DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.
Justice
By
Raymond Cooper
When I Grow Up
Chao's clothing burst apart into shimmering motes of light as she expanded, her body growing rapidly to a ceiling height of sixty metres before the unstable molecules reassembled and covered her again. Instead of an abbreviated white dress over a black leotard, now she wore a skin-tight combat suit, black with strange white markings entwined over the surface. To Setsuna's eye, weak as she was with such matters without Pluto to advise, it did seem to be very much similar to the magical symbols Earth had developed from the memories long since lost of the Moon Kingdom's existence and technology, but what they meant Setsuna didn't know.
The now-giant teenager didn't hesitate, simply slipped forward on her feet as if moving without thought, dipping down low under the Evangelion's kneejerk reaction to swing forward at chest height before rising up and slamming a fist into the armoured behemoth's jaw.
The Evangelion slammed upwards and backwards, but turned its uncontrolled tumble through the air into a recovered flip, and it slammed down into a crouch on the ground, the left arm back for balance while the right rested on the ground to prevent the bioroid from otherwise falling forwards. Chao slipped forward again, leading with her right foot before dropping her hands down onto the ground, springing back up and landing with her right foot smashing into the Eva's jaw.
The head of the Evangelion snapped around with the force of the blow, but the pilot recovered before the shoulders turned too far, and the Evangelion continued spinning in the direction of the blow, rolling around Chao's outstretched leg as she headed towards the ground and a standing position, to deliver an armoured elbow to the side of the teen's head.
"Ouch!" the giant yelped, springing backwards, giving her head a quick, nervous feel to make sure nothing was broken. Apparently, nothing was, as Chao gave a yell and sprang back into combat within a few seconds.
Watching two giants of similar size duke it out with a fist fight made Setsuna giddy, as if the world had tipped suddenly sideways.
With a start, she realised there was someone next to her, someone transparent and apparently without feet, dressed in an old-style school uniform – even by Setsuna's thousand year old memories. "You must be... Sayo?" Setsuna guessed.
"Yes," the ghost replied with a nod. "It always takes people a while to see me. I remember the first girl who saw me. That was a long time ago. Chiu, I think her name was. Chiu-chan. She was so cute and naked."
"Um..." Setsuna reached for something to say, but the ghost, the ghost's topic of conversation, and the giants fighting outside all made it a little hard to think clearly. "Naked?"
"It wasn't bad naked, she was just on an island, naked."
"Naked."
"With thirty other girls."
"Right."
"Oh," Sayo rushed, waving her hands in front of her frantically in a negative gesture. "No! The other girls weren't naked. Just Chiu. Chisame. And they weren't all together. It was... oh, I know better now, but then it was scary. I thought they'd all be like me." She sounded a little wistful as her mind wandered. Dust fell through her as one of Chao's punches buckled a breastplate on the Eva. An forearm crashed down on Chao's arm, but the teen dropped her arm and let it swing with the strike while she half-turned to her right to stand perpendicular with the Evangelion, before dropping to the ground while twisting her legs through the Eva's – Setsuna could see from the forearm armour that this was labelled Unit-24 – and then scissoring her legs so the Eva crashed over. A quick bounce back to her feet, and Chao was moving around, watching for an opening as the Eva stood up. Sayo continued. "But I didn't want them all like me. Dead, that is. A few of them were by that time. More died after."
"Why are you telling me this?" Setsuna asked, as the Eva leaped towards Chao, dropping into a roll and coming up off its shoulders with force, slamming its feet out into Chao's midsection. The giant teen managed to block, but it was obvious the force hurt.
"Chao said you come from that time," Sayo said, turning to face Setsuna. "From the bad times. Right before the war. One of the lesser senshi got to the island we were being held on, and tried helping everyone, but couldn't save everyone. One of the girls was... she was bad. Evil. A survivor, the senshi said later on before she disappeared for good. What happened... broke one of the girls badly. She caused a lot of trouble in the war. It was very sad," Sayo sighed. "But a thousand years does a lot to dull the pain. Chao says it's not meant to be like this, that there was another time that her ancestor tried to create. Something better. And Chao thinks you come from this place. Well, Chao and the council. Was it really something better?"
