I hope ya'll like this. It's exactly 1:11 am right now and I'm exhausted. Don't expect these chapters this fast very often because I won't always be on spring break and I usually I won't have a chapter already half written. The first section along with the first italicized section of this chapter was supposed to be the original prologue but on a whim I started writing the other prologue one night and decided I like it better so I turned this one into the first chapter. I can't guarantee any particular time for when the next chapter will come out and I am warning you it may be a while but I'll try to get them out whenever the writing bug bites me. Anyhoo now that I've babbled on for a while I'll let you get on to the story. -SK
P.S. If you notice any big errors like major spelling or grammatical errors please tell me. Also if there are any major plot problems from the SM parts please tell me but keep in mind this is a fanfic so I get a little leeway.
~Untitled~
By Sorceress Knight
The Beginning
They were losing she knew it. Their planet would be lost all because she was too weak. She was supposed to be the senshi of protection and she couldn't protect the planet she now called home.
Unless… unless she could save the queen. Hide her away where no one could hurt or harm her. Save the others too. She had the power; she knew she did somehow. She was the middle planet, neither inner nor outer and she would save them until they met again. They would lose this battle but she would be back. Oh yes she would be back with a vengeance to win the war for earth, for her Queen, and for her friends.
"Jupiter! Watch out!" A woman sporting a yellow and blue sailor fuku yelled. The said Jupiter jumped into the air and flipped up and over a beam of energy flying through what would have been her.
"Damnit!" she swore loudly. "Sparkling Wide Pressure!" She screamed. She threw a large disk of electricity killing a couple hundred of the soldiers the team of senshi faced. But thousands more replaced them.
The entire plain surrounding the Crystal Palace was covered in a wash of gray and skin tones as an army the likes of which had never been seen swarmed the streets of Crystal Tokyo. The once thriving city was covered in the gray dust of war. The usually bright skies were dark with storms that crackled from the lightning gracing the skies. The Princess of Jupiter was loosing her temper.
"Venus we can't hold them off much longer!" a woman in aquamarine shouted through a head set as she systematically let off shot after shot of water fed power. Everything she hit was destroyed but once again another mass of gray uniformed warriors rose to take the place of their fallen comrades.
"The main shields are down we can't get them back up! Someone has sabotaged them! We're using all our power to hold up the ones that we are making ourselves. We can't take much more. If any of you guys fall I've given Saturn the order to destroy the planet! We're getting the king and queen along with Chibiusa out of here now!" The doom filled message crackled through all the senshi's headsets as they continued to fight with the grim determination of those who know they are doomed. All were slowly excepting their fates to die once more except for one.
"NO!" Jupiter's voice cut through the conversation.
"What is it Jupiter?" Venus asked through the gritted teeth of one who was barely holding up under some unimaginable weight.
"The soldiers are retreating! That means HE's coming! Everyone get in the palace! NOW!" The tone in her voice was commanding and imperious every ounce of her tone attesting to the fact that she was a queen. However, she was not the queen of the senshi.
"Jupiter we can't do that!" Uranus yelled coming up next to her on the battlefield. Saturn appeared next to her, holding her glaive and looking exhausted.
"Go Damnit! You have to! Now! All of you!" Saturn and Uranus planted there feet showing they were going to stay while Neptune came up behind them with a determined look on her face.
"We are NOT leaving you Jupiter!" Uranus stated firmly. Jupiter looked at one of her best friends with lightning in her eyes.
"Omoe O Korosu!" She yelled forming a ball of lightning in her hand. "Go. Now." Her voice was so chilling even Saturn was unsettled by the coldness in the, usually, sweet senshi's voice.
Listen to her Uranus. A mysterious but familiar voice called into the tall senshi's head. Nodding the blonde senshi ran off with her love and adopted child following flabbergasted behind her. Sighing Jupiter let the lightning diminish into her hand.
"I'm sorry guys," she whispered softly. Time around the green clad senshi seemed to bend and twist as a commanding woman in a black and maroon fuku appeared bearing a staff shaped like a key.
"Are you ready Jupiter?" She asked in a voice soft yet commanding.
"Yes Setsu."
"Then go and don't be gone forever." Jupiter nodded as the time once again sped up. She was on the battlefield of her death. The men that had retreated were now coming back in a crescent around an evil looking man. He sneered and began laughing when he saw who was opposing him.
