So, her name was Setsuna, I thought. It seemed appropriate, a strange name for a strange woman. Yet, here I was, following her, a person I did not even know. Naive little Lamia. That is what everybody called me. They were most likely right. I was too trusting. But now things were beginning to get really strange. At first, we had been walking across green grass in the bright sunlight. Now, there was mist everywhere, obscuring the view. It was suddenly colder. Then, I noticed the ground. It was no longer grass. Now it was smooth stone. My footsteps echoed in the mist. Wait ... Echoed? We were out of doors. And the noise was the sound of my footsteps alone. What had happened to the other girl? I looked around wildly, calling her name. All that returned to me was the sound of my own voice until I heard a soft thump on the floor, I guess it was the floor, beside me. I jumped back a step, then turned. It was the same girl, and yet not the same girl. Setsuna no longer wore the chic clothes that she had worn only a few moments before. Now she was clothed in a very short skirt that was attached to a white bodysuit with a sailor style collar. Adorning her new costume were large bows. In her hand she carried a kind of Key, with a large garnet on the top, and on her forehead she wore a kind of tiara. I stood, looking at her, until she gestured downward. My eyes followed her gesture until I realized that my clothes had changed as well. Suddenly, some of the mists coalesced into a mirror that I could see my entire body in. I was dressed similarly to her. My short (very, very short) skirt and collar were very dark blue and my bows were silver. I had on thigh-high silver boots with black flames wreathing the sides of them. My bodysuit was black and white flames fared where the skirt and suit were joined. Setsuna still stood beside me and she gestured at my face. When my eyes followed her gesture, what I saw scared me even more. I was not the same. My eyes had changed from the pale sky blue they usually were into a dark blue that matched the blue in my new outfit. The white steaks that ran through my bright gold hair were now black. I looked at Setsuna. "What's going on here?" I asked stupidly.
"Nightfyre ... I wish I did not have to do this to you," Setsuna said. A single tear slipped down her cheek, as her Key began to glow.
"Do what?" I asked. "We need your help. The Court of Dominion is coming and bringing with them the Blood Plague that nearly destroyed Chyslyss so long ago. Serenity only knows what else they have planned. The senshi are fading fast and Fyre is the only thing that can stop this enemy." Her Key was glowing brighter, its dark red light filling the room, now that the mists were clearing away.
"What are you talking about"
"I will show you, Lamia of Eternal Night," Setsuna said. She lifted her Key and the world was suddenly in third person.
She was twenty years old, but appeared to be only twelve. Her anguished cries echoed silently through the desolate streets of her once busy village. She walked down the main thoroughfare slowly, unwilling to believe the carnage that lay there. Everywhere she looked, the bodies of people that she had known and loved littered the ground. Blood was pooled everywhere and each body was marked by the tell-tale marks of the Blood Plague. Suddenly, she realized that she was in front of her home. Slowly, dreading what she knew that she would find inside, she turned. As she stepped up on the porch, she hesitated, then walked inside. Here, death overwhelmed her. Silent tears slipped down her face as she crossed the blood-stained wooden floors. In the first room she entered, she stopped dead in her tracks. Her mother and baby sister, Abihail, who had only just been born before she had left for her training, lay on the floor in the horrible contortions that spoke of the agonizing death brought only by the Blood Plague. Lamia sobbed as she knelt beside the twisted body of her precious baby sister, heedless of the blood that now was covering her hands and soaking through her long robes. She touched the blackened skin, feeling where the blood which had been released when the baby's blood vessels burst, had gushed through each pore.
Suddenly, as she cried, her telepathy opened the door to the past. In her mind, she saw her family's deaths, heard the tortured screams of the villagers as they too died. Through the images, a baby's high frightened wailing swelled. Even after Lamia had shut off her mind, killing the pictures, the baby's wailing continued. Suddenly, she realized that the wailing was not an after image of her pictures. It was here, and now. It was real. She rose to shaky feet and followed the sound. The source of the cry was nearby. In the next house over she found the child lying in a room along with its mother, untouched by the plague. Apparently, the mother, knowing that if the baby was touched by someone with the Blood Plague it would die, had locked both herself and the baby in an isolated room. Lamia noticed the first signs of the Plague on the mother, the raised veins that signified that the vessels were swelling. Then, Lamia saw the knife sticking from the mother's chest, held where the mother had thrust it through her own heart before she could infect her baby. It was, she thought, the most horrible thing that she had ever seen, save the sight of her own mother and baby sister. She bent to pick up the child. As she lifted the baby into her arms, a sudden rage filled her.
I looked at Setsuna with tears rolling down my face. "That was me! But, it wasn't me. Who was she?" I asked, even though I thought I knew the answer.
"She is Nightfyre. And she is you, even though you don't remember her. That girl died when her world was conquered by the Court of Dominion. Her family was all killed by the Blood Plague. When she was brought before Starta, guardian of Fyre, she came into her role as Nightfyre, leader of the elite group of warriors known only as Fyre. She is you and you are her. When your world was destroyed, Starta used the last of her powers to send you to the future, here, away from the seed of the Blood Plague that still shadows your world now, thousands of years later"
"So, who am I now? Just Lamia. I cannot have any of my powers remaining," I said, beginning to remember what I had known, deep down inside my heart my entire life.
"Your powers do remain, just as the powers of the other Fyre members remain. Their powers are dormant. Yours, Lamia, have been awakened now." I stopped her.
"Who are you"
"I am Sailor Pluto, the guardian of Time. I am a part of this Solar System's defenders, a group known as the Sailor Senshi"
"This Solar System? Why, if I think about it, the memory is very dim, but I seem to remember the ascension of a Queen Serenity to the throne here. I was, maybe, fifteen"
"Yes, you as a member of Fyre are older than any of the senshi, except myself. You are also more powerful than any of the senshi, save Sailors Moon, Saturn, and myself. We need you, Nightfyre, and the rest of Fyre. We need your help and experience in fighting the Court of Dominion"
"What happened to this Solar System?" I asked. "We were attacked by an enemy that the Queen Serenity did not have the power to destroy. It killed all of the senshi, as well as the Moon Princess and her betrothed, Prince Endymion of Earth. As Serenity's last strike, she used the power of the Silver Crystal to not only imprison our foe, but to send the rest of us here, to Earth, a few years after you were sent." I looked at Sailor Pluto for a long while, digesting this.
"When do we go? And where?" I asked calmly.
"Now. And to Tokyo." "Let's go then." She raised her Key and we were gone.
I own NOTHING Sailor Moon!
Please, if you have any love in your heart, review!