Earth, Boston Metropolitan Area, 2065 AD (Serenity Year -927,
2816 Years after the founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 22229,
Federal Year -1919)
A storm of darkness and light erupted across Dr. Wise's living
room. A second later, the alarms went off, alerting the local police,
kicking in automatic mana dampeners, and setting off the
sprinklers due to a programming error. Sailor Saturn frowned at
the ceiling. "I could understand if Mars set off the sprinklers, but..."
Dr. Henry J. Wise let out a deep breath, then panicked. "My
computer!" He sprinted into his study, then remembered that it
had been enchanted to resist water when he had the sprinklers
installed.
"We don't have time for that! Grab anything you can't live
without, then we have to get OUT of here!" Saturn looked around,
twitching. I wish I knew what to grab, she thought. Instead I have
to wait for him to remember where he put things and what he
wants and... She began counting to a million, although she didn't
expect to reach it.
Dr. Wise began grabbing pictures. "I take it I should expect to
never see anything again that I leave behind?" He grabbed his
Luftmann prize off the wall and stuffed it in his briefcase as well.
"Should I take clothing?"
"Only if you can't bear to lose it." She ran over and took the
briefcase. "And hurry. It will take days for it to take total control
of the city, but I'll draw its' attention." I should leave to distract it,
but then it might find him anyway, and I can't protect the poor old
man if I leave him. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this."
He shrugged. "At least this way, I might not live. So what's
this thing going to do?"
"Take over the city first to make sure no one closes the
gateway. After that...who knows. Hopefully, we'll finish with the
Sun-Eater before that happens." I shouldn't have mentioned that,
she thought. No need to panic him with what he can't stop.
"The what?" He crammed a battered old suit into his suitcase,
along with all his ties and underwear. Several books also jumped
into the suitcase, along with four CDs and some disks.
"That's where I'm going once you're safe. Whatever got loosed,
it won't matter if we don't stop that thing. The thing in the
'accelerator' can't destroy all life on Earth in four days or less." I
hope, she thought. "Ready to go?"
"Ready as I ever am," he said quietly. I wonder if I'll ever
see this place again? He went and turned off the alarm. "Stupid
thing flooded the apartment under mine last time."
"I think they'll have more worries than that." The world
blinked out again, and they appeared in a very sophisticated lab
which Dr. Wise recognized from his last trip to Japan. Dr. Tomoe
was nearby, sitting at a computer, watching something the others
could not see on his glasses, though they could tell he was using a
partial VR hookup, since his glasses didn't normally show a test
pattern on the outside.
"Um, hi, Dr. Tomoe," Dr. Wise said.
Dr. Tomoe started and poked his headset. "Must be another
glitch in this thing. I'm thinking I'm hearing Dr. Wise," he
muttered.
Sailor Saturn walked over and gently pulled off his glasses.
"It is Dr. Wise, poppa."
Dr. Tomoe looked at both of them, pulled off the headset, then
said, "Uh..."
"I know your daughter is Sailor Saturn," Dr. Wise said.
Saturn hugged her father. "Things didn't go so well, Poppa."
"You know Setsuna-chan wouldn't have told you not to go if
she didn't mean it, dear." His voice was gentle, but it had a faint
chiding tone, which didn't seem appropriate for someone
addressing one of the most powerful people on Earth.
"We lost Dr. Wise's Time Orb, Poppa. Whatever broke through
has. Poppa...it..." Her voice trailed off.
"What, dear?"
She turned to Dr. Wise. "Can someone actually time travel
with that thing?"
He thought for a moment. "I think it would help you not get
lost if you tried, but the sheer power that it takes to travel
backwards through time is enormous."
Saturn cocked her head for a moment, and her little girl
aspect that had come out went back where it came from. "I note
you didn't say anything about moving forward through time."
"You're already moving forward through time. Even those
morons at the Chronos project have done that. However, it's rarely
done, because there isn't a lot of a point. Basically, it's the
difference between moving gently downstream, and paddling.
Moving backwards requires going against the current, and it's a
VERY strong current. Even then, though, moving more than a few
days forward through time requires a lot of energy." He sat down
on a handy stool. "I assumed you'd know all about this from your
mother's projects," Dr. Wise said.
"I know the theory, but given that we haven't studied your
Orb," Saturn said, "I don't know ITS capabilities."
Dr. Tomoe said, "It's chiefly intended for research, but in the
wrong hands, it could make a mess."
Dr. Wise nodded. "Well, a bit of a mess. It's easy to slow
down or speed up time in a limited area with it. No one is going to
be nuking William the Conqueror or helping the Toltecs invade
Medieval Europe with it." He thought a moment. "It would be
great for a spy, though."
"Does it add power or multiply it?" Saturn asked.
"Multiply, of course. It was MUCH harder to make like that,
but..."
"I have to find Pluto now." Saturn said, her voice hard. "See if
you two can work out a way to destroy it from a distance...
somehow." She vanished in a swirl of light and darkness.
"Why is she so worried? It's not that dangerous an object."
"In the hands of a mortal." Tomoe said quietly. "There are
things in heaven and earth not dreamt of in your philosophy,
Henry." He laughed. "I've always wanted to say that."
*************************
Black Moon Rising
Chapter 2: The Window of the Present
*************************
Earth, Crystal Tokyo, SY 68 (3060 AD, 3811 Years after the
founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 23224, Federal Year -926)
Arcadia woke up with something warm and heavy on her
chest. A quick peek revealed it wasn't Marcus, much as part of her
hoped it might be, but was instead a little blue-haired munchkin in
green pajamas.
She stared, wondering what the kid was doing in bed with her.
As consciousness returned, so did some clue as to why she was here
in the first place, but no clues as to why the little girl was here.
This must be their daughter, she thought.
The child suddenly opened her eyes, stared, then said,
"AAAH!!! I've been kidnapped!" She jumped up, which hurt, since
she was standing on Arcadia, leapt off the bed, and ran off
screaming.
Arcadia sat up and laughed, then slid off the bed and grabbed
her pants off the floor, just in case someone came in, attracted by
the screaming.
A few seconds later, a rather ridiculous looking collie head the
size of a cat's head stuck itself in through the door, then said, "I
assume you're Arcadia and not an evil kidnapper from the planet
Mongo?" He had a thick Rigellian accent, which made him sound
like Arcadia's uncle Nigel.
"You must be Hermes," she said, staring. I've never heard an
animal REALLY talk, she thought, unless some of the animals in Mr.
Bluesleeves' Morning Romp really talked. "Umm...I need to get
dressed."
Hermes moved the rest of the way into the doorway, then
turned and said into the hallway, "I told you she wasn't a
tentacular monster from Anabaxis XVI, Ami-chan. She doesn't
even have one tentacle." He turned back to Arcadia. "Has someone
shown you how to use the wardrobe?"
Arcadia had a very vague memory of someone having to help
her make it into the bed. "No." She looked around. The bed had
simple sky blue sheets and a darker navy blue coverlet, with
embroidered pillows. There was a small desk in one corner with a
small computer, or at least Arcadia guessed it was a computer. It
looked rather primitive, like something a street beggar might own,
without even a holoprojector. A very dim globe hung down over
the bed, and a huge wardrobe took up much of one of the walls. A
second wall, the one over the bed, held dozens of actual printed
books. What a waste of paper, she thought. They all looked
battered and torn like they had seen better days.
She walked over to the wardrobe. "What's so hard about
using a wardrobe?"
Hermes dashed over to the wardrobe. "Allow me to
demonstrate." There was a brief rush of air, and suddenly, he had
become a short man, about four feet tall, with a beard almost as
long as he was tall, dressed in a rough red shirt and blue pants. His
hair was dark brown, and his face was wrinkled with age that gave
the lie to his dark hair. "Basically, you have to fix your mind on the
sort of clothing you want, then open it. It's important to be very
clear on what kind of clothing you want, or you might end up with
ANYTHING, and then it won't reset until you actually wear
something." He closed his eyes and concentrated.
"So, are you actually a tiny dog or a human?" she asked.
"Neither. I'm a Mercurian Hound." He opened the wardrobe.
"I can assume a Dwarven form, however. I can also assume a sort
of mixed form, but it looks so ridiculous, I never do it. It's
supposed to scare people, but even babies just think my battle
form is cute and want to play with it." The wardrobe was full of
plain red shirts and blue pants, scaled to Hermes, along with a
simple blue cap with a golden feather in it. He pulled out the hat
and put it on. "Now you try." He closed the door.
Arcadia closed her eyes and tried to focus. What would I like
to wear? A million possibilities whirred through her mind. She
tried to remember how everyone had been dressed. Maybe a nice
outfit like Saturn was wearing, she thought. Well, before she
turned into Saturn. Yes, BEFORE that, she thought, trying to fix the
image in her mind, but it kept bleeding over, changing to the angry
Saturn, staring at the key that had brought her here.
She gave up and opened the wardrobe, and found it was full
of fukus, tiaras, and glaives, along with boots and bows. Hermes
laughed. "I see you met Hotaru-chan."
Arcadia closed the wardrobe and thought as hard as she could
of a simple purple wrap around with a green belt and black tights.
She opened the wardrobe, and Sailor Saturn's outfit confronted her
again. She frowned. "It's not working!"
"Didn't you hear what I told you, lass? You have to wear
something from the closet before it will reset." He laughed faintly.
"That's stupid!" she shouted.
He shrugged. "Magic always has some flaw. Permanent
enchanted sleeps that aren't so permanent because they have a
release condition. Eternal life that doesn't stop aging. Blah blah
blah. Still, you can just put on one thing, then do it again. Maybe
the boots?"
I forgot about shoes the first two times anyway, she thought.
She put on the boots, then closed the wardrobe. This time she got
the clothing she wanted. "Okay, now you scoot while I change," she
said.
"I'll go tell Ryo you're awake," he said, turning back into the
dog and scooting off.
She got changed. By the time she finished, Ami-chan was
poking her head in the door. "What's your name? I'm Ami!"
Her mom has no imagination, Arcadia thought. Naming
children after yourself is an act of pure ego. She said, "I'm Arcadia
N'Goya. I'm from Sirius."
"You shouldn't use a preposition like that. It's 'I'm serious'."
Ami-chan said.
"No, no, I'm from the planet Sirius III."
"Only monsters live on Sirius III! You are a monster!
AAAAAHHH!!!!" Ami-chan ran off screaming.
Arcadia sighed. Maybe I should have seen if Minako and
Steven had any free rooms.
***************
Nemesis, Royal Palace, DY (Demand Year 305)
Prince Demand frowned. "Are you sure, Wiseman? We can't
afford another fiasco like what happened to King Hari at Belkin
Ridge." He shuddered at the thought. Serenity's army had been so
huge. Albernia had been the greatest power on Earth, not counting
the Winter Queen's vast hordes, when Serenity came. King Hari had
thought he could easily take down Serenity once she was exhausted
from battling the Winter Queen. Hari had been an ignorant fool, fat
with unearned pride. He had ignored the prophecy at his cost.
