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IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
and again
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
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I bleed. For the hearts and minds of the losers of the
universe. And that is, for all of us.... For we are all losers,
and the greatest of all is the one who realises this and does
nothing to change it.
I bleed. From wounds too great to heal. I want to be loved
and hated all in one. The weapons I use against others only proceed
to hurt me more. Soon it will end, and then it will begin again.
Those for whom I care about the most will face my wrath.
I bleed. From eyes with tears of self-pity and self-hatred.
There is nobody who could care about someone whose exterior is so
thin the merest pinprick of contempt causes wounds more akin to
a dagger, a sword. And the pain lasts far far longer.
I bleed. For too long. Perhaps it is time to change but I
cannot change for I am without the desire and without the desire
there can be no change. Thus comes the onset of decreptitude, the
rotting remains of a soul that has never known happiness.
Since time began. And for some period before that.
There is no death for me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Prelude
The grass-covered valleys and fields that ran between
the rock-covered mountainsides of central Asia were a quiet place.
At least, that was what it seemed to the young, dark green haired
girl known as Hecate.
There was rarely, if ever, anyone passing through the starkly
beautiful valley she called home. She liked it that way. It was
hard enough for her to deal with herself without the added
complications of others' needs, and the necessity for the ordinary
social graces expected of one. Her sister agreed with the
sentiments. But then, as their mother would often say, their
destiny was very different from that of others.
Hecate had come running back to the house after playing in the
fields. Naiad, as usual, was sitting on a small stone-hewn seat,
reading. It was all her older sister ever seemed to do.
"Naiad-chan...." Hecate trotted up to her sister's side.
"The flowers...."
Naiad raised her head, brushing her almost glowing blue hair
away from her face as she smiled at her sibling. "What is it,
Hecate?"
"They're blossoming again.... Just over the rise.... So many
of them, buds and flowers...."
"And prickles and thorns, if you're not careful." Naiad drew
Hecate to her and lifted up her younger sister's simple woollen
dress, pointing out the number of seeds and such that were caught in
its fibres. "Look at this.... It'll take ages to remove that lot."
"Gomen, 'neesan...." Hecate put a finger to her mouth,
looking suitably chastised. "It's just so warm outside, and the
flowers were too beautiful.... I had to...."
"Roll in the grass, yes yes yes...." Naiad sighed,
remembering the lectures she had received from their mother about
doing the self same things.... She shook her head, sadly.... Life,
and time, were very strange things.... The patterns of behaviour,
repeating themselves. She wondered if it were at all possible to
break the mould and change those cycles....
"Look, oneechan.... It's an eagle!" Hecate pointed,
excitedly into the air, stepping back from her sister. "It's one of
the eagles from the mountains."
Naiad turned and looked up at the bird, its vast wingspan
clearly visible. "That's no eagle, Cate." She stood, excitedly.
"It's a Destiny Falcon."
"Wao!" Hecate leapt across the courtyard of the house,
watching the bird fly. "They're the rarest bird in the world....
In the entire universe.... What is one doing here?" Before Naiad
could answer, the bird started to circle over the rise from which
Hecate had come. Hecate, in her excitement, ran back towards the
rise in an effort to see what it was circling, leaving Naiad to
watch it from the house.
"A Destiny Falcon...." Naiad whispered to herself, softly.
"What message have you come to bring for us? For me?"
A warm breeze blew through the yard, and in it, she could hear
the voice of time call a name....
Millennia....
--------------------------------------------------------------------
BISHOUJO SENSHI SAILORMOON
USAGI IS DEAD - USAGI IS DEAD - HIP HIP HIP HOORAY
or "More Usagis Than You Can Poke a Moon Wand At"
Chapter 1 - Method in the Madness
by Dark Day for Anime (Mark A Page)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
and again
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
--------------------------------------------------------------------
There was nothing. And then there was something. Without a
body, it was hard to tell which was which, but she had long since
been used to the sensations that came with a non-corporeal
existence.
Her emotions welled as she stared down at the pathetic-looking
figure of the blond-haired girl, asleep with her hair cast around
her face like a golden halo. Feelings of sadness and contempt made
her want to both hold and lash out the girl, driven by memories of
the past. Both her own, and that of the girl.
She looked so weak now, and yet Naiad Keth Drutein knew her
when she held a commanding presence. Indeed, the captain of the
Moon Kingdom's guard, and high member of the court's inner circle.
Of all the Senshi, this one she had felt the MOST respect for.
But she was still capable of being a right bitch when she
wanted to be. Venus, as her designation had been, was once charged
with investigating Naiad's activities, and she had made the all too
sensitive Miko's life a misery during that time. For which she paid
dearly.... Ohhh yes, Naiad made sure Venus was left with a few
phobias and character flaws after that affair. Nobody EVER pried
into HER life, openly displaying her most PRIVATE thoughts and
feelings, allowing her to be humiliated and mocked....
Naiad took control of herself. Bitterness on things past had
a tendency to eat away at the very fabric of one's being, and her
being was all that was left of substance. She would have to work
through these issues at some future date.... But right now, she
wanted to see if what she was doing to the girl, now known as Aino
Minako, was having any affect....
Slowly, she lowered herself to Minako, and touched her
forehead with a ghostly hand....
----o
It was silent, cold and dark. There was nothing. Nothing
that could be seen or heard. She wanted to scream, but she had no
mouth with which to perform, and there was nobody here to hear her.
Because she was dead, and death was the end. the end of everything
for her, because it was the end of the entity that had been known as
Aino Minako.
She was dead, and it was bitchier than life. Could there be
anyone so unlucky as she was, this very moment, to be experiencing
true death for the very first time? Oh, she had experienced various
forms of death in the past, but there had always been an element of
transcendence about that, like there had been a part of her still in
existence, living and breathing, and interacting with the
environment around her. And, in a way, that was what she was
experiencing now. She could still register that complete lack of
stimuli, which had to be a stimuli within itself, but it was that
very lack of stimuli that frightened her the most. She was being
swamped.... Suffocated, by the nothingness, and slowly it was
eating away at what was left of her consciousness. And she knew
there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Visions of her life passed through what could be thought of
as her 'mind'. Things she didn't want to let go of. She wanted to
KEEP experiencing. She wanted to keep EXISTING. But it was over,
and there was nothing more she could do to stop it. She started to
panic, and she couldn't even do that. She wanted to scream, but
she had no mouth with which to perform the act. She wanted to....
