Hi again, readers. And awa-a-ay we go! Right into:

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SAILOR MOON: BANISHED
CHAPTER TWELVE

By Doctor-T

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The time: Nearly one earth month later.

The location: Almost two hundred light-years closer to the Galactic core, in a black gulf between unknown star clusters.

An eternity of darkness and emptiness reigned supreme in this particular lonely region of deep space. Nothing stirred here in this vast, trackless waste between the scattered star clusters, save the occasional molecule of gas or random dust particle. Once in a while, a larger lump of rock or ice would make a fleeting appearance, slowly tumbling along on its endless journey through infinity.

And then – something totally unexpected happened. Two flickering pillars of light momentarily appeared in the black void; solidifying a second later into the ebony silhouettes of a pair of very familiar, sailor-suited shapes, drifting together through the emptiness.

As soon as she and Sailor Saturn had materialized back into normal space, Sailor Pluto's Garnet crystal at the head of her talisman winked on, bathing both in a gentle red glow of projected light. Not, it soon proved, that there was anything at all to see out here in the black abyss, save each other.

Then little Sailor Saturn telepathically spoke up, confusion on her face and in her tone as she glanced about her at their new, obviously unanticipated surroundings.

"Setsuna-mama? Where are we? The stars are so faint! And where is the red dwarf star we were heading for? I can't find it anywhere!"

"What? This can't be right – we should have reappeared within a few billion kilometers of its position," that worthy responded, a puzzled frown on her forehead as well. "Hold on, I'll look for it myself…"

"It's just not there, Mama," Saturn insisted. "In any direction!"

"Well, this is unexpected. And you're right, Hotaru-chan. Not only does the red dwarf star seem to be beyond the range of our perception, those distant star constellations we can see are totally different from the ones that should be surrounding us right now," the now worried looking Sailor Pluto finally confirmed to her much younger companion, the tone of her thoughts betraying her surprise and uneasiness at what she was seeing. "Somehow our planned sailor-teleport to the next star out has sent us way, way off course! And as to where we are right now, I think that we're way out in the open void between star clusters, dozens of light years away from where we should have arrived back into normal space!"

"What? But how could that have possibly happened, Setsuna-mama?" Sailor Saturn anxiously inquired, suppressing a shiver of apprehension at the sheer strangeness of what had just happened to them. "Even by combining our power, we can't jump a fraction of that distance through space! If what you say is true, then we must have gone way beyond the star we were aiming for!"

"I don't know, Hotaru-chan. Maybe some natural phenomena, or even someone - or some thing - amplified the power of our subspace jump so that we deliberately ended up way out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"But – but, who would do such a thing to us?" Hotaru asked, her eyes huge with unease in the dim light. "And why?"

"There's no need to sound so alarmed, Hotaru-chan," Sailor Pluto reassured the fretful teen, her own uneasy expression fading as her mind registered that the area surrounding them, right out to the limits of her senses, was totally devoid of any other life forms of any description – even on the virus level. "I can sense that we're totally alone out here in this empty region of space. Chances are, what happened to us just now was most likely an accidental occurrence that was totally natural in origin."

I hope? She added under her breath.

"'Whew!' If that's so, then that's a relief, Mama." The red-lit form of the teenage Sailor Saturn visibly relaxed, and then she began to glance around through the black void surrounding her with building curiosity instead of fear now on her face. "So…where do we go to now?" the teen inquired in a dubious tone. "We're so far away from all of those just visible stars and star clusters! From this distance, most of them are so faint and packed together that they look like clouds of luminous, multi-colored mist!"

"I'm not certain as to that, yet," the disconcerted Pluto admitted. "So, since we're not in any immediate danger from anything, I'm going to try to pinpoint the nearest star or star cluster to our location," she then added in a businesslike tone, turning her attention back to the vital task at hand. "Once I find it, we'd best head in that direction. It may take us twenty or thirty sailor-teleports to reach the star in question, but we'll make it there eventually."

