Ascension

Prologue: By the Light of the Flame

-mentalyoga016-

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon and yada-yada, blahblahblah.


Chaos was a now-distant memory lodged in the back of their minds. Seven years comprised a pretty large chunk of a twenty-three year old's life, and most of the girls had tucked their senshi days safely away in the dark corridor filled with dusty memories of trying battles and unconditional friendship. But after seven years of assured quiet and rapidly thinning bonds, they thought that perhaps their fate had been altered somehow, that the mythic spinners had tugged and mended their threads, and that their real destiny was to exist in relative normalcy. Crystal Tokyo had been scratched out of mind like an old scab and they finally allowed themselves to settle into what seemed enough like peace to lie back and smile occasionally.

As for their friendship—well, they hadn't grown apart from one another so much as they had met less frequently, and the occasions they did seemed somehow less meaningful. Shopping expeditions had become few and far between, and the rare gossip sessions held by the warmth of the sacred fire at the Hikawa Shrine were filled to the brim, as all the gossip had built up to burst. A cup overflowing; but was the emptiness at the end of their drink a lasting chasm? They believed that nothing had changed between them; the eternal bond had not been broken along with their apparent futures. Sure, maybe Minako kidded her way out of coming to the erratic reunions, citing lame excuses no one believed for a second, and maybe Ami just couldn't seem to accept this tranquility like the rest. Maybe Rei needed Usagi's company more, and with different motivations, than she once had. Maybe Makoto's lone wolf disposition had finally bared its teeth. But the girls knew one another inside and out, and planned, of course, to be lifelong friends.

With or without a prescribed future lined up for them, they would not falter in the bonds they had forged over the past years, and in the past lifetimes, that they had shared.

It seemed, however, that when they went to leave one another, the glances and the hugs didn't linger as long as they once had…


Usagi paused on the balcony, looking out upon the city while absently rubbing her stomach. It was funny to observe something so alive, and yet so definitively detached, as a city. Even if she shifted her gaze every few moments, each time she could find a new facet of Tokyo, something she hadn't noticed in the twenty-three years she had called it 'home.' Take the Tokyo Tower, for instance. She had never before noticed that sitting out during sunset, with the sun hitting it from behind at a very precise moment, it almost looked a bit like a camera tripod. How many unsuspecting victims had it photographed moving about their daily minutiae? How many young couples' amorous activities were looked upon with disdain or with envy? How many muggings had been captured in its glare, but remained unreported by the silent Watcher? How many lives had thrived and died under its gaze?

The night-lights began to flash on, and Usagi realized that she never felt as safe as when she was surrounded by the protective shield of this artificial evening gleam. Almost immediately, she wondered whether or not the Moon Palace had ever been quite like this. Did it have the same hustle and bustle, the deep drone that is only noticeable with the deepest of attention? She remembered so little of her former life. The flashbacks did little to aid her careless memory; she was too caught up in the ins and outs of her newest manga to bother with memorizing a useless story long dead.

She leaned back and yawned, stretching her arms precariously above her head, feeling suddenly woozy along the railing. The city stretched its own arms out 100 feet below her, threatening to outdo her.

A pair of sinewy arms wrapped around her shivering waist. "You hungry?" Mamoru asked her, smiling into the side of her head with a sense of victory for having snuck up on her.. He grabbed hold of her tightly and lifted her up to the rail, "I guess the real question is when aren't you hungry?"

Playfully, she made a dramatic show of smacking him.

"Hey, hey, now! I'm just kidding!" he laughed "Plus, you're the one in the dangerous position now," he nodded to the moving cars racing below, and removed one strong arm to rub at the spot where her hand collided with the soft flesh of his cheek.

She squirmed nervously and held tightly onto his solid shoulders. Would she take him down smoking with her? "Bring me down," she commanded with as much authority as she could muster. He obeyed. "Besides, I'm not always hungry," she protested, running her fingers through the smooth, thick black hair that hung teasingly over his eye.

