The Voices of the Dead
In matters of time, Chronos was never wrong.
His time with his granddaughter was indeed short. Before Setsuna knew it,
her week on Pluto was over, and it was time for her and her mother to return
to the moon. Climbing on board their ship, Setsuna bid her father and grandfather
a tearful farewell, but her unhappiness at leaving her home again was far
overshadowed by the joy she felt at the prospect of seeing her friends
again and returning to her training. Her mood only improved when she and
Lady Moira arrived on the moon, for the reunion between the three princesses
was a happy and enthusiastic one.
Setsuna resumed her lessons, which continued
as usual until one afternoon a few days after she returned. After lunch
that day, rather then separating with their daughters, the three Queens
gathered them all together for their last lesson. Curious and excited about
this sudden turn of events, the girls were unnaturally quiet as they waited
expectantly for the wisdom the trio of Sailor Soldiers was sure to impart.
"Dear children," Lady Nuala began, "you have
all learned much since your coming to the moon. How do you feel you have
done in your lessons this past year?" At this question, the princesses
hesitated. They had long ago learned that a teacher's idea of what was
good or bad was not always the same as the pupil's—even when the teacher
was one's own mother. Still, they could not believe they might have done
poorly. They were all quite intelligent, and had worked hard to excel in
their training.
"I think I have done well." Setsuna replied
carefully at last, and her friends agreed. The Queens rewarded their answers
with smiles.
"You have indeed done well." Lady Moira agreed.
"As a matter of fact, we have decided that you girls have gained sufficient
knowledge of your elements to begin calling upon your powers." Excited
squeals greeted her statement, but the Queen of Pluto quieted the children
with great haste, for she had more yet to say. You see the princesses were
not yet ready to use their powers to fight as full Sailor Soldiers did.
Planetary magic was a dangerous brand of power, which consequentially lay
dormant within the soul of its mistress until she began to call for it.
It was bound to resist her calling at first, especially if she tried to
tap into her element right away. Thus, the Queens would not begin this
step of their daughters' training by teaching them to wield their elements,
but by instead teaching them to teleport.
Teleportation was a talent characteristic
of all royalty, and an extremely useful skill for a Sailor Soldier to have.
There would not always be a ship ready for her should she have to escape
the battlefield quickly with an injured comrade or civilian. Because it
was a basic skill that required little power, it was the perfect place
to begin teaching a Sailor-Soldier-to-be how to call upon her celestial
gifts. The girls learned this skill together, so they no longer had to
separate after lunch. This suited them just fine, for they very much enjoyed
one another's company.
To find the power to teleport was as simple
as such a task could ever be. Setsuna did not need to search the depths
of her soul for it. Sufficient power lay close at hand in her Aura.
The invisible barrier of magic surrounding her body prevented her soul
from escaping its confinement before her death. Once her soul was freed,
Lady Moira said, it would absorb her Aura into it, for the Aura was an
essential part of her being.
"Imagine," Lady Moira instructed the princesses,
"that you have three hands." Startled by this, the girls glanced at one
another, their mouths twitching as they fought not to laugh, but they sobered
quickly when Lady Nuala raised an eyebrow at them.
"You have three hands." The Neptunian woman
echoed. "Two are on either side of your body, coming from your shoulders,
just as they are now. The third, though, extends from your heart." Haruka
gave a most unladylike snort as Michiru covered her mouth with both hands,
and Setsuna chewed her lower lip to hold back the giggles threatening her.
She did not want to laugh. She knew the three former warriors were far
wiser than she in the ways of their powers, but the thought of having three
hands was simply too funny. Gnawing her lip as a smile tugged fiercely
at the corners of her mouth, Setsuna pictured herself with a third arm,
growing right out of her breast. It was absolutely ridiculous!
Suddenly, Setsuna gasped in shock. The picture of the three-armed
Setsuna vanished from her mind. Her two friends looked at her in alarm,
but the Queens were smiling a secret little smile.
