mother's perfume, of ripe fruit, of the
fragrances she had worn on her first date with Tony. That
memory shattered her imaginings. Tony had died. She
couldn't afford to love anyone. It would only be a death
sentence.
The world returned to her senses. "I can hardly believe
everyone in the city lives in the palace."
"Everyone who lives in Crystal Tokyo proper is part of
the Crystal Tokyo Combine, and the Palace is the most
habitable part of the city. Now, there's thousands of people
living in what were once Crystal Tokyo's suburbs, but they
never come into the Old City. It's too spooky, I guess. Plus,
you have to wear these boots everywhere." Makoto pointed at
his feet, covered with thick leather boots. "Too many crystal
fragments everywhere outside the palace, and we hardly have
time to sweep the entire city."
Rita laughed. "You know Hitomi would make us do it if
she could."
Marcus said, "While you were gone, she did send out
some people to start clearing more of the streets of rubble.
They were grumbling pretty loudly." He grinned. "Luckily, I
was busy helping Professor Anderson, so I got out of it."
"Professor Anderson?" Arcadia asked.
"She's the head of the research branch of the combine,"
Makoto explained. "I'm our chief trader, She's the chief
researcher, Brian Bjornen is head of Security, and Hitomi
Antwi is head of support services. She keeps us fed, clean,
and not in danger of running out of stuff we need."
"So what exactly IS the Crystal Tokyo Combine,
anyway?" Arcadia asked. Everytime she asked, it seemed to
do something else.
"We're sort of like a combined university, trading
company, library, farm, and academy for the arts." Marcus
said. "We started out when the capital moved to Sanctus Rei,
and some traders saw the chance to basically scavenge Crystal
Tokyo for goods, trinkets, historical items, etc, so they paid a
ridiculous amount of money to the new Republic of Earth
government to get a sort of 'palantine' control of the city.
There wasn't much left worth stealing except the library and
the old imperial records, so they rapidly sold out to a group of
scholars, who formed the Combine. We sell 'authentic Earth
food' on other planets, print books of historical research,
produce 'historical' films, and a lot of other things. I think
you'll like it here."
The music began to fade now. Makoto said, "Must be
nearly three. I need to remember to reset my watch."
Arcadia said, "So what exactly am I going to be doing?"
"Well, the first thing will be to test you for your magical
apititude. After that, you're going to get to learn the arts and
sciences of trading. You're done CAR, haven't you?" CAR
was computer assisted research, one of the first things you
learned in school how to do, right after you learned to read
and type.
Arcadia laughed. "I'm a bit older than five, you know."
"Well, Marcus stinks at it. He can play a flute to make a
woman's heart break, but he seems to be allergic to
computers." Rita said.
Marcus fumed slightly. "I'm not that bad. I only crashed
the mainframe once."
"Anyway, he didn't inherit my knack for making
machines do my bidding," Makoto said. "I'm looking at
expanding into the Bismollian market. I know they'll eat
anything, but I need a good market report. So that will be
your first task."
Arcadia was stunned. This was the sort of thing you
normally went to college before you started doing. He met me
twenty days ago and he's going to trust me to do this? Maybe
he's dumber than he looks. Of course, he can trust me to do
my best, she thought, but he has no way of knowing that.
"I...I'll do my best." She paused. "My magical aptitude is
earth, by the way, but I'm not very good at magic. I was
hoping to be a professional athelete, anyway, and they banned
magic use in that." Not many Sirians were good at magic.
Sirius was a low-mana world, and most Sirians couldn't do
much more than make small palm flames or move a wrench
across the shop to their hand. The height of Arcadia's abilities
had been to shatter bricks, and she knew some of that was
actually her martial arts abilities.
Rita smiled at her. "I'm sure you will. You seem like
the sort of person who throws her all into whatever she does."
Arcadia nodded. Everyone was meant to do something,
and you had to give that something your all. She had no clue
what she was meant to do, though.
* * *
A month later, Arcadia had gained a higher appreciation of
the difference between a low-mana and high-mana world. On
Sirus, she couldn't break anything larger than a brick. On
Earth, she could shatter boulders and mold rock like clay. A
crude unicorn sat on her desk, a reminder that being able to
mold marble didn't mean you actually had the skill to make
something that looked very good. She didn't care, for she had
always loved unicorns.
Right now, she wasn't using any magic, although she
was studying it. Her computer's holo-projector was
displaying the Solar arm of the Milky Way galaxy, overlaid
with data from F'ekre'FDID'i's Survey of Planetary ley lines.
Dozens of them intersected at Earth. Using the surviving past
editions of the survey, she ran the galaxy backwards through
time. It was easy with the sophisticated computers they had
here. She wondered again how the Combine, which wasn't
too rich as far as she could tell, had managed to get such
powerful computers.
Some of the leylines moved, while others did not.
Certain planets seemed linked in a stable fashion, while others
crept through space. Five hundred years ago, 200 hundred
leylines connected to Earth. She stared at the floating stars
and purple lines connecting them or weaving between them.
There wasn't a world in the galaxy with 200 leylines now.
She punched a button and sent it five hundred years
further back, to the middle of the Crystal Millenium. Leylines
flickered in and out of existence as time 'passed'. Many of the
older copies of the survey were damaged. Earth was
surrounded by an almost solid purple region of space. A
keyboard stroke brought up the number of leylines. Five
hundred.
Her jaw dropped. That was impossible. Dozens of
them, as many as were now connected to Earth in the present,
ran off towards Juraiian space, far off in the next spiral arm.
More keystrokes ran the hologram further backwards in time.
A river of leylines stretching to the galactic core grew into
existence. Six hundred leylines. Seven hundred. Eight
hundred. The region of practically purple space grew,
engulfing the stars closest to Earth. Nine hundred. If I can
blow up a boulder with 48 leylines, she thought, I could blow
up a mountain with nine hundred feeding power into this
planet. And I'm no hot stuff as magic goes. The picture froze
in the year 100 SY, the year of the first edition of the Guide.
1000 leylines.
Why didn't they teach us this in school?, she wondered.
What could have caused this? Maybe they did destroy an
entire moon in Serenity's wars. She shuddered. The potential
for destruction with that much magic was almost limitless.
We're better off without that much power, she thought. "I
can't believe anyone hasn't figured this out," she muttered to
herself. Maybe I could write up a paper and publish it. I bet
I'd make quite a name for myself.
"Most historians consider the editions before around
1100 SY when the Finis Astra Encyclopedia Company took
over publishing the Guide to be unreliable," Marcus said from
the doorway. He was carrying a bouquet of white roses in
one hand, and something tiny he was clutching tightly in the
other hand. Walking over to Arcadia, he continued, "Most
historians argue from Duke Rossi's correspondence that he
faked the records before 856 SY after the Great Fire destroyed
a quarter of the Imperial library."
"But you don't believe that," she said. She had learned
that when Marcus said, 'most historians', it usually meant he
was about to assert they were all smoking Ilya leaves. If he
actually agreed, they became 'reputable historians'.
Marcus laughed. "I think you're as psychic as my
parents." He popped the flowers into an empty vase sitting on
the side table by Arcadia's bed. "These are for you. I got
hauled out to some of the farms, today, and I thought you'd
like these."
She smiled, and sighed mentally. He likes me, she
thought, and I like him, but I can't afford to get too close to
anyone. Not with those nuts still hunting me. Maybe in a few
years when they give up. "If that's a wedding ring in your
other hand, I'll throw you out the window again."
Marcus laughed and held it out to her. It was a small,
ornate, fluted golden key, hanging from a red ribbon.
"Someone turned this up with a shovel. I thought you might
like it." It had to be incredibly old. Even beggars could do
better than a mechanical lock.
She took it and felt a faint thrill. It was magical, she
realized. "I think it's enchanted."