"But…?"

"…but I could eat." The color rose in her cheeks, a practiced display of femininity that she felt no need to phase out in light of her pseudo-feminist tendencies.

He grinned. "Let's go out. As much as I adore your cooking…" at the dismayed look on her face, he quickly made reparations, "I just…love to show you off to the world sometimes…heh…"

She didn't need any prodding, "Lemme grab my purse."

They were driving home. Dinner was pleasant; they spoke of old times, and of their future together. Her stomach was full, and she was lost in thought. Neither spoke, but it did not make for an uneasy silence; it was a comfortable sense of wholeness. They did not have to say anything to realize that they understood one another, completely.

She recalled trying to balance growing into her misguided ideas of womanhood, the constant fear of loved ones dying, and about saving the earth from imminent doom—she never thought it would end. In the mind of an awkward teenager, the angst was eternal. Yet here she was, as happy as she could ever have imagined.

She never believed she could end up like this. They pulled into the driveway, and Usagi put a finger to his lips as she led him up the stairs to a bed she knew would keep them warm the whole night through.


The morning wafted in through the blinds, a dazzling array of iridescence radiating softly upon her alabaster skin. Her chestnut hair caught the light, making it almost reddish, and it lay wave-like upon the pillow. Her eyes were closed; her lashes fanned out, like charcoal-black lace, from her eyelids. Behind the lids danced the dreams of a girl who had no time to dream in the waking hours.

Her alarm snapped to attention, sending a cacophony of sound down on her suddenly shattered night-visions. With a jolt, her hand resolutely sent the little bastard flying across the room into the wall. The pitiful cracking sound it made as it met its final collision was compensation enough for Makoto, and she smirked as she jumped from beneath the covers and tossed some clothes on.

She took the stairs three at a time, and grabbed a leftover sandwich lying on the counter, shoving it haphazardly into her mouth. Chewing optional. She made sure to have her briefcase and her bento box, before sprinting out the back door and into the alleyway, the quickest route. If she was late one more time, that cute boss of hers was going to send her packing…

…Sliding to a halt, Makoto narrowly avoided body-slamming a coworker as she completed her race to the most foreboding of all presences in the office: the all-knowing, all-powerful, one-and-only clock-in computer! It waited slyly in the crevice beside the vending machine, always eager to catch the defenseless, lowly proletariat running just a tad late. She sidled up next to it casually, and slowly, but punched her ID number into it with drive and purpose.

DENIED.

The computer may as well have shouted "No, you lazy-ass, you aren't getting away with it this time!" back at her. Her jaw dropped, as heavy as if it had been stuffed with lead. Oh, wait. She remembered suddenly that the sandwich she had shoved into it still hung there precariously, and she quickly polished it off, her stomach groaning and settling, satiated. She resisted the urge to pound the computer, counting to ten with intermittent deep breaths. Anger management hadn't been a complete waste of time, she figured, or else she'd owe the company a large sum of money for this damnable Satan-machine alone.

"Do you need me to swipe you in?" a deep, sultry voice caressed her ear.

"Why I oughta!" she whipped around, expecting Masao, the greasy guy with the Hitler-mustache from the next cubicle over, to be there. "Oh damn…I…er…I…uh…" She ran her hand through her hair and giggled nervously, wondering whether batting her eyelashes would help. She decided against it.

"I didn't mean to frighten you, Ms. Kino," her boss, Akiyama, looking striking in a black pinstripe suit and crimson tie, apologized.

"Call me Makoto, please," she murmured without thinking.

"Here, allow me," adding afterwards, "Makoto." He ran the card through the machine smoothly, and grinned. "Hey, just try not to let it happen anymore, ok? I might be your boss, and I might not mind being lenient with you, but my boss is gonna notice this one of these days." He winked and walked off to make his hourly rounds, a noticeably confident bounce in his step.

