Blood on the Moon
Chapter XI
By Lydiby
Swiftly we understood why the enemy wore white.
Crimson.
The puddle of blood we all stood in as we fought, steamed faintly. A mystery I wasn't going to contemplate if I intended to stay among the living. At one point, in the midst of the hemorrhage I managed to glance back. I saw Hotaru's solitary silhouette against the enormous blood washed moon, the blade of her glaive reflecting burgundy.
As I turned back and released another attack, her voice whispered to me.
'They will not suffer because of you.'
Later I would wonder which of two possible meanings she intended. That was not a good time for me.
"Moon Helix REVOLUTION!"
They went down in droves and did not rise again. My attacks contained silver from the imperial crystal. To my left Endymion released Smoking Bombers, blasting them into a gentle rain of misting blood and body fragments.
The fighting shifted like a serpent twisting, turning, and writhing. Macabre screams terrible enough to make you blank out for a dangerous moment shredded the air. A sudden surge drove us apart; furiously I cleared a ring around me with my staff. At some point my Princess gown had become my Sailor fuku, but I hadn't had time to examine the differences. Moving with a grace that seemed to be borrowed, I cut through the fray. Mina closely followed, covering my back and leading three of the other Senshi. My heart clutched up as I glimpsed Endymion on the ground, overshadowed by something that radiated evil powerful enough to sense on a field full of malevolence. As it lunged in for the kill I stabbed another vampire with my staff, trying frantically to reach him. The ground below its feet opened up and closed in the blink of an eye swallowing the thing. Halfway to hysterics I stumbled over to him.
"Usako, I'm fine. Keep fighting."
Bracing myself I turned and screamed.
"MOON HELIX REVOLUTION!"
Fueled by my fear, my fury, it cleared more ground then before. But still so many rose to take their place, and I was tiring rapidly. More often then not I was using any physical weapon I could lay my hands on, rather than a senshi attack. It was too difficult to get a clear shot with the front line changing faster then my mind could register. Chaos was rampant and I wasn't certain how I was still alive.
Blood ran down my body, through my hair, beneath my fuku, sticky, warm, and utterly repulsive. It burned when it dripped into my eyes; the taste and scent permeated my senses. Peripherally—as I continued to attack—I worried about my senshi, if I was growing tired they would be struggling. Vampires could move faster than we could see, which meant at times they were moving at the speed of light, it was a marvel they were even alive at this point. Even with the fear, my heart smoldered with pride for them. They were not a burden to Endymion's army.
The tide of fighting brought me to Rei's aid. Two vamps were beginning to overwhelm her. They fought like no others I had come across, with an animalistic ferocity that displayed only a desire for carnage—with no semblance to anything remotely human, no capacity for mercy. Just carnage. No movement they made was for any other reason than to destroy. When they turned away from a wounded Rei, the pair turned on me. Inwardly, I quavered; outwardly, I calmly moved to ward off their incalculable blows. As my staff rammed through the abdomen of one, Rei's blade lopped off the head of the other, stopping a hand's breadth from my own head. The head fell into the blood with a sickening plash, and I clearly saw them for the first time.
'Melinda and Chris.'
I realized with horror that I had names for these two bodies as they fell. They were almost unrecognizable. Almost; and the changes were too ghastly for words. Acrid bile rose into my throat as I realized what I had done, and what I must do if I wanted to keep my staff. Another vampire was moving towards me; I had no choice. Stepping on Melinda's body, I wrenched my staff free and moved on to destroy the next.
Gradually—as my training and reflexes took over, allowing my mind a minimal of respite—I realized we were no longer advancing, nor were we being driven back. I began to feel as though I had been fighting and killing forever, how long had it been? Twenty minutes? Two thousand years? When would we all be dead? Surely they couldn't keep coming and coming forever.
Or could they?
Automation soon took over and soul-prizing screams fell on deaf ears once again.
Somewhere along the way I became desperate to end it. The coldness tore away everything else. What happened was not certitude, but the power that had slept within me dormant for so long awoke.
There was a flash.
"My angel."
He was gone.
Everyone was gone.
Dead, all dead. Unearthly silence reigned.
Blankly, I stared at his peaceful body.
'My love, did I kill you?'
He could not answer.
Slowly, I knelt beside him and took his hand. Lacing the limp fingers through mine one last time.
"I loved you as Endymion and we were happy until war destroyed all we knew. I regret the end came so soon. I loved you as Mamoru, though I didn't know it; humans are often silly and trip over life's most precious gifts. I regret I did not choose to see it. I loved you as Darien, but I was too afraid to act upon it. I regret the pain my denial must have caused you. Please forgive me." I whispered brokenly.
A feather fell past my face and I twitched, looking upward for some merciful figure, but no one was alive on this plain of Hades.
Not even me.
The sky was purest black; even the moonlight was fading. Wearily, I looked towards Hotaru, she alone still stood; I had to complete this. Turning back to Endy, my Mamo-chan, I kissed his hand. With the gesture his body crumbled to ashes in seconds. My hand closed around something hard in a feeble attempt to hang onto part of him. The dust partially dissolved into the stagnant blood and partially blew away. All of the cadavers must have disintegrated at the same time because I could not see for the blowing dust borne on a warm wind, swirling upward like an infant cyclone.
'A holocaust,' I thought, faintly.
When the wind faded, I cautiously opened my fingers; there was a brilliant golden crystal cradled among the ashes cupped in my small hand. My mouth twitched as if remembering, after so many years, how to smile; if I had this, there was a chance I could bring him back. But as I made my way to what had once been Mina—through the snowfall of ashes— to collect her star seed both crystals vanished. Endy's seemed to turn to mist in my very hand and Mina's faded away to nothing among the tattered remains of her fuku. All of them had vanished.