----o
"IIIIIIIYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" The scream exploded from her
throat, perhaps even deeper than that. It was certainly the loudest
noise she'd ever produced in many a year. And, unfortunately,
Artemis and Minako's parents were becoming all too accustomed to it.
Artemis knew he hadn't much time to try and compose her before
her father would come pounding up the stairs to see how his little
girl was. He was up against her shoulder, front paws trying to
shake her out of her fugue, shortly after she had thrown herself
bolt upright from her bed. Minako was panting and keening, her eyes
and nose running as profusely as the sweat all over her body. She
was soaked through to the sheets, and was shivering as much with the
cold as with nerves.
"Minako-chan...." Artemis's voice was soft but insistent.
"It's alright, Minako-chan.... It was only a dream."
"Dead." She stammered. "I'm dying. D... d d d d dying...."
She started to panic again, shaking her head from side to side.
"Can't die yet. I'm too young. It's all wrong. Not going to die.
Destined to live eternally. Not going to die. Never going to die."
"Minako-chan, stop it! You had a DREAM. That is all."
Artemis swallowed. "Just another dream. Remember? You've been
having a lot of nasty dreams, lately. But this is the real world,
Minako.... The real world, where you are alive and everything is
safe."
"No.... Not safe. Never will be safe. Going to die. Going
to be killed. Monsters out there.... Want me to die for their
pleasure. Can't fight against them.... Too weak.... It's all my
fault. I deserve to die but I don't want to die. Selfish, ugly and
stupid. Help meeeeee....." Minako threw away the bedsheets and
stood bolt upright in the middle of her room, having launched
herself from the mattress with her amazing athletic skills, almost
bowling Artemis aside without thinking.
Artemis watched her as she stood, confused, wondering how it
was she had arrived in this place, this position, and realised that
she was finally coming to her senses, when, as if on cue, her
father threw open the door to her bedroom and almost slammed his
hand down upon the lightswitch.
"Minako-chan...." Her father was breathing heavily. He had
bolted up the stairs without thinking, and, considering how it had
been a few years since he was truly fit enough for such an activity,
was showing the signs of strain. He stepped forward and threw his
arms around Minako as her mother entered the room, one of her hands
over her mouth and tears in her eyes. "It's alright, Minako-chan.
Papa is here.... It's alright."
"Papa....?" Minako whispered, weakly. She seemed too shocked
to repeat her father's gesture, her arms hanging limply at her
sides.
----o
Naiad was impressed.... Not only with the progression of
Minako's psychotic state of mind, but with the volume of the random
ebbing and flowing of her brain patterns. Naiad had touched
Minako's very soul and had NOT been detected by either the proto-
Senshi or the being that had been with her, in the form of the cat.
She hovered near the ceiling, watching events unfold, feeling
a slight pang of guilt at what she had done.... What HAD to be done
if things were to work out the way she wanted them to. Those
feelings passed, rapidly, and she once more returned to the
nothingness, moving on to another target.... This time one with
more meaning to her....
----o
Minako's mother slowly descended the stairs as her father sat
despondently at the kitchen table, a hand over his eyes. "She's
asleep, now." She whispered as she reached the bottom of the
stairs, looking through the doorway to the kitchen. He jerked
upwards, as if registering her for the first time.
"Good." He said, his exhaustion clear in his tone. "I wonder
how long it will last this time." He turned away from her and
rubbed his forehead. "We're going to have to get her specialist
help this time."
"No!" Minako's mother stepped through the door with forceful
resolve. "No specialists, no psychiatrists or psychologists. She
doesn't need their help." Her husband turned back and looked at
her, disbelievingly.
"Minako-chan needs help, for goodness sake. Just because
you're afraid of what people will think of us...." His wife slammed
her hands down onto the table.
"I can't go through with all of that again. Not after what
happened with okaasan...."
"What happened to her is the SAME as Minako. We can't let our
pride get in the way over what is best for our daughter. Face it,
if we let this go on, what happened to your mother might also happen
to Minako. Do you want her to die in such a manner?" His wife took
a long breath and lifted up her hands, as if to quieten his raising
tone.
"I just can't accept that my daughter would turn out the same
way. It's too much. She's always been so happy.... So cheerful.
Why is this happening to her now?" Tears started to run from her
eyes, and he took hold of her, pulling her close and hugging
tightly, trying to console his distraught wife.
"Those moments of cheerful happiness always had their
downside. The dark moodiness Minako-chan did her best to hide from
everyone, even the closest of friends."
"Oh Kami.... how are we going to explain to her friends about
the way she's been acting. I'm sure they've noticed the changes in
her mood."
"We'll get to that when the time comes. I'm sure they all
have their own problems right now...."
----o
"You can question your existence and your destiny as much as
you like...." Erebus Todhunter levelled her gaze to the blue-haired
woman standing before her. "It will not make any difference,
whatsoever. Your physical existence is limited, and you simply
won't be able to stop what is to follow."
Naiad Keth Drutein slowly sank onto one of the lower stairs,
outside the entrance to the university, where she had encountered
Erebus flicking through one of the texts of required reading in her
course without much in the way of interest. "That's always been
your problem, you know that? You can't but help to look on the
negative side of everything."
"Occupational hazard." Erebus smiled, brushing a strand of
her straight, black hair from her strangely round, open eyes.
Erebus had always a childlike air about her, mostly due to the
large, doe-like eyes which she possessed. Their expressive quality
seemed unlimited, yet Erebus had become an expert at using that
expressiveness for her own ends. Not an easy task for someone who
was still so young.
"It makes me wonder what the hell I am doing all this study
for, then? Why am I bothering to learn anything if it's all going
to be lost the moment I die?" Naiad sighed, clutching her knees to
her chest, looking down at her feet. "The deeper implications of
simply wanting to go out and have a good time. If that was at all
possible...."
"The university won't let you go unless you prove to be a
total failure, and they certainly won't allow you to deliberately
fail. Bit of a quandary, isn't it?" Erebus tossed the book aside
and leaned back against the stone siding of the stairs. "A rather
all too thorough system, designed to torment the gifted."
"Well, they aren't going to allow anything like the Simiston
riots again, are they? Even a group of trainee Senshi can do damage
if they wish to, with long-standing consequences." Naiad huffed.
