Dinner was served at the palace. It was steak night and Usagi was tearing through her plate like rabid animal.
"THIS IS AMAZING!"
"Try tasting your food," Rei teased.
"Oh hush, this is awesome!" She had a ribeye and she was loving it.
Chibiusa was not used to steaks. She got a smaller filet mignon in case she didn't like it, but she ate it all happily.
They talked about happy things, their favorite shows at the circus, what they wanted to do tomorrow morning. None of them wanted to have the inevitable conversation; what happens when they go home tomorrow. Sure, Usagi and Makoto planned on talking to the outers, but what happens if they refuse to listen or accept her choices. Would Usagi permanently kick them out? Would it be another battle? Would they quit?
Finally Rubeus suggested, "maybe Diamond and Sapphire should stay here."
"What?" Diamond said.
"Until this dispute with the senshi is resolved. There's three of them and two of you and they know where you live, where your vacation house is, and presumably where you work and go to school. They might try to ambush you again."
"What would stop them from coming here?" Sapphire questioned.
"It would take them a lot longer to transport without dark crystals and it would be a lot harder to take on an entire palace of guards and your mother than it would be to sneak up on you."
Diamond grumbled. "He has a point."
"You're kidding," Sapphire hissed.
"I don't want to hide and I'm not saying that we will, but we have to think about what we'll do when we go back to Earth. I don't think we can just go back home and hope they don't attack again."
"They might be tracking your car," Ami added. "They did find you rather quickly."
"Well crap," Sapphire grumbled.
"Also, how can you hide from the guardian of time? If Setsuna's helping them, she'll find you anywhere," Rei added.
"Another reason to stay here," Rubeus added. "She knows you're here, but she'd have to be crazy to attack."
Pearl grumbled. "She might be crazy."
"What?" Luna questioned.
"She blames Diamond and probably me for the fall of the Silver Millenium. She was in love with Queen Serenity and if it hadn't fallen, she wouldn't have died, at least not when she did. She might do anything to keep Diamond and the Princess apart, even if it is crazy."
No one had a response to that.
"Well, we can't worry about it until something happens. Who wants lava cake?"
They ate their dessert, mostly in silence, but when they went to leave the table, an alarm went off.
"Oh crap, someone's breached the palace gate."
Guard youma came in ushering the Queen to one hiding spot and Diamond to another. A third group came and moved everyone else.
"Why were they separated?" Luna asked Sapphire.
"He's the next heir to the throne. They don't want them in the same place, so they don't both die in the same attack."
As the Queen had predicted, Setsuna attacked the palace. Michiru refused to go. She said it was one thing to fight them here, but she wasn't going to go to the Negaverse to attack them when their Princess, albeit stupidly, went voluntarily. Haruka was at odds with Michiru over senshi business for the first time in a very long time. She joined the Guardian of Time and the battle was on.
The butler-youma quickly tagged the senshi, so that they left light up footprints as they went, making it easy to follow their movements. He could not fight, so he thought that would be at least some way to help.
The guards had hidden Usagi and Chibiusa in separate rooms, again protecting two lines to a throne. Chibiusa didn't want to be alone so Rubeus went with her. "I'm not the best fighter, but I won't let anything happen to you."
"But what about my Dad?"
"Your Dad is here?"
Everything went to hell. She decided to tell him the truth. "I'm from the future. Diamond and Usagi are my parents, well they're supposed to be."
That explains how she's next in line to the throne of the Moon Kingdom. Rubeus thought she was Usagi's cousin.
"I don't know how it will work out, but he'll be okay. You just have to believe it. Without hope, we don't have anything."
She started to cry. Rubeus held her.
The screams were the worst part of this, Usagi decided as she was with her senshi. Hearing youma scream was awful. Sure, she heard it when she fought in battle, but those were bad ones. Hearing the guards get hurt and the staff yelling in a panic was enough to shake the future Queen to the bone.
"I can't just sit back and do nothing," she said aloud, albeit softly. "They're my senshi and they're out of line. I have to reign them in."
She started to get up.
"What are you doing?" Rei hopped up.
"I can't just let them destroy the palace. I have to stop them."
"They'll just kidnap you," Rei snapped.
"They can try."
"You want to take on Haruka, Michiru and Setsuna alone."
"I don't want to, but I'm their leader. I can't just do nothing. It would be like letting your kid destroy a 7-11 while you take a cigarette break out back."
"What? You're not going alone."
"Thanks for volunteering to come with me."
Rei should have seen that coming.
Haruka and Setsuna got disoriented. "Where do you think they're hiding?"
"There seem to be many hidden rooms here. They might have split up."
"Why would they do that?"
"Typical Palace procedure to protect the heirs."
They made a right and then another one, just to realize that they had been in this hallway before. "See our footprints are here."
"Why are our footprints here?" Haruka grumbled.
"That youma at the door. He must have tagged us. Look." Setsuna ran in a circle, leaving glowing prints the whole way.
