By Yohann DeSabrais
a.k.a. Technuma Saturn
Prologue...
"Oh shit!" said the doctor Ogawa as she realized just what had
happened.
Only a few seconds ago, her world made sense. The asylum she ran was
a smooth operation that held the more dangerously disturbed
individuals of Japan. They were held securely in her mental ward,
where they hurt nobody, not even themselves. Occasionaly, she even
managed to heal one just enough that a regular institution might be
able to take him in and allow him to live a better life without
padded walls, tranquilizers and a straightjacket...
Today, however, was going to be hell. Her phone had just rang to
inform her that one of the major nutcases in her care had escaped
during the night. And to make matters worse, a visitor was there to
see him just this morning, of all days!
"I`m... I`m sorry sir. He somehow got out of his cell during the
night, we have no idea how far he could have gone since then."
"I see... I better warn you, though, his mind is rather... deranged,
as you must know by now." said the visitor, removing his black
shades slowly for dramatic effect. He was very good at that.
"Coran Demsy will be captured and brought back, I assure you mister
Dreadborne." said doctor Ogawa.
"Please..." said Ronmar as he smiled, "...call me Mitchell."
* * *
CYCLES OF LIFE: EPISODE 26
MIND`S EYE VIEW
Her spine was healing well after the emergency reconstructive
surgery she`d received shortly after her new friend Xavier had
brought her to the hospital. The nerves had been damaged beyond
medicine`s capacity to cure, but she was recovering nonetheless.
Makoto could now sit up in her bed. She was starting to accept her
condition, not that she had to like it... but one must accept what
they can`t change.
"Do you feel anything if I do this?" asked Xavier as he proded his
finger along her right leg.
"No." she replied.
"And this?" he added, poking her foot.
"Nothing. I can`t even feel the bedsheets touching my skin."
"I`m sorry I can`t do anything for you, Makoto." said Xavier, his
green eyes reflecting sorrow.
"You already are." she said, taking his hands in hers and kissed his
fingers.
Xavier smiled. He gently hugged Makoto and kissed her softly. She
rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes.
"Tell me something, Xavier... why did you stick by me after you
brought me here? I mean, I was no more than a broken doll when I
first woke up, and you tolerated the crap I put you and everybody
else through..." said Makoto, until Xavier put his finger to her
lips, beckoning her silence.
"Hush, now." he said. "I did what I did because... well... I made
some bad choices in my life. When I saw you, I knew that helping you
was that chance of redemption I was losing hope of ever finding. I
just never expected to... to..."
"To fall in love?" completed Makoto.
"Yeah. I`ve always been alone, even when I was surrounded by others
like myself. Loneliness wasn`t so bad, but after a few years of
isolating myself, I`m ready to give myself again." he said, looking
in her eyes directly.
Makoto felt herself melt, the strenght and passion in those green
eyes was simply so much! A single tear of joy rolled on her face,
and she kissed him again. The only dark spot on this moment was the
thought of her friend Minako, and wether she had really done that
horrible thing the night before...
* * *
With the sun rising in the morning sun, the fugitive Coran Demsy
did his best to stay hidden from the police and anyone else who
would try to capture and return him to that dreadful cell in the
mental hospital. In his earlier days when he still called himself
Psyche, he had it all: money, power, respect and psy powers that
made him a feared and respected man. Now all he had was a rat
infested abandonned appartment building where he brooded and
plotted his revenge.
"Well, that`s another fine mess you got into." said the voice that
haunted him every day.
He turned around and saw Sailor Jendra. Sitting on the dusty kitchen
counter of the two room appartment he had improvised as his hideout,
she mocked him once again.
"Shut up." he told her.
"You had it all, you know that? But you wanted too much, mingled
with dangerous fanatics and you lost everything." she said.
"I could have won the big jackpot. The power Vortika could have
brought me.."
"Is a joke!" interrupted Jendra.
"Do you really think Vortika respected you AT ALL???" said Sailor
Mercury, who just happened to be standing behind him.
"Yes, she did, that`s why she admitted me and tempered Ronmar in my
presence!" he argued.
"Like hell she did!" said Jendra.
"The only reason she dealt you in on the hand is because you brought
plenty of poker chips to the playing table!" said Mercury in a
mocking tone.
"Shut up, both of you!" he commanded.
"Nobody ever respected you, Psyche. After your first blunder,
Majestra Vortika publicly disavowed you and left you out to dry."
said Mercury.
"Silence!" he ordered.
"You`re a loser AND a known dangerous molester... no one will EVER
trust you again!" added Jendra
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!!" screamed Demsy, pulling out a gun
stolen from a security guard at the asylum. He shot blindly at both
scouts, emptying the ammunition in a few seconds.
When he reopened his eyes, there was no one there. Only a few bullet
holes on the filthy walls.
"Shut up..." he whispered, falling to his knees, head in his hands.
* * *
Minako was about to enter Makoto`s room, but she hesitated. What was
she going to say? What was MAKOTO going to say? After what happened
the night before, the blonde senshi wasn`t sure how her friend would
react... surely she had heard of the blaze and the corpse of the guy
who almost killed her.
"The truth, that`s what. No matter how much it hurts." she told
herself, then entered.
Minako knocked on the door of her friend`s hospital room, then went
in. She was greeted by a stare of uncertainty, of doubt mixed with
reproach.
Silently, Minako opened her purse and handed over to Makoto her
stolen transformation pen. She took it without a word and held it
close to her heart. It took over two minutes of uneasy silence
before Minako broke the ice. "I assume you want to know the whole
story." she asked.