Was it? Setsuna wondered. There had been great bloodshed and pain to bring about this time, and no one trusted the guardians of love and justice in this time... the giant Evangelion outside pounding into a teenage girl – albeit sixty metres in height – spoke volumes on that aspect. But other than this, the world seemed safer. Much safer than it could have been. But deep down, what she had seen over the past week was there was no love, only like. No passion, only mild arousal. No hate or anger, only disappointment. No sadness, just a melancholy of a planet that had forgotten how to feel so it could fight the evil that had tried to best it. A dead world, still populated, but by a race of emotional zombies rather than a dynamic race on the edge of expansion into the great unknowns.
Like this, Setsuna knew even without the Time Gate to show her, that the future would continue as this was progressing. Humanity would continue to expand and succeed.
But was that all? Where was the joy, the passionate embrace after a hard day's work, the little quiet moments that reminded people they were living, breathing creatures rather than organic automatons? Little better than the Evangelion outside, but trapped in suits and work rather than armour. Setsuna shook her head. "I can't say," she said eventually. "Up front I want to say yes, yes it is, and scream it from the rooftops, but this has its good points as well."
"To you, personally, I mean," Sayo prompted.
"Then yes, where I come from is much better. There's much sadness that creates the future, but the future is full of love, peace, honesty... all chosen by humanity rather than forced. Something that people decide they wanted, rather than being told. They go to Sailor Moon for it, rather than her going to the people. And yes, it was much better. This place, this city... was a shining paragon of hope for what could be accomplished by love and fairness, a place that stood out in the darkness as a beacon of humanity. A memory of an ancient race, and a modern one, that as much screamed out 'I was here, I mattered once,' a memorial for a race that would continue into the heavens for eternity, a reminder of what humanity was capable of."
"It sounds very beautiful," Sayo commented wistfully. "I wish I could see it."
"Maybe you will," Setsuna said, before returning her attention to the fight outside.
"Chao Klan, you are a wanted terrorist," the Eva's pilot announced sounding slightly winded. The armour on the Evangelion was buckled and dented in a few places, but there appeared to be no serious damage. Chao, standing opposite Unit-24, was slightly winded, and had some grazes and scrapes where the boots and fists of the bioroid had connected. She also appeared to have a bit of a bump on her head. A bit, Setsuna thought wryly, it's larger than me. Other than that, Chao was none the worse for wear. Certainly her defence hadn't dropped, nor had her response times. In fact, while breathing hard, the teenager looked positively excited to be in a fight, a smile on her face suggesting she hadn't had such a good workout in a while and was eager for it to continue. "If you do not stand down, we will be required to resort to lethal force. Stand down, now, and prepare to be taken into custody."
"Into custody? You mean disappear into some jail cell off Florida to be disposed of when the hubbub dies down? Or are you going to use my bones to mount an Eva frame on it? Huh?"
"You are inciting insurrection and violence and deception. As has been proven, the Evangelion series are not made from deceased Meltrandi or any part of Meltrandi genetic mat-" The pilot got no further, as Chao gave an inarticulate roar, and leapt at Unit-24, pushing it down on its back and grabbing its central breastplate segmentation with her slim fingers and pulling as hard as she could. The Eva howled, as did the pilot when the neural feedback hit, and Chao successfully prised off one of the plates, reaching in and grabbing a fistful of flesh, tearing and pulling until she could hold it in front of the Evangelion's eyes.
"This is Meltrandi! I know it's Meltrandi! I've seen the DNA sequences often enough – you'd think I know! And as you know, my ancestor was on the –" Before Chao could finish, a shoulder mount snapped open, and a handle jettisoned out to a suddenly waiting hand. Less than half a second later, Unit-24 had extended its progressive blade to full length, and so Chao wouldn't get sliced by the blade, she let go of the chunk of biological material and flipped back as the Evangelion tried to cut where she had been a moment before.