"Do you think you are a match to me little girl?" He asked mockingly.
"You will kill me and still you will never be able to get rid of me. I will haunt you and hold what you want most out of your reach."
The man cackled an evil laugh. "Is that a threat?" he asked laughing.
"No. That's a promise." This caused the whole army of men to crack large grins and some of the less trained minions laughed out loud.
"It's not smart to make promises you can't keep child."
"Who said I didn't intend to keep it?" she asked smirking. "Or is it really so scary that a 'little' girl could beat your weak ass?" The man was enraged by the smirk. He immediately began charging power into his awaiting palms.
"Don't toy with me child!" Jupiter recognized her cue and began secretly putting up her walls. She put a strong wall in front of herself and then took the rest of her energy and began secretly funneling it back behind her. Unknown to Jupiter's foe she was creating a shield around the royal palace.
The man had large bits of energy forming around him as he charged up to attack. "I will kill you child and take your precious queen to be my personal toy! The precious humans that you protect will be my slaves! You could be their queen. You have fire I like. Come join the right side and I could grant you anything you want. You will have anything you want!"
"What I want is to see you DEAD!" Jupiter threw all secrecy to the wind as she saw the malicious look on the evil man's face. It was contorted in a horrid grin. His eyes shined with hate and malice while in his hands the wealth of power he held there continued to grow larger. The eerie green color of his magic, knowing that it was the same color as her own, made her want to hurl. She began to murmur in a language only she could understand. Come to me power of Jupiter. Kiss me with your awesome power and save the queen we love and need.
The evil man's face contorted in anger. "You will never see that because now you will die!"
Though surprised by his understanding of the Jovian language the brunette continued on: Promises made, a promise not to be broken. Keep the vows I made long ago. Sealed with death let my light of protection release! The princess of Jupiter turned a fiery green as the air around her began to crackle and sizzle. She closed her eyes only to open them again, this time completely green instead of the white on green that would have been normal. "You will never have them and you will never have me!"
A calm, cool oasis in the girl's head was calculating the situation in a collected manner. She quickly realized that her stores of magic were draining quickly. I must finish the shield. Kami please, let me have enough. First five layers down, the sixth almost finished, and the seventh halfway done. No other layers needed. Kami, let Setsuna be right about this. With her power quickly dispersing the woman's eyes turned to normal and her hair fell down into its proper place once again as her shields fell. Turning her head she looked back at the crystal palace. Goodbye girls. I'll love you always. With one last look through her overly moist eyes Sailor Jupiter turned to her fate.
The man she facing released the large collection of energy from his grasp in a fit of rage at the young girl's defiance. He hurled the energy at the Jovian senshi. She smiled softly as she was enveloped in an orb of dark energy. In a blink the Queen of Jupiter was gone.
~*~
My people are in shambles. The once rich culture that I am told ran through these islands is gone. We have only our legends for hope and only our lives as possessions. We are the bottom, the unwanted. We are the slaves of the soldiers. Our women are taken and raped and then sent back to us barely alive. Our children must not play outside unattended for fear that they will be taken as well. Our men are forced into the hard agricultural labor of the world order while the women sweat in the closed corridors of kitchens and cloth factories. There is only one law in regards to our kind: We do not matter. I appear to be the only one that believes that is a lie.
I am the least of my people, the bottom, the end. I am nothing but a charity case of a deranged old man too lonely to know the difference between sense and stupidity. The past-less child of no origin or history with nothing to give and everything to take. I am the witch that cursed the Okinawa III camp with a year of bad harvest and therefore the loss of twenty-five women in "tribute" to make up for the lack of grain. I am the wind that sears their faces as they stoop over smoky campfires cooking meager meals of rice and scavenged roots. I am the typhoons that destroy their boats and rip away their coastlines. I am the whip of the Master's soldiers searing into the innocent flesh of their young boys. I am the evil, the one without memory, the one who is nameless, Mumeino.
~*~
It was a dark and stormy night, or so the story went according the Atsumori-chan and his wonderful skill of storytelling. The wind had already ripped up two tents before the rain started coming down in sheets rather than drops. Lightning split the sky so often people mused that the darkness was really flashing into the light. It was during the first few pellets of hail that Tsuji-san wondered out of his tent drawn by some evil force.