Serenity had swatted down Belkin without even noticing. She
hadn't even bothered to kill a single one of his warriors. She hadn't
bothered to stop their flight to Nemesis. They were only the first of
those who had fled.
The Wiseman was powerful, but not a match for Serenity,
Demand thought. He found the way here, he brought us all here, all
those who fled Serenity's power, but he was no match for her,
Demand thought. He is a spider, who lurks in the shadows, a
coward who flees honest battle, Demand thought. So what does
that make me, hiding on Nemesis instead of challenging Serenity?,
he wondered. No. I must wait. Time flows faster here. We shall
raise up an army she cannot stop. For three hundred years, we
have labored, but I must have time. More time.
"You fear Saturn." Wiseman said, his voice faintly mocking.
At least, Demand thought Wiseman was a he. You could see little
beneath his hood but reddish burning eyes, and little beneath his
robes but gaunt hands. His voice sounded male, though oddly
distorted, as if he constantly spoke through a farspeaking crystal.
Maybe he does, Demand thought. If it is just an animated robe and
a farspeaking crystal...damned spider.
"Of course I fear Saturn! Alone, she could slay most of our
army, even now. With the others..." He shuddered. "Even the
bravest man does not stick his head in the lion's mouth, then pull
the jaws shut." I am not a coward, he thought. I'm just being
sensible.
"I have a plan to deal with Saturn. Imagine what could be done
if her power served you rather than opposing you." Wiseman's
voice sounded mocking again. Thinking a bit, Demand realized it
always seemed to be mocking, so this wasn't much of a change.
"You interest me, Wiseman." Perhaps he has finally gone
senile, Demand thought. It had to happen some time. Yet, if he is
right...
*****************
Earth, Crystal Tokyo, SY 68 (3060 AD, 3811 Years after the
founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 23224, Federal Year -926)
Muffins, scrambled eggs, and an orange put Arcadia in a good
mood. "How'd you know I like this for breakfast, Hermes?" She
asked.
"It's what Ami-chan eats every morning, so I just made extra,"
he said, curled up on the table at one end. "And you'd better eat it
all, Ami-chan," he said. "And no, you can't pour sugar all over it."
Ami-chan pouted. She was wearing a very simple blue dress
that looked like someone had sewn a blue t-shirt to a long blue
pleated skirt. "But I love sugar!"
"But would you marry it?" Arcadia asked, then laughed.
Ami-chan stared at the sugar pot. "You monsters from Sirius
are weird."
"Little girls are tasty with sugar." She got up and got some
more scrambled eggs. "You use soy sauce for little boys."
Ami-chan gulped loudly, then hid the sugar under the table.
"Too bad we don't have any sugar."
Arcadia laughed again. I haven't had this much fun in days,
she thought. "Oh, by the way, I'm here to help babysit you, Ami-
chan. Don't worry, I don't bite." She paused. "Much."
Ami-chan hurriedly wolfed down her breakfast. "C'mon,
Hermes. You've got to teach me something." She dragged him off
the table and ran.
Hermes said, "I'll try to put some sense into her. Somehow."
He paused. "You're not helping things, you know."
Arcadia threw back her head and laughed loudly. "Don't be
naughty today, Ami-chan, or I get to have one of your hands for
dinner!"
A loud shriek receded in the distance.
Hermes frowned. Arcadia said, "I'm sorry. I just...It seemed so
right." Now I remember why I had trouble keeping babysitting
jobs.
He sighed. "Ryo should be here soon to take you out to the
city. He got called away to some sort of meeting."
Ryo walked in with Ami-chan clinging to his legs and babbling
derangedly. He picked her up and hugged her. "Ami-chan, say
hello to your new friend, Arcadia. She's come from far away to
visit us."
"She's gonna eat me!" Ami-chan howled.
"Don't be silly. Daddy had a vision in which he saw she was
going to be a really good friend to you." He hugged Ami-chan
tightly. "Don't worry. You're safe here in the Crystal Palace."
Until it gets carpetbombed, Arcadia thought. Until the Black
Moon Cult attacks the first time. Unless that already happened, she
thought. And you can't hide in a palace forever, anyway. There's
nowhere safe in this world. I thought I found somewhere safe, but
they found me anyway. At least they can't follow me here.
Unless the ones in this time know about me. She shook off the
thought. If they could travel though time, they could have stopped
Serenity XVIII from making their sun go nova. "Well, I've had
breakfast. I guess I'll do the dishes."
Ryo nodded. "Just put them in the sink, and they'll clean
themselves and put themselves away."
Arcadia had seen that before, but probably only a few dozen
families were able to afford such things on Sirius. "You people live
pretty well."
Ryo shrugged. "Virtually everyone has one. Maybe 98% of
homes."
Arcadia stared. "Why don't...uh...why only 98%?"
"Some people like washing dishes."
Arcadia laughed and put the dishes in the sink. She stared,
fascinated as the dishes rinsed themselves off, then sudsed up,
were scrubbed by a brush, then rinsed again, then suddenly
became dry, then floated away to various cabinets, which opened
and closed. She realized that unlike the ones she had seen, this one
didn't teleport the dishes, it just telekinesed them. "Why doesn't it
just teleport them into the cabinets? Less wear and tear that way."
"Early models had a tendency to teleport your dishes into
someone else's cabinet, or lose them in other dimensions, or put a
monster instead of a plate in your cabinet. Telekinesis requires a
lot less energy, anyway." He put Ami-chan down. "Time for your
lessons, Ami-chan."
"Okay! I wanna learn how to make giant robots today,
Hermes!" She announced, marching off deeper into the suite of
rooms. Hermes followed, laughing.
Arcadia stared at the dishes as they finished. I bet a lot more
people would have those if they did that, she thought. Back in my
own time, that is. "What was your meeting about?"
"It's classified," he said. "Sorry. Ready to go?"
She nodded. "Do we get to go 800 KPH?"
"I foresee that not happening, and we can't avoid fate," he
said, laughing.
They headed out of the suite and down the hallway. The
palace was huge, but there didn't seem to be a lot of people. "So
how many people live here?"
He thought a moment. "A few hundred actually live here, but
thousands work here during the day or visit."
"Mostly servants?" she asked lightly.
"Not really. Not unless you'd call the Minister of Finance a
servant, for example. Or her husband a servant. Or their kids. We
have some hospitality staff, a handful of guards, some gardeners...I
suppose you could call the royal Bard a servant, sort of. He'd
probably drop a piano on you if you did, though."
Arcadia blinked. "What, you have a coin laundromat and you
all do your own laundry and stuff?"
He laughed. "I hope bellbottoms didn't come back in the
sixteenth century too. No, the laundry does itself."
"..."
"Nine tenths of what would be done by servants or janitorial
staff does itself, or can easily be done by a skilled mage in seconds.
My powers are feeble, but even I can clean up most messes, at least
inside the Palace." Everything was spotless, Arcadia realized. Even
her mother, the biggest neat freak in the history of mankind,
couldn't have found anything to critique. "Food cooks itself,
bathrooms clean themselves, laundry does itself. We do hire
caterers for special events, though. Humans do a better job than
magic on food. We also keep gardeners, because people change
their minds too often to leave it to automatic magic, and the
hospitality staff escorts visitors around and makes sure their needs
are met."
"If you have a hospitality staff, why are you showing me
around?" They stepped out of the palace through a pair of double
doors, passing two guards, who saluted, then headed down a
marble walkway through a pleasant row of shaped bushes towards
the great plaza that spread out around the huge palace complex.
"Because you're not an ordinary visitor," he said. "You're our
guest, and we take good care of our guests." He looked out on the
city. "And I'll admit you intrigue me."
"Me?" This all intrigues me, she thought. Although I still
want, no I need to get back home. "I'm just an ordinary girl." She
paused. "Well, an ordinary girl with a bunch of total loons after
her." She paused. "Do you have any idea when Pluto...the junior
Pluto, can take me back to my own time?"
"You want to go back, even though there are maniacs after
you, and you'd be safe from them here?" His voice sounded
remarkably light and unconcerned. He paused and patted one of
the bushes, which was shaped like a curled up cat, though it would
have been a housecat the size of a lion. She looked back at him,
and he gave her an odd look, and started mouthing something
silently.
"My friends are in danger. I have to help them," she said.
"And I'd like to see my family again, one day, now that I know
they're alive." Makoto, Rita, Marcus...I hope you're okay, she
thought. "Are you saying something or just making funny faces at
me?"
He laughed. "Just indulging a bad habit of mine." They
emerged from the bushes at the skimmer lot. He headed over to a
bright green one which Arcadia thought was horribly tacky. "Hop
in."
"Don't you own a less...umm..."
"Nope."
She gave up and hopped in. "Where do we go first?"
"Anywhere you'd particularly like to see?"
"Actually, I was kind of curious about the Royal Library,
but...ahh! I want to see somewhere I can run, and I want to know
how Serenity REALLY became Queen of the Earth." Dr. Anderson's
gonna die from joy, Arcadia thought. We'll make a MINT if I can
bring back some kind of historical text. And we'll go down in
history ourselves. Historiography, anyway.
He glanced over at her. "You like to run? I know just the
place." He started up the skimmer, and they headed out onto the
street. Despite Arcadia's best efforts to egg him on, they didn't
break any land-speed records.
*******************
Serenity stood on the balcony with Jupiter and Pluto, watching
the skimmer pull out of the lot. "It was all a distraction," Serenity
said quietly.
Jupiter blinked. "What?"
Pluto smiled faintly. "I assume you mean the temporal
anomalies that the Unternehmen has been detecting?"
"So you think she works for the Black Moon Family? Why
would they be stupid enough to give us a Time Key full of dark
energy if they wanted it themselves?" Jupiter sounded confused.
"Jupiter, you will shadow them. Keep her from harm."
Serenity said.
Jupiter boggled. "But...I have to protect you, Serenity! Who
will..."
"Who will threaten me here? The worst that might happen is
that I might overeat, or spill something on myself. Besides, I will
have Pluto with me, and Endymion." She paused. "And most of the
other senshi are either within the palace or close enough to be
called." She turned to Pluto. "Uranus and Neptune did return last
night, did they not? I didn't see them at breakfast."
"They are here. Uranus went jogging and hasn't made it back
yet, while Neptune overslept."
Serenity laughed. "I guess something from me rubbed off on
her."
They all laughed, though Jupiter frowned when it was over,
but took off in pursuit of the now distant skimmer. Pluto turned to
Serenity. "Surely one of the others would have been better for
this."
Serenity handed Pluto a hand-written note. "Please get
Makoto out of the palace while I prepare our chambers for our
anniversary celebration tonight," it read simply.
Pluto laughed. "Surely she remembers what today is."
"Her husband slipped this to me at breakfast. Apparently, she
either has forgotten, or she's waiting for him to mention it." For a
moment, Serenity giggled and looked the child she had been when
Pluto first met her. "I doubt they're really in danger. Ryo always
has a vision of when he is going to get attacked."
"Yes, but he doesn't always tell people." This was not what
Serenity wanted to hear.
*****************
"Do you want running first, or history first?" Ryo asked.