"Yes, please. I want to hear it from your lips." replied Makoto.
"Okay... it all started after I heard about what happened to you, I
decided to go after your pen... and punish the guy who shot you.
With my skills acquired as Sailor V, it was easy enough to go back
all the way up to the source. A small time crook called little Jimmy
fessed up to whom was responsible for your assault, and with the name
of the gang he belonged to, all I had to do was catch one of them and
squeeze the information out of him. The first one of them I found
was... shall we say, allergic to pain." she explained.
"So what did you do from that point on?"
"I was primed and out for vengence, plain and simple. If he`d been in
front of me, there`s no telling what I would have done. But once
again, fate had a different idea in mind..." explained Minako as she
went into vivid details of her encounter at the docks...
* * *
"Thirty-one... thirty-two... thirty-three..." counted out loud Sailor
Venus as she looked for the place where she`d find the Panther`s
hideout. It had been so easy to go up to this point, threatening and
beating her way through a long line of bums and small time crooks
whom she brutally crushed for the information she needed. It was a
welcome change from the desperate fights against the forces of pure
evil she`d grown used to battle, like the youmas of Beryl, the
cardians of Allan and Ann, the droids of the dark moon... the greedy
and pathetic motives of the petty thieves she was facing were a
refreshing relief to her.
So far she`d punched, kicked, threw across rooms, crushed several
noses and reduced fingers to bone under her steel lined boots. And
she enjoyed every one of these violent moments.
Now, however, she was just about to cross the line. Sailor Venus was
getting ready to take her first human life, in cold blood no less.
Had any one of her friends tagged along, she would have objected
vehemently to Venus`s plan... but the recently reawakened senshi was
working solo, like she always had done so as the cool headed
Sailor V.
"...thirty-four." she finished counting, having reached the
destination squealed by a mugger who would probably never fully
recover the use of his knees.
And now, to enter... how would she proceed? Hiding in the shadows,
Minako evaluated her options: the back door, the windows of the
second floor with the fire stairs, the air ducts on the roof...
"The hell with discretion!" she then concluded. "SOUL CRESCENT
SMASHER!!!" she screamed.
Pointing her index towards the front loading doors of the rusting
warehouse, a golden energy sphere formed on its tip and shot forward
in a blur of light, detonating loudly upon contact with the steel
doors and shredding them to tiny bits. Soul power had done wonders
for Sailor Venus, notably by increasing the strenght of her old
attacks tenfold.
"Time to bag myself a murderer." she muttered with an evil snicker.
Walking with a very deliberate hip swing, she entered slowly through
the settling dust cloud. There was a lot of debris spread over from
her blasting entrance, but no one in view.
"Damn, I should have taken an appointment." she said.
Just before she could do anything else, she heard a terrible scream,
followed by a gut-wrenching call for help. Her hero reflexes kicking
in, she sprang forward and ran to the back room... the scene waiting
for her there was not what she expected, to say the least!!!
Her target was right there, but the short cowardly man was being
assaulted by somebody else already!!! And not just anyone, it was
a tall man whose strong body was wrapped in a long dark blue cloak,
his head bathed in blazing red flames that shrouded his facial
features.
"What the hell are you??" she asked, making herself known to both
men.
"Help... me..." mumbled the short man, unaware that Venus wanted to
hurt him as much as his assailant.
"Shut up." ordered Ghangoroth as he crushed his throat in a grip of
steel. He fell down, limp and lifeless. He was dead.
"What did you do that for?" asked Venus.
"Do you think you`re the only one he did something against? That a
crook like him would be content to hurt a single person in his whole
lifetime?" he asked, not a trace of emotion betrayed by his monochord
voice. "Scum like him deserves to die, period. And besides, he was
trying to muscle in on MY territory. A place like this can only have
one successful battle arena, you know."
"I came here looking for a fight, and you`ll do just fine..." said
Venus, anger burning in her eyes, as she took her battle stance.
"I could use the practice myself, come to think of it. I don`t get
that much opposition of your caliber, fighting you off will be the
highlight of my year!" said Ghangoroth, pulling his cloak in his
back to free his arm movements. Minako noticed a small grin on his
face, the first sign of emotion anyone had seen on the psionic
warrior in ages.
* * *
"So? Are you going to tell me about that fight or what?" urged
Makoto, hanging on to Minako`s every word.
"I already told you enough. He was good, very good. My love-me-chain
whip was barely enough to keep him at bay. He had some powerful
telekinetic blasts and pyrokinetic firewaves to boot... and that`s
how that fire started, by the way; his fire lit up a leaky gas maine
that my whip cracked open by accident. The rest is kind of a blur,
since that huge explosion broke our concentration. Well, I have to
go, my classes start soon." said Minako.
"Minako?" said the paralyzed girl as her friend turned around and
headed for the door. "If you`d reached the guy before the flame head
warrior... would you really have.. you know... killed him?"
The blonde girl froze at the mere mention of this possible outcome.
She hesitated to answer, and dodged the question entirely instead,
replying out of context without even turning to face Makoto. "Rest
for now, my friend, rehabilitation is very exhausting as I hear."
She left.
* * *
Sitting in math class next to Robin, Usagi was really starting to be
worried. Her friend`s account of the events at the hot springs was a
very bad sign of more trouble ahead.
"Aebonite? What`s that?" whispered Usagi, trying not to get caught
chatting in class.
"I`m not sure. Maybe Luna can help us on that one." suggested Robin.