"Mores the pity. I'm really itching to give one of my tutors a
paranoia complex about his ex-wife."
"He probably already has one." Erebus chuckled. "Besides,
where is the fun in imposing your psychic powers on someone as lowly
and insignificant as he? No, save his torture for when you're
bored. Much better to take on the head of the faculty, instead."
"Ah, so you're the one who has been slipping the anchovy paste
into all of his food?" Naiad turned and looked up at Erebus, who
raised an eyebrow, a smile in her eyes.
"I didn't say that, now did I?"
"Yeah yeah yeah. How did you discover his allergy to
anchovies?"
"Now now. You don't think I'm going to give away all of my
secrets, now do you? Gotta save something for the University
Chancellor."
----o
"I don't think there was ever a time where you weren't
diligently obfuscatious...." Naiad whispered to herself as she
watched over Hotaru's sleeping form. "Always playing the enigma for
all it was worth. Then you would shut me out in favour of my
sister. That wasn't really fair, you know." She lowered her wraith
like hand to touch the girl's face.
Much to her, albeit momentary, surprise, Hotaru reacted,
turning away from the hand as if it had disturbed her sleep.
"Yes.... You were always like that...." Naiad held the hand to her
chest, the expression, on her transluscent face, hurt.
She then turned from the figure, and the girl's bedroom washed
away into a liquid nothingness, brilliant blue in its depth and
quantity. The Ocean of the Mind that Naiad had long searched for
throughout her short life. Now she was free of body to explore its
depths.... Its eddies and currents.... And to slowly go insane,
not only through what she found there, but how bored she became,
seeing the same thing, again and again and again.
All she had found was her OWN mind, not those of others. She
had been taught in the belief that the Ocean represented all
thought, of all the people that had ever existed or were to exist.
It was something of a dogma to her. As the Water Miko of the Third
Refrain within the Moon Kingdom of Sol, her entire belief structure
was dedicated to the possibilities of the mind and everything that
existed within and without it. In Naiad's case, this had been at
the expense of the physical, which she so despised, partly because
of those teachings. What was the point of being physically
acceptable to others, in terms of her humanity, sociability and her
femininity, if all that really mattered was what resided in her
skull?
She had explored her mind's physical limitations, through
drugs, self-hypnosis and all forms of meditation, and had found it
wanting. She required constant stimulation to make the exercise
worthwhile, and she very rarely provided the element of surprise, at
least to herself. So she then started to explore the minds of
others, and that was where she had REALLY earned herself such a bad
reputation. Servants and courtiers would recount frightened tales
of encounters with the Miko, and the things she would do to them
during these moments.
They had ridiculed her, then.... Treated her with a snobbish
contempt, or even fear.... The kind of fear that one would normally
reserve for a wild and unpredictable animal. If it hadn't been for
her friendship with Queen Tranquility, who knows what could have
happened to her.... There had been calls to oust her from office,
calls that Tranquility had vetoed. Tranquility understood her, had
always understood her.... And she had understood Tranquility VERY
well. She wanted her back.... She wanted Tranquility back....
Wanted her back in her arms but she didn't have any arms and now the
girl was lost to her forever because she was dead and so was
Tranquility and there was nothing more she could do about it until
she had found her again if her soul still existed and.... and....
and....
She screamed. Not a physical scream, but the shriek of a
restless spirit, echoing through the corridors of eternity and into
the minds of all those still alive to register. People would not
remark on the event for long. For all of its effect it was nothing
more than a hiccup in the various trains of thought, or a sudden
sensation of falling within a dream. If they were able to dream,
and there were many who couldn't....
----o
Hotaru opened her eyes and lifted herself from her bed,
clutching the sheets tightly to her chest. "Hello?" She whispered
into the darkness of her room. "Hello? I know you're there. I
could hear you.... Is there something wrong? Are you in pain?"
The girl's eyes were blank, as if she were talking in her sleep, her
words motivated by some subconscious source. The eyes then started
to focus, and gained an expression of disappointment when there was
no answer to her pleas.
She lay her head back against the pillow and stared at the
ceiling, feeling slightly annoyed at herself for no seeming reason.
"I missed her again." She whispered in a slightly huffy tone. "How
could I miss her so easily? She surely can't be so beyond my
reach."
She turned on her right side, holding her hands up underneath
her chin, clenched into fists. Surely her visitor couldn't be
trying to avoid her? That would be impossible.... Impossible for
one such as Saturn. With her interconnection to the worlds of the
dead, there was nowhere such a wandering spirit could hide. Yet
hide this spirit did, and with great rapidity, not even allowing her
the opportunity to converse, to find out just why she was receiving
these regular visitations.
She wondered if it had something to do with the state of mind
of her comrades. They had all seemed a little odd, lately.... Not
that any of them could be vaguely described as normal.... Something
she'd have to ask Pluto about, later. Then again, Pluto would
probably not give her a straight answer, even if she DID know what
was going on. There had been a dinner, one night not so long ago,
where she had asked Pluto where the salt was. She received an
answer that went along the lines of something about salt pans and
the various methods employed in the mass production of sodium
chloride. It was quite uncommon for Hotaru to get really cross at
the best of times, especially with Setsuna, but this was one of
those times, because the soup Setsuna had made for dinner really
needed a good dash of salt.
Hotaru chuckled into the covers, then sighed and went back to
musing over her visitor. Within a few minutes, she had returned to
sleep, and dreamt about life in a world that never should have
been....
----o
For her, all that existed was flame. Deep, cleansing fire,
its core purpose to wipe the world of all its sins. She so wanted
to punish everything and everyone with that flame, and had done so,
time and time again. It almost seemed impossible to her that it
might, one day, be lost to her. It was all that had given her a
base from which to form an identity in the years that had followed
her, what might be termed as, abandonment, by those who should have
cared for her the most.
She didn't quite know where this love of the flame had
started. Her prayers, in front of the ritual fire at the Hikawa
Shrine, had been little more than a matter of course, part of the
teaching handed down to her by the only person in the world who
seemed capable of bestowing any emotional concern for her wellbeing.
