Chapter Ten

For the first time in a very, very long time, Pluto was afraid. Were the situation not so dire she'd have probably found it quite funny. But there was nothing the least bit humorous about the darkly graceful length of the Silence Glaive, nor was there anything humorous about the violet eyed woman who held the most powerful weapon in the Solar System with the perfect poise of someone long accustomed to its use.

"Saturn," Pluto murmured, scarcely able to believe her eyes. The other woman was wreathed in violet light, the radiance of her power throwing the formerly darkened interior of the chamber into sharp relief. Here at last, awakened and terrible in her strength stood the senshi who had levelled a world.

"You are Pluto." Saturn's voice was soft, yet it carried easily like the rumble of distant thunder across the plains.

The silence, which had faded, came to life again, hissing like static at the edges of Pluto's awareness, hungry, searching for weakness. "I am Pluto."

"How did you find me?"

Saturn's eyes flashed with some unreadable emotion. Loneliness, Pluto wondered, perhaps pain? But before she could be sure she'd even seen anything at all, Saturn's eyes were hard again, twin pools of purple adamant devoid of anything save for a dispassionate calm.

"I scanned the surface of the planet."

"Really?" Saturn's lips curved into a ghost of a smile, though her eyes remained hard. "You'd have found nothing. This is a dead world, it has been for a long, long time."

Pluto swallowed, throat suddenly dry. It had not escaped her notice that the Silence Glaive no longer rested idly by Saturn's side. Instead the other woman's grip on the weapon had shifted just enough to ease it forward into a position where it could easily be brought to bear. She would have to choose her words carefully. "You're right. When we first scanned the surface of the planet we didn't find anything."

"Then how did you find me?"

Was that curiosity in those ancient eyes? Pluto licked her lips. "But I searched the records for anything I could find about your powers. The records are… sketchy, at best, but they were consistent. The Silence that is the hallmark of your power isn't just an auditory phenomenon – it applies to all known forms of energy as well. So we scanned the planet again, this time at full scanning power."

"Go on." Saturn's grip on the Glaive eased a fraction.

Pluto nodded. "At full scanning power, even if there's nothing there, we should still have gotten a fair bit of reflection from the planet's surface. This was the only place where we got nothing, no reflection from the scan at all. It was, for want of a better description, completely silent."

"Clever." Again there was a flash of emotion in Saturn's eyes, amusement, maybe.

"Do you know why I am here?" Pluto asked. Faster than she could have believed possible, the Glaive whipped around and came to rest against her throat. Barely able to breathe now, let alone think, as the dull roar of the Silence filled her mind, she lifted one shaky hand to the Glaive.

"Don't." Saturn's gaze was pitiless, her mouth set into a stern line and Pluto froze, hand a hair's breadth from the Glaive's impossibly sharp edge. Crazily, Pluto wondered what Saturn would look like smiling. Would her lips curve up and her eyes sparkle, or would her smile be more of a grin, with a flash of teeth?

"The demons have returned," Pluto whispered, well aware that a single flick of Saturn's wrist could easily separate her head from her shoulders. "Already Neptune and Uranus lie in ruins and the rest of the Empire will not be far behind them."

"I know."

Somehow Pluto was not surprised. Death was part of Saturn's domain, and the deaths on Neptune and Uranus had numbered in the millions, possibly even in the billions. Even asleep, the other senshi would not have missed such a massive disturbance.

"Will you help us?"

"Help you?" Saturn laughed but her grip on the Glaive never wavered. Her laugh was a harsh sound, broken and utterly lacking in mirth. "Help you?" Emotion flickered in Saturn's eyes this time, raw fury, and for a moment Pluto was certain that she would die right then and there. And then the laughter died, replaced with an eerie silence. There was nothing in Saturn's gaze now not hate, not rage, not sorrow. There was only emptiness, and stillness, and cold. It was the blackness at the end of the universe, the lingering death of a thousand suns burned black with age. "The Empire can die for all I care." Saturn shifted the Glaive and Pluto was forced to tilt her chin up to avoid being cut. "And its emissaries along with it."

"Wait!" Pluto lifted her hands in a placating gesture. "Wait! There must be something I can offer you. Serenity has given me leave to offer you anything, anything at all. Surely there must be something you want?"

Saturn lifted the Glaive a fraction higher and Pluto winced as the weapon's edge cut ever so slightly into the tender skin of her throat. A thin rivulet of blood rolled down the weapon's edge, deep crimson against unearthly black. "And if your life is the price, Pluto? What then, will you still be so quick to offer anything?"

Slowly, Pluto lowered her chin so that she could meet Saturn's gaze. The Glaive cut deeper into her throat, so sharp that she scarcely felt a thing until the blood began to flow from the deepening wound, to drip in thick drops onto the floor. Still, she ignored the injury, the Glaive hadn't cut deeply enough yet to strike any major blood vessels. "If that is the price, then I am willing to pay it."

The muscles in Saturn's arm tensed but Pluto refused to look away. If Saturn wanted to kill her, she'd not give the other woman the satisfaction of seeing her fear. But then the Glaive was gone and Pluto stumbled forward. Immediately, her hands went to the small medical kit she carried at her waist and she bandaged the wound at her throat. When she looked up, Saturn was regarding her calmly, seeming to take her measure.

"You would really die for the Empire?" Saturn asked.