"Better ask Artemis. He`s the specialist in crystals, Luna once told
me. If anyone knows about this weird heat sucking stone, it`s him."
"Where is Artemis anyway? I haven`t seen him in a while." commented
Robin.
"I don`t know, actually. He`s been real busy lately, Minako can
barely get a hold of him. He`s going to be there at our meeting
tonight, so we can ask him then." concluded Usagi.
"How many of us will make it anyway? It`s been so confusing
lately..." wondered Robin.
"I know my brother and Laurella at least, they should meet us on the
way to the temple."
* * *
Gingitsune entered a small artist studio located in an almost
deserted part of the Tokyo suburbs. Although the small mansion gave a
run-down impression from the outside, the inside decorating was
nothing short of breathtaking. The owner of the place had a wonderful
artistic sense, the archways, floors and columns that greeted the
eyes were testimony to that.
Everywhere he looked, statues, statues so realistic in their details
that they all seemed to be sleeping, waiting for their creator to
snap her fingers. Marble, granite, quartz, volcanic stone, so many
types of rock represented and each one of them fitting perfectly the
figure they had been carved into.
"She`s been busy all these years." he thought.
A loud shriek came from an intercom box located on a nearby wall.
"Who`s there?" asked a feminine voice in a very displeased tone. "I
have no appointments at this time."
"Have you ever needed any appointments in the service to your queen,
Thorelia?" asked the silver maned man, using a name she hadn`t been
referred as in many years. The long silence that followed gave him
the indication that she hadn`t forgotten him.
"You can come in, silverfox, but I`m not returning to the ruins of
the past." she finally said.
"We`ll see about that." he thought as he walked through the entrance
leading from the lobby to the main hall.
* * *
Rei changed from her dark red blouse and crimson skirt to her temple
garbs. She loved wearing nice stylish clothes, but she always
returned to the worn rough cloth of the Shinto. The apprentice
priestess knew she had more than enough time before anyone got there
for the meeting, so she knelt in front of the sacred fire for some
advice.
She began to concentrate on the dancing flames, letting them consume
her mind and draw her into a deep trance. Within minutes, there was
no more thoughts in her head besides the image of the fire, the singe
of the flame and the odor of the smoke. She WAS the flame, a fragment
of the god she worshipped.
The abstract motives of the glowing fire suddenly started to swirl
around, taking form and giving a glimpse of things to come to the
sweating Rei. What she saw in there was nothing to reassure her. She
saw the image of a man with glithering hair, surrounded in darkness
and standing up in the middle of a pool of blood. Two long tears
were rolling on his cheeks and they fell down, mingling in the fresh
blood. Then a burst of hellfire swallowed the whole image in a
fraction of a second.
"What did THAT mean?" wondered the young priestess.
Amidst the fire came something quite unexpected: another image began
to form, despite the fact that Rei had broken her state of trance.
It was the smiling face of Chibi-Usa, but she was a mature young
woman now. Her hair was still in her odango style, much longer than
it was right now, matching the lenght that Usagi`s own hair had
reached before she had it cut off. Her long hair was no longer pink,
however, having darkened to a burning shade of red.
Her face had the strenght and passion of Black Lady, when she`d been
turned into an evil adult by the Wiseman, but her eyes sparkled with
genuine kindness. This mature image of Usagi`s daughter even
whispered a few words.
"I love you, Rei..."
Then it all clicked.
"Of course, it`s been staring me in the face all the time!" thought
Rei. Chibi-Usa`s uncanny ability to swim, her sudden talent for
fire-based attacks, the strange link she felt between the small lady
and herself when they hugged at the hospital...
"Oh dear lord, I can`t believe this..."
* * *
"You haven`t lost your touch, Thorelia." commented Gingitsune as he
admired the creation studio of his former ally from the dark kingdom.
Dozens of bizarre looking statues of barely humanoid beings were
frozen in various expressions of anger, pain and fear. These were
the artworks that japanese high society was fighting for in a full
fledged bidding war. These were the very horrors that had been once
used to create the vile creatures known and feared as the dreaded
YOUMA.
"I`ve kept myself busy, as have all survivors of Beryl`s service."
said Thorelia, keeping herself out of sight in the darkest corner of
the badly light studio.
"We need your magic touch again." said Gingitsune, getting straight
to the point.
"I`m not interested. I know you`ve been gathering our former
collegues, but I`m not coming back. You may have given the oath to
the bloodline, but I am a free agent in this whole mess." calmly
explained the shadowy figure.
"No need to remind me, friend artist. I`m not here to play on your
loyalty, but rather to offer a deal."
"What kind of deal?" asked the woman.
"Tell me, Thorelia, those masks you shape for yourself, how long do
they last now?" asked the silverfox, sensing that the sculptress`
"face" was beginning to unravel.
An odd bubbling erupted from her right cheek, subsiding quickly. A
small trickle of flesh colored liquid oozed off her face, dropping
down to the floor in a hissing sound of corroded artificial skin.
"How long, Thorelia? Weeks? Days? Do they even last more than a few
hours, now, is that why you shun the grand openings of your
exhibitions and flee the interviews???" he pressed on.
"I don`t want to return, I don`t care what my face looks like..." she
tried to argue, but a more substancial section of her face melted
into a mushy paste, dripping down into a large puddle of dissolving
muck. She sobbed silently.
"Your phony faces look nice, but wouldn`t you just LOVE to have a
REAL face made out of real human skin? One that your body wouldn`t
reject?" asked Gingitsune.
"DAMN YOU! It was Beryl who made me like this!!!" she screamed
through her tears.