Even if he was an incredibly faulted man, her Grandfather had given
a sense of purpose, and place, through the strictures of the Shinto
faith that her family had, for the most part through their history,
been acquainted with. Even if it seemed a matter of course that she
should inherit the shrine, and the faith, where his own children had
failed to do so, she WANTED it, deep in her heart, because it was
something she could have for HERSELF, and not for the love and
respect of missing parents.
And with that intensity of belief came the ritual fire,
burning as intensely as her own soul. After a while she came to see
within it an aspect of herself, and with that a greater connection
to the various gods that she worshipped. She never had any doubts,
she had the POWER to be the next Priestess of the Hikawa Shrine, a
power bestowed upon her by those gods, as well as powers hidden deep
within her that she could not understand. And so she spent as much
time with the flame, feeling its heat from up close, hearing the
crackle of its whispy, ghostly strands, ebbing and flowing as it
consumed that which it was fed. And within her mind, she could see
the spirits that flocked to the flame, caressing her soul and
stimulating her powers even further.
And one day, it all changed. Changed because of someone she
didn't know she was meant to be. And in a way, it hurt, because it
meant that everything that she had experienced had not really been
because of her dedication to her faith, but a matter of fait
accompli. She was born to be someone special, but not because of
anything she had done.... She was given incredible magic powers,
and the ability to save the world, and it took absolutely no effort
whatsoever. After everything she had gone through, it had felt as
if someone had stuck a needle in her, deflating all the pent-up
emotional energy, leaving behind someone a great deal softer and
more relaxed with herself. Oh, she still LIKED to act the martinet
around those she would describe as her friends, but in truth they
probably didn't expect any different from her.
After the initial shock, she went with the flow, for the first
time in her life, she allowed herself to take it easy. Her
Grandfather was getting old and a little dotty, running around and
chasing the pretty girls. Then there was Yuuichirou, her
Grandfather's so-called acolyte, who was more interested in getting
into her pants than actually following the faith. But it wasn't as
if he was a bad person, or anything, just wayward and in need of....
How should it be put...? Babying? Yes, that seemed to be the word
she was looking for. He needed looking after, like a child. And
then there was Usagi, who really wasn't much better than a child
herself, sometimes. Usagi, however, seemed to know her more deeply
than she had ever allowed anyone else. An emotional barrier to the
world that she could rest against when things became hard, as they
often seemed to do. Yes, things were very easy for her, even with
the occasional world takeover attempt by usually unstipulated
villains and freaks, and the odd occasion of actually dying on the
job, which she found to be somewhat underrated as an experience, but
not one she would want to repeat. At least, not for a while.
So why was she feeling like it was all a lie?
In the midst of her dreams, she was burning....
----o
Naiad watched as the fire senshi burnt alive, screaming in
pain and terror, her flesh being stripped from her bones by
something that came from within, rather than without. And Naiad
felt a slight smile come to her face. Mars had been particularly
keen on punishing her during her time within the Moon Kingdom. Fire
and Water rarely went well together, especially when the castes of
Warrior and Clergy were involved.
Mars.... The one who had tried so often to prosecute her, on
the advice of others. Mars just wanted to punish, without even
thinking about WHY she was doing it. She made life hell for anyone
who didn't fit into the rarefied atmosphere of the palace. Whilst
Venus had been the Captain of the Guard, Mars was the Executor of
the Law, and she took her role seriously. So did Naiad. And as far
as Naiad was concerned, Mars's role was the lesser in importance.
Naiad 'fixed' Mars in the end. After she was dead. Oh yes,
she made sure Mars was never quite the firey personality she had
been to start with. And so she watched Mars's dream-state
predicament with satisfaction. Feel the pain and the suffering that
you imposed on others....
And as quickly as she allowed it to start, she ended it. And
all that was left of Mars was a smoking, blackened cadaver, keening
on the floor of darkness for all that she had lost. For all that
she was to lose.
Lose Usagi.
Lose the kingdom to be.
And Naiad wept, for it was all too much.
----o
The pain was incredible, like nothing she had ever experienced
before. Only she had, repeatedly, in her dreams. Burning. Burning
everything. Burning things in her childhood. Her parents only took
notice when she had been caught. That was when they had handed her
over to her Grandfather. Because she had needed to be taught a
lesson. All she wanted was for them to notice her, accept that she
was alive. That she existed. But they never did. Indeed, she had
made it worse. She might as well have never existed for all they
cared.
And now she was burning, and was to cease to exist.
Everything was going to end, and nobody would care. She wished she
could cry, but her tears would not flow, for her eyes had been fried
from their sockets. And she accepted that nothing good was going to
happen in her life, and that it was all going to end this way. In
the fires of her own soul. And then dust and ash.
The flames stopped and what was left of her fell, lying in a
state so damaged that she didn't feel pain anymore. In a way, she
was disappointed. She WANTED to feel that pain, so she could suffer
as she deserved. Suffer and be punished for simply existing. But
there was no pain, and there was no punishment. Just darkness and
nothingness encroaching on the edges of her mind. Nothing mattered
anymore. Nothing....
----o
Rei opened her eyes to the darkness of her room, surprised to
find it was still there. Why?
She turned onto her side, having wiped sweat from her brow.
There was no end to this torment. Yes, that was good. She didn't
deserve the happiness she had been given. The happiness that Usagi
had given her.
Happiness, ripped away from her, forever.
Usagi....
She started to cry to herself, softly.
----o
Naiad watched Rei cry, the girl so absorbed in her thoughts
and feelings that she didn't notice the spirit within the same room
as her.
The breakdown that Mars was now feeling was mirroring Venus,
almost at the same point. It was only a matter of time before Naiad
could exercise her plan. But she had to be sure.... She had to be
sure that they were ALL ready for what they had to do.
To save the Kingdom of Crystal Tokyo.
By destroying its Princess.
----o
Several blocks away, half asleep and half out of her bed
covers, Usagi sneezed, waking herself up. Wiping her nose, she went
back to sleep and dreamed of eating a grand feast of all the foods
she had been told, throughout her life, were really really really
bad for her.
She didn't care. She lived a charmed life. For as long as it
was going to last....
--------------------------------------------------------------------
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
and again
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
--------------------------------------------------------------------
DARK DAY FOR ANIME
Concept/Writer: Mark A Page
Beta Readers/Editing: Sievert Dinar, James T Woolford, Jeff Schell
Version 1.1 - Friday, 21st May 2002
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
and again
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I bleed. For the hearts and minds of the losers of the
universe. And that is, for all of us.... For we are all losers,
and the greatest of all is the one who realises this and does
nothing to change it.