"Running first. I like to exercise in the morning." Arcadia
stretched, then pulled her bangs out of her eyes again. The cool air
blowing past made her shiver just a little, but it was a good shiver.
"I wouldn't mind going hoverscootering, but they haven't invented
those yet, have they?"
"You'd have to ask someone who actually cares about vehicles.
Uranus probably knows, or Steven or Daichi or Minako. If you can
crash it, Minako's probably driven it." He laughed. For someone
who claimed not to care about vehicles, Ryo drove very well,
gliding through traffic flawlessly and making every traffic light just
in time.
They zipped around a corner and started heading towards a
large park at the end of a broad boulevard. They zipped past a
blue-uniformed man leaning against a lamp post. He was snoozing.
Arcadia laughed. "I guess cops sleep on duty everywhere, eh?"
"Well, technically, he's a Troubleshooter. And he's off duty."
They pulled into the parking lot at one end of the park and started
cruising slowly, hunting for a parking space.
"A Troubleshooter?" The parking lot disturbed Arcadia. It
was huge, but it had looked pretty small when they had been
coming up to it. The air shimmered oddly around it as well, like
heat rising from the...marble? She blinked. Did they strip the
entire Earth of marble for this city? "And how did you know that
guy was off-duty?"
"We don't have much crime in Crystal Tokyo, not that can be
handled by non-Senshi, anyway, but we do have a variety of
problems that have to be solved." He pulled the skimmer into a
parking lot, turned it off, and stepped out. "And I knew the guy
was off-duty because he wasn't wearing his badge, and he wasn't
armed, either. I guess he was up all night and clonked out on the
way home."
Arcadia vaulted over the door, instead of opening it, then
stretched again. "Is it safe to leave him there like that? What if
someone robs him or..."
"Well, I can go check on him while you go run, but that sort of
thing doesn't happen here. There hasn't been a petty mugging that
wasn't part of interplanetary diplomacy in thirty years." He
shrugged. "And even those stopped about ten years ago when our
intergalactic neighbors realized that arranging a 'mugging' wouldn't
fool anyone over the age of five here."
"No mugging? Do you execute all the muggers?"
He shook his head violently. "We don't have the death
penalty. People almost never commit crimes for one simple reason.
You can't get away with it. It doesn't stop all crime, but it stops
almost all of it." He turned and pointed off through the park. "The
track is that way. I'll be right back." He got back into the skimmer.
Arcadia looked where he pointed and could see some people
jogging through the trees. "So why doesn't anyone get away with
it?"
"You can't escape the Troubleshooters unless you've got the
resources of a major government behind you that can get you off
the planet after you commit your crime. They've got the best
magical and technological crime-fighting equipment there is,
although they spend a lot more time dealing with their real job,
which is dealing with human stupidity." He started up the skimmer
engine.
"Dealing with human stupidity?"
"People driving 800 KPH over the city, for example." He
laughed. "People who climb up onto places they can't get down
from. The occasional fist fight. Children who eat rocks. Getting rid
of poverty and having a fairly iron-clad justice system stops
property crime, but the laws and the legal system haven't been
made that keep people from being stupid. The Troubleshooters
have branches beyond the Criminal Justice branch, which deal with
cleaning up the problems people get into. Anyway, we can talk
more about this later. You go jog. I'll be right back." He backed up
the skimmer, then turned and zoomed off.
Arcadia watched him go, then headed over to the track. But
how does anyone make sure the Troubleshooters stay honest? She
was curious now, but answers would have to wait. The track had
dozens of people, some walking, some running, some jogging, a few
rollerskating. She sat down in the grassy zone in the middle and
did some stretching exercises, then started jogging. The people
were quite variegated, from old to young, with skin tones from
normal human ones to weird colors like green or purple. She
recognized a Rigellian and a green-skinned Orioner, both wobbling
on roller skates as some five year old tried to show them how it
was done. Arcadia threw back her head and laughed loudly, then
tried to pretend she hadn't when they both stared at her. She
started running around the track, gradually speeding up.
It's been a while since the last time I really got to run like
this, she realized. Her muscles grumbled a bit. I haven't gone
running in close to two weeks, I've been so busy, she thought.
Makoto works me pretty hard, but I had hardly realized it until
now. I haven't had this much time off since...since before I left
home.
She felt a presence to her right and glanced over. A girl was
running along side her, easily keeping up, which startled Arcadia,
who wasn't going all out, but was still outpacing everyone else on
the track. Her skin was just a touch lighter than Arcadia's, and she
had large bangs which somehow were resisting blowing in the
wind, unlike the long narrow pony-tail she had in back, which was
whipping about. She was wearing blue shorts and a white 'muscle
shirt' with a yellow shooting star on it. "Hithere,haven'tseenyou
herebefore!" the woman said, almost faster than Arcadia could
understand.
"I just got here," Arcadia replied. "I'm Arcadia N'goya. Can
you try talking a little slower?"
The woman blushed. "Sorry. I get excited, and everything
just speeds up." She laughed. "I'm Jenni Ognatz. You're pretty
fast."
Arcadia resisted the urge to brag, but not very well. "Faster
than everyone here, maybe. I can do the three minute mile, but
that wouldn't even get me into the Pan-League games." Actually,
that was pushing the limits of what could be done without magic or
cybertech. She'd read an article claiming that professional athletes,
even the magic-free ones had to be using magic somehow, that
speeds approaching the two minute mile were simply impossible
for human flesh to sustain or achieve without some degree of magic
based on studies conducted on low-mana worlds, but Arcadia didn't
buy it. She had grown up on a low-mana world, and she could do
the three minute mile. She'd been able to do that since she was
twelve. Her coach thought she had the potential to do even better
by the time the next Pan-League games came around.
"Pan-League games?" Jenni looked confused. "Never heard of
those."
Arcadia laughed nervously. "I meant the Solar Games." She
blessed her history classes. "I was reading this history book and..."
Jenni loped along. She looked almost like she was forcing
herself to slow down, which disturbed Arcadia. "I know how that
goes. I'll read a good novel, then I start talking like everything in
itwasrealand..." She took a deep breath. "Or I just talk too fast."
"Lemme guess. Speed is your magical aptitude?"
Jenni threw back her head and laughed. "How'd you ever
guess? You too, I suppose."
"I wouldn't even know how. I want to run as fast as I can
without magic." The world seemed somewhat blurry around her,
and Arcadia suddenly realized she was trailing a cloud of dust.
How fast am I going?
Jenni giggled. "I think you passed that a while back. I'd guess
we're running somewhere between sixty and seventy five miles an
hour."
Looking back, Arcadia could see that the dust simply veered
away from anyone who actually ran through it, dissipating rapidly
without actually touching anyone. "..."
"I never realized how fast I could go either until I came to the
Earth." She grinned. "Wanna see how fast you can go?"
Arcadia liked speed more than she disliked surprises. "Maybe
we'd better get off the track."
Jenni nodded. "There's a racetrack reserved for this sort of
thing. I was on my way there to meet a friend for a little
competition. Follow me!" She took off, speeding up. Arcadia
simply ran, hoping whatever was letting her move so fast kept up.
It did.
They roared down the path, dodging slow moving walkers like
they were standing still. Soon, they zoomed onto another small
track, but this one had stands around it on two sides, and what
looked like some kind of 'announcer box'. One of the cutest guys
that Arcadia had ever seen was here, tinkering with a bizarre
looking double wheeled personal vehicle. He had short blond hair
and bore a strong resemblance to Arcadia's old boyfriend Tony,
although he had paler skin and was a bit more feminine looking.
A weird thrill ran through Arcadia's body when she saw him.
It wasn't exactly arousal, more like a confused mixture of
recognition and terror. Some tiny drum began to beat in her head,
telling her to run far, far away, that she shouldn't be anywhere
near this person. At the same time, he wasn't at all menacing, but
rather quite attractive. Arcadia wanted to run away from him and
kiss him at the same time, but deep down had the feeling that
either action would be a mistake. She whispered to Jenni, "Is this
the guy you're looking for?"
The guy stood up and brushed his hair back, grinning. "Let me
guess, Jenni. You ran all the way from New Rome, eh?" He turned
to Arcadia and smiled, with a twinkle in her eye. "Who's your cute
friend?"
Arcadia blushed. I'm being an idiot. He's married, she
thought. I can smell it. Marcus would call me a ninny. "Uh, hi. I'm
Arcadia N'goya."
"So you like to run too? I'm Ten'ou Haruka." He put away the
tools he had been using on the bike, and wiped his hands with a
cloth, then turned to Jenni. "This time, I'm going to win."
Jenni laughed loudly. "Not unless you blast me in the middle
of it, Haruka." She zipped over to the bike. "Tell you what, I'll let
you ride this, and I'll still beat you."
"No way!" Arcadia said. "That thing looks like something they
used in the Stone Age. If we were really running as fast as you
said, I could outrun that thing."
Haruka laughed. "Oh really? Let's get to it, then."
Arcadia stared. "Uh, right." Me and my big mouth, she
thought.
Jenni drew a line in the dirt of the track. "Three times around.
No energy blasts, no claiming you have a mission in the middle of
the race." She looked right at Haruka.
"Hey, I did have a mission! You heard my watch go off!"
"I think you hid your wife somewhere and had her call you
when it was clear I was going to win." Jenni winked, clearly not
serious. "Everyone ready?"
I must be insane, doing this, Arcadia thought. Still, it is a
piece of junk... She hunched down, ready to run. "Ready."
"Three. Two. One. GO!" Arcadia went. The world turned into
a blur. Her whole body was tingling, her muscles working like
never before. She ran, faster than ever before. She made a
complete circuit before she realized Jenni was pacing
them...running backwards. Glancing over at Haruka's strange
vehicle, which she now realized bore some resemblance to a
hovercycle, she could see it was near the top of its speedometer,
although the weird glyphs on it were illegible to her. He must have
dug it out of some ruins, she thought.
The second circuit was made by the time she managed to
shout to Jenni, "How fast ARE you?"
"Seriously fast!" she shouted back, grinning. "Now you know
why Haruka always LOSES our races."
Arcadia pushed herself. She could tell she hadn't hit her
limits yet. With an effort, she managed to get a twenty meter lead
on Haruka and crossed the finish line, then skidded to a halt,
raising a huge dust cloud. "So how slow is that thing, anyway?"
Haruka looked peeved for a minute then said, "About 250
KPH. Next time, you two get to use a bike too."
Arcadia boggled. "I was....no way!"
Jenni grinned. "If this is your first time on Earth, I think
you'll find yourself exceeding your limits quite a bit."
Haruka cocked his head. "I hear someone shouting your name,
Arcadia."
She acked. "I forgot! Ryo was expecting me over at the jogging
track!"
Haruka gave Arcadia an odd look. "Urawa Ryo?"
She nodded. "Um. Yeah. I'm sort of staying at the Royal
Palace."
Haruka grinned. "I suspect I may be seeing a lot more of you
then."
"Really? You work there?"
"The Queen has heavy gambl..." Haruka started.
"Does everyone use that joke? Minako tried to claim that too."
"And she didn't even give me credit!" Haruka said in mock
outrage. "She probably garbled it too."