As aforementioned, this far out in the pitch-black gulf between the unfamiliar stars, the darkness was nearly total. Only the red light emitting from the huge gem on Sailor Pluto's Garnet Rod enabled Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn to see each other clearly as they both drifted together through the near absolute-zero temperature, all-enveloping nothingness that stretched on for at least fifty light years in every direction. Every direction, the intensely concentrating Pluto then realized, bar one…

"Setsuna-mama, I'm beginning to get hungry," Hotaru suddenly complained in a plaintive tone. "I feel all drained of energy, way out here in this cold, distant place."

"At least, since Chronos-Otōsan powered us up, we both now don't need to eat physical food any more," Pluto reminded her, now focusing her senses on the sole stellar object that she had managed to locate in their immediate neighborhood. "Remember, we can draw all the energy that we need from only sunlight, now, Hotaru-chan. So at least you won't starve to death out here – wherever here is?"

"But there isn't much starlight way out here anyway, Setsuna-mama! The very nearest star must be dozens of light years away from us. And I'm hungry for the taste of real food, not just solar energy!"

"Don't worry, little one. And you're wrong about the distance to the nearest star. See that bright yellow star off to the left of me? It's only three light years away, and even from way out here, I can just sense that it has at least two really big gas giant planets circling it. They have to be large for me to be able to pick them up from this distance. And where there's two planets, there should be more."

"Oh, yeah, now I see the one you're talking about," Sailor Saturn exclaimed in a much happier tone of voice as she peered in the requisite direction, which was directly behind her. Her face reddened slightly as she added, "Heh-heh. Um - I was facing the wrong way to notice it before, wasn't I?"

"Yes. Now concentrate your senses on it, Hotaru-chan, and tell me what you think."

"Hmmm? Let's see now - hey, that star is a 'G' Class sun, just like our own one back home is! There is no spectral difference between the two of them that I can tell. So we're definitely going to go that way to check it out, Mama?"

"Yes," her foster mother affirmed. "We certainly should sailor-teleport in that direction and see what we can find. Maybe we'll even be lucky enough to find an inhabited world that will be able to offer you at least something that vaguely resembles earth food?"

"Ewww, Yuk! What do you mean, 'vaguely resembling'?"

Sailor Pluto laughed at the expression on Hotaru's dimly lit face. "Come on! Hold my hand and we'll go."

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The lonely, slowly rotating planetoid was little more than a frozen rock with a scattering of dust and ice on it, orbiting at nearly Oort cloud distance from its isolated parent star, but it served as a handy observation platform for the two lost sailor scouts. Twin pillars of light briefly flared upon its dim surface, to be replaced a second later by two very slender and feminine humanoid forms, one tall, and the other much shorter. And also less patient.

"Are we there yet?" Hotaru wanted to know, tugging at Setsuna's near arm. "Hey! That star still looks to be really tiny from here!"

"Not yet, Hotaru-chan. And that is because we are still at least a third of a light year out from it. We'll jump in at a slight angle from the star itself this time, I can feel the presence of a sizeable planet orbiting in that direction."

Their second jump was much more successful. As she and Sailor Saturn materialized back into normal space, Pluto noticed with satisfaction that the central star was much closer and brighter than before. Furthermore, just to the right of their new position loomed the gargantuan, dimly lit, bluish-green crescent of a small gas or ice-giant planet, surrounded by a partially visible, nearly vertical plane of icy rings, the bands glowing with faint white luminescence in the weak sunlight. And nor was the far-flung giant entirely alone in majestic solitude. It was being orbited by at least one large, visible moon, and several distant, slowly moving dots marked the various paths of a few other smaller ones.

"Hmm. With those faint rings, this planet looks a bit like the ice giant, Uranus, in our own solar system," the surprised Sailor Pluto telepathically mused to her companion. "It's almost the same size and color as Haruka's planet is, too. Only, those surrounding rings are at a more normal angle of inclination. But that's a bit of a coincidence, finding a planet so similar to one of our own way out here."

"Hey, Setsuna-mama, do you think that maybe we somehow really are back in our own solar system right now?" Sailor Saturn burst out excitedly, staring at the majestic blue, ringed marble below her and badly wanting to believe that, by some sort of miracle, they had arrived in the vicinity of their much missed home star. "That planet really does look like Haruka-papa's one! Do you think that it could it be possible that the wormhole created by Chronos-dono merely sent us around in a big circle, or something, and dropped us off again close to our home worlds, after all, without us even realizing it? Maybe we weren't on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy after all, but only about two hundred light years away from home?"

