Prologue:
Queen Serenity relaxed on the medical bed as the medical scanner made a few passes before folding itself into its standby configuration. She was full of hope: her belly was still perfectly flat, but she knew through her magic that a spark of life had taken root inside of her, and later by analysis that she was carrying at least three children. Her king might be away on a diplomatic mission, but their last night together, a month ago, seemed to have done the trick.
A particular kind of trick that she had delayed for nearly a thousand years.
A door opened. The queen opened her eyes and saw the palace's head doctor walk her way with a radiant smile.
"Good news, my queen." – Said the old man. – "The scans are conclusive: that blastula did separate, and instead of three, you will have four babies."
The queen felt thrilled: the magic in her family line dictated that a female of her blood could only become pregnant whenever she didn't have a living heir, and not a single multiple birth had happened in the thousand and fifty years since a minor Countess led her people to depose a despot Queen, only to be raised a Queen by the people.
Still, a multiple pregnancy presented great issues when it came on a ruling House, particularly one like the ruling House of the entire Sol System. How would she be able to keep her daughters from fighting for her throne? She would need time to think…
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16 years, 7 months and 14 days later:
Queen Serenity sat down on her throne as she watched the happenings at the sixteenth birthday Ball for her four princesses. Quicksilver was off to the side chatting away with some of the artificers from her sigil planet, Mercury. Obsidian was comparing notes on fire magic with some classmates, and the identical twins Pearl and Amber were sitting at a table with Prince Endymion from Terra and taking turns giving him quick pecks on the lips. The queen considered that to be cute, as those two girls had always shared everything and thus considered it completely natural to court the same boy. Her only worry were those quick glances her other two princesses gave the trio whenever they thought nobody would notice: she knew they were in love with the prince as well, but didn't want to either give strife to their own sisters or challenge the law topping bigamy as potential group marriages.
For a moment she wondered how long it would have taken for Amber and Pearl to notice the huge loopholes she had left on the rules of engagement she had laid between them and their boyfriend: her saying of 'remain clothed until you two and him are of age' could be interpreted as 'slip his hands under your skirts', 'slip your hands into his pants', 'rub each others fully clothed', 'have a private birthday party after your eighteenth birthday ball' or even 'wear crotch-less panties and have him open his zipper'. However, such musings would be irrelevant after this day: her four daughters would change, she would make them happy and along the way she would have some fun.
She tapped her glass, and the ball quickly wound to a standstill. The guard, having been previously warned, made a long corridor in front of her throne. Her daughters and the prince of Terra already knew what to do, so they moved through the crowd to emerge and stand gracefully on the opposite end of the human corridor.
The queen waited a few more moments, creating anticipation, before she opened her lips.
"I call you forward, Quicksilver of Mercury, Amber of Venus, Obsidian of Mars and Pearl of Oceanus, my princesses. You are also wanted before me, Endymion of Terra."
Slowly, the five royals made way to her. When they all reached the foot of the dais of the throne, they kneeled down in unison and stayed down. The queen made the customary gestures that showed her superiority, but inwardly sighed: if these weren't such formal affairs, she would not even have the dais, let alone the grovelling.
Damned formalities: they had served well their purpose during the formation of her empire, but from the last couple of centuries they had become such a drag…
Keeping her solemn act, she spoke up.
"Endymion of Terra, it is of my understanding that you seriously court two of my princesses. Am I wrong?"
"It is correct, your highness." – He replied, still not looking up.
"However, it has come to my attention that you are swooned upon not only by the two that you have showed interest in, but also by my other two princesses." – These two of then looked up from their grovelling positions, uncertain expressions on their faces. – "As things are, I have to take steps in order to prevent a rift between my princesses. I have decided, in hopes to preserve the peace between them, to deny you further access to them as they are right now."
The two other princesses looked up, to join the first two in expressions of horror. Prince Endymion seemed composed, but self-loathing seeped off his skin in waves.
"Now, my princesses, I must insure your future happiness. To do so, I will now have you sit on my throne."- The queen rose from her throne and stepped to stand beside it. – "The experience of the highest chair should enlighten on my wisdom. Besides, once you have seated together, I should be able to announce my Heir, an act that I have postponed for as long as you have been alive."
Some muttering had raised on the throne room a minute since, but it all stopped on her promise: sixteen years had gone by, her daughters where nearly adults, and the Queen had always refused to officially name a heir. She had even birthed them through a full-cut Caesarean section so there wouldn't be a first-born.
The four princesses stepped up the dais and, after some cluttering in front of the throne, jammed themselves together on it. The queen commended her deviousness for the numbness she had created around: Obsidian and Quicksilver would not make comments, but her other two daughters would normally whine until their every little comfort was met.