I bleed. From wounds too great to heal. I want to be loved
and hated all in one. The weapons I use against others only proceed
to hurt me more. Soon it will end, and then it will begin again.
Those for whom I care about the most will face my wrath.
I bleed. From eyes with tears of self-pity and self-hatred.
There is nobody who could care about someone whose exterior is so
thin the merest pinprick of contempt causes wounds more akin to
a dagger, a sword. And the pain lasts far far longer.
I bleed. For too long. Perhaps it is time to change but I
cannot change for I am without the desire and without the desire
there can be no change. Thus comes the onset of decreptitude, the
rotting remains of a soul that has never known happiness.
Since time began. And for some period before that.
There is no death for me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Prelude
The grass-covered valleys and fields that ran between
the rock-covered mountainsides of central Asia were a quiet place.
At least, that was what it seemed to the young, dark green haired
girl known as Hecate.
There was rarely, if ever, anyone passing through the starkly
beautiful valley she called home. She liked it that way. It was
hard enough for her to deal with herself without the added
complications of others' needs, and the necessity for the ordinary
social graces expected of one. Her sister agreed with the
sentiments. But then, as their mother would often say, their
destiny was very different from that of others.
Hecate had come running back to the house after playing in the
fields. Naiad, as usual, was sitting on a small stone-hewn seat,
reading. It was all her older sister ever seemed to do.
"Naiad-chan...." Hecate trotted up to her sister's side.
"The flowers...."
Naiad raised her head, brushing her almost glowing blue hair
away from her face as she smiled at her sibling. "What is it,
Hecate?"
"They're blossoming again.... Just over the rise.... So many
of them, buds and flowers...."
"And prickles and thorns, if you're not careful." Naiad drew
Hecate to her and lifted up her younger sister's simple woollen
dress, pointing out the number of seeds and such that were caught in
its fibres. "Look at this.... It'll take ages to remove that lot."
"Gomen, 'neesan...." Hecate put a finger to her mouth,
looking suitably chastised. "It's just so warm outside, and the
flowers were too beautiful.... I had to...."
"Roll in the grass, yes yes yes...." Naiad sighed,
remembering the lectures she had received from their mother about
doing the self same things.... She shook her head, sadly.... Life,
and time, were very strange things.... The patterns of behaviour,
repeating themselves. She wondered if it were at all possible to
break the mould and change those cycles....
"Look, oneechan.... It's an eagle!" Hecate pointed,
excitedly into the air, stepping back from her sister. "It's one of
the eagles from the mountains."
Naiad turned and looked up at the bird, its vast wingspan
clearly visible. "That's no eagle, Cate." She stood, excitedly.
"It's a Destiny Falcon."
"Wao!" Hecate leapt across the courtyard of the house,
watching the bird fly. "They're the rarest bird in the world....
In the entire universe.... What is one doing here?" Before Naiad
could answer, the bird started to circle over the rise from which
Hecate had come. Hecate, in her excitement, ran back towards the
rise in an effort to see what it was circling, leaving Naiad to
watch it from the house.
"A Destiny Falcon...." Naiad whispered to herself, softly.
"What message have you come to bring for us? For me?"
A warm breeze blew through the yard, and in it, she could hear
the voice of time call a name....
Millennia....
--------------------------------------------------------------------
BISHOUJO SENSHI SAILORMOON
USAGI IS DEAD - USAGI IS DEAD - HIP HIP HIP HOORAY
or "More Usagis Than You Can Poke a Moon Wand At"
Chapter 1 - Method in the Madness
by Dark Day for Anime (Mark A Page)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
and again
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
--------------------------------------------------------------------
There was nothing. And then there was something. Without a
body, it was hard to tell which was which, but she had long since
been used to the sensations that came with a non-corporeal
existence.
Her emotions welled as she stared down at the pathetic-looking
figure of the blond-haired girl, asleep with her hair cast around
her face like a golden halo. Feelings of sadness and contempt made
her want to both hold and lash out the girl, driven by memories of
the past. Both her own, and that of the girl.
She looked so weak now, and yet Naiad Keth Drutein knew her
when she held a commanding presence. Indeed, the captain of the
Moon Kingdom's guard, and high member of the court's inner circle.
Of all the Senshi, this one she had felt the MOST respect for.
But she was still capable of being a right bitch when she
wanted to be. Venus, as her designation had been, was once charged
with investigating Naiad's activities, and she had made the all too
sensitive Miko's life a misery during that time. For which she paid
dearly.... Ohhh yes, Naiad made sure Venus was left with a few
phobias and character flaws after that affair. Nobody EVER pried
into HER life, openly displaying her most PRIVATE thoughts and
feelings, allowing her to be humiliated and mocked....
Naiad took control of herself. Bitterness on things past had
a tendency to eat away at the very fabric of one's being, and her
being was all that was left of substance. She would have to work
through these issues at some future date.... But right now, she
wanted to see if what she was doing to the girl, now known as Aino
Minako, was having any affect....
Slowly, she lowered herself to Minako, and touched her
forehead with a ghostly hand....
----o
It was silent, cold and dark. There was nothing. Nothing
that could be seen or heard. She wanted to scream, but she had no
mouth with which to perform, and there was nobody here to hear her.
Because she was dead, and death was the end. the end of everything
for her, because it was the end of the entity that had been known as
Aino Minako.
She was dead, and it was bitchier than life. Could there be
anyone so unlucky as she was, this very moment, to be experiencing
true death for the very first time? Oh, she had experienced various
forms of death in the past, but there had always been an element of
transcendence about that, like there had been a part of her still in
existence, living and breathing, and interacting with the
environment around her. And, in a way, that was what she was
experiencing now. She could still register that complete lack of
stimuli, which had to be a stimuli within itself, but it was that
very lack of stimuli that frightened her the most. She was being
swamped.... Suffocated, by the nothingness, and slowly it was
eating away at what was left of her consciousness. And she knew
there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Visions of her life passed through what could be thought of
as her 'mind'. Things she didn't want to let go of. She wanted to
KEEP experiencing. She wanted to keep EXISTING. But it was over,
and there was nothing more she could do to stop it. She started to
panic, and she couldn't even do that. She wanted to scream, but
she had no mouth with which to perform the act. She wanted to....
