The Watch
By Michael Beck (the son of Dick Beck who uses his father's e-mail
address)
Authors Note:
A long time ago, I posted a story called "The Watch" on the RAAC.
There were posting problems, Chapter 3 never got up and due to a rather
confusing set of circumstances Chapter 6 was posted twice. Also, the
story was never finished because I lost interest. Anyway, here is the
full version of The Watch, with the unfinished last three chapters
done. The only changes made to the original manuscript were the removal
of some typos. You may notice a great deal of difference between the
first seven chapters and the last three, because both me and my writing
style changed over the intervening year (hopefully for the better). In
any case, her is The Watch in all its glory.
Prolouge
The four people sat down in the none-to-comfortable chairs, and the
briefing began.
"About a year ago we started getting reports of anomalous activites in
the Tokyo area. Monsters appearing out of nowhere, superheroes in scant
clothing stopping said monsters, the usual. Since security didn't seem
to be in danger and it wasn't interfering with the energy shipments, we
ignored it."
"Last night, however, an observation satellite recorded *this*."
A screen switched on, to show a rather incredible sight, at least by
ordinary standards. The four agents had seen a lot weirder though. A
skyscraper, the Starlight Tower according to a caption underneath the
picture, being covered in crystal that seemed to *grow* out of the walls
themselves.
"Such a blatant manifestation of supernatural activity cannot be
permitted." The statement was redundant. "Luckily the crystal
dissapeared before dawn, so we were able to keep it out of the papers
without resorting to coercive measures."
"Your assignment is to investigate these so-called Sailor Scouts. The
comps give a 86% probability that they are in some way connected to the
Moon Kingdom, so be careful. Moon Kingdom manifestations aren't very
competent, but they spend energy like water. Treat them in the standard
manner." Nobody in the room needed to be told and of this either.
"And whatever you do, don't let this people interfere with the energy
shipments. We're going to need every bit of energy we can get for
vebed. Dismissed."
Chapter 1
The four people eating lunch and chatting in the Starlight Tower's cafe
looked pretty ordinary, mostly because they had all received intense
training in just that.
"Guise, what does the Kirilian say?"
The brunette smiled, showing teeth obviously in need of flossing. "A
Class 19 PE occurred two nights ago at 5:24 on the 33rd floor-" she was
forced to stop because two of the others had fallen off of their
chairs. The other had simply blinked, which considering his normal
range of emotional expression was pretty much the same thing.
"Uh, Mary, wouldn't a class 19 PE have destroyed much of the city, as
well as setting off every Kirilian for several light years around?"
Robert Monaco asked from the floor as he began to rise.
Mary Guise, Paranormal Event Specialist, shrugged. "Only if it wasn't
properly contained and directed. We learned that the hard way in our
Tugunska lab back in 1908. Now we have special equipment to manage such
energies, but there's no way you could have gotten the stuff onto the
33rd floor of the Starlight Tower. For one thing the ceiling of the
32nd floor wouldn't have been strong enough and the stuff would have had
fallen through the floor. It must have been a purely supernatural
containment, which we can't do. I wish I know how it was done."
"Dean, can you use retrocog to figure out what happened that night?" the
blank faced Fred Noskos asked their resident psychic.
"Are you kidding? This is a class 19 PE we're talking about here.
Don't ask me for any event in the past year within five hundred yards of
that sort of event." Valerie Deans' voice was incredulous.
Noskos reached into his briefcase and pulled out four manilla folders.
Each of the other three took one. The folders contained their fake IDs,
credit cards with unlimited charge accounts, and everything else which
they were going to need for this investigation. After the mission was
over they would all, at times just far enough apart so that no one would
notice the connection of them all leaving at once just as they had all
been hired at once, the four of them would have "job transfers" and be
called away.
"I get to be a librarian." Mary said.
"I'm the new Crossroads High School Psychologist." Noskos supplied.
"Taxi driver." Monaco commented.
"Madam Zorba, Advisor to the Stars." Valerie groaned.
"I don't like our new psychologist much" Serena commented. "The old one
was much handsomer, and had better people skills."
Mina snorted. "You mean the old one was a person. In lunch today he
got hot coffee spilled on him, and he didn't even blink. Just wiped it
up. What happened to the old one, anyway?"
"Won the lottery." Serena answered. "The last anyone saw of him he was
buying a one-way ticket to Hawaii." She paused. "Doesn't it seem sort
of odd. We lose a psychologist, and get a new one immediately
thereafter?"
Luna and Mina let out simultaneous sighs, much to Serena's puzzlement.
For the bureaucracy to move so fast was simply unheard of, after all.
"Anyway, here's the new hair place." Mina said. "Think of it Serena, a
free haircut! You can finally get rid of those meatballs."
That did it. "Darien always used to call my hair meatballs." Serena
wailed.
After they got her calmed down, they went into the beauty parlor,
unaware of what was waiting for them inside.
The youma was very frustrated. If its cover had permitted it to jump up
and down and yell, it would have had been doing just that. It had
seemed such a simple job to compare the recovered hair from Sailor Moon
with the hair of various teenage girls until a match was found, and then
take the Silver Empyrean Crystal. To get all the girls in the area to
come, the Negaverse had bought a beauty salon and set up a free haircut
offer. It as the only way to get hair for analysis without anyone
noticing it was being taken. The youma did smile at the thought of what
would happen to the former owners when they tried to spend the money
they had been paid in. It as amazingly easy to get money when one could
simply teleport the bills out of banks. Of course, the bills were then
marked as stolen . . .
However, Malachite had forgotten something when he had come up with this
idea. He had had no idea of just how many girls their were in Tokyo.
Girls who were very fussy about their hair. If she had to hear "just a
little of the sides, not too much now, no not that little, that's all I
want, no cut the bangs too. . ." one more time, she was going to drain
the energy of everyone at the salon, cover or no cover.
At last. That long-haired blond over there, a match.
A quick magical command closed all the doors, and another spell sent
everyone in the place to sleep. It didn't affect Sailor Moon of course,
no Sailor Scout would be affected by such a weak spell.
"Hand over the Silver Empyrean Crystal, Sailor Moon." The youma
commanded. "Don't play dumb with me!" she added when the girl protested
she didn't understand. "Your hair and Sailor Moon's match! You must be
Sailor Moon!"
Robert Monacco stared at the now locked beauty salon. His Kirilians
were showing a rather odd magical aura around the building. All day
long he'd been taking girls to and from the place, but obviously the
salon was not what it seemed. Pulling out his astrium-loaded assault
pistol, he took up a position to fire on whatever came out, at the same
time sending out a message to the others to give him backup.
"Hold it right there, Negaslime." Sailor Moon shouted. "You offered a
free haircut to everyone, and now you've reneged on your promise just
because some of my hair got on that girl there by accident! In the name
of the moon, and for the sake of everyone ever sucked in by false
advertising like yours, I will punish you!"
Who is she, the Better Business Bureau? Luna thought from her hiding
place under a nearby table.
Fortunately or un-, depending on your point of view, Sailor Moon was
prevented from completing her speech by the youma shooting out
high-velocity nail clippers.
While Sailor Moon whined and dodged, Mina took the opportunity to
transform without the youma noticing.
"VENUS CRESCENT BEAM SMASH!" and the resulting energy slamming into her
back, was the first indication the youma had of Sailor Venus' presence.
The former hair stylist was blown through the wall, directly into
Monacco's line of fire. A half-dozen bullets hit her side, knocking her
back.
By themselves, the bullets wouldn't have had done much. Youma cannot be
killed by purely physical force. However, these bullets were specially
designed to harm creatures with this attribute. The slugs began to
discharge magical energy directly into the surrounding tissue, crippling
the creature. The youma retaliated quickly, sending a pair of scissors
directly into Robert's thigh.
Sailor Moon may have been a bit slow on the uptake, but once she got a
grip on the situation you couldn't fault her reflexes. "MOON HEALING
ACTIVATION!" she shouted, and a shower of sparkles turned the creature
back into its former identity as a hair stylist.
"Not bad, Sailor Moon." Tuxedo Mask commented. He had appeared as if
from nowhere, as usual.
Sailor Moon was overjoyed. "Tuxedo Mask! You complimented me.
Hurrah!" She began to dance a jig.
Sailor Venus was more subdued. "Um, I don't think he's here to help."
"Quite right." The caped figure replied. "And for the record, I'm
Prince Darien of the Negaverse, not Tuxedo Mask. We will have that
crystal, no matter what you try to do to stop us."
"You won this time, but next time you won't have it so easy." With
those words, he was gone.
"Anything on those bullets yet?" said Rei. "Inquiring minds want to
know."
"No." Amy replied. "I've never seen anything like these bullets Serena
recovered from the area. This metal seems to be hundreds of times
stronger than steel, yet far lighter than aluminum. What's really
incredible though is the way they react to energies. They can seemingly
store gigantic amounts of energy, then discharge it just as quickly. I
might call it a superconductor, but to any ordinary form of energy it's
just plain impervious."
"Some sort of insulator then?" Artemis asked.
"No, even insulation is a form of interaction between electricity and
the material. Electricity just bounces off this stuff. It attaches to
this metal, assuming that it even is a metal, but doesn't /affect it.
The same for heat. However, when the bullet hits something, the extra
energy is discharged along with the kinetic energy. Nasty piece of
work. To my knowledge, and that of my computer, this sort of thing is
completely unprecedented."
"I know of something that has that sort of effect on energy." Serena
suddenly said. "My tiara when one of you guys uses an attack to enhance
its power."
"WHAT?" she protested in response to the glances she received. "Can't I
have information once in a while?"
"Sure you can." Lita said. "It's just a first, that's all."
At the same time another meeting was taking place, one whose
participants were far more conscious of the significance of their
discussion.
"'Negaverse?' Are you sure that's what the guy said?" Fred asked.
"Yeah, I'm sure. You think you know what it is? Then tell us." Robert
demanded. The fact that he would be one crutches for the next few weeks
was making him testier than usual. Since it wasn't a mortal wound, or
one that would leave permanent damage if treated with conventional
techniques, Watch HQ had refused to take him back and put him in a regen
tube.
"Yeah, I know what it is." Noskos answered. He let out a long
sigh,
the most emotion anyone had ever seen from him.
"The whole thing dates back to when we were first making plans
for the
vebed. We discovered through spying on our erstwhile archfoes that they
were wary of some sort of parallel plane of existence known as the
Negaverse. Since the enemy of your enemy is your friend, we decided to
try and contact it. Unfortunately, we then found out that one can't
always rely on adages. The Negaverse was nasty ,even by our standards.
So we sealed up the gate, then set off a volcanic eruption to bury the
whole area, just in case."
"We could produce volcanic eruptions that long ago? But the Grid wasn't
up." Valerie was surprised.
"We could. It was done by putting explosive in percisely calculated
locations within the mountain, and then setting them off at percise time
relative to each other."
"We managed to confirm a very important piece of information, however."
Mary put in. "The style of magic used---saying the names of attacks in
loud voices, usage of pantomiming hand gestures for the spells, the
immense amounts of excess light and sound involved, all hint very
strongly at Moon Kingdom magic."
She smiled. "And another characteristic of Moon Kingdom magic is that a
precisely calculated ward will contain it, totally and absolutely.
Unfortunately, I need more readings on the magics of each Scout to
create such a ward."
Noskos nodded. "So be it. We'll get you your readings. People, it's
time to bring forth the Devils."
Chapter 2
They weren't actually Devils in the sense of being creatures of
hell,
of course. Even the Watch was leery of dealing with the denizens of the
Pit any more than it absolutely had too. No matter what the demons
professed to want, the Watch knew that the demons really wanted all hell
to break loose. Literally. Only the Watch kept such creatures in
check, just one of the organization's many duties.
"Devil" was a generic term for Watch-created monsters. The term
had
come from the New Jersey Devil, the name given by the press to one such
creature that had escaped from a Pine Barrens facility in the first
decade of the 20th century. The Devils were extremely useful, highly
cost effective, and most important of all absolutely deniable.
This particular one was a seven-foot creature called Jumper.
Where
the
name had come from was obvious, since the thing looked like a beach ball
with gigantic legs attached. The thing had red-glowing insectoid eyes,
and a mouth filled with evil-looking teeth. The mouth was purely for
psychological effect, since Devils had no digestive system. They could
only receive food intravenously, a precaution established to make sure
that the creatures could not survive for long in the wild without Watch
support.
"Repeat your instructions." Valerie sent.
"I am to create a disturbance to attract the Sailor Scouts."
Jumper
answered through its radio implant. "When they arrive I am to cause
them to attack me, so that you can analyze the spells they use. I am
not to actually kill the Sailor Scouts, but I can hurt them if it will
induce them to use more attacks."
"Good." Valerie replied. "Now, go forth. And remember, like
all of
us you are expendable for the good of humanity."
Jumper did his duty. Less than ten minutes after he had
received his
orders, downtown Tokyo was being terrorized.
Jump leapt from car roof to car roof, smashing every vehicle he
landed
on. Lita, her shopping trip cut abruptly short, first called the other
scouts, then transformed into Sailor Jupiter, unaware that her every
energy was being analyzed and recorded.
"JUPITER THUNDERBOLT CRASH!" she roared. Mystically created
lightning
shot down out of a clear blue sky, striking the rod that had emerged
from her tiara. The rod glowed with blue light, just before electrical
energy of enormous intensity shot forth, missing Jumper completely.
"Yes, yes." Mary gloated as her sensors began to gather more and
more
valuable data.
"JUPITER THUNDERBOLT CRASH!"
"JUPITER THUNDERBOLT CRASH!"
"JUPITER THUNDERBOLT CRASH!"
Sailor Jupiter stopped her fruitless attacks. This wasn't
getting her
anywhere. This particular youma was fast, probably due to those
incredible legs. It was always at least ten yards away from the impact
point. Several blackened spots on the pavement showed how well her
strategy was working.
Mary cursed. She still needed more data. Just a little more fighting
would do the trick. "Attack the Sailor Scout." she commanded through
her link. "Nothing fatal, just break a few bones."
The leg hit Sailor Jupiter in the chest, hard. She staggered
back.
Probably just a few ribs broken, she decided. Probably internal
bleeding as well, it was lucky that wounds taken in this form didn't
translate once she had transformed back. Of course, he didn't want to
find out if this applied to dying as well.
"MERCURY BUBBLES BLAST!"
The attack took everybody by surprise, even Jumper. Sailor
Mercury
had
realized how quick the thing was, and had set her computer to
calculating an optimum attack time. As it had smashed into Jupiter, the
creature had been moving to fast for too long to change direction in
time to avoid the bubbles. It's upper left leg frozen, the creature
reeled back.
Jupiter saw her chance. "JUPITER THUNDER CRASH!" The left leg
was
blown away entirely.
Another blast of bubbles from Mercury killed Jumper.
Mary smashed her fist to the tabletop in glee. She could now
calculate a matrix to contain Sailor Jupiter. To bad about poor Jumper
though, but she had other Devils.
"Send out Thoul." she commanded. "Tell him he can knock out Sailor
Jupiter, we don't need any more data on her magic.
The screech caught the two Sailor Scouts totally unprepared. Something
that looked like a spectacularly ugly cross between a crane and a
vulture was diving straight towards them.
They dodged, of course. Sailor Mercury got to the side all right, but
Sailor Jupiter took another hit, this time from one of the thing's
eight-foot wings. She was flung through the air and landed against a
telephone pole, getting knocked out cold.
