Author's notes: Well everyone here it goes. I never thought I'd meet the point in my nerdy life where I'd actually want to write fanfiction about Sailor Moon, but here it is! I'm taking it in a little different direction than most fans of this show might expect, I hope you all enjoy it though. Enjoy and please review.
…Greenland, three hours after the "Death and Rebirth Event"
Captain Blake looked down at the barren wasteland that always was Greenland. It was covered with snow and ice, not a sign of life to be seen. The massive crater would have gone unnoticed if the world-spanning event mere hours earlier hadn't taken place. Under normal circumstances the gothic castle embedded in rock along-side the crater would have astonished Blake. But after what he'd seen mere hours ago, nothing could surprise him.
"Hawk-Eye this is Command, anything to report, over?" Blake's superiors chimed over the radio. His earpiece kept the hum of the circling chopper at bay.
"Command, this is Hawk-Eye. We have a massive crater here, about the size of a small town. If I didn't know any better I'd say I we were looking down at the surface of the moon, over."
"Clarify that, Hawk-Eye, what do you mean, over?"
Blake went on to describe what he was seeing. The ground unearthed by whatever made the crater did not seem like earth's natural soil. It looked more like the surface of the moon. Which even he knew was not scientifically possible. But did not bother to mention that last detail, because science had gone right out the window three hours ago.
"We also have a structure here, Command," Blake went on. "Hidden in rock beside the crater, looks like a portion of some gothic castle, over." Command also didn't need to explain to Blake it was not possible for such a structure to be there. But he knew the chopper was streaming a video feed to Command. Any doubts in his sanity, though few and far between, would be silence once the chopper banked for a shot of the structure.
"New orders for you, Hawk-Eye," Command crackled into Blake's earpiece. Blake shot a questioning glanced at the other three members of his squad, they all nodded. "You are to land inside the crater and take soil samples, then proceed to the hidden structure and recon the location, keep in radio contact with your shoulder cameras on. Keep your heads on a swivel, we don't know what's in there. And do your bests to stay warm, the Army has had enough dead heroes for one day, over."
Blake acknowledged and checked his weapon and equipment. His squad did the same. They all activated their shoulder cams, sending a live feed of everything they saw to the Pentagon. Blake silently prayed this didn't end up as one of those "found footage" horror movies.
The chopper landed dead center in the crater. Blake opened the door and led his team into the arctic cold. They were heavily bundled in winter gear, but even growing up in Chicago hadn't fully prepared Blake for the bone chilling cold of the arctic. Through years of experience in Delta Force, Blake had been to hot-spots around the world, mostly in arid desserts and tropical jungles where the furnace heat of the climates were as deadly as snipers and IEDs. Blake cursed that the cold made him miss such places.
The only thing to be thankful for now was the moon. It seemed to shine brighter than usual, casting gentle light down on the gray rock and glassy snow, giving it all a silvery look. Blake shook the sentiment from his head, there'd be time to admire the natural beauty later. He knelt to scoop some of the un-earthly ground into a small plastic bag. His men Judson, Dodge, and Drake, did the same.
Once each squad member had sampled the strange dirt, Blake signaled for them to spread out, keep their eyes peeled, and follow him to the castle. They all nodded. Blake radioed Command that they had all sampled the ground and were making their way to the target. Command dutifully chimed for them to be cautious. It was hardly necessary, but Blake appreciated it and knew his men would too.
They made their way up the slope of crater in silence. Blake couldn't help but think back on the events of the past three hours. The nightmarish wave of darkness which blanketed the entire world, originating from the exact position he was walking on. How the ground charred and grayed in its wake and all buildings split and cracked like ancient ruins. And the nightmarish monstrosities that attacked out of nowhere. Some of these green-skinned monsters were humans, warped and corrupted by the wave of darkness.