"Settle down." – the queen said. – "I will wait another minute."
About ten seconds passed, and some more muttering began anew. The girls themselves had even begun fidgeting from their obviously uncomfortable sitting arrangement. But then Obsidian, always so attuned with detecting irregularities, stretched a hand into a yet unseen bubble of magic surrounding the throne like a cocoon. Her touches made the field shine slightly in a reddish glow, faint but still clear enough for people to follow how the bubble shrank steadily on the princesses. After about twenty more seconds the field was small enough to start moulding to the skins of the girls, which had clearly frightened Amber and Pearl, the two on top.
The queen, spotting this, stepped in front of the throne and knelt down. Enough gasps came from this: Serenity the Overlord, who had never ever knelt in front of anybody in the seven hundred years it had taken her to create a stellar empire starting from a rocket-load of refugees escaping tyrants on Earth, was now knelt in front of her own throne.
She knew she would stun them, so she spoke soothingly.
"Welcome this magic, my daughters. Just relax and let it happen."
Shakily, but her girls nodded one by one. She smiled at them before putting a hand forward and touching the field, making it shine blindingly. Then she pulled back her hand, stood up again and resumed her standing position by her own throne.
After roughly thirty more seconds of waiting, the bright field dissolved and people could once again look at the princesses. Or ratter princess, as the throne was currently holding a single occupant: a subtle mix of the three different facial types of the four girls, and a dark green hair held up in Pearl's buns while still keeping the red bow that princess Amber favoured so much. Their dresses had seamlessly mixed, too: their aquamarine, silver, scarlet and bronze had turned to pearlescent white and their different styles had mixed into strapless and full-length, which looked regal even when it technically was a sundress. For the face of the girl you could see she was confused, looking like she didn't know how to move a single muscle of her body. Before she had even tried to move, her mother seized the moment to wave at the muttering assembly and quiet them down. With a royal tone and a hand on the girl's shoulder, she declaimed.
"Hear me now and hear me well, daughter: Your birthright is now properly stamped with your name. Now rise and face your people, Princess Serenity of Luna, Childe of the House of the Moon and Heir to the Silver Millennium Empire!"
The girl looked with uncertainty up to her mother, who gave her the barest nod as encouragement. The girl stood up slowly from the throne, and stepped forward.
"Silver Millennium, you have a heir!" – the mother, now with a discreet smile, bellowed from behind her daughter. The audience took a few second to react, but soon had raised the few and scattered applauses into a boisterous clamour.
Only loud enough for her daughter to hear, the Queen spoke a few reassuring words: "It will take a few days for the magic to settle, but then the magic will become completely voluntary. You'll be able to go back and forth all you want."
The queen enjoyed to watch how her daughter slowly warmed up and eventually began really basking on the people's cheering. She gave her a few more minutes before she came around her and climbed a couple of steps down the dais. At that point the audience noted her once again and quickly hushed down to silence.
Once the noise wound into silence, the Queen spoke up once again.
"Now hear me, Prince Endymion of Terra: you are a fine man with sincere love in your heart. I consider that my Heir only deserves the best, and she has decided that the best is you. I allow you to court her, and as soon as you and her turn twenty-one I should announce your mutual engagement. That is…" – the Queen turned up to her daughter. – "… If both you and her are and remain willing."
"Yes!" – the princess screamed excitedly, unknowingly saying her first word. Then she ran down the dais and jumped on Endymion's arms and lips, who was quite stunned by everything that had happened and took a second before reacting and starting to give back into the kiss.
The queen retained her current position for a few more seconds. She knew that this would be the most intense (so far) kiss that the kids had shared, and they would all look forward to future repetitions. Not to forget, this kiss was largely intensified by Obsidian's and Quicksilver's longing.
The princess (-es) and the prince remained connected like this for a minute, before something happened. The princess seemed to suddenly gag before she began outright convulsing on the grasp of a stunned Endymion. At about the same time, random people around the party began showing all kinds of symptoms, from vomiting to sudden fainting.
The Queen noted these things and rushed down the dais to her fused daughters. Even before touching them, she could feel the problem: one of their four planetary manna taps, the one for Oceanus, had gone into complete disarray. Looking around she noted that every one of the currently unwell attendees also hailed from Oceanus. She touched the forehead of her daughter and felt the hole in one of the four taps seeping away the production of the other three. A wider search made her notice Endymion's own chaotic tap: it seemed to mute the tremors like they weren't there.
For her daughters' health, the cure seemed ironic: rub his aura on theirs, by means of rubbing their currently single body on his.
She closed to be close to his ear: she didn't want more people than necessary to know this.
