Shattered Time

Disclaimer: I don't own either Sailor Moon or Gundam Wing. This will be the only chapter that has a disclaimer.

Well, hello all. After a monumental amount of time, I'm coming out of retirement and popping out another GW/SM fic. I'm hoping my writing style has improved sometime within the last…year and a half. That said, I hope you enjoy my new fic. Please review and tell me how I'm doing, I haven't seen either series in a while (though watched Endless Waltz and read the SM manga a few times to get the feel back for the characters) so if people seem a bit OOC, let me know. It's going to be similar in a way to my first fic, One Summer Day, but with a bit more serious setting.

I'm not going to definitively divide up whose pov I'm in, but I will use little dividers whenever I'm switching between really different ones. Or if I can't think of a good enough transition.

Shattered Time, Chapter 1: The Broken Place

Crystal Tokyo was in shambles. The once-vibrant city was cracked and abandoned. Only the Crystal Palace, once a symbol of the Second Silver Millennium, stood sparklingly over the ruins of the abandoned high-rises of the city. Its crystal walls undimmed, unshaken; one would never know of the ruin of the rest of the city had they only seen its palace. A closer look now at the cracked and upheaved streets; demons roamed, thin and cracked themselves, long deprived of human flesh and souls to sustain them. A bolt of lightning from the tormented skies reveals a dark obelisk, as unmarred as the white crystal formation not too far from it. If not for the packs of demons wandering around it, one would assume they were made by the same hand. Silence rules this place, save for the distant echoes of snarling demons, fighting one another for lack of anything to do.

But a twinkle now; a twinkle of power flashes from the Crystal Palace, a glimmer of hope for this forsaken city. It is gone as soon as it appeared, the only evidence it ever happened being five small shadows flitting across the surface of the Palace. Five figures in Sailor fuku, running doggedly for the entrance.

The doors slammed behind them and each of the girls breathed a sigh of relief as it did. Silence permeated the still air.

Rei was the first to break it. "It's getting worse. There's even more than last time."

"Aw, it's not like they're a problem or anything…" Minako stretched her arms and sighed. "There's just too many of them."

"They're weaker." Hotaru observed distantly. "They're thinner, didn't you see?"

Ami leaned against the wall. "Without the city's people to feed them, the Enemy can't sustain their army."

"Don't suppose there's a chance they'll just all die off?" Makoto grunted as she stretched her shoulders.

Ami shook her head. "I highly doubt it. There's so many more, the Enemy could be breeding them for all we know."

Minako shivered. "Bleh. Now that's an image I could have done without…"

"Nasty images aside…" Rei rolled her eyes at Minako. "We did get what we were looking for."

Without a word, Hotaru stepped forward, leaning her staff against the wall, its blade smeared with demon blood. From under her collar, she produced a tiny chunk of light, a piece of crystal that sparkled in the darkness. "We were lucky the demons are so weak, getting one this big would have been difficult a few years ago."

No one argued, and they left the doorway in silence, heading up stairs and down corridors to a large, ornate door. They hesitated for a moment, not looking at each other, and pushed through. A circular set of stairs took up most of the room, leading up to a pedestal, with a pale pink orb set on top. Hotaru produced the crystal piece and handed it to Minako. Heading slowly up the stairs, she carefully set the piece on the orb, and smiled as it was quickly absorbed. The orb glowed a brighter pink as the piece hung in the center of it, and flashed brightly as it disappeared.

"That was a big piece. There can't be too many more before we have the whole Silver Crystal back to Usagi." Hotaru mused quietly.

Minako turned back to the rest of the Senshi. "Yep. Then we can take out those bastards once and for all. Serve 'em right for breaking it in the first place."

Makoto, spirited by the sending of the crystal piece, clenched a fist and grinned. "And for crowding up our city."

"And for all the little things like trying to kill our entire population, trying to take over our planet, trying to kill us, stuff like that." Rei crossed her arms and pursed her lips as Minako stuck her tongue out at her. "I'm going to go wash all this demon gunk off."

"I should get back to tracking down the next piece…" Ami waved as she retreated behind Rei out the door.

The others scattered, off to their respective pastimes. Hotaru stayed a moment longer, looking into the orb. The orb that used to keep them in contact with the outers, their queen, and princess out in space, fighting off reinforcements to the Enemy on the ground. But it had lost power not too long ago, and the static filled messages were too difficult to decipher to continue using it. They could only send the crystal shards through it now, to rejoin the pieces they had recovered during the battle that broke it, and since. And once they found all of them… Hotaru herself gave a small smile and left for the kitchen to get lunch.

Not too far away, a darkness plotted. Thought. Fretted. It reached out its darkness and tried again in vain against the barrier around the Crystal Palace. One of its higher demons dead for a piece of the sacred crystal, palace barrier just as strong as ever, the darkness found itself feeling thwarted and frustrated. It lashed out, reaching into time to upset some pocket of a universe. It only made the darkness feel a little better.