Her feet crunching down hard on the surface, smashing through the top layers of reinforced cement, Chao looked up, murder in her eyes. Setsuna realised that, even with the humming bladed weapon, Chao knew she could still take the giant robot, tear it limb from limb without major injury. But a steady thrum through the ground made Setsuna look around. To the west, another Evangelion. To the north was a third. And sure enough, from the south, there was a fourth. They weren't hurrying. Indeed, one held a large rifle, ad even as Setsuna watched, it fired at Chao. Chao's bodysuit reacted, however, and the streams of protons washed around her and into the ground at her feet as if she was a rock in a stream. Chao barely noticed. But no more shots were fired, and the Evangelions weren't hurrying. They knew Chao couldn't go anywhere, and sheer numbers would wear her down eventually.
Desperately, Setsuna looked back inside even as Sayo did. The wall panel took that moment to flash brightly as a light came on behind the crystal surface, and Setsuna turned back and bellowed, "CHAO!" as loud as she could.
Somehow, Chao heard her, and glanced her way before having to quickly dodge another attack from the prog knife. She gave a decisive nod, before returning her attention to Unit-24. Circling like a tiger, the Evangelion held the humming blade before it in a sideways position, across its body, ready to use it to block or make a rapid strike. Chao's hands were similarly loose just out from her sides as she turned with the robot. The quick flick of her eyes she gave to her sides as she turned told Setsuna that the teenager had seen the other Evangelions approaching, and was ready for them if they moved faster.
Chao wasn't stupid, though, even as full of rage as she was. Her circling took her close to the ruined spire in which Pluto and Sayo stood, and as she stepped past the doorway, one of her hands thumbed the activation trigger on her belt again. Her bodysuit blew apart as she collapsed in on herself, her form shrinking many times over, before the bands of shimmering light reassembled into the dress she had been wearing previously. Even while shrinking, Chao didn't waste time. As soon as she was small enough to fit through the door (still about twice as tall as Setsuna) she pushed through, grabbing Setsuna as she went and dragging her along behind her at a fast clip. Once she had reached her normal size, Chao still dragged Setsuna along through sheer force of will.
Behind them, Setsuna could hear the Evangelion reach inside the front door and begin lifting. "Do we need your device?" she asked Chao, gesturing back to the front room where the biomechanical node was still plugged into the wall.
"Nope, we need to get deeper, and quickly."
"Why? What's –"
"There was a teleport chamber built under this tower. It's untraceable. We need to get there, fast, before they break something. Ah," Chao added, glancing up at a featureless crystal panel above a recess into a wall, "stand in here."
Chao joined Setsuna as they stood huddled close into the wall, Sayo drifting along with them, then the floor started and dropped down below the level of the corridor. The elevator travelled about fifty metres down before stopping in a wide chamber filled with crystal technology, shining brightly in the dim light. The Chinese girl ran for a crystal, flat-topped, extruded from the ground before a circular pad. "Hurry and get into the matrix," she snapped, pointing towards the pad while the fingers of her other hand danced across the top of the flat crystal. Sayo and Setsuna did as bade, then a few moments later Chao joined them.
There was a loud roar from above as the Evangelions got bored waiting for their prey to come out and simply started lifting the tower from its foundations. At the same time, the world hissed and spat and flickered, and then Setsuna was somewhere else.
Elsewhen, the air spat and crackled in a similar manner, then a hole in the air opened, and a young girl in leather fetish gear was spat out unceremoniously into the ground. "Konoemon! You old bastard! I'll get you for this!" She waved her fist back ineffectually, knowing that she wouldn't. The transport had seemed to be harder on the old man this time. Perhaps it was the problem of getting around the curse in this way he had that had caused the strain on himself – he'd found something about search and rescue on extended school property in the runes, and so had to designate the island as temporary school property using ancient magic. It helped that apparently, there was great magic surrounding this island. In her time in her resort while waiting for Konoemon to heal, Evangeline had done a great deal of reading, looking for the island she and her classmates had been abducted to, but she had been unable to find anything in Japan's surroundings that matched what she had been on.
