Chapter 12

Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune quickly came inside Chronus' castle, not paying heed to two groups of beings fighting all around in the desert-like world. Michiru guessed that her attack hadn't been strong enough in order to kill the grey haired man. She was sure that Chronus wanted to carry his threat out, and destroy everything that surrounded him only to gain the chance of an escape and restore Golden Millennium in other place and other time. Soon, both woman-warriors were in the chamber with apparati used for the extraction of the Silver Crystal's energy. Michiru looked at the wall under which the man had fallen down when she had attacked him. He was not there. Only bloodstains on computer devices showed sings of the fight which had occured earlier. Haruka looked at the waving surface of the large mirror in the middle of the chamber.

"It looks like your mirror..." She said.

"Yes, because it actually is my mirror only a bit enlarged. Don't deal with details. We must find Chronus." Michiru replied.

"Look out!" Uranus shouted, because she noticed the ball of golden light approaching Neptune with large speed. Michiru turned around, dodged the attack, falling down on the floor. The bullet hit one of computers smashing it to pieces.

"What you are doing! If you destroy this laboratory and you free Silver Crystal's energy..."

"Everyone will vanish." The grey haired man announced calmly.

"But you abandoned the real world already. I only want you to wake up from an illusion. Even if it means your death." He added. The man emerged from behind one walls of the room. The half of his face was covered by the mask made from the hardened surface of the mirror which had joined with his skin immediately after the first contact. He leaned on his walking stick with the head of the devil, and the ring on his finger glistened with a golden light.

"Space Sword Blaster!" Uranus attacked with the sword.

"Haruka, no!" Michiru tried to stop the friend.

"Silent Wall." Chronus whispered raising the hand with the ring above head. He surrounded himself with an invisible barrier. The light blade bouned back from it and hit some strange looking apparatus, seriously damaging it.

"The fight here is too dangerous." The green-haired girl announced.

"She knows it very well, but she doesn't care!" Chronus spoke coming closer to woman-warriors.

"She is the beginning of the end of the wonderful, the only and the real world! She is the source of all corruption, power which destroyed everything we tried to built together since time immemorial! She is an upright obstacle in the road to the ideal world!" The man was irritated.

"Don't you remember who first turned against us, when we wanted together to create the ultimate power of the Golden Millennium? It was she! She was amongst the ones who were afraid to become gods of the entire universe! They envied us and their jealousy and fear initiated the disaster!"

"I don't know what he is talking about but if he doesn't shut up..." Haruka clenched fists.

"No! Don't attack him now. We cannot risk destroying this place." Michiru calmed the friend.

"In this world... after such a long time... she came back from the Hell, found you before me. And she infected you with her venom, spoilt you, dirtied you physically and spiritually!"

"Enough." Uranus ran towards the man. She attacked with the cosmic sword, hitting the invisible barrier again.

"I could destroy you when I saw you for the first time in the flying hotel. I could kill you instead holding you prisoner in mines of the stone city. I wouldn't have so many problems... but looking at your mediocre fight, I am pleased that I let you live. I am pleased that I will be able to observe exploding Silver Crystal tearing atoms of your fallen body apart."

Chronus started to speak to the girl with even more anger and his eyes were on fire from internal hate. Haruka attacked again, putting her sword on the invisible barrier.

"I cannot understand why you are still defending this place after I showed you the real world." The man turned to Michiru, ignoring Sailor Uranus.

"I cannot understand why you betrayed me, although I showed you who you were in the past and who you could become again if you took my gift. You are protecting this ball of mud inhabited by poor beings who have an audacity to call themselves the civilization. They don't know even what this word really meant at one time. The civilization which isn't able to look out beyond their own small world, while the Golden Millennium reached the most distant galaxies.

The civilization divided into hundreds of states, fighting between each other and hating one another because of the stupidest reasons, the civilization chasing dreams not worth anything, while the Golden Millennium was one nation with one, praiseworthy, common goal. I want to give you new true world! Why don't you want to take it?" The man withdrew his hand. Haruka pushed on invisible wall.

"You want to give us the new, wonderful world, yes? For what price? in what way?" The blonde whispered.

"By killing innocent people? By doing horrifying experiments on women, which only wanted to find a job and better life? By forcing all your enemies to do the slave work? By destroying entire worlds!? Is how your Golden Millennium is supposed to look!?" Uranus became nervous. The cosmic Sword started lighting with a very intense brilliance.

