Chapter 9
Michiru, dressed in an emerald dress given to her by Chronos, was standing in front of a mirror, looking at herself. New clothes appealed to her and thanks to that she forgot about the captivity for a brief lapse. When she made sure that she was looking good in the dress, she checked all corners of the room in which she lived to find some weakness, anything that she could use against Chronos. She did it in a vain again. She looked out of the window noticing new guests arriving at the desert-like land. The ball of light whirling chaotically appeared on the horizon and two beings looking like jellyfish emerged from it and then majestically sailed in the air to the main building of the stone castle. When the girl left the window, servant of grey haired man turned up in her room. Headless being, looking like a flying jacket on the stand, approached her.
"I expect you in front of the castle. Today, I will grant your request and I will explain everything to you." The voice of Chronos got out of the inner parts of the strange creature.
Michiru decided to go to the man. She found him outside, talking to a gloomy man who was holding some young girl on a chain. Seeing Neptune, Chronos left the guest showing him one of stone buildings, probably the one in which the one was supposed to stay.
"You are looking wonderful." He said coming up to the girl. Michiru looked at him with a cold look.
"I will show you really what the Golden Millennium was. I will demonstrate you how the real world should be." He announced smiling. Then he asked Neptune to come off with him into the place inside the most private part of the desert stronghold.
Chronos and Michiru came into a huge, empty chamber made of gleaming crystal. The girl found acoustics of the room interesting, it was letting her hear her breath and the rustle of hair.
"Let me demonstrate you all that I told you about." The grey haired man said. He closed his eyes tapping the floor of the room with his walking stick. In the same moment, the scenery around the girl changed abruptly. Michiru realized that she had moved to the hilltop covered with green grass. The pleasant wind shook her hair, her skin received a warmth of rays of the noonday sun, and stalks gently tickled her legs. Girl turned around, noticing Chronos standing by her.
"Look." The man whispered pointing at the object lying in the distance. Michiru looked at the large metropolis stretching out from the hill, until the horizon. Bright towers, resembling gigantic crystal, connected with hundreds of hung bridges towered over other, less impressive buildings. Contradicting the laws of gravity, other megastructures floated in the air between them, all having appearance similiar to regular polyhedrons called Platonic solids. Each of them was probably a house for hundreds of people. Vehicles of different kind circulated moved buildings, some small, barely discernible, other almost as large as forms of architecture that made the unusual city.
"This was Golden Millennium." The man said.
"This was the real world." He added.
Scenery changed again, and Michiru felt that she had risen high above the surface of the Earth. She looked at hundreds of huge crystalline structures growing into beautiful shapes, connected with each other by a net of bridges. The girl subconsciously knew that these objects had been living beings, and the net of connections was their shared nervous system, thanks to which they communicated with themselves and could serve residents of the city. The view changed again, and Neptune could admire beautiful gardens, full of plants which she had never seen before and other forms of life which she even wasn't able to name correctly. Scenes were put forward in front of her eyes like transparencies. She could see soaring buildings with crystal glass walls singing songs in the tongue understood by every sentient being in the whole galaxy, monuments amongst which the fire, existing eternally apart from time and space, burnt and huge pillars ascending above the horizon, around which the space-time continuum deformed, granting the beginning of the future time gate leading to other ages and worlds. Michiru's eyes were blinded by glitter reaching from a distance, and when they got used to the luminous intensity, they saw artificial garden in which crystalline flowers grew, silver crystal, full of the energy coming from billions of beings from inflationary bubbles, infant universes, stillborn because of the whim of one man. After the consecutive change of the scenery, Michiru was in a black outer space full of twinkling showed her a real galactic civilization. She was passed by a star fleet, full of shining ships, ready to set off on a journey to unknowns places of the universe. In other vision, the girl noticed megastructures on a planetary scale: artificial moons, space stations in the form of a rings with a diameter of a world and tests of star gate, thanks to which the fleet could travel to the other side of outer space. Michiru was a witness of the birth of the artificial star, somewhere amongst lonely nebulla and the assembly of fragments of the Dyson sphere around her. After the display, Chronos and Neptune came back to the crystal glass chamber.