The horror and chaos was rampant around the world. Cities were in flames, neighbors at each other's throats, creatures of darkness attacked everyone in sight! Every military force on the planet mobilized to defend their homelands from the overwhelming, otherworldly, enemy. Blake and his squad were at the Pentagon when it happened. Their briefing on yet another covert op in another hot-spot was put on permanent hold. They armed themselves and rushed to the defense of the White House, where a horde of the green monsters and possessed Americans was attacking.
Wave after wave of living nightmares charged, gnashing and slashing with tooth and nail. Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, secret service, even local metropolitan police came to the aid of the nation's commander-in-chief. Then when ammunition was nearly out, and all hope seemed lost, that brilliant flash from the night sky swept the planet. All the green monsters vanished like dust in the wind.
Those formerly possessed fell to the ground unconscious, some of them with bullet wounds moaned in agony. Widespread confusion about the nature of the possessions led to many tragic cases of police and soldiers shooting and killing the victims, even as they raised their hands in fear and confusion, insisting they did not know how they'd had gotten there. To the shock of all, the ground had returned to its natural state and all buildings split and cracked by the darkness had miraculously been repaired in the blink of an eye. Many thought they had lost their sanity, equally many thought the world had ended. Blake almost believed the end had come, but figured a certain Jewish carpenter-turned-preacher would have made an appearance by now if that was the case.
"Until the world ends, we assume it won't!" Blake had barked to the shocked defenders of the White House, taking command of the situation. The president had been so impressed with Blake, he'd assigned him and his squad to investigate the source of this chaos. It hadn't taken long for the Pentagon and NORAD to trace the insanity to its point of origin in Greenland.
Blake took in a deep, silent, breath as they emerged atop the crater and looked into the ancient, long abandoned castle. He and his men readied their rifles, pointing their mounted flashlights down the stone stairway into the bowels of the gothic fortress. "Command, we are entering the target now, over," Blake announced over the channel and all but ignored Command's acknowledgement as he signaled the men to follow him down into darkness.
They met no resistance as they ventured further into the castle. But they kept on guard, for fear of an ambush. It got slightly warmer further down, allowing them to uncover their faces. Sergeant Drake followed right behind Blake. Drake was a model Army sergeant, his tough no nonsense demeanor was appreciated by both officers and enlisted men. Though his unnatural calm in the chaos of combat was often unnerving. He hadn't even seemed too shocked during the calamity hours earlier. Drake eventually fished a chocolate bar out of his coat and casually munched it, while still gripping his rifle at the ready.
"How the hell can you eat at a time like this?" Judson gasped exasperated.
Drake turned to him with his habitual calm smirk. "Still breathing aren't I?" he asked smoothly. "Eating is for the living." Blake paused to look over his shoulder. He tensed at the look on Judson's face, the Texan private was on the verge of cracking. The tragic news of the destruction of his home town, Dallas, had hit him like a ton of bricks, but his stubbornness would allow him to show it immediately. But Blake had suspected the nervous twitches in his movement and voice over the past hour. Blake readied himself for what was to come, they needed this like they needed their blood to boil!
"WHY THE HELL ARE YOU SO DAMN CALM?" Judson shrieked. "I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'VE BEEN KEEPING UP ON CURRENT EVENTS, BUT WE WERE GETTING OUR ASSESS KICKED!"
"Lock it up, private!" Blake snapped, with both a softer and sharper tone. "If anything is down here, if they didn't know we were here before they sure do now! Are you trying to compromise us?"
"COMPROMISE! WE'VE BEEN COMPROMISED!" The hysterical soldier paused, seeming to grapple control of his voice. "All our weapons, all our training, all our experience and tech, and those THINGS almost destroyed us! We were out of ammo! We were almost wiped out back there, and WOULD HAVE BEEN if that freaking, Deus Ex Machina shit hadn't happened! We don't even know how or why it happened! But it's the only reason we are alive!" Judson's voice was cracking in and out of control. Blake was an instant away from stepping up and knocking him out with a solid punch. Then Drake put a firm, but gentle hand on Judson's shoulder. The soldier looked into his sergeant's eyes, seeming on the verge of tears.