"Your Golden Millennium is ending here and now!" Sailor Uranus' uniform glistened the same as her sword earlier. Bright wings appeared on the girl's back. Michiru looked at the friend with fear and amazement. Haruka attacked again, this time breaking through the barrier. The ring on the man's finger was broken into small pieces. Chronus tried to protect himself with his walking stick, but it was also destroyed by the new power freed from the talisman. The man butted against the wall watching the devil's head in his hand, the only part which remained from his walking stick. Uranus felt weakness, and then wings on her back disappeared. Chronus smiled. A shining blade, very similar to the Cosmic Sword, emerged from the devil's head. The man attacked. The surprised girl defended herself against his attack at the last moment.

"Exploiting all these people, killing them... I did nothing bad. You know why? Because everyone were false the same as the entire world in which you live!" Chronus attacked more aggressively. After a few slashes of the sword blocked by Uranus, he hit as stron as he was able. The cosmic sword fell out of Haruka's hand and the girl fell down on the floor. The man prepared the light sabre to strike.

"Did you think that you could win against me? I duelled with meteorites in the interstellar space in my free time!"

Michiru watched Chronus preparing for the death blow. Simultaneously, she noticed the surface of the mirror covered with the fluid time-space behind his back. She knew that she had to act swiftly. She closed her eyes, trying to make contact with the inside of the mirror, to feel it again, to force its obedience as earlier. She was in her Sailor Neptune form so her control over the talisman was much stronger than when she had hit Chronus the first time.

"Submarine Reflection!" She shouted, feeling all the power emerging from inside the mirror gate. The fluid space-time shone with an emerald glitter, simultaneously buzzing with a metallic sound, bringing som kind of ocean simulated on a large, heavenly computer to one's thought. Chronus turned around, surprised by an unusual occurrence. In the same moment, the fluid space-time violently expanded, leaving frames of the mirror. It reached the body of the man like some devilfish, wrapped him up with ten of tentacles and violently pulled him in the direction of the looking glass. Chronus was drawn into the inside of the mirror. At the last moment he caught its frame.

"I will come back! I will find the old you and I will come back with her." He shouted.

"And I will judge this world!" He added. Power pulling the man to the inside of the mirror was too strong. He couldn't fight with it. Soon, he was on the other side of the emerald barrier, leaving only a fragment of the walking stick in the shape of the devil's head with broken up horns in the chamber. Michiru ended the contact of her mind with the space-tme, sealing the mirror with Chronus inside. Haruka approached the devil's head lying on the floor. She stepped on it, destroying it even more.

"Is this the end?" She asked, looking at her beloved.

"I don't know. I must quickly turn this device off, as long as I remember how to operate it." Michiru headed in the direction of computers controlling the energy uptake from the Silver Crystal.

When Haruka and Michiru came out to the courtyard of the desert palace, it turned out that the fight had come to an end. Bodies of defenders of the palace and rebels lay all around. At one end of the stone stairs, rebels were helping the injured, and in other end, pig-soldiers were pushing tied up Chronus' guests who surrendered to them as last. Haruka noticed Aexel standing on the desert, saying something to her warriors. She raised the Cosmic Sword above the head. The sun rays reflecting from the blade hit Aexel's eyes.

"Was he...? Was he defeated?" The woman asked.

"He is defeated." Haruka replied.

"He's defeated!" Aexel shouted announcing victory over the tyrant. Rebels, despite the majority of them were tired with fight, found enough strength to be pleased with the victory. At some point, Sailor Uranus noticed her friend from Zeta Reticuli. He was in the puddle of his own, green blood laying nearby the destroyed humanoidal walking machine.

"K'h'bloo" Haruka quickly came to the friend.

"Don't move! Somebody will take care of you right away." She said.

"No. This time you won't change my fate." The alien answered.

"It isn't possible to cheat the fate twice." He added.

I'm sorry..." The girl whispered.

"Take the final gift from me." K'h'bloo touched the head of the blonde with his hand.

"Preserve images from my childhood in the memory." He added. Haruka closed her eyes. She saw green meadows stretching out up to the horizon of the Holy Moon of Zeta Reticuli. She watched as the sun had risen above strange world, lighting the silhouette of the gas giant seen across the sky above the meadow. Tears started to flow from the girl's eyes.

