Konnichiwa, minna-san!

I haven't been subscribed for very long, but I'm enjoying FFML very
much. 

Anyway, I wrote a Sailormoon fic that I call "Eve Of Darkness". Friends
tell me it's good enough to post to you, so I hope you enjoy it.

All comments and constructive criticism are very welcome at
raye_j@yahoo.com.

Raye  

===
raye_j@yahoo.com
Member of the Shoujo Anime Proliferation Project Ynstitute
(SAPPY)

I believe in dragons, unicorns, good men
and other mythical creatures.
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Eve Of Darkness

by Raye Johnsen

^^^^^^^^^^
Sailor Moon is copyright Naoko Takeuchi, Kodansha, Toei Animation, DiC
Productions and Mixx Ltd. This is a fanwork, intended as an homage to the original
work, and is not for profit in any way. All rights belong to their original holders.
 
^^^^^^^^^^

**BOOM!!**
     The wall I was braced against shook against the explosion. About a hundred
metres away, the impact caused a hole a full twenty metres across. Shrapnel and
shards of the concrete as large across as my head rained around us, along with the
water from Sailor Mercury's strike. I cursed as I saw Yuusuke blown backwards - the
lolling angle of his head revealing that his neck had been broken.
     We were losing.
     The assault had not stopped. I peered through the dust as the next wave began.
     "JUPITER - OAK - REVOLUTION!!"
     Another shockwave rang through my bones and I couldn't help the way my eye
rejoiced in the lyric beauty of Sailor Jupiter's attack as it destroyed another portion
of our final defence.
     Oh traitor gift - my blessing and my destruction, my eyes and my talent for art.
They had learnt to see and portray all things as beautiful. And to preserve them I
had become a terrorist.
     I didn't call it "freedom fighting". I was honest with myself. I was fighting for what
*I* held dear.
     "MARS - FLAME - ARROW!!"
     As my death came flying down, I found that, rather than my entire life, what
flashed before my eyes was the events leading up to this ...


     It all started with Sailor Moon. Neo-Queen Serenity, we're supposed to call her
now.
     I don't. She's not *my* Queen anymore.
     A great saviour, who fought the Darkness, time and again. And won.
     I've painted portraits of her. As Sailor Moon, triumphant warrior. I painted her
wedding portrait and her coronation portrait. She is a beautiful, magnificent woman
and I'm proud I had that chance.
     I don't think that's contradictory. You don't have to like a person to approve of
their actions and you don't have to like a person's actions to like *them*. But I
digress.
     She fought so many times for us. I was alive for the last attack. The sensation of
being frozen was awful. Unlike natural freezing to death, we were flash-frozen, and
those of us who managed to survive it - not many, I may tell you - were conscious
while we were encased. Deliberately so. The entity which did it fed off fear and pain
and suffering, and we were to be its food source.
     If Sailor Moon had not saved us -
     But she did. We survivors all were fully aware of it. We all lost someone close,
family or friend; most, including me, lost everyone.
     We acclaimed her and her Sailor Senshi as our saviours and our leaders, and
gleefully crowned her Queen of our small planet. Now truly small; less than one
million of the two billion humans who had swarmed our world remained alive. 
     And we began to heal and rebuild.
     It was five years into her reign. Nobody had died since her accession, and we
had not thought about that fact. We really should have. 
     Sailor Moon announced that she and her senshi were immortal. And she was
prepared to share immortality, for a price.
     Not that she called it that. Not that it was perceived as that. No, all that was
required in order to live forever was that you underwent purification via her
Emperium Silver Crystal. All the evil would be removed from your heart, and the
bonus side-effect was that you'd live forever, never aging, never dying.
     I still shudder thinking about it.
     I can see why she had to offer it that way. Immortality was, after all, a side effect
of the purification, not the main point of the process, and it couldn't be duplicated
alone. Besides, who'd want an *evil* person to live forever?
     But I am an artist. For me, painting isn't a reproduction of what I see. I don't just
paint the view; I paint how it makes me feel. How it makes me change. I paint the joy
I feel that I'm alive. I paint the grief that my parents and friends are not. I paint my
happiness. And I paint my pain.
     I need my pain.
     I need my rage, that my best friend didn't survive the Freeze. I need my hurt, that
I'm the only survivor of my family. I need my joy, that I did survive to mourn them.
And I need the bitterness, that the Sailor Senshi were able to save only me.
     I need my darkness. Unless I can feel the rage, the blaming, the hurt, I can't feel
the joy, the forgiveness, the appreciation. 
     And without it, I can't paint.
     But with it, I wouldn't be allowed to live in Crystal Tokyo.


     So that was why I was there, crouched behind a smouldering, crumbling concrete
wall, a handmade fireworks cannon clutched in my fist. As long as I knelt there and
fought, my soul was intact. I was still complete. I was still *me*.
     I survived the Freeze. No way in hell was *I* going to sit still and let them strip my
soul.
     Sailor Mars was winding up her little cantrip. The arrow would swiftly descend
and take me out.
     So be it.
     But I'd call a debt in on the way. 
     As Mars wound up her little spiel, I pointed and lit the little hand cannon. At
Sailor Mercury. Fire to water. 
     "For all of us," I whispered, as the world fell in.


