Chapter Twenty-Eight - Explaining the Truth
***
The man, King Endymion, was easily distinguishable as such. Aiyana could see that right away. But it wasn't because of his regal clothes, the staff he carried, or even the fact that he was in the small office she had deemed as private. It was the simple fact that she had looked for resemblances between the two of them, and they had been there.
Besides the eyes, the other resemblances were easily definable, although it had been determined that she looked almost wholly like Hotaru. They had the same sharp, straight chin, Aiyana noticed, which was probably the most noticeable besides the feature in their eyes. Their body build was both tall and slender. And the long, tapering fingers were common to each.
But the eyes...it was as if looking into a mirror. While the king's were narrower, thinner, indicating older age, they were both of the same color, as if the oceans themselves had dropped a little of their radiance into both sets. But whereas the king's were now large and shocked, Aiyana's were of regular size and very calm, as if she had been expecting to see her father standing before her.
*I wonder if all generations of Saturns get their father's eyes,* Aiyana wondered, realizing that Mikomi, too, had a perfect mirror of her father's eyes.
"You!" King Endymion exclaimed, backing away.
"And you," Aiyana added, half-bitterly, half-nonchalantly. She realized that she was still holding her sword and that her knuckles had tightened quite a bit around the hilt, so she relaxed her grip and hoped that was the only reason he had moved away from her.
"What are you doing here?" Actually, that's not the first thing King Endymion wanted to tumble from his mouth. How did you get here, where are you living, are you all right...those things had tossed in his head, too. But the questions he actually asked had been the first thing that had found his mouth, thus the question.
"Looking for you." It wasn't entirely truthful; her chief mission in the palace was actually to look for the transformation wand that Hotaru had supposedly left behind. But she was in the palace looking for King Endymion as well: she'd wanted to meet her father, and now she was facing him.
All the other questions King Endymion had got stuck in his throat.
"Do you recognize me?" Aiyana said, suddenly curiously angry. "Do you see a resemblance at all? Do you even know what I looked like when I was younger?"
"Of course I did," Endymion said defensively. "Your mother sent me pictures."
"So you *do* know." Aiyana tilted her head to the side and stared up into Endymion's eyes. "How long have you known?"
"Since the day I saw you walking around the palace with Masaya," he admitted. "The first time you came out, I believe. Way back, about five or six months ago."
"You've known about me for six months and you never came to see me?" Aiyana asked, her eyes narrowed. "Never came to ask about me, to see my child, your granddaugter? Never even inquired about my welfare or tried to grant me asylum?"
"What did you expect me to do?" King Endymion asked, throwing his hands up. "Send out a Macy's parade for your arrival?"
"I expected you to act like a father," said Aiyana. "But why should I have? You haven't done that in seventeen years!"
King Endymion exhaled loudly and let his hands fall back to his sides. "I couldn't," he said softly. "I couldn't have any more interest in you that would seem normal. I couldn't tell anyone you were my daughter!"
"Why not?" Aiyana asked, her voice almost tearful now. "Why? Why couldn't you? Why did you have to hide me for years, never come to see me, only write letters and never tell anything about me?"
"Have a seat," Endymion said, gesturing to the comfortable recliner and the desk in front of him. Aiyana sullenly sat on the desk, letting her legs dangle from it. Endymion went to check that the door was locked, then collapsed into the soft leather recliner, sighing deeply.
"I've actually been waiting to explain this to you," he said. "Ever since that first day I saw you, I've been anticipating explaining the truth to you. But I never...I never really...you know when you think of something, and it's so close you can taste it - you start planning out ways to do it in your mind - and you still think it will never happen?"
Aiyana nodded.
"That's the way I felt," he said. "I knew what I wanted to tell you, knew what I had to tell you. But I never actually imagined telling you for real. I thought it would all blow over, that somehow you would disappear and I wouldn't have to deal with it. Once I tell you, Aiyana, I will have to tell everyone, and that's going to be hard for me."
"You would let me be executed before you would face your disgrace?" Aiyana asked incredulously.