----o
"IIIIIIIYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" The scream exploded from her
throat, perhaps even deeper than that. It was certainly the loudest
noise she'd ever produced in many a year. And, unfortunately,
Artemis and Minako's parents were becoming all too accustomed to it.
Artemis knew he hadn't much time to try and compose her before
her father would come pounding up the stairs to see how his little
girl was. He was up against her shoulder, front paws trying to
shake her out of her fugue, shortly after she had thrown herself
bolt upright from her bed. Minako was panting and keening, her eyes
and nose running as profusely as the sweat all over her body. She
was soaked through to the sheets, and was shivering as much with the
cold as with nerves.
"Minako-chan...." Artemis's voice was soft but insistent.
"It's alright, Minako-chan.... It was only a dream."
"Dead." She stammered. "I'm dying. D... d d d d dying...."
She started to panic again, shaking her head from side to side.
"Can't die yet. I'm too young. It's all wrong. Not going to die.
Destined to live eternally. Not going to die. Never going to die."
"Minako-chan, stop it! You had a DREAM. That is all."
Artemis swallowed. "Just another dream. Remember? You've been
having a lot of nasty dreams, lately. But this is the real world,
Minako.... The real world, where you are alive and everything is
safe."
"No.... Not safe. Never will be safe. Going to die. Going
to be killed. Monsters out there.... Want me to die for their
pleasure. Can't fight against them.... Too weak.... It's all my
fault. I deserve to die but I don't want to die. Selfish, ugly and
stupid. Help meeeeee....." Minako threw away the bedsheets and
stood bolt upright in the middle of her room, having launched
herself from the mattress with her amazing athletic skills, almost
bowling Artemis aside without thinking.
Artemis watched her as she stood, confused, wondering how it
was she had arrived in this place, this position, and realised that
she was finally coming to her senses, when, as if on cue, her
father threw open the door to her bedroom and almost slammed his
hand down upon the lightswitch.
"Minako-chan...." Her father was breathing heavily. He had
bolted up the stairs without thinking, and, considering how it had
been a few years since he was truly fit enough for such an activity,
was showing the signs of strain. He stepped forward and threw his
arms around Minako as her mother entered the room, one of her hands
over her mouth and tears in her eyes. "It's alright, Minako-chan.
Papa is here.... It's alright."
"Papa....?" Minako whispered, weakly. She seemed too shocked
to repeat her father's gesture, her arms hanging limply at her
sides.
----o
Naiad was impressed.... Not only with the progression of
Minako's psychotic state of mind, but with the volume of the random
ebbing and flowing of her brain patterns. Naiad had touched
Minako's very soul and had NOT been detected by either the proto-
Senshi or the being that had been with her, in the form of the cat.
She hovered near the ceiling, watching events unfold, feeling
a slight pang of guilt at what she had done.... What HAD to be done
if things were to work out the way she wanted them to. Those
feelings passed, rapidly, and she once more returned to the
nothingness, moving on to another target.... This time one with
more meaning to her....
----o
Minako's mother slowly descended the stairs as her father sat
despondently at the kitchen table, a hand over his eyes. "She's
asleep, now." She whispered as she reached the bottom of the
stairs, looking through the doorway to the kitchen. He jerked
upwards, as if registering her for the first time.
"Good." He said, his exhaustion clear in his tone. "I wonder
how long it will last this time." He turned away from her and
rubbed his forehead. "We're going to have to get her specialist
help this time."
"No!" Minako's mother stepped through the door with forceful
resolve. "No specialists, no psychiatrists or psychologists. She
doesn't need their help." Her husband turned back and looked at
her, disbelievingly.
"Minako-chan needs help, for goodness sake. Just because
you're afraid of what people will think of us...." His wife slammed
her hands down onto the table.
"I can't go through with all of that again. Not after what
happened with okaasan...."
"What happened to her is the SAME as Minako. We can't let our
pride get in the way over what is best for our daughter. Face it,
if we let this go on, what happened to your mother might also happen
to Minako. Do you want her to die in such a manner?" His wife took
a long breath and lifted up her hands, as if to quieten his raising
tone.
"I just can't accept that my daughter would turn out the same
way. It's too much. She's always been so happy.... So cheerful.
Why is this happening to her now?" Tears started to run from her
eyes, and he took hold of her, pulling her close and hugging
tightly, trying to console his distraught wife.
"Those moments of cheerful happiness always had their
downside. The dark moodiness Minako-chan did her best to hide from
everyone, even the closest of friends."
"Oh Kami.... how are we going to explain to her friends about
the way she's been acting. I'm sure they've noticed the changes in
her mood."
"We'll get to that when the time comes. I'm sure they all
have their own problems right now...."
----o
"You can question your existence and your destiny as much as
you like...." Erebus Todhunter levelled her gaze to the blue-haired
woman standing before her. "It will not make any difference,
whatsoever. Your physical existence is limited, and you simply
won't be able to stop what is to follow."
Naiad Keth Drutein slowly sank onto one of the lower stairs,
outside the entrance to the university, where she had encountered
Erebus flicking through one of the texts of required reading in her
course without much in the way of interest. "That's always been
your problem, you know that? You can't but help to look on the
negative side of everything."
"Occupational hazard." Erebus smiled, brushing a strand of
her straight, black hair from her strangely round, open eyes.
Erebus had always a childlike air about her, mostly due to the
large, doe-like eyes which she possessed. Their expressive quality
seemed unlimited, yet Erebus had become an expert at using that
expressiveness for her own ends. Not an easy task for someone who
was still so young.
"It makes me wonder what the hell I am doing all this study
for, then? Why am I bothering to learn anything if it's all going
to be lost the moment I die?" Naiad sighed, clutching her knees to
her chest, looking down at her feet. "The deeper implications of
simply wanting to go out and have a good time. If that was at all
possible...."
"The university won't let you go unless you prove to be a
total failure, and they certainly won't allow you to deliberately
fail. Bit of a quandary, isn't it?" Erebus tossed the book aside
and leaned back against the stone siding of the stairs. "A rather
all too thorough system, designed to torment the gifted."
"Well, they aren't going to allow anything like the Simiston
riots again, are they? Even a group of trainee Senshi can do damage
if they wish to, with long-standing consequences." Naiad huffed.