Thoul let out another paralyzing screech, and flew back up. It began to
shoot out feathers, feathers that hit with enough force to crack the
pavement.
"MARS FIRE IGNITE!"
"VENUS CRESCENT BEAM SMASH!"
The new arrivals came just in the nick of time. The first attack burned
away the feathers coming for Mercury, and the second smashed Thoul from
the sky. Another fireball turned Thoul to ash.
"Octavia. Brontac. Attack!" Mary commanded.
The giant octopus looked particularly fearsome, the more so because it
simply ignored three fireballs from Mars in rapid sucession. That was
all the data Mary needed to finish Mars' containment matrix, and
Brontac, a Devil that looked like a large piece of black cloth, wrapped
itself around her. Precise pressure points were touched, and Mars fell
unconscious. Two beams from Venus blew huge holes in the cloth, while
some bubbles from Mercury finished Brontac off.
Octavia fled, to be replaced by a Devil, though the Sailor Scouts still
thought it was a youma, that looked like a particularly shiny sea urchin
covered with extra-sharp spines. The spines popped every bubble, and
beams just bounced off the reflective skin. Pretty soon both of the two
remaining Scouts were knocked out by the creature's toxic skin
secretions.
Less than thirty seconds later, two black vans pulled up. Men in dark
suits and sunglasses flung the Sailor Scouts into the back of one of the
vans, closed the doors, and drove away. The other van loaded up devils
both living and dead, screeched away as well.
Now came four big eighteen wheelers. While two unloaded cars to replace
those damaged, the others unloaded crews which began to place strange
devices around damaged portions of walls and pavement. Room-temperature
atomic transmutation, powered by technologies far beyond those available
to the general public, began. Within ten minutes both the vans were
gone as well, and there was no sign that the battle had ever even been.
When Serena, finally released from detention, ran up panting a few
moments later, she was extremely surprised not to find anything.
Michael Beck <dickbeck@ix.netcom.com>
The Watch
Chapter 3
The next day at school, Serena tried to asked the others what
had
happened.
Tried to.
"What are you talking about?" Amy asked. "Nothing happened
yesterday.
We just finished our shopping trip. You were there, Serena."
"Yeah." Lita added. "Did something happen to us that we don't
remember? You're the forgetful one around here, not us."
Rei chuckled. "Yeah, remembering something that never happened
is
going too far even for you."
Serena stuck out her tongue, and Rei replied in kind. Serena
lost this
particular tongue duel, her heart just wasn't in it.
"But what about that youma?" Serena pressed.
The others blinked. "What's a youma?" Mina asked.
"Does this mean you actually know a word I don't?" Amy laughed.
Serena was starting to get a very bad feeling about this. She decided
to do a quick check.
"So Mina, how's Artemis?"
The blond girl was obviously surprised at the sudden shift in topic, but
answered the question anyway. "Artemis is fine, is there any reason why
he shouldn't be?"
"No, none at all." Serena replied. "Did he tell you the great joke
that he told me?"
Mina chuckled. "Serena, get real. Artemis is a cat, he can't talk."
She said more, but Serena didn't hear her. Serena had fallen to the
floor in shock. And even when she hit the ground, it was like she
didn't stop falling, but continued to plummet into a bottomless pit of
horror.
"They didn't remember anything!" Serena wailed. "It's like they aren't
Sailor Scouts anymore. Worse, it's like they've never even been Sailor
Scouts. Amy remembers Greg, and even remembers seeing Sailor Mercury
saving him from Zoiscite.
"It's like every single memory that involved the Sailor Scouts has been
edited out!" She cried harder than ever.
"This is indeed most worrisome." Luna said. "The next time the Dark
Kingdom tries something, you're going to have to face them alone. And I
don't think that-" the Cat was forced to stop when Artemis interrupted
her.
"Wait a minute, what about the transformation wands?" the Cat of Venus
demanded.
Serena looked up from her tear-soaked pillow. "I don't know, it didn't
even occur to me to ask."
"Uh-oh." Luna said. "This is a big problem. If the Dark Kingdom gets
its hands on those wands, it'll be able too . . .". Her voice trailed
off, but had a tone that strongly indicated that had the Cat been
biologically capable of blanching, she would been doing so.
"What will they be able to do?" Serena asked.
"Never mind that." Artemis answered. "It would take too long to
explain, and you probably wouldn't understand or believe it."
"No, tell me." Serena demanded. "I want to know."
"No you don't." Artemis replied, in a voice that implied just that. He
relented. "Let's just say that if Queen Beryl those wands, its game
over. And no continues. For anyone. Anywhere. Ever."
"How do we know she doesn't have them already?" Serena asked.
"Because if she did, we'd all either be dead or wishing we were." Luna
explained. "We have to find those wands, and we have to find them now."
"I want you to take out the Crescent Moon Wand, and say 'Energy
Perception'."
Serena obeyed. "LINKAGE PERCEPTION!"
It was incredible. It was like she was seeing without seeing, sensing
without sensing. She felt . . . she didn't know what. It was something
that had no words in any language.
/\Concentrate on the wands\/ Luna--said? Serena didn't even know how
she knew it was Luna, but she obeyed. She was too stunned by her new
perspective to even think of refusing.
She thought about the wands, what they looked like, on the sounds her
friends' voices made when they transformed. She could feel a
connection, but that word didn't even begin to describe the bond.
The wands were . . .
The wands were . . .
She couldn't find them.
Far away, a automatic sensor beeped. The individual on duty
looked at
it, but it looked to be a pretty average probe attempt by someone who
was pursuing a peripheral topic. Not worth bothering with.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU COULDN'T FIND THEM!!!" Luna roared.
Roared
literally, she sounded like a lion in a very bad moon. Serena was
uncomfortably reminded that cats were meat eaters.
"Calm down Luna, she did the best she could." Artemis
interceded.
"But what worries me is that there's no way I know of that the Dark
Kingdom could keep you from finding those wands, not with the linkage
between the wands. Which means that you were right, Luna, we aren't
dealing with the Dark Kingdom here at all."
Serena jerked her head up. "What?! The Dark Kingdom isn't
behind all
this? Why didn't you tell me?"
"You didn't need to know." Luna answered. "We weren't even
sure
ourselves until just now. We've suspected it ever since the incident at
the beauty parlor, but had no actual evidence. There didn't seem to be
any sense in giving you more to worry about until we knew for sure one
way or another."
Serena sighed. That actually made sense. "Well, now what do we
do?"
she asked.
"You do nothing." Artemis replied. "Me and Luna have a few
extra
cards to play to get information. We'll let you know when, or if, we
get anything.
That night, Luna and Artemis sent out a psychic message to Zeus,
one of
their compatriots.
/\Zeus, how's it going?\/ Artemis asked jovially.
/\Fine.\/ came the response from the Cat entrusted with the
maintenance
of the Repository. Once there would have been several Cats helping him,
but that had been eons ago. The Cats did not age or get ill, but in
terms of injury they were just as vulnerable as a normal cat. Only a
few dozen of them had survived the fall of the Moon Kingdom, and both
accidents and the occasional suicide had cut their numbers down to
eleven. The Cats were unable to reproduce without aid from an aural
therapist, and those simply didn't exist anymore.
/\We need you to use the Star-Scryer to look for any unusual
energy
disturbances in the Tokyo area.\/ Luna cut straight to the point.
/\Get real.\/ Zeus answered. /\That's the main locus of
Negaverse
activity on the planet. There'll be disturbances galore there.\/
/\True.\/ Apollo answered. \/But we're looking for something
else. We
don't know just what, but ignore stuff that fits Dark Kingdom profile./\
/\Sure.\/ was the reply. /\But after this is over you'll have
to tell
me why you wanted this.\/ Once they would never have spoken to one
another this way, but that had been a very long time ago. Ten thousand
years had effectively erased all caste distinction between the Cats.
The Star-Scryer had been designed by Moon Kingdom enchanters for
the
purpose of detecting and analyzing in minute detail energy disturbances
that occurred light-years away. As a tool for detecting
extraterrestrial civilizations it had worked perfectly, and it had been
an invaluable tool for military intelligence against some of those same
aliens. The Watch's precautions in Tokyo against detection were pretty
good, but against the Star-Scryer they would have been hopelessly
outclassed at light-months, much less a few thousand miles.
"Serena, you just aren't going to believe this." Luna said. She sounded
awed, and more than a little bit scared.
"What won't I believe?" Serena wanted to know. She had stayed home
from school that day, since the night before she had literally cried
until her eyes bled. If it hadn't been for Apollo and Luna's
companionship, she might well have tried to commit suicide, though her
parents didn't know that last. They were planning to send her to the
school psychiatrist as soon as she felt well enough to go, however.
In a way, Luna couldn't really blame the girl. Serena had been a rather
ordinary girl until Luna had recruited her-drafted her, to be more
accurate-into the fight against the Negaverse. The last year of
living
in constant readiness to fight had worn away at her nerves, and now she
had lost her love and her best friends, all in the space of a few days.
If they had died it might not had been so bad, but now they simply
didn't remember the things that had made them friends in the first
place, something even worse.
"A whole network of energy." Luna answered. "You see, energy gathers
in places where people are feeling strong emotions. In every single
such place-you know, concerts, amusement parks, nightclubs, even some
places you aren't old enough to know about-we found a device that
gathers up this energy, and transfers it to a certain central location.
This location may be what's behind the recent mindwiping of the Scouts.
Therefore, we want you to investigate it."
"ME?!" Serena squeaked.
"Yes." Artemis replied. "You." He didn't mention that the main reason
Serena had been selected for recon was the strict 'no pets' policy of
the location involved.
Serena crept around the back of the Tsung Pizzeria, a popular gathering
spot for students of Tokyo university. She hadn't been able to believe
that this was where the energy was going to, but Luna said it was.
The inside looked like what she supposed most pizzerias looked like,
ovens and jars of toppings and lots of cooks making pizzas. She had no
idea where to start looking for all the energy, at least not until she
noticed two doors that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
One turned out to be the employee bathroom, but the other was locked.
Why would anyone lock a door in a pizzeria? Serena wondered. She pulled
on the handle, but the door didn't budge.
Serena couldn't believe it. Her friends were in danger, maybe the whole
world was in danger, and she was going to be thwarted by a locked door.
No! She yanked on the knob again, as hard as she could. To her
amazement, it came off in her hand, and she was able to just push the
door open.
Inside she found something that definitely didn't belong in a pizzeria.
The room was filled with strange objects that looked like lumps of grey
coral with randomly shaped pieces of clear crystal stuck into them at
apparently random intervals. In a table on the center of the room was a
particularly large hunk of coral that somehow felt charged with energy.
A pair of sunglasses lay incongruously on a table near the door she had
entered, and there was another door on the other side of the room.
As she watched the door began to open up. Without waiting to see who
came through, she grabbed the nearest thing to hand, the sunglasses, and
dashed out the door.
It was too late though. The person had seen her and gave chase.
Serena took turns at random, but her follower wasn't fazed. More
importantly, Serena didn't know the area and soon found herself in a
blind alley with her pursuer close behind.
/\Calm.\/
Serena was staggered. "Who said that?" she demanded, spinning around.
But there was no one in sight.
/\Never mind who I am. Relax. Concentrate on your surroundings.
Create a picture of the alley in your mind, as if you were seeing it
from the outside.\/
Desperate, Serena did so. It wasn't as if she had anything to lose.
/\Now, imagine the alley without you in it.\/
Though she couldn't imagine what good it could do, Serena obeyed. Just
then her pursuer, dressed all in black, and wearing a ski mask, entered
the alley. He looked around quickly, but left. It was as if he hadn't
even seen her.
Serena was stunned.
"Who are you?" she said out loud.
/\I am Serena, third of the that name, Princess of the Moon Kingdom.\/
A pause. /\Who are you?\/
<dickbeck@ix.netcom.com>
The Watch, Chapter 4
By Michael Beck (the son of Dick Beck who uses his father's e-mail
address)
Chapter 4
/\So, they let these 'reporters' say whatever they want about
the
government? And don't imprison them or anything? Strange.\/
/\Exactly.\/ Serena answered. The Moon Princess was having
trouble
dealing with the modern world. It was hard to blame her, if Serena had
suddenly found herself in the mind of someone ten thousand years in the
future she'd have been confused as well.
/\Most interesting. Now tell me more about this 'middle
class'.\/
Before Serena had a chance to resume her explanations of modern
society, Artemis and Luna walked into the room. Artemis was carrying
the sunglasses Serena had found in his mouth.
"Hello, Serena. And . . . Serena." The Cats were unsure about
how to
deal with Serena's new companion, so to speak.
"Hi. Got anything more on those glasses?"
"Did we ever." Artemis answered, dropping the glasses so he
could
talk. "These glasses are just plain incredible. They're magical
talismans, like the rods are."
Serena stared. "Wait?! Do you mean that someone with these
glasses
could turn into a Sailor Scout or something like that?"
Luna nodded. "Only the frames. The lenses are magical energy
detectors that work a lot like the visor Amy uses . . . used to use."
/\Hold it. How can one make a talisman without crystals to
serve as
channels?\/ Serena relayed the question to the Cats.
"That occurred to us as well, iprolux." At Serena's stare, Luna
explained. "That's a Moon Kingdom title of address. I suppose you
could translate it as Your Majesty, but that's not really accurate,
because the accent on the third syllable implies that the ruling is done
not by force but rather by a realization on the part of the governed
that . . ." She trailed off as she noticed Serena's eyes start to
glaze.
"Anyway, the crystals are there, they're just very small. As in
too
small to be seen with naked human eyes." Serena felt-that was the only
word for it-the Moon Princess' shock at Luna's words. The two of them
had discovered that they could sense each other's general emotions, but
not each other's thoughts unless they specifically directed them to one
another.
Artemis picked up the thread. "This means that whoever built it
is
better at magic than the Moon Kingdom was. We couldn't make magical
items with crystals this small." He sighed. "The transformation wands
were considered a triumph of Moon Kingdom ingenuity and knowledge.
These glasses leave those wands in the dust. And by Serena's account,
the room was filled with devices like this one."
"Tell them the rest." Luna commanded.
"Do I have to?" Artemis whined.
"Yes."
Artemis looked sort of embarrassed. "Well, these pair of
glasses is
more than just a marvelously sophisticated magical item. They're a
magical item designed to look as if it isn't magical. If we hadn't been
going over these glasses with a fine-toothed comb looking for anything
unusual, we'd never had found the magic."
"The only reason that the makers of these glasses would ever do
that
was if they were trying to hide the glasses. But from who? We don't
know, but whoever the makers are afraid of must be even worse than they
are."
Serena broke into a cold sweat. The people who made these
glasses
could, as she understood it, go right through the Dark Kingdom without
even slowing down. Which meant that if there was something they were
afraid of . . .
"Well Serena, why don't you tell me what's wrong?" The new
school
psychologist was obviously trying to make his voice sound tender. It
wasn't working.
"Nothing." Serena answered hotly.
"That's not what your parents said." Doctor Noskos answered.
"I told you, nothing is wrong." she answered, now obviously
angry.
"They said you were crying all night long, and talking to
someone else
in your sleep."
"Unfortunately, if you don't want to talk to me, I can't force
you
to." After writing her a pass for class, he dismissed her.
The moment she was gone, he picked up the phone and began
dialing
frantically. They had a big problem.