"Don't let any of the researchers see it, then. It'll never
be heard from again." Marcus laughed and looked at the
hologram of the stars. "Anyway, Dr. Anderson argues that
Duke Rossi actually played down the number of leylines in
this arm of the galaxy in the earlier years of the Crystal
Millenium."
Arcadia's head swam. DOWNPLAYED? There couldn't
have possibly been more. "..."
He laughed. "I did that too. Apparently, they found
someone's research on Barnard III, dating from SY 220, and
there were over a thousand leylines leading to the 20 light year
sphere around Earth at that time, where Rossi only identifies
856. The reason it survived was that the guy who did it went
on to found a university there and they preserved his papers.
Anyway, this world was once so fat with magical energy that
people probably cast spells in their sleep." He sat down on
the corner of the desk and whipped out his flute from
wherever he hid it. His main magical apitude was water, but
he also had a knack for pulling his flute out of nowhere. "And
Crystal Tokyo was one of the seven most powerful nodes of
magic upon the world. Sanctus Rei sits on another one of
them, but I can't ever remember the other five. Would you
like some music to research by?"
Arcadia laughed. "If I said no, you wouldn't go away,
anyway."
"M'lady is indeed wise in the ways of the world." He
began to play the same haunting tune the building itself played
from two to three in the afternoon. Arcadia closed her eyes
and listened. He didn't play for an hour, though.
* * *
That night, Arcadia was woken up by two clumsy people
trying to sneak into her room. She instinctively rolled out of
bed to the floor, even though she thought it was probably just
Peter playing another prank, like the time he had put frogs in
her bed. Peter was another one of the teenagers, the son of
Dr. Anderson.
When her bed got two holes punched through it by energy
beams, she discarded that theory. Her pants were on the floor
where she had landed, and she grabbed them. She was only
wearing a shirt and panties, and she didn't want to run for her
life like that. Good thing I was too cold to sleep naked
tonight, she thought. Poking her head around the corner, she
called upon her magical talent to crush the rods they were
carrying, then jump kicked one of them, hit the floor, rolled,
lept to her feet and ran. There were more of them in the
hallway, but they weren't very alert. She sent two of them
flying with well placed kicks and fled around the corner, still
carrying her pants.
The other reason for taking them was the flash grenade in
her pocket, which she had picked up on Dilber XI. She
tossed it behind herself and ducked into another hallway,
quickly pulling on her pants. Turning, she came face to face
with five more of the maniacs. How did so many of these
fruitcakes get in here? She heard explosions and shouts
elsewhere in the building. All five of the cultists were women
with dark green hair tied back in a pony-tail, though their faces
were quite different. One of them was holding a NS whip. A
single touch would scramble your nervous system, inducing
paralysis, agony, or death. "Give us the key, and we'll let
you live."
"Like you let my brother live? I'd rather die!" She
couldn't fight them, but at least she would die defiantly. "I
don't know why you maniacs have been chasing me or why
you killed everyone at my birthday party, but I..."
The whip-carrier cocked her head. "What in the Nine
Worlds are you talking about? I don't even know what your
name is, but this...," she said as she held up a small conical
energy scanner, "indicates you either have the Time Key or
you yourself are a temporal vortex. Given that you should be
rapidly aging or youthening, or SOMETHING if the latter was
the case, you must have the key."
She thought for a moment. They don't know who I am?
Is this why they've been chasing me or...She remembered the
key that Marcus had given her. It glittered in the light as she
pulled it out and stared at it. All of the Time Keys had
supposedly been destroyed by Sailor Pluto...if they had ever
really existed. "What, this thing? It was under a stump in
someone's wheatfield."
The woman's eyes glittered. "Yes! With this, we can
travel to the past and save Nemesis from destruction! We can
bring down our enemies! Five decades of searching have
finally paid off. Give it to us." She raised the whip. "Now."
There was no way it could be a time key, but she couldn't
let them have it, no matter how suicidal trying to fight them all
was. Time to see if I'm still ready to champion the track team,
she thought. She spun without bothering to answer and
started to run.
Sadly, Arcadia had not been aware that a NS whip can
extend up to a hundred feet. She only got back to the main
hallway before the most excruciating agony of her entire life
turned her muscles to jello and sent her toppling to the floor.
Her visual nerves fired as well, and the world became a
psychedelic sea of swirling colors. She tasted sulpher and
sugar mixed into a not very tasty 'treat'. A cacophony of
sound assaulted her ears. Her sense of balance went haywire,
and as she fell, her last conscious thought was that it was
taking far too long to fall a few feet to the ground.
********************
She woke up, her stomach churning. The Time Key, if
that was what it was, was clutched in her hand. Two men and
two women were talking to each other in oddly accented Solar
Standard. "Anyway, so then the Empress hugged him so
tightly he nearly had a heart attack and started babbling about
cute kitties. You'd think the Kzinti Empress wouldn't be such
a fluffhead about cats when she is one, but..." That was a
woman's voice.
"Well, humans act the same about monkies and gorillas
and orangutans and the like sometimes. You remember all
those goofy movies like 'Going Ape' don't you?" One of the
men said.
The second man made gagging noises. "It took a
thousand years, but I had forgotten that. Now you had to
remind me."
The second woman laughed, her voice soft and pleasant.
"I believe we found a copy of that which survived the..."
The second man howled. "NO!!!!!"
Arcadia contemplated opening her eyes, but was afraid
of a return to psychedelia. Her stomach was churning, and
the ground was rocking. She heard slapping noises, like
something striking water. We're in a rowboat? How do these
people expect to escape with me in a rowboat? The Combine
has three motorboats, for one thing. Unless they sabotaged
them. She feigned unconsciousness so she could try to learn
their plans.
The first woman laughed. "Please tell me you're
joking."
The second woman said, "I kid you not. Somebody
buried some really BAD movies in a time capsule that was
found in the ruins of Chicago. It had 'Bring me the Head of
Charlie Brown', 'Fried Green Potatoes', and 'Highlander 2',
among other things."
Everyone except the second woman let out a yelp of pain.
Arcadia wondered if she had been kidnapped by escaped
lunatics. The Black Moon cult breaks into my home, kidnaps
me and this key, then I get given to four people who are
discussing bad movies and seem to have decided to try to
escape by rowing across the Sea of Peace. Maybe this is all a
nightmare, or Peter drugged me for a joke and I'm imagining
this.
"I bet that if the Queen tried to purify those tapes, they'd
evaporate away into nothingness." The first man said.
"I bet even the Silver Crystal couldn't help them." The
first woman said, laughing.
The Silver Crystal? Another legend, Arcadia thought.
It's been missing since a little after SY 1000 and no one had
used it in hundreds of years, assuming it had ever possessed
any powers. Who were these whackos?
"I think our guest has woken up," the second man said.
"Hello, Arcadia. Don't worry. Even with Minako rowing,
we probably won't sink."
She heard a loud thwap. "Hey!" The first woman, who
seemed to be named Minako said, "I have never sunk a boat!"
"That you didn't get on," the second man said, laughing.
Arcadia opened her eyes. A dark haired man wearing a
nice black suit with a blue tie was sitting on the aft bench with
a blonde haired woman in a yellow dress that kept trying to
slide off her shoulders. She was very wet and had hair down
to her mid-back. Her arms were well-muscled, and she was
rowing slowly. The fore bench held a man who was rowing
faster than her, though he looked fairly flimsy in comparison.
His hair was short and black, his eyes dark. A woman with
equally short, but differently styled blue-black hair sat next to
him. She was wearing a blue blouse and dark blue denim
jeans, while he was wearing a green t-shirt with some
unintelligible logo on it and light blue denim jeans. Arcadia
took a moment to wonder why one pair was dressed for a
formal ball and the other pair looked ready to play soccer or
something like that.
The taller dark-haired man spoke again. "I'm Steven,
Arcadia, and this is my wife, Minako." He pointed to the
rowing woman, who nodded and smiled. He pointed at the
other couple. "This is Ryo and Ami." He paused. "Hmm.
