"Do you think Heaven really exists?"
- Rita Bernal, Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative
"I love Hell."
- Lady No, Warriors Orochi 4
THE SAILOR SCOUTS WERE REALLY AMPED UP FOR THE SHOW. The spotlights lit up the floor of the colossal circus tent in giant radiant polka dots. An audience of thousands of unseen spectators cheered with excitement in the circular nebula of darkness surrounding the stage. Para Para hovered fifty feet in the air, sitting on top of her magic sphere with her legs crossed. She giggled sadistically to herself.
A galaxy of colors swirled around the arena as the Sailor Scouts unleashed their planetary attacks against today's disposable opponents. Para Para had conjured up a small army of Lemures monsters do her dirty work while she observed from the circus stratosphere. The creatures all shared the same general appearance of animatronic bears wearing ruffled collars and riding on motorized unicycle wheels. They came in three different varieties, and Para Para was in command of roughly a dozen of each type. The first kind was about a head taller than an average Sailor Scout and came lightly armored. The second type was more ferocious and covered in reinforced steel plating. The last type were the slowest, but they looked the most deadly with their pitch black cauldron bodies and giant exhaust pipes poking out of their shoulders.
The Sailor Scouts were doing well against Para Para's bear essentials. A little too well. The battle was keeping the shadowy spectators entertained, but it made the tiny floating Amazoness rather bored and frustrated. She decided to liven up the show by stretching her right arm above her head and hurling a bright blue meteor down toward her adversaries.
The devastating impact from Para Para's blast sent the Sailor Scouts flying in every direction like uncoordinated acrobats shot from cannons. Mars, Uranus, and Neptune sprawled to the left side of the ring. Moon landed with a faceplant. Mercury, Jupiter, and Pluto came crashing down in a jumbled pile. Venus slammed against the outer ring of the stage with Chibi Moon stumbling into her lap. She forced herself to sit up and held the small princess protectively in her arms as the fighting became desperate.
Jupiter was the first to struggle back to her feet. She charged her magic powers and ran through four of the mono-wheeled menaces with bolts of lightning shooting from her gloved fingers. The stray paw of one of the smaller and faster Lemures swung through the air and smashed into the side of her face, causing her to collapse on her back as a growling shadow loomed over her.
Things went from Don Bluth to John Carpenter in about two seconds flat. The bear's mechanical body torqued backward and split open down the center, revealing its internals filled with power cords flailing out like a nest of starved snakes. The bear instantly became something more akin to a giant crab, and all of its legs were grappling for Jupiter.
The princess of the stormy planet gasped as the Robooblizer tipped over on its wheel and fell on top of her. Its open shell surrounded her like a ribbed fence and left just enough room for parts of her arms, legs, and her head to stick out.
The underside of the machine started to glow in digital green, triggering a mysterious transformation in Jupiter's body. She screamed in rebellion and could be seen striking the machine's underbelly with her lightning attacks even as the change was taking place. A separate hatch on the back of the machine opened up and released a device resembling a pie on a Jack-in-the-box spring. The metallic "crust" of the Denogginator split open into a spider form just before it wrapped its claws around Jupiter's face. The back of the aluminum pan was decorated with a smiling clown face. Jupiter's arms still squirmed in rebellion, but hope was already lost as dark Lemures energy waves altered her body and corroded her mind.
After a few short but horrible seconds, the machine released her from its shell and balanced back on its wheel. Jupiter got to her feet in a series of mildly robotic motions before she turned toward the other Scouts. Her expression was strangely cheerful and just slightly demented. Her human appearance was almost unchanged, aside from the digital pulse in her eyes and the faint twinkling lines in her skin caused by electronic currents moving quickly through her veins. Jupiter wasn't anything a few nanomachines and a quick anti-static rinse couldn't fix.
The converted Sailor Scout was already helping the unicycling Lemures bring down the rest of her team by the time they recovered. Moon found herself facing off with several of the bulkier steel-plated monsters in the middle of the confusion. She smacked one opponent away with her scepter and tried to throw a kick toward a second one. It ended up catching her by her boot and flipping her backward so she collapsed back down on her rump. The cosmic rabbit had run out of luck.
Moon's reaction was similar to Jupiter's moments earlier as the Level 2 Robooblizer opened its chassis and crashed on top of her. The Denogginator that locked over her head was painted with a pale and expressionless face resembling a drama mask. Venus held Chibi Moon tighter in her arms and made her look away.
Moon was back on her steel-plated heels while the rest of the Scouts were still fighting for their lives against Robo-Jupiter and the Berenstain Bots. Her mannerisms were cold and devoid of all emotion. Her eyes were the same as Jupiter's. Her skin had a paler texture that almost passed for porcelain. Bits of metal armor and circuitry were welded on the sides of her face and down her body on top of her Sailor Suit, giving her a look that hybridized synthetic with organic. Her long pigtails had lost most of their natural color and flickered in energy ribbons. Her hip roll glowed like flexible tube lighting. The good news was the metal patchwork soldered to her body formed a natural support structure under her chest. She'd never have to worry about wearing a bra again.
She joined the battle alongside her less mechanized sister-unit. Jupiter fought like her normal self with a light coat of sadism, using her powers to send a massive lightning tornado spiraling through the arena. But Moon attacked the rest of her team with an augmented speed and physical strength greater than what was possible even for a Sailor Scout, dishing out a beating that combined rocket kicks and electromagnetic palm bursts with the usual scepter shaking and tiara throwing. Venus continued protecting Chibi Moon at the edge of the arena while Mars, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were surrounded.