"I'm afraid not, Saturn-chan," Sailor Pluto replied sadly. "The central sun here is pretty much indistinguishable from our own one, but if what you just said was true, I should be able to sense my home world of Pluto and it's big moon, Charon, from this close to our home star. And can you sense your planet, Saturn, anywhere near here?"

"No," Sailor Saturn groaned out after trying hard to do just that for almost twenty seconds. "But that planet there looks so much like Haruka-papa's planet, that for a moment I was hoping-?"

"Sorry to disillusion you, Hotaru-chan. This definitely isn't Earth's solar system, I'm afraid. But the news isn't all bad, because I do sense several other smaller worlds here, closer in to the star. An asteroid belt, as well."

"Can you sense any signs of life here yet, Mama?"

"No, not yet. As a matter of interest, that big moon below us does possess a thin atmosphere of sorts. But even if there are any life forms down there, they almost certainly won't be sentient. We are still about six billion miles away from the star itself, so we are too distant from it for any normal humanoid life to naturally exist this far out. Some types of Faerie life excepted, of course."

"I want to go further into the system and check out the inner planets," Hotaru declared, now focussing her attention on the region of space close in to the dazzling central sun. "Maybe there's a world like Earth there? I think that there's one planet maybe ninety million miles out from the star, but since it's directly in line with the sun in front of us, I'm not sure. The radiation from the sun is mostly blocking it out from me."

"Good spotting," Sailor Pluto congratulated her young charge. "There is an Earth-sized planet there, and it seems to be located right in the center of this star's habitable zone, too. Your senses are getting much better now, with practise."

"Thanks, Mama. And I…sense one more planet as well, even closer to the star than that, I think? Are there any other ones here, do you know?"

"Yes, there are. Apart from the two big gas giants that I found before from deep space, and this smaller blue-colored ice giant right here, I've spotted a fourth one, another gas giant, about three quarters the size of Jupiter. It's orbiting further in from this one, but at present is situated on the far side of this star. One more much smaller planet is orbiting inside that one – it's a heavy rock and iron world about seven times the mass of Earth, I'd say. This one is probably the other planet that you found, Hotaru-chan, but it's certainly not habitable by humans. A normal person landing on it's surface would be squashed down and have to crawl everywhere because of the extreme gravity. The last world that I can sense is very, very close to its parent star, and it's big – twice the mass of Jupiter, at least! I wouldn't want to visit its surface, either, it would be like landing on the sun itself."

"So, that's two outer, very big gas giant planets, one smaller one, the ice giant here, one heavy rocky inner world, one smaller rocky planet, and an inner hot giant planet," Sailor Saturn repeated, ticking them off on her fingers. "For a grand total of seven new alien planets that we've discovered."

"Correct. And six of them won't be of any use to us at all."

"But what about the seventh one, the Earthlike world that I sensed," Saturn asked, eyes bright with curiosity. "Does it have an oxygen atmosphere and oceans? Has it a moon? I can't tell from way out here! Can you, Setsuna-mama?"

"We'll be finding out soon enough, child," Sailor Pluto remarked, glancing back the way that they had come, and then stiffening with surprise at what she saw. "But first - look!"

Sailor Saturn stared off in the direction of Pluto's pointing Garnet Rod. Then her purple eyes widened again in astonishment. Rapidly approaching their position in deep space was a massive, greyish coloured, metallic mountain that could only be a spaceship of some kind – and an interstellar one at that!

"Wow! It's big…!"

"I don't think that vessel is a warship," Sailor Pluto declared, concentrating her full attention on the behemoth. "I'm not picking up any hostile emanations from inside it. But if it is built for war, something that big might just be able to do even us some real damage. So be on your guard, Hotaru-chan, just in case."

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Aboard the huge starship, the presence of the two lost sailor senshi had not gone unnoticed by its otherworldly occupants.

"Observation: Two life Forms dead ahead. Observation: Both Life Forms are radiating heat and seem to be comprised of enormous amounts of pure energy. Conclusion: Extreme caution advised."

"What? Two life forms are floating unprotected in open space? Now, who could they possibly be, I wonder? I didn't know that any 'I' Class Beings are residing in this isolated solar system. Bioputer, identify said organisms."