/\Listen.\/ the Moon Princess thought\said. \/The square of the
hypotenuse equals the square of the other two sides. You can use this
to solve problems three and five. As for problems seven and twelve, you
should . . . Oh, never mind./\ With that, she did something. Suddenly
Serena knew the answers to the problems on her geometry test. She
wasn't told the answer, she just suddenly knew it.
It was like that all day. The Moon Princess was extremely
smart. Or
rather, she was extremely knowledgeable. She had grown up with the
greatest minds of an entire solar system as her private tutors. The
result was an education that left this one in the dust.
That night, Serena started studying.
Meanwhile, the Watch group was holding an emergency meeting in a
McDonalds, which were everywhere these days.
Valerie let out a low whistle at the graphs Noskos showed her.
"Impressive. This girl is an A rating to all 19 places."
"That's very good." she added.
"Better than you?" Robert asked.
"A lot better than I am. The psychic rating system is extremely
complex, but it has to be to cover the entire spectrum of human
psionics. To be A-rated in every single category means that this girl
can do pretty much anything, assuming she has enough energy at her
disposal and that she's had training in doing so."
"Perfect." Guise said. "We've got a incredibly powerful psychic with
absolutely no training running loose in one of the most densely
populated areas on the planet, and a whole other universe getting ready
to invade. Just perfect." She turned to Noskos. "Any chance of being
able to use the big guns?"
"Nope. Anything heavy enough to actually hurt the Negaforce would have
such a heavy leak ratio that we'd never be able to cover it up."
The others nodded. The whole point of the Watch was to hide from the
human race that it was being influenced by forces not of human or
natural origin, and the amount of astral energy required to do real
damage to something like the Negaforce would bleed off a small
percentage of its energy as mundane forces such as heat and light. Not
a large percentage, but it would make Tugunska look like a firecracker.
There was no way the Watch would be able to cover that up, either from
the creatures that it kept in ignorance of its from true power or, more
importantly, from the population at large.
"We'll ignore the Negaforce itself for the time being. It can't hurt us
directly, and I'd say that the four of us together are more than a match
for anything that it can send out."
"The three of you." Valerie corrected. "We still haven't been able to
recover my glasses. Without them, I can't transform."
"You know, you're supposed to have those on you at all time. Come to
think of it, don't transformation glasses have trackers in them so we
could find them when they got lost? Can't we use that to find them?"
Robert asked?
"They do." Valerie replied. "The reason that I didn't have my glasses
on me was that the tracker wasn't sending out a signal, and I needed to
repair them. I tried to chase the girl who took it, but no joy. I
didn't even get a good look at her."
Noskos changed the subject. "Be that as it may, I'm going to
try and
get Serena to come to me for 'counseling'." They all knew that that was
an euphemism for brainwashing the girl. "If I can get her to come for
even a few half-hour sessions, her powers will be so blocked off that
she'll never use them again unless the Watch wants her to."
"Any possibility of recruitment?" asked Valerie.
Noskos shook his head. "No. The girl is too emotionally unstable.
She'd probably spill the whole beans to her friends the first chance she
got. And we certainly can't let her run free with that kind of power
level. Eventually she'd get so angry or frustrated that her powers
would break free of her current subconscious controls, and both her and
everyone around her would be in terrible danger. And if she was trying
to defend herself, or, even worse, someone she cared about . . ." he
trailed off, but he didn't have to finish. The results of such a thing
didn't even bear thinking about. When psychic powers broke free without
proper controls, the results were almost always destructive. The only
bright spot to such incidents was that the destruction tended to be so
total there was often no evidence left to indicate what had really
occurred.
"I wonder what Queen Beryl is doing. We haven't heard from her in a
while."
"That's a bad thing?" Luna inquired from her perch on Serena's
shoulder. The Cat whispered directly into Serena's ear, so no one else
could hear her speak. A talking cat could attract unwanted attention.
Communication the other way wasn't a problem, since Luna's ears were
sharp enough to hear Serena's subvocalizations. Any observer simply saw
Serena muttering to herself.
/\Probably up to something sneaky.\/ "said" the Moon Princess. Serena,
as usual, repeated the spirit's words to Luna, with a little prefix to
indicate that they weren't her own.
/\During the time of the Moon Kingdom, she was known for this
sort of
thing. She'd try the obvious, and if that didn't work she'd do the same
thing again, only with a new twist you'd never even thought of.\/
Images came, crystaline ships atttacking and being driven back. The
ships coming again, only this time the ships were unmanned and had no
weapons. They were nothing but speed, and they smashed themselves
against the defense batteries before the guns had time to react. Serena
didn't know how she knew the meaning of the images, but she did.
"That fits in with my own memories about her." Luna agreed.
"Once,
before she rebelled, we were playing a game of hre@xi-" the Princess
provided a vision of a game that looked like chess played on the sides
of a cube, "----and she---"
The pause was due to the youma that had just appeared as they
rounded
the corner. It looked like a giant crab, but one with dozens of sets of
pinchers spaced equidistantly around the entire body. They seemed out
of proportion, longer and thinner than they should have had been. There
was no sign of eyestalks, or any sort of head.
Serena ducked into an alley and transformed. There was the
usual
feeling of disorientation, and suddenly she was . . . elsewhere.
Ribbons swirled around her, attaching themselves to her, becoming
something that looked like silk but was ten times as strong as Kelvar.
Then, again without transition, she was standing in the alley again.
The youma came for her. It seemed to move slower than before.
Serena
knew that this was just an illusion, her own reflexes had simply been
heightened, one of the many changes that resulted from Sailor Scout
mode. The youma wasn't going to get a chance to hurt her.
"MOON TIARA MAGIC!" Serena shouted. It was, as usual, like
someone
else was running her body. Without being totally aware of it she
plucked her tiara from her forehead, wound up, and threw the jewelry,
now a disc of death, at the monster as hard as she could.
Those oddly spindly claws snatched the Frisbee-like object right
out
of
the air.
About then Serena realized that she was in big trouble.
The attack was even more of a surprise to Serena than it was to
the
youma. One moment the youma was advancing, the next a brilliant flash
of purple light came and half the youma's legs were gone.
Serena spun towards the source of the attack, a black Cadillac
with
tinted mirrors. The doors opened, and two people dressed in black suits
with tinted sunglasses came for her.
The men in black completely ignored the youma, which had fallen
over
onto its back and couldn't right itself with only half its legs.
"Hello, Sailor Moon." one of them said. "Mars, Mercury, Venus and
Jupiter really want to talk to you. In fact, they've been desperately
waiting for you to rescue them for quite some time now."
As she backed away from the approaching black-clad figures,
Sailor
Moon
knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she could not possibly get away.
Michael Beck <dickbeck@ix.netcom.com>
The Watch Chapters 5 & 6
Chapter 5
"Wow." said Artemis. "That's what I would call a miraculous
escape.
In fact, its what I do call a miraculous escape."
"Tell me about it." Luna responded. "If that frog hadn't been
on the
endangered species list . . . or if the orange popsicles hadn't been all
the way in the back of the ice cream shop. . . I shudder at the
thought."
Artemis nodded his agreement. "True. Now what are we going to
do
about these mibs?"
Luna raised a eyebrow. "Mibs?"
"Men In Black. Seems as good a name as any, based upon Serena's
description of them."
Luna sighed. "Artemis, have many times have you seen that
movie?"
"It's not my fault that it's so funny. 'Why else would we hold
it in
Queens?'" he pantomined.
"Never mind that right now. We need a strategy."
"True. Obviously what we're doing now isn't working. The mibs
have
sucessfully mindwiped, or perhaps captured and replaced with some kind
of duplicate, four Sailor Scouts. Either one is as impressive as hell,
and Serena can't deal with something or someone capable of such things.
Not at her present power level."
"Then we raise her power level." Luna answered.
Artemis goggled. "Are you out of your mind!" he yelled.
Realizing
that cats aren't supposed to talk, he lowered his voice. "Luna, what
you suggest is insane. Teaching Serena how to use, really use, her
powers is like giving a baby a submachine gun. On second thought, no.
That dramatically underestimates the threat involved in lifting the
mindblocks on Serena's powers. I'm not just worried about her ability
to handle them, I'm worried about her ability to handle their use. Look
at the Lunar Disguise Pen. She uses a magical item that was the pride
of Moon Kingdom magic to get into movies! And she uses the Crescent
Moon Wand as a nutcracker! Can you imagine what she'll do when she has
full access to her abilites! She'll mind control her teachers into
giving her As on tests, jump back in time to catch buses, and use
cryokinesis to keep her ice cream from melting! It's stupid, it's
crazy, it's insane!"
"The barriers have partly broken down already if the Moon
Princess'
mind is manifesting itself." replied the other Cat. "Besides, got any
better ideas? For that matter, any other ideas?"
"Nope. Let's do it."
"LUNA MIND MELD!"
The beam of light shone from Luna's forehead into Serena's,
probing
her
thoughts. Luna brushed past most things until she found the complex
structure of blocks and barriers she had placed within Serena's
subconscious. To her surprise she found that one such block, the one
relating to generation of illusions, was already partially down. Not
all the way, but enough so that Serena could generate simple images that
would fool someone doing a cursory inspection. Since she would be
removing that block anyway, she left it as it was. However, she began
to dismantle other blocks, one at a time. Some, such as the one
relating to controlling the wills of others, she left completely in
place. None were dismantled fully, as such an action would be suicidal
at Serena's current stage of development. But most of them she broke
down part of the way, just enough so that Serena could learn their use
without killing herself or others.
After she withdrew, Serena was understandably angry. "Luna, how
could
you? Tampering around in my mind like you just did! What did you do in
there?" As she shouted, things began to happen. Wind currents picked
up, throwing papers around the room. The edge of comforter began to
smolder, while a bottle of soda froze ice cold. The window shattered,
and Serena's flower suddenly sprouted, then wilted. The radio began to
play, but at a volume far higher than the one on the volume control.
/\SERENA!\/ Artemis . . . shouted? It wasn't vocal, that much
was for
certain. /\Your emotions manifest themselves as energy now! Get
control of your emotions before you bring the house down! Literally!\/
"What's going on?" Serena stammered. "What did you do to me?"
/\When you were a little baby,\/ Luna explained, /\, your
psychic
abilities were placed underneath hypnotic blocks. We did it to protect
you from your own powers. Otherwise the first time you ever got excited
or frustrated or angry or anything like that you'd have had killed
yourself, and likely everyone around you.\/
/\Correct.\/ the Moon Princess added. /\I broke down one block
to
allow you to create an illusion to escape your pursuer, and your own
anger broke the block on your power to remember your past
reincarnations. That's where I came in.\/
"Why didn't you ever tell me about this?" Serena asked. "Come
to
think
of it, how come you never spoke right into my mind before?"
/\Because you weren't psychically sensitive before. Speaking
into the
mind of someone who isn't is a lot harder than that of someone who is.
As for why we never told you about it, why should we? All it would have
had done was to depress you and possibly degraded your fighting
performance. Therefore, we did not tell you.\/
Looking at the Cat, Serena was struck by a sudden chill. Her
supposed
friend had manipulated her like she was a toy. Was Luna even her friend
at all?
"I don't believe it." Robert groaned. "Who would have thought
that
that stupid frog would turn out to be on the endangered species list?"
"I know." Guise commented. "Man, if the orange popsicles
hadn't been
so far in back of the ice cream shop, we'd have had the girl."
"By the way, how's Scuttler doing?" she added.
"OK." Valerie answered. "A week in the regen tank and he'll be
as
good as new. He's even forgiven us for having to blow his leg off."
Of course, Scuttler couldn't do any different. Like all Devils,
the
portions of his psyche that would have had enabled him to question Watch
philosophy had been blocked off.
Valerie sighed. "I have to agree with you guys though. This
was a
fiasco. I mean, we're not supposed to make mistakes like the ones we
made today!"
Guise shrugged. "Hey, no training is perfect. Besides, even
the
lowest probabilities happen sometimes. It doesn't matter that much in
any case. We'll get her next time."
"Not necessarily." Noskos supplied. "Don't forget, every time
you
beat somebody you teach them something, if they're willing to learn.
Sailor Moon seems to be willing to learn. The instant she realized her
magics were useless against us, she made tracks. If she hadn't been
lucky as hell it wouldn't have done any good, but she was that lucky.
Next time she may have some new tricks up her sleeve. She'll be
prepared for someone catching her tiara, in any case."
"True enough." Guise admitted. "But she hasn't seen anywhere
near the
number of tricks we've got at out disposal. Granted, her tiara could be
a real threat if she were to use it efficiently, but she doesn't. We
just need a plan to smoke her out."
"And I've got one." Noskos put in. "Actually, the comps back
at The
Ranch came up with the basics, but I've put the finishing touches on
it."
"According to the mindscans of the other Scouts, Sailor Moon is
the
Moon Princess. So . . . " he handed them a flyer that had a picture of
a girl in a long gown on it, and underneath the picture were the words:
'Little Moon Princess Beauty Class. Learn calm, grace and poise to make
you a princess outside as well as inside.'
"Your not serious." Monacco said. "She'll never fall for
something
this blatantly obvious."
"Yes she will. She's an amateur, remember? She actually cares
about
junk like titles and appearances. This will work. And if it doesn't,
Tokyo will have a lot of girls with calm, grace and poise in it while we
wait for the comps to finish reviewing the mindscans so we can find out
Sailor Moon's identity directly."
The other's nodded. Even with Watch technology, going over the
wealth
of useless information in a complete mind download to find the one piece
of information you wanted was hard work, and took lots of time. Better
to find what you needed by more conventional means when you could.
Meanwhile, Serena was in a very good mood. Her new abilities
were
useful in a lot of ways. Her ice cream didn't melt anymore, telekinesis
made her dart throwing far more accurate, and she could tell when
someone wasn't in a good mood simply by assensing their auras.
Right now she was giving the Moon Princess a lesson in the
modern
world
through the method of showing her newspaper articles and explaining what
they meant.
/\So the whole thing is over the markings on the American
President's
privates?\/ the Moon Princess asked.
/\No. That's simply the evidence that is being put forth to
prove
that
he did the crime.\/
/\So what? He was a governor, doesn't he have the right to any
woman
he wants?\/
The Silver Millenium had been very enamoured of the idea of Rank
Having
It's Privliges. /\No, it doesn't. You see--\/
/\WAIT! Look at that?\/
'That' was an advertisement for a 'Little Moon Princess Beauty
Class'. /\This is a trap.\/ Serena stated positively.
/\Don't be ridiculous.\/ the Moon Princess sneered. /\How could
they
know about us? Let's go to it. I need to brush up on what is
considered proper etiquette in this time. Besides, you need to be less
clumsy and this will help you learn.\/ The last was an unanswerable
argument, so Serena agreed.
After the class was over, Serena was stopped as she left.
"Not you, Sailor Moon." the teacher said. "You're coming with
me.
Don't bother to deny it, we did a genetic comparision to some skin cells
you left behind at your last fight."
"No way I'm going with you!" Serena shouted. "MOON PRISM POWER!"
Drawing upon her enhanced strength, she threw the girl across the room.
The beauty teacher landed neatly on her feet, and smiled. "Thank you
very much for confirming your identity." she said, grinning. She took a
pair of frighteningly familiar sunglasses from her pocket, and put them
on. Her outlines fuzzed for a second, and now she was dressed in a
black suit.
Serena ran.
Serena finally stopped to catch her breath in an alley. Not a
blind
one, she had learned her lesson about those.
Suddenly, a black figure appeared at the end she had come in,
and
another appeared at the other. She was trapped, an impression that was
heightened when a hand broke through the wall and grabbed her leg.