Ryo ran into the track, looking worried. "ARCADIA!" he
shouted, then gave a sigh of relief, even though he was facing the
wrong way to see her. He turned around and walked over more
slowly. "I was starting to panic."
Jenni said, "Hi! I dropped in from New Rome to whip Haruka,
but Arcadia here did it for me!"
Haruka laughed. "You knew you couldn't beat me, so you
found yourself a ringer. Admit it."
Ryo looked thoughtful, then said, "Sorry I took so long, Arcadia.
I had to give him a ride home."
"No problem. I think I got more exercise than I...I can't believe
I ran so fast! I've never run that fast in my life!" Arcadia said. I'd
better not do that at the Pan-League games or they'll throw me out.
"Crystal Tokyo is perhaps one of the five most magically potent
locations in the galaxy at this time, and certainly the most
hospitable to human life." Ryo said. "Even marginal talents become
impressive here."
Haruka said, "More than marginal talent. Not too many people
can outrun my bike, even here."
Arcadia blushed. "I guess Coach Stettin would be proud."
Jenni said, "Speaking of marginal talent, it's your turn,
Haruka."
Haruka grinned. "You shouldn't badmouth yourself like that.
You two wanna play referee?"
Ryo nodded. They sat down. Haruka and Jenni both got into a
sprinting position and took off like rockets. Arcadia could barely
see them as they blurred along. Ryo whispered, "Jenni's going to
kill Haruka."
"What makes you say that?"
"Haruka's watch is going to go off now."
A loud buzz, shifting frequencies as the two blurred around
the track, cut through the sound of running feet. They both
skidded to a halt and Haruka groaned. Jenni laughed. "I TOLD
YOU!"
***************
Arcadia followed Ryo and Jenni, who had tagged along, into the
museum. The sign outside had proclaimed 'The Window of the
Present'. It was a huge crystal mansion, close to a block in size,
that looked more like a house than a museum from the outside.
Jenni dashed about, constantly in motion, looking at various things.
Arcadia whispered, "Does she ever slow down?"
"Only when she's asleep, I think," Ryo replied. "She's not called
the fastest woman on Earth for nothing." He looked around for a
moment, then said, "So where do you want to start?"
"Well, for one thing, why did the Earth freeze over? We know
there was some sort of civilization before that, but all we have is
crazy stories."
"Ahh. We'll start at the beginning, then. Follow me." He
walked out of the atrium past a huge statue of the Winter Queen.
Jenni sprinted in, passing him on his way through the entry
archway, while Arcadia followed at a more normal speed.
*****************
Solar System, Vicinity of Neptune, 2066 AD (Serenity Year -926,
2817 Years after the founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 22230,
Federal Year -1920)
Over 99% of the universe is cold, boring, featureless space
occupied only by the occasional electron, proton, neutrino, or other
tiny cold, boring, featureless objects. If you've seen one electron,
you've seen them all.
Thus, the space just a few million miles to the left of Neptune
was a pretty boring place to be until space rippled and several
living spaceships, a UN space monitor, and a few dozen individuals
capable of surviving in deep vacuum appeared. One of them, a red-
haired woman, turned to a second one, a man clad in white armor,
and asked, "Can you explain what just happened, and more
importantly, can you make me understand it?"
"Yes and no," the man said, then smiled.
She frowned and turned to another one of the people floating
comfortably in deep space. "How about you, Pluto?"
"The Sun-Eater tried to take us with it by collapsing the space
around us into a black hole, which would have been rather fatal. If
Tenchi hadn't been here, it would have succeeded, and we would
probably have been dead." Pluto said. She turned to Tenchi, who
was another one of the floating figures. "I thank you."
Yet another floating figure, this one blond with twin pigtails,
hugged Tenchi impulsively. "Thanks for coming when we called
you!"
He blushed a bit and said, "Well, I'd hardly let my home planet
be destroyed by the Sun-Eater."
Ryouko pulled out a sake bottle. "Let's celebrate! Drinks all
around!"
"Only you could find sake in deep space," Aeka said, shaking
her head.
"I grabbed this from your personal collection, so I think I'm
not the only one," Ryouko said, winking.
Aeka blushed.
Normally, sound doesn't travel in space. If the Sun went nova,
you couldn't hear it, although you'd certainly see it. Most of these
beings were far too powerful to be bothered by petty things like
the lack of a medium for sound to carry through. Thus, when one
of the ships screamed, the lack of air was irrelevant.
The sheer force of the scream sent the hapless UN monitor
ship tumbling towards Neptune, made people fall down on the
bridges of the other living ships as if they were on Star Trek, since
no one had invented seat belts on Juraii either, and sent the tiny
humans and aliens soaring through space in surprise.
Tenchi whipped his head around as soon as he stopped himself,
although he managed to toss Sailor Moon into Ryouko, kick his son
Ryu in the face, and tangle his legs with Aeka's in the process.
"Tsunami?"
A few seconds later, Tuxedo Kamen folded over and started to
scream and throw up at the same time. Sailor Moon ran over to
him. Let it be noted that watching someone run through deep
space is strange looking.
Ryouko peeled off to save the poor UN ship, which was simply
in over its head. Tsunami's voice boomed through the void. "The
Tree of Life is under attack! I'LL HAVE YOUR HEAD!" In an instant,
Tsunami streaked into motion, heading for the Earth.
Tuxedo Kamen whispered, "Mother..." He tried to rise to his
feet, and fell down, slowly drifting towards Neptune, although
Sailor Moon grabbed him before he could go more than a few feet.
Pluto blinked. "Time dilation. We've been gone for a year.
The black hole was just a distraction so I wouldn't notice this."
Tenchi really didn't want to meet anyone who used black
holes as a distraction. "Right. We've got to get to the Earth. Now."
Sailor Moon began directing everyone into a circle for a Sailor
Teleport. She got out the Silver Crystal. Hang on, Mamo-chan. I'll
save you. I will.
**************
Earth, Mega-Tokyo, 2066 AD (Serenity Year -926, 2817 Years after
the founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 22230, Federal Year -1920)
Dr. Celia Stingray, Dr. Wise, Dr. Tomoe, Dr. Wu from Hong Kong,
Dr. Hikaru Hiyama, Dr. Jonathan Quest, Dr. Noriko Udaigaku, Noa
Izumi and Asuma Shinohara sat around a round table, deep
beneath the ground. Noa wished for the fifth time that she had a
doctorate in something, ANYTHING, because she was starting to feel
rather intimidated. "Why am I here, anyway?" she asked for the
third time, hoping to cut through the chatter of twenty syllable long
words that were starting to make her head hurt.
"Because you're one of the most powerful people we have who
haven't vanished off the face of the universe," Dr. Tomoe said. He
sighed. "We can only assume that we may never see our missing
friends again, since they've been gone so long without even a hint
of what happened. On the other hand, we still have a sun, so we
can presume they won."
"Maybe it got lost," Dr. Wu suggested, grinning.
"They're not dead," Asuma said. "Imprisoned maybe, but not
dead."
Dr. Wise blinked. "How can you be so sure?"
"If you constantly had to tell the dead to go bugger off, you'd
be sure too." Asuma said. Before The Miracle, he had possessed a
mostly latent medium talent, except for one past incident when he
was much, much younger, but afterwards, it had become more
active than anyone deserved to put up with. He was almost looking
forward to death, as he had several people he wanted to go beat up
in the afterlife for making his life difficult.
"We can't wait any longer. If we don't close the New Delhi
gate, Kali will turn this world into an ice cube. Her armies and her
ice have already overrun Russia, Canada, Scandinavia and most of
Australia and southern Africa. We have days at best." Celia said.
"Now, Shinohara-san, have you completed Dr. Wu's machine?"
He nodded. "I don't see how it's going to actually WORK, but it
is finished."
"It doesn't have to. It's just the diversion to attract Kali's
forces away from protecting the gate. The real attack will take
place with a small strike force teleporting past most of the
defenses." Celia gestured and a hologram formed over the table.
"Macky, Noa, Hikaru, myself, and as many of the Kasuga clan
members as we can round up will launch the attack in subspace to
cut our way through to the gate and close it. Dr. Wise, have you
completed the calculations for the temporal shield we're going to
need?"
"Temporal shield?" Noa asked.
"We'll never make it through the temporal distortions around
the gate without something to shield us from them. We'd get
slowed so that eons passed while we blinked," Hikaru said.
"Jonathan and I have determined that we can't build a
suitable device in the amount of time we have. Not that can handle
the energies involved. However, we have determined how Kali is
producing the distortion." His voice dropped.
"How?" Dr. Tomoe asked. He had already guessed the answer.
"My Time Orb," Dr. Wise said quietly. "I'm going with you. I
made it, and only I can stop it."
"That's too dangerous," Celia said. "I know you're a skillful
mage, but you're also..." She paused, considering her words.
"Flimsy. Old. Weak. I don't care. Only I can do this. Whoever
makes a mystic object has a stronger bond to it than anyone who
simply uses it. I have to do this and no one else can take my place.
Does anyone here have my knowledge of time magic, both theory
and practice?" He looked around.
Silence.
"I take it this motion passes, then," Dr. Wise said. He had
never been so scared in his entire life.
**************
Earth, The Core, 2066 AD (Serenity Year -926, 2817 Years after the
founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 22230, Federal Year -1920)
Scientists believe the core of the Earth consists of molten rock.
This does a very good job of keeping people from bothering the
Tree of Life, which is normally what it wants. You can't destroy
something if you don't think it really exists.
Unfortunately, KALI was not easily fooled, and neither was
her servant, the Winter Queen, who had turned the great chamber
of the Tree, once a beautiful meadow into a Winter Wonderland.
The Tree of Life screamed again, feeling its roots beginning to die,
buried under a mountain of ice. The Tree of Life is not easily slain,
but it almost wished it was easily slain, just so the pain would be
over.
The air shimmered and a woman appeared. Her name was
Tsunami, and she was rage incarnate. The ice around her melted
by the heat of her anger. For a moment, she paused, seeking the
Winter Queen, who sat on a great throne of ice, holding a long
scepter shaped like a dancing woman with six arms and a belt of
skulls. The Winter Queen had pitch white skin and pale red eyes.
Her hair was long and utterly white. She dressed, of course, in
white. "So you got free. A pity."
Tsunami gathered her power to strike. Seconds later, she was
unconscious, frozen in a block of ice. The Winter Queen laughed.
"How foolish of you to think you could stop me. Your grandmother
possessed power that dwarfs yours, and yet she is trapped."
A few seconds later, several dozen humans appeared in the
chamber. The Winter Queen grinned. "How nice of you to spare me
the trouble of hunting you down."
"I am Sailor Moon! Freezing the Earth solid isn't very..." The
Winter Queen found freezing her in that pose to be very amusing.
******************
Earth, Crystal Tokyo, SY 68 (3060 AD, 3811 Years after the
founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 23224, Federal Year -926)
Arcadia looked up from the series of maps, which depicted the
rate of advance of the Great Ice. "So this Kali was an out of control
Archetype? And the Winter Queen was an Avatar of hers?"