"Mores the pity. I'm really itching to give one of my tutors a
paranoia complex about his ex-wife."
"He probably already has one." Erebus chuckled. "Besides,
where is the fun in imposing your psychic powers on someone as lowly
and insignificant as he? No, save his torture for when you're
bored. Much better to take on the head of the faculty, instead."
"Ah, so you're the one who has been slipping the anchovy paste
into all of his food?" Naiad turned and looked up at Erebus, who
raised an eyebrow, a smile in her eyes.
"I didn't say that, now did I?"
"Yeah yeah yeah. How did you discover his allergy to
anchovies?"
"Now now. You don't think I'm going to give away all of my
secrets, now do you? Gotta save something for the University
Chancellor."
----o
"I don't think there was ever a time where you weren't
diligently obfuscatious...." Naiad whispered to herself as she
watched over Hotaru's sleeping form. "Always playing the enigma for
all it was worth. Then you would shut me out in favour of my
sister. That wasn't really fair, you know." She lowered her wraith
like hand to touch the girl's face.
Much to her, albeit momentary, surprise, Hotaru reacted,
turning away from the hand as if it had disturbed her sleep.
"Yes.... You were always like that...." Naiad held the hand to her
chest, the expression, on her transluscent face, hurt.
She then turned from the figure, and the girl's bedroom washed
away into a liquid nothingness, brilliant blue in its depth and
quantity. The Ocean of the Mind that Naiad had long searched for
throughout her short life. Now she was free of body to explore its
depths.... Its eddies and currents.... And to slowly go insane,
not only through what she found there, but how bored she became,
seeing the same thing, again and again and again.
All she had found was her OWN mind, not those of others. She
had been taught in the belief that the Ocean represented all
thought, of all the people that had ever existed or were to exist.
It was something of a dogma to her. As the Water Miko of the Third
Refrain within the Moon Kingdom of Sol, her entire belief structure
was dedicated to the possibilities of the mind and everything that
existed within and without it. In Naiad's case, this had been at
the expense of the physical, which she so despised, partly because
of those teachings. What was the point of being physically
acceptable to others, in terms of her humanity, sociability and her
femininity, if all that really mattered was what resided in her
skull?
She had explored her mind's physical limitations, through
drugs, self-hypnosis and all forms of meditation, and had found it
wanting. She required constant stimulation to make the exercise
worthwhile, and she very rarely provided the element of surprise, at
least to herself. So she then started to explore the minds of
others, and that was where she had REALLY earned herself such a bad
reputation. Servants and courtiers would recount frightened tales
of encounters with the Miko, and the things she would do to them
during these moments.
They had ridiculed her, then.... Treated her with a snobbish
contempt, or even fear.... The kind of fear that one would normally
reserve for a wild and unpredictable animal. If it hadn't been for
her friendship with Queen Tranquility, who knows what could have
happened to her.... There had been calls to oust her from office,
calls that Tranquility had vetoed. Tranquility understood her, had
always understood her.... And she had understood Tranquility VERY
well. She wanted her back.... She wanted Tranquility back....
Wanted her back in her arms but she didn't have any arms and now the
girl was lost to her forever because she was dead and so was
Tranquility and there was nothing more she could do about it until
she had found her again if her soul still existed and.... and....
and....
She screamed. Not a physical scream, but the shriek of a
restless spirit, echoing through the corridors of eternity and into
the minds of all those still alive to register. People would not
remark on the event for long. For all of its effect it was nothing
more than a hiccup in the various trains of thought, or a sudden
sensation of falling within a dream. If they were able to dream,
and there were many who couldn't....
----o
Hotaru opened her eyes and lifted herself from her bed,
clutching the sheets tightly to her chest. "Hello?" She whispered
into the darkness of her room. "Hello? I know you're there. I
could hear you.... Is there something wrong? Are you in pain?"
The girl's eyes were blank, as if she were talking in her sleep, her
words motivated by some subconscious source. The eyes then started
to focus, and gained an expression of disappointment when there was
no answer to her pleas.
She lay her head back against the pillow and stared at the
ceiling, feeling slightly annoyed at herself for no seeming reason.
"I missed her again." She whispered in a slightly huffy tone. "How
could I miss her so easily? She surely can't be so beyond my
reach."
She turned on her right side, holding her hands up underneath
her chin, clenched into fists. Surely her visitor couldn't be
trying to avoid her? That would be impossible.... Impossible for
one such as Saturn. With her interconnection to the worlds of the
dead, there was nowhere such a wandering spirit could hide. Yet
hide this spirit did, and with great rapidity, not even allowing her
the opportunity to converse, to find out just why she was receiving
these regular visitations.
She wondered if it had something to do with the state of mind
of her comrades. They had all seemed a little odd, lately.... Not
that any of them could be vaguely described as normal.... Something
she'd have to ask Pluto about, later. Then again, Pluto would
probably not give her a straight answer, even if she DID know what
was going on. There had been a dinner, one night not so long ago,
where she had asked Pluto where the salt was. She received an
answer that went along the lines of something about salt pans and
the various methods employed in the mass production of sodium
chloride. It was quite uncommon for Hotaru to get really cross at
the best of times, especially with Setsuna, but this was one of
those times, because the soup Setsuna had made for dinner really
needed a good dash of salt.
Hotaru chuckled into the covers, then sighed and went back to
musing over her visitor. Within a few minutes, she had returned to
sleep, and dreamt about life in a world that never should have
been....
----o
For her, all that existed was flame. Deep, cleansing fire,
its core purpose to wipe the world of all its sins. She so wanted
to punish everything and everyone with that flame, and had done so,
time and time again. It almost seemed impossible to her that it
might, one day, be lost to her. It was all that had given her a
base from which to form an identity in the years that had followed
her, what might be termed as, abandonment, by those who should have
cared for her the most.
She didn't quite know where this love of the flame had
started. Her prayers, in front of the ritual fire at the Hikawa
Shrine, had been little more than a matter of course, part of the
teaching handed down to her by the only person in the world who
seemed capable of bestowing any emotional concern for her wellbeing.
Even if he was an incredibly faulted man, her Grandfather had given
a sense of purpose, and place, through the strictures of the Shinto
faith that her family had, for the most part through their history,
been acquainted with. Even if it seemed a matter of course that she
should inherit the shrine, and the faith, where his own children had
failed to do so, she WANTED it, deep in her heart, because it was
something she could have for HERSELF, and not for the love and
respect of missing parents.