Unintended, connections snapped into place. Nonchalant thoughts far away in that universe furthered that connection. Pulled other beings into it. The darkness peered into the time-space and watched the result of a simple lashing-out. A chance occurrence folded over into an unlikely event. Five unlikely events to be precise. If the darkness had a mouth to laugh with, it would have. Turning its attention to the present universe and time, it watched. It watched as five very different young boys found themselves very confused on an abandoned street in the middle of Crystal Tokyo.

Wind rustled through the rubble and around five people who had no business being there. None had the state of mind to speak. Duo had a machine part in his hand, payment for it in the other, just about to pass to the salesman that was no longer there. Quatre sat awkwardly on the ground, having lost the chair he was sitting in moments before. Heero stood up slowly, tensed and mildly sore after having fallen from the bed that was now in another universe. Trowa held his clown mask, hand frozen where it had reached out to open the chest to put it away. Wufei was the first to break the silence, frozen in a defensive stance, sweat from his spar still on his forehead.

"What happened?" Was all that he could think to say. Each looked around at the dark and cracked landscape and at each other.

Tensed and nervous they moved slowly, taking in their surroundings. "We're on Earth." Heero said suddenly, looking up at the clouded sky.

"I definitely was not on Earth a few seconds ago." Duo stated firmly, gripping the machine part firmly.

"Then how did we get here?" Quatre asked softly, finally standing up.

A few blocks away, and a few floors up, five points appeared on a computer screen and the Senshi of Ice nearly choked on her cappuccino. After a few moments of coughing, she blinked at the coffee spattered screen. Moving jerkily to the mouse, she clicked on one of the points and went through several keystrokes. Reading through the text, she was out the door of the lab and yelling for the others at the top of her voice before the text even finished loading.

Dashing from different points of the palace, the Senshi nearly collided at the door. Out of breath suddenly, Ami gasped for air while trying to tell the others what she had seen. "People…in the city…five…of them…just popped…up out there…"

"People?!" The others said in unison and looked at each other incredulously. A second ticked by in complete disbelief and Ami broke the silence with a new breath.

"They don't have any power signature!" Another second. "Hello! The demons are already on their way!"

Without another word, the five dashed out the door, Rei transforming on the way, hair still damp from her shower. Ami leading the way, they jumped across rooftops, shooting power at any demons they pass, though it became clear that they would not have beaten the demons to the newcomers.

At the center of the chaos of crawling bodies, five stood, defending themselves and losing quickly. Only Duo had a gun, a safeguard for business in a bad neighborhood. And though they were trained fighters each, fists were poor weapons against a growing circle of hissing monster.

From atop a rooftop, a stream of ice showered onto the numbers of demons and they evaporated into dust. A streak of lightning followed, as did an orb of dark purple power, a thrashing golden chain, and a massive flaming arrow. The number of demons shrank quickly; more so as many retreated into the darkness of the buildings. Five girls dropped from a rooftop and continued their attack from the ground, slowly working their way toward the five bloodied and confused boys. Power flew from their empty hands, without armor or weapons of any kind. An opening appeared and four kept attacking while the fifth ran up and addressed, as calmly as she could amidst a crowd of demons, the five bewildered boys in the center.

"We're going to get back to the palace, we'll explain everything there!" Ami gestured toward the palace visible above the rooftops and shouted over the chaos of the other Senshi's attacks and howling demons. "Did Usagi send you?" The confused looks she got were answer enough. "Nevermind! Let's go!" She turned and yelled at the others and let loose a stream of ice at the demons in the street towards the palace. The others followed with an explosion of various powers and moved with Ami and the boys towards the palace. Once they were on the move, the boys running behind Ami as she dispatched the demons ahead, the four followed behind, almost running backwards as they fought off the desperate and hungry demons leaping at their heels. With final attacks, the four finally escaped through the barrier at the door and heaved breaths in the shadows inside.

Without looking up, Minako gasped for air, hands on her knees. "You guys had better have a damn good reason…"

"For showing up in the middle of a demon infested city like this." Rei finished irritably, pushing her long raven hair out of her face.

The five boys looked blankly at them, at a complete loss for words. The five strange girls had no visible weapons, yet cast attacks like magic. Their very odd outfits added to the confusion.

Heero found his voice first and stepped forward, tense and cold, small wounds bleeding freely. "We don't know what happened. Where is this?"

Phew! Not as long as I'd like it to be, but it's getting late. Hopefully everyone'll like this, and even if you don't let me know. I don't plan on always having a note at the end (ruins that nice suspenseful feeling at the end) but I wanted to for the first chapter.