"And it`s her heir alone who has the knowledge to graft you a new
face, darling."
"All right, you win... I`ll mold you some new youma." conceded the
artist.
"Thank you. My Lord and Lady will be pleased." replied the man,
grining wickedly.
* * *
"Is this it? Where`s everyone???" wondered Laurella as she looked
into the small reception room at Rei`s place, totally deserted save
for the young priestess herself.
"Setsuna had to work late, Haruka and Michiru called in to say they`d
be late because of heavy traffic, Ami and Minako are spending some
time together since they`ve been seperated so long... well, you get
the idea. Chibi-Usa will be here with the cats, but that`s it."
explained Rei.
"More snacks for us then!" said Usagi with a big smile.
"That`s the sister I recognize!" observed Shingo.
Ever since her dramatic confrontation with Gallagher and the Prime,
Usagi hadn`t been the same, being a lot sader and gloomier. In recent
days, however, she had been returning to her old scatterbrain self
once again. As much as the others got aggravated by her childish
behavior at times, they`d rather have her be happy and carefree than
sullen as she`d been.
"So it`ll be five of us, then." said Laurella, sitting by Usagi who
already dug in the cookie plate waiting on the table by a hot tea
pot.
"SIX!!!" corrected Chibi-Usa who ran in from the frosty winds outside
into the warm room and putting down her travel bag which she opened.
"Make that eight!" said Luna as she hopped out after Artemis.
"Artemis, Usagi tells me you know a lot about crystals." said Robin
as she poured some tea for her friends.
"Right on, what do you need to know?" replied the white cat.
"What do you know of something called AEBONITE?" asked Robin.
Artemis had a very noticeable shudder at the mere mention of the
stone.
"Aebonite, are you SURE???"
"Certain. That`s what the silver haired guy said."
"Silver haired?" thought Rei out loud. "This sounds like my vision!"
"There exists a very rare mineral called Aebonite." explained
Artemis. "It has the natural property of absorbing surrounding
energy and reemit it in a random pattern of varied energy forms. It
can be purified to absorb one specific type of energy and precisely
redirect it to a single focal point, turning it into a powerful
energy gathering device."
"Something tells me there`s more bad news attached to that."
suggested Shingo, who received Laurella`s elbow in the ribs as a
more or less don`t-be-snippy command.
"He`s right." continued the cat. "It takes considerable knowledge of
crystals and huge energy ressources to purify aebonite into the
heat-sucking crystal you saw yesterday. In addition to that...
aebonite is indigenous to one place only: THE DARK KINGDOM
ITSELF!!!"
"So those triplets we fought would be... what`s the name you told me
again, Usagi? Droids?"
"Youma, Robin. The dark kingdom uses youma." replied the blonde
girl.
"Right, youma. So where do the cardians fit in???"
Everyone let out a loud sigh. Robin had a lot to learn about the past
encounters of the sailor scouts.
"So the legacy of Beryl lives on." commented Luna.
"I always wanted to roast some youma myself! I just love it when dad
tells me all about how he and mom defeated all those weird monsters
with stupid names!" said Chibi-Usa.
Rei found herself looking at Chibi-Usa quite insistently. She knew
something about the small lady that she herself ignored. She wanted
to tell her very much, but just didn`t know how.
"What is it, Rei?" she asked, noticing her stare.
"Nothing, honey, enjoy your cookies." said Rei with a warm smile.
"I always loved you a lot, you know that?" whispered the small lady
to Rei.
"Yeah, me too!" she whispered back.
* * *
"That was very brutal, what you did to these guys." said Ami to
Minako. She hadn`t said much throughout their dinner, but this was
the only thing on her mind. "Why did you do it?"
"Because they hurt Makoto, that`s why. Evil needs no reason other
than to exist, so why should justice have any more reason than that?
We must make a stand against the onslaught of darkness, period."
said Minako.
Ami dragged her fork through her barely touched plate. Who was this
girl in front of her? What had happened to the sweet woman she`d
fallen in love with?
"Minako, we scouts and senshi stand for justice, that much is true,
but can we really afford to lose ourselves in bloody retribution?
Isn`t that how Beryl corrupted the earth in the first place,
manipulated humanity into aiding her attack upon the silver
millenium???"
"Perhaps. Our maybe we just have been hiding behind our sweet
teenage image to ignore the fact that we`ve been chosen by fate to
hold back the raging rivers of chaos. Regardless of the true reason
behind our rebirth in this world, it`s now our sacred role to impose
order into the crumbling structure of this society!" said Minako, her
voice cold like Ami had never heard it.
"I can`t believe what you`re saying! Ever since you woke up with soul
power, you`ve been acting strange, sounding more and more like the
sword of vengence..."
"What are you trying to say?" accused Minako.
"I don`t think we should see each other quite so often from now on.
A little distance would do us both a lot of good." said Ami, looking
down in her plate, unable to gaze into her girlfriend`s eyes.
"Are you breaking up with me???" asked Minako in disbelief.
"Well... yeah, I am. I don`t like what you`ve become, the girl I love
is gone." said Ami, a tear going down her cheek.
"Fine, be that way! See if I need you, Ami! I don`t need anyone of
you, Sailor Venus... no, no, SAILOR V never needed ANYONE!!!"
screamed Minako before storming out of Ami`s house.
"Wait, you don`t have to do this!" pleaded Ami as she ran after her
lost friend. Too late. She had already transformed into Sailor V and
sped away into the distance of the setting sun.
"You don`t have to be alone..." she whispered, crying in her hands.