"Endymion." – She said into his ear, calling his attention away from the limp girl. – "Destiny tests me now as a mother and you as a future husband. Go into your personal chambers; unrobe your body and theirs, lay with them on your bed and keep as much of your body as you could possibly keep in contact with theirs. They should come out of shock after a few minutes and feel… concupiscent." – She paused for a second, while his eyes bulged. – "Yes, my son, I'm asking you to reciprocate them at this point, and to copulate with their single body as soon as they invite you. Remember that Pearl's life could be forfeit any moment you stop touching them. Now, you should go." – She said, finishing with a second's silence before giving a light shove on Endymion's shoulder. Endymion stood there motionless for a second longer before blinking, nodding at the queen and turning to the nearest door.
Seeing her soon-to-be son-in-law carry away her currently singular daughters, the Queen ran back up the dais, landed on the throne and pressed a hidden switch on it, making a large and intricate keyboard unfold from several hidden panels on the throne and be arrayed around her. At the same time, five panoramic, holographic screens materialized themselves hovering around the dais in a semicircular configuration, perfect for the audience to see them.
At the moment all of them were blank, so the queen began typing furiously and making them cycle information. Quickly the centre one displayed a blue jewel in a star field captioned as 'Oceanus from Mars, three light minutes from object'; the one to its left showed the same jewel, half eclipsed, captioned 'Oceanus from Jupiter, five light minutes from object'; the three remaining screens showed noting but static and captions saying 'Oceanus telemetry'.
The queen already suspected what had happened, but hoped against hope to be wrong. She pushed away her keyboard (which immediately folded back into the throne), pulled out of ether a pair of highly ornate cybernetic gloves, pulled them on and began making rapid hand gestures at the distant screens.
Halfway through her gestures, several yellow turrets popped from the roof of the dance hall and went off. The palace's public announcement system began announcing in a computerized monotone:
"General Yellow Alert has been declared, applicable to all Guard and Military personnel. All the personnel to their duty stations; all guests and the health personnel is to report to the Great Hall immediately." – The message began repeating from there.
When people's attention returned to the dais, the queen was already controlling five more screens, which were nothing more than copies of the centre screen, each one properly captioned as being progressively delayed five seconds from the previous.
The crowd once again went silent, watching in rapt attention the centre screen. Many a scream was heard: the centre of the planet's disk developed a pimple of red light, which then began shuffling colorations until it became an angry blue-white and disappeared back into the planet. A few seconds passed without any further happenings, until the planet seemed to inflate before it went up in plasma.
The queen saw the entire planet's history flash by her eyes: how she led the very first pioneering expedition into the frozen planet four hundred and fifty three years ago, how she established the very first settlement, how she lead the construction of the first twenty four Sea-Urchin Class terraforming reactors (simplistic fusion-powered water heaters), how the frozen wasteland slowly melted into a world-spanning ocean…
She shook her head and tried to focus back into the situation. Then, she made a dismissive gesture and the ten screens flew far from the dais, almost to the middle of the hall. She pulled back the one depicting the Jovian point of view and stretched it up until the image of the planet filled the quite generous space that this hall had between ceiling and floor.
Once again, silence made presence, until somebody shouted "There!" and the room went once again into turmoil. A bluish spark flew from space into the dark side of the planet and disappeared into it. Nothing happened for a whole minute, until the whole planet blew apart.
To the queen, things were now clear: it had been a planet-piercer missile travelling at a mid-C fractional speed, loaded with an antimatter-powered iron core point-warmer to act as a starter, joined by a gravity-assisted plasma rain device so a reaction of silicon fusion could take place in the deep mantle and make the planet blow from the inside. Furthermore, the HQ and Academy of Pearlescent City and around sixty-five-percent of her abyss-borne war fleet were now little more than plasma, along with seventy million civilians. Her remaining Navy was dispersed from close solar orbit all the way to extra-Plutonian patrol. Moreover, even as low as her military resources where at the moment, she would need to divert a good portion on search-and-rescue and to protect the Jovian cloud-cities from the coming asteroid rain.
She once again made the screen fly away and stood up. Silence didn't quite return, but enough people stopped to watch their queen.
She made a simple motion: she slowly extended her gloved hands to her sides, and ever so slowly brought them around her own neck. She held this position for a few seconds, until the yellow turrets turned red and angry air-raid sirens began being heard in the distance. The PA system interrupted its announcement and changed it: "Red Alert: the Empire is at risk. Full martial law will be established in two hours."
The assembly dissolved into hysterics at that point.