That may have meant that it was further afield, and there were far too many islands in the world to check each separately, but how many had Japanese-styled school buildings? None, from what Eva could tell in her research. Oh, she found references to schools of foreign powers in various countries, like some French boarding school for young ladies in Vietnam, various branches of an elite academy for the rich around the world - Evangeline had actually attended this school's Japan branch some thirty years before and had taken designs on a man named Suoh before his eye had been captured by another, or so she fondly recalled while researching – and even one which seemed to accept human students in the twilight world of the standard, everyday monsters. But in all her research, she hadn't found an abandoned Japanese-style school on an island that matched the one she had been on.
So either it was being hidden, or there was something else at work here.
She got to her feet, her power cloaked as soon as she'd left Mahora Academy, and looked around. She was in an open field, nothing around her for hundreds of metres except long grass. There was lots of long grass, with trails through it as if many things had run through the grass. Where was she? Isla Sorna again?
"No," she chided herself quietly, "don't be stupid." She glanced around, making sure no one was watching, then allowed her glamour to sweep over her, changing her form to that of an incredibly sexy teenager, still dressed in the brief leather leotard with slightly more skin showing than before.
She gave herself a once-over; yes, everything was looking right and had filled out properly. Her magic seemed to be working right, which was good, because there was some magical resonance here she didn't understand. She swept her cape around her, looked up and launched for the sky.
Ahh, it felt good to be airborne again. True, it really had been only four days or so in real time since she had flown at Kyoto, but there she'd been involved in a fight with that annoyingly skilled young boy Fate and the demon Sukuna, helping to save Negi Springfield. She didn't know what it was about the son of the Thousand Master, but she was drawn to him. Maybe she wanted a rematch? Or maybe he reminded her of his father, his father with that delicious... Eva shook her head. Eye on the prize, she reminded herself. But what if the prize is Negi himself?
From up high, the island didn't resemble any that Eva could remember having seen, but up here the magical resonance seemed much more powerful. Almost as if she could reach out and touch it...
On sudden impulse, Evangeline stuck her hand up above her, and it came into painful contact with a magical barrier. It threw her back towards the ground, and she managed to stop herself after being thrown a few dozen metres. It was powerful, if it was able to throw her that far. A quick circuit of the island from the air, cloaked from sight from the ground, showed that the barrier extended the whole way around. She didn't have to hide too hard, as the sun had gone down and it was now dark. The barrier lay about half a kilometre from shore on all sides, and Eva suspected that the outside world she could see through the invisible barrier was just an illusion, but even with her magical power, she was as unable to break the illusion as she was the barrier.
This was serious stuff. Eva was the end boss, as she referred to herself, at the top of the game, and for something to make her feel this much like the child she resembled, that she had been over half a millennium ago... it was scary.
She sank back down to the island, deep in thought. If she'd only brought Chachazero with her, she could have easily gotten inside the school and to Negi and found out what was keeping him so long. She'd expected him to have this place blown wide open by now. That said, he'd taken a pretty bad bash to the head while she'd been in the classroom before being turned loose outside, and likely had no wand or staff with him. If he couldn't use unincanted spells, and so far he hadn't given any indication he could actually do that, even if he did have some interesting ideas on re-channelling his magic back into himself for a power boost, then there was no way he could do magic without either the staff or wand. But did she want him doing magic?
As much as Eva wanted to go in and rip people to shreds (and could actually do just that) she was also aware she had to keep the existence of magic from the normal world. Oh, the world at large accepted the occasional magical hero, but thanks largely to the efforts of the physics professor Ueda, magic was largely debunked in Japan and rarely spoken of anywhere else in the world. The magical world liked things that way, hence why they kept sending inept bunglers Ueda's way, and crazy old men to America to make teenagers waste their time chasing them in natty costumes rather than allowing them to chase the actual demons, trolls and rogue mages that hid just below the surface of human society.
Privately, Eva thought it would all boil over one day, and magic would become widely known, but she'd been thinking that for a very long time now, and nothing ever came of it.
So, without the 'ripping people to shreds' option available to her, Evangeline had to act secretly. That meant no killing, no maiming, no disappearing soldiers, no storming the classroom to retrieve Negi. No, she had to be subtle.
She looked at the ground around her, thinking. If she had just brought a doll with her...
... or, she realised looking around at the long grass, sticks, and other items around her, made one herself...