     I didn't die. Nor did Sailor Mercury. She did end up in hospital, but I don't know if
it was my weapon or someone else's that put her there.
     They saved me. I was dying. Would have died, but those damned senshi pulled
me out of the rubble and took me to hospital. Apparently the doctors were fifteen
hours in surgery, repairing me.
      I wished they hadn't bothered. I tried ripping out my IV (but by then I was on
saline drip and it didn't much matter), not eating (well, I didn't know *then* that it
takes sixty-five days plus to starve to death) and looking for high balconies (but by
then they knew I was suicidal and had a twenty-four hour watch on me).
     Sailor Moon herself came to ask me why. I was recovering, but they still wouldn't
leave me to sit by myself. Apparently my constant repeated suicide attempts were
known outside the hospital. Or maybe they briefed her. I didn't ask.
     "You're the Court Artist. Why did you fight? Why do you keep trying to die?"
     I smiled at her. So sincere. So blind. "Because, Sailor Moon, I would rather die in
body than die in soul."
     She didn't understand.
     I didn't expect her to. 
     But that only proved that I didn't have any choices. If the Queen who understood
everyone couldn't understand me, what hope - or place - did I have?
     Later that night, I slipped away and jumped off the third floor verandah. But I only
broke my leg; my fall was broken by vegetation. I hate lilac bushes.


     It was two days later that the announcement was made.
     Those of us who did not wish to accept purification and immortality under the
Emperium Silver Crystal might seek to emigrate elsewhere.
     I still cry every time I think of that announcement.
     But what choice did any of us have?


     Sailor Moon came herself to see us off. Over three thousand of us wanted to
leave.
     Not that we were bad people - although we did take all the "criminal element"
with us. Most were like me - they did not wish to bear the price of immortality.
     We had chosen a small planet, circling a nearby star. The system was enclosed
in a nebulous but effective asteroid ring, and its moon was made of non-reflective
rock. We named it "Blackmoon".
     I think it's a pretty name. I liked it then and I still do.
     We all lined up to enter our colony ship. It would take a year to get to Blackmoon.
Sailor Moon stood at the edge of the landing field.
     I stood at the head of the line. For some reason, I'd been elected leader of our
colony. I looked at her, and she at me.
     I looked at that young-old face that had lived a lifetime before my birth and still
couldn't see my pain, and nodded to her gravely. She nodded back. 
     "So this is the colony?" she asked.
     "We are the first generation of the Blackmoon Family, Sailor Moon," I replied
proudly. 
     "I'm sorry that you have chosen not to stay," she said softly. 
     I didn't reply.
     "Please carry with you the good wishes and blessings of the Earth," King
Endymion offered gravely.
     "Thank you. We will remember the Earth with friendship," I offered in return.
     He nodded and linked hands with his wife. I felt -something- touch me, and
turning to face my people, I saw it.
     On our foreheads, where a small, golden uptilted crescent adorned Sailor Moon's
face, a small, downtilted black crescent graced ours.
     I frowned. A mark of shame. The leaders of Earth would see that our children
grew up thinking that they were disgraced, and that all the rest of the universe would
too.
     All thoughts of friendship with *this* planet blew into the ether. 
     I turned to face the queen of Crystal Tokyo and her husband. They both took a
step back as I glared at them. How could they?! How *dared* they!
     "I thank you," I gritted through clenched teeth, "for labelling us with the sigil of
our chosen home. We will bear it with pride." Not shame! Never shame! NEVER as
they intended!
     I turned and led our people into the ship that would take us home.


     And so, that's why. That, my dearly beloved grandchildren, is why all of you have
that little crescent on your foreheads and why we live here and why you hear stories
about places that are not on the maps. 
     You were supposed to be bitter, and angry, that we gave you this legacy. But you
are complete and whole.
     The Gods created angels and humans. Angels they gave only the capacity to do
good, and so an angel cannot choose his actions. An angel always does what is
right, because he can't do anything else. But humans can do both good and evil,
and so a human can choose.
     On Earth, they are angels now. They do only good, which is nice, but they can't
choose. And I wanted you to be able to choose. While you will do bad things, you'll
do good too, but you'll do what you choose. And that fact, that you can and must
*choose*, each and every time, will make each act better than any act any angel can
perform. 
     My dear ones; what we wanted, for ourselves, and for you, was freedom. And
now, I pray that someday, you will forgive us.

^^^^^^^^^^
AUTHOR'S NOTES:

1) The events portrayed herein are not completely consistent with the events in the
manga, the anime, or the publications of the Crystal Tokyo Historical Society. They
are not *meant* to be. This is a personal account and while the teller firmly believes
them to be the truth, there is a great deal of personal bias. 

2) This fic is the result of ponderings on a number of subjects - the oral history
programmes (where younger people record the reminisces of older people, and then
transcribe them for use as historical records), the fact that tales from history that we
are told as stories by our grandparents are usually more interesting than the official
versions we read years later in textbooks and the way that *all* the Black Moon
Family despise Terrans and like the planet. It was primarily caused by a friend
asking me if I would go to the Black Moon, and when I answered "yes", asking me
*why*. I couldn't answer then, but I think I can now. (Personal question to ponder,
you needn't answer if you don't want to: would *you* be a Blackmoon Family
member?)

3) Just to clarify - the lead character AT NO TIME is truly suicidal. She NEVER
thinks "this is awful, I want to die". If anything, her thinking is "I'm trapped, I don't
want to be a zombie, I'd rather die". She isn't depressed so much as desperate.

4) All comments/suggestions will be cheerfully welcomed at raye_j@yahoo.com.
This includes honest negative criticism. Flames and other non-constructive
negativity, however, will be ignored unless they're wearing red and yell "MARS
FLAME ARROW!!!"