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Nine thousand, five hundred and eight years, eight months, twenty-three days, two hours and fourteen minutes later:
Simultaneously, two sets of blue eyes opened on a dark bedroom. The girls they belonged to had both been fast asleep just a moment ago, yet both were now wide awake, even if it was the middle of the night and there had been not a single external stimulus. The girls instinctively sought each other, so Minako, the one sleeping on the upper bunk, quickly slinked down and entered the bed of her welcoming sister.
"That dream again?" Asked Usagi, as she closed her covers again.
"Right. You too?" Minako replied, as she settled by her sister.
Usagi nodded, unseen in the darkness but very clear with both huddled together face down under the comforter.
"We were sitting with a boy in a table at a ball…" – Usagi said.
"…And we were both… well…"
"Yes, I know." – Usagi provided for her sister, and both blushed furiously. After a few seconds of silence, Usagi spoke again.
"Then the queen called us, two other girls and the boy forward, fused us girls and we… well…"
"… Jumped back on the boy's arms."- Minako complemented.
The girls stopped for a couple of seconds while their blushes came down.
"Then I get a terrible pain like from behind my eyes…" – Usagi opened.
"…While the echo of your pain paralyzes me…" – Minako continued.
"…And we wake up simultaneously." – Usagi closed.
Minako nodded and the two girls sighed together.
"I wish we could learn what these weird dreams mean." – Minako mentioned. – "Artemis says they could be memories from the Moon Kingdom, but the dream is still too fussy!"
"The language is weird, too." –Usagi added. – "We already found out that two of the names of the girls means 'Pearl' and 'Amber' in old Sanskrit, but that's pretty much as far as we've gotten."
"I still say that one of the other sounds like the Sanskrit word for volcanic rock." – Minako interposed.
"As do I, but we need better evidence than our hunch. We've already discussed we believe the fourth one to mean something like 'runny metal', but have so far had no single shred of its origin."
"Right." Minako said.
Usagi was opening her mouth to continue speaking, but stopped when she felt a slight tremor on the bed near her feet. Expectably, the twins felt the slight points of pressure caused by the cat walking over the comforter covering them, to drop down and make himself comfortable between the shoulders of the twins. After a few seconds and a sigh, the cat spoke.
"That dream again, girls?" – He asked. Then began speaking without waiting for an answer. – "Well, anything new to it?"
The girls shook their heads slightly.
"Then sleep, ladies. Last thing we need is to run late to school, don't you think?"
"Yeah, Artemis," – drawled Minako.
"We wouldn't want that, right?" – spoke Usagi.
"Because then 'we' wouldn't have the girls' computer to surf pornography, right?" commented Minako.
The cat began fidgeting at that. – "You know that was a Trojan and a virus, girls! You wouldn't trust me with you at all times if I was a pervert, would you?"
The girls waited a few seconds for tension before answering.
"Well…" – Usagi opened.
"We might one day grow to be perverts ourselves." – Minako closed.
"What…?" – Artemis managed to get out, before his footing went up in smoke: the girls had suddenly, in a quick movement, managed to roll the top of the comforter on him, then put pressure on it so he could not escape. Minako then fished him from it and embraced him firmly onto her developing bosom, while Usagi straightened the bed back to normal. The twins then fell back to bed, and after being covered again by their sheets, firmly embraced each other around the helpless Artemis.
"Good night, sis" – they exchanged one after the other. Then to their bosoms, they spoke in unison.
"Good night, Love-kitty."
Without further ado, the girls placed their heads on the pillow and were asleep within five minutes.
Artemis sighed after being sure that his two charges were indeed asleep. Minako and Usagi Amino were the thirteen year old twin daughters of Tetsuo Amino, Japanese diplomatic aide and Frey Oppenheimer, German-born Japanese citizen and translator for the embassy. The family currently lived in a small Londoner flat owned by the Japanese embassy and the parents were currently halfway through a two-year assignment, after which they would return at least for two or three more years in Tokyo before once again being given a foreign assignment. His charges were at the moment fighting minor magic-augmented thugs around London, which he could only hope would account as training for the war that would await them back in Japan, along with the tasks of finding the remaining Sailor Scouts and the Imperial Princess.
Artemis also considered something else: whatever it was, he knew there was something purely wrong with the sole concept of the existence of Sailor M. This nagging feeling didn't leave him and had already made him call Usagi 'Sailor O' a couple of times, even if he didn't know what would the '0' stand for.
Further musings were cut short for Artemis: he knew that Minako usually slept facing down and Usagi usually slept facing up, so it should have been no surprise to him when the girls rolled over and assumed those positions without even loosening their embrace. Now he was caught well, considering that the girls usually didn't move much while they slept and still had a load of homework on the bust department.