Whoops! I'm posting this a day later than I intended to.

So, without further ado -

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SAILOR MOON: BANISHED
CHAPTER TEN

By Doctor-T

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Back above the deeply buried core of the moonlet, things were rapidly coming to a head. Almost five minutes after they had been knocked over the edge of the gravity well that led to the miniature black hole at the exact epicenter of the moonlet, Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn were miraculously still alive. But it was equally obvious that neither sailor senshi could maintain their grip on the lower railing indefinitely. Sooner or later the relentless pull would tear them both from their handholds and drag them to their doom.

"Setsuna-mama!" Hotaru cried out in wide-eyed terror. "My feet feel like they weigh a ton! I – I can't hold on much longer!"

"That's…because your legs and feet are your closest body parts to the singularity below us, Hotaru-chan," Pluto gasped back though her clenched teeth, fighting to maintain her own precarious grip. "The gravity field is pulling on them with much stronger force than on your upper body! Don't give up!"

"I'm trying! But I can't last much longer!"

"You have to! If you do fall, then the tidal forces caused by the sudden increase in the gravity differential will stretch you out and tear your body apart before you even reach the event horizon!"

"Mama!"

"Hotaru-chan! We've only got one chance to get out of this alive!" Pluto cried out, her keen mind suddenly hitting on the one option left to them that might still get them out of their terrifying predicament. "My 'Garnet ball' force field can't save us from that gravity well, but your 'Silent wall' can! Activate it around both of us, right now!"

"But, Mama, if I do that, the null-field barrier will break our grip and we'll both fall into the black hole!"

"I know, but we're going to get pulled in anyway," came Pluto's grim reply. Sweat beads speckled her forehead as she felt her hold on the railing beginning to weaken. Heaven knows how Hotaru was still managing to hold on against the relentless tug that was dragging them both down to their doom. "So your 'Silent wall' is our only chance of survival now! It cancels out everything, including gravity, so there's a good chance that it'll stop us being sucked in! And if we do fall in, it should protect us from being crushed out of existence – well, hopefully, anyway?"

"I'm scared, Setsuna-mama!"

"So am I, Hotaru-chan. But…we have to try this. If we don't, we're both dead for sure! And I don't know if even you can come back and be reborn after falling into a black hole!"

"Ahh! Mama, I'm slipping! I gotta do it – Silent Wall!"

Even as Hotaru's fingers slid from the railing, Sailor Pluto clutched at her terrified daughter, losing her own grip on the railing as she did so! But, even as they began to plummet downwards into the gravity well, the impenetrable 'Silent wall' null field snapped into place around them – a split-second too late to prevent their ferociously accelerating fall into the light-sucking, invisible monster at the exact center of the moonlet's core!

Already traveling at only the barest fraction under the speed of light as it passed through the event horizon, the perfectly circular ball of black energy touched the microscopic-sized rotating ring of the micro singularity, itself – and instantly destabilized it!

With absolutely catastrophic results.

In a trillionth of a second, a new white hole was born – and in that terrifying instant, all of the gigatons of compressed mass forming the mini black hole blew out again as a spinning wave of pure quantum energy, the sudden pulse instantly vaporizing the entire moonlet and everything on it into far less than atoms!

On the yautja starship, amidst crackling sparks and swirling smoke as their control panels shorted out from the unimaginably powerful electromagnetic pulse from the titanic explosion, which had hit them at the speed of light, the surviving hunters watched in horror through their automatically darkening main view screen as a newborn sun flared up into existence behind their racing starship, in the exact center of the narrow gap between the sky-spanning planets. Even worse than this, a perfectly circular wave front of pure white, superheated plasma was expanding at a frightening rate towards not only the suddenly brightly lit facing hemispheres of both hapless worlds, but also their now powerless ship. They were all doomed – their ship and both planets - and the hunters knew it. At its present speed, the violet-hot fireball of subatomic energy was going to hit their now helplessly drifting vessel in less than a minute. And with their propulsion and navigation systems down, there was no way they could possibly escape being wiped totally out of existence, just as the trapped moonlet at the epicenter of the titanic blast had been.