You look seasick."
She felt seasick. For some reason, she could drive a
skimmer at 200 MPH and feel fine, but boats made her sick up
in seconds. She sat up and promptly threw up over the side.
"Bleah. So you people DO know who I am." Sitting back
down, she said, "Bunch of liars."
Ami blinked. "When did we say we didn't know who
you were?"
Arcadia said, "Not you four. The pony-tail brigade with
the NS whip." She winced. No wonder my seasickness is
worse than usual. Her whole body ached as if she had been
exercising. For days at a time.
The four people looked at each other confused. Finally,
Ami said, "Pony-tail brigade with what kind of whip?"
"An NS whip." They looked at her as if she had claimed
someone had assaulted her with cellophane. "Don't tell me
you don't know what one is."
"Okay, I won't," Minako said. "So what's a NS whip?"
"It makes every nerve in your body fire at once. Or
something like that. Hurts like hell." She suddenly realized
they hadn't even bothered to restrain her. Looking around the
boat, open sea surrounded her on three sides, but to the west,
she saw a beautiful city of crystal, with mountains rising
beyond it. One of them was a huge mountain of red crystal.
She knew that mountain. That's Crystal Tokyo, she thought.
But it's not a ruin. What's going on? "Where am I?"
"Just off shore of Crystal Tokyo. You plummeted from
the sky, and Minako caught you," Steven said. "I take it you
didn't exactly plan this trip?"
"I what?"
"I'll tell you what happened," Minako said.
* * *
Earth, Crystal Tokyo, SY 68 (3060 AD, 3811 Years after the
founding of Rome, Juraian Year 23224, Federal Year -926)
Minako and her husband were sharing a quiet moment in
the gardens that day. To be more precise, they were kissing
under a tall tree with golden leaves, while sitting on a marble
bench. The air was sweet with the fragrance of flowers,
thousands of which ran in beds alongside the crystal paths
through the royal gardens. They had just gotten back from a
diplomatic mission to the Kzinti empire, which had been a
grand triumph for Minako. She had always loved cats, and
they loved her. Bringing along Artemis had been the real key,
though, she had to admit. Not only had his usual antics kept
the Kzinti Emperor in a good mood, having a being similar to
themselves among the delegation to their world had made them
more open to her proposals. Artemis was off with Luna
somewhere, probably getting in a fight about why he didn't
call her more often during the mission. Minako giggled,
which got her tongue accidentally bitten by Steven.
"Sorry about that, dear," he said. He pulled the
shoulders of her dress back up. The dress was really too wide
and kept trying to slide off her shoulders. He suspected that
might be the idea, though.
"We've been so busy, we haven't gotten to do anything
romantic for months," she said. "Let's go boating." She
stood up, as did he, taking her hand as they walked across the
gardens together.
They got all the way across town to the docks without
anything bad happening to them. Urawa and Ami were there,
having apparently gotten the same idea. Urawa said, "I got a
boat for four."
Steven laughed. "I think I'm going to have you plan our
next vacation. That way, nothing unexpected would happen."
Urawa was a powerful precognitive, able to see a few
seconds into the future all the time, and subject to periodic
visions further into the future, which he could not control.
Oddly, his visions were usually more reliable than his future
sight. The Elder Pluto simply smiled when asked why, and
the Junior Pluto was utterly clueless as to why this was the
case, since their own powers worked opposite this. His eyes
suddenly widened and he shouted, "HEADS UP!" Grabbing
Ami, he jumped away from the edge of the dock, just as a
scream ripped through the air from above. "Catch her, Mina-
chan!"
Steven looked up, and Minako was already in
movement, leaping high into the air to catch the purple haired
girl who was falling from the sky and shouting as if she was
being tortured to death. Her name was Arcadia N'goya, he
realized. Where Urawa saw the future, Steven saw the
present. He saw things as they really were and knew them. If
he looked at the dock long enough, he could have told you its
chemical composition and found every flaw in its
construction. The girl had a lot of magical potential, he could
tell, far stronger than himself. Other than his special talent and
divination magic, he could only manage minor feats of magic
despite years of study with highly adept magi like the Sailor
Senshi.
He also saw something that Minako hadn't thought about.
The arc of her current movement was going to dump her
several hundred feet out into the ocean. "Let me guess. You
saw she was going to land in the ocean, but you knew it was
inevitable."
Urawa laughed. "You know me too well."
Ami sighed. "Is she going to need help?" She asked her
husband.
He stared off at Minako, who was now screaming herself
as she plummeted. "No, she'll be fine, but she's going to
kick my butt." Most people would have run, but Urawa knew
it was destiny, and he couldn't escape it.
Steven wasn't so sure of that. After all, if the future
couldn't be changed, what would have happened if Urawa had
just kept quiet after his vision? Minako wouldn't have reacted
fast enough to catch the girl. He wasn't going to argue,
though, because Urawa was stubborn as stone on this issue.
Ami ran to the end of the dock, with Urawa following
more slowly and Steven half-jogging. "You okay, Mina-
chan?" he asked.
She was bedraggled, and her dress was now on the verge
of sliding off her body completely, but she had a firm grip on
the unconscious girl as she reached the edge of the dock.
Steven and Ami pulled her up. Ami said, "She doesn't look
hurt."
Steven gave her a hard look. "No physical damage except
a few bruises, but her nervous system is going haywire for no
particular reason."
"Organic problem or artificial?" Ami asked. Steven
could tell you what was wrong, but she was the one who
knew how to fix it afterwards.
"Artificial. Pretty much, all of her senses are firing at
once like crazy. Including her pain sense. I think she finally
clonked out simply because it was the only way to deal with
it." He reached over and pulled up Minako's dress onto her
shoulders again.
Ami pulled out her computer and ran a quick scan. "The
effects are already fading. She should be fine in a few
minutes. "I wonder if she likes boating."
Minako glanced over at Steven, who frowned. "You
know I don't like to do that without people's permission. It's
rude." He could find out almost anything that existed as a
state in the present about someone, given enough time, but he
almost never did it unless he had to. It made him intensely
uncomfortable, and he didn't think probing someone like that
was moral. He had done it a few times, anyway, but certainly
never for anything this petty. Minako didn't seem to quite
understand that.
She shrugged. "Everyone likes boating. We can just take
her with us."
* * *
Arcadia felt her stomach prepare to empty itself again. "I
hate boating. Excuse me while I throw up again."
Ami reached into a pocket and pulled out a small bottle
and passed Arcadia a pill. "Take this."
Arcadia swallowed it, and her stomach instantly settled.
She blinked. "What was that?"
"Snake oil." Steven said. Minako bopped him on the
head.
"Seasickness antidote. I get seasick too, so I invented
those." Ami smiled.
"But...it was so fast!"
Ami nodded. "You don't want to throw up first, THEN
get better."
It didn't really answer her question, but it made sense.
"So what year is this?" This must be some kind of trick, she
thought, but why would they bother? Unless maybe this is a
Sim, and my real body is lying somewhere being
experimented on. She decided to not pursue that option, since
she couldn't do anything about it.
Ami blinked. "Juraiian Year 23224 or Serenity Year 68,
depending on which calendar you use. 3,811 years after the
founding of Rome. Atomic year 1115. Let's see, by the
Kzinti calendar, it would be..."
Urawa said, "I don't think she uses the Kzinti calendar,
Ami-chan."
Arcadia did the math in her head. She had travelled 1464
or so years through time if they weren't insane or lying.
Surely, if this was a trick, they'd choose something plausible.
She stared at the key in her hand. Unless this is real.
Minako visibly jumped and her dress started to slide
down again. "Pluto gave you a Time Key?"
Ami said quietly, with a compassionate voice. "Did a
woman with dark green hair give you that? Are you from
another time?"
"Marcus gave it to me." I hope he's okay, she thought.