King Endymion could do nothing but stare at her for a moment. "I don't know," he said. "Fear is a horrible thing, Aiyana, and I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?" she scoffed. "You're the king. They can't execute you - your wife wouldn't allow it, would she? And I doubt they would try for a little infidelity. You seem to be well liked here." Aiyana noticed the way Endymion winced at the word 'infidelity.' "So are all the rumors untrue, then? Were you really unfaithful to your wife?"
"No," said Endymion. "Listen, I'll tell you everything.
"By now, you should know of the warriors the Sailor Senshi, right?" Aiyana nodded, and he continued. "Well, the story of them actually starts millennia ago, in a kingdom called the Silver Millennium. It was the stuff of dreams. The planets in our solar system were all inhabited, and they had kingdoms. At the head of each kingdom was a princess and a warrior, the warriors of eight of the nine planets. The same senshi you know today? The same princess-warrior of the old days. Sailor Mercury was also Princess Mercury, and she ruled the planet of Mercury, and so on.
"However, on Earth, a princess wasn't born. A prince was born instead - me, Prince Endymion. I was gifted with the powers of a warrior, but not a full Sailor Senshi. Only females could be Sailor Senshi and protect their planet fully.
"Anyway, there was this whole long history in the Silver Millennium that really isn't relevant. Just know that I was the prince of this planet, and Neo-Queen Serenity, my wife, was the princess of the Moon. We...we had a relationship during the Silver Millennium's reign, but it was cursed from Serenity's birth and a great war against the dark forces destroyed the Moon Kingdom and the other kingdoms of the Silver Millennium. Since the forces were from Earth, the Earth was left intact, and so Serenity's mother sent us all to be reincarnated to new lives on Earth one thousand years into the future.
"One thousand years in the future turned out to be twentieth centry Tokyo, Japan, what Crystal Tokyo used to be. One by one, the Senshi were discovered and awakened to their powers. But the one sent to find the Senshi, a guardian cat named Luna, made a mistake. She found the moon princess, Serenity, and mistook her for a warrior. She couldn't sense the powers of any of the planets - Mercury, Mars, Venus, or Jupiter - within her, so she created a transformation item for her, and the new warrior was dubbed Sailor Moon.
"Me, I found myself. Or rather, my instincts found me. Every time Serenity - her name was Usagi then - would transform into Sailor Moon and get into trouble, I would transform into a superhero, named Tuxedo Kamen. My biggest attack was to throw roses made of my ki at an enemy to damage their vitality, so that Sailor Moon could eventually eliminate that enemy.
"We fought for two years as Senshi, and over that course of time, we discovered Sailors Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Pluto, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn. The first four girls were destined to forever protect the Moon Princess, and because of that commission, they became the best of friends to Usagi. They are the women as you know of them. The latter four had various other duties that kept them from becoming close friends with Usagi. Sailor Pluto was the Time Guardian, destined to watch the Gates of Time forever and to stop the timeline from being altered. Sailors Uranus and Neptune protected the galaxy from outer influences and were away a lot, and Sailor Saturn...
"Sailor Saturn was the warrior of Death and Rebirth. You see, during the Silver Millennium's reign, Sailor Saturn was called by special talismen of Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune. The carnage had gone too far, and Sailor Saturn's powers of destruction were needed to end it all. Sailor Saturn can only end eras because the regenerative powers of the moon line can start them again - it's like a checks and balances system. So when Sailor Saturn ended the Silver Millennium with her staff of death, the Silence Glaive, the Moon Queen - Usagi's true mother - rebirthed our souls on Earth.
"Well, because of her destructive powers and the ominous feelings that they brought, Sailor Saturn was to remain asleep most of the time. She would only awaken when called by the talismen of the other three Outer soldiers. She held the ultimate powers of both life and death, and could give life and take it away. Are you getting all this?"
Aiyana nodded again, but didn't say anything. She wanted King Endymion to continue.