But then, a mere second later, a totally unexpected miracle happened. Just before the ever-expanding fireball could engulf the near faces of the trapped worlds and sear both clean of all life, the hungry, greedily reaching tendrils of the all-consuming subatomic conflagration suddenly began to slow their expansion. And then, to the utter astonishment and relief of M-di-H'dlak and his battered band of survivors, the superheated wave of destruction abruptly reversed course, collapsing like a deflating balloon back inwards on itself, shrinking down towards its now vaporized point of origin. Within mere moments, the last of the luminescent energy had winked out of existence, as if the event had never even occurred!

A miracle that the two encased sailor senshi drifting inside the 'Silent wall' at the center of the inferno were also right now becoming aware of, as the spherical space inside their protective barrier suddenly began to fill with the pure white light of creation!

We're still alive! The elated Sailor Pluto silently shouted to the cosmos, her face a study of both utter relief and joy. If we were going to die, then it would have happened by now! My plan worked - Sailor Saturn's barrier held against the black hole!

But…what's happening now? I'm glowing! What the-? There's some type of heatless energy flowing through the 'Silent wall' and into my body! But – that's impossible! Nothing can get though the silent wall barrier – nothing!

"Mama?!"

"Hotaru-chan? What's the – oh?"

Kami-sama! Hotaru-chan is absorbing the energy, just as I am! And is she – somehow changing because of it? No, that can't be right – can it?

"Hotaru-chan! Don't panic, it's all right," Pluto hurriedly reassured her frightened daughter as they hugged each other tight. "Don't ask me how, but our bodies seem to be automatically absorbing all of this zero-point quantum energy that is somehow getting though your barrier! It should have killed us instantly, but the reverse is true, I can feel that it's powering us up instead!"

Sailor Pluto was about to say more, but just then, a deep, commanding voice suddenly spoke directly into her mind.

"Children of the Galaxy cauldron, I grant thee both the power of thy destiny."

"What? Hotaru-chan, did you hear something just then?"

"No, Setsuna-mama. What was it?"

"For a second, I thought that I heard…a voice…"

"A voice? In here with us?" Sailor Saturn squawked. "Who was it?"

"I'm not sure. But…it sounded a lot like my father, Chronos."

"Ch-Chronos-dono, the God of Time?"

"The very one. But I must have been imagining things…!"

Or was I? That was my Otōsan talking to me, I'm sure of it! But why would he make contact with me, right here and now, unless…he somehow already knew that all of this was going to happen-?

It was right at that second that Hotaru finally accepted that they both were in fact going to live.

"Mama, we're still alive! We survived falling into a black hole! It's a miracle!"

"No it isn't, Hotaru-chan," the older girl declared, her own heart still hammering at just how close they had been to oblivion. "It's the laws of physics in action," she then explained. "Your 'Silent wall' is the ultimate nullifier, remember? It succeeded in canceling out even the crushing gravity of that micro black hole, and even though the energy released somehow managed to penetrate your force field, it was in a form that we could absorb safely…" Sailor Pluto then grinned sheepishly, the expression on her face betraying her own relief at having unbelievably escaped from certain death. "Ah-heh. Actually, Hotaru-chan, you're absolutely right. There's no other word for our continued survival but 'miracle!'"

Yes, a miracle - one granted to us by not only Sailor Saturn's 'Silent wall', but also by my father, Chronos. I'm absolutely sure of that, now! And I think I know the reason why…but first-things-first-!

"Now that this energy flow into us seems to have stopped, it's time we thought about getting out of here," Pluto then remarked, trying hard to keep the perturbation she was now feeling at her mysterious, all-powerful Otōsan's actions out of her voice.

