Chapter 1: Death row. Next in line speaking
The last vestiges of the dim evening light begun to darken as a small and sickly purple haired girl dashed through the empty city streets trying very hard not to pass out.
Her lungs felt like fire and her head rang like someone had put a hammer to it. Every step cost her valuable energy and she felt as if she could keel over at any moment as she had done many times before when she was doing less stressful tasks than sprinting as quickly as her atrophied body would take her.
Hotaru Tomoe had never been a good runner. Neither the fits of tiredness which a childhood accident had left her with, nor her days spent cooped up alone in her room in the laboratory being browbeaten repeatedly by the uncaring caretaker her father had blindly hired to take care of her, improved her physical condition much.
But something inside her told the girl that her very life depended upon whether she could catch up to her one and only friend before it was too late.
This time, she would not let another one of the few people kind enough to view her as a human being slip away. She needed Chibiusa's company and deep in her heart knew that Chibiusa needed hers as well. It was the happy images of the few happy days that they had spent together as friends which spurred her onwards, lending her strength she no longer possessed and giving her speed that would have let her run alongside the Flash himself.
Hotaru had lost sight of her pink haired friend awhile ago but a bizarre sort of intuition told her that she was still going the right way.
If only she hadn't acted so shocked when Chibiusa had come to see her earlier. The poor girl was just concerned for her and being the idiot that she was, she had frightened her friend.
The imposing and imperialistic edifice of her school building came within sight as Hotaru crossed an empty field covered with large craters with no grass.
It looked like a scene straight out of one of those bad post-apocalypse films after some sort of massive battle had just taken place.
Several times she nearly tripped on the unsteady ground but willed herself to keep going nonetheless. A painful cough threatened to escape her tortured throat, but she forced it back.
At last as the last of the oxygen in her lungs expired, Hotaru reached the front of the academic building of dark stone and expensive glass. A strand of pink hair noticeable only by the most attentive eye nestled upon one of the stony steps leading to the entrance confirmed to her that Chibiusa really had come this way.
Hotaru could make out muffled voices coming from inside the building. They were quiet as if the speakers were trying hard not to be heard.
One voice among them sounded tearful and close to breaking with every word. It was also one of the higher pitched voices. The adorable voice of dear Chibiusa who must clearly be in some sort of danger.
Deciding that she needed to get into the building as quickly as possible yet also as stealthily as possible, she quickly tried the door to find it locked as expected now that school was out.
That's when she noticed that one of the windows to the side of the entrance had a large hole in it.
Broken glass littered the ground beside it. Another classic feature straight out of the aftermath of a battle in a bad Hollywood film.
There would be time to pray for the victims of whatever awful fate must have befallen the victims of this horrific tragedy later Hotaru thought as she managed to pull herself between the broken glass into one of the ground floor classrooms. Fortunately, the window was not too far from the ground and the gap was wide enough to fit her petite figure through without injury.
All that mattered to her right here and now was finding her friend and rescuing her from whatever terrible danger she must be in right now. From the way her voice had intermingled with the other mysterious voices from what she heard outside, the situation Chibiusa was in could not be good.
Hotaru crept quickly but quietly through the empty classroom careful not to bump into any of the neatly but crowdedly arranged tables and chairs. Common sense dictated that she was only a 12-year-old sickly girl with no self defence training whatsoever. Surprise was her only advantage in whatever nasty confrontation was sure to be coming next.
She swore she could hear crying as she stole silently across the corridor struggling not to trip in the slippers she was wearing on her feet. In her hurry to pursue Chibiusa after she had been frightened away, Hotaru had not had time to change and now begun to slowly ascend the steps leading to the next floor wearing only a pink t-shirt and a matching set of shorts.
The very clothes she went to sleep in every evening. She did hope despite the tenseness of the situation that her ridiculous appearance would not startle her friend. She must have looked like a mental hospital patient who had escaped her cell before being discharged.
It was only because of Chibiusa's short legs and young age as well as the adrenaline rush coursing through her boiling blood fuelled by friendly concern that Hotaru had had any chance of catching up.
The voices got louder and louder as Hotaru got further and further up the dark stairway. She still couldn't quite clearly hear what they were saying to each other but now two more of the voices were beginning to sound strangely familiar.
Like they belonged to two people she had met before but never gotten to know well, being spoken through static. One was almost as soft and soothing as Chibiusa and another was strangely calm, majestic and cold in stark comparison.
Hotaru had heard those two voices before but couldn't quite remember where. The remaining voices belonged to complete strangers for whom she had not the slightest inkling of recognition for. She stopped going up the stairs when she arrived on a floor on which a glimmer of light was shining from around a corner and the words spoken by the speakers seemed almost discernible.
Still careful to make as little noise as she could, Hotaru slunk closer to the light until she found that it was coming from a classroom to the right in front of her. The door was closed but a light shone from a window beside it.
From here she could make out the conversation clearly. She could also completely tell that her inkling of one of the voices belonging to Chibiusa was unfortunately very correct.
"No, you can't just kill Hotaru like that. She's my friend." Came the pleading moan of the pink haired pre-schooler that had given Hotaru her one reason to keep living.
"It is what has to be done. You yourself have seen her state. That girl's failing body won't last long now anyway. She is not even completely human anymore."
Hotaru put her hand over her mouth at these words. How dare whoever was speaking condescend her half machine body which had barely stayed alive after that terrible lab accident which killed her mother.