To be continued...
a.k.a. Technuma Saturn
Prologue...
"Oh shit!" said the doctor Ogawa as she realized just what had
happened.
Only a few seconds ago, her world made sense. The asylum she ran was
a smooth operation that held the more dangerously disturbed
individuals of Japan. They were held securely in her mental ward,
where they hurt nobody, not even themselves. Occasionaly, she even
managed to heal one just enough that a regular institution might be
able to take him in and allow him to live a better life without
padded walls, tranquilizers and a straightjacket...
Today, however, was going to be hell. Her phone had just rang to
inform her that one of the major nutcases in her care had escaped
during the night. And to make matters worse, a visitor was there to
see him just this morning, of all days!
"I`m... I`m sorry sir. He somehow got out of his cell during the
night, we have no idea how far he could have gone since then."
"I see... I better warn you, though, his mind is rather... deranged,
as you must know by now." said the visitor, removing his black
shades slowly for dramatic effect. He was very good at that.
"Coran Demsy will be captured and brought back, I assure you mister
Dreadborne." said doctor Ogawa.
"Please..." said Ronmar as he smiled, "...call me Mitchell."
* * *
CYCLES OF LIFE: EPISODE 26
MIND`S EYE VIEW
Her spine was healing well after the emergency reconstructive
surgery she`d received shortly after her new friend Xavier had
brought her to the hospital. The nerves had been damaged beyond
medicine`s capacity to cure, but she was recovering nonetheless.
Makoto could now sit up in her bed. She was starting to accept her
condition, not that she had to like it... but one must accept what
they can`t change.
"Do you feel anything if I do this?" asked Xavier as he proded his
finger along her right leg.
"No." she replied.
"And this?" he added, poking her foot.
"Nothing. I can`t even feel the bedsheets touching my skin."
"I`m sorry I can`t do anything for you, Makoto." said Xavier, his
green eyes reflecting sorrow.
"You already are." she said, taking his hands in hers and kissed his
fingers.
Xavier smiled. He gently hugged Makoto and kissed her softly. She
rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes.
"Tell me something, Xavier... why did you stick by me after you
brought me here? I mean, I was no more than a broken doll when I
first woke up, and you tolerated the crap I put you and everybody
else through..." said Makoto, until Xavier put his finger to her
lips, beckoning her silence.
"Hush, now." he said. "I did what I did because... well... I made
some bad choices in my life. When I saw you, I knew that helping you
was that chance of redemption I was losing hope of ever finding. I
just never expected to... to..."
"To fall in love?" completed Makoto.
"Yeah. I`ve always been alone, even when I was surrounded by others
like myself. Loneliness wasn`t so bad, but after a few years of
isolating myself, I`m ready to give myself again." he said, looking
in her eyes directly.
Makoto felt herself melt, the strenght and passion in those green
eyes was simply so much! A single tear of joy rolled on her face,
and she kissed him again. The only dark spot on this moment was the
thought of her friend Minako, and wether she had really done that
horrible thing the night before...
* * *
With the sun rising in the morning sun, the fugitive Coran Demsy
did his best to stay hidden from the police and anyone else who
would try to capture and return him to that dreadful cell in the
mental hospital. In his earlier days when he still called himself
Psyche, he had it all: money, power, respect and psy powers that
made him a feared and respected man. Now all he had was a rat
infested abandonned appartment building where he brooded and
plotted his revenge.
"Well, that`s another fine mess you got into." said the voice that
haunted him every day.
He turned around and saw Sailor Jendra. Sitting on the dusty kitchen
counter of the two room appartment he had improvised as his hideout,
she mocked him once again.
"Shut up." he told her.
"You had it all, you know that? But you wanted too much, mingled
with dangerous fanatics and you lost everything." she said.
"I could have won the big jackpot. The power Vortika could have
brought me.."
"Is a joke!" interrupted Jendra.
"Do you really think Vortika respected you AT ALL???" said Sailor
Mercury, who just happened to be standing behind him.
"Yes, she did, that`s why she admitted me and tempered Ronmar in my
presence!" he argued.
"Like hell she did!" said Jendra.
"The only reason she dealt you in on the hand is because you brought
plenty of poker chips to the playing table!" said Mercury in a
mocking tone.
"Shut up, both of you!" he commanded.
"Nobody ever respected you, Psyche. After your first blunder,
Majestra Vortika publicly disavowed you and left you out to dry."
said Mercury.
"Silence!" he ordered.
"You`re a loser AND a known dangerous molester... no one will EVER
trust you again!" added Jendra
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!!" screamed Demsy, pulling out a gun
stolen from a security guard at the asylum. He shot blindly at both
scouts, emptying the ammunition in a few seconds.
When he reopened his eyes, there was no one there. Only a few bullet
holes on the filthy walls.
"Shut up..." he whispered, falling to his knees, head in his hands.
* * *
Minako was about to enter Makoto`s room, but she hesitated. What was
she going to say? What was MAKOTO going to say? After what happened
the night before, the blonde senshi wasn`t sure how her friend would
react... surely she had heard of the blaze and the corpse of the guy
who almost killed her.
"The truth, that`s what. No matter how much it hurts." she told
herself, then entered.
Minako knocked on the door of her friend`s hospital room, then went
in. She was greeted by a stare of uncertainty, of doubt mixed with
reproach.
Silently, Minako opened her purse and handed over to Makoto her
stolen transformation pen. She took it without a word and held it
close to her heart. It took over two minutes of uneasy silence
before Minako broke the ice. "I assume you want to know the whole
story." she asked.