The Scouts quickly found themselves overwhelmed as they were forced to fight two of their converted own in addition to the motorized Russian circus. Pluto was thrown to the stage floor from Moon's crescent uppercut, while Mercury's legs were swept out from under her by a spinning tire and she flopped belly-down near Pluto. Two of the most monstrous Lemures covered with spikes and diesel pipes split their bodies open and began the chilling conversion of their helpless victims. The mechanical spider-pies that covered Pluto's face and the back of Mercury's head were painted with matching scorched and demonic sneers.
Mercury's sparkling magic bubbles spilled out from underneath the Robooblizer before they were drowned under murky energy waves. Pluto shrieked in terror inside the alien green light beaming from her machine's undercarriage. Something was obviously wrong when her squirming arms and legs changed to the color polished graphite. Black clouds billowed out of the exhaust pipes on the two Robooblizers like smokestacks on a metallurgy plant.
The machine trapping Pluto shut off its lights and lifted its cage off of her smoke-covered figure. It closed back up into its bear-like form and slowly rolled away. Pluto's voice could be heard rising in a fit of hysterical digitized giggling from under the blanket of pollution.
The goddess of the Underworld snapped back to her feet with hydraulic speed. She was now only an artificial mannequin of her human self crafted out of dark metal. The intricate feminine features of her face and body were eternally captured in smooth ironwork and articulated with rubbery doll joints. Her long hair was made of bright fiber optic string that rippled with a constant electric current. Her face was painted with strange black spade and diamond markings. The corners of her black steel lips were constructed with straight seam lines that flapped and clicked like a marionette's as she laughed psychotically. Her eyes were filled with electronic insanity and the inside of her mouth was filled with digital lighting. Every time she grinned or sneered, her sinister expression glowed in the dark.
The physical composition of her Sailor uniform had changed just as drastically as her body. The base leotard was now made of thin gray cellophane that was either vacuum sealed or painted directly onto her metallic female architecture. Her miniskirt and her ribbons were made of mostly clear black plastic that reflected the tent's stage lights and barely obscured everything underneath. Behind her transparent bow, the front of Pluto's chest was molded to spherical perfection with her two nubs constantly pronounced. Electrons weren't the only things that had a tendency to get excited during a Level 3 conversion. The process involved intense body imaging that brought out all of the details when they changed to metal.
Pluto's features would have bounced quite vivaciously as she cackled if they hadn't been constructed out of a single sheet of alloy. Subjects who evolved to this stage of the conversion process were high on tackiness and low on humanity. There wasn't an inch of organic material left.
Mercury crawled off her belly by lifting her hips from the ground and exposing her shiny metal rear side that was sculpted with so much detail underneath her clear skirt that it may as well have been naked. She rose up from her knees and turned around so she stood beside Pluto. Together they were a pair of former planets who loved showing off their moons. With wicked robotic faces and jointed black gloves pulsing with Lemures energy, they were the kind of gals who could warp the laws of the universe and make your entire existence implode on itself just by looking at you a little funny.
Chibi Moon gasped in dread once the smog cleared and she saw what had become of her allies. Mars fought for as long as she could before Jupiter paralyzed her with an electric shock and one of the quicker lightly-armored unicyclists trapped her under its steel ribcage. Neptune and Uranus held out slightly longer before they suffered the grizzly fate of being converted by a pair of Level 2 Robooblizers. One after another, they all became customers in a different kind of Electronics Boutique.
The circus's phantom audience celebrated with cheers as the battle fell disastrously out of favor for the Sailor Scouts. Para Para was the only one who wasn't completely amused as she watched the spectacle from 50 feet above on her floating orb. The demon trickster was trying to smile, but she tucked her palm underneath her chin as she sighed with a little disappointment.
"Drats. I was hoping I'd get a whole team of Level 3's."
Sadly, the transformation from human organic material to cybernetic Lemures form could only be performed once.
On the stage below, Jupiter and Mars reunited as smirking devious Sailor Scouts with flickering body glitter. Moon, Uranus, and Neptune acted as emotionless cyborgs do and joined together for optimal efficiency. Mercury and Pluto closed out the party with their darker, fully automated bodies and their psychotically shattered personalities.
The Sailor team's seven pairs of pulsing bright green eyes turned together in the same direction. Their altered minds all focused on one simple pre-programmed task: Destroy the pink fungus and take her Golden Crystal for the Dead Moon Circus.
Chibi Moon realized they were all looking directly at her.
"H-hey, don't worry about this. We'll still win. We can save everyone," she pretended to sound confident, but her shivering and her cracking voice gave away how terrified she was. She was cornered on one side of the circus ring with only one Sailor Scout left to protect her.
"R-right, Venus?"
She wondered why her older guardian was being so silent behind her. She nervously lifted her head and instantly froze in horror at what she saw upside-down in her field of vision. The silhouette of Sailor Venus was crouching over her in the glare of the polka dot circus lights. The guardian of love's electronic green eyes stared back into Chibi Moon's with diabolical intent.
Author's note: I chose Para Para because Pallas is the best Tennyo in Ayashi no Ceres. I thought about setting this during the S season and building it off of that show's scientific themes, but I think this scenario works pretty well too.