Chapter 7 - Confessions of a Samurai
by Prince Johnathan of Jupiter

~~BGM Choice: The Death of Optimus Prime from Transformers the Movie~~

Author's Notes: This is a very touchy and emotional scene in the story. Readers keep a thing of Kleenex near by and beware.

Sean looked out over the lunar landscape of Earth's Moon and the Moon Palace that stood before them.
"Lita, this is amazing! In my time, the moon is..."

Lita looked as if to scold him. "Sean! You know better. Telling me what this place is like in the future will not help matters. It might make them worse."

Sean groaned. "Thank you, Doc Brown."
She quirked a brow. "Doc Brown? Who's that?"

Sean chuckled. "A scientist who created a time machine in a movie. He constantly spoke of how information about the future could rupture the space time continuum. He was a crazy old guy."

Lita chuckled. "Oh." She didn't understand any of it.

Sean and Lita had been on the moon for only a few hours. Sean marveled at the magnificent structures on the surface of what would be, in his time, a barren rock. To Lita, this was all old hat, but as they strolled along, Sean couldn't help but be amazed.

"Such beauty..." Sean marveled.
"It took many years just to build the palace," Lita stated. "The rest was just as long."
"And it's here that Princess Serenity and her mother the Queen live?"

Lita nodded. "There is also the Temple of Life, a shrine to Princess Peaceful, Queen Serenity's older sister. She died before Queen Serenity and her subjects traveled to come to this solar system."

Sean speaks to himself. "She didn't die... just escaped."
Lita looked at him, shocked. "What was that?"
"Ummm... uhhhhh... nothing, just thinking."

Sean had met Princess Peaceful on his Quest for the Power Orbs. The Sky Palace had appeared in the sky over Earth. That was when Jana...

'Wow,' Sean thought, 'I haven't thought of Jana the entire time I've been here. I remember before I came here she was my entire life... my entire world...' He glanced at Lita. 'Now it's Lita. Maybe when I fell in love with Lita... I let Jana go.'

Lita looked at Sean, concerned. "Are you ok?"
Sean nods and wraps an arm around Lita's waist. "Yeah, just thinking about my past."

Lita nodded, but then stops and looks out over the railing over the lakes of the Moon.

Sean looks back. "Lita?"
"I just realized..." She looked up, into his eyes, "I know so very little about you."
Sean sighed. 'I knew some day she would ask this...' He spoke up. "My life is nothing special..."

"My love..." She goes to him and sits them both down on a bench overlooking one of the crystalline ponds around the Palace. "Over our last few weeks together, you have learned all about me, my culture and my life. Now I want to know at least about your life."

Sean took a deep breath. "Ok, I'll tell you my story..."

~I was born to two people who were like night and day. They weren't married, which for my mother was a problem. From the moment of my birth, I was in for a life of lies. My parents got married shortly after I was born. I have no real memory of those days...

After my fifth birthday though... I remember. That was when my life began to be plagued with sadness. My mother cheated on my father constantly with other guys, even friends of the family. I never knew until later in life. Finally she demanded her independence and threw Dad out. A year later they were divorced, ceased being man and wife. In the end, she retained the right to be the person to take care of me. My father retained the right to see me during the ends of every week.

Over the next 4 years, my mother had many different men in her bed... and one she almost married. The only reason she didn't was because the man was very abusive of me. He would hit me... very badly...~

"Oh Sean..." Lita spoke softly and sadly, holding him close. "I would never have guessed..."
"I know..."

~As I said, my mother had many men over the 4 years after she divorced my father. However, they all realized what kind of woman she was and promptly would leave her. Still very young, in her mid 20's, she would just move the blame onto me. She claimed I drove them away by saying how I was going to get my parents back together again. In reality, it was the fact that she wanted to sit around and spend the money the guy would give her.

Finally, she was trapped by a person who could lie better than she could. He played on this want to get her, then pulled out the money and held all her belongings in his clutches after they married. He is the man who is my stepfather. Supposedly, he loves my mother and I, but I don't trust him... Over time I've learned he is a master manipulator. He moved me from my home on the East Coast of the US to the Midwest, claming we were gonna get a whole new start. However, it turned into his excuse to use and abuse me.

During these events, I went from a boy to a teenager, slowly standing up for the rights every child has. I spent a lot of time trying to secure these rights and I am still fighting. It was right around my 13th birthday that I felt something magical was going to happen. It was late in the summer of that same year that something DID happen. I was walking along a beach, looking out at a lake made by the city's reservoir. On that beach, I found a ring of silver with a green gem inside.

When I put it on, I was taken to ShadowWorld, a plane of existence where all things are somewhat half-alive and half-dead. Things gone from this world, like Dragons and Unicorns, all reside there in harmony. There is no sun, no moon, no stars, only eternal night and an endless expanse of flat land. In part of it, was a huge combination of Japanese and English craftsmanship that makes up Castle Samurai.

It was here, after a series of trials, that I became Teen Samurai, defender of the planet Earth for the 1990's. During this time, Gorcon, the Evil Warlord, created Death Samurai, my evil doppelganger. Gorcon wants to control all universes and merge them with ShadowWorld to make a dark universe of death and destruction. My job along with the other Thunder Men who I would gather, was to stop them and save the universes and to one day regain the Orb of Death that powers Gorcon and Death Samurai. If we do and bring all the Orbs together, we can resurrect our leader Ying's home world, maybe even bring him back to life.

Part of the training is a trip through the Hall of Armor. In this room stands the armors of every Samurai that has passed before me. These armors lead to time portals, which send me to the time of the wearer of the armor...~

"And that's all she wrote."

Lita sat in thought, taking it all in. Then she spoke. "You are the strongest, bravest warrior I have ever known. I am honored to call you my beloved." She leaned over and kissed him. He returned her kiss and after it ended, they say in each other's arms looking out over the lake. Overhead, a shooting star streaked across the sky."