"Yes, please. I want to hear it from your lips." replied Makoto.
"Okay... it all started after I heard about what happened to you, I
decided to go after your pen... and punish the guy who shot you.
With my skills acquired as Sailor V, it was easy enough to go back
all the way up to the source. A small time crook called little Jimmy
fessed up to whom was responsible for your assault, and with the name
of the gang he belonged to, all I had to do was catch one of them and
squeeze the information out of him. The first one of them I found
was... shall we say, allergic to pain." she explained.
"So what did you do from that point on?"
"I was primed and out for vengence, plain and simple. If he`d been in
front of me, there`s no telling what I would have done. But once
again, fate had a different idea in mind..." explained Minako as she
went into vivid details of her encounter at the docks...
* * *
"Thirty-one... thirty-two... thirty-three..." counted out loud Sailor
Venus as she looked for the place where she`d find the Panther`s
hideout. It had been so easy to go up to this point, threatening and
beating her way through a long line of bums and small time crooks
whom she brutally crushed for the information she needed. It was a
welcome change from the desperate fights against the forces of pure
evil she`d grown used to battle, like the youmas of Beryl, the
cardians of Allan and Ann, the droids of the dark moon... the greedy
and pathetic motives of the petty thieves she was facing were a
refreshing relief to her.
So far she`d punched, kicked, threw across rooms, crushed several
noses and reduced fingers to bone under her steel lined boots. And
she enjoyed every one of these violent moments.
Now, however, she was just about to cross the line. Sailor Venus was
getting ready to take her first human life, in cold blood no less.
Had any one of her friends tagged along, she would have objected
vehemently to Venus`s plan... but the recently reawakened senshi was
working solo, like she always had done so as the cool headed
Sailor V.
"...thirty-four." she finished counting, having reached the
destination squealed by a mugger who would probably never fully
recover the use of his knees.
And now, to enter... how would she proceed? Hiding in the shadows,
Minako evaluated her options: the back door, the windows of the
second floor with the fire stairs, the air ducts on the roof...
"The hell with discretion!" she then concluded. "SOUL CRESCENT
SMASHER!!!" she screamed.
Pointing her index towards the front loading doors of the rusting
warehouse, a golden energy sphere formed on its tip and shot forward
in a blur of light, detonating loudly upon contact with the steel
doors and shredding them to tiny bits. Soul power had done wonders
for Sailor Venus, notably by increasing the strenght of her old
attacks tenfold.
"Time to bag myself a murderer." she muttered with an evil snicker.
Walking with a very deliberate hip swing, she entered slowly through
the settling dust cloud. There was a lot of debris spread over from
her blasting entrance, but no one in view.
"Damn, I should have taken an appointment." she said.
Just before she could do anything else, she heard a terrible scream,
followed by a gut-wrenching call for help. Her hero reflexes kicking
in, she sprang forward and ran to the back room... the scene waiting
for her there was not what she expected, to say the least!!!
Her target was right there, but the short cowardly man was being
assaulted by somebody else already!!! And not just anyone, it was
a tall man whose strong body was wrapped in a long dark blue cloak,
his head bathed in blazing red flames that shrouded his facial
features.
"What the hell are you??" she asked, making herself known to both
men.
"Help... me..." mumbled the short man, unaware that Venus wanted to
hurt him as much as his assailant.
"Shut up." ordered Ghangoroth as he crushed his throat in a grip of
steel. He fell down, limp and lifeless. He was dead.
"What did you do that for?" asked Venus.
"Do you think you`re the only one he did something against? That a
crook like him would be content to hurt a single person in his whole
lifetime?" he asked, not a trace of emotion betrayed by his monochord
voice. "Scum like him deserves to die, period. And besides, he was
trying to muscle in on MY territory. A place like this can only have
one successful battle arena, you know."
"I came here looking for a fight, and you`ll do just fine..." said
Venus, anger burning in her eyes, as she took her battle stance.
"I could use the practice myself, come to think of it. I don`t get
that much opposition of your caliber, fighting you off will be the
highlight of my year!" said Ghangoroth, pulling his cloak in his
back to free his arm movements. Minako noticed a small grin on his
face, the first sign of emotion anyone had seen on the psionic
warrior in ages.
* * *
"So? Are you going to tell me about that fight or what?" urged
Makoto, hanging on to Minako`s every word.
"I already told you enough. He was good, very good. My love-me-chain
whip was barely enough to keep him at bay. He had some powerful
telekinetic blasts and pyrokinetic firewaves to boot... and that`s
how that fire started, by the way; his fire lit up a leaky gas maine
that my whip cracked open by accident. The rest is kind of a blur,
since that huge explosion broke our concentration. Well, I have to
go, my classes start soon." said Minako.
"Minako?" said the paralyzed girl as her friend turned around and
headed for the door. "If you`d reached the guy before the flame head
warrior... would you really have.. you know... killed him?"
The blonde girl froze at the mere mention of this possible outcome.
She hesitated to answer, and dodged the question entirely instead,
replying out of context without even turning to face Makoto. "Rest
for now, my friend, rehabilitation is very exhausting as I hear."
She left.
* * *
Sitting in math class next to Robin, Usagi was really starting to be
worried. Her friend`s account of the events at the hot springs was a
very bad sign of more trouble ahead.
"Aebonite? What`s that?" whispered Usagi, trying not to get caught
chatting in class.
"I`m not sure. Maybe Luna can help us on that one." suggested Robin.