Haruka touched them. "It's not paint. I don't know what it is."
"Who cares?" We need to put a stop to this nonsense now!"
They took down a guard. Instead of taking him out, they demanded to know where Usagi and Diamond were.
"I'll never tell, not even if you kill me."
"Oh I can kill you." Haruka got ready to level him when Sailor Moon screamed.
"Sailor Uranus, Sailor Pluto, this ends now!"
"It can, just come home and leave the boyfriend here."
"I am not leaving without him," the leader insisted.
"What? You can't marry him," Pluto told her.
"Says who? You. My past was fiction. For all I know, the future you told me was a lie too."
"Don't you dare."
"Don't I dare what? I don't love Endymion. I never did, and I'm not going to marry him."
"You'll kill Chibiusa!" Haruka creamed.
"No, I won't. Mamo-chan and I will work it out, somehow."
"What about your other responsibilities? You're supposed to rule Crystal Tokyo together."
"Nope. I want to bring back the Moon Kingdom."
"What?" All of the senshi said.
"When I become Queen, it should be of my kingdom, not a planet that was never really mine to begin with."
"What about Diamond?" Ami asked her.
"I want him to be my King."
"Oh, hell no. You're not making that bastard king of the Moon Kingdom." Setsuna hissed. "And insult your mother's memory like that?"
"It's not his fault she died. If anything Endymion's father is to blame. He's the one who killed me in my last life."
"What?" Haruka questioned.
"Didn't Setsuna tell you what really happened?"
Usagi recounted an abridged version of the story Queen Pearl had told her, starting with her forced engagement to Endymion and discovering she was pregnant with Diamond's baby. "His father tried to cheat the duel. I died instead of Diamond and then the ensuing war destroyed the kingdom. Queen Beryl showed up and was able to destroy what was left in all the chaos. She was so crazed, she didn't even realize Endymion was already dead."
"So when we died it wasn't because of Beryl, it was because of a dispute over you that got out of control."
"Yeah, like this scene right now. I was too scared to choose him in my last life and everyone died. I'm not making that mistake again. I know you two think this is the right thing, but it isn't. He just wants to be with me, just like he did then. He doesn't even want the Black Moon throne." Diamond told her he'd give it up so they could run the Moon Kingdom together.
"Then who would take it?"
"Sapphire? I don't know."
Haruka started to change her mind. "Michiru was right. Forgive me Princess."
"It's not me you owe an apology to. It's Queen Pearl; this is her kingdom and her palace."
"I forgive you," the Queen said as she proceeded down the hall. When Sailor Moon went to stand up to Uranus and Pluto, the Queen decided to do the same. This is her Kingdom afterall. "You've been told nothing but bad things about me and my people in this life and in your last one. Believe me, people have done worse to this palace."
For the first time in over 1000 years, Setsuna saw Queen Pearl. She was enraged. How was it fair that she lived and was able to send her son to the future when Serenity died saving her daughter?
"You don't have to do this," the Queen told Setsuna. "I know you miss Serenity, but this won't bring her back."
"You have no idea how I feel."
"Yes, I do. I lost my King in a fight over a stupid river. He pushed me out of the way when these archers attacked. It's been over 1000 years since I've seen him. I still miss him everyday."
"If your kind didn't just steal left and right, this never would have happened."
"Maybe, or maybe if Serenity didn't ostracize us and then dump all of her undesirables in my Kingdom, we wouldn't have been so desperate for supplies. She wanted to better her kingdom, and she did what she felt was necessary to do it, so did I. I wasn't perfect, and I know she wasn't, but as a sovereign, I respected her success, even if I despised the way she got it.
There are a lot of what ifs that could have changed the fallout, and I have a lot of regrets, but they aren't about how I ran my Kingdom. They're about how I treated my son. I knew he loved Serenity. He was running away left and right. I had him followed once because I couldn't figure out where he was going or what he was doing. He would sneak into the Moon Kingdom or onto Venus or anywhere he could to be with her, and I could have tried to help him.
I could have offered a peace treaty to Queen Serenity. I could have given back the land I took, but instead, I prioritized my political goals over his happiness. Serenity did the same with her daughter and at what cost. We were so set on one-upping each other that we lost what meant most to us. Is it fair that she died and I lived? No. If I hadn't had a mimic-youma, I would have probably died too by sending my son into the future, but I had one. It wasn't about fairness; it was just chance.
"What the heck's a mimic-youma?" Haruka questioned.
"It mimics objects or powers that it sees so that I can use them one time."
"Only once?"
"I can leave and come back and if the youma sees it again he can redo it, but only one time per sighting. I saw Serenity port her daughter, and her daugher's senshi into the future and I was able to port my child with my youma. It died instead of me because it was its energy that did the porting."
"But I saw the future," Pluto stammered. "Mamoru and Usagi have Chibiusa. They have to."
"Hasn't the future been cloudy when you look at it?"
