Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon is the property of Naoko Takeuchi, Kodansha Comics, and Toei Animation. This is purely fan-related; don't sue!

All information used in the story is true, and has been written by Naoko Takeuchi and placed in a Japanese magazine called Animemangaland.

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The Darkness Returns
Prologue: Dreams of the Past
By: Princess Yaten
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A young girl around 6 or 7 years old, with short silver hair, is running for her life. She is holding onto the hand of a lady who she trusts with her all her heart. The two are followed by a man who was carrying two other children as they fled from the death and destruction that had once been their home.

Not far behind, they can hear the sounds of footsteps and shouting as they were beign pursued by their attackers.

As the family is running an explosion appears in front of them and they are all knocked off their feet. The youma soldiers surround the family with their weapons out and ready to fire when they recieved the order. One of the soldiers walks over to the still form of the man, and kicks him. Seeing no reaction, the soldier then turns the man over, and the blank, sightless eyes was proof enough that he was dead.

The lady puts her daughter down and stands to face the youma. "What is the meaning of this!" She shouts. "This is no way to treat the Royal Family of the planet Star Healer. As the queen of Star Healer, I demand you leave me and my family alone." The Queen is visibly shaken at what is happening.

The child she had been carrying in her arms moments before, steps forward and takes her mothers hand followed by her siblings. "Momma?" she says.

The queen turns to look at her daughter, and tries to hide her fears from her. "It's all right, Yaten. I will handle this. Go take care of Lotous and Shanna."

A sudden flash of light appears in the sky. A figure shrouded in darkness appears. "Queen Alina of the planet Star Healer." The voice says. "You shall die for corrupting my son, and turning him to the side of good." the voice says as it looks at the body of the husband. "My son, Mihat, will be avenged for what your kind did."

Queen Alina stands up difiantly to glare at the figure, her children surrounding her from behind. "How can you say I corrupted him?" she demands. "All Mihat did was fall in love with me, and I with him. It was you who corrupted him. And now you've killed him."

"My son has paid for his betrayal of me, and now is the time for you and your spawn to die with him." the figure then turns toward the youma's gives the signal and they attack.

"Shanna, Loutus, Yaten. Run!" Queen Alina orders her children.

Yaten and her siblings run for the forest that was behind them, but the youma's surround them, and kill Loutus and Shanna. Before they can kill Yaten, Queen Alina appears in between them and attacks blowing the youma away with her powers.

"You've destroyed my soldiers, Alina. Looks like I may have to kill you both myself." The figure says as she begins her attack. She shoots a energy ball at the queen and princess.

Alina sees it coming but it's too late to do anything to get out of the way or get Yaten out of the way. She then grabs Yaten and pulls her daughter under her, and shields Yaten with her own body just as the energy ball hits. The last thought Alina has is "Please let Yaten live through this if I...."

The figure begins laughing evilly, "Finally! The royal family of the Planet Star Healer is dead. My vengence is complete, now for the rest of the galaxy." She turns away from the corpses, and is about to head back to her remaining forces, and they leave planet Star Healer to cause more death across the universe.

A few minutes later, Queen Alina's body begins to move, as something pushes at her body from underneath. Princess Yaten manages to push her mothers body off of her own, and pulls her mother closer to her so that her mothers head rested on her lap.

"Mommy..." Yaten says as tears run down her face, as she looks at the carnage that had been done to her family, and realizes that she is now alone on her planet.

As she sits there crying, she hears something behind her, but doesn't pay much attention to it, but jumps and tries to runs away when whoever it is places a hand on her shoulder. She turns around to see a lady with long flowing red hair standing behind her

"Wait. Don't run away, I am not here to harm you." The woman says. "I am here to help you."

"How do I know if you are telling the truth?" Yaten shouts. "You could be one of those bad people who did this. Who took my family away from me."

"I am not part of the ones who did this. Your parents were good friends of mine, Yaten. I even met you when you and your brother Loutus were still babies." The lady says. "Maybe your mother has told you about me? I am the true ruler of all the star planets."

Yaten blinks back her tears as she listens to this bit of information. "You mean that you are... you are..." she couldn't finsh her sentence, unsure that she might be right or wrong on her guess on who the lady was.

"Yes, Princess Yaten." the lady says. "I am Queen Kakyuu." Queen Kakuu moves in closer and Yaten stands still as Queen Kakyuu bends down and places her hands on her shoulders. "Yaten, I am here to ask a favor of you. Would you like to come back with me to my home planet to live, now that you have no home here anymore?"

Yaten just looks at Queen Kakyuu with surprise evident on her face. "Come with you? Why do you want me to come with you for?" Yaten asks.

Queen Kakyuu smiles. "You will become my ward along with my other two wards who are orphans also." Queen Kakyuu looks sad. "They are princesses from the planets Star Maker and Star Fighter who lost their own families to evil beings. But unlike you, they never even knew their original familys."

"Never knew their familys? Why not?" Yaten asks.