"He has sparkly white hair, and he's not female." She
pocketed it. "This can't be SY 68! It's not possible!" Maybe
I've gone insane, she thought.
"What year should it be?" Minako asked, continuing to
row with a steady rythym as Steven pulled her dress up again.
Ryo kept rowing, while Ami got out her computer and started
typing. A visor appeared on her head with a tiny screen that
she periodically looked at.
"Serenity Year 1532. I was in what was left of Crystal
Tokyo, but..." She trailed off. This can't be real. I'm going
to start dreaming about meeting Saint Rei or something.
All four of them frowned in unison. Minako said, "What
happened to Crystal Tokyo?"
"Demand the II bombed it to tiny bits a little over fifty
years ago. Serenity XVIII somehow escaped and managed to
tow a N5 bomb into his home system and caused its sun to go
nova, wiping him out and most of the Black Moon Cult. Two
days later, her head exploded for reasons 'never clearly
explained' as Dr. Anderson would put it. The last remnants of
the Solar Empire collapsed or joined the Federal League after
that. Serenity XIX tried to take the throne, but the new Solar
Republic government exiled her to Deimos. I think she's still
there. She may actually be of Serenity's bloodline. They all
live a long time, I've heard. Twenty years ago, it joined the
Federal League and just about all of the worlds that had held
out thirty years ago joined us." She stared at the city. You're
supposed to be a ruins! "Enough history." A faint tune began
to drift out from the city, echoing across the waters. The
palace was singing. She shivered. "It's two o'clock?"
Ryo nodded. "Yeah. The palace always sings from two
to three." He paused. "So it still sings over a thousand years
from now?"
Arcadia listened. The tune was exactly the same. The
pain in her body faded away in seconds, as if it had never
been. Her worries diminished, replaced by a sense of hope.
The song always did this for her, but never this powerfully
before. She could sense the power it bore. It was magic. For
the first time since her arrival, she smiled. "Well, I suppose I
should be getting home. My fam...my friends will be
wondering what happened to me. Not that it isn't nice
meeting you, but I don't belong here."
"I doubt it will be that easy," Ryo said. "Pluto doesn't
just hand those things out for fun. She probably will want
you to do something before you go home."
Arcadia frowned. All the stories about Pluto agreed only
on one thing. She would use anyone and anything to
accomplish her purposes, and you never knew for sure what
those were. "I didn't ask to come here."
Ami said, "I will take you to see Pluto. If she won't
help, I will do my best to return you to your own time." She
paused. "To use the Time Key, you just hold it up and tell it
where you want to go. You could try that right now. It might
work."
Ryo shook his head no, but no one noticed but Arcadia.
She held up the Key and concentrated. For a moment, she felt
energies building up, but then nothing happened. The
energies drained away. "I think the battery's gone dead." She
looked at Ryo. "Why were you shaking your head?"
"I knew it wouldn't work."
"You could have told me and saved some time."
"You would have ignored me and tried anyway. Better to
let you try and save my breath." He shrugged. "Should I
start steering for shore so you can take her to see Pluto, Ami-
chan?"
"How do you know Pluto, anyway? Isn't she like one of
the rulers of the city?" I wanted to ask why two of them had
gone boating in formal clothing, too.
Minako grinned. "We break legs for the Yakuza. She's
got HEAVY gambling debts and..."
Steven lightly rapped her skull. "Let's not fill her head
with one of your silly stories, dear."
"She's Sailor Venus and I'm Sailor Mercury, Arcadia-
chan." Ami said.
No way, Arcadia thought. This has to be a dream.
Minako's husband is gonna announce he's the Easter Bunny
and Ryo will be the Hogfather, next. "You don't ...look like
all powerful warriors."
"I wouldn't say we're all powerful." Ami said.
"Pluto does a good job of seeming to be all-present,
though," Minako said. "Or maybe just all-obnoxious."
"Actually, she's been very nice lately," Ami said. "And
she was never obnoxious. She just never told us anything."
Arcadia couldn't believe anyone sane would talk about
the legendary Pluto like that. Maybe the stories were
exaggerated, she thought. "Well, let's go. I have to get back
and find out what was going on when I came here."
* * *
Arcadia let out a yell of pure pleasure as they zoomed over
the streets of Crystal Tokyo. She liked flying even more than
she liked running or driving at ridiculous speeds. Everyone
except her and Minako, who had somehow browbeaten the
others into letting her drive the skimmer, was screaming at the
top of their lungs. Well, Arcadia was screaming too, but it
was because she enjoyed it, while she was fairly certain the
others were simply scared. What surprised her was that the
skimmer looked much like the ones used in her own time. I
suppose there's only so many improvements you can make in
something as simple as a skimmer. Skimmers usually
couldn't fly this high, however. They were travelling about a
hundred feet over the rooftops, and most skimmers couldn't
get more than thirty to fifty feet off the ground. "So how fast
does this thing go?"
Steven shouted, "No! Don't ask her that!"
Minako grinned. "I don't know. Let's find out."
Ami simply hid her face in Ryo's chest. Arcadia could
hear them both praying. Steven started pulling his hair. The
skimmer acclerated, faster and faster. The Palace, which had
been miles away, was now closing in at high speed. Minako
cackled and the skimmer dodged to one side, arcing around
the palace like a space ship slingshotting itself through a
gravity well. The entire palace chimed a series of notes that
echoed across the city, as many of the buildings picked up the
tune and rang faintly. "One of these days, I'm going to figure
out how to play some songs I know by doing that," Minako
sagely announced.
"One of these days, I'm going to convince the Queen to
forbid you to ever drive again," Steven moaned.
In the time it had taken to say that, they were halfway
across the city. Arcadia said, "I thought we were going to the
palace."
"I have to slow down before we can land, and I don't
want to slow down until we see how fast this thing is,"
Minako said. They were still speeding up. Rice fields blurred
by under them as they zoomed across open countryside.
Arcadia looked at the speedometer. 800 KPH.
"We're going 800 KPH? In a SKIMMER?"
Minako laughed. "Not bad, eh? I guess I ought to turn
around before we end up running out of land and plummet
into the ocean."
"You could say that." Ryo mumbled.
She roared around in a vast arc and headed back. The
fields seemed remarkably empty of people, Arcadia noticed.
Dozens of miles of rice paddies, and only ten or twenty people
that she had seen. Most of them were chasing their hats from
the first pass. "Why are there so few people in the fields? Is
today a holiday?" She would have guessed they were farms
operated largely by robots, but there weren't any robots,
either.
Ami finally dared to look up. "An average farm family of
five can meet the needs of a hundred square kilometers of farm
with about two hours of labor a day. What you're seeing right
now are the people who either didn't feel like getting up early,
or had things to do in the morning. Or they may have an
exceptionally large farm and actually need to work on the farm
longer than two hours. And some people are perfectionists, of
course."
Arcadia boggled. "Two hours a DAY?" Even with the
best equipment, unless you had robots to do the work for you,
farmers had to work a lot longer than that a day for a farm that
big. For that matter, most people didn't HAVE farms that big
except for corporate farms.
"The less adept farmers might take three to four hours,
but most people don't do farming if they don't have a natural
aptitude for it." Ami said.
If you only have to work two hours a day as a farmer,
I'm surprised everyone doesn't go into farming, she thought.
"So how long does everyone else work?"
Ami said, "It depends on how you define work. Most
people can meet their basic needs for the day in about two
hours, but the average person usually spends longer than that
in some sort of productive activity, whether it be making
luxury items, research, practicing song, dance, or art, writing,
or whatever. That's very variable. Some people might spend
ten hours or more at that, while others might only spend a few
hours at it."
Arcadia boggled some more. Meet your needs in two
hours? No way. It wasn't possible, and if it was, people
would just laze around all day, goofing off. Sort of like what
these four were doing when she met them. Maybe that was it.