"After our two years of fighting, we believed that our lives as soldiers of peace and justice were over. A year passed, and Usagi and I began planning our wedding. But Usagi was always there to spot an injustice, and that's when the greatest injustice of all arose in her eyes."
"You two were in the middle of planning your wedding, but the other Sailor Senshi had no one to be with," said Aiyana.
"Exactly. The timeline had dictated that Sailors Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus forever be the close guardians of Usagi, and the same with Pluto, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Their bodies as well as their souls and starseeds were immortal, and they were not granted with the ability to procreate. It was discovered they were all infertile. There was no need for them to have children, since they would be the protectors of Serenity and all her progeny for years to come. They were cursed to never fall into true love, since Serenity was supposed to be their one true love, the one they would protect for eternity. It was something they didn't take too hard. They knew their destiny and accepted it.
"But Usagi couldn't accept it. She wanted the girls to know the joy that she and I experienced of being in love. So, being as willful as she is, she made a wish on the ginzuishou.
"The Maboroshi no Ginzuishou is a powerful silver-colored crystal that has been passed down in Serenity's line for millennia," King Endymion continued. "It has been referred to as the key to the universe. It has power whose only limit is the constraints of it's user. The ginzuishou has the power to do anything - reverse curses and destiny, change timelines and lives forever, and destroy even the darkest of evils. And since Serenity's line was tied in with the life of the ginzuishou, there was nothing that she couldn't do with it. Usagi knew this.
"So she made a wish on the ginzuishou - a wish that the other girls would be freed of the obligation to care for her their entire life, that they could have lives and families and, most importantly to Usagi, fall in love. Since the Senshi's curse to protect Serenity forever didn't come until after the Silver Millennium was destroyed, probably per an unconscious request by Serenity's mother, they had the ability to fall in love before the Millennium ended - and indeed, all had. So their soulmates' starseeds returned to Earth and were reborn, thanks to Serenity's wish, which made some pretty impossible things happen.
"The four men, the Senshi's husbands, had been my protectors and generals when I was a prince on Earth, and they each had their own magical powers," King Endymion said. "During the Silver Millennium's reign, Serenity and my love had been forbidden. So the Senshi and my generals would have to chase and find us in order to keep us apart as we were supposed to be. During those duties, and probably other meetings arranged so, they managed to fall in love with each other. So, these four men - Zoisite, Jadeite, Nephrite, and Kunzite - were reborn with Earth identities on Earth in Tokyo.
"Through what must have been a miracle, each of the girls was reunited with the one they had loved of old and they all got together. Now Usagi and I could plan our marriage in peace. However, there must have been some outside forces that kept us from planning our marriage peacefully, and we were stopped by a new battle that ensued. And this is where I explain how you came to be born.
"There were youma all over the Earth this time. Our new enemy was smart - they knew that the way to hit us was not to deploy one or two youma in Tokyo, but to flood the Earth with them and get them out of control. And besides that, we were a few years out of practice with the transforming, the youma battles, and all. Since they were all over, we decided to split into groups of two and battle the youma all over. I was paired with Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury and Sailor Jupiter were together, Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus, and Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus. Finally, Uranus, Pluto and Neptune pooled their powers, and they awoke Sailor Saturn, who was paired with Sailor Pluto.
"We fought all over the Earth, tirelessly. There were youma all over the place, but they were weak and easily destroyed by a strong blast. However, there were enough to do considerable damage. We began to weaken, and were inevitably separated and regrouped upon finding another one of us. I can't tell you who I was with besides Usagi, but I do remember - how could I forget? - that the last person who completed my pair was Sailor Saturn.
"Remember I told you my ki attacks were in the form of sharp-tipped roses? The roses were created of my own life essences; since I was the Senshi of Earth, in a sense, I had the life-giving and regenerative powers of the Earth. So my roses had the element of life within them. Saturn was a perfect balance for that power - her powers also encompassed life, but not so much life as mine. My powers were all about the energy and the abundance of life, hers more about the limits of the life, birth and death.