"Yeah, let's go! But how do we know that it's safe for me to drop the 'Silent wall', Setsuna-mama?" Sailor Saturn anxiously wanted to know, more than a touch of fear in her tone at the thought of dissolving away the defensive globe of black energy that had saved their lives. "If I do that, and that micro black hole is still outside, we'll be dead before we even realize our mistake!"

"Easy. For one thing, I don't think that the micro black hole we fell into even exists anymore," the older girl replied, feeling absolutely sure about the truth of her statement. "That energy discharge we both absorbed had to have come from something exploding, and it can't have been just the moonlet itself blowing up, or anything like that. That's because if the moon we're on did suddenly blow up for some reason and the black hole at its core was still functional at the time, its gravity would have instantly sucked all of the released energy and matter in our immediate vicinity through its event horizon and out of existence, before the energy could have had time to penetrate your 'Silent wall'."

"Oh? That's true," Sailor Saturn nervously conceded, obviously still not fully convinced as to the wisdom of dropping her shield. "I guess?"

"But, just in case I'm wrong about the both the moon and the black hole we fell into at its core having been destroyed, now that we're shielded from the effects of the black hole containment field by your 'Silent wall' and it's no longer interfering with our ability to sailor-teleport, we'd best both jump a few dozen miles away from our present location, back into normal space," Pluto then suggested. "By doing that, we'll reappear well clear of both this moon and the gravitational field of the black hole – if they both do in fact still exist, of course - and we can take a look at the situation from there. Just drop your 'Silent wall' once we've safely teleported."

At her words of advice, a rueful grin appeared on Sailor Saturn's youthful face, and she relaxed back to her normal self. "Oh, yeah? I should have thought of that myself…! Let's do that right now!"

And so they both did.

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Once they had rematerialized back into normal space at a safe distance away from their previous location, the lost sailor senshi took stock of the situation. With no great surprise, Sailor Pluto saw that she had been right after all. The small planetoid they had been trapped inside had vanished as if it had never even existed. And of the space-distorting gravitational field of the micro black hole, there was no sign at all, either.

The world-connecting tunnel of thin air in their vicinity had utterly vanished as well, severed and consumed by the unimaginably violent and thankfully temporary emergence of the small white hole. But the air bridge at least would reform in time, as the gravitational fields of its parent worlds performed their almost zero-gee magic upon the now fiery and smoke filled twin atmospheres to either side of them.

"So I was correct with my assumption after all, Hotaru-chan. The micro black hole and the moonlet have both been totally destroyed. And so Chronos-Otōsan really did use the vast energy trapped in the black hole to power us both up."

"Yeah, Setsuna-mama, you were right! But how did Chronos-dono know we would be here, at this particular planetoid at this particular place in space and time?" Saturn asked, staring with wonderment at her foster mother. "I mean, there are millions of solar systems in the galaxy, aren't there?"

"Because he's Chronos," Pluto patiently explained. "Even enhanced as we both are now, he's still as far beyond us as we are to the ants scurrying at our feet back on Earth. And since my father is the omnipotent God of Time, nothing of past or future events can be hidden from him if he truly wishes to know about them. It would be child's play for Chronos to foresee our appearance at this location in the near future, and set his plans accordingly."

"Waaa?! So you're saying that Chronos-dono knew all along that we would come here, Mama?" Hotaru gasped out in query, her wide eyes reflecting twin pools of bright light from the alien sun. "And so he set up this trap for us to stumble into, to test us out, and then reward us for passing it by granting us a power upgrade?"

"Something like that, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto agreed, a thoughtful expression now on her face. "And at least a couple of good things have happened to us because of it," she then pointed out, her voice containing a noticeable tone of relief. "For one, when we absorbed all of that quantum energy inside your 'Silent wall', even though you physically look to be the same as before we were trapped, it somehow evolved your physical body from your normal human form into your immortal, Sailor Saturn form. Which means that you no longer need to eat and drink physical food to survive, just like I don't have to. Two, I also somehow know that you now possess full conscious control over not only your pre-existing abilities, but also the full powers of the adult Sailor Saturn, as well."