Well, two could play at that game. And if the guy was close
enough
grab her . . .
"MOON TIARA MAGIC!" The two at the alley ends ducked to the
sides,
but
she didn't care about them. Instead she threw her tiara at the alley
wall the hand had come from.
The disc blew a large hole in the wall, and Serena tried to rush
through it. But despite the slash in his side, the figure did not
loosen his grip on her leg.
"MOON HEALING ACTIVATION!" The shower of glittery dust fell on
the
black-glad figure, transforming him-no, her, back to normal form. In
fact, it was her beauty teacher. The grip still did not loosen, but
that didn't matter. Not even the strongest human being had strength to
match that of a transformed Sailor Scout. Serena pulled free easily,
grabbing the glasses as she left.
"She's learning." Mary thought as she got up. The other two
ignored
her plight in favor of chasing Sailor Moon. Not unexpected, she would
have had done the same had it been one of them."
Even after Serena had ditched the glasses in a sewer, the whole
incident bothered her.
/\I don't get it.\/ she said to the Moon Princess. /\Why didn't
she
let go when I detransformed her?\/
/\You've been fighting the Negaverse too long.\/ her psychic
companion
answered. /\You think in terms of youma. These 'mibs', as Artemis
calls them, aren't like that. Like you, they're probably transformed
because they want to be.\/
/\In any case, I've got a different question. How did she know
your
location in the alley that precisely that she could reach blindly
through a wall and grab you on the first try?\/
/\How should I know?\/ Serena answered sharply. /\Wait, Luna
said
those glasses could detect magical energy. Maybe they can detect me
when I'm transformed! In which case . . .\/
Swiftly Serena detransformed and hid inside a clothing store.
Sure
enough the two rushed right past the window.
Now that she had a chance to stay still for a moment, Serena
sent
herself into the meditative state necessary to use her new psychic
abilities. Activating her remote viewing powers, she began to spy on
her two foes.
The two of them had stopped, and were heading back the way they
had
come. Obviously they knew they had lost he, but how had they figured it
out that quickly. More seriously, they were stopping right outside the
clothing store! Obviously they had some backup way of tracking her.
Since this trick wasn't helping, Serena dropped her extrasensory
spying
and switched to telekinesis. Detaching an electrical wire, she dropped
it towards them.
The two didn't even glance at it. Serena realized belatedly
that the
wire wasn't live.
But she had a backup trick. Manipulating it like a rope, she
tied up
one of them with the wire. Just as the other put a hand on her shoulder
and broke her concentration. She was lifted up one-handedly as the mib
used the other hand to apply a small patch to her cheek. To her horror,
Serena found that her powers were useless. She tried to whip out her
wand, but the mib grabbed it from her before she could transform.
"Nice try, girlie." the mib sneered. "In fact, a very nice try.
You've leaarned the basics of how to use your powers efficiently. But
you're the high school band, and we're the New York Philharmonic."
Seeing that Serena had no idea what that was, he clarified. "What I
mean is, you're a day player and we're All Stars." At Serena's
continuing uncomprehension, he sighed. "Never mind, you're just plain
hopelessly outclassed . . . " he trailed off for no apparent reason.
Just then Serena realized that a cloud had blocked out the sun. No, it
wasn't a cloud.
The mib was so shocked that he dropped her. Serena looked
outside.
And then she looked up. And up. And up.
It was a youma, but one as big as a skyscraper. Completely black except
for its glowing red eyes, it fairly radiated evil. Queen Beryl rode on
top of its head, and Darien and Malachite stood on its left and right
shoulders, respectively.
/\The Invincible Shadow.\/ said the Moon Princess. /\At least
now we
know what Queen Beryl has been up to.\/
Chapter 6
"My God." the mib whispered. "What is that?"
Serena found his words both comforting and scary. Comforting,
because
it meant that these guys weren't completely invulnerable. Scary,
because they were pretty close to being invulnerable and if this scared
*them* . . .
Suddenly Serena found herself hanging upside down. "Do you know
what
that thing is?" the mib demanded. "Tell me, now!"
"It's called the Invincible Shadow." Serena answered, relaying
the
information given to her by the Moon Princess. "It's formed by the
Seven Shadows using the power of the Negaforce to combine into a single
entity. It can draw upon the entire Negaverse for energy, and is
invulnerable."
The mib smiled in a way that made Serena blanch. "Nothing is
invulnerable."
Just then large black van with mirrored windows pulled up. The
back
doors opened, revealing one mib and two ordinary people, one of them
Serena's former beauty teacher. "Get in." one of them said. The mib
obeyed, taking Serena in with him.
"We need to lead it away from the city." said the mib who was
obviously
in charge. "Computer, do a strafing run with taunt. See if we can get
it to follow us."
Beams of yellow light shot from the front of the van, hitting
the
monster's knee. "YO, FATSO! BET YOU CAN'T CATCH ME!" came an amplified
voice.
The Invincible Shadow ignored both completely.
"Movement patterns indicate subject is searching for as yet
unknown
object." came a oddly metallic voice, the same voice that a moment
before had taunted the creature.
"It wants this." Serena interjected, holding up the Silver
Empyrean
Crystal.
"What is that thing?" said the leader.
"The Silver Empyrean Crystal." said the woman Serena hadn't met
before. "It's one of the most powerful magical foci known, created by
the Moon Kingdom just before the whole Silver Millenium collapsed from
whatever destroyed it."
"That was the Negaverse." Serena interrupted.
The four looked at each other. "Hoo-boy." said the one who had
captured Serena. "We sure underestimated the Negaverse, didn't we?"
"Wait!" Serena said. "How come you know about the Moon Kingdom
but
not
that the Negaverse destroyed it?" They ignored her completely.
"In any case, we can use the wand to get it to follow us." said
Fourth
Mib. "Computer, open back of van."
The van opened, and Serena was shocked to see that they were
flying
over the city. She hadn't even known they had left the ground. For
some reason there was no wind even though the back was open. That was
only slightly less scary than the Invincible Shadow was.
Grabbing the Wand from Serena, the leader held it up. Speaking
into a
microphone, he shouted. "Hey, Shadow. Come and get it!"
Sure enough, the Shadow came after them.
"OK." said Boss, as Serena thought of him. "Plans Alpha-8 and
Beta-12. If those two both don't work, we'll go with Alpha-19, then
Delta-7. And if those don't work . . . Gamma-86." There were sharp
inhalations at the last. Boss sighed. "Yes, I know it's drastic, but
we can't take any chances with this . . . thing. If it was able to
stomp the Moon Kingdom, imagine what it'll do to us once it gets going!"
Plan Alpha-8 turned out to be highly advanced version of digging a hole
and waiting for the enemy to fall into it. First the flying van did . .
. something, and a gigantic circle of ground large enough to hold four
city blocks and so deep Serena couldn't see the bottom simply . . .
vanished. No flash of light, no explosion, it simply vanished. Almost
instantly afterwards there was a shimmering, and the ground seemed to be
exactly as before. But when the Shadow tried to walk on it, it fell
through the solid seeming earth. To leap up again instantly, both it
and it's passengers completely unharmed.
Beta-12 was slightly different. This time instead of a hole, a gigantic
area was made into quicksand with some kind of strange device. Again
the area was made to seem normal, and again their pursuers went through
the traps completely unharmed. The mibs started to murmur stuff about
expense accounts.
Plan Alpha-19 did absolutely nothing that Serena could see, but the mibs
seemed very disappointed that nothing happened.
Delta-7 was a fuzzy black substance that the van scattered in
the
Shadows path. In fact, it scattered far more of the stuff than the van
could possibly contain. Again, nothing happened.
"Gods." whispered Former Beauty Teacher. "The Watch used a
third as
much to stop the Gogmagog itself. This thing didn't even slow down."
/\So, they call themselves the Watch.\/ said the Moon Princess
in
Serena's mind. /\Potentially useful information, assuming we get out of
this alive. The same for the "Gogmagog" thing. Maybe it will become
our ally, if we can find it.\/
/\You know, in a way it's nice to know these people are
fallible.\/
Serena commented. /\Of course, knowing we'll get out of this alive
would be even nicer.\/
By this time they were out over the ocean. The water didn't
seem to
be
fazing the Shadow at all. "Computer." said Boss, in a formal tone of
voice, "are there any witnesses within visual distance of the effects of
plan Gamma-86."
"No." the mechanical voice replied. "All satellites necessary
are in
place."
"Everyone, turn away from the windows." Boss warned. After
everyone,
including Serena, had done so, he said "Begin.".
Wihtout transition, light shot into existence from the windows.
Serena
didn't dare turn around to see what was happening. Looking at that
light would burn away her retinas, blinding her for life. But imagine
what was happening to the Invincible Shadow and its passengers. On
second thought, she didn't want to imagine it.
The light seemed to go on forever, though it was probably only
going
for few seconds. After it was over, Serena looked out the windshield.
All she could see was steam. Obviously whatever had just
happened had
evaporated a truly gigantic amount of ocean water. The mibs ignored the
sight, instead looking at readouts projected onto the windshield through
some unknown means.
"My God." whispered Former Beauty Teacher. "It's still alive.
Hurt,
but not dead. Not only that, but sensors show that was able to protect
two of it's three passengers. How much do you want to be that if it
hadn't had passengers to protect it wouldn't even be scratched."
Serena was heartbroken. What if the one that hadn't been
protected
was
Darien?
"Gamma-86 was our best shot, and we won't be able to use it again for
two weeks. Looks like checkmate for us. In fact, it looks like
checkmate for everybody." said the other female.
Checkmate . . . the word nagged in Serena's mind. A word from
the
game
of chess. What else had she heard about ends of games recently? Of
course, what Artemis had said about . . . the wands!
And Serena had her answer.
"LINKAGE PERCEPTION!" she roared. She saw the bonds that bound
the
eight elements of the Invincible Shadow, the Negaforce and the seven
former Rainbow Crystal Carriers, to one another. Swiftly she found the
point where all the linkages met.
"MOON HEALING ACTIVATION!" came next. But she didn't just
scatter it
everywhere like usual. Instead she aimed it at the vital point where
all the bonds joined. Once that knot was gone, nothing held the Shadow
together. It fell to pieces. The mibs quickly picked up the seven
Carriers. But the two survivors of the Negaverse had disappeared, and
so had Serena.
Michael Beck <dickbeck@ix.netcom.com>
The Watch
Chapter 7
Serena sat straight up, and immediately regretted doing so.
/\Awake, I see.\/ said the Moon Princess.
/\Where are we?\/ Serena asked.
/\Don't know.\/ responded the Moon Princess. /\Remember, the
only way
I have of gaining information is through your senses. Since you were
unconscious and weren't sensing anything, neither was I.\/
/\Awake, I see.\/ came a voice.
Serena spun towards the sound, and immediately regretted it as
the
whole room continued to spin even after she stopped.
While looking for the Rainbow Crystals, Serena had encountered a
gigantic cat named Hercules who never stopped eating. This cat was so
big he made Hercules look thin as a rail. However, that wasn't what
caught Serena's attention. What struck her was that this cat had a
crescent moon symbol, just like Luna and Artemis did!
The hastily formed Negaverse Combat Group was having its first
meeting. Serena Tsukino's revelation about the true nature of the Moon
Kingdom's fall had forced a drastic upward revision of the Negaforce's
it's threat rating.
Threat ratings were odd things, reflecting power, intent,
competence
and vulnerabilities in varying measure. For example, even the weakest
of Sayuns could destroy the world literally one-handedly, but they had
relatively low threat ratings since the supposedly invincible warriors
could be laid low in seconds with Watch biochemical weaponry. On the
other hand the rather pathetic race of supernatural beings called the
%tzen were considered to be a very real threat because of their
unrelenting hostility towards mankind.
The Negaforce was now known to be powerful almost beyond belief,
and
the Watch already knew how evil it was. This added up to a very big
problem.
"So, what's the strategy?" Guise asked Noskos. Since they had
been
involved, if only peripherally, in stopping the Invincible Shadow, the
group that had been sent after Sailor Moon had been assigned to help
stop the Negaverse. Noskos was in charge.
Noskos shrugged. "Two portions. One, we keep constant watch
for any
Negaverse energies. Anything that even hints of the Negaverse gets a
full-level response. Two, we find Sailor Moon. She has information on
the Negaverse, and we'll need it. Furthermore, she seems to have had
success in this area in the past."
The others at the table nodded. Watch information on the
Negaverse
was
virtually none-existent. Other than a single robot probe sent in
decades ago, the Watch had never been involved with the Negaverse. The
secret group had enough problems without literally adding a whole new
dimension of difficulties. Right now the Watch relatively secure, but
that could change at any time. In fact, it just had changed.
"Anyone else think they should be in charge?" asked Prince
Darien as
the body of his latest challenger dropped to the floor.
The other Generals shook their heads. After eleven thousand
years of
rule, Queen Beryl was dead, slain by creatures of the same world from
which this newcomer came. That in itself would have had been a major
argument for his being the strongest. Of course the corpses of those
who had contested Prince-now King-Darien's rulership were another major
boost for his legitimacy.
"So, what exactly is this place?" Serena asked Zeus, as the
enormously
fat Cat had introduced himself.
"The Repository." answered the Cat. "Those of the Cats that
survived
the fall of the Silver Millenium got together to try and preserve as
much as the Moon Kingdom's heritage as possible. We spent millennia
gathering up every record and artifact we could find and transporting
them here, to the Repository."
"Is this where to transformation wands were kept?" Serena asked.
"Yes. Along with Sailor Mercury's computer, the Crescent Moon
Wand,
your communicators, and a whole lot of other stuff that we were planning
to give you when you needed it. There's also a lot of other stuff that
would have had been useless to you, either because it didn't have combat
use or because it would have had required training that we simply didn't
have time to give you. In fact, some of them have masses measured in
tons, which would have obvious detrimental effects on your ability to
use them in combat."
"Like what?" Serena wanted to know.
"Lots of things. There's a weather control device, which can
only
turn
light rain to cloudy skies and back. We've got a device that transforms
carbon dioxide to oxygen and carbon, originally used to help terraform
Venus."
"Wait a minute." Serena interrupted. "I thought that all the
worlds
were inhabitable at the time of the Silver Millenium."
"They were, but not originally. Earth is where the human race
first
evolved. In the beginning we went along much to same technical lines
your civilization did, first making stone tools and living in caves,
then progressing towards cities, smelting and agriculture."
"About then our two civilizations parted ways. We found that
there
existed . . . energies, lets call them. Energies that were virtually
unlimited in their capability, energies that could be manipulated by
human thought. From there we developed devices to detect those
energies, and later to store them and manipulate them."
"However, to build those devices required crystals. Lots and
lots of
crystals. The purer the better. That's why diamonds and rubies and
whatnot are so rare in this time, the Silver Millenium used them all
up."
"So the war that broke out between the Negaverse and the Moon
Kingdom
was over resources." Serena said. "I had been wondering about that."
In the back of her mind, Serena sensed something odd coming from
her
psychic companion. She couldn't really define it. Deception, caution,
a combination of the two, perhaps something else altogether? She was
certain of one thing though. Though what Zeus had told her was true, it
wasn't the whole story. However, the full story wasn't all that
important right now. What was important was the Negaverse, and she said
so.
Zeus nodded. "That brings us to this, the Star-Scryer."