"We were fighting a particularly abundant group of youma, when we were down to about two. I aimed my ki attack at one of them. Apparently, Sailor Saturn didn't see my attack, and she went after the youma with a physical attack. My rose hit her in the chest, and it stuck there. She fainted and collapsed.
"What was I to do? The youma would have killed us both. So I played dead. The youma were stupid enough to think that we were both dead, and they left us to create more carnage elsewhere. As soon as they left, I got up to check on Saturn. The rose was in a fatal-looking spot, but I thought I could pull it out, then heal her - we both had healing powers - no problem, right? Wrong.
"The ki rose was never *meant* to come *out* of anyone. So it was stubborn and it wouldn't come out! Saturn was losing a lot of blood and I was afraid she'd die. She told me to use my powers to get the rose out, as that might work, and so I expended a tremendous amount of ki trying to dislodge the rose from her chest, while she used hers to try and purge it. After a while, we did get it out.
"Remember I told you our powers were the perfect balance? They were the two aspects of life. The limits of life, and the abundance of it. When the two combined, I guess they created *a* life."
Aiyana widened her eyes. "Me!"
"You," Endymion concluded. "Thanks in part to Serenity's wish, Saturn had the ability to carry life inside herself, and carry life she did. I was about twenty-one at the time. Saturn, who knows? The youma were everywhere, and the world was degenerating quickly. In time, it would fall to the hands of the enemy. And suddenly, they retracted. Kind of like the Romans in 66 C.E. We celebrated their retreat, and Usagi and I got married, finally! We still didn't know that Hotaru was pregnant. So Usagi and I got married, and Usagi got pregnant with Chibi-usa...who demands to be called Usa now. She would be your younger half-sister.
"However, just like the Romans in 70 C.E., the enemy came back when were at our weakest - Usagi was pregnant, and Saturn was acting weird. Instead of fighting and risking the life of our future Moon Queen, the Senshi decided it was time for Sailor Saturn to act. Saturn enacted her powers of destruction and used her Death Reborn Revolution attack to begin the destruction of the world. But Serenity had rebirth powers, and before the attack completely destroyed the Earth - just like during the Silver Millenium's reign - Serenity used the ginzuishou to ensure that we would be reborn. So while the destruction was taking place, we were encased in crystals."
"The Cold Sleep!" Aiyana exclaimed. "So that explains how I was conceived before the Cold Sleep, and still before your other daughter!"
"Yes," King Endymion. "After the Cold Sleep - how long it lasted, we don't know - it certainly added many, many years to our lives. After the Cold Sleep ended, Serenity's pregnancy must have regressed somehow. She was still pregnant with Chibi-usa, but for some reason, her gestation period wasn't just nine months. It took a few years! The upset timeline must have caused time to stretch for a while - but only in Crystal Tokyo. In other places, time had gone on as normal.
"After a little while, Hotaru came to me and told me that she was pregnant, then explained how she thought it happened. And after a little experimentation - no, not more babies! We used a little of our powers to see if we could animate non-living things. It worked! So we figured that if a little of our power could do all that damage, how much more must we have done with the power that it took to extract that rose? We figured that's what must have gotten Hotaru pregnant. So Hotaru decided that she wanted to move away. She didn't want to disturb our new lives in Crystal Tokyo, didn't want to explain. So she merely moved away. I helped her get settled.
"As soon as she moved away from Crystal Tokyo and out of the time stretch, her gestation went back to normal. She went into labor a month after she moved into Dublin, Ireland - after what must have been centuries of her carrying you - and on January fourteenth, twenty-nine eighty-three, you were born."
Aiyana's eyes were as wide as saucers.
"Four years later, on June thirtieth, twenty-nine eighty-seven, Chibi-usa was born. So you see, you are older than Chibi-usa by both conception and birth, due to the time stretch and the power by which you were conceived."
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AN: I know I really messed up the Sailor Moon timeline in this chapter. To tell you the truth, it confuses me, so I fudged a lot of it. It's really more based on the anime timeline, but I mixed in parts of the manga and made up some stuff as I went along. It really wasn't fully explained by Takeuchi-sensei, so I took creative liaison. So shoot me.