"What?" A look of utter astonishment appeared on the young Sailor Saturn's face at what she had just heard. "I have my full powers right now," she gasped out. "As in full cosmic powers? Are – are you sure about this, Mama?"

"I'm absolutely positive, Hotaru-chan," Pluto quietly confirmed. "I've had time to scan you, now, and this I know for a fact."

"But, Setsuna-mama, I was told that us sailor senshi could only access our full abilities after our twenty-first birthday?" Sailor Saturn persisted, disbelief still on her face. "And in your current incarnation, not even you are fully powered up yet, for that reason!"

"Well, in this particular case, it seems that Chronos has made an exception for you. And for myself, as well."

"He has? You have your full adult abilities right now, too?"

"Yes. My mind's eye informs me that my own sailor senshi space/time powers have now been amplified by at least the power of ten – and maybe even more than that. In fact, with regards to raw power, I'm almost on a par with you, now."

"Wow! Then, that means…?"

"Hold on. Before you get your hopes up, Hotaru-chan, unfortunately, I sense that I still can't open space/time warps or sailor-teleport further than I could before our incarceration, more's the pity," Pluto hastened to add, having noticed the hopeful expression transforming her young companion's face. The green haired beauty let out a wry chuckle as Hotaru's face fell again at the bad news, then she added by way of explanation, "As to why this is still so, I suspect that my father, Chronos, has placed mental blocks in my mind that prevent me from accessing my pre-existing ability to travel long distances through space-time, other than by comparatively short range teleportation, that is. He's also blocking your adult ability to do the same, as well. I can only surmise that he still doesn't want it to be too easy for us to return home to Earth?"

"Awww?! Darn it all," Hotaru wailed. "We get all super-powered up to the max, and we still can't get home any faster! Then what's the point of making us stronger if it won't help us find our way back to Earth?!"

"My Otōsan doesn't arrange premature power enhancements just for the fun of it," Pluto answered her daughter, a slight frown on her brow as she realized that there was even more to their situation than she had at first thought. "There is one other thing that I'm now absolutely sure of, and it is that we've been granted our full powers for a reason, Hotaru-chan. And I've got a strong suspicion that we're definitely going to need our enhanced abilities at some point during the next stage of our journey towards the galactic core."

Sailor Saturn gulped nervously at her older companion's alarming observation, and she clutched her Silence Glaive even tighter. "You mean – we could be heading into even greater danger than what we've just been through, Mama?"

"Yes, Hotaru-chan. That's exactly what I mean. So we'd both best be very careful out here from now on. Even as strong as we both are now, we're certainly not safe from everything that we may meet this far out in deep space. I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily, but over the years, I've heard rumors of nightmarish things lurking in some distant corners of our galaxy that make these xenomorph monsters and the yautja we've just fought look about as dangerous as key chain plushies!"

"Uwahwah! Setsuna-mama!" Hotaru wailed. "D-don't scare me like that! I'll never be able to go to sleep ever again worrying about it!"

"Sorry, Hotaru-chan. But since our upgrading, you don't even need to sleep now, if you don't want to," the Sailor Scout of Time reminded the anxious looking teen. Then she reached forward and grasped her adopted daughter's white-gloved left hand in firm reassurance.

"With regards to what we may or may not run into on our journey back to Earth, there's no use in worrying about things that may not even happen."

"Yeah, Setsuna-mama, I guess that you're right," Hotaru conceded, perking up a bit again. But then another thought struck her, this one of more immediate concern.

"Hey, Mama, do you think that there's any of the yautja still left alive after the moonlet blew up? Maybe some of them managed to escape back into space again aboard their spaceship before the explosion? They could be hiding somewhere nearby, just waiting for a good chance to attack us again!"