There was a tremor through the island, Sailor Ceres felt. Something was here, something unaccustomed to making baby steps in its life. Something female. She wondered, was this the Master that the female robot was talking about earlier in the evening? But as quick as it appeared, it cloaked itself and hid. Ceres had more important things on her mind at the moment, though.
For a start, Ceres didn't know if this transformation had a time limit. The other senshi seemed to be able to hold this form for hours at a time, but Ceres didn't know if that was based on magical power levels, training, or even birthright if not just part of the package, and it could be embarrassing and potentially extremely disastrous if Ceres reverted back even to her cursed female body while on this island.
No doubt Umiko had lots of systems in place to detect anyone new. About the only thing she wouldn't expect would be the senshi, sidelined as they were by their current lack of popularity – unless, Ceres realised, the senshi had the brilliant idea of trying to reinvigorate their image by saving these kids – or at most Umiko would only be searching for the nine commonly-known senshi.
Still, there was a pink one that was referred to sometimes while Ceres was around the others, senshi and Dark Kingdom alike, so perhaps there were more out there than Ceres realised, and maybe Umiko had taken that into account.
Personally, Ceres didn't think that was likely, though, as no hordes of monster had arrived to ravage the enforced inhabitants of the island. It was a scary way to test her beliefs about Umiko and her competence, but it was one that paid off.
Idly, Ceres wondered what Ayumu was doing right now. Most likely she was stalling Umiko, considering her recent behaviour. There was more going on with that girl than Ceres could fathom for the moment, but that wasn't an immediate problem, and if Ceres was right, not really a problem at all.
She felt someone ahead of her, near a small stream. She could smell smoke, only a little bit, and it smelt damp, as if the wielder was trying to light sticks and leaves that weren't yet dried out completely. With a silent leap, she touched down in a clearing on the stream's bank, behind a girl with her hair pulled sharply back who was crouched down and swearing as she tried to get her green kindling to light. Nearby, a laptop's monitor was letting out a decent amount of light to see by, but it was half-closed, so the light didn't propagate as far as it normally would have in these conditions.
"I can help with that," Ceres offered, stepping forward into the light.
The girl started, spinning around on the ground and pushing her glasses up her nose with one hand to peer suspiciously at Ceres. Her other hand clutched a thin stick from her 'fire'. "Stay back!" Chisame warned.
Ceres held her hands up in a non-threatening manner for the second time that evening. "Whoa! I'm not tryin' ta hurt you or anything. I'm here to help you."
"Help me? Ha! In that outfit? What are you packing, hard drugs?"
Ceres looked down and not for the first time wondered why the senshi uniforms were so impractical, when they could have offered so much more protection to the arms and legs and a mask for the face. Presumably, the former was a moot point because the senshi were effectively immortal and indestructible by most means, and the latter was taken care by some kind of magic of advanced technology that stopped anyone from recognising one of the senshi when out of their costume, unless specifically told about it, or if, as with Ranma, one was exceptionally skilled at identifying people through non-visual methods. "No, I'm packing magic and according to one of your friends, the best set of breasts she's ever seen."
Chisame snorted. "You haven't met Chizuru yet," she snorted, but then took another look. "Maybe you might not have to. But how can you help?"
While Ceres didn't have any clue as to the activation phrases of her magical attacks, and suspected she wouldn't until she actually needed them, she did still have a mastery of martial arts. Focussing her ki into one of her hands, until it manifested as an apparent roiling globe of red plasma, she slammed her fist down into Chisame's pile of sticks. Chisame ducked, expecting to be showered in splinters, but Ceres stood upright again, removed the lighter from Chisame's free hand, bent back down and lit the pile of kindling.
Amazingly, it was still standing upright.
"What did you do?" Chisame asked.
"Uh... I just dried out the wood and leaves in your pile by gathering my energy up in my hand and –"
"You know, forget I asked anything." She regarded Sailor Ceres through her glasses again. "You're not from the island."