***
The man, King Endymion, was easily distinguishable as such. Aiyana could see that right away. But it wasn't because of his regal clothes, the staff he carried, or even the fact that he was in the small office she had deemed as private. It was the simple fact that she had looked for resemblances between the two of them, and they had been there.
Besides the eyes, the other resemblances were easily definable, although it had been determined that she looked almost wholly like Hotaru. They had the same sharp, straight chin, Aiyana noticed, which was probably the most noticeable besides the feature in their eyes. Their body build was both tall and slender. And the long, tapering fingers were common to each.
But the eyes...it was as if looking into a mirror. While the king's were narrower, thinner, indicating older age, they were both of the same color, as if the oceans themselves had dropped a little of their radiance into both sets. But whereas the king's were now large and shocked, Aiyana's were of regular size and very calm, as if she had been expecting to see her father standing before her.
*I wonder if all generations of Saturns get their father's eyes,* Aiyana wondered, realizing that Mikomi, too, had a perfect mirror of her father's eyes.
"You!" King Endymion exclaimed, backing away.
"And you," Aiyana added, half-bitterly, half-nonchalantly. She realized that she was still holding her sword and that her knuckles had tightened quite a bit around the hilt, so she relaxed her grip and hoped that was the only reason he had moved away from her.
"What are you doing here?" Actually, that's not the first thing King Endymion wanted to tumble from his mouth. How did you get here, where are you living, are you all right...those things had tossed in his head, too. But the questions he actually asked had been the first thing that had found his mouth, thus the question.
"Looking for you." It wasn't entirely truthful; her chief mission in the palace was actually to look for the transformation wand that Hotaru had supposedly left behind. But she was in the palace looking for King Endymion as well: she'd wanted to meet her father, and now she was facing him.
All the other questions King Endymion had got stuck in his throat.
"Do you recognize me?" Aiyana said, suddenly curiously angry. "Do you see a resemblance at all? Do you even know what I looked like when I was younger?"
"Of course I did," Endymion said defensively. "Your mother sent me pictures."
"So you *do* know." Aiyana tilted her head to the side and stared up into Endymion's eyes. "How long have you known?"
"Since the day I saw you walking around the palace with Masaya," he admitted. "The first time you came out, I believe. Way back, about five or six months ago."
"You've known about me for six months and you never came to see me?" Aiyana asked, her eyes narrowed. "Never came to ask about me, to see my child, your granddaugter? Never even inquired about my welfare or tried to grant me asylum?"
"What did you expect me to do?" King Endymion asked, throwing his hands up. "Send out a Macy's parade for your arrival?"
"I expected you to act like a father," said Aiyana. "But why should I have? You haven't done that in seventeen years!"
King Endymion exhaled loudly and let his hands fall back to his sides. "I couldn't," he said softly. "I couldn't have any more interest in you that would seem normal. I couldn't tell anyone you were my daughter!"
"Why not?" Aiyana asked, her voice almost tearful now. "Why? Why couldn't you? Why did you have to hide me for years, never come to see me, only write letters and never tell anything about me?"
"Have a seat," Endymion said, gesturing to the comfortable recliner and the desk in front of him. Aiyana sullenly sat on the desk, letting her legs dangle from it. Endymion went to check that the door was locked, then collapsed into the soft leather recliner, sighing deeply.
"I've actually been waiting to explain this to you," he said. "Ever since that first day I saw you, I've been anticipating explaining the truth to you. But I never...I never really...you know when you think of something, and it's so close you can taste it - you start planning out ways to do it in your mind - and you still think it will never happen?"
Aiyana nodded.
"That's the way I felt," he said. "I knew what I wanted to tell you, knew what I had to tell you. But I never actually imagined telling you for real. I thought it would all blow over, that somehow you would disappear and I wouldn't have to deal with it. Once I tell you, Aiyana, I will have to tell everyone, and that's going to be hard for me."
"You would let me be executed before you would face your disgrace?" Aiyana asked incredulously.