If everyone lived like nobles, they'd all have to be as lazy as
most nobles were.
They zoomed into the city's airspace again. Two dark
blue skimmers with a yellow crescent moon painted on the
sides rose out of the streets and closed in on them. Steven
laughed. "So how close to losing your driver's license are
you, Mina-chan?"
Minako grumbled. "I was just trying to show Arcadia
how fast this could go."
The two blue skimmers, each manned by a man and a
woman in dark blue uniforms with white hats emblazoned
with the same yellow crescent moon as the skimmer, pulled up
alongside the group's skimmer. The one on Minako's side
was being driven by a woman. Her male partner said, "We
clocked you going more than FIVE TIMES the speed limit
inside the city, and only God knows how fast you were going
over the countryside." He was holding a clipboard with what
Arcadia recognized as almost certainly a traffic ticket.
He paused, staring at Minako. "You look familiar."
Minako said, "Maybe you've seen me on Holovision."
She pulled out a small card, which projected a tiny rotating
picture of herself in somewhat more casual garb, and handed it
to the officer. "I'm Mina Harker."
One of the officers in the other vehicle said, "Hey, I went
to your last concert! It was great!"
They all started babbling about how wonderful a singer
she was, and Minako clearly drank it all in like a child eats
candy. She signed autographs for all of them. Finally, the
officer with the clipboard said, "Your fine is 2000 Marks, due
in one month." Minako's jaw dropped.
Arcadia whispered to Ami, "Um, how much money is
that?"
Ami whispered back, "Minako makes more than that for
just showing up at one of her concerts, but the average person
can earn 2-5 marks an hour through work, depending on what
they're doing. One common way to pay fines is through
public service of some kind, which is paid at 4 Marks an hour.
The average speeding ticket is more like 20-50 Marks,
though."
"But...but...I wasn't going that fast!" Minako whined.
The female officer in the vehicle on the right side of the
skimmer punched a few keys on the keyboard in her skimmer.
"Actually, you've broken the previous record for worst
speeding. However, the K'kklith ambassador had diplomatic
immunity, so he got off easy."
Minako sighed and signed the ticket. Arcadia was rather
surprised. No one in Sirius' government ever paid speeding
tickets. One of her hometown's city councilmen had 12,000
Sirian Dollars in unpaid tickets when he left office. "Go in
peace, officers," she sighed, then slowly began to drive
towards the palace again. The two patrol skimmers dropped
down to street level and zoomed off.
"You're actually going to pay that?" Arcadia asked
dubiously. "Or is this going to file 13?"
"No one is above the law," Minako grumbled. "Even if
they were just trying to be helpful. This never happens to
Haruka. Hmph."
They're probably just saying that to look good, Arcadia
thought. I mean, even Councilman Estevan never publicly
proclaimed he didn't pay his tickets. Rulers always put
themselves above the law. Power corrupts, yatta yatta yatta.
"So is your name Minako or Mina?"
"Mina Harker is my stage name, and the name I use when
I don't want to be recognized as Sailor Venus," she said.
"She's starting to become as much of a celebrity as Sailor
Venus is, though, so I may have to come up with another
one."
Steven lightly noogied Minako. "Becoming an idol singer
kinda does that, you know."
Minako curved around the palace more slowly this time,
settling down in a large paved square full of skimmers on the
north side of the Palace. Her parking space had the sign of
Venus embossed on it in gold. For that matter, the parking lot
was paved with marble, which surprised Arcadia. They
hopped out of the skimmer and Arcadia looked around. The
palace was roughly shaped like a five pointed star, and the
parking lot rested in one of the angles between the points.
Arcadia vaguely recognized it. It wasn't marble in her time,
but it was still a parking lot.
The palace itself looked familiar, but different. For one
thing, the tops of all the towers weren't blasted to rubble. It
reached high into the sky, towering over the rest of the city. A
mixture of pleasant scents filled the air, and she could hear
faint music drifting down from a window in one of the nearest
towers. A marble path, each slab embossed with the symbol
of one of the planets, lead to one of the main doors into the
palace, where two footmen stood, dressed in white and
yellow, each carrying a long white staff tipped with a crescent
moon.
They both snapped to attention when the group
approached, crossing their staves over the door. Everyone but
Arcadia saluted them, and they saluted back. "All hail the
Lady Venus, Lady Mercury, and their consorts." One
bellowed.
The other bellowed, "Peace be with you," at a volume
more suited for announcing a fire in the house than a greeting.
Arcadia laughed a little. "Do they do that every time you
walk in?"
Minako nodded. "I've seen those two do that when I
came dragging in at three o'clock in the morning. They're
both veterans of the Liberation War and the Kzinti war. They
could retire if they wanted to, but they'll probably still be there
when they're old and grey."
"So why are they stuck on door duty?"
"They requested it. Nothing could please Stanley and
Oliver more, as far as I can tell, except maybe another war,
and that's not too likely to happen. Especially now that we've
finally established peaceful relations with the Kzinti."
The halls of the palace were decorated with enough
artworks for a thousand museums. Virtually none of them
had survived to Arcadia's time, except for a huge wall mural
that had been carved and painted into one of the walls. It
showed the Sailor Senshi doing battle in the sky with the
Winter Queen and her warriors over a red crystal mountain.
Some things were subtly different. In Arcadia's time, the
senshi in the wall mural all wore green uniforms with only a
single stripe of a different color at the bottom of their skirts,
while in this, they all wore a variety of colors and subtly
different styles. The hair colors were different as well, and
the Winter Queen was now an albino instead of a pitch black
nightmare with mauve hair and red eyes. Yet, the picture and
carving was exactly the same except for color schemes. Some
really bad restorer must have tried to fix it later.
Ami looked over. "You like it?" She smiled.
"We still have this in my time, but someone repainted
everything wrong."
"I guess a lot has changed in a thousand five hundred
years," Ryo said casually.
"Just about everything I've seen in this place has either
been stolen, destroyed, or is packed away in the vaults in my
time. Or Doctor Anderson has stashed it in the library."
Ami coughed loudly, then said, "So you've visited the
palace in your time?"
"What's left of it. Heck, I've lived there for a month."
She wondered if telling people about the future was a good
idea, then dismissed the worry. Like telling them about events
1500 years in their future was going to make any kind of
difference. "Okay, it all started on my sixteenth birthday..."
* * *
By the time that Arcadia finished, they had reached
Pluto's quarters. Ami said, "She probably will be here,
expecting you. If not, I'll take you to the Museum of
Unnatural History. If she's not there...we'll go see if Usagi
knows where to find her."
The door was plain brown wood, unpainted, but with the
symbol of Pluto embossed in gold on it. It had a simple door
knob without a lock. Ami rapped on the door, and a white
haired man answered it. Arcadia wasn't sure what age he
was. He had no wrinkles on his face and moved like a much
younger man than his hair indicated. She had met young
people with white hair, Marcus for example, but his hair
looked white from age, not from being normally that color.
There was a difference. It didn't sparkle, either, not that she'd
met many people with sparkling white hair. He was wearing
glasses, which surprised her. Glasses were only found in
museums in her era. A ten year old could almost fix
someone's sight. Surely he had the resources to get his vision
corrected.
"Hello," he said. "Come on in."
He stepped out of the way. Minako said, "I think I'm
going to go change my clothing and make sure I don't forget
to pay that ticket." She grumbled for a moment, then grabbed
Steven. "You can help me pick something out."
"Oh joy," he said. "Bye, Arcadia. Good luck on getting
back home!"
She waved bye as Minako dragged her husband away,
then headed into Pluto's quarters. The parlour was plush,
with nice padded chairs, and a purple and green color scheme.
There was a low table in the middle of the room with various
magazines and a pair of small crystal cubes scattered across it.