"Basically, yes. The Archetype of Destruction. Sort of. It's a
long confusing story, but the only way to stop the Winter Queen
was to close Kali's gate so it could no longer use all its power
through her. Once that happened, she wasn't totally invulnerable,
but unfortunately..." Ryo said, walking to the next display, a list of
names, divided into three categories: dead, suspended animation,
injured. "The Tree of Life survived, but it was too weak to undo
the damage the Winter Queen had done. Too many of the really
heavy hitters were unconscious or out of action by the time the
gate was closed. Kali's master stroke had been to start to seal off
the system from the outside. Luckily, she was defeated before she
could keep things from getting out. The survivors fled. The
Juraiians evacuated everyone they could, and the Silver Crystal was
used to put everyone else into suspended animation until the world
could heal." He pointed to the list. "Right now it's showing people
important to me, but it adjusts to show anyone the viewer is
interested in."
Jenni zipped over from halfway across the room. "I'm really
hungry. What about you, Arcadia?"
"Me too. So the Silver Crystal put the entire population of the
world into suspended animation?"
"It tried. Unfortunately, vast numbers of people died before it
was used, or were somewhere that Kali's power had corrupted too
much. Some people survived by being around a node of power and
formed small settlements that had to scrabble for a living on the
Frozen Earth. Albernia, the Watchers, Dahli, New Rome, and others.
Anyway, let's go get some food. I'm kinda hungry."
"I feel like my stomach is trying to eat its way out of me."
Arcadia said. "All that running, I guess."
"You two meet me out front. I'll go see if Hikaru wants to join
us for lunch. And I know just the place." He grinned.
***************
Raphaella turned to Michael. "We're being followed by Sailor
Jupiter." Raphaella was short and a little pudgy with long blond
hair. Michael could have been her twin brother, to look at him,
probably because he was. He wore a long blue tunic, belted at the
waist and dark blue tights, while she wore a very nice green dress
and a very silly looking pointed hat with a trailing veil.
Michael wished again he had never shown her the book he
had found. Even in a city of highly eclectic dress, she stood out.
"She's following the girl and Mercury's husband. Didn't you see her
wandering around mindlessly looking for them earlier?" Why did
Albrecht choose us for this mission? I'm the only person in this
group with the brains to be a spy. Of course, telling us why we
have to follow these two around would have helped.
He glanced over at Gabrielle and Uriel, who were the only
people he knew who could make out while walking down the street
and never bump into anything. Maybe I should unleash the Droids
we brought just so they would stop that. He sighed. I hate my life.
"I think she's a time traveler," Rafaelle announced.
Michael paused long enough to bang his head on a handy
lamppost. "I suppose she's Queen Serenity's lovechild too."
"Ahh! That would explain how she got a time key and was
able to use it."
"A what?"
"Now who's an idiot? Wiseman said she was important to us
getting a time key so we could solve this whole mess by simply
traveling through time and keeping Crystal Tokyo from ever being
created. Didn't you listen when we got sent on this mission
briefing?" She gave him that infuriating smile which screamed, 'I
win again, brother' at him.
"That wasn't in the mission briefing!"
"Okay, so maybe I learned that listening at doors, but still..."
Michael's jaw dropped. "You. Spied. On. MSOKDFJLIS?" His
rising voice was cut off by her hand.
"Perhaps you'd like to just shout, 'Please come and kill us,
Sailor Jupiter' while you are at it?" Rafaelle shook her head,
frowning.
"The last person who spied on the Wiseman is still a smear on
the wall of the throne room!" Michael shuddered. "You may have a
brain the size of a pea, but I want you to live!"
Uriel finally spoke, having apparently paused in his making
out. He was tall and black haired, though you normally couldn't tell
because of the black hooded robes he tended to wear everywhere.
He did a great Wiseman imitation, but only when it was safe, which
wasn't very often. Today, though, he was wearing bright green
robes embroidered with the Sailor Senshi symbols, an outfit which
marked him as a member of the First Church of the Senshi, which
he wasn't, but it was a great disguise. "I'd rather appreciate not
dying myself."
Gabrielle, who had short wavy brown hair, was dressed in a
matching red outfit marked with the symbol of a High Initiate of
the Cult. She had stooped smooching Uriel, but was still clinging to
his arm. "You two should have dressed up like us. It's a lot of fun.
Everyone either stays away from you because you're a loony, or
they get obsequious. Sure, you have to memorize a lot of their
crazy doctrine, but everyone deserves a good laugh or twenty."
Michael shook his head. He couldn't stomach dressing as a
crazed heretic, no matter how good the cause. Having to hide their
black moon symbols was bad enough. "We didn't have time to
learn how to pass as the village idiot. I'm sure it comes naturally to
you."
Uriel frowned. "And which one of us started shouting?"
Michael sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm just tense and I think we're
wasting our time."
"Well, the museum was a lot more interesting than watching
people run, even if it was full of lies," Gabrielle said. "Although not
nearly as bad as that awful, 'Book of Truth' the Senshi worshippers
quote from." Cocking her head, she began to proclaim loudly, "And
lo, Serenity cast her bread upon the waters and gave forth with the
breath of life, and the ice melted and the grass grew, and Serenity
said that it was good. And it was good." She continued onward,
making blessing signs at passersby. Soon, a crowd began to gather,
and she harangued them on the glories of the gods and goddesses
made flesh that walked among them.
Michael took a moment to curse the day he was born.
****************
Arcadia sat at a table with Jenni, Ryo, and several people she
had just met. One of them was Professor Hikaru Hiyama, a rather
gorgeous blonde, who looked to be in her mid-thirties, and who
wore an odd sort of navy blue suitdress, the likes of which Arcadia
had already seen, along with what looked to her like some sort of
blue cloth noose, decorated brightly with odd golden squiggles.
Maybe she's an Odin worshipper, Arcadia thought. They wear
nooses and hang themselves for wisdom. Bunch of loonies. "So, the
gate closed but Noa and I got stuck on the other side of it. I
grabbed Noa and we time-jumped. We got lucky and Pluto found
us and brought us here, since I had forgotten one thing when I did
the time-jump."
"What?" Jenni asked.
Noa laughed. "She forgot that we'd STILL be trapped in
subspace when we reached the future." Noa was a short woman,
who appeared to be in her early twenties, with close-cropped red
hair. She was wearing a tan uniform that looked somewhat like a
Troubleshooter uniform, with a name tag that identified her as 'Lt.
Commander Noa Izumi-Shinohara'. Several holograms controlled
by an AI were dressed in similar outfits as they walked around the
brewery/restaurant, Memories of SV2.
Ryo sat quietly and sipped his soda. I wish the formula for Dr.
Pepper hadn't been lost in the Great Ice, he thought. I'd almost be
willing to kill for some real Dr. Pepper instead of this SynthPepper.
"So what happened to your husbands?" Jenni asked quietly.
"And how'd you both get so young looking?"
Hikaru sighed. "Time jumping out of a temporal anomaly
is...not a good idea. Noa was a baby physically when we emerged
and I was a withered old hag on the verge of death. Pluto was able
to help me learn how to fix my body, but I had to...well, I can't talk
about that." She squirmed a bit. "As to my husband..." She sighed.
"Jonny is dead. While we launched our attack, he was trying to
carry out our backup plan and Kali pulled the plug on him."
"Backup plan?"
"Questworld, a VR environment he created has some strange
properties. I've long theorized it actually projects your mind into
subspace. Anyway, one of Kali's minions broke into the Florida
compound and destroyed Questworld's power supplies. His mind
was trapped in Questworld, as far as we could reconstruct, and then
it killed his body. That assumes my theory was correct. If
Questworld isn't just another dimension, then he probably became
a vegetable, pure and simple when the power was shut off." She
stared at her lunch, a simple ham and cheese sandwich. "Anyway,
I spent a long time looking for him, but I couldn't find him. Even if
his mind survived in Questworld after his body died, that was a
thousand years ago."
"Why don't you just go back and save him from being killed?"
Arcadia asked.
"I can't timejump a thousand years under normal conditions
and Pluto won't take me. I understand why, although it still
irritates me. I miss Jonny, desperately sometimes, but I know he
wouldn't want me to spend the rest of my life mourning him. In
fact, I've started seeing this really nice Juraiian fellow. But enough
about me." She started eating her sandwich.
Arcadia listened, quietly shoveling away more food than she
had ever eaten before at one sitting in her life. Jenni was scarfing
down burger number five. I'm so hungry, Arcadia thought.
"I, on the other hand, got to age normally back to my current
state," Noa said. "Pluto 'raised' me. I had all my memories, but my
body didn't remember things like walking. You never realize how
many kinds of things you've turned into reflex actions until you
forget them all." She paused and ate some of her soup. "And as for
my husband..." She laughed faintly. "He always wanted to get even
with those ghosts for harassing him all the time, making him chase
down people in retirement homes so they could apologize for things
that happened fifty years earlier...He died fighting some of Kali's
minions that had found our base in Tokyo. Now he's a ghost,
himself. Say hello to our guests, dear."
Noa spoke, but it wasn't her voice. "Hello to our guests, dear."
It was a soft male voice.
Jenni, Ryo, and Hikaru laughed. Arcadia's skin crawled. Her
husband's ghost lives inside her? Ugh. She started on another
sandwich, gobbled it in seconds, then said, "So, to about sum up
what happened with Kali and the Great Ice is that she kicked your
butt and you basically got lucky that you beat her at all. Your
heavy hitters got their asses handed to them on a plate, the second
string got stomped, the third string all died or ended up as ghosts
and whatnot. Am I right?"
Noa glared at Arcadia. Jenni choked on her food and spewed
crumbs, which would have landed on Ryo, except he had scooted
over just before this happened. Hikaru laughed sadly. "That about
sums it up. KALI learned from SHIVA's mistakes, I think. Indeed,
if Tenchi hadn't been stronger than KALI realized, I think KALI
would have succeeded completely, because the Sun-Eater's black
hole death trick would have killed off our first string entirely." She
finished off her sandwich. "Being a historian, I can tell you that
while luck is rarely the sole cause of anything, it can often play an
important role. Of course, Ryo here would tell you it was all
destiny, but I disagree. We make our own destiny."
The conversation soon degenerated into the sort of argument
that no one really wins, because everyone is simply making
assertions that can't really be proven unless you're God, in which
case you don't need to argue. Needless to say, God was not one of
the people taking part.
********************
Earth, Ruins of Crystal Tokyo, SY 1532 (4524 AD, 5276 Years after
the founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 24688, Federal Year 538)
Marcus ran down the hallway for the fourth time that night.
"ARCADIA!" he shouted. His mother grabbed him as he passed the
doorway she stood in.
"She's gone, Marcus." Rita held Marcus in a firm grip. "Either
they have her or she's fled the Palace and is hiding somewhere in
the city."
The battle was long over. Most of the Combine's members
were trying to clean up the mess and collect the corpses that
remained. Marcus said, "They...She's not dead, right? Right?" He
was frantic.
She pulled Marcus into a crushing embrace. "We would have
found her corpse. She wasn't what they were after."