"How did you like the real world?" He asked.
"I'm still shaken by it." The girl admitted.
"You saw the paradise which was destroyed by a group of fools, amongst which your friend was. You could admire the place which was destroyed so this faulty world could begin."
"I felt this place, as if I really was there. It was remarkable..."
"The chamber of illusion can create mirages as perceptible as the real world, and the pattern comes from my memories."
"The display was grand and perhaps I'm starting taking your version of the history seriously, but still I don't understand how it is connected to me? Why am I here?"
"Let us go to other place." Chronos ignored the question of the girl.
"Do you remember the garden with gleaming glitter?" He asked.
"Yes. I still can't see well after it blinded me."
"It was a garden in which we created energy sources which built our civilization. Silver Crystals were born in this garden."
"Was there so many of them?" Michiru was surprised.
"Yes, all wonders that you could see, were possible to build thanks to the energy gathered in them. As a matter of fact they also turned out to be the reason of destroying the real world."
"I remember, Sailor Pluto and other who opposed you didn't accept the truth about their origin. You didn't reveal the truth about it."
"They were fools! They weren't able to understand that, in these crystals, we trapped the universes, which were only supposed to be born, we destroyed no real life! If inflationary bubbles weren't collected by us they almost certainly would be torn apart by quantum fluctuations! They were idiots who preferred to destroy themselves, than something that could, but not had to come into existence in infant universes. Because of their foolishness we now live in a false, spoiled reality."
The girl and the man came into the other room. As it turned out, Silver Crystal was there, connected to wires and devices of different kind.
"The other Silver Crystal?" Michiru was surprised.
"Yes, one of them is intact. It was with me all these years."
"Is this place alive thanks to this one?"
"No. Minerals from the mine provide enough energy."
Michiru remembered smoking chimneys in the city on the desert.
"Now I understand why that city was built."
"Yes. Slaves are working there under the control of my demons. My palace can function only thanks to them. This witch Pluto left me behind in the worst of possible places, where it is necessary to fight for survival."
"If you think that I help you to use Silver Crystal you will be disappointed. Only Sailor Moon, our princess is able to do it."
"I know whom you are talking about. Your princess is the best evidence, that this world is broken and requires to be repaired. I don't need you to use the crystal."
"Why do you need me?"
"I want you by my side, when I will fullfill mission and reconstruct the real world. I want you to be a witness of the accomplishment of your most wonderful plan!"
"My plan?" Michiru asked.
"Yes. You... your old incarnation in the real world, you were one of the most wonderful creators of the magnificence of the Golden Millennium. You developed the method of capturing the power far beyond what Silver Crystal can give us."
"It doesn't have any sense. I was never a scientist or a leader. Neither now nor in my past life in the Silver Millennium."
"It is because you were born in a false, spoiled world" The man hit the floor with his walking stick.
"It is a world which corrupted even such a wonderful being as you. Now you are only a shadow of your self, rotten to such an extent that you started to sleep with other woman. When I think about it, you disgust me." The man said, moving awat from green haired girl.
"How dare you..." Michiru refrained herself from a comment. She didn't want to provoke Chronos.
"But I need your body in order to be with her again. My former beloved."
Michiru clenched fists. Thought about the closeness with somebody like Chronos caused that she had felt like screaming.
"The surface of your mirror is also my invention. It is a fluid space-time, decompactified dimension which outside is not bigger than the frame of the mirror, but inside is stretching out boundlessly. You are able to control it, because she was also able to do it. You are an the only person gifted for navigation in its interior. Probably you could predict the future thanks to the mirror, because the fluid space-time has a local influence on what is happening also in this artificial world. Let me tell you about your last hours in the days of the Golden Millennium."
Michiru was silent. She didn't want to listen to the voice of the grey haired man.
"She... your true identity... she was faithful to me to the end and she became the first victim of the murderess with the Scythe of Silence who joined me enemies. She was too big threat for them, because she was visionary, greater than I ever was. Her body was destroyed, but I rescued her mind sending it to the fluid space-time, the place in which they could not find her. She still is there, on the other side of the mirror. I devoted a lot of years trying to find a way to find her. I entered into an alliance with many beings from different realities whose knowledge would let me reach her and get her here. Each of my partners was a scientist and helped me in exchange for work opportunities on projects which they could not carry out in their own societies. All in a vain. I thought that the dream about meeting with her would never come true, until I learnt about Sailor Neptune, living the Earth again.