"It has? How did you know that?"
"Because I changed the past, so the future had to change with it."
"What?"
"When I ported my son into the future, I had him raised on Black Moon. Apparently, I did a crappy job because Death Phantom tricked him. He got them to attack Crystal Tokyo that's how Neo Queen Serenitiy got hurt, and Chibiusa came to the past to try and save her.
When you let her and Endymion through, I used another mimic-youma to copy the time key. I then went back to my sons' childhood and instead of raising them here, I had them adopted and raised by good people in Tokyo. Then I went and did a better seal on Death Phantom, so he couldn't get to them again. This time around they had the right start and instead of attacking Crystal Tokyo in the future, they ended up meeting the senshi in this time.
This is why the future is cloudy. The future you knew was based on events that now won't happen. Neo Queen Serenity is fine. She won't be attacked and Chibiusa will be able to go home, not to the world she knew, but the world that is being created now. She'll also need a new nickname."
"So Mamoru's not her father?"
"He never was. When Queen Serenity ported her daughter into the future, she sent both her daughter's starseed as well as her granddaughter's starseed, except Usagi couldn't be born with a baby inside of her, so that starseed got sent even further into the future. Chibiusa is Usagi and Diamond's daughter. She always has been. That's why she has pink hair and red eyes. My hair was pink before I became queen and she has her father's eyes."
Setsuna was starting to finally understand what Serenity had told her about the future. She had warned the senshi not to rely on her ability to see into it too much because sometimes all it takes is one action, one moment for everything to tailspin.
"You're careful, which is why I chose you, but sometimes, you are too careful. Sometimes you have to let things happen come what may." She meant moments like this. She should have just let Usagi and Diamond happen.
"For a thousand years, I blamed you and your people for the fall of the Silver Millenium, but you were no more to blame than anyone else. We all made choices that aided in the fall and I'm sorry it took me so long to see it."
"I forgive you Setsuna, and I'm sorry for your loss."
"And I am for yours. I just wish I could see her again."
"You can, well sort of."
Without waiting for an explanation, Setsuna followed the Queen down the hall. Usagi was curious too she she went along and then everyone followed her.
The security threat was over. Diamond followed the footprints to find the group. Chibiusa was asleep, so Rubeus put her in bed. Esmarelda and Sapphire managed to find a bottle of liquor that had been hidden in their safe room, and they got tanked.
When the Queen stopped, she was at the door of a control room. She called for her hologram youma and he came trotting down the hall. She set him up and before their eyes was a hologram of Queen Serenity.
There was a weakness in the wall between the living and the afterlife and this youma was able to manipulate it, projecting the late Queen's persona to them.
Setsuna started to cry. "It's been so long, my Queen."
"I know, and you've done so well. It's been such a long time for you to be alone. It's time, Honey."
"Time for what."
"To seal the gates of time. I'm relieving you from your post. You'll still be a senshi, but you won't have to watch the time gates anymore. It's been holding you back. You need to live your own life, fall in love again."
"I don't know if I can do that."
"I know you can. It's time to let me go."
Setsuna nodded. She didn't know if her heart could take that, but she was not about to argue.
"My child," she said facing Usagi. "You have grown so much. I know you will be a great Queen for the Moon Kingdom."
"I just want you to be proud of me."
"I always have been. I'm sorry I made up a past for you. I didn't know how to tell you that my own failures brought about the end of the Silver Millenium. I didn't know Diamond had come to the future. I thought you would have to spend eternity without your soulmate, so I made one up for you. I knew it wouldn't be the same, but I thought since you two were friends, you might find happiness anyway."
"I understand."
"Diamond, one of my biggest regrets was not giving you a chance in your last life. I can see clear as day that you love her like no one else ever could. Don't forget that no matter what challenges come your way."
"And Pearl, I think that if we hadn't been so stubborn, we could have been friends. I always admired your tenacity, even if you still to this day can't follow any rules. (Like the one that prohibits manipulating the wall of the after life). Thank you for watching over my daughter for me."
"Of course, would you like to see our granddaughter?"
Queen Serenity nodded and Pearl went to get a sleeping Chibiusa. The girl wokeup when she heard her grandmother whistling.
"What are we doing?"
"We're going to meet your other grandmother."
This was her first time seeing the Queen Serenity. "She has your eyes," Serenity said to Diamond. "How did she get pink hair?"
Pearl laughed. "She got that from me."
"Of course she did. It looks like gum."
"Mother," Usagi chastised.
"It does. Well, she's the most adorable little girl I've ever seen. Even if her hair might be mistaken for cotton candy."
"Will my hair ever become silver like yours?" she asked her grandmother.
The other women were a bit wary. Most women don't like it pointed out that their hair is silver.
"It might. It also might become purple."
After some more chitchat, it was time for Chibiusa to go to bed. The others left shortly afterwards giving Setsuna a chance to say a final good bye to her love.
"I'll never forget you," Setsuna said.