King Endymion could do nothing but stare at her for a moment. "I don't know," he said. "Fear is a horrible thing, Aiyana, and I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?" she scoffed. "You're the king. They can't execute you - your wife wouldn't allow it, would she? And I doubt they would try for a little infidelity. You seem to be well liked here." Aiyana noticed the way Endymion winced at the word 'infidelity.' "So are all the rumors untrue, then? Were you really unfaithful to your wife?"
"No," said Endymion. "Listen, I'll tell you everything.
"By now, you should know of the warriors the Sailor Senshi, right?" Aiyana nodded, and he continued. "Well, the story of them actually starts millennia ago, in a kingdom called the Silver Millennium. It was the stuff of dreams. The planets in our solar system were all inhabited, and they had kingdoms. At the head of each kingdom was a princess and a warrior, the warriors of eight of the nine planets. The same senshi you know today? The same princess-warrior of the old days. Sailor Mercury was also Princess Mercury, and she ruled the planet of Mercury, and so on.
"However, on Earth, a princess wasn't born. A prince was born instead - me, Prince Endymion. I was gifted with the powers of a warrior, but not a full Sailor Senshi. Only females could be Sailor Senshi and protect their planet fully.
"Anyway, there was this whole long history in the Silver Millennium that really isn't relevant. Just know that I was the prince of this planet, and Neo-Queen Serenity, my wife, was the princess of the Moon. We...we had a relationship during the Silver Millennium's reign, but it was cursed from Serenity's birth and a great war against the dark forces destroyed the Moon Kingdom and the other kingdoms of the Silver Millennium. Since the forces were from Earth, the Earth was left intact, and so Serenity's mother sent us all to be reincarnated to new lives on Earth one thousand years into the future.
"One thousand years in the future turned out to be twentieth centry Tokyo, Japan, what Crystal Tokyo used to be. One by one, the Senshi were discovered and awakened to their powers. But the one sent to find the Senshi, a guardian cat named Luna, made a mistake. She found the moon princess, Serenity, and mistook her for a warrior. She couldn't sense the powers of any of the planets - Mercury, Mars, Venus, or Jupiter - within her, so she created a transformation item for her, and the new warrior was dubbed Sailor Moon.
"Me, I found myself. Or rather, my instincts found me. Every time Serenity - her name was Usagi then - would transform into Sailor Moon and get into trouble, I would transform into a superhero, named Tuxedo Kamen. My biggest attack was to throw roses made of my ki at an enemy to damage their vitality, so that Sailor Moon could eventually eliminate that enemy.
"We fought for two years as Senshi, and over that course of time, we discovered Sailors Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Pluto, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn. The first four girls were destined to forever protect the Moon Princess, and because of that commission, they became the best of friends to Usagi. They are the women as you know of them. The latter four had various other duties that kept them from becoming close friends with Usagi. Sailor Pluto was the Time Guardian, destined to watch the Gates of Time forever and to stop the timeline from being altered. Sailors Uranus and Neptune protected the galaxy from outer influences and were away a lot, and Sailor Saturn...
"Sailor Saturn was the warrior of Death and Rebirth. You see, during the Silver Millennium's reign, Sailor Saturn was called by special talismen of Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune. The carnage had gone too far, and Sailor Saturn's powers of destruction were needed to end it all. Sailor Saturn can only end eras because the regenerative powers of the moon line can start them again - it's like a checks and balances system. So when Sailor Saturn ended the Silver Millennium with her staff of death, the Silence Glaive, the Moon Queen - Usagi's true mother - rebirthed our souls on Earth.
"Well, because of her destructive powers and the ominous feelings that they brought, Sailor Saturn was to remain asleep most of the time. She would only awaken when called by the talismen of the other three Outer soldiers. She held the ultimate powers of both life and death, and could give life and take it away. Are you getting all this?"
Aiyana nodded again, but didn't say anything. She wanted King Endymion to continue.
"After our two years of fighting, we believed that our lives as soldiers of peace and justice were over. A year passed, and Usagi and I began planning our wedding. But Usagi was always there to spot an injustice, and that's when the greatest injustice of all arose in her eyes."
