Disclaimer: Sailor Moon, the Sailor Moon universe, and all associated characters are owned by Naoko Takeuchi, Kodansha publishing, and Toei Animation. I do not claim the rights to any of these characters or properties. I am not recieving any compensation for writing this story.

Author's Note: This story is inspired by a post made by Frizzy on her tumblr, sailorfailures. Frizzy one day wants to make a Sailor Moon web-series set in Australia with Mina(ko) as the main character and the Death Busters and Black Moon family working together as the villians. I have borrowed these ideas from her. If you haven't, I highly recommend checking out Sailorfailures. It's a great blog. Other than that, the plot elements come from me re-working things from various Sailor Moon canons. Spoilers thourgh S (both the anime and manga), all of Code Name Sailor V, PGSM, and the second stage of the Sailor Moon musicals.

Act 0

Professor Tomoe couldn't believe what was happening. Since his break through studying black holes—the discovery that gravitational fields could be strong enough to actually bend and redirect energy which became dark matter, meaning virtually the entire universe was made up of potential energy—he'd been working almost exclusively on the problem of time travel.

His colleagues had petitioned and had him expelled from the Imperial Science Institute, but they hadn't believed in his work on black holes either until he'd proven his hypothesis. This time they said opening a potential worm hole was dangerous, but what great scientific mind had ever played it safe? It infuriated him that the others couldn't see it. Obviously, something had to compress matter enough to cause the Big Bang. What could be capable of that but a super massive black hole? A black hole of that magnitude could easily have warped and compressed enough energy to fill the Milky Way with dark matter, not to mention the energy that was released in the explosion itself.

He'd strove for years to get the grant from the Netherlands to buy the parts for a very small hadron collider. He'd had to build his own technical academy to finance his lab on the tuition fees, but it had all been worth it for this moment.

He watched in awe, face showing more delight than the day his only daughter had been born. The colored lines on the computer screen were spiking and very slowly spinning into a tiny circular outline. A hole was opening between dimensions. A hole was opening in time.

Tomoe couldn't be the only witness to this momentous event. He rushed to the intercom and hit the button for the family room. "Keiko!" He called, voice brimming on the hysterical with joy, "Hurry to the lab and bring Hotaru! She needs to be able to tell this story one day! I've done it, Keiko! I've done it!"

"Dear, I—" Keiko tried to answer, but the professor had already cut the volume. She stared at the intercom. This must be really big. Souiichi never wanted anyone in the lab. She picked up Hotaru, and with the little girl, made her way downstairs.

"Souichi, what have you done exactly?" Keiko asked as she pushed open the heavy white door.

Professor Tomoe kissed his wife and spun his daughter through the air. "I've made a worm hole! I've proven time travel! I've opened a space between dimensions!" He pulled them over to several monitors. "You can't see it, but look here," he pointed to the swirling circle on the screens. It was better defined than it had been seconds ago. "It's there! There in the centrifuge!"

Keiko turned to look at the seven foot spinning metal hoop. "Darling, I believe you…but is this proof?"

"That math proves it, Keiko! The math!" Professor Tomoe said back excitedly.

"Can you send something through it?"

"Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Who knows what's on the other side or even what's inside it. Untold damage could be done by sticking things through a hole in space-time. The practical applications will take several more years of work."

Keiko nodded. She was a pharmacologist. Good, practical, money making science, but never the less, she was proud of her husband. She had to admit, this was something that would definitely make history. She slipped her arm around his back, and he wrapped his around her waist.

He'd done it.

Then his lab exploded.

Tick

This must be what pain feels like, Professor Tomoe thought, this is the kind of pain war survivors talk about. He tried to open his eyes, but only one obeyed. He was covered in something warm and sticky and metallic. Blood, the thought, I'm covered in blood, only there's no way I could have lost this much blood and be conscious. The world was slowly forming out of blurs and vague shapes and he realized he was looking up at the sky. He'd been in his basement. How was he looking at the sky? It took him three tries to raise his head. When he finally did, he realized a piece of what used to be the ceiling was sticking out of his leg.

Then he remembered the blood. All that blood that couldn't possibly be all his. He started to scream.

Professor Tomoe couldn't stand but he began dragging himself around the debris the best he could. His hands were quickly becoming cut and splintered messes and moving hurt more than staying still and he hadn't thought that was possible, but that wasn't what was important. "Keiko! Hotaru!" He yelled, voice hoarse with desperation.

Less than a meter away from him, under a beam and a huge sheet of plaster, he saw blood pooling. It felt like it took him a week to push it aside, and when he had, he wished it were back in place.

If he didn't know what was below the sheet used to be Keiko, he would never have been able to tell. She was facing down and her back had been crushed. One arm was missing and the side of her head was open. Grey matter flecked everything around the body. Her skin looked burned. He wondered if his was too. He started to cry.

Then something beneath what used to be Keiko moved and he was very, very sick. Hotaru. He repeated the name over and over to give him the strength to move the ruined body. He did not want to see what used to be Keiko's face.

Hotaru was breathing. Barely. Her arms and legs were twisted into angles human limbs should not form. She was horribly bruised, but she was breathing.

"Hotaru, baby, please," Professor Tomoe sobbed not knowing what to do. She was five years old.

"You created a rip in the Great Fabric. You are lucky it was miniscule or the damage could have been catastrophic. You did this, but you can save her," a deep voice said.

Professor Tomoe whipped his head toward the sound so quickly he was almost sick again. What appeared to be a shadow clocked in a black robe floated near where the centrifuge had once been. "Just tell me how," he pleaded, so far past caring who or what the thing was.

"If you make a deal with me, I will grant her the power to live. It will not heal her body, but she will not die."

"Do it. Anything. Please."

"There are laws of exchange. I cannot do this for free or it will throw the universe out of balance. To save her, I must imbed within your daughter the Malific Black Crystal, an unparalleled power source. I will do this if you will help me save my family."

"Yes. Yes. Just save her," Professor Tomoe chocked out.

The figure floated over to Hotaru's tiny, crumpled body and laid it's gnarled, shadowy hands on her chest. After several long moments, her breath deepened, then labored, then evened out again. Very slowly, her eyes opened.

"Papa, it hurts," she said in a very weak voice as tears ran down her face.

"Oh, my darling, my baby, Hotaru," Professor Tomoe pressed his face to her hair. When he'd regained some measure of control over himself he looked up at the shadow again. "And my wife?"

"She is dead. I can do nothing for her. However, there are ways to recreate her…" The shadow raised its hands and three people stepped out from the wreckage from around the centrifuge. They each had a curved black shape on their foreheads. "You may call me Wise Man and these are my disciples. We will help you now, and then, Good Doctor, you and I will have a very long and rewarding talk."