'No,' I thought weakly.
Another feather fluttered downward and I realized what I had missed before; I had wings. How do I describe to you suddenly having more of you than there was before? Having bones, sinews, muscles, nerves, and feathers that were never there before? But all possible joy was obliterated; 'he called me his angel.'
Tears were inadequate.
Several lifetimes' worth of pain and injustice collided and my emotions reacted no differently than the collision of cold front and warm front. With a soul borne fury comparable to the violence of Mother Nature, I walked to and entered the overshadowing void.
I had one last duty to perform.
"SAILOR COSMOS, SUCH A LOVELY HARVEST OF STAR SEEDS," the voice was singsong, and vitriolic—like having corrosive acid poured into your ear—at once, "DO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH THEM?"
The voice tried to force me to the ground, but I stood shuddering in agony. Stood in my wavering defiance, fueled by a thundering rage, intense enough that it had to run beneath me. I couldn't contain it. It was beyond human capacity.
I was beginning to wonder if I was human at all.
How could I endure all this? Humans didn't have it naturally in them to devastate hundreds by—even extreme—provocation.
What was I? The question was far beyond matters of living or dead—pure existence.
Existence was the entire question; as my Senshi and Tuxedo Kamen emerged from the endless shadows. (How strange the darkness was, that I could see them so clearly. Like it was a black drop clothe.) They attacked at once. Unflinching, I rammed my Moon Staff into the ground and raised a shield. They're attacks slammed into and washed over it. Fading as they spread over the broad dome. Perversely, it gave me hope. If this new evolution, Sailor Cosmos, could deflect their attacks so simply, could I withstand this—this Thing of prophecies? For a moment I dropped my shields to look at them. They looked little different, but it was as if their pupils had dilated to the point of swallowing their entire eyes.
'Black,' I thought, dully, 'my soul must be stained that colour by now.'
I couldn't try to talk them out of this; I couldn't beg, I couldn't plead. They were puppets, not my friends. I was not going to gain them just to lose them; it was too much.
"COSMIC LUNARIS!"
Bitter relief; they were gone, swept from existence.
Not human, no, never human.
With efficient movements, I gathered their star seeds to me and pressed them to my chest. Perhaps I sobbed, I don't know, but they seemed to absorb into me and I felt—more real. Not better, but not…alone. Moving on, I came to a freestanding ornate doorframe that I couldn't see though. Drawing a deep breath ('my last? It matters not.') I stepped through.
After so much midnight oppression, my eyes took several minutes to adjust to the dazzling light. Several minutes during which nothing attacked me, or remotely sinister occurred.
"The Galaxy Culdron," the vitriolic voice said. It was still beyond terrible, but now that I could see the speaker, the pain inflicted was less physical and more—empathetic? That didn't make any sense, but I couldn't decide which was worse.
She.
Ladies and gentlemen, the shock of the day is that the solitary most evil being existing in the entire universe is female.
'How pathetic of me,' my former self thought, from wherever she'd been buried by…current events, 'all of that and this is what shocks me? A matter of gender? Tell me again, how did I get this far? By getting 30 on Math tests? Sweet delirium don't let this lunacy last much longer. Lunacy, ha….'
Sailor Galaxia glittered before me. Her title rising in my mind as a bubble trapped within a shipwreck.
"My Playmates." She smiled frostily and stepped towards me.
Without any preamble, she thrust her hand into my chest, through skin, muscle, and bone. The sensation was between cardiac arrest and katabatic hell. She withdrew her hand, holding all of the star seeds and I collapsed. On my hands and knees, I watched apathetically as she flung them into the Cauldron. Irrevocably destroying them.
I wondered that I still existed; she couldn't take my star seed as well? I stirred slightly, could I stand? Even if I could I hadn't the slightest idea how to defeat her. I didn't think even a Cosmic Lunaris could destroy the creature I saw before me.
'The creature, the vampire, the former human, the girl. After all, once she must have been not much different from me.' I shuddered at the thought but it was curiously stirring. 'What must happen to someone to make them like this?' I wondered and rapidly hoped I'd never know. Forcing my trembling legs to support me, I stood.
"You can't win," she said, it was almost a whisper—if something that makes you wish you did not exist can be a whisper.
I staggered forward, into the Goddess of Death's arms.
"Yes, that's it, give in, death is the only peace."
It sounded good. It sounded Very good.
'The girl," I thought, 'She was a girl once. She ought to be a girl again.'
With one last heaving breath, I dropped my head to expose my jugular. She bit at once and it hurt, oh it hurt like hell. The burning at some point went from hot to cold. My lungs were freezing, I couldn't breath, and I was dizzying senseless. My life flowed away between her lips. My vision closed in and part of me wailed; it was over.
'It's only just begun.'
My heart gave a last weak thump and if I could have I would have smiled.
I was sort of floating. If I had a body I would have danced. She hadn't seen it and that was her salvation. By drinking my blood, she'd put me in her. I was in her blood.
'First of all, there is no way this girl got loved in her childhood. Or her adolescence. Or her adulthood.'
I went through her memories and gave the metaphysical equivalent of a wince.
'Or ever.'
And that was the moment when I let all the anger and hate die. She had enough hate and anger for the universe. Something else was needed. She was just an accumulation of the worst of human behavior. A child of neglect and abuse.
'Positively brutal. How did she even live long enough to become undead? The answer was painfully simple; she'd never known anything else.
"Well, Galaxia, I love you!"
I felt myself fading out; I tried to—
nothing.
