CHAOS AND COSMOS
Chapter 12: "Striving For Balance"
A Neo-Sailor Moon fanfic
By Bill K.
When Sailor Chaos lunged, sword in hand, her speed caught all three Senshi from the past by surprise. Chaos was on Sailor Vesta in a moment, her sword swinging for the kill. Vesta barely had time to change into a gnat, removing herself from the Dark Senshi's field of vision. Chaos took a moment to try to locate Vesta, then turned on Juno.
But Sailor Chaos was intercepted by Sailor Moon. There was no time to use the Moon Tier. Instead she caught Sailor Chaos in mid-lunge, grasping the woman and twisting to try to pin her to the ground. The Princess had spared no avenue in her training to become the best Sailor Moon she could be and Jiu-Jitsu was one of those skills. Even her cherished Aunt Makoto had been impressed.
Sailor Chaos responded by putting her right hand against Sailor Moon's shoulder. She braced her feet against the ground and shoved. Sailor Moon's grip broke and the woman flew eight feet before landing. The teen rolled to her feet, ready to attack or defend, and saw Chaos almost upon Juno
"Aqua Initiation!" Juno shouted sharply.
Beneath Sailor Chaos, the ground rumbled. Then it exploded underneath her, driving a gusher of water into the air with Chaos caught in the middle. The force of the torrent was equal to a raging river current, but Sailor Chaos stood unmoved. Juno backed up a step as Chaos walked out of the gusher, unaffected beyond being drenched.
Sailor Moon summoned the Moon Tier and hoped she would be in time. Before she could fire, though, an Asian elephant suddenly appeared over Chaos's head. Gravity took over and the pachyderm dropped squarely on the back of Sailor Chaos. The Dark Senshi was driven to the ground, buried under the massive hind quarters of Sailor Vesta.
"Thanks for the save, Vesta!" Juno exclaimed.
"Look sharp!" Vesta barked. "She's squirming underneath me! How much punishment can this woman take?" The elephant's eyes widened. "Hey, I can't feel her no more!"
Juno looked around frantically and spotted Sailor Chaos rise up out of the ground behind her like a wraith, then solidify again. Juno backed away, forming water projectiles as she retreated and firing them at Chaos. Using her free right hand, Chaos easily deflected each water projectile as she stalked Juno. Vesta changed from an elephant to a tiger and lunged angrily at Chaos.
"Silver Moon Crystal Power Kiss!" Sailor Moon shouted.
The pink energy from the Moon Tier struck Sailor Chaos squarely and the Dark Senshi folded into herself. Vesta was able to veer away at the last instant, landing behind Chaos and crouching for an attack if needed. Sailor Chaos was propped up on her sword, her knees buckled and her head bent forward. Sailor Moon poured out her desire to change this woman, to reform her into a vehicle of peace, all focused through the energy emanating from the pink crystal through the Moon Tier.
But Sailor Chaos would not relent. And eventually Sailor Moon's energy had to. The pink beam faded away. The pink tendrils surrounding Sailor Chaos, trying to influence her to peace and happiness, changed to black and then evaporated into mist. Sailor Chaos straightened up and turned to Sailor Moon.
"Your mission is futile," Sailor Chaos said, again without any emotion. "You do not have the power to turn me, nor do you have the power to protect your friends. You are a failure, as Sailor Moon and as the progeny of Serenity. You always have been and you always will be."
Her eyes stinging, Sailor Moon pointed the Moon Tier again and fired. Again pink tendrils surrounded Sailor Chaos and again Chaos seemed visibly affected. But once more the tendrils turned black and dissipated, and in a much shorter time.
In the blink of an eye, Sailor Chaos was on top of Juno. Juno took two steps back, then stumbled and fell and found a sword tip at her throat. Before Chaos could behead Juno, Vesta the tiger was on her back. The tiger's claws dug deeply into Chaos's back and she plunged her fangs into Chaos's neck. But with little effort, Sailor Chaos swung her free arm back and flung Vesta from her. Ignoring the wounds on her back, Sailor Chaos looked down upon Sailor Juno as Juno looked up into the eyes of her executioner. Then Chaos glanced at Sailor Moon, silently challenging The Princess to save her friend.