The evil spirit drew him far from his tent across the flooded fields to the quickly flooding river valley of the Blood River. The water raced around Tsuji-san's feet as the evil spirit drew him deeper and deeper into the waters of the once blood filled valley. Many say it was the evil ghosts of the murders in the Great Massacre that brought Tsuji-san there but whatever the reason he found in front of him the body of a young witch who had been cursed by the gods for her evil ways. The spirits knew this so they compelled Tsuji-san to save her from the waters that had come to wash her evil from the earth. Tsuji-san drew the girl close to him as he waded out of the swirling depths onto higher land. It was in that closeness that the young girl bewitched him into caring for her.
That night Tsuji-san brought the girl into his tent and laid her in his bed taking care of her as if she were his own daughter. When her fever peaked from exposure to the cleansing rain he cared for her until morning when she finally fell into a deep slumber. Because the girl-witch had not died the gods allowed the storm to wreak havoc on the fields of the people that night, releasing hail and winds the flattened the stalks and stripped the grains.
The people tried to convince Tsuji-san to kill the girl and end the plaguing of the camp but as a respected elder the people would not touch him. Despite their most dire attempts the old man would not release the girl so the winds howled on as the young woman's fever rose and fell.
It took five days for the girl's fever to break and in that time the fields of the camp were brought down to nothing. Silently, on the third day in the deep of the night, twenty-five women from eighteen to twenty-two disappeared to never return. No one said it out loud but all knew they had been taken because the witch had destroyed the crops. So they shunned the girl.
When the young woman's fever broke Tsuji-san rejoiced loudly between the rows of tents ignoring the sad and angry stares. Some believed the man to be deranged and felt pity for his soul while others saw him as bewitched and were filled with hatred for the witch in his keeping. Tsuji-san danced on in his glee before returning to his tent to once again tend to his charge.
In the weeks to come the young woman began to recover, slowly at first but then rapidly as she pushed herself farther each day. The only thing she could not heal was her memory. No matter how hard she tried the young woman could not remember where she had been or why she had been in the stream in the first place. It plagued her to no end as Tsuji-san tried to help her find a way to remember but all to no avail.
When Tsuji-san began to go out again serving as the camp elder, the young woman took to exploring the camp but she could feel the hatred that glistened in the eyes of those that watched her. Every once in a while a stone or piece of bone would be thrown her way but she only continued on her way unmoved by the act of violence. Slowly the people of the camp learned to accept their unwelcome guest until one day a great tragedy struck the camp.
Exactly one year after the witch came to the camp her guardian fell gravely ill. In desperation the young woman turned to the camp's healing woman, the person who hated her the most. Tsuji-san was sick for many weeks but in that time something happened between the healer and the girl. Perhaps it was her stubbornness or her unwillingness to give up even when she knew it was hopeless. Or perhaps it was something about her deep eyes filled with kindness and never ending curiosity coupled with the inner fire of the healer's own eyes. Whatever it was, the old healer and the girl came to an understanding with each other, forever changing the young woman's fate.
Three weeks after taking ill, Tsuji-san died in his sleep as his body painfully devoured itself from the inside out. The members of the camp wanted to take her belongings and get rid of witch that was plaguing their camp but the old healer woman stopped them with her stubborn glare and her iron will. So the girl gained the ability to stay but not her acceptance. That came in time, slowly, as her fierce manner and strangely wise ways began to win over the teenage children of the camp. Her never-ending patience began to draw the children to her. Within two years the witch had gained acceptance among her piers but still she did not move her tent from the very out skirts of the camp. The adults of the tribe still would not accept the young witch for the grief of losing wife, daughter, and sister was still fresh upon their hearts. But they too would learn to heed the healer woman's decisions.
The redeeming happened on chilly spring night once again cloaked in rain. The torrential down pours of the storm were eroding the streambed that ran behind the camp. In an act of careless recklessness and teenage stupidity a group of young men from the camp decided to use the rain as a chance for proving their manhood. One of those boys was Atsumori, son of the elected chief of the camp. The challenge the young men set to each other was the try and jump from one end of the slowly widening streambed to the other. In order to prove his leadership in their group, Atsumori decided to go first. As he was about to leap the already slippery mud washed away from under him plunging the young man deep into the quickly running waters where the other boys could not reach him.