"Not for the Empire," Pluto corrected as she staggered to her feet. "For its people."

"There is one thing that I want," Saturn said and this time she did smile, and it was a sad smile full of old pain, still fresh despite the countless years.

"Name it."

"You."

"What?" Pluto flinched as if struck. Did Saturn truly intend to kill her?

Saturn chuckled again, the sound as empty as her earlier laugh. "Not your life, Pluto, though I could take that too if I wanted. No, there is something that only you can do."

"The Gates of Time…" Pluto murmured, horrified. What sort of damage might Saturn wreak if she was allowed to enter the Gates? "I will not-"

"You will," Saturn said. "Or the Empire will fall and all its people with it."

Pluto grit her teeth. Saturn was right. The Empire needed Saturn far more than Saturn needed it. She had no doubt at all that the other woman would simply let the Empire fall to the demons. "I will not let you use the Gates to travel either forward or backwards in time, Saturn."

"You are in no position to set any conditions, Pluto." Saturn stated simply. "But if it eases your mind at all, I've no desire to change the past or the future. What is done is done, for better or for worse. There is simply something that I wish to see."

"See?" The Gates could be used to scry through the past and even the future, if that was all that Saturn wanted… "What do you want to see?"

Saturn's mouth firmed into a thin line. "Only when we are the Gates themselves will I tell you, not a moment sooner."

Pluto nodded. "That seems acceptable… but what guarantee do I have that you won't simply turn on the Empire once you've dealt with the demons?"

"You have none." Saturn's reply was delivered swiftly. "No guaranteed whatsoever that I won't turn on your precious Empire and be a thousand times worse than those demons ever could be."

"Then why should I take you back with me?"

"You take me back with you?" Saturn grinned darkly. "I'm awake now, Pluto. It's no longer up to you whether I stay or I go. Still…" Saturn paused, thoughtful. "I won't turn on your Empire, Pluto, not unless they turn on me first."

Pluto breathed a sigh of relief. "I am grateful for you assurances, but why, why would you spare the Empire?"

"The Empire will fall, Pluto. The only thing that matters is how. If I were to smash the Empire to dust, to shatter the Gates and wreak death and ruin across the Solar System it would matter little. Somehow, somewhere, someone would survive. The line of Serenity is nothing if not tenacious. And then they would rebuild and the Empire would rise again. No, it is better to let it to be, so that when the Empire falls it will be at its own hand. Only then will the Empire truly fall, only then will it die as it should have died all those years ago." Saturn seemed alive for the first time as she spoke, her whole body trembling with energy, the violet flame that coursed along her slender frame leaping in response to her agitation. Even the Silence Glaive seemed excited, the echoing thunder of its presence nearly deafening as it thrummed with power.

Speechless, Pluto could only look at Saturn in abject horror. She wanted to tell the violet eyed woman that she wrong, that the Empire would stand forever, but the words would not come, for somewhere deep in her heart, the words rang true. She had always used the Gates of Time to try and steer the Empire clear of trouble, but even the sight granted by the Gates was not perfect. There were things they did not show, or rather things they did not allow her to see. The demons were a perfect example of that. She'd received little warning from her scryings at the Gates, only vague images of ruin and despair.

Saturn was the senshi of death and rebirth. It was she who wielded the power to destroy, to smash planets and crack galaxies. Yet was such destruction always pointless, might it not also serve a purpose? Was destruction needed? Was it necessary to sweep aside the old for the birth of the new? Shaken, Pluto forced herself to focus. She had managed to secure Saturn's cooperation, or at least she thought she had. Right now that was what mattered. She could ponder Saturn's words later. Yet, she couldn't help but wonder what had happened to Saturn, what had filled her with such visceral hatred of the Empire.

"We need to get back to the surface," Pluto said at last. "I have a transport waiting for us at the top of the valley."

"I see." Saturn's eyes narrowed. "Come here."

"What?"

"The path you took to enter here is most likely closed. This place was designed to keep things in, not let them out. Even you may find it difficult to escape."

Pluto frowned. "Then how are we going to get out?"

"Have you forgotten," and now there was a ghost of a smile, pained and lonely on Saturn's face. "What I am?"

And then Saturn raised the Glaive and the silence that filled the chamber was terrifying in its totality. Pluto jammed her hands over her ears and fell to her knees as her mind shut down, overwhelmed by the raw power that rolled off Saturn. A second later and it was over. Shaking her head, Pluto looked up and gasped. The twisted Saturnian night lay above them, a jagged fabric of different colours awash with stars.

"Now," Saturn asked nonchalantly, as though obliterating several miles of rock in the span of a heartbeat was nothing at all. "Lead me to your transport."

X X X X

Author's Notes

As always, I neither own Sailor Moon, nor am I making a dime off of this.

Let me begin by apologising for the delay and thanking all of the readers who continue to read this story. Your support is very much appreciated. For those wondering about the delay, it's been due to a combination of things. For the most part it's largely due to how much busier life has gotten. However, matters weren't helped when my computer's hard drive decided to up and die on me. Fortunately, the awesome tech support guys were able to salvage the files I had on it, but losing that hard drive definitely set me back.

For this chapter, I've decided to once again go to the past. If you're curious about what's going to happen given the rather awkward situation I left Hotaru in during the present, don't worry because I will get to that.

As always, get in touch. I appreciate your feedback.