The Star-Scryer looked like a perfectly spherical bowl the size
of an
Olympic Swimming pool. The inside of the bowl was covered with crystals
of apparently random color, shape and size, to produce a beautiful
effect. Above the bowl hovered a gigantic three-dimensional image of
the planet Earth, without clouds obscuring it. The globe was covered
with lines of light that zigged and zagged apparently at random. Where
the lines met one another there was another, brighter spot of light.
In some places, like Japan or the northeast part of the United States,
the lines were so dense that you couldn't even see the earth. In others
there were vast expanses without any lines at all.
"This magical device shows every energy disturbance on the
planet in
perfect detail." explained Zeus. "Observe." he sent a magical command
towards the bowl, one that Serena's new senses allowed her to detect and
analyze. Within her she felt the fascination of the Moon Princess at
the Star-Scryer. A image appeared in her mind, one of a young Moon
Princess looking at this same device in awe and wishing that she too
would be allowed to help operate it someday. Now the Moon Princess was
having her chance.
The image zoomed in on a portion of the south of Africa. As they got
closer in, more and more details of the lines could be distinguished.
Serena now saw that the lines were not homogenous, but that they had
subtle colorings and disturbances. A whole new level of complexity was
revealed. It was beautiful.
Then an alarm "sounded". The alert was purely psychic, but it got
attention. At the same time the Star Scryer's focus suddenly changed to
the American Midwest, and focused in on a small area with almost none of
the lines.
"The Negaverse." said the Cat in response to Serena's unspoken question.
"It's time for Sailor Moon!" Serena said. Then she did a reality
check. "On second thought, maybe not."
"Why not?" said the Cat, aghast.
"Well for one thing, I'm not going to able to get from here to the
American Midwest in time to stop them. Come to think of it, where is
here, anyway? And how did I get here in the first place."
"You're on Pluto, in a underground facility built by the Moon Kingdom."
the Cat answered. "And you'll get to the US the same way we got you out
of that van. Teleportation."
Serena opened up her mouth to ask who "we" was, but it was too late.
There was a sparkle of light, and suddenly Serena was in a alleyway,
with a youma twenty yards away. It seemed just as surprised to see
Serena as she was to see it, but the youma didn't hesitate. It came
straight for her, clawing and screaming.
Serena reacted without even knowing what she was doing. Suddenly the
magic flowed through her, and she-or the Moon Princess, she just
couldn't tell, it all happened so fast-channeled that power into an
attack. A stream of ribbons shot from her fingers and wrapped around
the youma. There was a sickening crunch, and suddenly the youma was on
the ground, bloodied and dead. Even as she watched the body
disintegrated into dust.
She looked at her fingers as if she had never seen them before. In a
way, she never had.
"What am I?" she whispered.
Chapter 8
�Did I do that?� Serena whispered as she stared at the pile of dust
before her that a moment earlier had been a youma out for her blood.
/\Yes, you did.\/ the Moon Princess replied in her head. /\You were in
danger, and your powers reacted to protect you. Actually it�s a lot
more complex than that, but you get the drift.\/
�B .b . . I�m an ordinary girl.� Serena said, still in a state of
shock.
/\YOU ARE NOT ORDINARY!!\/ the Moon Princess �screamed�. /\You are my
reincarnation, and heir to my powers and my knowledge. You have access
to a whole spectrum of abilities that ordinary humans can barely even
*dream* about. If that doesn�t qualify you as not being ordinary, then
I don�t know what does.\/
Serena blinked at the sudden vehemence of her internal companion.
Didn�t she understand how Serena felt? Didn�t she understand that
nothing in Serena�s life had prepared her for this? That ribbons
*weren�t supposed* to come out of your fingers and kill your foes.
On the other hand, Serena listened to talking cats and took advice from
a voice in her head that no one else could hear. She was probably
asking for trouble regardless.
A sixth sense warned her just as blob of green goo shot towards her. A
shield shot up, and deflected it. An exercise of will, and the youma
went the way of the last one. All of which reminded Serena of the fact
that Zeus had teleported her into what was apparently a war zone.
Serena did what she always did in such a situation.
�MOON PRISM POWER!�
Serena had seen the other Scouts transform, so intellectually she knew
that the change really took place too quickly to ever really see.
Blink, and you�d miss it. Every time she changed her watch ran about
thirty seconds faster, though, so appearances were deceiving. It was a
strange experience, like she was floating in midair. And then the power
came around her, and *into* her in a feeling of cloth penetrating and
creeping under her skin and she thought it would go on forever . . .
And then, as usual, it was over and she was Sailor Moon.
�Hold it right there!� she shouted as she rounded a corner, seeing a
youm advancing on a rather pudgy tennage boy. �People shouldn�t have to
live in fear, especially not of creatures like you! I�m Sailor Moon,
and I fight for love and justice, and in the name of the moon I WILL
PUNISH YOU.�
*Who is this scantily dressed idiot, and why is she yelling in
Japanese?* wondered Boris Freeman.
�MOON TIARA ACTION!�
It should have been the usual sequence-take tiara from head, power it
up until it was glowing, then throw with literally supernatural accuracy
and power. This time, however, it was different. The tiara glowed, but
it was a faint warmth rather than a miniature sun. The trajectory was
wobbly, and when it hit the youma grunted and staggered, not screamed
and died.
It moved to quickly for her to react, something else no youma had ever
done before. In a second she was lying on the ground with a slash in
her side, and the youma was moving in for the kill.
/\I�ve got a problem.\/ said the Moon Princess.
/\What was your first clue?\/ Serena retorted.
/\The tiara. Listen, I need to know something. The wands and the
tiara both work by taking the magical energy in the area and using is to
produce the transformations. But this town doesn�t have enough ambient
magic to fully power them up.\/ Serena remembered the globe, and how
this place had been almost devoid of the lines. \/The youma isn�t
faster than usual, because of the weak transformation I�m slower than
usual. Same for the tiara.\/
/\In other words, I�m helpless here.\/
/\Yes.\/
Fredrick Ryu, the Watcher in command of the assault force, hated
inertia drives.
Until a few years ago, quick-response teams like his had flown in
transports that used plasma boosters to zip quickly from bases to the
site of the alien invasion/supernatural disturbance/ridiculously
well-armed cult. The designers, figuring that time was of the essence
and remembering that Watchers were supposed to ignore physical
discomfort in pursuit of their duties, hadn�t bothered to make the
passengers comfortable. The transports had been hells of noise and
stink and heat and acceleration.
Then researchers had cracked the inertia drive, and suddenly the
transports were different. The drives were silent, so no noise, no fuel
to stink up the compartments, and no waste energy meant no heat. The
only problem was that inertia drives didn�t produce gravitational
acceleration, which meant that you didn�t know you were moving. Fred
had only the testimony of the pilots that they weren�t still in the
hangar at A51, and he found that somewhat disturbing.
�Sixteen minutes to landing.� said the computerized voice in the
Watcher�s ear. As if he couldn�t tell from the numbers projected on the
surface of his Shades. The others in the transport shifted and
twitched, waiting for action. They�d been kept on alert ever since the
Negaforce had reared its ugly head, and it had almost been a relief when
the call to move out had come. All the same, some of them might die and
that put a damper on their enthusiasm.
The youma advanced, knowing the famous Sailor Moon was at its mercy.
No tiara to throw, no Sailor Scouts to save her.
/\This was all a trap.\/ Serena said mentally. /\A trap for me.\/
/\Looks like it.\/ the Moon Princess replied. /\I suppose I should be
flattered.\/
Something snapped. /\Well, the Negaforce will have to excuse me if I
don�t roll over and die like a good victim should. Is there any other
way to power the tiara?\/ The internal conversations took place far
faster than conventional speech, the youma had barely taken two steps in
this time.
/\I could use my own internal energy.\/
/\Huh?\/
/\I have internal energy reserves. It�s the same sort of energy that
the Negaforce tries to drain from people, only I have far more of it
than almost anyone. I can use it to power the tiara, and make it work
as normal.\/
/\What do you mean, *you* have the energy reserves. I have them.\/
/\That�s what I said, isn�t it?\/
With a shock, Serena realized that the Moon Princess saw their
�relationship� very differently than she did. Serena viewed the Moon
Princess as the consciousness of the Moon Princess of the Moon Kingdom
of ten thousand years ago, reincarnated Serena�s body. God only knew
what the Moon Princess� view on the matter was. There were more
important things to worry about right now.
/\Well, I imagine myself as a deep hole, with a treasure at the
bottom. Now, imagine myself jumping into the hole. But I don�t fall, I
don�t want to fall. I�m simply at the bottom, with the treasure. Now
I�m at the top, still with the treasure.\/
Amazingly enough, it worked. Serena had *power* now. She channeled
the power to her tiara without knowing how, and it glowed brighter than
ever before. Then she sent it forth.
�Status change.� said the computer. Fred watched the updates on his
shades. A new power source, apparently mobile, was destroying the
youma. That would make the Watcher�s job easier. The question was,
what would the other major power source think of it?
Serena didn�t know whether she was having the best or the worst time of
her life. Her tiara shot through the town, slicing through walls to
kill the youma hiding behind them, changing direction in midair to find
them wherever they fled. She�d used a similar tactic during the final
battle, if you could call it that, with Nephlite to keep her tiara from
hitting Molly. Now she was finding an offensive use for it. Pretty
soon the town was clear.
�Impressive.� came a voice. Serena spun around to see a smallish woman
with badly combed red hair approach her. What caught Serena�s eye was
the Negaverse General�s uniform however. To make matters worse, she
fairly radiated magical and psychic power.
/\Be careful.\/ the Moon Princess whispered. /\Onyxite isn�t the kind
of person you turn your back on.\/ Images came, of Onyxite in the days
of the Silver Millenium. Onyxite in something like an evening gown,
Onyxite in what looked like a sailboat ride at night except the Earth
was in the sky, Onyxite raising up a red-slicked knife with a serrated
edge. . .
�Hello Onyxite.� Serena said, trying to rattle the General. It worked,
the redhead stared for a moment. �How did you?� she whispered. �No
matter. You�ll be dead soon enough regardless.� Smoke billowed from
her hands, smoke that moved far faster than smoke should. Serena set up
a screen of ribbons, and the battle was on.
The Watchers, stared, enrapt, at the play of numbers and symbols
displayed on their Shades. They told the tale of a magical battle of if
not epic proportions than at least notable ones. It was obvious who was
going to win, however.
Meanwhile, Serena was coming to the same conclusion. Onyxite was
weaker than she was, though Serena couldn�t tell how much. But every
ribbon she launched (something about inner symbolism reflecting itself
if magical manifestations according to the princess, Serena didn�t want
to know what kind of mind lent itself to ribbons, or smoke for that
matter) was stopped sooner by the wisps of smoke. Every attack she
blocked came closer to her before being snuffed out. And if even a
single wisp came through, Serena *knew* she was dead. Onyxite was
playing for keeps, and so was she.
The problem was that Onyxite was *good*. She knew tricks with spells
Serena couldn�t imagine, finding the gaps in Serena�s barriers and
misdirecting Serena�s atttacks so they punched right through the mists
to strike only air. Serena�s raw power simply wasn�t a match for God
only knew how many years, maybe even decades or centuries, of experience
of on Onyxite�s part. The Moon Princess whispered tactics in Serena�s
ear, giving her the knowledge without which she�d have been dead by now.
To make matters worse, she was getting exhausted. She was
cannibalizing her own internal energy to fight this battle. So was
Onyxite, but she hadn�t just cleared a town of ravaging monsters.
Another puff came, and Serena *knew* she wasn�t going to stop this
one. It was too large, too powerful, too evasive. Onyxite wasn�t using
the same trick twice. In desperation, Serena gather all her remaining
energy to produce a shield around herself. No fancy tricks, no
intercepting the attacks, just a shield.
The power *ground* into her, throwing her to the earth bruised and
bloody. But not dead, which was what the unabated attack would have
done.
/\Let me take control of the battle.\/ the Moon Princess said.
/\I thought you already *were* in contro*l.\/ Serena retorted. /\I�ve
been following you-my directions, haven�t I?\/
/\No, I mean direct control. Not simply telling me what to do, but
taking direct control of my power usage. Believe me, with my training
this General will be dead meat.\/ The confidence with which her
companion �spoke� inclined Serena to believe she could actually do it.
Serena released control, feeling the surge of pleasure from the Moon
Princess as she exercised control over her own movements, her own
*powers*, once more.
�Looks like she�s making a comeback.� said one of the mibs. The others
nodded.
�Six minutes till landing.� said the computerized voice.
Onyxite couldn�t believe what was happening. She had *won*, beaten
Sailor Moon in a one-on-one fight. Now, suddenly, everything had
changed. Not just the fight, but her opponent. Suddenly the Sailor
Scout held herself differently, walked differently, and most important
of all fought differently.
The first clue she�s had was when her opponent had suddenly liquefied
the ground she�d been standing on, distracting Onyxite for the crucial
moment needed for her opponent to cast a healing spell on herself. Now
the battle was no longer the sort of straight magic-against-magic
Onyxite excelled at. It was an environmental one, changing the
surroundings to distract and harm your opponent. Things weren�t made
any easier by the fact that her opponent, at the same time she was
playing tricks with gravity and atmospheric composition, was sending
purely mental attacks as well. Not to mention biological ones, she felt
a stitch suddenly appear in her side. It was all she could do t keep
the cold hand away from her heart and lungs.
Sailor Moon was fighting like, like the Moon Princess!
The realization distracted Onyxite just long enough for a telekinetic
fist to land, knocking her back and disrupting her powers once more.
Her clothes shredded, leaving Onyxite naked. She tried to reach for her
magics, but it was to late. She was being blocked, and Sailor Moon �
no, the Moon Princess, the millennia dead Moon Princess, stood above
her, a conjured whip in her hand. Then the whip came down, and down
again, and again . . .
/\What are you doing?!\/ Serena �shouted�.
/\Killing a defeated enemy, what does it look like I�m doing?\/ the
Moon Princess replied.
Serena was stunned for a moment by the sheer *casualness* of her
companion�s reply /\But she isn�t a threat anymore. She�s learned her
lesson.\/
/\That�s the problem. A bit of advice. When you teach someone a
lesson, they *learn*. Onyxite isn�t a threat *now*, but if she escapes
and recovers she�ll be even more of a danger than she was while we
fought her.\/
/\You think *she�ll* be a danger anytime soon?!\/ Serena answered,
shocked. By their feet Onyxite lay, a quivering wreck, her skin
partially gone from her back. /\And even if she is, that�s no need to
torture her!\/
/\If I don�t make an example --\/ the Moon Princess started to explain,
but Serena was having none of it.
/\GIVE ME BACK MY BODY *NOW*!!\/
/\Don�t say I didn�t warn me.\/ was the reply, but the Moon Princess
complied.
Onyxite stared as her opponent�s whole aspect changed again, from regal
and haughty to tired and caring. What was going on her? Schizophrenia,
maybe. Then she realized. This Sailor Moon was the actual reincarnation
of the Moon Princess! This was bad, this was very very bad.
�Hstan liop requum nbuux ivalli.� she whispered, just before losing
consciousness.
�What did that mean?� Serena wondered, just as the mibs arrived.
�Don�t move.� one of them said, sharply. Serena had no intention of
doing so, partly because of sheer surprise and partly because of all the
weapons. At least, she assumed they were weapons from the way they were
pointed at her. They didn�t look that like any gun she�d ever seen.
She assayed a quick mental probe, only to be rebuffed sharply.