"There's no tactical president here!" he said calmly, like it should have been obvious. "No soldiers in this man's army, or any other army, has ever faced a doomsday Armageddon ripped straight form John the apostle's worst nightmare. We did the best we could do, soldier." Judson went silent and his breathing calmed. Blake softened his fist, Drake never ceased to amaze him.
"Our best wasn't good enough though, was it sarge?" Judson asked, his voice trembling, but more consistent.
"Which is why we need to get to the bottom of this now, and we need you to do your job in order to do that," Drake said plainly. Judson swallowed hard.
"Yes, sergeant," he paused and looked at Blake. "Sir, is there any chance you could all ignore what I just did?" he asked, lowering his head in shame.
"First we finish the mission, then in the after-action report we'll see what gets forgotten and overlooked. Audio and visual footage from these cams go missing in the system all the time." Blake said sternly.
"Yes, sir!" Judson straightened, Drake released the man's shoulder from his grip. "Request permission to take point then."
Blake smiled. "Not granted, son. You know my policy; a leader who stays in the rear…"
"Takes it in the rear," the whole squad finished with a brief laugh. Blake glanced at each of his men, even private Dodge who had kept quiet the whole time, he looked a bit shaken by the confrontation, but he nodded firmly. Blake led them further down into the unknown.
The stairs came to an abrupt end as the castle walls gave way to a large cave cavern. The steep drop off was no more than ten feet, but what Blake saw at the bottom made him blink in astonishment. "Contact!" he softly snapped. "We've got four bodies down there, not moving." Drake moved in to jump down and investigate, but Blake beat him to it. He landed on his feet with a loud thud, the cold and solid rock had made for a painful landing, but he didn't care. His only thoughts on the bodies at his feet.
Drake snapped orders for Dodge and Judson to stay up top and cover them before jumping down to assist with the bodies. They all wore white uniforms that looked like they'd belonged in some Si-Fi space opera. Each was a teenaged boy, about high school aged, two with blonde hair; one longer and lighter than the other. One with long white hair and another with long red hair. Blake ungloved his hand and felt one of their necks, not expecting anything but frigid flesh, and was shocked to find not only some warmth, but a pulse! He put pressed his ear to the same boy's mouth and felt a faint breath.
"Holy shit we've got a live one here!" Blake blurted out thoughtlessly. He went on to check the other three, all still alive. How was it possible? The temperature alone should have killed them by now!
Blake radioed in to command, they needed no convincing, having seen and heard it all from the shoulder cams. Blake steeled himself at his next orders from command, Intel dug up some dirt and the four handsome faces below him were ringing some bells.
… Langley, VA
"I say we kill them, hand them over to the medical, gut them and study them. End the matter there!" Agent Tombs grunted in his chair. The elderly agent was gruff and often abrasive, but his wisdom may well have saved the country many times over, and he knew it.
Agent Lynch sighed as he sipped his coffee, somehow he knew the old fossil would say that. He halfway agreed with Tombs, the bastards had already been the cause of so much carnage and misery. But Lynch was smart enough to know four valuable pieces of commodity when he saw them, and he wasn't the only one.
"Those monsters showed us no mercy, why should we show them any?" Tombs went on.
"We've had this discussion earlier," Agent Hex broke in in her usual cool demeanor. "Our sources have only managed to put together some of the picture here. Whatever that sentient energy source that attacked us was, those boys were working with it, but there are too many questions left unanswered here. If they were with it, why weren't they wiped out with it? Our diagnostics of their bodies show they'd been exposed to immense amounts of that dark energy. As you may recall our scientists have determined that this energy wave sought to absorb all life on the planet through its minions. Their bodies had received even more exposure to the energy than those possessed by the dark energy. They might have been possessed or even temporarily absorbed by the entity. We'll have a more complete picture if we can revive them. Plus, in this rapidly changing world, four young men with abilities like theirs might prove useful tools."
