Earth had lost the final battle, and now it was time to feed the Doom Tree with some Sailor Suited fertilizer. The five Sailor Soldiers were sprawled in defeat at the base of the Tree, each on her back or curled on her side. The ground between its roots had been turned into a human garden, with one section allotted for each princess. They were all on humble display with large throbbing pitcher plants sealed completely over their heads and dense vegetation growing around their bodies. They were being prepared for wonderful evolution.
Although the heroines were physically exhausted and their magic was drained from the epic battle, their bodies were still in constant motion. They slowly writhed beside one another with leaves sticking to the twinkling sweat on their legs and soft grass tickling their arms. They moved clumsily and lethargically, the way a woman might roll in her bed as she dreamed, or the way an unborn infant occasionally stirs in the womb.
Alan and Anne served as the gardeners in this ultimate and decisive effort to rid the universe of the already weakened Sailor Soldiers. Mars had been the most stubborn of the group when the pitcher plant first fixed itself around her head, while Mercury had been the most docile. People had different qualities and temperaments just like plants, and the Sailor Soldiers required different amounts of attention before they were all resting in relative ease at the base of the Doom Tree. By this point, no one was making any serious attempt to fight out of their predicament and the only way to tell Moon apart from Venus, Venus apart from Jupiter, Mercury apart from Moon and the like was by the colors of their Sailor uniforms and the long hair hanging out some of the pitchers. It was a slumber party fit for the apocalypse.
The foliage covering the ground simply conformed around Scouts' shapes like earthy mattresses and never tried to bind them down. The bulbous green pitchers covering their heads were little more than expanding and contracting ventilation sacs that regulated the oxygen in their bodies and painlessly recorded their brainwaves in tiny bioelectrical pulses. The plants could have been pushed off with little resistance. The only thing keeping the Scouts from sitting up and escaping their dirt beds was the soft melody Alan played on his pan flute as he sat just above them on the Tree's largest root. In any other situation, he would have used his flute to play a blaring sequence notes that energized one of his demonic creations, or play a horrible shrill noise rendering the Tree's enemies deaf. But for this occasion, he played smooth velvet in musical form. The song was slow, soft, and almost inaudible, keeping the fallen heroines sedated like a lullaby. Rest easy, little Sailor Senshis. Tommy isn't going to summon the Dragonzord tonight.
Anne was confidently walking between the Doom Tree's gargantuan roots and tending the five plots in the garden. She made sure none of the Scouts became too tangled in the vines growing around them, checking to see if the airways along their necks were always free and they never became too uncomfortable. She would gently nudge the Scouts apart if two or three of them squirmed too closer together in their hazy stupor. She was always checking they were all a safe distance apart so their body temperatures never rose too sharply in the humid brush.
Each time she visited another Scout, Anne offered her a light kiss on the front of the pitcher plant engulfing her head or a friendly pat on the hip. She whispered sympathetic condolences to each one for trying so hard to protect her world, trying to cheer her up and help her look forward to her new life. Even when Anne was checking on Sailor Moon, her most hated enemy, she was polite and encouraging. The Scouts were too dazed to offer any of their responses, other than occasional weak muffled moans.
At one point, Anne boldly cupped her hand straight over Mars's left breast and softly pushed inward to feel her heart, curious to see if Mars's blood ran hotter than everyone else's like she had always proclaimed. It was Anne's last chance to assess Mars's body while it was still in its current state, and she didn't hesitate to act on it. It turned out Mars's pulse was no warmer than any of the other Scouts', but it was cute how she reacted by wiggling her hips in her shimmering ruby miniskirt for a second before giving up and drifting back into quasi-sleep. Anne cheerfully praised her for being a good Sailor Scout and letting the Doom Tree have complete control of her body.
The sight at the base of the Tree was rather easy on the eyes. Colorful glimmering ribbons rested next to twisted reeds of moist grass. Shining white silk stretched over five elegant busts rose and fell in rhythm with leaves swinging on hanging vines. The pitcher plants engulfing the Sailor Soldiers' heads took the uncomfortably human aspect out of the scene, letting them shine as what they were: a charming arrangement of shapely organic forms decorated in formfitting silk and rainbow-colored satin accessories flourishing on the soil beside curved leaves and lush vines. Their Sailor Suits shimmered like tree leaves in morning dew.
Flora and fauna adorned the forest floor together in a single harmonious garden. Jupiter's dark green costume looked especially at home clustered in the viridian foliage. The twigs catching on her skirt caused the back of the pleated gleaming fabric to hike slightly higher as she drowsily struggled to change positions, revealing a just small peek at her gorgeous lower rear physique. Alan and Anne may have been aliens from galaxies away, but they had a stronger appreciation of the Earth's natural beauty than the Earth's own guardians.