�Nice try.� the mib who seemed to be in charge said. �But nowhere near
nice enough.�
/\Wardings, powerful ones.\/ said the Moon Princess. /\Unbelievably
complex, too.\/ Serena didn�t need to be told *that*. She�d thought
that what Onyxite had thrown at her was complex, until she had seen the
Moon Princess� stuff. These wards left the Moon Princess in the dust.
Serena couldn�t solve them in *days*, and there was no way she could
call up enough power to smash through them.
But someone else could. The beam of magical energy smashed through the
shields, and Serena vanished.
�SHIT!� Fred spun around. �Tell me someone managed to track that!�
Even as he spoke, he knew no one had. The instruments had been
configured to analyze interdimensional warps, not magical spells.
�SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!�
Once more there had been no sense of movement, no transition. One
moment Serena was *there*, the next moment she was *elsewhere*.
Elsewhere in this case being the Repository.
On her last �visit�, Serena hadn�t really had a chance, or the presence
of mind, to look around. Now, as she looked at it, she was struck by
the sheer *oddness* of the construction. The walls were too tall for
the width of the floors, but still too short for the width of the
ceiling. Despite the fact that the walls and the ceilings were exactly
the same breadth. The material was odd too, it shined when you looked
at it from the corner of your eye but not when you looked at it
directly. There were other things, no right angles but no curves
either. Serena kept her eyes focused on Zeus as he waddled forward to
keep from looking at the room to much.
/\Why did you drop me into the town without warning?\/ Serena
demanded. /\I was nearly killed!/\
/\But you weren�t. Plus you killed a General, which is pretty
impressive.\/
/\I didn�t do it.\/ Serena answered. \/The Moon Princess did.\/
/\Isn�t that what I just said?\/ The mental voice sounded confused.
/\Wait, never mind, its probably a cultural difference. Sorry, but Luna
and Artemis have far more experience with modern society than I do.\/
/\In any case, I�ve managed to find the transformation wands.\/
/\Where?!\/ Serena and the Moon Princess demanded as one. It was a
shock to *feel* the two voices coming from her head at the exact same
time.
/\In the US. I�ll show you where in the Star-Scryer.\/
Serena paused, wondering if she should ask her next question. /\What
does �Hstan liop requum nbuux ivalli� mean?\/
The Cat jerked his head around. /\Where did you hear that!\/ he
demanded.
Serena wasn�t in the mood to hear demands. She let her power become
barely visible, a wind with no apparent source stirring her hair as
barely-glimpsed ribbons of light formed around her fingertips.
/\Something Onyxite said. Now, what does it mean?\/ she �said�
menacingly. One nice thing about telepathy, it was a lot easier to
produce a menacing thought than a menacing tone.
/\Well, the closest translation would be �you�re not like the others�.
However, we have to . . ./\ But Serena wasn�t listening.
Not like the other *whats*? Then she had it.
Zeus shot upwards, propelled on mental hands so he could like right
into Serena�s eyes. /\Not like the other Sailor Moons?\/ Serena asked.
If a ridiculously overweight feline could look ashamed, Zeus did.
/\Yes.\/ he answered, in the mental equivalent of a whisper. /\Not like
the other Sailor Moons.\/
/\Or Sailor Mercurys, or Sailor Marses, or Sailor Jupiters or Sailor
Venuses?\/ Serena demanded. In the back of her mind the Moon Princess
was screaming at her, but Serena paid her no mind. /\How many others?
Two, three, four, ten, a hundred, a THOUSAND? HOW MANY??\/
/\Two hundred three teams of Sailor Scouts.\/ replied Zeus, his head
hung down in shame. /\One hundred and ninety-four were successful in
stopping Negaverse incursions. The failures resulted in the Namib, the
Sahara, the Australian Outback, the Dakota Badlands, the Patagonian,
Death Valley, the Gobi, and the Sinai. Before you ask, two failures in
Northern Africa sort of merged./\
Serena didn�t recognize half the names on the list, but she got the
drift from the ones she did. /\The Negaverse did all those?\/ The
shock had cut through her anger, just a little bit.
/\Yes. But you�re different from all the other Sailor Scouts that have
come before. Only you have had such power, such magic. Only you have
been shown the Repository, and it was *you* who found the Empyrean
Silver Crystal./\ There was something new in his tone, a mixture of
hope and desperation. /\You can WIN!\/
/\So why didn�t you just TELL ME THIS! Why didn�t you let me know I
was about to eat from the Tree of Knowledge instead of letting me wake
up one morning to find I�d been force fed during the night!!!\/ Serena
demanded.
/\BECAUSE WE DIDN�T THINK YOU COULD HANDLE IT!! Because we though
you�d hide under your bed instead of doing battle and finally ending
this once and for all!\/ They stood there in frozen tableau for a
moment, a preadolescent girl in a sailor fuku and with an overweight cat
hanging in midair in front of her face, eyes locked.
/\Let�s just calm down.\/ the Moon Princess interjected. /\Zeus, let�s
make a deal. You tell me all the things that I should know, and I�ll
help you defeat this evil once and for all. Is that acceptable to me?\/
It took Serena a moment to navigate through the Moon Princess�s
viewpoint. /\Yes.\/ she grated.
/\Good. Now, what were you saying about the wands?\/ Serena
recognized the attempt to change the subject, but didn�t argue.
/\Forget the wands for a moment.\/ Serena put in. /\Part of this deal
was that you were going to tell me everything that I needed to know.
So, what do I need to know?\/ She paused. /\Wait, I�m not going to let
*you* decide what *I* need to know. I�m going to tell you what I *want*
to know, and you�ll answer my questions.\/
The Cat�s mental voice was full of fear, but with healthy doses of
satisfaction and hope mixed in. /\Oh, you are perfect.\/ he
�whispered�. Serena decided to ignore that comment.
/\First off, what is the Negaforce, anyway? I mean, I know that it
sends out youma to take people�s energy, but why?\/
/\Well, it�s kind of hard to explain . . . what do you know about
pollution?\/
/\Um, that factories make it when they produce stuff and that it
poisons the air and water and kills animals. What does this have to do
with anything?\/
/\A great deal. You see, I didn�t get to finish what I was telling you
before. The energies we found, the ones that you can think of as magic,
well to use them produced byproducts. Not physical byproducts, but
*psychic* ones. For lack of a better term, it produced negative
emotions, the distilled essences of hate and fear and pain and
jealousy. In any case, we had to do something with them. So we . . . I
suppose transported is the best word . . . the materials elsewhere. Not
just to another location, but to another *universe*.\/
/\Where they became the Negaforce.\/ Serena finished for him.
/\No worse, than that, far worse. They *corrupted* the Negaforce.\/
The Cat�s mental voice had become desperate, pleading for something
Serena didn�t know how to give /\The power that would become it had
always existed in that universe, but it had been mindless, unformed. We
gave it form, gave it substance, gave it evil. Now do you understand?\/
/\And?\/ the Moon Princess prompted.
/\Huh?\/ �said� the Cat.
/\I know you too well, Zeus. Remember, for me it hasn�t been anywhere
as long as it was for you. There�s something you�re holding back.\/
It took Serena a moment to realize Zeus had responded at all. She�d
become used to mental communication, and Zeus� response had been vocal,
too quiet and mumbled to understand, almost too quiet to hear.
/\Speak up!\/ the Moon Princess said sharply, a psychic overtone of
*command* running through the statement.
The Cat spoke again, its head hung down in shame. This time the
response was louder, but still to mumbled to be intelligible.
/\**I SAID SPEAK UP**!!\/ was the response.
�IT WAS MY IDEA.� the Cat roared in a tone of loss. �It was my idea to
use the Negaverse as a toxic waste dump for our own evil!!! I did
it!!! I destroyed the Moon Kingdom and ended the Silver Millenium!!
Now do you understand!?!�
Serena did understand. The Cat wanted *forgiveness*. Forgiveness for
its millennia old mistake, for the error in judgement that had destroyed
its civilization and everything the Cat had ever known. �I forgive
you.� she said softly, speaking aloud as well. The Cat turned to her, a
look of pure joy in his eyes.
/\Well, I don�t forgive you.\/ the Moon Princess snapped. /\You should
have taken the consequences into account when you chose that action.\/
The mental tone was stern and accusatory. The Cat looked like it was
about to break out in tears.
/\And where were you when all this was happening?\/ Serena retorted.
/\I thought you were in charge of the Silver Millenium.\/
/\I was Princess, not Queen. Besides, it wasn�t my job, it was the job
of Advisors like Zeus, and Luna and Artemis for that matter. They
should have done it.\/
Serena growled at her companion mentally, but realized that this was
neither the time nor the place for a confrontation. She decided to
change the topic, to go further with this could only result in tragedy.
/\You said you found the wands?\/ she inquired.
/\Yes.\/ The Cat seemed relieved to change the subject, and Serena
couldn�t blame him.
\/I was able to use the Star-Scryer to locate the wands. It was pretty
hard, I almost had to comb the whole planet meter by meter to find
them. Here, let me show you.\/
The Star-Scryer was just as impressive now as it had been before, with
the image of earth floating with the strange lines all over it.
Serena�s curiosity got the better of her.
/\What are the lines, anyway?\/ she asked.
/\Ley lines.\/ the Princess replied before the Cat could answer.
/\They show lines of energy, created both by the earth itself and by the
people who live upon it.\/ A pause. /\Am I correct in assuming that
the Negaforce is best able to break through where a great deal of energy
is gathered?\/
/\Um, yes.\/ the Cat was clearly uncomfortable with addressing her.
\/That�s why they came through in Tokyo, so many people clustered
together combined with the natural energy spikes of that area made it
possible to make a particularly easy doorway. That�s why the Negaverse
stole people�s energy, and why it has been doing so for thousands of
years. It needs enough to make a permanent hole.\/
/\There sure seems to be a lot of it.\/ the Moon Princess said.
/\There are 5.7 *billion* people on Earth now.\/ the Cat replied.
Serena could feel the sheer shock of her companion at the statement.
/\That�s a lot of energy running loose.\/
/\Now, come here.\/ There were a pile of greenish fruits lying on a
table. /\These are thvorik fruits.\/ A mental exclamation of delight
came from the Moon Princess. /\They�ll restore your energy.\/ Serena
ate one experimentally. Suddenly she could *feel* her energy reserves
recharging. /\Take them and put them in your dimensional pocket, you�ll
probably need them.\/
/\In any case, the wands are located *here*./\ A closeup of the
southwestern United States. A point flashed red. /\I can�t teleport
you into their base directly, they�ve got screens to prevent exactly
that.\/
Serena nodded. There was no backing out now, there had been none from
the moment she had first cried the words and made the change. /\Do
it.\/
Chapter 9
Zeus hadn�t bothered to mention that the place where the wands were
being kept was in the middle of a desert. Serena supposed that the
location made sense, if you wanted to be safe from assault making sure
you were in a hostile and isolated environment was a good start.
All the same, Serena had sweat on her brow, sand in her shoes, and
soreness in her muscles. And still another six miles to go. The Watch
had shown the ability to track her as Sailor Moon, so she didn�t dare
make the transformation here, despite her added endurance in that form.
Granted, she was drawing energy from the earth to supplement her own
reserves, but even so it was still hard.
/\I there anything I can do about this?\/ Serena asked.
/\My soreness?\/ the Moon Princess replied. /\Look into my body, see
its veins, its cells, it�s structure.\/ Serena tried it, and found that
she actually could do it.
/\Now, change it. Make it so it is *right*.\/ Serena had no idea what
it meant, so she tried thinking good thoughts at her sore muscles. It
actually helped, she felt better.
/\As long as we�re doing this, I�ve got some moles I�d like to get rid
of.\/ the Moon Princess commented. /\Huh?\/ Serena said.
/\Well, I can control my whole body this way. My metabolism, my
pigmentation, your muscular and skeletal structure, anything. Now�s as
good a time as any to fix the little things that are wrong with it.\/
Serena stopped, stunned. /\Am I sure that�s such a good idea?\/
Serena had decided that addressing the Moon Princess the way the Moon
Princess addressed her was the best policy.
/\I�ve got the power. Why shouldn�t I use it?\/
/\Because . . . \/ Serena trailed off at this, not knowing the answer
herself. But something told her that using power this *casually* was a
bad idea, that it would have consequences that she wouldn�t like.
Then again, she wasn�t really one to talk. Not considering some of the
uses she had put her power to when she first got it�a week ago?
Serena stopped short, running the numbers again through her mind. Yes,
one week. It *felt* like a whole lot longer.
/\Can I show me any other tricks with magic?\/ Serena asked, partially
to change the subject and partially because she had the feeling she was
going to need the tricks pretty soon. How easily Onyxite had beaten her
was still running through her mind, and she didn�t want to repeat the
process.
/\Sure. Now, look at the air. Look at its molecules. Look at how
those molecules move, interact.\/ Serena did so. /\Now, make those
molecules *slower*.\/
Somewhat over an hour, and a great deal of knowledge later, Serena
reached the first sign of her destination, an extremely long chain fence
with barbed wire on top of it. It reached as far as the eye could see
in either direction, and every few hundred feet there were signs posted.
Serena wished she could read English, but there was another way.
Drawing on one of the tricks the Moon Princess had taught her, she put
her senses into the sign, into the *meaning* of the sign.
/\Property of the United States Army. The use of deadly force has been
authorized against any and all trespassers.\/ Well, that was certainly
encouraging. She reached out again, into the ground beneath the fence.
The earth was filled with small devices and odd chemicals.
Experimentally she threw a rock over the fence, with no result. But
something still bugged her. She called over nearby rabbit and tossed it
over the fence. It took one step and, in a flash of light, was reduced
to dust.
With a twang of conscience, Serena called forth a buzzard she saw
flying above her, and redirected it to fly above the fence. It too
dissolved to dust in a flash of brilliance.
/\This place obviously has defenses that kill any living thing that
tries to get near it.\/ the Moon Princess said.
/\No shit.\/ Serena replied. /\But the wands are in there, so we have
to get in.\/ A thought occurred to her. /\Wait a minute, how do *they*
get in?\/
/\Well, they must some kind of gate or something. I guess it�s time
for more walking.\/
Serena walked along the fence for another half an hour before spotting
the road. It looked like one of the interstates she�d heard America
had, great roads that crisscrossed the entire continent. She looked,
but didn�t see cars coming from either direction. She sighed, and
continued her walk around the fence.
Three hours of walking later, she still hadn�t found an entrance. The
Moon Princess had been �educating� her in magic and psionics the whole
time, so the time wasn�t a complete waste. But by the time she came to
the road for the second time, Serena had had enough.
/\This is ridiculous. This fence has no openings, no ways in or out.
We know from the buzzard that they don�t fly over. So how do they get
in and out of their own base?\/
/\I know from Zeus they don�t teleport, their own screen would prevent
it. The only other option I can think of is some kind of a tunnel.\/
The possibility froze Serena. She hadn�t thought of that. Then
another memory flashed, the black van. Then she had it.
/\The entrance to the tunnel is along the road.\/ Serena said. /\I�m
sure of it.\/
/\What makes me so certain?\/
/\Remember the van? And the glasses? And the beauty class?
Everything these people have tried so far has been something strange and
unusual disguised as something quite ordinary. So, the entrance to the
tunnel is disguised. But it can�t be *too* disguised, or they�d never
be able to find it themselves. It also has to be in a place that�s
easily accessible, because they must use it a lot. A good compromise
would be an entrance somewhere along the road.