"But they've been chasing her for...wait, do you think they..."
"They would have sent an army if they knew what we were up
to here. They would have probably used a nuke if they knew." She
sighed. "The survivors won't remember anything they shouldn't.
What we still don't know is why they thought there was a Time Key
here."
Marcus coughed. "A...Time Key?" He paled. "I have a feeling
we're not going to find Arcadia any time soon."
Rita frowned. "What, you found one under a rock and gave it
to her?"
"Um...I didn't KNOW it was a Time Key. It's not like anyone in
this place has ever seen one." He thought a moment. "Well, except
for..."
"Actually, the library is full of pictures of them." Rita said.
Marcus facefaulted, of course.
*****************
The region of space near the burnt out cinder formerly known as
Nemesis, SY 1532 (4524 AD, 5276 Years after the founding of
Rome, Juraiian Year 24688, Federal Year 538)
The junior Pluto appeared in space, hovering over the charred
hunk of cold bits of rock which had once been the world known as
Nemesis. Her eyes filled with tears as she remembered a world
that had once been cold and grim, but full of life and hope as well
as hate and desire for revenge. Most of its inhabitants had been
barely sane at best by the time it was destroyed, and it had been
corrupted by Dark Power to the point where most of them were
barely human, but she didn't care. They had deserved better than
mass murder. Something could have been done. Somehow. The
only thing that had kept her from killing Serenity XVIII was that
someone had beaten her to it.
Actually, killing would have been a mercy, compared to what
the junior Pluto had contemplated when she learned of this. The
dead feel no pain, but the living can suffer for as long as life lasts.
Pluto could make you live a very long time.
Her future sight became a haze, blurring and vanishing. For a
moment, the younger Pluto thought her own rage was clouding her
sight. It had happened before.
The black ribbons arcing at her from what had previously
been empty space changed her mind. She flew upwards with a
thought, dodging the destructive streamers. Spinning, she
confronted her assailant. It was a woman with short, wavy brown
hair. She was somewhat attractive, if you liked pouty faces,
although her brown eyes were quite beautiful. Her body was
slender, and she wore the uniform of Sailor Saturn, though the
Silence Glaive wasn't normally made out of pure darkness. The
younger Pluto stared for a moment. She looks like...if she tells me
she sold her soul to get Daichi away from me, I'm going to scream.
And what has she done to my future sight?
"You have no future to see." Sailor Saturn grinned. "Or to be
more precise, I don't think you really WANT to see your future."
Pluto frowned. None of the Sailor Senshi of this time but me
are up to fighting a menace of this level, although...the mana
decline should effect Saturn as well.
"Not really. The only reason I haven't Silenced the universe is
that I need the right tools to do so, and you've hidden them away."
Saturn began to glide closer. "I will get them from you."
Pluto said, "Never." She concentrated to flee. I need to make a
plan, she thought. Nothing happened. "What..."
Saturn laughed. "This was a poor choice of places to confront
me."
"I didn't know I would be confronting you. I was just..."
"Sloppy. You're a pretty pathetic successor to the first Pluto.
Now, would you like to warm up your lungs for screaming, or shall
we get down to business?"
"I don't suppose you'd answer one question for me before I get
slowly tortured?"
"No."
"Hah! You answered one any way!"
It wasn't much of a trick, but it was some tiny comfort before
agony set in. Very tiny comfort.
*****************
Earth, Crystal Tokyo, SY 68 (3060 AD, 3811 Years after the
founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 23224, Federal Year -926)
Ami and Ambassador Nene of House Hakubi-Masaki stared at
the tiny key sitting on the table between them. "I don't suppose
you've figured out that this thing is actually charged with inverted
tachyons or something else harmless, have you?" Ami asked
hopefully, not really expecting Nene to say yes.
Nene tossed her red hair about, laughing. "How would you
invert a tachyon?" She turned back to the holographic computer
screen that hung in the air, then started typing on the holographic
keyboard construct which linked to her real computer, which
lurked somewhere in subspace.
"I have no clue. About all my computer will tell me is, 'This is
pure Evil. EVIL! Don't touch it, mother! It's Evil!'" She laughed.
"Other than tossing it into a black hole, I still haven't figured out
how to destroy it without releasing the evil. Unless Serenity uses
the Silver Crystal. That might work."
"The Radiant Hawkwings might work too. You ought to consult
Libra. The Zodiac has so much stuff squirreled away in that library
of theirs..."
"Yes, but no one can ever find it. They don't even have a card
catalog, and I think the books are organized in alphabetical order
by the first word of the eighth page." Ami sighed. "I feel like I'm
trying to gain wisdom by banging my head against a book until it
leaks in."
"I still think we could lock the key away in subspace instead of
the vault. Subspace is too big for anyone to find it."
"Subspace is also full of nasties that could find interesting uses
for it." Ami said. She got up. "Want to join us for dinner? Maybe
we can find out something useful from Arcadia."
"Sure, I'd love to. Ryu should be back by now. I'm sure he'll
want to come too."
"I'm surprised he didn't teleport straight to you when he
arrived," Ami said.
"Perhaps the fact that you warded the vault and all the
connected rooms against teleportation had something to do with it."
"That didn't keep him out of my bedroom," Ami said, then
regretted it.
Nene cocked an eyebrow. "And when did this happen?"
"I said bedroom! Not bed! Not that Ryo and I always us..."
She clamped a hand over her mouth. A tiny voice snickered inside
her head and she told it to shut up. As usual, it didn't listen.
****************
While Arcadia still had a lot of questions about how things had
gotten from Great Ice to Crystal Tokyo, her morning had been
enough history for one day for her. Jenni had to take off, but
Hikaru stayed with her and Ryo as he took her to an art museum
and around the city to see various tourist attractions. She could tell
that Ryo and Hikaru were old friends, as they bantered back and
forth.
They stopped in front of a monument, a simple black obelisk
covered with names in a small park. "What's that?" Arcadia asked.
Several dozen people were kneeling around it, or searching it for a
name.
"The Liberation War memorial. It honors all those who fell in
the war against the Winter Queen and her monsters." Ryo said.
"Every name is recorded there." Hikaru said quietly.
"Not too many deaths, eh?" Arcadia said. "Can't be more than
a few thousand names on there."
"Actually, there's over two hundred thousand names on there.
The monument identifies anyone who approaches and calls up
appropriate names from its database. A mixture of magic and
technology," Hikaru said. "There's a keypad on the other side if
you want to find people you're not related to."
A woman in blue robes approached those around the
monument and began to declaim loudly. "Yeah, let us remember
those who fell in service to the holy Serenity and her servants, the
Senshi. They are assured a place in paradise."
Ryo gagged for a moment, then spun around on one heel and
grabbed Arcadia's arm. "We're out of here."
Hikaru laughed. "What, you don't want her to ask the blessed
Mercury's consort to give them all a blessing?"
"Huh?" Arcadia asked.
"The First, Second, and Third Churches of the Senshi think the
Sailor Senshi, their spouses, closest allies, children, etc., are all
walking gods and goddesses. Well, to be more precise, the First
Church thinks we're divine, the Second Church thinks this is the
Millennial rule of the Saints, and the Third Church thinks...I'm not
sure they even know what they think." They hopped in the
skimmer. "They're not bad people, but they're utterly lost in space.
Serenity goes on holovid and explicitly denies any claims to
divinity at least once a year, but they won't listen. Heck, Rei is the
Archbishop of Crystal Tokyo. She'd probably be Pope if she didn't
have too many other duties. But no, the Rei worshippers insist she
doesn't really mean it when she tells them they're all idiots. Ditto
for all the other ones." He sighed. "Are they still around in your
time?"
"They call themselves Serenity's Children in my time. My
parents sort of vaguely raised me in that faith, but I never really
believed any of it. I dunno what I really believe. I used to have
fluff for brains, and once that cleared up, I didn't have time to
worry about it." She looked back at the ranting woman fading in
the distance. "I guess Rei would blow up if she knew they named a
city after 'Saint Rei' in the future too."
Hikaru laughed. "I don't suppose I got a city?"
"I don't think anyone remembers you," Arcadia said. "I really
shouldn't talk about the future, though."
"We can't change it, so what would it hurt?" Ryo said.
"Don't listen to Ryo. I've watched him let himself get dunked
into blue paint because he foresaw it and didn't think anything
could be done about it." Hikaru said. "Being a historian, I'd love to
know what comes next as well as what came before."
"You don't want to know what comes next. It's not pretty.
History is full of death, destruction, greed, murder, lust, and other
nasty things." Arcadia sighed. "We make the same stupid mistakes
over and over, a litany of pain and betrayal." She waved her arms
about at the city. "Most of this is rubble in my time. Only the
palace is even inhabited."
"One must risk the thorns to grasp the rose," Hikaru said
quietly. "History holds hope and joy and love as well as darkness
and death. Golden ages as well as declines and falls. All things
made by human hands die in the end. If we expect to prevent that,
we are fools. All we can do is make the most of the time we have
and do our best to make sure we add more joy than pain to the
balance."
I wish I could believe that, Arcadia thought. I used to, but then
I got a wakeup call. She stared at the visions of beauty that
surrounded her and tried to forget their fate.
**************
Michael frowned at Gabrielle. "Now we've lost her! Thanks to
you."
"Not really," Uriel said.
"What do you mean, not really?"
"I put a bug in the skimmer the first time they both left sight
of it. They're headed back to the palace."
"You know, we wouldn't have had to follow them through the
streets if you had told me that."
"I felt like a good walk."
The beatings were about to commence.
*****************
Dinner was a crowded affair, with Ryu, Nene, Hikaru, Ami, Ryo,
Ami-chan, Hermes, and Arcadia, all crammed in around the table,
which looked designed for maybe four people at best. They made
do. "Tomorrow, you'll dine in the Great Hall, Arcadia, as we usually
do for dinner, but I believe Serenity and Endymion are going out
somewhere tonight, so you'll meet them tomorrow."
This scared Arcadia just a bit, though she wouldn't admit it.
Bits of church services drifted into her mind. Mother Brown would
be so jealous, she'd explode, Arcadia thought. "Okay."
Dinner was soup, nicely spiced salmon, some cheese sticks, and
enough rice for a small army, along with orange tea. "This is really
good," Nene said. "So, Arcadia, how long will you be visiting
Crystal Tokyo?"
Arcadia looked over at Ami, who gave her a thumbs up. "I
don't know. Depends on when Pluto takes me home. Is it normal
for her to take this long to...uh...whatever exactly she's doing?"
Hikaru laughed. "Pluto will take you home when it suits her.
Not a moment before or later. I'd take you myself, but I can't make
that long of a jump."
"Why don't you just take a spaceship?" Ami-chan asked.
"I'm from the future."
"Do they have any fun games in the future?"
Arcadia paused and munched on some salmon. "Sure. I'll
teach you some later."
"Cool! Small Lady's gonna be jealous!" Ami-chan said. "She
never gets to meet time travelers."
Ryu said, "So, got any advice for me when I become emperor,
Arcadia?" He grinned at her. Arcadia had never seen anyone with
such hugely spikey hair before, although it was a rather subdued
brown, unlike most spikey hair.