"Perhaps at one time I indeed was this person, but if her mind is where you say it is, she isn't me. I cannot help you, even if I tracked her down."
"You are wrong. When her awareness will recognize the body, even as degraded as yours, it will unite with it. She doesn't know what happened to the Golden Millennium, she doesn't know that there is no world which she helped to create. Therefore, when she recognizes the body being able to control the fluid space-time, she will merge with it."
"Do you want me to kill me so that she can live?"
"No. I want to wipe all your sins so that you can be reborn as great as you were then."
"Why they... the ones who opposed your governments... Why were they afraid of her so much?"
"I told you that she had been... you were one of the greatest visionaries in our Galactic Empire. You knew that for the development of the empire it was necessary to do something that nobody hd done before. All trouble of the Empire rose from the ambitions of races inhabiting its worlds. All our problems resulted for the lack of the total control above individuals too stubborn to see that what we did was good. My wonderful beloved found a remedy for it. She knew that we would never achieve the plenitude of our abilities, if enemies thwarted our plans. She wanted to exploit the energy of the crystal to rebuild the reality anew. The universe with me in his centre. Universe deprived of the illness of the Free Will!"
Michiru became pale.
"Now I understand everything. They killed her, because she wanted... to make you a god!"
"Yes, you wanted me to become the Lord of the entire reality, because you knew very well then our Empire could live endlessly only then."
"I will never agree to get her here. She is too dangerous. You can kill me now, I will never grant your request." Michiru said firmly. She looked defiantly at Chronos.
"I won't kill you. After all I wouldn't hurt somebody whom I love. But I won't hesitate to destroy this false world. Do you think that I won't dare to attack the Earth? My army of demons will defeat its protectors with an ease. I will destroy all of them, even this slapper with whom you shamelessly fuck in nights. Now come back to your chamber and think everything over. I must entertain my guests. Later you must turn up at the party, you are the most important person in this world now."
The man in the white suit left the chamber. Michiru stayed inside. She looked at Silver Crystal sparking with an energy of million of suns gathered in it. She thought about Haruka and other girls defending the city against monsters obtaining the energy from the second ginzuishou. She saw in thoughts Haruka falling down dead after blows of the fiery whip which she afflicted recently herself.
"I will do it." She said through clenched teeth. Chronos stopped for a moment, but he didn't turn around. After seconds of a silence, he moved ahead.
Michiru was sitting on the armchair standing under one of ballroom walls, looking at Chronos welcoming guests. The girl was looking at the room mindlessly, being in a trance, since her mind was in some other place and analysed everything which she inquired in the holographic room and later in the chamber with Silver Crystal. The grey haired man greeted the man in a green armour, delegation of persons in black suits, the elderly man in purple robes in the company of boys, the couple of tall figures with long bright hair and a sex difficult to guess. Michiru observed other beings also, which turned up in a ballroom. She noticed the two-legged walking machine, the robot scanning surroundings with something like a scanner of the structural light, afloat jellyfish shimmering with colours of a rainbow and strange, long-haired man, holding a sad girl on a chain. Helpers of Chronos were flying above heads of the assembled company supplying them with food and drinks. At some point, the grey haired man tapped on the floor with the walking stick in order to gain attention. Talks died down, so he could start his speech.
"Dear friends! As you already become convinced, I am a man fulfilling his promises. Each of you helped me achieve my purpose and keep this dying world alive. Your help will be awarded. When you agreed to help me, I promised you that I would help you to become somebody else, better than persons surrounding you in worlds in which you lived. I promised to show you the real world, as it should be, to take off the veil of an illusion, beguiling you with shadows. I assured that if you follow me you will find it and you will be somebody more than in your own reality. Today this day came. And everything will be an available thanks to our special guest, this young girl Kaioh Michiru!"
All eyes and other sensory organs looked at green haired girl.