The majority of the camp was far out of earshot of the loud screams and shouts that came from the group as their voices tried to fight over the din of thunder and rain. Only one lonely tent was within earshot for the young woman enjoyed hearing the sound of the stream skipping along as she slept. Already awake listening to the storm, the young woman heard the shouts and ran out to see what was going on. She ran hard to the stream searching frantically in the water to see what had been lost. As she ran along the side of the water she saw the desperate head of a young man hurtle out of the water to suck in precious air before he was sucked back down. In a moment of panic the young woman turned to the sky and yelled, "STOP!"
Though the young woman had intended the shout as a plea to the gods her voice rang out with all the power of thunder and lightning commanding the storm to cease. The young woman began to glow with a green light as instantly the winds died the rain quick falling as the din of the thunder disappeared. Without the winds to aid them along the waters ceased being choppy though the large of amount of water squeezed into the streambed kept the waters running quickly. Still growing an eerie green the witch dived into the water while the young men simply stared at her in awe. Swimming with agility she did not know she possessed the glowing girl closed in on a now barely conscious Atsumori. Maneuvering his limp body across her back the witch began to swim for shore. As she began to swim the soft green glow of her body intensified as she exerted more and more energy to keep her and the much heavier boy afloat while still swimming to the shore. In an effort that took all her strength the young woman painfully dragged herself and the half-drowned Atsumori onto the bank where she rolled him off of her and promptly passed out.
After much chaos and glaring the old healer woman was able to tend to her charges in peace while a group of very upset parents interrogated the uninjured boys. The story and the young men's description of her bravery earned the young woman her acceptance and her place in the camp. By decree of the elders she was charged with learning the secrets of the healing woman since she had yet to be discovered by Master's soldiers and put to the hard labor of the other women. The night also birthed a new friendship as the young Atsumori and the witch were forced to bed rest in the healer's tent for week without company. And so the friendship blossomed and the witch earned her place in the camp. However, this would not be the last of the strange power that coursed through the young woman's veins…
~*~
"Mori-chan you know I hate it when you tell that story in front of me. You make it sound like it was special or something. Don't listen to him Nozomi-chan your brother is just full of horse manure." Mumeino threw one of her small ratty pillows at Atsumori as he opened his mouth to continue the tail of her finding. This strangely happy group was the only one to be found among the rows and rows of shabby tents but with the tragedies that had been bestowed upon the three people currently inhabiting the tent, perhaps they deserved to be a bit carefree.
The small family that lived in the tent was a strange one brought together by pain and sorrow. The sudden death of Atsumori's father had sent his mother into such despair that she died three weeks later. Though the camp did not talk of it, everyone knew the cause of his father's death had been because the Master had on a whim decided that the head elder of the Okinawa III camp was somehow planning a revolt. Everyone knew that was just his excuse. The real reason had been to once again break the spirits of the slaves once again but their plan backfired in one small family.
With the death of both his parents Atsumori was left with the care of his 5-year-old sister who could not grow up without a mother figure. To solve the problem Atsumori packed up all the family things and moved him and his sister into his best friend's tent. Needless to say Mumeino's reaction to the sudden invasion of her space was sympathetic if not slightly comical as she stumbled in one night from lessons to discover people sleeping in her tent.
The move had proved a happy one though it had been largely frowned upon by many of the camp elders. Still they eventually accepted it since it allowed for a recently married couple to move into Atsumori's vacated tent which was the only free one left because the Master's men had refused to give the camp another of their left-over tents. So the people of the camp moved on with their small a battered lives and the tattered family found strength in each other.
"Mei-chan you simply do not have any taste in storytelling whatsoever," Atsumori retorted after ducking the thrown pillow. In an undignified manner Mumeino replied by sticking out her tongue. "Gasp! Eighteen years old and still taunting me with her tongue. Nozomi-chan make sure you not follow our dear friend's example and grow up to be simply a magical ruffian."
With a snort Mumeino launched herself at Atsumori resulting in a quick playful wrestling match while Nozomi giggled at their antics. After successfully pinning Atsumori and declaring herself the winner, Mumeino straightened herself up and smoothed back her long brown hair in a dignified manner. Eyes shining with mischief she announced, "Now that I have proved my superiority and saved my ears from that wretched tale it is time we all go to bed." And so the little family rolled up in their tattered blankets and went to sleep thankful to have each other. Little did they know that a new wind was coming that would lead one member to need every ounce of strength her little family had to offer.