One moment she wasn't there. The next she was, Sailor Cosmos again swinging her staff like a bat and knocking Sailor Chaos away. Chaos unfurled her wings and used her momentum to carry herself into the air twenty-five feet above them.
"Again you interfere," scowled Sailor Chaos from above.
"Again and again," Sailor Cosmos proudly proclaimed. "The balance must be maintained, Chaos."
"A plague on your balance!" snapped Sailor Chaos angrily. "So what if they live another minute or a millennium? Death will have its due! You cannot keep them from its grasp!"
"You may be companion and consort to death and emptiness, but I'm the champion of life. And I will not let you cheat them of one moment of that precious life."
With that, Sailor Chaos dived at her. She swung her sword. Sailor Cosmos parried with her staff. The impact sent a shock wave over the barren landscape, causing at least one gnarled tree struggling for life to finally give up and fall over.
"Hey!" Vesta suddenly exclaimed. The tiger found herself sinking ankle deep in the barren soil. The same thing happened to Sailor Moon and Sailor Juno. While Sailor Moon stopped when the ground hardened around her ankles, Juno and Vesta continued to sink.
"No, I won't let you do that," Sailor Cosmos told Chaos. She waved her staff at the three Senshi and they suddenly found themselves free of the ground.
Sailor Chaos took that opportunity to dive at Sailor Cosmos again. But a cannonball of water, fired by Juno, knocked her away before she could get to Cosmos. Cosmos ran over to them as they gathered together.
"Grasp my staff, all of you!" Sailor Cosmos instructed. "Sailor Chaos has the advantage here and this skirmish can't end well!"
The three Senshi complied. A wave of energy passed through them, filling each Senshi with a fantastic sense of peace. And when they opened their eyes, the three found themselves in a grassy meadow dotted with trees and bushes, all drinking in the rays of the brightly shining sun.
"Where are we?" Sailor Moon asked.
"Crystal Tokyo," Sailor Cosmos replied, then grew an impish smile. "Don't you recognize the lake?"
Sailor Moon gazed over to a lake in the distance. She puzzled for a moment, then sparked with recognition.
"That's the lake outside the north side of the Crystal Palace!" Sailor Moon exclaimed. Then she sobered. "But - - where's the palace? Where's the city?"
"Gone," Sailor Cosmos replied softly.
"What happened?" Juno asked anxiously.
Sailor Cosmos grew melancholy. "Chaos has always lurked on the outer reaches of humanity, waiting, watching, influencing when it can. Its goal is the destruction of everything."
"Why?" Sailor Moon asked as the others listened.
"Chaos is an elemental force of the universe," Cosmos explained. "It exists and it follows its prescribed function. There is no why. Chaos merely is."
"She don't seem all that," grunted Vesta. "Sure, she's tough, but there's probably a way to take her down."
"You speak of Sailor Chaos," smiled Cosmos. "Sailor Chaos is an aspect of Chaos, as Talon Umbra was, as was Metallia and Wise Man, as was Pharaoh 90 and Nehelenia." Vesta and Juno tensed at the mention of the last name. "It's like your index finger is an aspect of you, but it isn't the totality of you. Chaos is so vast, so limitless, that I can only comprehend it in abstract terms. And I've been fighting Chaos for a good many years."
"Then how is this possible?" Sailor Moon asked, waving at the lush green around them. "If Chaos is as powerful as you say, shouldn't this be a dead world?"
"Because we're only one of a billion, billion worlds in all of reality," Sailor Cosmos said, amused by their primitive naivety. "And Chaos is on all of them, waiting and corrupting and sowing the seeds of every planet's destruction. Chaos has succeeded thousands upon thousands of times, leading to the deaths of entire societies and the charred remains of planets."
"Then," Juno swallowed, "it's hopeless?"
"No," Cosmos replied. "Because Chaos has failed thousands upon thousands of times as well. It's the cosmic balance."
"You said that earlier," observed Sailor Moon. "What exactly is the cosmic balance?"