A plate of chocolate chip cookies, six glasses, six small
matching plates, and a pitcher of some liquid sat on one end of
the table. A little boy, about five years old, stood by them,
looking like he was barely controlling himself from eating
them all. He had short black hair and was wearing blue jeans
and a purple t-shirt with green letters, "Crystal Tokyo
Spirals". There was a small logo on the shirt of someone
kicking a soccer ball under the words. "Daddy, I'm gonna
'splode if I don't get a cookie soon!"
Arcadia laughed. Little kids never change, I guess.
The man turned to Arcadia, "I'm Professor Tomoe. Nice
to meet you. Please sit down. Would you like a cookie?" He
started pouring drinks and putting cookies on plates, making
sure that the little kid got his cookies first. "And this is my
son Ian." He looked around. "His sister Barbara is around
here, somewhere. Probably hiding again."
"I'm Arcadia N'goya. Nice to meet you." She paused.
"Are you Pluto's husband?" She sat down in one of the
chairs, which molded itself to her form. It was soft and
within seconds, she didn't want to ever have to get out of it in
her life.
Professor Tomoe nodded. "Setsuna and I have been
married for a very long time. She should be here soon. She
called and told me to prepare some snacks, since we'd be
having company."
Ami laughed a little. "I wish Ryo always forsaw when
we were going to have guests."
He laughed. "Maybe I do, but I don't tell you when I
forsee you're not going to be ready for them."
She made a face at him. Arcadia relaxed in the
wonderfully comfortable chair and munched on cookies as if
they were going out of style. I'm so hungry, she thought.
Must be because I lost everything in my stomach. She
yawned loudly. I'm so sleepy, she thought. Adrenalin and
other excitement had kept her going, but now, she started to
slip off to sleep.
That came to an abrupt halt when the little boy climbed
up into her lap and started tugging on her hair. "I wanna play
pony!"
She started awake. "What?"
"Play pony! I wanna play pony!"
Professor Tomoe started to get up. "Let her rest, Ian.
I'll play pony with you later. Go find your sister."
Ian hopped off Arcadia's lap and ran off into the depths
of the suite. "Barbie! Where are you?"
"I'm sorry about that," Professor Tomoe said. "Ian is a
very lively little boy. When he was very little, he once
screamed for 10 hours straight, except when he was eating."
The door opened and a beautiful woman in her late thirties
with reddish eyes and long greenish-black hair walked in.
She was dressed in a flowered wrap-around outfit which ran
from neck to near her ankles, tied at the waist with a green belt
tied in the back with a bow. It looked incredibly archaic to
Arcadia. She walked over to Professor Tomoe, who got up,
and they kissed briefly, then she turned and said, "Hello,
Ami. Hello, Ryo." She turned to Arcadia, and for a moment,
she looked intensely surprised. In fact, Arcadia had never
seen someone so surprised in her entire life. A few seconds
later, the look was replaced with a pleasant smile. "Nice to
meet you. I'm Mei'ou Setsuna, and you are?"
Ami and Ryo gave each other a confused look, and
Professor Tomoe said, "This is Arcadia N'goya, Setsuna-
chan." She nodded and sat down, grabbing a cookie and
pouring herself a glass of lemonade.
"So where are you from, Arcadia?" Setsuna asked. "Are
you studying with Ami-chan?"
Arcadia frowned and held up the Time Key. "Did you
arrange for this to come into my possession or not? More
importantly, can you send me home, with or without it?"
Setsuna's eyes widened for a moment. Her voice was a
little too casual. "How did you get it?"
"Someone dug it up, Marcus found it, and he gave it to
me." Is she trying to trick me, or does she really not know
what's going on? She has to know, Arcadia thought. If she's
really Pluto, Pluto sees the future and travels through time and
stuff. Unless this is an evil duplicate or...let's not get into
that, she thought.
Professor Tomoe looked a little uncomfortable, and Ami
was staring alternately at the key and at Setsuna, who said
quietly, "I did not arrange for you to get that key. Nor can I
easily send you home."
Arcadia boggled again. This was starting to become a
habit. "WHAT? Then HOW did I get here?"
"I can think of three possibilities. One, that for some
reason that key was charged by me or the Junior Pluto and left
lying around where it was dug up by chance. I find this
unlikely. Two, that at some point in the future, we will do
this as part of some plan that hasn't been made yet. This is
possible, but doesn't explain certain things. Thirdly..." She
paused. "What year are you from?"
"1532 SY." Arcadia said quietly.
"Ahh, that explains it. You're from after I die. You're in
the junior Pluto's jurisdiction. You'll have to see if she
knows why you are here." Setsuna sat back, visibly relaxed,
and ate a cookie.
"Junior Pluto?" Arcadia prayed this was not the little girl
who was hiding somewhere in the house.
"Each of the Senshi eventually trains an apprentice, who
is known as the junior or younger 'whatever' during that
Senshi's lifetime," Ami said.
Setsuna cocked her head for a moment. "Can you see
her in your future sight, Ryo?"
"Yes." He said.
Setsuna started on her second cookie. "Interesting."
Arcadia looked over at Ryo, who said, "Hey, I didn't
bring you here, Arcadia. I'm sure Hime-chan will help you,
though."
There was a knock at the door. Setsuna said, "Come in,
Hime-chan."
The door opened and the junior Pluto walked in. Arcadia
recognized her outfit as that worn by Sailor Pluto, but she was
blonde with short hair and was carrying a time staff tipped
with an amethyst. The stories didn't mention any such Pluto.
The next one was supposed to have long blue-black hair and
didn't show up for...well, a while after this. If she
remembered correctly. And there was only ONE time staff,
just like only one Silver Crystal. "Hmph. Spoil my grand
entrance, will you?"
"Kind of hard to surprise a room with two people who
see the future, Hime-chan," Ryo said.
Professor Tomoe got up and pulled over another chair to
the circle around the table. "Would you like some cookies?"
"Sure!" She walked over to the plate of cookies and
grabbed half of what was left, then sat down, leaning her staff
against the chair. "If The Unternehmen calls about another
temporal anomaly, I'm going to kill them."
Ami said, "They found ANOTHER one? That
makes...six this year?"
"And it's only May," Pluto said. "I gave the Queen a
report." She turned to Arcadia. "Oh, hi! You must be
Arcadia."
Arcadia gave a sigh of relief. "Please tell me you can
send me back to the future."
"I can send you back to the future," the junior Pluto said
with a mischevous smile.
Arcadia gave a bigger sigh of relief. "How soon can I
go?"
"Actually, I only said that because you asked me to."
Himeko laughed, as did Ami.
With effort, Arcadia resisted the urge to scream at Sailor
Pluto. "Did you bring me here?"
"No, but I know who did." Sailor Pluto said, her voice
becoming serious. "Ami, scan that time key."
Ami blinked. She pulled out her computer, and Arcadia
suddenly realized she had no clue where Ami was keeping that
computer when she wasn't using it. The visor appeared on
her head again and she looked at the key, then started typing.
A few seconds later, she gasped. "It's full of...the Saturn
power? But Sailor Saturn can't control time travel..." She
typed a little more. "It's programmed to go off again a week
from now. I can't tell what it's going to do, though. Maybe
with more study..."
Arcadia REALLY didn't want to have to meet Saturn.
There were stories of the first Saturn destroying entire fleets
by herself. She had the power to lay entire planets waste. But
if it was the only way...assuming this wasn't some kind of
trick to keep her here. They might be lying so they can keep
me here for some reason. Her stomach churned and she
frowned. "So what does this mean?"
Professor Tomoe said, "Are you sure it's specifically the
Saturn power and not some other kind of dark energy?"
"Dark energy?" Arcadia asked. "Is that like dark matter?"
She had heard the term, but wasn't quite sure what it meant. I
guess dark energy would be non-visible.