"Better ask Artemis. He`s the specialist in crystals, Luna once told
me. If anyone knows about this weird heat sucking stone, it`s him."
"Where is Artemis anyway? I haven`t seen him in a while." commented
Robin.
"I don`t know, actually. He`s been real busy lately, Minako can
barely get a hold of him. He`s going to be there at our meeting
tonight, so we can ask him then." concluded Usagi.
"How many of us will make it anyway? It`s been so confusing
lately..." wondered Robin.
"I know my brother and Laurella at least, they should meet us on the
way to the temple."
* * *
Gingitsune entered a small artist studio located in an almost
deserted part of the Tokyo suburbs. Although the small mansion gave a
run-down impression from the outside, the inside decorating was
nothing short of breathtaking. The owner of the place had a wonderful
artistic sense, the archways, floors and columns that greeted the
eyes were testimony to that.
Everywhere he looked, statues, statues so realistic in their details
that they all seemed to be sleeping, waiting for their creator to
snap her fingers. Marble, granite, quartz, volcanic stone, so many
types of rock represented and each one of them fitting perfectly the
figure they had been carved into.
"She`s been busy all these years." he thought.
A loud shriek came from an intercom box located on a nearby wall.
"Who`s there?" asked a feminine voice in a very displeased tone. "I
have no appointments at this time."
"Have you ever needed any appointments in the service to your queen,
Thorelia?" asked the silver maned man, using a name she hadn`t been
referred as in many years. The long silence that followed gave him
the indication that she hadn`t forgotten him.
"You can come in, silverfox, but I`m not returning to the ruins of
the past." she finally said.
"We`ll see about that." he thought as he walked through the entrance
leading from the lobby to the main hall.
* * *
Rei changed from her dark red blouse and crimson skirt to her temple
garbs. She loved wearing nice stylish clothes, but she always
returned to the worn rough cloth of the Shinto. The apprentice
priestess knew she had more than enough time before anyone got there
for the meeting, so she knelt in front of the sacred fire for some
advice.
She began to concentrate on the dancing flames, letting them consume
her mind and draw her into a deep trance. Within minutes, there was
no more thoughts in her head besides the image of the fire, the singe
of the flame and the odor of the smoke. She WAS the flame, a fragment
of the god she worshipped.
The abstract motives of the glowing fire suddenly started to swirl
around, taking form and giving a glimpse of things to come to the
sweating Rei. What she saw in there was nothing to reassure her. She
saw the image of a man with glithering hair, surrounded in darkness
and standing up in the middle of a pool of blood. Two long tears
were rolling on his cheeks and they fell down, mingling in the fresh
blood. Then a burst of hellfire swallowed the whole image in a
fraction of a second.
"What did THAT mean?" wondered the young priestess.
Amidst the fire came something quite unexpected: another image began
to form, despite the fact that Rei had broken her state of trance.
It was the smiling face of Chibi-Usa, but she was a mature young
woman now. Her hair was still in her odango style, much longer than
it was right now, matching the lenght that Usagi`s own hair had
reached before she had it cut off. Her long hair was no longer pink,
however, having darkened to a burning shade of red.
Her face had the strenght and passion of Black Lady, when she`d been
turned into an evil adult by the Wiseman, but her eyes sparkled with
genuine kindness. This mature image of Usagi`s daughter even
whispered a few words.
"I love you, Rei..."
Then it all clicked.
"Of course, it`s been staring me in the face all the time!" thought
Rei. Chibi-Usa`s uncanny ability to swim, her sudden talent for
fire-based attacks, the strange link she felt between the small lady
and herself when they hugged at the hospital...
"Oh dear lord, I can`t believe this..."
* * *
"You haven`t lost your touch, Thorelia." commented Gingitsune as he
admired the creation studio of his former ally from the dark kingdom.
Dozens of bizarre looking statues of barely humanoid beings were
frozen in various expressions of anger, pain and fear. These were
the artworks that japanese high society was fighting for in a full
fledged bidding war. These were the very horrors that had been once
used to create the vile creatures known and feared as the dreaded
YOUMA.
"I`ve kept myself busy, as have all survivors of Beryl`s service."
said Thorelia, keeping herself out of sight in the darkest corner of
the badly light studio.
"We need your magic touch again." said Gingitsune, getting straight
to the point.
"I`m not interested. I know you`ve been gathering our former
collegues, but I`m not coming back. You may have given the oath to
the bloodline, but I am a free agent in this whole mess." calmly
explained the shadowy figure.
"No need to remind me, friend artist. I`m not here to play on your
loyalty, but rather to offer a deal."
"What kind of deal?" asked the woman.
"Tell me, Thorelia, those masks you shape for yourself, how long do
they last now?" asked the silverfox, sensing that the sculptress`
"face" was beginning to unravel.
An odd bubbling erupted from her right cheek, subsiding quickly. A
small trickle of flesh colored liquid oozed off her face, dropping
down to the floor in a hissing sound of corroded artificial skin.
"How long, Thorelia? Weeks? Days? Do they even last more than a few
hours, now, is that why you shun the grand openings of your
exhibitions and flee the interviews???" he pressed on.
"I don`t want to return, I don`t care what my face looks like..." she
tried to argue, but a more substancial section of her face melted
into a mushy paste, dripping down into a large puddle of dissolving
muck. She sobbed silently.
"Your phony faces look nice, but wouldn`t you just LOVE to have a
REAL face made out of real human skin? One that your body wouldn`t
reject?" asked Gingitsune.
"DAMN YOU! It was Beryl who made me like this!!!" she screamed
through her tears.