Sailor Soldier anatomies mingled perfectly together next to thriving plant anatomies. The distinction between them practically faded completely when they were so close together and left on such exquisite display. It set the stage for putting all of the foolish scientific semantics aside and allowing the two equally beautiful forms of life to become one in the same. All that pink and ivory flesh writhing between the roots of the Doom Tree was meant to be sculpted out of soft emerald. Anne and Alan were already envisioning how every quaint corner and lively contour would look in their minds. Alan played his flute more slowly and quietly to make sure nothing was going to stop it from happening.
But to some remote degree, the Scouts had not succumbed completely to sleep and were vaguely conscious of what was happening around them. They could only guess what fates awaited the five of them. In the numb recesses of her musically-sedated mind, Mercury was the most fretful in the group. Her photographic memory was filled with science book illustrations and flickering computer screen photographs showing cutaway diagrams of plants with all the miraculous organs working together. She had a special interest in botany, but that was only from a safe distance where she was a passive observer and not participating as one of the organ components. She wasn't a plant and the Doom Tree wasn't a native species to Earth, but she more than anyone else on the team had some distant and terrified inklings of what function they had been reduced to in the Tree's complex dendrological system. The total defeat rapidly approaching them wasn't going to be a dignified one. But, mercifully, none of them could gather enough of their senses to be aware of it.
The Doom Tree's roots began to rustle through the dirt, signaling it had captured enough of each Sailor Soldier's delicate thoughtstuff in its ancient extraterrestrial cells and now it was hungry for their substantive meatstuff that had been laid out so nicely at its base. Alan and Anne climbed higher on its trunk so they were a safe distance away from the ground.
The Tree's roots lifted up and cast a giant shadow over the conquered, writhing, tiredly moaning Sailor Soldiers. A soft hissing sound brushed over the foliage on the ground as the Tree began releasing its foaming acidic sap.
A radiant yellow-amber pond rose inch by inch around the incapacitated Scouts. The roots looming over them descended slowly and quietly like giant mossy blankets just as the heroines began to sizzle and steam. Their bodies and battle dresses peacefully dissolved in complete privacy as the Doom Tree's root system flattened over them.
A few days later, five large vibrant green buds started growing on the branches of the Tree. The insides of the tightly wound buds pulsed and burbled with flowing nutrients, the sounds of life coming to fruition. A few days after that, the buds blossomed.
Alan and Anne watched patiently as a group of exotic new life forms rose out the branches and made their way down toward the base of the Doom Tree—the site of their original demise. The five black silhouettes shook the sugary fluids out of their hair and stretched their cramped muscles.
They were graceful in their mannerisms and they acted completely comfortable with their bodies. All of them, aside from one with thorny branches spiraling down her long pigtails, who stumbled a bit on her new bare feet. She needed the help of the tallest and most sturdily-grown one in the group to hold her shoulders and help her regain her balance. The taller figure had willow vines knotted in her ponytail.
The silhouettes walked out from the gloomy shade of the Doom Tree and into the strange alien light that hung over the entire sky. The Sailor Scouts had been reincarnated as indigenous members of the same race as Alan and Anne. They had light turquoise skin and pale pastel-colored hair with long elven ears poking out. They had inherited all of the physical traits of their former selves, along with most of their basic personality quirks. But something had been lost in transynthesis. The Doom Tree had failed to copy the chemical signals in their brains that made them identify with humanity and motivated them to be courageous guardian angels of Earth. It had filled in the blanks with new impulses that convinced the Scouts to devote themselves to the Tree and aid in its conquest of the planet.
The result was five lovely creatures made entirely of plant flesh and foliage. Densely woven vines took the place of silk unitards, while clusters of verdant leaves twinkling with moisture took the place of satin ribbons and skirts. Grassy wreaths grew around their foreheads to replace their metal tiaras. Each Senshi was essentially naked and wrapped in an all-natural mockery of her Sailor Fuku. A little flower would blossom here and there on their bodies to help them stay color-coordinated.
The quintet of beautiful space dryads giggled quietly to one another before glancing toward the master gardeners who had raised them.
"What do you think, Alan?" Anne asked with her hand tucked under her chin in thought. "Do you think they came out nice? Or should we throw them out and look for some other seeds to plant?"
"Look at them, Anne," Alan said with pride. "The Doom Tree grew the best fruit we could have hoped for. I say we let them join us."
"So, who do we get to mulch up first?" Sorbus Moon asked with an equally playful and sinister grin.
Author's note: No tears. Only chlorophyll now.
Author's note 2: The difference between this story where Donald Sutherland-esque things happen to the Sailor Senshis and that other thing I wrote where Donald Sutherland-esque things happen to the Sailor Senshis is that in the other thing, they all get turned into flower girls. In this story, they get turned into deciduous arbor girls with some flower hereditary genes added in. Totally different scenarios.
That, and the wardrobe design. In this one I was going for a shinier, more showy take on their costumes, like their Sera Myu designs or those Crystal Figuarts Zero statues. In that other story I just pictured them wearing their plain TV costumes.