"Dark energy is what is used in black magic', to put it
loosely," Ami said. "There is no such thing as truly neutral'
magic. That is the realm of natural law. That is why the
sorcerors of tale and legend tend to be painted in tones of
black and white. To truly perform magic, you must make a
moral choice of one kind or another. Those who walk the line
never achieve the level of power of those who fully choose
good." She paused. "Or evil." She sighed. "Now, not
every magical act is infused with vast moral significance, but
ultimately, the attempt to draw on both kinds of power is
highly dangerous and tends to be destructive of sanity in the
long run."
"But the world isn't all about GOOD' and EVIL',"
Arcadia said. "It's full of shades of grey. Most people aren't
tremendously good or evil."
"And even in this age of high magic, most people will
never wield strong magical power," Setsuna replied. "Magic
destroys those who can't make up their minds, or they become
reforged and reshaped by the power they weild to a form more
apt for it. There is a price for power. You use the power, but
it also uses you. If you wield dark forces, they will slowly
consume you. If you wield the light, it will bear you up, but it
also makes demands as well. You can preserve your freedom
of action only at the cost of impotence, in the sphere of
magic."
Arcadia frowned. That was nothing like what they
taught in her magical theory class. On the other hand, if these
were really the Sailor Senshi, and this was really Crystal
Tokyo in 68 SY and even half the stories were true... "Wait,
you said it had Saturn power in it? Isn't Saturn one of you
people?"
Setsuna sighed and stared at the floor. Professor Tomoe
shifted uncomfortably, as did the younger Pluto. Ryo started
to say something, then fell silent after the first syllable. Ami
said quietly, "She was the victim of an attempt to defy that
law. With her life, she contains the Saturn force. The Saturn
force is...almost alive. It seeks to destroy all life.
Everything. She has vast power, power enough to match the
Queen blow for blow, but she can't use it at that level without
being consumed by the darkness."
"Why can't you just send it back where it came from?"
Arcadia asked.
"We don't know how. Even the Silver Crystal couldn't
kill it, although it did go dormant for a while, but the Queen
nearly died," Ami said quietly. "When she dies, it will move
on to the next Saturn, whoever that poor soul is."
That really stinks, Arcadia said. No one deserves to be
constantly in risk of being eaten alive by their own magic like
that. "There's got to be SOMETHING that can be done,"
Arcadia said, her voice rising. "That's just so unfair!"
Professor Tomoe said, "I know. Poor Hotaru-chan. I
would give anything to help her." His voice was strained.
"Anything, to set her free."
"Hotaru, Sailor Saturn, is Professor Tomoe's daughter,"
Ryo said quietly. Ami began typing again, checking her visor
periodically.
"Are you a Senshi too, Professor Tomoe?" Arcadia
asked.
Everyone laughed a little. Professor Tomoe smiled and
said, "I think I wouldn't look very good in a skirt. No, I'm
just a professional mad scientist." He winked, and spoke with
a falsetto voice. "Want to be a guinea pig for one of my
experiments?"
Arcadia laughed, and everyone else laughed raucously.
The laughter stopped when Ami said, "It IS the Saturn Force.
But it's not from Hotaru." She paused. "I think it's from
whoever is the Sailor Saturn of your time, Arcadia."
"There isn't one. The majority of them died during the
bombing of Crystal Tokyo, and the rest died helping Serenity
XVIII blow up Avalon or died soon after. There hadn't been
a Sailor Saturn worthy of the legend in centuries, anyway.
Really, they were just ceremonial bodyguards for the most
part, although the last Sailor Uranus and the last Sailor
Mercury were reputed to be the two most deadly combatants
of the fifteenth century. I've seen a holo of that Mercury
fighting. She killed twenty assasin robots by herself."
Arcadia thought for a moment. "She had an ice blade that
could cut through just about anything. Anyway, the Sailor
Senshi are gone. Toast. Game over."
Everyone looked dismal at that pronouncement except the
younger Pluto, who stood up. "The proper word is
'underground'. If this is correct, then I have clearly missed
something, however. I must go." She started to raise the
Time Staff.
"Wait! Can't you take me home if you're going that
way?"
"Someone wanted you to come here, and they have the
Sailor Saturn of your time working for them. Given that I
believed she had NOT been reborn in your time...It would be
very dangerous for you to return until we know what is going
on, and only you and I can travel freely to that time. There are
other senshi who could help once we arrived, but...It is up to
you. I urge you to stay," the younger Pluto said. "You
would be sticking your head into the lion's mouth in the dark
if you return."
"But...what about my friends? I have to warn them about
this! I have to warn..." Marcus, she thought. He found the
key. "I have to warn Marcus. He found the key. He could
be in danger too!"
"I will warn him and make sure he gets to safety," the
younger Pluto said. "I don't know how I let this all slip by
me." She sounded a little angry. "Someone let Daichi know
I'm going to miss dinner, okay?"
Ryo said, "We will."
"Tell him that..." Arcadia trailed off. "Tell him to make
sure that his dad gets the report I did for him. The one on the
Rigellian grain futures."
Professor Tomoe and the junior Pluto gave Arcadia an
odd look in unison. Setsuna simply smiled, as did Ami. Ryo
muttered something incoherent. "I will do as you requested. I
will let your parents know you are alive as well. I'm sure they
must be worried about you."
"They're both alive? The Black Moon Cult left them
alone?" Arcadia's heart jumped with joy.
The junior Pluto vanished in a spray of purple light
before she could answer. A few seconds later, the door
opened and a short woman with short black hair, about the
same length as Ami's, but differently cut, wearing a purple
wrap-around that went down to about halfway along her
calves with a blue belt and black tights walked in. She wore a
golden necklace with a ringed planet in silver hanging from it.
"Hi, dad! Hi, mom! I'm here to babysit the kids." She
paused. "It is tonight that you're going out?" She turned and
saw the others. "Hi, Ami-chan! Hi, Ryo-kun. How's the
research for the new display at the Window of the Past coming
along?" Turning further, she saw Arcadia. "Hi! Nice to meet
you! I'm Hotaru." Her eyes suddenly locked on the key in
Arcadia's hands, and for a moment, she froze in place. Her
lips moved silently, then she said, her voice choked with fear,
"What...what is that?" She gulped. "Are you...to be my
apprentice?"
Arcadia blinked. "Me, a Sailor Senshi? I can barely blow
up a brick off of Earth...I'm a little better here, but I...me,
Sailor Saturn? I'm a stick of dynamite where you're a N5
bomb." She paused. "Not to say you're a weapon of
destruction or anything...umm..."
Setsuna was staring at the floor again. Everyone else
focused on Hotaru as she said, "Where. Did. That. THING.
Come. From?"
"Uh...someone dug it up in a field in the year 1532 and it
may have been made by the Sailor Saturn of my time?"
Arcadia hadn't been this scared since her 16th birthday
party/massacre.
"It has to be DESTROYED!" Hotaru shouted, her face
red with swelling anger.
"If you just smash it, you'll unleash the Saturn force
within it." Ami said. "We'd best seal it in the vault until I can
figure out the best way to dispose of it."
Arcadia dropped it. "Take it. I don't want to be
anywhere near..." She looked at Saturn. "I can't use it
anyway. I already tried. I don't even know why it brought
me here."
The rage suddenly ran out of Hotaru, replaced by
confusion. "Wait...it brought you through TIME?"
"I'm from the year 1532. My name is Arcadia N'goya,
and I was born on Sirius. Nice to meet you." She shrank
back in her seat, just in case Saturn started to lose it again.
Hotaru took a deep breath. "Nice to meet you, Arcadia.
I'm sorry I yelled at you." She turned to Ami. "Work fast,
Ami. The Saturn Force is not easily contained." She stared at
the floor. "Although at least it can't steal a chunk of metal's
soul."
Ian and Barbara, a cute little girl with blue eyes and
greenish-black hair like her mother's, but cut short like
Hotaru, ran out of the back and hugged Hotaru's legs. "Hi,
big sister Hotaru!" Barbara shouted. "You want a cookie?"