"And it`s her heir alone who has the knowledge to graft you a new
face, darling."
"All right, you win... I`ll mold you some new youma." conceded the
artist.
"Thank you. My Lord and Lady will be pleased." replied the man,
grining wickedly.
* * *
"Is this it? Where`s everyone???" wondered Laurella as she looked
into the small reception room at Rei`s place, totally deserted save
for the young priestess herself.
"Setsuna had to work late, Haruka and Michiru called in to say they`d
be late because of heavy traffic, Ami and Minako are spending some
time together since they`ve been seperated so long... well, you get
the idea. Chibi-Usa will be here with the cats, but that`s it."
explained Rei.
"More snacks for us then!" said Usagi with a big smile.
"That`s the sister I recognize!" observed Shingo.
Ever since her dramatic confrontation with Gallagher and the Prime,
Usagi hadn`t been the same, being a lot sader and gloomier. In recent
days, however, she had been returning to her old scatterbrain self
once again. As much as the others got aggravated by her childish
behavior at times, they`d rather have her be happy and carefree than
sullen as she`d been.
"So it`ll be five of us, then." said Laurella, sitting by Usagi who
already dug in the cookie plate waiting on the table by a hot tea
pot.
"SIX!!!" corrected Chibi-Usa who ran in from the frosty winds outside
into the warm room and putting down her travel bag which she opened.
"Make that eight!" said Luna as she hopped out after Artemis.
"Artemis, Usagi tells me you know a lot about crystals." said Robin
as she poured some tea for her friends.
"Right on, what do you need to know?" replied the white cat.
"What do you know of something called AEBONITE?" asked Robin.
Artemis had a very noticeable shudder at the mere mention of the
stone.
"Aebonite, are you SURE???"
"Certain. That`s what the silver haired guy said."
"Silver haired?" thought Rei out loud. "This sounds like my vision!"
"There exists a very rare mineral called Aebonite." explained
Artemis. "It has the natural property of absorbing surrounding
energy and reemit it in a random pattern of varied energy forms. It
can be purified to absorb one specific type of energy and precisely
redirect it to a single focal point, turning it into a powerful
energy gathering device."
"Something tells me there`s more bad news attached to that."
suggested Shingo, who received Laurella`s elbow in the ribs as a
more or less don`t-be-snippy command.
"He`s right." continued the cat. "It takes considerable knowledge of
crystals and huge energy ressources to purify aebonite into the
heat-sucking crystal you saw yesterday. In addition to that...
aebonite is indigenous to one place only: THE DARK KINGDOM
ITSELF!!!"
"So those triplets we fought would be... what`s the name you told me
again, Usagi? Droids?"
"Youma, Robin. The dark kingdom uses youma." replied the blonde
girl.
"Right, youma. So where do the cardians fit in???"
Everyone let out a loud sigh. Robin had a lot to learn about the past
encounters of the sailor scouts.
"So the legacy of Beryl lives on." commented Luna.
"I always wanted to roast some youma myself! I just love it when dad
tells me all about how he and mom defeated all those weird monsters
with stupid names!" said Chibi-Usa.
Rei found herself looking at Chibi-Usa quite insistently. She knew
something about the small lady that she herself ignored. She wanted
to tell her very much, but just didn`t know how.
"What is it, Rei?" she asked, noticing her stare.
"Nothing, honey, enjoy your cookies." said Rei with a warm smile.
"I always loved you a lot, you know that?" whispered the small lady
to Rei.
"Yeah, me too!" she whispered back.
* * *
"That was very brutal, what you did to these guys." said Ami to
Minako. She hadn`t said much throughout their dinner, but this was
the only thing on her mind. "Why did you do it?"
"Because they hurt Makoto, that`s why. Evil needs no reason other
than to exist, so why should justice have any more reason than that?
We must make a stand against the onslaught of darkness, period."
said Minako.
Ami dragged her fork through her barely touched plate. Who was this
girl in front of her? What had happened to the sweet woman she`d
fallen in love with?
"Minako, we scouts and senshi stand for justice, that much is true,
but can we really afford to lose ourselves in bloody retribution?
Isn`t that how Beryl corrupted the earth in the first place,
manipulated humanity into aiding her attack upon the silver
millenium???"
"Perhaps. Our maybe we just have been hiding behind our sweet
teenage image to ignore the fact that we`ve been chosen by fate to
hold back the raging rivers of chaos. Regardless of the true reason
behind our rebirth in this world, it`s now our sacred role to impose
order into the crumbling structure of this society!" said Minako, her
voice cold like Ami had never heard it.
"I can`t believe what you`re saying! Ever since you woke up with soul
power, you`ve been acting strange, sounding more and more like the
sword of vengence..."
"What are you trying to say?" accused Minako.
"I don`t think we should see each other quite so often from now on.
A little distance would do us both a lot of good." said Ami, looking
down in her plate, unable to gaze into her girlfriend`s eyes.
"Are you breaking up with me???" asked Minako in disbelief.
"Well... yeah, I am. I don`t like what you`ve become, the girl I love
is gone." said Ami, a tear going down her cheek.
"Fine, be that way! See if I need you, Ami! I don`t need anyone of
you, Sailor Venus... no, no, SAILOR V never needed ANYONE!!!"
screamed Minako before storming out of Ami`s house.
"Wait, you don`t have to do this!" pleaded Ami as she ran after her
lost friend. Too late. She had already transformed into Sailor V and
sped away into the distance of the setting sun.
"You don`t have to be alone..." she whispered, crying in her hands.
To be continued...