"What do you think it is?" Cosmos asked.
Sailor Moon frowned, but Cosmos wouldn't respond further. Finally she sighed in irritation.
"Well," The Princess pondered, "philosophically I suppose it's opposing forces keeping each other in check. When you achieve a balance between, say, good and evil, you reach a state of harmony."
"Right again," Cosmos nodded ruefully. "Harmony on a cosmic level is a balance between life and death, knowledge and ignorance, progress and regression, invention and destruction; Never leaning too far to one side, for that destroys harmony and inevitably leads to destruction."
"You could have just answered the question," grumbled Sailor Moon.
"I could have," smirked Cosmos.
"And that's what happened here?" Juno asked.
"Yes," nodded Cosmos. "On Earth, as on many worlds, there has been a champion to keep Chaos in check and to balance the scales between entropy and progress. For a long time, it was Queen Serenity."
They all noticed Cosmos grow sad.
"But all living things die," Cosmos related. "Even the one acknowledged through the universe as the single greatest Senshi in the history of life. And Chaos began to make inroads. Chaos began to undo everything that Queen Serenity had accomplished in her magnificent life."
"What about her replacement?" Sailor Moon asked with a feeling of dread.
"Since that replacement was you," Cosmos told her with a twinkle in her eye, "I'm not going to go into specifics. You're much too sharp. You did carry on her mission, and very admirably, until - - something - - happened. And Sailor Chaos came into being."
"Came into being how?" pressed Sailor Moon.
"I must not answer that," Cosmos maintained. "Maybe this quote sounds familiar: 'It's terrible to know the future. Terrible to know your own, but just as terrible to know someone else's'."
Vesta and Juno glanced at Sailor Moon. They saw their leader recognized the quote, though they didn't, and its implications.
"Anyway," Cosmos continued. "Sailor Chaos was very bold and very aggressive. Chaos, from time to time, grows impatient and creates these aggressive avatars like Metallia or Sailor Chaos, or corrupts living beings into avatars like it did with Nehelenia. And Sailor Chaos. rather than corrupt from stealth or decay over time, attacked. I tried to hold her back, but her determination to win was, I'm ashamed to say, greater than mine. With the help of human cohorts whom she corrupted, she devastated the planet. She created a haze that choked off the sun, thus destroying most of the plant life. Food became scarce. Technology was put to work to solve the problem, but she and her co-conspirators sabotaged the technology. As she gained advantage, mechanical progress and material knowledge began to disappear. And the more she destroyed, the stronger she seemed to get." Cosmos took a breath. This was clearly painful for her to remember.
"That's when you became Chibi-Chibi," Sailor Moon asked sympathetically, "and ran away to the twentieth century, isn't it?"
"I was overwhelmed," Cosmos said. "I needed my . . . needed the strength Queen Serenity had. Of course, genius that I was, I picked one of the most traumatic periods of her life." A smile began to bloom on Cosmos's pretty face. "But I learned from her, just by being with her. I learned the strength of pacifism. I learned the power of a gentle touch. I learned the miracle that love really is. Seeing her triumph against impossible odds, because Sailor Galaxia was far more powerful than she was, gave me the courage to go back and face what Sailor Chaos had done."
"So you did this?" Juno asked.
"Not alone," Cosmos demurred. "The planet helped. It wasn't dead yet. I just removed the things that were choking the life out of it. And life began to return: plants, animals, even humans."
"You did a wonderful thing," Juno told her.
"I just restored the balance," Cosmos answered. "Sailor Chaos had gone too far. The harmony was gone. Life and death were misaligned. I restored that."
"Well now that we're here, maybe the four of us can take this Sailor Chaos down for good," Vesta proclaimed.
"No," Cosmos replied.
Sailor Uranus watched from the observation window as Sailor Saturn writhed on the bed she was secured to in the palace detention area. Uranus couldn't quite determine if the impotent actions of her little Firefly was Talon Umbra trying to escape the magnetic restraint field or Saturn trying to escape Talon Umbra. She'd been watching ever since Saturn had been placed in the restraint field, desperately wanting to help in some way and knowing that she couldn't. How much time had passed? Too much, for Saturn had suffered during every moment.