"Affirmative. Genotype: 'Humanoid Sailor Senshi'. Designations: unknown. Origins: unknown. Purpose here: unknown. Power levels: Larger one: 'I/G' Class. Smaller one: 'G' Class. WARNING! 'G' Class Organisms' dead ahead. Taking evasive action now."

"God Class?" the ship's designated controller gasped out, multiple eyes widening with shock. "Here, in this system? Why? Could they possibly be here because they know what is going to happen in our vicinity soon?" After a moment's thought, the creature quickly came to a decision. "Bioputer, quick, get me into contact with them! Priority One!"

"Action Requested: unwise," came the monotonic reply. "Reason: 'G' Class Organisms are unpredictable. Action Advised: move behind the nearby ice giant planet, engage quantum drive and approach the target world from the far side of the system."

"What? And miss this chance to talk to them? Bioputer, cancel that emergency escape scenario and do as I said. Establish a line of communication with them, right now!"

"Orders received. Actions Taken: Now establishing contact via telepathic link. Multilingual Translator on. Precautions taken: Blast Shields on maximum in case of retaliatory energy feedback. Quantum drive coming on line for immediate escape if required."

"Thank you. Right…um? This is Controller One on the starship Ark II calling Unidentified Beings. I humbly request the pleasure of your attention. I wish to speak with you, for information purposes only. We are not hostile. I repeat, we are not hostile."

"Wow! They're speaking to us like we do to each other," Hotaru enthused, looking surprised and delighted at hearing in her head the message from the huge ship, both telepathically and in Japanese. "And they're being pretty polite about it, too."

"Clam down, Hotaru-chan. The crew of that vessel are probably worried about just why we're here," Pluto replied. "I'd best put their minds to rest."

"This is Sailor Pluto calling Alien Ship," she immediately beamed back. "My companion, Sailor Saturn, and I mean you no harm. We are merely passing through this solar system on our way back to our home world. We shall not harm you or that planet orbiting in this star's habitable zone ahead of us."

"Whew! That's good to know. And they actually deigned to talk to me," the controller sighed out with relief, after receiving the reply from the taller of the unknown godlings. "What luck!"

"Further Information Deduced: probable physical age of both entities – less than thirty orbits of the inhabited planet ahead. The larger deity is older than the smaller. Conclusion; they are both extremely young for 'G' Class entities, probably little more than children. Speculation: the larger one may be a parent of the smaller, and therefore overly protective of it. Conclusion: I repeat - extreme caution in both words and deeds strongly advised."

"Duly noted. New Message to entities, invite them to join us on board this ship. We shall convey them to the planet that is our destination, if they so wish."

"Action Requested: unwise. Reason: 'G' Class Organisms have the capacity to destroy this ship by their mere presence. New Action Advised: politely ask them to join us at the planet ahead if they so wish."

"Not likely," the controller argued. "From what we were just told, they are both strangers here, like us. And if the power that they are radiating is registered approaching that inhabited planet ahead of us without our calming presence having already arrived there first, the population could quite possibly panic at the mere sight of them. They are both 'G' Class after all."

"New conclusion: Controller's logic undisputable. Action Taken: invitation to entities being transmitted. Invitation sent. Defensive Precautions now also taken: All inner shields on maximum power, emergency escape pod under controller's chair activated."

"Thank you, Bioputer. One other thing - how long is it until our other, expected guest arrives?"

"Answer: approximately ten minutes, give-or-take a few milliseconds."

"So they want us to join them on board?" Sailor Pluto remarked to her little companion after receiving and acknowledging the transmission from the intelligences on board the giant starship. "And they're apparently going to the planet that you wanted to find out more about, as well. So what do you think, Hotaru-chan? Do you want to catch a lift with them?"

"Yeah! But ask them if they have any 'Nihon Soba' in there. I'm starving for some noodles!"

"Somehow, I don't think that they're going to have any Japanese food on board, Sweetie. Hold on, I have just received our jump destination co-ordinates for inside the ship. Take my hand again, and I'll teleport us both there."

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Author's Note: Next chapter, get ready for several uexpected crossover characters, including the first mention of - him.