"Miss Kaioh has a gift, thanks to which I will regain the only person, who have the key to the real world, who can transform this deranged place into the new Golden Millennium!" Chronos raised his walking stick with a head of the devil above the head. Guests started beating applause, all the time fixing their eyes on Michiru. The girl closed her eyes. She regretted that Chronos had taken her transformation pen, because she wanted to submerge the entire ballroom in oceanic waters. Even for the price of her own life. At some point she heard a thud coming somewhere from over her head. Eyes of all assembled company turned at the direction of the ceiling. The small ball of fire, which glitter attracted the attention of guests bigger and bigger. Chronus surprised by the this phenomenon looked at Michiru. The girl didn't say a word. She clenched fists reminding herself her last conversation with the man. Was it really a next trick of her kidnapper? However, the old man seemed equally surprised by the unusual occurrence. In the same moment, the ball of the fire became so large that Michiru had felt its heat on the face and shoulders exposed by the emerald dress. A few guests headed for the exit in order to get out out of the room as soon as possible. The old man in the green armour prepared the crystal glass sword, and humanoid machine directed its sensors in the direction of the fire in order to obtain more information. The ball of fire exploded, changing into glitter of the blinding light lasting very briefly. Michiru covered her eyes with the hand. Black Pegasus with a burning mane and red eyes like red-hot coals floating above the floor. Chronus smiled widely. Michiru covered her mouth, being shocked.
"Haruka..." She whispered. Sailor Uranus was sitting on a back of the black steed. She kept the Space Sword in one hand, and her second hand was tightened on the bridle, thanks to which she could control the monster.
"Michiru! I'm taking you from here!" The blonde shouted, simultaneously ordering the steed to approach to the green haired woman. Chronus stood up before Neptune, shielding her from Haruka. He clenched his fingers around the walking stick.
"Do you think that you can control what belongs to me? What I created?" He said. When he snapped his fingers, the bridle broke into small pieces freeing the dark louse.
"Damn!" Uranus swore, feeling that the Pegasus freed itself from her control. Chronus lifted the walking stick up to calm his steed and give him the command, the first one from a very long time.
"White knight upon a fiery steed? I don't need trouble." He whispered. Everyone were looking at the event in surprise, nobody dared to move or to speak a word. At one point, burning mane of the horse increased its intensity violently. The fire touched Sailor Uranus' body, inflicting a great pain on her. This suffering wasn't physical, because her skin wasn't scalded, but other kind of pain, reaching much deeper than into the interior of her organism. The girl paralysed by the attack of the Pegasus dropped her Space Sword and fell on the floor. The horse obediently landed near his lord. The fire on its mane disappeared and only red eyes remainded of what it was a few seconds before. Michiru tried to go to help Haruka, writhing in pain on the palace floor, but Chronus stopped her. The magic of his ring, or perhaps fear that the man could to do something to her beloved, caused that the girl had not dared to move against him.
"Your knight reached as far as here... I didn't expect it." Chronus said approaching the deafened blonde.
"I must thank you. Thanks to you I regained my lost item and I don't have to free it myself. Now when it is mine again, I don't have to use old corridor. I don't have to meet Pluto anymore. I thank you woman-warrior from Uranus." He announced calmly.
"I will reward you and I will let live. I am a merciful god after all." He added.
In the same moment two gargoyles flew into the room. Stone monsters quickly came to their master and waited for his new orders. Chronus came up to Haruka, squatted by her and rested his hands on her back. The blonde shouted, feeling a pain as if somebody pierced her with the heated up fire iron. Uniform of Sailor Senshi disappeared from the body of the girl, changing into her everyday clothes. The grey haired man left her holding her transformation pen in the hand. Michiru clenched fists. Chronus deprived of the power not only her, but also her lover. The man turned to stone monsters.
"Take her to the city. Let her help convicts at the work."
Two monters carried the order of their master out obediently, raising unconscious Sailor Uranus, and later taking off with her. Soon two monsters rushed out fromm the ballroom taking the blonde with themselves. Michiru sat down on the armchair. She buried her face in her hands. She felt more helpless than at any time earlier. Chronus turned to the guests, interested in the unpredictable event.
"Come back to your play! Don't let the little interference spoil joy from our common party." He announced gladly.