"You two were in the middle of planning your wedding, but the other Sailor Senshi had no one to be with," said Aiyana.
"Exactly. The timeline had dictated that Sailors Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus forever be the close guardians of Usagi, and the same with Pluto, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Their bodies as well as their souls and starseeds were immortal, and they were not granted with the ability to procreate. It was discovered they were all infertile. There was no need for them to have children, since they would be the protectors of Serenity and all her progeny for years to come. They were cursed to never fall into true love, since Serenity was supposed to be their one true love, the one they would protect for eternity. It was something they didn't take too hard. They knew their destiny and accepted it.
"But Usagi couldn't accept it. She wanted the girls to know the joy that she and I experienced of being in love. So, being as willful as she is, she made a wish on the ginzuishou.
"The Maboroshi no Ginzuishou is a powerful silver-colored crystal that has been passed down in Serenity's line for millennia," King Endymion continued. "It has been referred to as the key to the universe. It has power whose only limit is the constraints of it's user. The ginzuishou has the power to do anything - reverse curses and destiny, change timelines and lives forever, and destroy even the darkest of evils. And since Serenity's line was tied in with the life of the ginzuishou, there was nothing that she couldn't do with it. Usagi knew this.
"So she made a wish on the ginzuishou - a wish that the other girls would be freed of the obligation to care for her their entire life, that they could have lives and families and, most importantly to Usagi, fall in love. Since the Senshi's curse to protect Serenity forever didn't come until after the Silver Millennium was destroyed, probably per an unconscious request by Serenity's mother, they had the ability to fall in love before the Millennium ended - and indeed, all had. So their soulmates' starseeds returned to Earth and were reborn, thanks to Serenity's wish, which made some pretty impossible things happen.
"The four men, the Senshi's husbands, had been my protectors and generals when I was a prince on Earth, and they each had their own magical powers," King Endymion said. "During the Silver Millennium's reign, Serenity and my love had been forbidden. So the Senshi and my generals would have to chase and find us in order to keep us apart as we were supposed to be. During those duties, and probably other meetings arranged so, they managed to fall in love with each other. So, these four men - Zoisite, Jadeite, Nephrite, and Kunzite - were reborn with Earth identities on Earth in Tokyo.
"Through what must have been a miracle, each of the girls was reunited with the one they had loved of old and they all got together. Now Usagi and I could plan our marriage in peace. However, there must have been some outside forces that kept us from planning our marriage peacefully, and we were stopped by a new battle that ensued. And this is where I explain how you came to be born.
"There were youma all over the Earth this time. Our new enemy was smart - they knew that the way to hit us was not to deploy one or two youma in Tokyo, but to flood the Earth with them and get them out of control. And besides that, we were a few years out of practice with the transforming, the youma battles, and all. Since they were all over, we decided to split into groups of two and battle the youma all over. I was paired with Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury and Sailor Jupiter were together, Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus, and Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus. Finally, Uranus, Pluto and Neptune pooled their powers, and they awoke Sailor Saturn, who was paired with Sailor Pluto.
"We fought all over the Earth, tirelessly. There were youma all over the place, but they were weak and easily destroyed by a strong blast. However, there were enough to do considerable damage. We began to weaken, and were inevitably separated and regrouped upon finding another one of us. I can't tell you who I was with besides Usagi, but I do remember - how could I forget? - that the last person who completed my pair was Sailor Saturn.
"Remember I told you my ki attacks were in the form of sharp-tipped roses? The roses were created of my own life essences; since I was the Senshi of Earth, in a sense, I had the life-giving and regenerative powers of the Earth. So my roses had the element of life within them. Saturn was a perfect balance for that power - her powers also encompassed life, but not so much life as mine. My powers were all about the energy and the abundance of life, hers more about the limits of the life, birth and death.
"We were fighting a particularly abundant group of youma, when we were down to about two. I aimed my ki attack at one of them. Apparently, Sailor Saturn didn't see my attack, and she went after the youma with a physical attack. My rose hit her in the chest, and it stuck there. She fainted and collapsed.