Sailor Neptune, Uranus and Aexel and her friends met in the ballroom. When everyone defending the palace died or surrendered to forces from the Stone City, the land freed oneself from despotic government of the tyrant in the white suit. Haruka and Michiru stood by the box, in which Sailor Neptune sealed the fluid time-space with Chronus imprisoned inside it. Michiru, using memories of the former beloved of the man, deactivated barriers surrounding desert-like world, thanks to which the land became visible to Sailor Pluto travelling in corridors of time. Handing over to the box with Chronus to Aexel was the last thing that girls were supposed to do. Pale skinned woman approached Haruka.

"Unfortunately we didn't find the Black Pegasus which you mentioned. It looks like that he escaped when his master lost control over him."

"Damn. " The Blonde wasn't pleased with the turn of events. It was she who freed the beast from its prison.

"We couldn't also find the man which you mentioned." Aexel turned to Michiru.

"Perhaps he escaped using the Pegasus. Perhaps he only helped us because it was a part of his plan." The girl announced.

"We cannot think about it now. They both are probably very far away. We must be ready for their return." Haruka added.

"I don't know how I can thank you for everything you did for us." Aexel turned to the blonde.

"If not your help we still would sit in stone walls and pushed prisoners to work." She added.

"It is I who should thank you. And everyone who made up their mind to go with me to the fight." Haruka replied and continued.

"Your victory brought many victims. I'm sure that the ones who survived still hates me for that."

"The ones who gained the freedom understood. Or they will understand in the future."

"What are you going to do now?"

"Many of prisoners are already thinking how to get back home. We will try to find a way to return."

"Our friend, Sailor Pluto. I'm sure that she will be able to help you." Michiru cut in on the conversation.

"If she wants. We will have another debt. There are many who has nowhere to come back, because Chronus took them from dying worlds. We are sentenced to live on this barren planet. I don't have place to come back also."

"Come back with us. You will find your place on the Earth." Haruka offered.

"No. I'm needed here. If this world doesn't have a strong leader, it will become a place of the massacre much bigger than the one which you witnessed. They all see me as somebody whom they can trust. I cannot disappoint them."

"I understand."

"There is information in computers that will help you to exploit the energy of Silver Crystal."

"We will need it. Soon the swarm of Cacodemons will be lured here by corpses and blood."

"Now we'll give you our last gift." Haruka said.

"And very important task. Essential both for us and for your society." Michiru added.

"Chronus inside the box and the fluid space-time." Uranus pointed at the object.

"Well. We will become guards of this monster and take care that he never finds a way to his freedom. I will order people to put the box in the deepest mine and to flood it with tons of rubble from the destroyed Stone City. He will never threaten anybody in the entire Multiverse."

"A time for say goodbye has came." Aexel said seeing Sailor Pluto gate opening in the vicinity. The woman quickly received the signal given off by Michiru. Aexel approached Haruka.

"Farewell. Now, when I saw what you were ready to do to help her, I know that I have no chance with her." She whispered to her ear. Uranus touched Neptune's hand and headed towards the space-time gate.

Epilogue 1

Haruka and Michiru went to the graveyard on which their friend Koji was buried. While they were in Chronus' world, weeks passed on the real Earth and the tragedy of the flying hotel already disappeared from front pages of newspapers. Girls decided to say goodbye to their friend who had died because their enemy wanted to kidnap Michiru in a grand style.

"I'm feeling guilty." The greem haired woman was very sad.

"Stop thinking about it. Only Chronus is guilty and we punished him for everything he did. He hit us like no one else before. When I will think what happened because of him... we learnt everything about Setsuna, Elios became our enemy, I released the monster which destroyed Elysion... not mentioning what I saw in the Cygnus Tower and the stone city. But we must forget about what happened as soon as possible."

"Remember that we're also on the list of victims of the crash."

"True. But now I don't want to think how to straighten all up."

"And what about Setsuna? Can you forgive her? Hotaru told me that you wanted her to move out as soon as possible."

"I wanted it. At the beginning. But later, when all happened to me because of that monster... I don't know. It won't be the same as before, but I don't want us to become enemies."

"I also don't want it. But the one thing is certain. We cannot tell Usagi or her friends anything. The truth would break their hearts. It will be our secret. Now Chronus is ealed, so there is no reason to tell them."

"It will our secret." Hotaru said, who came up to girls with Setsuna. Haruka looked at the tall woman.

"I know what you want to say. But don't you worry. I won't be irritating you and I will do as you want." Setsuna spoke.