Setsuna came out to the balcony plunged into darkness of the night, where Hotaru rested. The black-haired girl didn't notice the appearance of her friend, she was thinking about something.
"Hotaru, come in. It is cold here. I don't want you to catch a cold."
"I'm not feeling cold. I like to sit here, because I'm feeling as if I was close to stars."
"You worry about Haruka and Michiru..." Setsuna asked.
"It's obvious." The black-haired replied unwillingly.
"Nothing is happening, and it means that it wasn't as bad in Elysion as we thought. Perhaps she even managed to reach an agreement with Elios and there was no fight?"
"Unlikely, it's improbable. I believe that Haruka will win and soon they both will be with us. Actually, I thought about something completely different, about what I saw on the Thirteenth Floor of the Cygnus tower."
"Hotaru... I will listen to you one more time. If the conversation will let you free emotions after such experiences..."
"That's not the point. What I saw there was horrible, but I managed to somehow deal with it. I'm also not afraid that Saturn took over me there."
"So what's the problem?"
"When I was walking through laboratories I saw something very familiar. Technology which my father used, when he was with Deathbusters. When I was enslaved... I'm sure that I saw daimon eggs in one of laboratories. My father had to somehow be connected with Cygnus and what happened on this floor."
"Hotaru... perhaps it happened when he wasn't himself, when he served aliens from Tau Ceti?"
"I want to think so... but I feel anxiety all the time."
Setsuna sat down by Hotaru and hugged her.
"I will try to learn something more. I have acquaintances in the police. Now, they are searching for rubble after the tower. Objects from the laboratory, or at least some of them, survived the building's collapse. Perhaps I will manage to obtain more information about them."
"Thanks." Hotaru replied.
"Are you coming in?" Setsuna asked.
"No. I still want to look at stars." The black-haired girl turned towards the city, and her eyes fixed on the blank, black space in which the Cygnus tower stood not so long ago.
At night, the party in the ballroom of the palace of Chronos warmed up for good. Guests were busy with conversations and discussing plans for the future which the grey-haired man provided for them. Michiru imperceptibly got out outside stone walls. She passed some fat person, who was throwing up in the backstreet because of the overeating. The girl found stairs leading to the roof of the stone stronghold. When she was half way, she stopped. She looked at the city in the distance, red from the fire of torches, city to which her beloved was taken away. She embraced herself, because the night was very cold. After a dozen steps she came on thea roof. She strolled between stone obelisks standing there expecting the familiar silhouette in a darkness.
"Are you here? I came here as I promised you. Appear." She said.
At some point, a hooded figure in a black habit emerged from the floor.
"Didn't you like entertainment that Chronos prepared for us? Attractions were incredible, even a display of the fight and defeat of the woman-warrior from the Silver Moon." He said to the girl.
"Give these jokes a miss. I trusted you and I promised to do what you asked me for."
"What did you learn?" Wiseman asked, not being pleased that Michiru was prejudiced against him.
"Chronos is crazier than he seemed to me. All that's going on here, is only a play for him. He actually aspires for the omnipotence and the total control of the reality which he will create. He has energy source, thanks to which he can destroy the space-time of this place and create something what he calls the real world."
"How is he going to make it?"
"I don't know. But he is convinced that I will help him with it."
"And you don't even know what he is planning... you aren't telling me the whole truth."
"It's not like this. He claims that my body belonged to his lover, and now it revived in this world. Her mind is imprisoned in something that he calls the fluid space-time. Chronos thinks that I can control it and I will be able to free her."
"If he is right, he is much more dangerous to the future than the Son of the Moon."
"Son of the Moon?"
"It's unimportant, woman-warrior."
"I want your help!" Michiru said firmly, seeing that Wiseman geared himself up to walk away.
"In what, woman-warrior?"
"In freeing my companion, from there." The girl pointed at the stone city.
"No. I won't go there with you. There are herds of monters on the desert which would tear even my body apart. But I remember that you helped me. When the time comes I will assist you. Remember that no treasure trove is safe for somebody who is going through walls like through a haze."
Wiseman walked away from Sailor Neptune and disappeared in the hard stone of the roof.