Makoto blushed in spite of herself. 'Damn it. Just who does he think he is!?' she though indignantly, leaning against the vending machine. 'Honestly…just because he's got a killer smile, and an amazing as--' The blood only rushed more rapidly to the surface, and the prudish woman waiting behind her to get to a soda-pop gave her an odd glare. The vending machine made an abrupt 'whirring' noise, as though in reply. "Sorry," she bowed her head and made a mad dash to her cubicle.

True to form, however, Masao soon peeked his head over the wall, "Mako-chan, I didn't see you come in!" His stringy hair fell into his eyes, and without missing a beat, he licked his palm and slicked it back. Makoto made an admirable effort not to gag, quickly placing a rough palm against her mouth to hold back.

"Ms. Kino, Masao. Makoto, if you absolutely must. But if you ever call me Mako-chan again, I'll rip your tongue out." She smiled maliciously, her eyes lighting up at the thought. Looking down at her well-sharpened claws, she buffed them a bit on her teeth and glanced back up at him.

He laughed, an uncertainty weighing it down, as though he didn't know whether or not she was serious. "Sorry, Ms. Kino." His face disappeared once more behind the one protective layer—the flimsy wall-like divider—between them. Sighing, she tried desperately to get working on the report she was supposed to have to Akiyama later that day. Running through address books and company information before regurgitating lists and statistics from other reports—this was the bulk of her work. Days melded together, each one an endless array of meaningless words. She bloody well lost any interest in reading on her own time, that was for damn sure. Outside the office, letters became intimidating, words threatening, and paragraphs nearly monstrous.

It was odd. Surreal, even. Not that long ago, it seemed, she was out tossing thunder bolts around carelessly, and saving the world from the great evils of the Unknown Universe, and now she was sitting at a tiny desk writing inconsequential accounts for a man only a year or so older than she was.

She never thought it would end up like this.


Out of sheer habit, she pushed her glasses back up snugly upon the thin bridge of her nose. Why, she mused carelessly, did glasses have such propensity to do that? By this time, shouldn't someone have invented self-sustaining rims? She added that minor project to her mental To-Do list and returned quickly to her work.

Typing furiously away, she plugged equations into the Mercury computer. She knew that, although she couldn't see every facet clearly yet, the computer--within its tiny and efficient brain--knew everything. It was a matter of knowing the correct mathematical codes. She imagined, even, that it could predict the future with a precise numerical sequence. But who was she to theorize such things?

"Ami, would you like me to help you out with anything?" Mizuno Kaya inquired in her soft-spoken but firm manner.

"Mother," she replied in the same tone, one learned over time from the still-vibrant woman standing behind her, somehow ageless, "I need to concentrate right now. If you'd just leave me to my devices for a bit…"

Mizuno Kaya nodded quickly and went about her business.

Working in solitude once again, she wiped the thin layer of sweat lining her brow. If only she were able to get the last bit of the problem answered, the dash of truth would become unmistakably apparent. But it seemed an unending question; who knew such seemingly simple workings could be so intricate? The battles and the strategies and the attacks and defenses she had left behind never gave her so much trouble. Perhaps this particular vocation wasn't cut out for her; perhaps she should stick to her sphere of influence.

There! The last piece of the puzzle. She finished the final step with an effortless motion and a content grin tugging at the sides of her mouth. Finally, she could bake a proper pan of brownies! Ah, the Mercury computer never failed to impress her.

Sliding the menacingly rectangular pan into the oven, she paused for a moment to congratulate herself. The ease was only passing, though, with only the faint impression of something that may have been a smile upon her lips remaining. What if she were to bake them too long? They might burn, fain! they'd explode! Her happiness swept away in the tide of uncertainty, she began to question her larger motives. The significance of baking a pan of brownies properly or not was not the greater question. When did she cross the line of using the computer for necessity and into this era of abusing it in favor of trivialities? Had life really become so mundane, so purposeless, that her tiny gateway to eternal power was merely a get-out-of-jail-free card to her now? Abuse. That's what this was—an abuse of something she might once have called sacred. She had defiled eons of dignity and order.