And then Saturn turned and looked at her in the observation window, and gave Uranus the most wicked look of malicious glee the Senshi could ever recall seeing. Angrily Uranus threw herself against the window. The barrier held, forcing the Senshi to glare as Saturn laughed at her.
"Uranus, she's only doing that to taunt you," Neptune gently chided. The green Senshi was sitting in a chair, patiently waiting for Serenity or Ami or Usa or somebody to remedy the situation. "Don't let her make you lose your eye."
"Sorry if I can't be as calm about this as some people," snapped Uranus.
"Just because I can keep my head about this does not mean I don't care," bristled Neptune.
"Yeah," Uranus said softly. "I'm sorry."
"It's the frustration talking," Neptune replied gently.
"Neptune, what if we lose her?" Uranus asked, trying and failing to hide the quaver in her voice. "What if Dumpling wakes up too late? What if . . .?"
"If it happens, we'll face it," Neptune said. "But I'm not going to waste my time and energy speculating on it until and if it happens."
"The mirror," Uranus said suddenly. She turned to Neptune. "The mirror!"
"The Deep Aqua Mirror can't cure her," Neptune told her.
"But maybe it can see," Uranus continued. "See if she gets well. See if . . ."
"See the future? That's Setsuna's province, not mine. And would you really want to know?"
"Yeah," Uranus hardened. "To know if there's an end to this for her. And if she can't be cured, to know I can go in there and throttle the life out of that grinning little demon - - so it knows what death tastes like." Uranus swallowed. "And so my little Firefly doesn't have to suffer anymore."
Just then, Uranus saw a reflection in the window from the doorway. She turned, causing Neptune to look. The light from the hall cast the person in silhouette.
"Dumpling? Glad to see you up and . . ." Uranus began. Then she stopped when she realized that the figure in the door wasn't Queen Serenity.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'NO'?" roared Sailor Vesta.
"The destruction of Sailor Chaos would accomplish nothing," Cosmos told her.
"She wouldn't hesitate to off you," Vesta growled.
"And that's the difference between us," Cosmos explained.
"If you're scared," muttered Vesta. Cosmos didn't flinch.
"Have you given up?" Sailor Moon asked.
"Given up, no," Cosmos answered. "But I know to pick and choose my battles with Chaos to maximize my success. I know when to pull back."
"So that barren patch where we faced Sailor Chaos - - that was Earth, too?"
"It was," nodded Cosmos. "I've reclaimed half of the planet, restored nature and gave the people who survived a means to live and achieve. It wasn't easy. Some day I hope to reclaim the entire planet. For now I've managed to contain Sailor Chaos on one side of the planet."
A man ran up, interrupting them. He wore a simple woven cloth tunic and wooden sandals and looked like something out of an ancient historical painting from the feudal era. He bowed reverently to Sailor Cosmos, his hands clasped together.
"Please, Sailor Cosmos!" the man said desperately. "My daughter! She's hurt! She had an accident! Please help her!"
"Of course," Sailor Cosmos replied benevolently. "Take me to her." And off they went, leaving the stunned Senshi behind.
"This place is nuts!" Vesta remarked.
"And did you see his tunic?" Juno began. "He's like some peasant out of some feudal drama you see on holo-streams. She really did wipe out everything." Juno looked up at the sky. "I wonder how far in the future we are."
"Well," Sailor Moon said, staring after Sailor Cosmos as she disappeared toward the shoreline, "I don't know if Sailor Cosmos is immortal. But if she's not, every Senshi generation is a thousand years, more or less. That would put us somewhere between 4000 and 5000 A.D."
Juno whistled.
"So what about Saturn?" Vesta asked. "We just giving up?"
"Nobody's giving up," Sailor Moon stated.
"Then what do we do? Because this Cosmos isn't going to help us take down Chaos. That's a fact."
"You're right about that," Sailor Moon sighed.
"So?" Vesta persisted. Juno looked to her as well.
"I don't know," Sailor Moon finally admitted.
Continued in Chapter 13