"Princess Seiya of Star Fighter was sent to me when she was a baby moments before her planet blew up because of a war that broke out there." And Princess Taiki of Star Maker was also a baby when she was sent to me by her mother because of trouble."

Yaten looks uncertainly at Queen Kakyuu. "What will happen when I reach planet Kinmoku?"

"When you reach planet Kinmoku, Seiya and Taiki will become your new sisters, and I will be your new mother." Queen Kakyuu explains, "And the three of you will be trained in the ways of the Sailor Senshi, known as the Star Lights. You will be the guardians and protectors of my daughter, Princess Fireball. And you will take on my last name of Kou" Queen Kakyuu then looks back at Yaten, "Will you come Yaten and fullfill the duties that I have asked of you?" Kakyuu holds out her hand expectantly.

Yaten walks over to Queen Kakyuu and takes her hand into her own. "Yes, I will, my queen." Yaten says with a smile on her face.

Just as they are about to leave, the ground around them begins to shake and tremble with an unseen force. And all of a sudden a black cloud appears in front of them, a cloud with glowing eyes and fangs. "You can't have her Kakyuu, she is mine. Anyone of my blood belongs to the darkness of the negaforce." The cloud shrieks out.

Yaten just grabs on to Queen Kakyuu and begins screaming and wanting whatever the thing is to go away and leave her alone.

Suddenly she hears a familiar voice calling her name. "Yaten wake up!!" the voice shouts. "Come on wake up!"

"I don't think he's going to wake up." Another voice says.

Yaten hears the voices and locks onto them and finds herself having a sensation of swimming in a sea of darkness, that was surrounded by the voices she heard, and Queen Kakyuu and the monster cloud were left behind.

***************

Yaten opened up his eyes to find himself lying in bed, and Seiya and Taiki were sitting on both ends of the bed, with concerned looks on their faces, watching for a sign that he was waking up. Both let out sighs of relief as they saw that he was finally awake.

"Yaten are you okay?" Seiya asks.

Yaten sits up in bed to glare at them for being in there. "Of course I'm okay, you guys. Why shouldn't I be?" Yaten demand. "And what are you doing in my room?"

Taiki sits down closer to Yaten. "We were both asleep in our bedrooms when we woke up 10 minutes ago to the sounds of you screaming your head off." Taiki explains.

Seiya nods in agreement. "We both got here at the same time, and when we came in you were thrashing and screaming. You knocked a couple of things over too." Seiya says as he indicates the damage done to the areas surrounding the sides of the bed. "Nothing we did could wake you up. So we stayed and waited to see if you would wake up on your own."

Yaten stared increduously at Seiya and Taiki. "Nothing you did could wake me up out of my dream for the past 10 minutes?" Yaten asks.

Seiya and Taiki both nod.

"Must have been some nightmare you had, Yaten-kun." Taiki says.

Seiya smile uneasily and says jokingly, "I warned you that you would get really bad nightmares if you had too many sweets in the night."

Taiki elbows Seiya in the ribs.

"Do you want to talk about what the dream was about?" Taiki asks.

Yaten turns his away from his brothers trying not to look at their faces. "Not really. The dream took place the day my family died, and I first met Queen Kakyuu."

"That doesn't sound like a bad dream, Yaten." Seiya says, a scowl forming on his face. "Why would you be having a nightmare about your family's death after all these years?"

"It wasn't the death of my family that caused me to begin screaming, it was what happened afterward, just as Queen Kakyuu was going to take me away to bring me to Kinmoku..." Yaten explains "Something that did not really happen that day."

"Like what?" Taiki asks.

Yaten looks back at Seiya and Taiki. "It's nothing really. Probably something my mind created just for my nightmare." Yaten says with a false smile on his face. He then notices the time on his bed room clock. "You guys, it's 3 in the morning! We got to get some rest if we want to make it to school tomorrow." With that he pulls the blankets over his head.

"Yaten are you sure you don't want to tell us more?" Taiki asks as Seiya practically drags him out of the room.

"Taiki, if Yaten had something he wanted to tell us, he would have told it to us already." Seiya exclaims. "Besides he's right about one thing, if we don't go back to sleep soon, we might be late getting to school tomorrow. Good Night Yaten"

"Oh, well good night Yaten." Taiki says.

"Good night you guys." Yaten says from underneath his covers.

The minute he hears the sound of the bed room door slamming shut, he sits up in bed and thinks about the dream he just had. 'How can that be possible' Yaten says to himself. 'What was that thing that appeared just as Queen Kakyuu and I was just about to leave? It wasn't there the first time I met Kakyuu, and it never was there any other time I had this dream.'

Yaten is confused about his problems about what the dream was telling him, as he lies on the bed, he falls into a deep dreamless sleep.

Somewhere outside Yaten's window, a smokey blob of smoke hovers outside his window laughing evilly with glee. 'I've found you at last, grand daughter. And this time you won't get away from me so easily.' The blob thinks to itself.

To Be Continued.....