/\I think I follow my logic. But what am I looking for?\/
/\I don�t know. Anything that�s a break from this road.\/
/\Maybe I can spot it from the air. Do I remember what I told me about
flying?\/ Serena nodded mentally, and went through the procedure. The
air has lines, I make it have lines. I grab that line with my mind, a
pull myself along it. . . and suddenly Serena was in the air. She
focused her will, gaining speed and altitude. The wind blew her hair
back, and she felt the sun on her face. For a moment, she was free of
responsibilities and cares, once more a child who had never heard of
transformation wands or Negaverses. She wanted to fly forever, to go the
ends of the earth. Images from the moon Kingdom went through her mind,
flying on the Moon and on other planets, looking down to see a red storm
the size of a world, strange plants that seemed to move ever so slightly
though there was no wind . . .
But then the moment was gone, and she was herself again. Remembering
she didn�t want anyone to see her, she wrapped herself in light, kept
the beams from reflecting off her. There didn�t seem to be anything
below her. She magnified her vision, using yet another technique. A
glint caught her eye, and she soared down for a closer look. It was
nothing but a service station, and she�d glimpsed sunlight on a gas
pump.
Wait a minute, how come a gas pump in the middle of nowhere was so
clean? The whole place was suspiciously clean, now that she thought on
it. Certainly cleaner than the old man sleeping in a chair could
account for. A psychic eye into the soil revealed a hidden tunnel
behind the butte the soda machine rested against. Serena didn�t know
how to open it, but she didn�t need to. She simply made herself as the
wall, and then the wall didn�t exist for her anymore. She stepped
through, to find herself in a tunnel wide and tall enough to fit an
eighteen-wheeler through. It was surprisingly well lit, but even so it
went on too far for her to see the other end. She sent the power in a
different configuration, tapping the heat and light in the air and
making it kinetic energy. She then channeled the energy around herself,
and shot forward at sixty kilometers an hour. It took her little more
than a minute to reach the end.
Now she was in what looked like the biggest garage she�d ever seen. It
was filled with hundreds of cars of all makes, models and sizes, from
little minicars to those huge trucks they transported other cars on.
Curious, she went over to one and used her powers to look inside it.
Serena knew she wasn�t that good at knowing what an engine was supposed
to look like, but gray coral and gold metal wasn�t it. She�d definitely
found the right place. The next question was, how to find the wands.
Then she noticed what for all the world looked like an elevator. Well,
it couldn�t hurt. She hit the �call� button, and waited a couple of
minutes. To hell with it. She opened the door magically, and flew down
a shaft wide enough for any of the vehicles in the garge, noticing as
she did so that there were no cables or anything to hold up the car.
She reached out for the wands. They were downwards. She soared down,
then realized that an elevator car was coming right towards her. She
was about to pass through it, no worry about being seen because she was
still invisible, when another idea came to her. She made herself flat,
existing only in two dimensions and not in the third. Next she placed
herself along the wall, and when the car came a few seconds later she
went between it and the walls of the shaft with no trouble at all.
Restoring herself to three-D, she continued downwards until she knew
she was on the same level, horizontally, as the wands were. Continuing
through the door and down the hall, she advanced.
The door opened, and the Watchers waited expectantly. None of them got
out, and no one came in. Everyone�s eyes met, and they are tapped their
Shades and spoke as one.
�Control . . .� they all stopped embarrassed. Finally the most senior
there continued by default.
�Sir, I think an intruder got tired of waiting for the elevator again.
I don�t see any holes in the walls, I think, they phased through. Well,
yes I know no one�s ever come in through this particular entrance, but
could you analyze the logs?� A moment�s pause. �Thanks.�
She turned to her comrades. �OK, they just ran the infra-red through,
we�ve got an invisible intruder on the loose.�
An invisible intruder wasn�t unknown in a Watch facility. But all the
same, it was a problem. Bases were designed to deal with big, obvious,
violent threats. Things like demons with enough power to destroy cities
or alien armadas landing or all the bodies in the morgue suddenly rising
up to make a break for freedom. Lone infiltrators hadn�t been a major
concern of the either the architects or the people who wrote the
security procedures, so long as they stayed away from something truly
important. The guards around the antimatter reactor, the spaceship
impound, and the computer banks were all increased and equipped with
infra-red and ultrasonic detectors. Other than that, things continued
in their usual mix of organized chaos.
Meanwhile, Serena was trying to find her way to the wands. The guard
posts seemed to be everywhere and she wasn�t going to take the chance
that those Shades couldn�t see her. Going through the walls was the
obvious solution, but she couldn�t keep that up for long at a time. The
denser the material the harder it was, according to the Moon Princess,
and whatever the walls were made of was dense beyond belief. Spend too
long inside, and she wouldn�t be able to get out. So she had to travel
mostly by corridor.
The situation hadn�t been helped by the fact that whoever had designed
this place had never even heard of a straight line or a right-angle turn
or a direct path. Halls doubled back and went in vees and esses, and to
a sense that worked on finding a straight line to the object you wanted
the design was crippling. Though Serena didn�t know it, that had been
the idea.
/\There has to be an easier way to do this.\/ Serena said. She�d
already had to eat one of the thvorik fruits she taken with her from the
Repository to replenish her power. There were only three left, and she
couldn�t afford to waste them in fruitless wandering.
/\We can�t exactly ask directions.\/ said the Moon Princess.
/\Why not?\/ A twist of power, and Serena looked and had the aura of a
mib. She walked up to the guard station, hoping her nervousness didn�t
show on her face or in her voice.
�Excuse me, I�m new here. I�m trying to find the place where we keep
the magical artifacts, could you help me?�
�You mean section 23. Sure I can help, take two lefts, three rights,
go straight for four intersections, another left, another right and
you�re there. Don�t worry, everyone gets lost in here.�
The directions proved accurate and pretty soon Serena was in the right
place. At least the number 23 was on the wall, and behind the desk
where a bored looking mib sat she could see row upon row of crates.
She decided to try and risk her disguise to get past him.
�Hi, I need to some magic items. They should be four wands, about yea
long, with the Roman symbols for the various planets on them . . .�
The mib nodded. �I understand.� He typed a few keys. A blue light
shot down from the ceiling, highlighting her in a luminescent cell. Oh
shit, a trap. She flared up her power, flashing flames and lightning
against the sides of the beam. But this wasn�t any ordinary light, her
best shots weren�t doing any damage. The mib walked up to her, a smug
smile on his face.
�Not bad. A good plan, as a mater of fact. However, if you really had
authorization for the wands you would have known their ID numbers. Plus
you would have had written authorization.�
�Almost forgot. You have the right to remain silent. Should you
choose to waive this right, anything you say can and will be used
against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If
you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided to you. Do you
understand these rights?� Stunned, Serena could only nod.
Being wheeled through the halls standing in a giant glass tube was a
humiliating experience, Serena decided. Well, not actually wheeled,
since the tube floated in midair and the stuff seemed to be a force
field she couldn�t phase through and the mib wasn�t pushing the tube but
controlling its movements with what looked like a joystick on steroids,
but the principle applied.
�Where are you taking me?� Serena demanded. The mib ignored her. She
tried psychic communication, repeating the same question. Still no
response.
/\I don�t think they�re going to give us any answers.\/ the Moon
Princess.
/\You�re probably right. I wonder where they�re taking us?\/
/\Probably to a holding cell or something.\/ An image flashed,
prisoners being kept in cages that seemed to short for their width. The
guess proved correct, as Serena was unceremoniously dumped in a room
full of other people in identical tubes.
�What are you in for?� asked a blue-eyed blonde wearing an odd blue
uniform. At least Serena�s language spells still worked.
�Um, trespassing I guess. What about you?�
�I crashed my spaceship in a lake.�
�AGAIN!?!� said a . . . thing that looked like a girl. But her body
was made of metal, except for the head, which looked like it had been
cannibalized off a life-sized China doll. Serena knew it was impolite,
but she couldn�t help but stare. It was like something out of a sci-fi
novel, but given a frightening reality. The girl noticed, and smiled.
�You�re first time in a Watch detention area, right? Don�t worry, they
don�t kill people, they�re too soft-hearted for that. Remember that
little speech they gave you before they took you in?� Serena nodded.
�Well, that�s a perfect example. In a few days they�ll give you a
trial, complete with twelve jurors and defense attorney. Curious people
are always going onto Watch property, if this is your first offense
you�ll get off with a slap on the wrist.�
Serena felt the Moon Princess� surprise at the statement, and echoed it
herself. �What do you mean people are always coming onto Watch
property. They�ve got that field that kills anything which comes onto
it.�
�Oh, that�s just for show. They�re too *nice* to kill sentient beings
unless their attacked first, the field just sets off an alarm that
paralyzes you. Hey, wait a minute, if you thought those fields kill
anything alive, you must not have crossed the fences. How did you
trespass?�
�I, um found the entrance.� Everyone turned to stare at her, and gasps
echoed through the room.
�That is . . . impressive.� said tall thing covered with long green
hair and wearing a red cap with a white fur rim on its head. The other
there nodded.
�Excuse me.� Serena said. �But what is the Watch, anyway?�
The blonde shrugged. �You don�t know? Well, you�re new. It started
out the usual story. One civilization abandoned magic and spiritual
power in favor of technology, and began to expand because with
technology you can get mass production and industrialization, producing
enough of a surplus for exploration. But it didn�t know much about
spirituality now, and the aboriginal shamans were using magic to kick
the settlers� butts. Following me so far?� Serena nodded. It was
strange, hearing this viewpoint. No matter what the woman looked like,
she wasn�t human, she was some kind of alien.
�In any case, a secret group was founded to solve the problem. This
secret group was able to learn the spiritual arts of the natives, and by
combining them with their technology produced something pure magic or
pure technology simply couldn�t defend against. But this is where the
story gets off track.�
�Normally, at this point the group that�s discovered adeptechnology
either takes over the world or gives their technology to the rest of the
civilization.� Serena sensed the comprehension of the Moon Princess, as
she recognized her own civilization�s story. � This group, later to be
called the Watch, didn�t do either. They continued to keep their
discoveries secret, only using adeptech themselves when there was no
other choice. Except for their mibs, vehicles, creatures and bases,
they make almost no use of it. And they continue to keep the secret to
this day.�
She shrugged, a surprisingly human gesture. "No one knows why they made
their choice. Whenever asked, they say that they know a secret trap in
adeptechnology, and that if we understood that trap we'd have done the
same thing ourselves. Of course, whenever anyone asks what the trap is
the mibs reply that if we have to ask, we aren�t ready to understand."
Serena frowned. Though the first part explained a lot, the second only
raised more questions. �But why are they constantly collecting energy?�
she asked.
�They sell it to other races, including my own, in order to leave this
world alone. They can afford it, 5.7 billion people, especially with
this level of ecosphere, means a *lot* of energy to sell.�
�So if you�re supposed to keep off Earth, why are you here?�
The result was a long and complex story involving her secret membership
in something called the Dunce Corps, a spaceship that ate carrots, and
time travel.
�And so I�m here.� she concluded. Serena could only stare. �What about
you?�
�Well, I�m the reincarnation of the princess of an ancient civilization
that existed on the Moon, this moon I mean, ten thousand years ago . .
.�
After she was done, the others looked impressed.
"Wow." said the green thing. "That's an interesting story even by our
standards."
"I wish I could win on the strength of how interesting my story is."
Serena replied. A mental assent came from the Moon Princess. "Or at
least get out of this tube."
The robot snorted. It was strange, seeing human emotions on a face
made from porcelain. "Well, you can't. Watch." With that her hand
glowed with blue flame, which she smashed against the tube. The fire
simply . . . vanished. It didn�t blast back or have any effect, it
simply vanished as if it had never even been. "It's actually a
dimensional flux, not a material. Everything we shoot at it gets sent
straight into another universe, we can't get through."
"What about teleportation?"
"Been tried. This whole base is full of jammers for just that reason.
Face it, there's no way out."
"NO! I refuse to accept that." Then an idea hit her. "You said this
was a dimensional flux. What happens if a dimensional warping hits it?"
"Nothing, the warp just goes right on through. But that doesn't do any
good in terms of getting you out. After all, what would you aim for?
The flux is self-sustaining until they deactivate it from the outside,
so there's no machinery maintaining it to aim for. The only thing to
hit would be us."
"Well, what does this deactivating machinery look like."
The robot waved her hand, and a three-dimensional image appeared of a
strange looking conglomeration of coral and crystal. "This."
"Do you know what the schematics look like?"
"Are you kidding. Give me the materials and I could *build* one. But
again, that doesn�t help without the materials."
"Oh, really? What would be required, may I ask." Serena knew a way
out of this. Not components, but compounds and elements?"
"Well, I'd need yttrium, selenium, some complex organic compounds . . .
hey what are you doing?" Serena was concentrating, remembering the
conjuring tricks the Moon Princess had caught her. Slowly, piles of
metal accumulated at her feet.
The others in the cells looked at her, and smiled.
It took two days to finish the device, especially since Serena had to
work by "feel" instead of eyes. All the materials needed to be
manipulated invisibly, and getting each molecule into place was *hard*,
even with someone to coach her. Without the principles of similarity
and contagion, the work would have taken years, maybe decades. But
eventually she was done, and turned it on.
The others burst out, overjoyed. The blonde smiled, and said
evilly,"Playtime."
Serena left them to their amusements, with tended to involve a great
many explosions and gratuitous destruction. She was chasing something
else, something she could only sense but knew existed nonetheless. A
warp to the Negaverse.
She was a ghost, invisible and intagible. They never even knew she was
there, her control was fine enough now to mask her aura so precisely
Shades couldn't see her. She found the portal, and went through.
Chapter 10
It wasn't like the sudden first here, then there with nothing in
between "sensation" of teleporting. The gateway to the Negaverse was a
fall, but falling *sideways*. And there were the voices too, the half
seen hands that seemed to reach for her, coming into contact as they
slid through her. No, they slid *between* her.
She slid out, stumbling upon the landing. She'd been to the Negaverse
once before, chasing after Jadeite during the school bus incident. But
then she'd been too busy fighting for her life to look around. Now she
did.
She'd been expecting a barren desolate plain, without a shred of life.
But there was life, lots of it. She looked around, suddenly realizing
that there was desert behind her, but forest in front of her. The
demarcation between the two was sharp and abrupt, with no gradual change
between the two types of landscape. Just one inch was desert, the next
inch forest.
There were five mibs too, all dead. They seemed to be wearing some
kind of black metal suit, with strange lumps Serena was willing to bet
weren�t just decorative. There was also a blasted black vehicle that
looked like a tank on steroids. There were dead youma too, *lot* of
dead youma. Apparently here youma didn�t turn to dust upon death.
Her magical senses picked up disturbances to her right, and she saw
strange flashes of light there as well. Well, she knew which way to
head, though she wished that for once she could get to run *away* from
things like this, the way normal people did.
The thought stopped her. When had she stopped thinking of herself as
�normal people�?
She ran at top speed through the forest, magically enhancing her
endurance and agility. She saw a few animals, all with teeth and
claws. The she stopped, staring. A bird was eating some berries, but
that wasn�t all. It was *tearing* at the bush, rending the berries with
its beak. And then Serena understood the effect the Moon Kingdom�s
dumping operations had had.
In a normal ecosystem, animals ate plants for energy and animals ate
other animals for food. When battles occurred between predator and prey
they were for survival, and when males fought over a mate it was just
for show.
But here, all that was *real*. Animals ate another not just for food
but because they *hated* the other animals. That was why the boundary
between desert and forest was so exact, because two environments *hated*
one another and couldn't bear to have a transitional space between them.