"What was I to do? The youma would have killed us both. So I played dead. The youma were stupid enough to think that we were both dead, and they left us to create more carnage elsewhere. As soon as they left, I got up to check on Saturn. The rose was in a fatal-looking spot, but I thought I could pull it out, then heal her - we both had healing powers - no problem, right? Wrong.
"The ki rose was never *meant* to come *out* of anyone. So it was stubborn and it wouldn't come out! Saturn was losing a lot of blood and I was afraid she'd die. She told me to use my powers to get the rose out, as that might work, and so I expended a tremendous amount of ki trying to dislodge the rose from her chest, while she used hers to try and purge it. After a while, we did get it out.
"Remember I told you our powers were the perfect balance? They were the two aspects of life. The limits of life, and the abundance of it. When the two combined, I guess they created *a* life."
Aiyana widened her eyes. "Me!"
"You," Endymion concluded. "Thanks in part to Serenity's wish, Saturn had the ability to carry life inside herself, and carry life she did. I was about twenty-one at the time. Saturn, who knows? The youma were everywhere, and the world was degenerating quickly. In time, it would fall to the hands of the enemy. And suddenly, they retracted. Kind of like the Romans in 66 C.E. We celebrated their retreat, and Usagi and I got married, finally! We still didn't know that Hotaru was pregnant. So Usagi and I got married, and Usagi got pregnant with Chibi-usa...who demands to be called Usa now. She would be your younger half-sister.
"However, just like the Romans in 70 C.E., the enemy came back when were at our weakest - Usagi was pregnant, and Saturn was acting weird. Instead of fighting and risking the life of our future Moon Queen, the Senshi decided it was time for Sailor Saturn to act. Saturn enacted her powers of destruction and used her Death Reborn Revolution attack to begin the destruction of the world. But Serenity had rebirth powers, and before the attack completely destroyed the Earth - just like during the Silver Millenium's reign - Serenity used the ginzuishou to ensure that we would be reborn. So while the destruction was taking place, we were encased in crystals."
"The Cold Sleep!" Aiyana exclaimed. "So that explains how I was conceived before the Cold Sleep, and still before your other daughter!"
"Yes," King Endymion. "After the Cold Sleep - how long it lasted, we don't know - it certainly added many, many years to our lives. After the Cold Sleep ended, Serenity's pregnancy must have regressed somehow. She was still pregnant with Chibi-usa, but for some reason, her gestation period wasn't just nine months. It took a few years! The upset timeline must have caused time to stretch for a while - but only in Crystal Tokyo. In other places, time had gone on as normal.
"After a little while, Hotaru came to me and told me that she was pregnant, then explained how she thought it happened. And after a little experimentation - no, not more babies! We used a little of our powers to see if we could animate non-living things. It worked! So we figured that if a little of our power could do all that damage, how much more must we have done with the power that it took to extract that rose? We figured that's what must have gotten Hotaru pregnant. So Hotaru decided that she wanted to move away. She didn't want to disturb our new lives in Crystal Tokyo, didn't want to explain. So she merely moved away. I helped her get settled.
"As soon as she moved away from Crystal Tokyo and out of the time stretch, her gestation went back to normal. She went into labor a month after she moved into Dublin, Ireland - after what must have been centuries of her carrying you - and on January fourteenth, twenty-nine eighty-three, you were born."
Aiyana's eyes were as wide as saucers.
"Four years later, on June thirtieth, twenty-nine eighty-seven, Chibi-usa was born. So you see, you are older than Chibi-usa by both conception and birth, due to the time stretch and the power by which you were conceived."
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AN: I know I really messed up the Sailor Moon timeline in this chapter. To tell you the truth, it confuses me, so I fudged a lot of it. It's really more based on the anime timeline, but I mixed in parts of the manga and made up some stuff as I went along. It really wasn't fully explained by Takeuchi-sensei, so I took creative liaison. So shoot me.