She thought a moment. "You'll be Ryu the First, right?"
He nodded. "Yep. Son of Emperor Tenchi and all that, may he
live forever, blah blah blah."
Arcadia had only a vague knowledge of Juraiian history. All
she knew was that Jurai went to hell in a handbasket, starting
around 700 SY. "Do you think you'll be alive in SY 700?"
"Yeah. Should be. I might even be Emperor by then."
"Is your sister likely to murder you?"
Ryu paled. "I...uh...I certainly hope not."
"I suggest having fewer children so your descendants can't
squabble over the throne as much. Other than that, I can't
remember much." And you don't want to know what I do
remember, she thought. "Oh wait, you didn't marry your sister, did
you?"
"She's married to Lord Stingray." Nene said. "Better known as
the biggest..."
Ryu clamped a hand over her mouth. "Anyway, Pluto will
probably come in and thwap me if I pry more. I hope you're
enjoying your stay." He sounded nervous.
"What happens to me?" Ami-chan asked.
"A vicious mob of dustbunnies attacks you tomorrow because
you didn't clean your room." Arcadia said. Most of the people at
the table laughed. "Then I shaved you bald and spraypainted your
head."
Ami-chan shrieked and jumped over into her mother's lap.
"Don't let her shave me bald!"
"I was just teasing. I won't do that," Arcadia said. "Sirian
honor."
"Oh, okay."
*********************
Arcadia went walking in the garden after dinner. She wanted
some solitary time to think about everything she'd seen. The
garden was beautiful, full of towering trees, and more kinds of
flowers than Arcadia had ever actually seen outside of books
before. Sirius didn't have very many kinds of flowers, although it
had several unique breeds of tree. At least she had thought they
were unique. She was shocked to find a Sirian silverleaf
surrounded by Rigelian Silverspray, a kind of delicate silver flower
that looked somewhat like violets, located near the heart of the
garden, which was literally shaped like a heart. She laughed a little
at the carpet of reddish grass that formed a perfect heart around a
white wooden gazebo covered with vines. A long swinging bench
sat in the middle of the gazebo, just like the one that she had sat on
with Tony during her birthday party, just before he died.
Her eyes misted up, and for a moment, she wanted to run
away from it, but she steeled herself to approach it. Grimly, she
forced herself to sit down on it and swing. She enjoyed swinging,
she told herself.
Her father had built the gazebo in their backyard in his spare
time. While he was a successful investment broker, Arcadia
suspected he had really wanted to be a carpenter. Half the
furniture in their house was handmade from rare woods by her
father, and she had learned just a little from him, enough to make a
really tacky picture frame for a birthday present from him, and
three stools that tended to fall down.
She lost herself in remembering him and all the things he had
made as she slowly swung the bench back and forth. Unwanted
memories struggled to surface, but she tried to tamp them down.
Mary and Andy had died in the gazebo when the Black Moon cult
had attacked. They had snuck off to make out and a shot from the
first vehicle had blown it off the face of the Earth. Arcadia
hunched over and plugged her ears, not that this was any good for
fighting off remembered noises.
They also didn't stop real sounds very well. A voice cut
through her misery. It was soft and female. "What's wrong? Are
you okay?"
Arcadia didn't recognize the voice. She lifted her head and
turned around. "I'm fine," she lied.
A girl her own age faced her. She had pale skin and a slender
figure, with long blonde hair done up in two balls with trailing
ponytails, one on each side of her head. She was wearing a plain
white blouse with a small red bow pinned with a golden brooch on
her bosom, and a short blue pleated skirt that went down to her
knees. The sleeves were poofy and gathered at mid-arm. "You
don't look fine," she said softly, stepping a little bit closer. "Have
you been crying?"
Arcadia wiped the tears from her eyes and decided not to say
no, since she didn't like to lie blatantly. "A friend of mine died in a
gazebo like this."
The girl finished moving over and placed a hand on the bench.
"I'm sorry. You must miss her very much."
"Mary was my best friend. We'd known each other since we
were five." Her brain tried to barrage her with a 'This was her life'
pastiche, but she fought it off. "She died at my sixteenth birthday
party." Her voice was flat. "Along with my boyfriend and several
dozen of my other friends."
The girl's eyes misted up, and she looked ready to cry herself.
"That's horrible," she said, her voice trembling. "What...how did it
happen?"
"These maniacs drove skimmers into the party and started
killing everyone. They were after me, and I still don't know why,
really." Arcadia began to cry again, cursing herself. It was months
ago, why am I crying now? "They chased me halfway across the
galaxy for months, and then I thought I had finally lost them and
then they found me again and..." She couldn't talk because her
voice was choking up.
She looked up and saw the girl was crying too. Whoever she
was, she reached over and clasped one of Arcadia's hands with
hers. "Are they still after you? Don't worry. You're safe here."
Her voice was shaking almost as much as Arcadia's. "No one will
hurt you."
"I...I'm sorry," Arcadia said, looking away, but grateful for the
hands holding hers. "I didn't mean to make you cry. I seem to
bring trouble wherever I go."
"Don't be sorry. This isn't the first time I've cried for someone,
and if I melted from my own tears, I'd have melted away a long
time ago." She laughed a little bit. "Just cry. If you hold in your
pain, it will devour you."
"I...my name is Arcadia." Shame over crying in front of
someone she didn't even know warred with a desperate need for
comfort in her soul.
"I'm Usagi. You have a lovely name, Arcadia. I bet you like
trees and gardens a lot." Her arms moved and wrapped around
Arcadia, who knelt on the bench, burying her face in the space
under Usagi's chin.
"Y...yes, I do," Arcadia stammered. "I like to run too," she
babbled. "I seem to be doing a lot of that lately..." Marcus, Makoto,
Rita...I'm sorry I left you all behind. I didn't mean to run away, to
leave you. Tears took her completely, and she had no idea how
long she knelt on the bench, hugging a girl she had just met, and
crying enough to irrigate the Andal desert.
By the time she finished, she had turned Usagi's blouse into a
tear-stained mess, and she felt rather dehydrated. "I bet you're
thirsty," Usagi said quietly.
Arcadia laughed a little. "I feel like I haven't drunk anything
in months." Her stomach rumbled. "I shouldn't be hungry this
soon! I've been so hungry since I got here."
Usagi's stomach rumbled in reply. "Crying is hard work," she
said quietly, then giggled. "Follow me, and we'll raid the
refrigerator."
Arcadia got up and smiled. "Are the defenses very tough?"
"I'm supposed to be on a diet, so Luna will probably stay there
all night trying to keep me away from it. But I think I have a
clever plan."
Famous last words, Arcadia thought.
*******************
Arcadia looked around as she and Usagi ran down the hallway.
Spotting a spiral staircase with a long handrail going down to the
next three floors, she handed Usagi one of the bags of food, picked
her up, put her on the handrail and gave her a push. "Meet me at
the library," she said, as Usagi began to spiral downwards,
shrieking.
She looked back at the angry black cat chasing them and
waved the bag in the air. "Catch me if you can!" She sped up,
trying to remember how she had run so fast at the track.
The cat sped up, transforming into a rather scary looking
black panther, but Arcadia ran as fast as she could. Doors slammed
open and shut as she ran past, blurring through a maze of barely
remembered hallways. The black panther, which had an golden
crescent moon on its forehead, fell behind, finally losing her
completely. She found the grav chute she was looking for, and
jumped into it, drifting down three floors to the level she wanted,
then pushing off the wall to jump out of it.
The Great Library was much as she remembered it, except
even bigger and better decorated, although the walls were not as
crowded with salvaged art as in her own time. At first, she couldn't
spot Usagi, but then a pair of blond knobs poked out from behind a
book shelf. "Did you lose Luna?"
"Yeah." She closed the library doors, huge slabs of mahogany
carved with geometric patterns and the Senshi symbols. "I wish
you'd told me your diet enforcer transforms into a panther, though.
That was kinda scary."
"Venusian cats shapechange. Luna tends to forget she has other
forms, though, unless she gets embarrassed or angry." Usagi began
spreading out their loot. "You did get the donuts, right?"
"A world without donuts is on the brink of apocalypse,"
Arcadia said, quoting 'Bimrax Hergen', one of her favorite movies.
"Yep." She pulled out a donut and ate the entire thing with one
bite. I'm turning into a pig, she thought. But I'm a happy pig. She
laughed.
"Gimme! Gimme!" Usagi said frantically, sticking her face into
the donut bag.
Arcadia laughed and started eating. "I feel like such a pig. I
can't believe I'm eating so much. I'm gonna gain 2000 pounds and
look like a gorilla."
Usagi started scarfing down food as well. "You've probably
been using a lot of magic. One way you can fuel magic is to eat, eat,
eat. Your body converts the food into energy and you can use it to
do magic. This works especially well if you're just running really
fast, or becoming super strong, or something else that just lets you
do something normal at a magical level, like outracing a skimmer
on foot." She ate an apple in four bites. "So where are you from?"
"Umm..." Arcadia decided to be honest. "About 1500 years in
the future." She ate half a sandwich with one bite. "Don't ask me
about the future. You don't want to know." There's not a lot of
room for nice people like you in my future, she thought. I wish
there was.
"Time travel really does wear you out. I bet everything seems
very strange to you." Usagi's voice had dropped from the high
pitched merriment of before to a more serious tone that was almost
a little sad.
"Yeah. It's so picture-perfect I could almost gag." She finished
her sandwich. "Okay, that's an overstatement, but it's just like...I
can't see how it works. I haven't met anyone who wasn't nice.
Well, one person did get kinda mad, but I can't blame her. It's just
so...It's all...It's this big fairy tale of happy shiny people, and I can't
see how it turned into the horror story I'm from." Arcadia stared
at her food. "Everyone's so hopeful and cheery and...I feel like the
evil witch at a princess' christening. People ask me about the
future, and all I can tell them is that everything is going to go to
hell in a handbasket. That everything they've fought for is going to
be destroyed. And then the whole business with the museum and
all..."
Usagi chugged some coke, then asked, "Business with the
museum?"
"Well, in my own time, all we have are really goofy legends
about how the Great Ice ended and where it came from. Basically,
as far as I can tell, the people running this place screwed up really
badly, got their ass kicked, and only stopped everything from being
destroyed by sheer luck. I mean, if that one guy hadn't insisted on
going along to try to get his Time Orb back or if the Juraiian
Emperor hadn't been there to help fight the Sun-Eater or..." She
snarfed some chips. "I mean...you should earn what you get
through hard work, not just stumble your way into a Golden Age.
We work our asses off on my homeworld, and we're pretty
miserable." She paused. "Okay, not miserable, but we're not THIS
well off. I mean, everyone seems to live like kings here."
"You're leaving out the Great Ice," Usagi said quietly. "The
world suffered for nine hundred years. Dark magic slowly
poisoned those in suspended animation. Monsters ate those who
scrabbled out a desperate living on the surface. Life was nasty,
brutish, and short. They paid in blood, sweat, and tears for what
we have now. Magic has its price, but they paid that price for the
generations to come. I wish it could have been different. I wish no
one had had to suffer."