Agent Lynch was always impressed with the agency's national security panel's only female member. Hex always had a cool demeanor, even when she was scolding someone. And for an older woman she sure hadn't lost her looks. The middle aged woman had grown up in Harlem, New York City, though surprisingly didn't share much of her neighbor's distain for their homeland. Names such as "oreo" were widely sneered at women like her in neighborhoods like the one she grew up in. Personally Lynch didn't understand how that word could be an insult. They were his favorite dessert.
"But how can we trust an enemy? What's more, an enemy with such immense power?" Tombs challenged her. Lynch smirked, who said anything about trusting them? Hex only smiled, somehow seeming both sweet and menacing. Lynch doubted Hex had any delusions about Tombs challenging her. A shallow person might have accused Tombs of racism. Tombs may have grown up in a darker age, but not an agent on the panel would have suspected his integrity. In fact a number of KKK members had gone missing in the 70s and 80s, and all on the panel had clearance to know they'd been "dealt with" in Agent Tombs signature style. The bodies never were recovered nor would they ever be. The descendant of a union soldier who'd barely survived Andersonville was not to be trifled with.
"No one is trusting anyone," she replied. "We keep them sedated until we have a plan for how to use them, then we wake them up, question them, and test their mettle. We keep them off the books and on a need to know basis. And if they are discovered we cut all ties and blame the carnage on them, declassify everything we know about their involvement in the event, everything we know they've done, including those brainwashing and kidnapping operations in Tokyo. We've got built-in deniability."
Tombs was silent, like the rest of the table, but nodded thoughtfully. "What do you say, Agent Graves?" Hex asked, turning to the chairman of the panel. The older gentleman puffed on his cigar casually. His chair was slightly elevated at the far end of the table, he appeared almost kingly. Everyone on the panel knew he'd been a rookie back during the Bay of Pigs operation, had done work in the field as well as behind a desk, both equally deadly to enemies of the state. Agent Graves was what every CIA agent aspired to be, including Lynch.
"I take it you have a plan, Agent Hex?" he asked. She smiled and turned to Lynch.
"Agent Lynch does," she explained then nodded for him to stand. Lynch cleared his throat and outlined the details of his plan. The panel listened intently, he could tell he was impressing Hex, but Graves and the others kept straight faces. Graves smiled as he finished.
"You have quite the imagination, Agent Lynch," the elderly agent said. "But I like it." Lynch repressed a sigh of relief. "Have we managed to gain anymore intell on the boys themselves?"
"I have, sir," Agent Web stood up, closer to Graves' side than most. Like Lynch, Web was a younger man. An up and coming agent with his own ambitions and aspirations, he was also a skilled hacker and commanded his own army of hackers. "My net-army has discovered a never-before-seen network. A completely separate internet from ours, the puzzling thing is, we've tracked its source to the moon." There was a pause of shocked silence in the room.
"Are we talking aliens here?" Lynch blurted out, and immediately regretted it. Thankfully no one laughed or told him to shut up.
"Possibly," Web went on. "And to add to the puzzle, we calculate that it has been up and running long before the event. My net-army has only just begun to get inside, but I just received word on my tablet that they've uncovered visual records and those boys are in it."
Web turned to the plasma screen on the wall and thumbed the remote control. The screen began showing one of the visuals taken from this alien network. It was of the four boys standing together in their white uniforms. Lynch smirked that they looked like they were dressed up for comic con.
Web had even deciphered their names. Jadeite, Nephrite, Zoisite, and Kunzite. These were the only details Web had to offer at the time. But Lynch was certain he'd be getting to know them much more intimately soon. He and the rest of the panel also weren't entirely sure how those mysterious girls appearing in Tokyo factored into all this. The preening princesses were running around the city fighting the minions of the entity long before the agency had gotten wind of it. What was the connection? Lynch couldn't wait to find out and now he wouldn't have to.