Pluto frowned, then closed her eyes and concentrated for a second or two, carefully scanning the surrounding regions of space.

"Yautja are hard to pick up even for us when they're cloaked, but I can't sense any in the immediate vicinity of us, or anywhere else in the surrounds of the twin planets, either, Hotaru-chan," she finally replied. "Still, I can't tell you for certain that there weren't any survivors amongst them. Because of the chaotic sub-atomic after-effects of the abortive white hole eruption, even with my enhanced powers of perception, the region of space between and surrounding these planets is still too disrupted for me to be able to register any life forms at all at the moment, let alone one or two surviving yautja."

"But if there are any still alive, do you think that we'll have any more trouble from them?"

"It's hard to say, Hotaru-chan. Under normal circumstances, they'd regard us as prize trophies, so I'd have to say 'yes'. But now that we've absorbed all of that energy from the white hole, we're much more powerful than we were before. From what I know, yautja are brave but not suicidal. So if they now consider us to be way out of their league, they'll probably give us a wide berth from now on."

"Whew! That's a big relief, Mama!"

"Yes, it is to me as well. Come on, there's no reason for us to hang around here any longer, so we'd best be on our way." Then something that her foster daughter had mentioned earlier to her popped back into her mind. "Hey, do you still want to visit that water world nearer this star?"

"Oh?! Yes please, Setsuna-mama," Hotaru enthused, forgetting her earlier trepidation as her thoughts switched back to the enthralling prospect of swimming in a warm ocean under the beneficent golden rays of the brightly shining alien sun. "We may be super, super-powered now, but that's no reason why we still can't go and have some fun on our way back to Earth, is there?"

Setsuna laughed, successfully managing to conceal the trace of unease in her voice from her adopted daughter. "None, indeed, Hotaru-chan. Come on, we'll make the jump to the planet right now."

I sense that Hotaru has indeed been granted her full adult powers, but her persona seems to be unchanged from before, she then silently told herself. So that means she is mentally still only the thirteen-year-old teenage girl that she was before we fell into my father's trap, not the adult Sailor Saturn... Damn! That brings a whole new set of problems for me to deal with.

I'd best keep an even more careful watch on her now. Without the mature Sailor Saturn's guiding mind, Hotaru isn't ready to shoulder the responsibility of her newfound cosmic abilities yet, and even worse, Chronos has granted them to her before she's had any training at all in their proper use! Being the Sailor Senshi of Time, I already knew beforehand what my full abilities were going to be, and how to use them to best effect. But Hotaru in her teenage form doesn't…!

Pluto shuddered involuntarily as ancient memories of their previous lives, now thousands of years in the dim and distant past, suddenly came flooding back into her anxious mind.

The Sailor Saturn that I knew before, at the time of the Silver Millennium, was even more powerful than I was back then. She could blow away an entire star with ease! There's no getting away from it, at the first chance I get, once we travel into an unpopulated sector of deep space, I'm going to have to give Hotaru a crash course in control of her newfound abilities.

Thank god that it's me out here with her, now, and not one of the others! Hotaru and I are by far the most powerful of all of the Sailor Senshi of our solar system, so even if we both were back on Earth and not lost in deep space, I am the only one of our group with the knowledge, the ability and the raw power to train her in what she has to learn now, too. And now that I am in possession of my own full cosmic abilities – except that I still can't travel through time, thanks to the will of my father, Chronos – I am close enough to Hotaru on the cosmic power scale to prevent her from doing anything too destructive – I hope? There's no telling the damage she may inadvertently cause to the fabric of space-time if I don't teach her to suppress her power – and the sooner I do just that, the better!

And if I fail, and Hotaru does lose control of her power…? Well, for the safety of any inhabited planets we may come across on our journey home, I might have to trap and freeze my daughter in her human form inside a time-stasis field and tow her back to Earth that way.

Darn! I really, really hope it doesn't come to that!