"Did you see something, my child?" Lady Moira
asked nonchalantly, as if she were asking Setsuna if she had enjoyed her
supper. Too stunned to speak, the little princess slowly nodded. She had
indeed seen something. When she had envisioned herself with a hand protruding
from her chest, an impossibly beautiful garnet sea had swirled before her
eyes! Now though, all she could see were the trio of Sailor Soldiers and
her two best friends.
"What was it, Mother?" she asked when she
had found her voice again.
"Your Aura." Moira replied. "When you can
see that third hand, which you create from the small amount of magic you
have been able to use since birth, you will be able to see your Aura."
"Birth?" Michiru repeated. "We have been able
to use this bit of magic since birth?"
"Yes," Lady Eriu conceded, "but not consciously.
It is the magic that you open yourselves to when you play games of pretend."
Setsuna had never thought that she might have been using magic when she,
Haruka, and Michiru pranced about the palace, playing that they were unicorns!
"Why have we never been able to see our Auras
before?" Haruka wanted to know.
"Your Aura will only become visible when you
wish to use the magic it provides." Her mother explained. "Once you have
mastered teleportation, however, your Aura will become visible to all."
The girls did not pretend to understand Eriu's prediction, but they never
again laughed at the idea of a third hand growing from one's heart.
As a matter of fact, Setsuna grew to enjoy
seeing the hand, and watching her cranberry Aura flare up around her. When
both the hand, and her Aura were visible to her, Setsuna would use her
mind to slowly guide the imaginary appendage into the ghostly garnet sea.
Then, just as the Queens instructed, she grasped a handful of the swirling
power, holding it tight within that magic hand, which she then pulled back
into her breast. The magic she had collected coursed through her veins
in gentle, pulsating waves, filling her with a pleasant calm. Once the
power was there, it was only a matter of telling where she wanted to go.
Teleporting was an amazing experience. The
moment she told her power where to take her, Setsuna would feel her body
dissolving into a beam of pure magic, and she was swept into a dimension
of nothingness. Although she knew there was no such thing as time in that
dimension, Setsuna could not help but feel as though it took her an hour
to reach her destination. Even that, though, was a bit of an embellishment,
as her childish impatience tended to exaggerate any amount of time, and
when she finally left the nothingness and found herself in her chamber,
she could see by the grandfather clock that no time had passed whatsoever.
As their skills increased, the girls soon
discovered that they could easily teleport anywhere in the White Moon Kingdom
that they wished to go. They raised a bit of a hullabaloo one evening when
they'd decided to test exactly how far their powers could take them. They'd
begun by transporting themselves to a small village on Mercury. The presence
of the three young princesses had greatly troubled many of the commoners,
who could think of no reason for them to be there, but were inclined to
assume the worst. They debated taking the news to the royal family, but
decided against it when the girls informed them they were only training,
and quickly teleported off the planet. Of course, that left the villagers
with the task of retrieving the few who had not waited, and were already
on their way to see Queen Mercury.
They had selected Pluto as their next destination,
as it was the furthest world of the kingdom. They managed to give Lord
Hades quite a shock when they suddenly materialized in his study, and he
had not quite recovered yet when Setsuna tackled him in a bear hug and
kissed him on the tip of his nose before she and her friends teleported
away again. All was going well, until the princesses somehow lost each
other when they stopped on Jupiter between Pluto and the moon. Not one
of them knew quite what to do without the other two, but before long, Michiru
decided to teleport back to her chamber in the Silver Palace. A few suspenseful
moments later, Haruka, pale and shaky but otherwise unharmed, appeared
in the empty bathtub in the bathroom that was joined to their chambers.
The girls might have gotten away with their little planet hop had Setsuna
not gone from Jupiter to the kitchen of the Silver Palace, where the cook
happened to be carving up the meat for tomorrow's supper. As it was, Setsuna
ended up on the counter along side the unfortunate wild thing, and the
princesses' adventure was discovered. As no harm had been done, the girls
faced no punishment, but they did decide not to teleport outside their
mothers' supervision for the time being.