"No one should have to suffer," Arcadia said. "But we do
anyway." She drank some coke, then started on an orange. "Life is
a haze of pain and misery, and death is our only way out." She
sighed. "I'm not made for a wonderland like this."
Usagi reached over and squeezed Arcadia's hand. "I think this
is exactly what you need. Life is more than just pain. If we
pretend there is no pain, we're fools, but if we pretend joy doesn't
exist, all we can know is pain. Your life hasn't been all pain, has
it?"
"No. You're right. I've had a lot of good times too, but I
just...The universe isn't fair. Why did my friends have to die? I
was the one they wanted, but my friends died instead. I'd kill
myself if it would bring them back." Arcadia felt the tears coming
again.
Usagi squeezed Arcadia's hand again. "Killing yourself or
living as if you were dead won't bring them back."
"I know. I just..." She wiped her eyes with her free hand.
"Every time I'm happy, I expect something bad to happen to ruin
it." I will not cry anymore, she told herself.
Usagi held her hand tightly. "Would you like another hug?"
"Yes," Arcadia blurted out. They hugged silently for a long
time. Finally, Arcadia said, "Thank you," quietly.
Usagi said, "How about if I take you somewhere fun tomorrow?
I think I know something you'd like."
"Sure. Ryo was going to take me back to the Museum for more
history lessons tomorrow, but we didn't have anything planned for
the morning."
She laughed. "You've got a good tutor. He usually knows your
questions before you even ask them."
"I bet he's hard to play practical jokes on too."
Usagi nodded. They stayed up late talking, and Arcadia wasn't
even sure she dragged herself into the right bed when she finally
got home.
******************
Michael sat at the table in their hotel room and tried to read
'The Book of Truth'. 'And lo, the wrath of the most holy Rei is
terrible to behold, her anger a fire that consumes all it touches. For
she is the Wrath of the Most High made flesh, the avenging angel,
the one who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah at his command for
their sins. Yet too, she is the Angel of Song, her voice the cool
breeze of the morning, her light that of the morning star, that
heralds the coming of day. And the people listened to the words of
Imoron, as he spoke the words of the Most High, and they did
dance and sing, and feast upon...' Michael put down the book.
"Damn you for making me read this stupid thing, Gabrielle. I still
think this is a stupid plan."
"Do you have a better one? All you two have to do is to
pretend to be lay followers of the cult and spout two or three
verses and a blessing or two if necessary. Serenity worshippers
tour the palace all the time. No one in their right mind will WANT
to look at us, and anyone who is in the cult will trust us implicitly."
Gabrielle put down the robes she was sewing together. "Now, do
you want the pattern that indicates you're especially devoted to a
particular Senshi or the one that indicates you have yet to choose a
patron?"
Michael glanced over at Raphaelle, who was busily sewing a
green robe with gold thread. "What did you pick?"
"I'm gonna be a Jupiter worshipper, I think. We both do
lightning." She grinned. "You should be a Small Lady devotee."
Michael gagged and only barely resisted the urge to throw up.
"What I want to know is why what we told Albrecht made him
decide we have to sneak into the palace and put that," he pointed at
a reddish gem lying on the table, "in her room. Especially since he
wouldn't say what it is."
Uriel looked up from watching the news on holovid. "It's a
jumping gem."
"A what?"
"You can use it and the matching gem to bypass teleportation
barriers. Basically, the gems are linked through subspace and you
enter one, go through a tunnel, then come out of the other one.
Spies use them all the time to get into places that lock up at night.
You go in as a tourist, drop it somewhere it won't be found, then
come back later and run wild." Uriel pointed at the holovid, which
was showing a star map of the local galactic arm. "Take a look at
this."
The announcer said, "Senshi Mercury announced today that
preliminary surveys have been completed for the following worlds:
Winath, Rimbor, Dor, and Calaxis III. Those interested in
emigration to these new colonies should apply at their local
emigration office for a stake in these worlds." Four worlds lit up on
the map. "Also, the Juraiian Empire is seeking colonists for the
following worlds..."
Everyone else watched. "So what?" Gabrielle asked. "Who
cares about these idiots colonizing planets?"
"We have a base on Winath, although I don't know much
about it. Or we DID, anyway. We'd been mining the system for
minerals and crystals, I think," Uriel said quietly. "Something must
have happened to it."
"Damn them!" Michael shouted. "We should send our fleets
and crush them now before they take over the entire galaxy! I'm
surprised they haven't driven us off Nemesis the way we got
driven off the Earth."
Gabrielle looked thoughtful, while Raphaelle said, "Once we get
the Time Key, it won't matter. She's the key to the Time Key.
Probably, he'll send us back later to grab her."
"Yes, indeed she is." A voice boomed through the room,
reeking of death and bitterness. It was a voice they knew too well.
Everyone fell to their knees. Raphaelle buried her face in the
bed and didn't even look up. Michael said quietly, "Hello, sir. How
can we save you?"
The Wiseman stared at each of them, fondling the orb he
always carried. "Ahh, respect. A rare commodity. So you want to
know what you're doing?"
Michael stared mindlessly for a moment. How much does he
know? "It would...uh...help us plan better."
"If any of you breathe a syllable of what I am about to say to
anyone, even the Prince himself, I will ensure that you suffer
centuries of agony without death. Do I make myself clear?"
"Like crystal," Uriel said very faintly.
"Albrecht is a fool who doesn't understand how to do anything
right. You will ignore his orders. Now, this is what is going on and
what you are going to do..."
******************
Earth, Angelica's Needle, 2365 AD (Serenity Year -627, 3116 Years
after the founding of Rome, Juraiian Year 22529, Federal Year -
1619)
Only one thing preserved human life upon the frozen Earth.
Two things, actually. One was a fact, the other a being. The fact
was that the Winter Queen was too insane to carry out a methodical
plan of extermination. The other was a being, known only as
'Wiseman', a sage of great power who traveled between the tiny
settlements clinging to life against the cold, the monsters, and the
Winter Queen's rages.
'Wiseman' was presumed to be male because of his name and
his voice, but no one really knew for sure. Indeed, the prophet
Andros had been burned to death for claiming that 'Wiseman' was
actually the Winter Queen in disguise, simply playing with the
Kingdom of Albernia, like a cat plays with a mouse. Few really
believed that, and they burned as well, for any community that
spurned the Wiseman's help was left to wither on the vine before
the assaults of the Winter Queen, the monsters, or simply the
vagaries of the weather.
And yet, he claimed no reward. He would accept a meal, but
that was it. All he asked in return for his aid was that if he one
day came for help, that it would be given. In three hundred years,
he had never called upon that claim as far as anyone in Albernia
knew. Indeed, years might pass without his presence.
Even so, if you met him once, you could never forget him.
Thus it was that Nin, who had seen him when she was five,
recognized him instantly when she looked up from her hoeing. She
had no idea how long he might have been watching her. "Uh..." She
dropped to her knees and bowed. "How can I help you, Wiseman?"
His voice was terrifying, for it sounded like he was inside some
sort of vast echoing chamber even when he stood, as now, in an
open field. "Take me to Queen Cerise and King Mikal."
All over the field, cleared of snow and ice by the power that lay
within the royal line, peasants fell to their knees and bowed their
heads to show respect. Nin gulped. "Yes, sir." She turned and
began walking towards the small town that clustered around the
Royal Palace. She had spoken with the royal family before, nearly
everyone in Albernia had, but she had never sought them, outside
of days on which court was held. Indeed, Wiseman needed no one
to escort him, for none would have challenged his right to enter. He
always did this, however. During his last visit, fifteen years earlier,
her uncle had been the one chosen to escort him.
The Royal Palace was a three-story building of stone and dried
clay, mainly distinguishable by its flag, which was a golden needle,
and the stone pillar that jutted out of its heart over the roof,
Angelica's Needle. It was here than the King and Queen lived, that
they communed with the great goddess Albernia who watched over
the kingdom and preserved it from the ice. Many gods and
goddesses had died three centuries ago when the Winter Queen
conquered the world, but their sacrifice had not been in vain, for
the Winter Queen was cut off from the heavens, severed from most
of her power. Those few kingdoms that endured had the protection
of some patron deity and of the Wiseman.
The guards recognized Nin, and more importantly, they
recognized the Wiseman. There were only two of them anyway.
Harry stepped out of the way. "Be welcome in this place,
Wiseman." He dragged Andy out of the way, since Andy was too
busy staring to move.
The ground floor of the Palace contained the kitchens and
servant quarters, but the majority of it formed the Great Hall, a
pillared chamber with the royal thrones on the far side, one on
each side of Angelica's Needle, the heart of the kingdom. It was
named after their first queen, who had saved them all from the
first onslaught of the Great Ice so long ago. It also doubled as a
dining hall, and currently the tables were being laid out as a
discussion finished at the foot of the throne.
The room fell silent as Nin slowly crossed the room, nervously
pulling on her skirt, which she imagined was starting to slide off.
The servants stared at Wiseman, though all they could see were his
pale hands. All else was hidden inside his voluminous robes.
Queen Cerise paled and dropped the goblet she was holding. It
rang as it struck the ground, but its crystal did not shatter,
although the ale it held splashed all over the legs of her eldest son,
Richard.
Richard scampered out of the way, and bowed to Wiseman.
"Queen Cerise. King Mikal. I come bearing good news."
Wiseman said, his voice echoing as none other did in the hall.
Nin heard virtually everyone in the room, including herself,
give a sigh of relief.
"First, the army your scouts have spotted massing to the North
will not come. The wandering people slew its leader, Duke Thorn,
and it has broken up." The wandering people were a race of curly
haired, short men and women, darker skinned than the people of
Albernia, who knew secrets that enabled them to survive in the icy
wastelands ruled over by the Winter Queen's monsters. While they
sometimes visited Albernia to trade, they never stayed anywhere
for long. They had been both friends and enemies of the kingdom
at different times, but Queen Cerise's mother had formed a compact
with them that still kept the peace.
"More importantly, I have had a vision of the future." His
voice altered subtly. While he still sounded like he was in an echo
chamber, it was no longer stern, but pleased. "The Great Ice will
not endure forever. One day, a boy will be born of your line with a
silver crescent moon upon his brow. It will be his destiny to marry
the woman who bears the yellow crescent moon, for she will be the
Queen of Summer, and he the king, and their union will heal this
world. They will be the ones who cast down the Winter Queen and
end the Great Ice. Watch for that boy, for when he is born, you will
know that a new age of joy is at hand." He turned and began to
walk away.
The Queen's eyes lit up, and the King looked pleased as well.
Nin quietly stepped out of the way. Richard said, "Stay with us a
while. Surely, you must grow weary of constant traveling."
He turned around slowly. "I cannot rest. Long ago, I made a
mistake and helped to destroy all I held dear. I failed those who
were depending on me. I cannot rest until one day, the Winter
Queen falls, and my penance is complete." His voice was sad. "I
pray that day come soon. While I still can...It must come soon. It
must."
He turned and walked silently, out of the building, out of the
town, out of the kingdom. It would be long before they saw him
again.
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