How had things ended up like this?


"Aino Minako; she's a real class-act," the casting director chuckled, plotting her moral downfall with his compatriots. Their confident laughs indicated that they either believed she couldn't hear them or didn't care if she could. She was hidden away in a nook off of the side hall, a meager wall between them. "I heard she…" he whispered, becoming inaudible momentarily. Minako leaned forward, angling her ear towards the indistinguishable mutterings, "and ended up with that last role. Can you believe the lack of artistic integrity in this business?"

One of the other men with him chuckled, "Hey, screw integrity! I wouldn't say 'no' to that!" More lecherous laughing.

The words struck her like a swift poison. She was shaking almost violently, tears threatening to break free of their shell—her façade fortified only by her resolute will. Standing, she gripped her purse handle with white knuckles, and turned on her heel. She would rather proudly show them just what kind of girl she was. She stalked into the room, suddenly a lioness; the men looked up with deceitfully pleasant smiles.

"We'll call you in when we need you, Miss…" the ringleader remarked condescendingly, allowing his eyes to linger far too long on the front of Minako's blouse. His hair was plastered against his skull with grease, his shirt unbuttoned enough to reveal a light spattering of thin chest hair and two gold necklaces, and he reeked of cheap cologne sprayed on far too liberally. She nearly laughed aloud, finding an odd humor in his strikingly stereotypical sleaziness.

"How about I let you know if I need you," she retorted with a dash of sass, "but don't hold your breath—I don't want to be held responsible when you pass out!" She wanted to smile, proud of her audacity. She was no average blonde, right?

His eyes flashed, but he was confused at her outburst and looked to his comrades for backup. They shrugged in unison, stupid and herd-like. She could almost picture them standing in a line chewing cud in synchronized motions. "What is it you're trying to say?"

It was her turn to laugh, and laugh she did. Wrapping a hand tightly around her hip, she stood erect and replied, "I wouldn't be caught dead working for a dirt bag like you. That's what I'm trying to say, Mister." Her smirk widened, and the cerulean hue of her eyes deepened dangerously. "And I most certainly did not give that director a bl--"

A crew member attempted to escort her away. She shook him off with ease. "I won't be needing your assistance; lay another hand on me, and I'll make sure you sing soprano, buddy." He made no further effort.

She drove away from the studio, pressing her foot far too heavily upon the gas pedal; she was fuming. In fact, she was beyond that—she was livid, and would only continue to seethe to boil over. But beneath the anger, there was another emotion. Was it sadness? She has suffered rejection before, and will most assuredly suffer it again in the future. Many had made quite clear that they considered her a joke, so the questionable insults were nothing shocking, though unfounded they often were.

Something stung within her, though; was it guilt? No. Why should she have felt any guilt? She has done what she had to in order to make a life for herself. To pursue her own--Aino Minako's--individual dream. If that at any point had involved things she'd rather not remember in the morning, then so be it. People made mistakes. To err, she told herself, was human. She was doing the best that she could.

Still, maybe she regretted some of her more recent past. Maybe the girl she was in high school, the naïvely idealistic child-woman, maybe she would have looked down on what she was today. Maybe the Minako that believed in the intrinsic goodness of people would have spit on the Minako that now compromised herself and others in order to get by, in order to make life bearable. Maybe.

But maybe she shouldn't think on it too hard. It was true, she didn't expect to end up like this, but as she said, she was doing the best that she could…


The Fire burned as strongly as it always had, and the phoenix living within it had risen from the proverbial ashes too many times to record. The most graceful of dancers, it wound its way among the air currents in the room; it was gaudy, but inherently beautiful. It's beauty, however, belied its inner turmoil. The Fire did not predict happy events. In her days spent meditating before it, waiting for visions to come, not once had she found a vision of better days. Not once had she found a smile waiting for her in the recesses of the flames. And now, she was unable to find much of anything.

The Fire had lay silent seven long years.