Lady Eriu had said that when the princesses
mastered teleportation, their Auras would be visible to all. It was that
evening that her meaning was made clear, for when the Queens discovered
their guilty-faced daughters in their chamber, each was wrapped in a wispy,
but beautifully colored cloud of power a plain as the eye could see. Their
Auras quivered and swirled for only a moment before fading back to invisibility.
In a matter of months since they first began
learning to teleport, the girls had mastered it. Not only could they teleport
themselves, and up to one other person under their own power, but they
could easily combine their powers to transport even more people. In just
a few more months, they had also learned the art of mental communication,
a more difficult skill, which required that they begin to search their
souls for the necessary power. Although it took them a little bit longer
to master that skill, the girls found it was an even more wonderful skill
to have than teleportation. It was great fun to speak silently to one another,
especially at mealtimes, when they were meant to be quiet and polite. It
was not long before the princesses were ready to begin wielding their elements,
and they were again separating for their final lessons.
"As you know," Lady Moira told Setsuna when
they were again alone for that lesson, "each Sailor Soldier draws her power
from a different element. Do you remember what yours is?" A silly question,
Setsuna thought. Of course she remembered. She would never dare forget
something as important as the source of her power.
"The afterlife, Mother." she replied, her
tone clearly displaying that she found the question inane. A look of amusement
flickered across the former warrior's beautiful face. She cocked a greenish-black
eyebrow at her daughter.
"Ahhh, yes, but do you know exactly what you
draw your power from?" she asked. Setsuna hesitated. That sounded to her
like a trick question, and she was not sure she wanted to risk getting
it wrong.
"Have you ever taught me that?" she countered,
trying not to sound defensive. Moira answered negatively, and Setsuna sighed.
She never knew how to answer such questions. It was so hard to tell where
to look for an answer, whether it would be the obvious or obscure one.
"The true source of your power is something
known as the Voices of the Dead. Remember that you asked me once if a soul
can speak to its lover after death?" Setsuna nodded eagerly. She had never
stopped wondering about that. "The answer is yes. All souls can speak with
the ones they love when they depart this world. The reason for that is
the Voices of the Dead. Is that clear to you?"
"I understand that the Voices of the Dead
allow souls to speak with those they love once they are free," Setsuna
said slowly, "and that they are what I draw my power from, but I know not
what they are, nor do I know how my power can come from them. When I teleport,
the power comes from my Aura."
"Which is also powered by the Voices of the
Dead." said Lady Moira. "You see, my precious one, every Sailor Soldier
will eventually develop a magic attack using her powers. Each soldier's
attack is her own. No Sailor Soldier wields the same one as she who bore
her name in the previous generation. Your attack will not be the same as
mine was, and your own daughter's will not be the same as yours. Am I clear
thus far?"
"Yes, mother." The princess replied.
"Good. Now, although our attacks are different,
there is one talent we both will share as descendants of Lady Pluto, for
there is one undying ability passed through each line of Sailor Soldiers.
In our case, it is the ability to communicate with the dead." Setsuna drew
in a quick breath, her dark red eyes round as saucers.
"Can we really?" she asked in amazement.
"We can." said the Queen of Pluto. "Once you
are able to hear these Voices of which I have spoken, you shall be able
to call upon your powers to create an attack that you will wield in defense
of this kingdom." Her mouth open in awe, Setsuna nodded. Seeing the enchanted
look in her child's eye, Lady Moira pursed her lips, looking sternly at
the princess.
"Remember, my daughter," she cautioned, "your
powers will resist your call at first. You must expect that it will take
a great deal of time for you to begin hearing the Voices."
"Oh, yes, Mother. I know." The green-haired
girl agreed, and her mother smiled.
"Now then," said she, "shall we begin our
lesson?"