It was a perversion of nature, of reality, and the most horrible thing
Serena had ever seen in her admittedly short life. Now she could
understand why Zeus had devoted tens of thousands of years to battling
this evil.
The lights were getting closer now, and she could see signs of battle.
More of the strange vehicles, and plenty of dead youma and mibs. Plants
of animals reached for her as she ran, trying to grab her, but she blew
each of them away with a thought.
Then she burst into a clearing, and saw it. On Earth, it would have
been impressive,as part of a mountain range. Here the peak jutted out
of the ground, with no foothills or anything, just a single solitary
spire. Youma and mibs were scattered around it, and battles were gong
on halfway up the mountain. Even as she watched, flames blared and
solitary figures fell screaming from the heights. One landed, or rather
*splashed*, less than a foot from where Serena stood, staring.
Serena activated her powers, and flew to the top of the mountain. A
couple of mibs and youma shot at her, but she ignored them. She knew
where her target was.
She entered the at the top, the Moon Princess whispering in her ear.
The Moon Princess had been here once before, ten thousand years ago, and
nothing had changed. Serena knew which turns to take, and soon emerged
into a hollow where some trick of water and geology and produced a cave
with a natural throne placed within a rock that looked like a skull to
even the most casual observer. And on that throne rested Darien.
/\Here at last, I see.\/ he spoke into her mind. Serena suddenly
realized that he wasn't addressing *her*, but the Moon Princess.
\/I'm here to stop you.\/ was the response of the ancient ruler. /\We
placed all our own fear and hatred here for a reason, so they wouldn't
control us. You've become part of the Negaforce now, just as much as
the youma and Queen Beryl did./\
/\And is that a bad thing?\/ he demanded. /\It brought me forth from
where I resided in this body's mind, so that I could take my rightful
place. Why haven't you destroyed this incarnations mind yet, if I may
ask?\/
/\I still have much to teach me, when my time is ready I will rule once
more. Come, join me and we will reestablish what once was\/
/\I'm sorry, but this time the Moon will serve, and the Earth rule!\/
With that black roses shot forth, floral razors seeking Serena's
heart. But she wasn't there, she had teleported behind Darien, and
blasted him from behind. But he had a shield up made of petals, and the
two canceled each other out. He rolled away, and send forth another
attack, *thickening* the air around Serena so she couldn't breathe. She
blacked it, and set cape aflame, but the fire went out almost instantly
and he send a pulse of doubt in her own abilities at Serena, but Serena
was familiar with the emotion and ignored it. The Moon Princess went
silent from it, but Serena didn't need her anymore. This was her home,
her element. And so she danced a dance of magic and murder, neither
partner making a single mistake.
And then Darien was a second too slow, and his elbow bent back at an
unnatural angle. Serena could see a sliver of white just before the
blood covered it. He healed himself, but it took too long. Serena hit
hit from two other sides, and he was down.
Serena called forth the magic, ready to stop his heart forever. But
then she stopped herself, just in time. This wasn't her. No matter how
right it felt, she wasn't a killer.
She looked down at her enemy/lover, wondering what to do. The Moon
Princess had no such doubts, however.
/\KILLHIM!\/ she demanded.
/\NO!\/ Serena snapped back. /\I'm not like that!\/
/\Yes I am.\/ Images flashed through Serena's mind, enemies human and
otherwise lying dead from duels and battles. \/Don't I care that left
alone he will return to grow stronger and more deadly than before, with
knowledge of my tactics and abilities?\/
/\Don't *you* care that you're hurting people.\/ Serena snapped back.
And then what Darien had said a moment before came back to her. /\He
said you put all your own fear and hatred into the Negaverse. That's
what really happened, didn't it. Zeus was lying when he said it was
byproducts, wasn't he?\/
/\Correct. We of the Moon realized that our own negative emotions were
causing us problems, so we developed the means to make them into a
physical form, and then to dispose of them in the Negaverse. And it let
the Moon become dominant over the Earth that had birthed us, and then to
colonize the other worlds of the solar system, and finally to explore
and conquer other stars. Some tried to stop us, but we slaughtered them
all until the Negaforce destroyed us from within. We were complacent,
believing nothing could unseat the base of our power, the Moon. We were
wrong, as it turned out. But now I will take this body, just as I took
every body I reincarnated in during the time of the Moon Kingdom. That
how we did inheritance, you see.\/
Then, without transition, Serena was standing in a barren plane,
extending as far as she could see in any direction.
"Like it?" came a voice from behind her. Serena whirled to see . . .
herself. But not herself. The face was . . . wrong. To new, to
babylike. But of course, Serena realized. Her double had never
frowned, never known tears or sneers or bared teeth. Only smiles had
caused wrinkles in those cheeks and on that brow. It was a difference
Serena found disturbing.
Then the wave of pure *emotion* smashed into her. It was love made
physical and real. She was smashed to the ground. Not, to the "ground"
she realized this place was just a construct, created for the Moon
Princess' convenience for this battle.
"I've been trained in doing this." the Moon Princess sneered. "I've
got a dozen lifetimes worth of replacing my bodies previous
inhabitants. You can try to fight back, but you really have no way of
beating me." But Serena heard her with only half an ear.
. . . Convenience . . . and then a thousand memories crashed through
Serena's mind. Rei using her powers to influence a raffle so she could
go on a cruise. Greg confessing to using his ability to see the future
in order to do well on a test. And herself using the Disguise wand to
do get into places, using her powers to keep ice cream from melting and
a thousand other things.
And then Serena understood what had destroyed the Moon Kingdom ten
thousand years ago, and what she could do now to defeat her opponent.
She couldn't fight the oon Princess with love, because her opponent had
never known anything but love. But she could fight with hate. She sent
forth a blast of hatred. In this psychic plane emotion were physical
objects, and her enemy was knocked back.
Serena looked at her reeling foe and brought up the energy,
concentrating all her hatred and anger and pain into a single psychic
blow.
"I can do it because I am Serena Tsukino." She gasped out. "And I
fight for LOVE, and JUSTICE!." Now she had gotten up onto her knees." I
will right wrongs and triumph over evil, and that means YOU. And in MY
name," now she was on her feet, shaky but determined.
In the psychic plane the Moon Princess had created, a glow appeared in
Serena's cupped hands.
"I."
The light grew, forming a distinct ball.
"Will."
Now the glow was a small sun, but you could still look at it directly.
You could see the roils that marred its surface, as emotions that were
never meant to be channeled so precisely struggled against their user.
Anguish, fear, jealousy, envy, the essence of all of these and more
concentrated and focused into single *desire*.
"PUNISH YOU!!!"
And the blast came forth, a literally *hungry* beam of emotion. It
struck the Moon Princess and she was gone, defeated not by her foe's
strengths but by her vices.
Serena collapsed upon the plain of the Negaverse, exhausted physically
and mentally. Darien's barely living form was before her, but there was
one thing she needed to do.
She raised up the Crescent Moon Wand with the Empyrean Silver Crystal
within it and called upon the power, upon every bit of her mind and
heart and soul and body, and put in into a single use. It was a
struggle to get out each word, but she managed.
"COSMIC."
Her ribs were hurting.
"MOON."
Blood came from her nose as abused vessels couldn't take any more.
"HEALING."
Now she could feel her mind start to go, as she drained away her own
consciousness for just a little bit more energy. She tried to call up
her resolve, but she was tapping away at that as well. She never knew
how she got out the last word.
"ACTIVATION!!!!"
Out came the white light, burning away at the Negaforce, at all the
hatred and fear the Moon Kingdom had spread into it thousands of years
before. But it didn�t work.
This was a struggle that couldn't be solved through clever tricks or
special attacks. This was power against power, and Serena didn't have
enough power. The last week or so had weakened her physically, mentally
and emotionally, and even at full strength there was only so much a
single human could give. Not even Serena could call upon resources that
simply didn't exist.
She struggled on, knowing she would lose. Was it her vision that was
getting blurry, or was reality itself becoming less distinct? She
couldn't tell anymore, didn�t care anymore, it didn't matter, she had
failed, nothing could save her, nothing at all . . .
A sudden pain in her arm, and then there was new strength, she couldn't
tell from where. It flowed through her, revitalizing her. She sent it
forth, letting it feed the light and stars. The two colors fought in
the Negaverse's sky, white and black. It was daybreak for the first
time in millennia, and the results showed. But it was more than that.
A new form of expanded consciousness came over her, and she could see
the results. Trees stopped reaching their arms to snap birds out of the
air, and became straight and true. Tentacles receded as fish returned
to the way they were. The sharp boundaries between landscapes receded,
becoming less distinct. Animals actually *grazed* instead of simply
ripping at the plants. It wasn't always that way of course. In some
places, things were indistinguishable from before, and occasionally even
worse. But where the light spread, the *hate* was gone. And through it
all, Serena could hear the Negaverse *screaming*. It was a scream
without sound, for it was purely psychic. And a scream without any
words Serena could understand, both because she couldn�t spare the
attention to interpret and because the Negaforce was almost hysterical
with terror. The inhuman mind that gave the Negaforce direction could
feel it�s power ebbing away, it knew that if the hate was cleansed it
would no longer be a conscious thing, maybe it would no longer even be a
living thing. So it struggled, and hard.
But in the end it was the light that spread to encompass all. Without
the evil to penetrate it Negaforce lost a conscious mind, returning to
its dormant state. But Serena heard its last thought crystal clear,
just before her whole world went blank.
/\Thank you.\/ it said.
Serena woke up in a bed, with tubes running into parts of her body
mentionable and otherwise. The lines looked odd, almost organic. Other
than that, the whole place looked like a standard hospital room. She
tried to move her arms and legs, but couldn�t summon up the energy. The
same was true of her psychic abilities, she realized. She tried
shouting vocally, but was too hoarse to get the words out. She waited a
few minutes , and then a man dressed in a doctors uniform came over.
"Awake, I see. Oh , sorry, I'm Dr. Meyers. Before you ask, you can't
have water for your mouth, you don't have enough strength to keep it
down. You've been asleep for a week now, and for the first two days we
weren't sure you would wake up at all. If this had been a normal
hospital, you wouldn't have."
"So I'm still in the hands of the Watch." Serena, managed to get out.
Her voice felt cracked, unused.
"Yes. And you're lucky, otherwise you'd be dead. You did a Final
Drain, and even if you hadn't the psi-hancer overdose would have done
you in. You're lucky to be alive." Serena remembered the pain in her
arm just as the extra power came. An injection of some sort of drug,
she realized.
But the thought was only distant, and she remembered the realization
she had come to in that bit of hell.
"It's ease." Serena croaked.
The "doctor" turned around, an hopeful expression on his face.
"What's ease?" he asked, in the tone of one looking for a specific
answer he hopes the questioner already knows.
"The trap. The one the Moon Kingdom fell into, that I almost did. It
the reason why power corrupts. Past a certain point of personal power,
things become, well, *easy*. It's easier to use the power to get rid
of problems than to actually, you know, solve them. And, and when the
problem comes back stronger than before, just throw more and more power
at it, which only makes things worse in the long run. You don�t want to
do anything that involves sacrifice, and you don't care what you do
because you know some power is always going to come along and save you .
. ." Serena knew she was babbling, and didn't care. Past a certain
point it just didn't matter anymore, and this was one of those points.
The man smiled the way you did to welcome an old friend you hadn�t seen
in years when he came over for dinner. "You've got it. Welcome to the
Watch."
Serena stared. "'Welcome to the Watch?' What the fuck are you talking
about?"
"By reaching that realization, you automatically qualified yourself for
Watch membership."
"That's crazy. One stupid idea and suddenly I'm a Watcher." She
sighed. "You people are insane." She felt herself getting sleepy, the
real thing this time instead of the dead state after she had fought the
Negaforce.
When she woke up, she felt a whole lot better. She was still too weak
to move, but it was the too weak to move that you felt after a long
night's sleep rather than not having the energy reserves required for
moving muscles.
With some effort, she managed to get up, but was too dizzy to stay that
way for long before collapsing on the bed. For a moment she wondered
why she couldn't hear the Moon Princess in her mind, them remembered she
had killed her.
"You're awake." said Dr. Meyers.
"I know." Serena replied. "Now what will happen to me?"
"Well, you'll go to the Academy for training, and after you graduate
you'll be given a position in -
"Never mind the details." Serena interrupted. "I mean what will
happen to *me*?"
To his credit, he understood what she meant. "You will join the Watch,
and remain in it until you decide to leave."
"But I don't understand. Why *me*?" Serena pleaded. She knew she
should be shocked right now, but she beyond shock. Past a certain point
the dramatic revelations didn't matter anymore, and she was way past
that point.
"Because, you understand the trap of ease and of ability, that if you
don't *think* your way out of challenge you won't win. Until you
defeated the Invincible Shadow, you were just one more reject of an age
ten thousand years gone by to us. But in defeating it you showed
*tactics*, and *strategy*, and most importantly a realization that you
couldn't win just with power."
"You might have been offered a position right then, but you
disappeared. But you still managed to track your wands here, and put up
a credible performance of belonging here. And what you did in the
prison room. There are actually three different ways to get out of
those tubes, but the one you came up with wasn't even one of ours! You
*thought*, do you understand?"
"I think so. But what does the realization about ease have to do with
anything."
"Everything. That's why the Watch is capable of beating back the
nonhuman menaces time and again, because we understand that by putting
ourselves in difficult situations we triumph and grow. The other races
and beings, they can just use power to solve all their problems. But we
don't, that's why we have to think and learn. Before you think that
that's something simple, consider it. It took me *years* to understand
it. I spent my time working for what I thought was an agency called
Majestic 12, and over time I noticed that their were easier ways of
doing things but the administrators didn't seem to care. It was only
when I reached that realization on my own that I could join the Watch.
No do you understand?"
"No, I don't. What does this have to do with anything. Why do you
take people away and lock them up and hide the truth from everyone?
WHY?!!"
"Your understanding is still limited I see. But don't worry, it will
come in time."
"If that is the understanding I will get, then I don't want it. Do you
understand? I DON"T WANT IT!!"
"Do you truly mean that?"
"YES I do . . ." Her voice trailed off as she realized from the
suddenly sad expression on his face that she had just crossed a line.
Crossed it unknowingly, but crossed it all the same.
"Then so be it." he sighed, and all was black again.
Epilogue
Serena got up to go to school, rushing down the stairs and rushing past
her mother. She had overslept as usual, dreaming about what it would be
like to be the Sailor Moon who had saved her from those monsters so many
times.
Far away, the Cats stood at attention. This all had to be perfect,
they knew. Just as they had planned, their green haired mistress
appeared before them, raging and screaming.
"HOW COULD YOU DO THAT! WE"LL HAVE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN . . what's
going on? What are you doing to me?" She was panicked now, and scared
for the first time . . .ever.
"Just a few tricks we picked up from the Watch." Artemis replied
smugly. "They were more than happy to part with them in exchange for
the secret of accessing the Negaverse, and for the chance to recruit
someone like Sailor Moon."
"And now, we've completed our goal." Luna put in. "The Negaverse is
no more. Now only one thing remains to remove the last vestige of the
Moon Kingdom's sins from the universe."
The Guardian of Time screamed, but there was no way out.
"It's our turn." Zeus said. "As things end, another shall begin. In
fact, this ending and a certain beginning fit in perfectly." He sent
the mental command, and the rather small, as nuclear devices went, was
activated.
"LET THERE BE LIGHT!!"
And there was light.