And with that intensity of belief came the ritual fire,
burning as intensely as her own soul. After a while she came to see
within it an aspect of herself, and with that a greater connection
to the various gods that she worshipped. She never had any doubts,
she had the POWER to be the next Priestess of the Hikawa Shrine, a
power bestowed upon her by those gods, as well as powers hidden deep
within her that she could not understand. And so she spent as much
time with the flame, feeling its heat from up close, hearing the
crackle of its whispy, ghostly strands, ebbing and flowing as it
consumed that which it was fed. And within her mind, she could see
the spirits that flocked to the flame, caressing her soul and
stimulating her powers even further.
And one day, it all changed. Changed because of someone she
didn't know she was meant to be. And in a way, it hurt, because it
meant that everything that she had experienced had not really been
because of her dedication to her faith, but a matter of fait
accompli. She was born to be someone special, but not because of
anything she had done.... She was given incredible magic powers,
and the ability to save the world, and it took absolutely no effort
whatsoever. After everything she had gone through, it had felt as
if someone had stuck a needle in her, deflating all the pent-up
emotional energy, leaving behind someone a great deal softer and
more relaxed with herself. Oh, she still LIKED to act the martinet
around those she would describe as her friends, but in truth they
probably didn't expect any different from her.
After the initial shock, she went with the flow, for the first
time in her life, she allowed herself to take it easy. Her
Grandfather was getting old and a little dotty, running around and
chasing the pretty girls. Then there was Yuuichirou, her
Grandfather's so-called acolyte, who was more interested in getting
into her pants than actually following the faith. But it wasn't as
if he was a bad person, or anything, just wayward and in need of....
How should it be put...? Babying? Yes, that seemed to be the word
she was looking for. He needed looking after, like a child. And
then there was Usagi, who really wasn't much better than a child
herself, sometimes. Usagi, however, seemed to know her more deeply
than she had ever allowed anyone else. An emotional barrier to the
world that she could rest against when things became hard, as they
often seemed to do. Yes, things were very easy for her, even with
the occasional world takeover attempt by usually unstipulated
villains and freaks, and the odd occasion of actually dying on the
job, which she found to be somewhat underrated as an experience, but
not one she would want to repeat. At least, not for a while.
So why was she feeling like it was all a lie?
In the midst of her dreams, she was burning....
----o
Naiad watched as the fire senshi burnt alive, screaming in
pain and terror, her flesh being stripped from her bones by
something that came from within, rather than without. And Naiad
felt a slight smile come to her face. Mars had been particularly
keen on punishing her during her time within the Moon Kingdom. Fire
and Water rarely went well together, especially when the castes of
Warrior and Clergy were involved.
Mars.... The one who had tried so often to prosecute her, on
the advice of others. Mars just wanted to punish, without even
thinking about WHY she was doing it. She made life hell for anyone
who didn't fit into the rarefied atmosphere of the palace. Whilst
Venus had been the Captain of the Guard, Mars was the Executor of
the Law, and she took her role seriously. So did Naiad. And as far
as Naiad was concerned, Mars's role was the lesser in importance.
Naiad 'fixed' Mars in the end. After she was dead. Oh yes,
she made sure Mars was never quite the firey personality she had
been to start with. And so she watched Mars's dream-state
predicament with satisfaction. Feel the pain and the suffering that
you imposed on others....
And as quickly as she allowed it to start, she ended it. And
all that was left of Mars was a smoking, blackened cadaver, keening
on the floor of darkness for all that she had lost. For all that
she was to lose.
Lose Usagi.
Lose the kingdom to be.
And Naiad wept, for it was all too much.
----o
The pain was incredible, like nothing she had ever experienced
before. Only she had, repeatedly, in her dreams. Burning. Burning
everything. Burning things in her childhood. Her parents only took
notice when she had been caught. That was when they had handed her
over to her Grandfather. Because she had needed to be taught a
lesson. All she wanted was for them to notice her, accept that she
was alive. That she existed. But they never did. Indeed, she had
made it worse. She might as well have never existed for all they
cared.
And now she was burning, and was to cease to exist.
Everything was going to end, and nobody would care. She wished she
could cry, but her tears would not flow, for her eyes had been fried
from their sockets. And she accepted that nothing good was going to
happen in her life, and that it was all going to end this way. In
the fires of her own soul. And then dust and ash.
The flames stopped and what was left of her fell, lying in a
state so damaged that she didn't feel pain anymore. In a way, she
was disappointed. She WANTED to feel that pain, so she could suffer
as she deserved. Suffer and be punished for simply existing. But
there was no pain, and there was no punishment. Just darkness and
nothingness encroaching on the edges of her mind. Nothing mattered
anymore. Nothing....
----o
Rei opened her eyes to the darkness of her room, surprised to
find it was still there. Why?
She turned onto her side, having wiped sweat from her brow.
There was no end to this torment. Yes, that was good. She didn't
deserve the happiness she had been given. The happiness that Usagi
had given her.
Happiness, ripped away from her, forever.
Usagi....
She started to cry to herself, softly.
----o
Naiad watched Rei cry, the girl so absorbed in her thoughts
and feelings that she didn't notice the spirit within the same room
as her.
The breakdown that Mars was now feeling was mirroring Venus,
almost at the same point. It was only a matter of time before Naiad
could exercise her plan. But she had to be sure.... She had to be
sure that they were ALL ready for what they had to do.
To save the Kingdom of Crystal Tokyo.
By destroying its Princess.
----o
Several blocks away, half asleep and half out of her bed
covers, Usagi sneezed, waking herself up. Wiping her nose, she went
back to sleep and dreamed of eating a grand feast of all the foods
she had been told, throughout her life, were really really really
bad for her.
She didn't care. She lived a charmed life. For as long as it
was going to last....
--------------------------------------------------------------------
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
and again
IASFU OA FWSS IASFU OA FWSS GOO JUA GOO JIPEST
--------------------------------------------------------------------
DARK DAY FOR ANIME
Concept/Writer: Mark A Page
Beta Readers/Editing: Sievert Dinar, James T Woolford, Jeff Schell
Version 1.1 - Friday, 21st May 2002