"What?"

"I will leave you. You cannot live with a liar."

"Don't. I said this because I was furious. I didn't really want it..."

"No. I already decided. I must rest and think everything over. Now, when Chronus is gone I became the last person remembering what the Golden Millennium was. I would like to say goodbye to it. I will come back to Tokyo when I am ready."

"And what if some enemy appears? We may need Sailor Pluto." Michiru announced.

"That's simple. I will give you the jewel from my Garnet Rod. If times requires it, the talisman will find the successor."

"Yeah, nice. And I will have to train the new Sailor Senshi!" Haruka was indignant.

"You wanted it very much. When Hotaru outgrew you in experience." Michiru butted in.

"Hotaru, did you get in touch with your father?" Setsuna asked.

"No. I don't know where he is. As if he vanished into thin air." The girl replied.

"I talked to the friend of mine from police. As it turned out, there was nothing strange on the rubble heap which was left after the Cygnus tower. There were no bodies of women, or parts of laboratory apparati which you saw. Later it turned out that, before rescue units were committed to the rubble, the place was surrounded by people in uniforms. They were soldiers, some kind of agents who knows. They had many lorries. Rumours about light effects of the teleportation appeared in the city."

"They removed all evidence. Question is, who?"

"And Tokiyama? What about him?" Haruka asked clenching her fist.

"He lives. The press reported on the miraculous escape." Setsuna replied.

"Well. I will find him." The blonde smiled.

"But now let us go somewhere to the city. We must celebrate Michiru's return and say goodbye to Setsuna before her journey, right?" She added.

"And remember. Don't talk about Golden Millennium, the thirteenth Floor, Tokiyama, Chronus..." Michiru added.

"At least today." Hotaru said.

All girls moved towards the gate to the graveyard.

Epilogue 2

Somewhere far away outside the city, a dozen uniformed men threw the last elements taken from ruins of the thirteenth Floor into the large pit, everything that never couldn't be publicly revealed. There were modified bodies of girls, the unusual weapons, biological waste and equipping from all laboratories. Computers were thrown there also after cleaning their disks and moving their contents into the safe place. Some people began to pour everything with flammable substance. One of soldiers threw the flame grenade to the ditch and the rubble violently caught fire. Tokiyama stood in the vicinity, looking at tongues of fire and clouds of the black smoke ascending up to the sky. He clenched his fist, and a swirl of thoughts filled his head. Ginger assistant, the only woman who survived experiments of scientists of the thirteenth Floor, the clash with Sailor Saturn and collapse of Cygnus Tower, was close the boss all the time.

"Did woman-warriors win? Is he dead?" She asked.

"I don't know. He should get in touch with me a long time ago, to punish me and you, because we didn't stop that bitch. But he is still silent."

"So let us assume that he is dead. Let us stop bothering about him."

"If it was so simple... if he is dead, it means that that bitch lives. And she will come after us..."

"And perhaps this beautiful girl will be with her..." The ginger woman fell into a pensive mood. The grey haired man in a uniform came up to Tokiyama.

"We almost finished. We will stay here to make sure that everything was burnt. Later we fill the pit with earth." He said.

"Won't be any problems with some people?" Cygnus company owner asked.

"No. I eavesdropped on your conversation. Is it possible that we are finally free?"

"I don't know. If you eavesdropped on our conversation you already know the answer. There's no sign of him. You know very well that he was never late."

"Yes. If he is not here, perhaps indeed somebody destroyed him. After such a long time..."

" I'm thinking what it means to us all."

"It opens new, wonderful possibilities. We can finally decide about everything ourselves, having everything in our hands what was left after him." The grey haired man finished the conversation looking at the column of smoke getting out of the flaming pit.

Epilogue 3

During the dark, moonless night, in a different place, somewhere in the abandoned warehouse in some big city, there was another meeting. Under one of the building's walls, poorly lighted by hanging electric lamp, a hooded man in a black habit was sitting. Listeners, young women and men gathered around him. Everyone was sitting in the shadow, not interested in each other, all looking at the direction of the mysterious figure.

"Let me tell you a story about things that are going to happen. I will tell you a story about how the order of the world which you know was shattered and the new world you didn't dream of in your worst nightmares took its place. You think that now somebody treats you unfairly, that the ones that should protect you, tell you lies all the time. But you cannot even compare it to the world which became if we don't act. Let me tell you a story about the Son of the Moon."