Rei smiled wanly. The Fire, fickle thing that it was, had not even thrown a scrap of a hint to her about Grandfather. His death the previous autumn hadn't come as a total shock; after all, Rei knew he was getting on in years, and couldn't get out of bed but for so long each day…she knew that even praying had become an ordeal for him, but his passing was difficult, nonetheless. She thumbed shut his eyes with tears flowing like wine from her own.

Planning the funeral, of course, had taken her away from her work. It was nothing lavish, and she knew Grandfather would have preferred it that way. He was eccentric, yes, but he was a shrewd man. Practical. Rei had inherited that from him. Her eyes, now, looked on the world warily. She did not trust easily, and she was not frivolous. Which is why the funeral had been so small, so rapidly plotted. His casket was cheap, she knew, but she tried to force herself to remember that a corpse is a corpse and would be taken to the earth in an extravagant coffin no differently than it would be in a cardboard box. Maggots find rotting flesh wherever it is kept.

He was a good man; he had raised her as a proper girl should be raised.

She did not cry. Not then.

She had inherited sole ownership of the Hikawa Shrine, and had to make many, many sacrifices in order to devote her full time to the machinations of it. She'd had dreams, she thought; vague ones, sure, but maybe she could have made something of her life. The Shrine, now, was her life. It was no chore to her; there had always been the possibility in her mind that the running of the Shrine would be her path. But she found herself wondering in quiet times what she might have done without the burdens of tradition. The cherry blossoms bloomed and fell, and she felt as an old woman must with the passing of the cycles.

And now, now she had things running smoothly once more. Perhaps, she sometimes liked to think, even better. She had hired fresh blood; some high school kids looking to get a bit of extra money. They made it easier on Rei; they helped some, but more than that, they brought life to the temple. She wasn't ready for this big number, this twenty-three, this real life that she was barely learning how to figure out on her own. She knew that it was pathetic, she knew that bringing kids in to make her feel like she might reclaim something she's lost forever…she knew it was stupid. But maybe it was something that got her through the day. Her raven hair would begin to grey soon, she was certain. Only twenty-three years old, but silver would suit her just as well.

She prayed to the Fire daily, and with each passing day she found with reluctance the relief at viewing a visionless flame. And yet sometimes, she wondered if it, too, was hiding things away for safe-keeping. She wondered what the Fire kept from her, behind its façade of omnipotence.

On this morning, she woke and dressed, she pulled her hair up into the traditional, tightly laced bun, and sipped pensively at a soft white tea. Her thoughts were warbled, amassed, she could not pick one from another. Suddenly, one jumped out to her; a memory.

The five of them, warding off Beryl's minions in the Arctic. Valiantly, they fought, but to no avail. She had died for the first time in this incarnation that day. The chill of the frost was nothing to the cold of death. She had doubted Usagi-chan initially, but found them without foundation. The bond they forged, the love they shared, it redeemed all. Beryl fell as quickly as she had risen, and good—or what they believed to be good—had reigned victorious. Where did all of that go?

Silently, she padded down the halls of the Shrine to the hidden room. A feeling pricking the underside of her gut had prompted her odd return. Closing the door behind her, she sat upon the cold wood lining the floor. She was accustomed to the feel of the sterile, repellant hardwood by now. It was almost welcoming.

The Fire flared up indignantly; she was there only hours before, and it did not take well to company. But what happened next reminded Rei just how erratic Fate--and the Fire--tended to be.

Just as she went to return to the mundane chores she knew awaited her, she noticed it; in the center of the flame, a tiny flicker. It was but a blip, a miniscule interruption of the Fire's gentle ballet, but she had seen it, and wondered if the Fire could feel the beats of her heart, as its pulse took on the sudden speed in rhythm that she had.

The specificities evaded her, but the flicker did not bode well. What flicker ever did? And the Fire was never wrong.

She smiled softly as dusty and iced-over parts of her soul suddenly warmed to the Fire's reminder of repaired fates. Her daily duties awaited her.