"No, I'm not. From your class, I mean. I am from this island, a nature spirit that does not want to see any more innocent bl-"
"You can stop that, too. You're a person. Some kind of sick, deluded cosplay freak, I'd think." Chisame snorted again, looking away from Ceres for a moment before her eyes slid sideways to look at the other woman. The senshi stood there mutely, head slightly cocked to the left, waiting for Chisame to continue. "Okay. Why are you here? Some sick game by Big Man? How did you find me? Are you -" Chisame stopped herself from adding, "a fan?" but it was obvious the person opposite had to be. Hadn't she appeared in a similar dress six months earlier in Chiu's World? She'd copied the costume from those worn by Sailor Moon and... oh. "You're with Sailor Moon?" Chisame guessed out loud.
Ceres nodded. Then, after a pause where she looked upwards thoughtfully, she nodded again. A third pause, then she shook her head slowly. "I'm... kind of to the left of Sailor Moon, you could say."
Chisame's eyes flickered to the left, but there was nothing there. It was stupid. Wait. Her eyes flicked to the right, Ceres' left. Nope, again nothing. She sighed again, angrily under her breath. "So," she asked in a dangerously light tone of voice, "Just who are you here with?"
Ceres recognised the tone of voice from Akane Tendo, his former fiancé. It was a voice that normally promised much pain of one kind or another. "I'm Sailor Ceres, and I'm here to rescue you."
"Oh! You mean... not here with Sailor Moon, but you fight alongside her," Chisame relaxed a little. "Are you going to get me out of here now?" she asked a little eagerly.
Ceres shook her head. "Unfortunately, not yet. I can't risk taking anyone out until I can get all those collars off everyone at the same time. I don't want to start rescuing people just to have everyone die."
"Oh."
"And another thing, I can't be seen on the cameras, but you can be seen talking to me on the cameras. So, if I'm around, just try ta, I don't know, act casually. And don't say my name."
"Right," Chisame agreed, nodding to herself.
"Just for safety's sake. I don't want a horde of monsters to descend on this island and kill everyone, you know? It's just... yeah. I want to make sure you're all safe before I can do anything." Ceres pointed back the way she'd come. "A girl called Asuna is over in that direction, in a cave partway up a hill over there. I'm telling everyone to meet over there in a few days. I'll get back around, let everyone know when it's safe to move, and then we'll get everyone there and I can get you free." Ceres looked around, feeling out with her senses. No one else seemed to be nearby, but you could never tell. "Also, for the next few days, continue acting as normal. Just keep moving like you do, keep doing whatever you do. If you see some of the other girls, maybe fight, scream, scare each other off – anything for the cameras. The weirder, the better. Anything to keep the production crew from killing one of you at random."
Chisame nodded mutely.
"So, I've got to go still. I've got to find some more people, tell them the same thing. If you need help, just shout out really loud. So long as I can hear you, I'll come running."
"Shout your name?" Chisame asked.
"NO! No," Ceres added a little quieter. "Just something nonsensical. Anything but my name." Ceres gave a little wave. "I'll see you round." She couldn't resist. "Chiu-chan." With Chisame's outraged squeal, Ceres bounced off into the night.
Well, watching reality TV was good for something after all.
The world Setsuna found herself in was red, that was her first thought. There was a roaring of great beasts, and with a start she realised that the redness looked like muscle and tissue and sinew and flesh, a giant mucousy tunnel winding away into eternity. Only the reassuring hand of Chao in hers kept her from screaming out loud to echo the beasts.
It was only a few seconds before the turning path that Setsuna realised looked like the oesophagus of a giant dumped them into a dusty room surrounded giant machinery. Massive teleport pods stood either side of the pad where the two stood, and as Setsuna looked around, Chao stepped down and headed over to a glassed-in observation area.
"We're back," she announced through the tinted glass. "She was there, just like you thought."
A figure behind the glass nodded, and as Setsuna approached, the door opened to reveal... someone she thought she wouldn't see again.
"Makoto?"
"Welcome back, Setsuna," the other senshi said. "You've been gone a long time. It's good to see you back again."
TO BE CONTINUED..
SAILOR MOON SAYS:
Man, it bits forgetting your MP3 player at work. I hope it's there tomorrow when I get in...
Next time: Makoto's big plan.