Hotaru picked up Barbara and hugged her silently. "Hi,
little sister Barbara."
"Her name is Barbie!" Ian shouted.
"Is not!"
Hotaru knelt down and patted Ian's head. "Hi, little
brother. Have you been making sure Barbara doesn't get
lost?"
He handed her a cookie from the table. "Here you go!
Yeah, she can't hide from me! I'm gonna be a famous
detective like Sheerluck Homes one day!"
"I'm sure you will," Hotaru said, rufflinghis hair.
Arcadia stared in surprise. How could anyone swing in
moods so fast? Why wasn't anyone else scared of her? Or
were they just used to it? "So...how long am I going to be
staying here?"
"You can stay with us until we figure out what is going
on and it's safe for you to go home," Ami said.
Ryo said, "We need someone to babysit Ami-chan,
anyway." He winked. "She runs poor Hermes ragged."
"Hermes?" Arcadia asked.
"Hermes is a Mercurian Hound. Basically, imagine a
Collie the size of a housecat. He babysits Ami-chan for us,
and tutors her, but he's getting old, and she has enough
energy for ten thousand small children. We could probably
power a star cruiser if we put her on a treadmill." Ami said.
"We've got plenty of space, and Ryo-kun could show you
around Crystal Tokyo."
"Okay." She seems nice, Arcadia thought. I bet she and
Professor Anderson would get along great. They're both
smart AND nice. I guess I'm going to find out if all those
legends are true. "I'm gonna need some clothing."
"I'm sure that Minako or Makoto would love to take you
shopping for clothes and teach you how to use a Wardrobe. I
always end up dressed as Julius Caesar or Napoleon or
something," Ryo said. "I'd be happy to show you around the
city myself, though. I promise I won't go 800 KPH like
Minako did."
"Actually, I thought that was really cool. I LIKE speed."
Arcadia said. "I guess that's why I like to run and race.
Movement is just...the faster the better. That's why I was
captain of our Track Team, and I was just a sophmore." She
yawned. "I think I need some serious sleep. I only had about
three hours of it before I came here.
Arcadia slept for a very long time, but not as long as Rip
Van Winkle.
******************
Earth, Albert's Needle, 2066 AD (Serenity Year -926, 2815
Years after the founding of Rome, Juraian Year 22230,
Federal Year -1918)
Albert's Needle was colloquially known as the pimple on
the butt of the Outback to most people who had ever heard of
it, even by the locals. It had a population of 257 and one dog.
The dog belonged to the barkeeper/general store owner/mayor,
Jimmy Wilkinson. The only reason everyone didn't leave was
that you could graze sheep during the wet season and no one
could afford to leave.
Everyone had been surprised when Dr. Angelica Ransom
showed up and started poking around the old caves in the
area. The only person in Albert's Needle who had ever seen a
college professor in the flesh was Crazy Old Man Hodge, who
had been ten years old back in the thirties when some
expedition from Mouskateer University, or some such place,
had come through town on their way looking for something or
another in the deep, deep Outback. It was something different
every time Hodge told the story, ranging from a ruins
inhabited by invisible wind-monsters to an ancient Elephant
burial ground to a underground world inhabited primarily by
giant Koalas and Elvis. He kept following Dr. Ransom
everywhere, asking her when she was going to come back
ranting insanely about cone-shaped aliens and little green men,
until finally Jimmy Wilkinson and Angie Smith (who had
rented a room in her house to Dr. Ransom) locked Crazy Old
Man Hodge (No one ever called him by anything shorter, and
no one remembered his first name anymore, except maybe the
postman. Even his mail usually said either 'resident' or
'Crazy Old Man Hodge'. So did his checks.) in the storage
room of the bar/general store, where he promptly ate all the
beef jerky as revenge.
Dr. Ransom claimed to be an archaeologist. She was, but
that wasn't why she was here. She was also a mage of some
repute, incredibly skillful at reading impressions of the past of
objects and finding archaelogical sites. It was her second
talent, which she hated, which led her here. The Archetypes,
as many magi called them, sought her out. They were the
spirits which incarnated highly powerful ideas, such as Truth,
Justice, Hate, Death, and other abstractions, such as Gaia,
Uncle Sam, or in Dr. Ransom's case, "Australia". You saw
them as you expected them to appear. Australia had appeared
to her as a woman garbed like Britannia, but armed with a
boomerang, instead of a spear, and wearing a wide-brimmed
hat.
Her first reaction had been to laugh so long she fell out of
her chair in the office at the University of Sydney where she
doing some research during a sabattical. Her second reaction
was, "Umm...I'm not even Australian. Why did you come to
me?"
Australia sighed and sat down on a throne that suddenly
appeared, destroying the filing cabinets in the office Dr.
Ransom had wheedled from the University of Sydney. "You
are the one who can reawaken my heart. Without you, I will
die soon. I beg you to help me." Dr. Ransom had been
pestered by dozens of Archetypes over the years, but she had
never heard one so desperate. Normally, nothing could phase
them.
"Die? Is a meteor going to squash the entire continent or
something?" And how could I stop this?
"Death has been giving us all funny looks and smiling a
lot." Australia shuddered. "And Destiny has been crying
continuously since about a year ago."
That convinced Dr. Ransom. Destiny was the coldest,
most heartless of the Archetypes. Normally, he/she/it did
nothing but show up at crucial events and watch impassively.
If Destiny was actually crying..."All right. I'll go."
She had found the place. The needle itself was the key.
It was a huge rock pillar, about four feet across, that rose
nearly a hundred feet into the sky, with a roughly circular hole
in the top. How she was supposed to awaken it, she had no
idea. She hadn't studied much magical theory, and Australia
wasn't much help. Yet, Australia insisted that Dr. Ransom
was the one. No one else could do it. She'd somehow
wheedled that much from Destiny and his three children.
At least the sun isn't too bad, she thought. It was
unusually cool for December in Australia this year, but she
didn't mind. That night, the news reported that contact had
been lost with several research stations in Antarctica. She paid
it no mind.
When it was fifty degrees at noon the next day, she
started to wonder what was going on. She was staring at the
needle again. It was warmer close to the needle, warmer by a
good twenty degrees within a hundred feet. This isn't natural,
she thought.
At lunch, the news announced that the worst blizzard in
recorded history was drowning Canada and northern Russia in
snow. More worrisome was that the glaciers were on the
move south. They had moved ten miles south since the last
measurement. "It's the Fimbulwinter!" Crazy Old Man
Hodges started shouting. "The Damn Frost Giants are
invading! Santa Claus was just a front man for them! He
wears red! The Devil is red!" Someone bounced a beer can
off his head, and he shut up.
The door opened and two people Dr. Ransom didn't
expect to see walked in. One was her husband, Phineas, who
had been in Jordan negotiating a business deal when he called
her the previous night. The other was a woman with long
green-black hair and reddish eyes who was wearing a very
expensive looking business suit. "Is that her?" She asked
Phineas.
Phineas ran over to Angelica. "What is going on? This
woman yanked me out of bed, but I'm not even sure why."
The woman that Angelica didn't know smiled. "Let me
explain everything."
She had to repeat herself three times before they even
began to think about believing her.
*************************
John Walter Biles : MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu
rhea@tass.org http://www.tass.org/~rhea/falcon.html
rhea@maison-otaku.net http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/
The Moon Hill Gymnasium was crowded with students, most from Moon
Hill, but some from other schools. The special committee to pick the
theme for the first spring dance had argued for weeks over a theme. Many
ideas had been suggested: Love--American Style, Spring Sock Hop, Can't
Stop Doing the Monkey, The Black Plague, Enchantment under the Sea, Zinc
Oxide and You, Space Viking Vixen Women from Venus, The Progressive Era,
and The First Spring Dance. After extensive argument, the sole remaining
conscious committee member had selected the theme "Our Gym Covered in
Crepe Paper."
--Sailor Moon Z #7