It was only thanks to these mechanical parts that she was alive right now and they were something she had zero control over.
She resisted the urge to swing open the door and give whatever mean bully was in that room a piece of her mind. At the very least they didn't sound like they were going to harm Chibiusa just yet and that was indeed a big relief.
Inching herself cautiously forward, Hotaru managed to get close enough to the window of the room without being seen or heard to catch a look at the people inside the room.
Nearest to her stood the pink haired visage of her friend. Her back was turned to the window but Hotaru could tell from the way it was trembling that Chibiusa must have been very, very upset.
A taller blonde girl whose very long hair fell beneath her waist in two tails stood beside the pink haired pre-schooler with her hand placed on the younger girl's shoulder as if attempting to provide comfort.
Hotaru's already great shock at hearing her name mentioned in this ominous conversation only grew when she guessed that this must be Usagi, Chibiusa's relative who once invited her into their house for a beautiful day she'd never forget and who had also been there a number of times with Chibiusa to support her from time to time.
A third taller figure stood a distance away from the two siblings, her hair green and also falling beneath her waist in a straight wave rather than a tail.
The sailor outfit shirt and skirt that this woman was now wearing did nothing to fool Hotaru. This was her elder student who Hotaru had until today regarded as her mother until she heard those awful words come almost nonchalantly from her lips. This was Setsuna Meioh, a physics student who had assisted in teaching in a lot of Hotaru's lessons.
She had no time to try and identify the remaining two figures before the conversation continued.
"Since the lab accident, Hotaru's father made her into his experimental doll. She was all that crazy man had left after he was expelled from the scientific community. He combined her with a demon which will soon reawaken to help Pharaoh 90 take control of the world. That demon is mistress 9." Another voice in the room sounded. It sounded mature and composed like Setsuna's but it was noticeably more nasal and regal in quality like the speaker was looking down at her listener's as she spoke.
"It must be stopped at any cost since if it reawakens, our world will be doomed and the powerful being known as Pharaoh 90 will succeed in taking over" This voice was deeper and coarser. Hotaru was unsure whether it belonged to a man or woman.
"And so Hotaru Tomoe must be taken care off or we are all doomed." The neither a man or woman voice summarized bluntly.
"But is there no way Hotaru can be saved?" Usagi seemed to be close to hysterics.
"There is only one. If she reawakens as Sailor Saturn then all the damage to her body will be repaired and Mistress 9 will no longer be able to take control of her. But since the prophecy clearly states that the reawakening of Saturn will cause great destruction, we cannot let this happen. Not after what happened the last time." Came Setsuna's monotonous reply which showed neither remorse nor humanity.
A storm of emotions flooded through Hotaru's confused mind as her brain flailed around trying to make sense of all that she was hearing now.
So this was the reason she had been prone to acting so erratically recently, giving threatening death glares at her classmates when they so much as mildly teased her and once making a grab for Chibiusa's crystal necklace without any intention of it.
Was this Mistress 9 her ghost which had been inside her all this time, trying to manipulate her actions?
And was her papa, not the kind and trustworthy father figure she had always thought him to be despite his eccentrics?
The last question made her eyes tear up and she quickly dabbed at her tears with a trembling arm.
Though all of this sounded ridiculous, Hotaru had been around enough to know that when adults spoke with this kind of tone, they could be nothing less than deadly serious as they were now.
Hotaru cautiously put her ear closer to the wall while taking care not to stand too close to the window. She needed to know more. Thankfully no one inside the room had spotted her yet.
"But you can't just kill the girl like that. The future exists, you said so yourself. Maybe Saturn won't re-awaken, and everything will be fine." Usagi's voice was choked with incredibly painful sobs that were painful to even listen to. At the same time, a venomous anger laced her every word.
"That unfortunately is a chance we cannot take. And that is why we can't work together. Think of us as your enemies if you like Usagi, but we must do this to save the world. This conversation is over, we're going to go now and do what we must."
Hotaru didn't know who said that but she didn't care. That was just plain cruel.
"No, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Don't go! There has to be another way!"
The desperation in Usagi's plea was what made Hotaru finally snap. She knew that it was now or never.
Teeth clenched and her body coated with sweat, the purple haired girl grasped the handle of the door and swung it open in one motion as she stormed into the room seething with righteous fury. She no longer cared about the potential danger. She only cared that these strangers were completely undermining the kindness of her two only friends and that Chibiusa should not have to endure their cruel words a second longer.
Words could not begin to describe the utter shock and confusion that came over the two girls and three young women in the room at the sudden appearance of the small and timid daughter of professor Tomoe garbed in clothes which made her look like a hospital patient more than anything else.
Not one of their expressions matched each other's.
Chibiusa and Usagi seemed to regard the new arrival with sympathetic concern though Chibiusa seemed more relieved and Usagi more worried.
Setsuna was clearly trying to keep a straight face but her grimacing lips betrayed the terror she was feeling at seeing her assassination plan revealed to the very target she was planning to enact it upon.
The remaining two strangers seemed to be looking at their target with varying degrees of disdain, the one with shorter dark blonde hair more angry than anything else at having their plan found out.
"Please. Don't, do, that." Hotaru managed to stutter out when after a few seconds no one said anything. "Please, don't kill me. I don't want... I don't want to die."