Chapter Six – Sympathy By Vote, Malicious By Design

With the movement of a petal to the left, the shifting of a long, bare stem forward and the idleness of a breath blown over the bunch to give it that natural look, the flowers finally met with some kind of acknowledgement from their master, if only a small moment of recompense for their simplistic beauty and pure, unaltered design. The room, hollowed and dimly lit, really lacked the attributes to accent his current creation, but Kage couldn't argue with the decorum. The other flowers, spoiled and rotten shadows of their former glory, were strewn about the room, cast aside by Kage as things not worthy of his art and too troublesome to even give a moment's notice. They bled, bruised and fractured far too easily for him to use; their splintered stems, opened petals and benign thorns all thrown as compost around the room. The only thing that mattered to him now was the flowers being delicately groomed under his steady hand. He wooed them as lovers, coaxing them into their proper place and admiring their beauty.

Flowers, he thought, were the only thing left in the world that could persevere. Anything else was just refuse.

When Eve had finally grown impatient enough, she undertook the task of sending for her general herself. Eight acolytes had gone and not returned, planting a small seed of doubt in her mind of her general's state of mind. As she walked, strolling down the endless hallways of the bleak palace created by her predecessor and entombed master, her mind was torn by the two impending problems with her reign. The first was the Sailor senshi. They seemed ill-equipped to deal with the problems facing humanity. She had the same desires they did; to bring about peace and prosperity to all of the world's citizens. However, they seemed unable to grasp the concept of dominant will. They left the choices to the masses and pointlessly hoped that humanity's good would outweigh and defeat humanity's bad.

It was a tactic she saw as frivolous.

However, they had also grown in power since their attacks on Anubis's Priests. Some force that even humbled her master had granted them this new power. This much she knew as Anubis had let it slip through his iron presence inside of her, though she was beguiled at the fact that Anubis seemed to have no great concern over it. In fact, he seemed encouraged by the fact. However, Eve knew that the confrontation between her ideals and those of her senshi critics would soon come to head.

Thus, she was presented with her second problem. Though Anubis dwelled within her, feeding her great knowledge and power as she seemed to feed his very essence, she knew that the powers leeched to her were no match for these new powers given to the Sailor senshi. It was, in fact, her general that gave her any kind of security against those who wished her harm. Her acolytes were growing in number, but they were weak and unable to amount to any real defense against the Sailor senshi. Kage was the only being of any potency that truly amounted as an asset in her quest. However, this volatile Scion was now so unstable that Eve truly could not rely on him doing anything she asked.

Her only insurance was the two he desired more than anything; something she kept just outside his reach to keep him loyal. Even that loyalty was becoming frail. Without the use of his celestial weapon, she could contain him, but his mind was something of an unraveling tapestry. Her involuntary attraction for him was merely what all women felt for that wild side. She also knew that most of it was from the part of her taken from Makoto. Despite her desires to have him, she would have to make a decision soon.

She would have to give him what he wanted or destroy him.

"Kage, my love, have you not received my summons for…"

Eve was unable to finish her sentence upon entering the room. In a moment of true understanding, Eve's knees shook violently and her hand instantly covered her mouth, her eyes almost bleeding as she stared forward at Kage's discarded collection.

He sat forward, his elbows propped on the small table in front of him, facing Eve and the open door over the table but totally unaware of it. The dim lights of the room shadowed all of him, aside from those gaunt hands and his glowering, ghastly face. The flowers before him were radiant and seemed to glow in the room, truly representing the beautiful in a room otherwise full of chaos. Lying about the room, strewn over ground and one another, was what was left of the acolytes sent to summon her general. Eve looked on in horror as their bodies lie mangled about, their arms broken or torn from their bodies, their chests oriented the opposite way of their hips or their face staring out like hollow shells hell-bound from the hand of the grim reaper himself. Not one of them suffered a peaceful death and each still appeared as if screaming; screaming for their end to come rushing to them as an end to all of their suffering.

"There is still something missing. I can't exactly decide what yet, but there is one last thing I need to do before they are perfect," Kage lulled in a tone that sent shivers of Eve's spine. He was a fearsome creature, looming back behind something beautiful and completely calm in the calamity around him.

Eve's body shook as she tried to breathe, even though she was prepared for all kinds of death due to Anubis inside of her. Upon seeing the gruesome scene before her, she felt an overwhelming pain in her heart and a throbbing fear in her stomach. Her eyes moved shakily from the bodies to him, unable to think straight upon seeing the look on his face. He was looking upon the flowers, his eyes barely open but showing nothing, as if they had lost the unique glow that had first set her about him. It was something else, however, that truly terrified her. "These…girls were human. I gave them nothing more than the power for our cause. They were innocent."

Now her fear multiplied, for Kage's eyes opened slowly and set the darkness ablaze with a pale green hue. Eve stepped back, though she felt that even if she ran from him, it would be the thing he wanted most; a sign of her fear and a sign for him to lunge for her. All of her being told her one thing in a clear, unanimous voice; Kage was the person most likely to kill her.

He had finally done it.

He had finally lost his humanity.

"Innocence is the bastard excuse for the holistic. If there is one thing I have learned from life, it is that innocence has no relevance in death." Kage's presence filled the room like the acrylic smell of the blood. His heart, blackened by a singular event, held no thunder as it beat; brought no rhythm to his being. Eve wanted to remove herself of this scene or to berate him of his actions, but she knew that it was dangerous to confront him now. She had no more sway over him and she knew it. What could control Kage now, she did not know.

Her lips quivering made a noise that seemed to amuse Kage, for he shifted his chin along his knitted hands and paled her with a pallid grin. "Do you know what the best kind of villain is? Do you know why history and literature are filled with beloved villains?" He waited, not really for an answer but to enjoy the sight of seeing Eve tremble in fear before him. It was exhilarating. "The best villain is the one who is understandably angry at the world. He is the one who makes you justify his actions, even as you hate him. Oda Nobunaga was often considered a demon; a vicious, cruel being who committed unspeakable atrocities. But we adore him because he made a change; because he had ambition. Do you think I'm a justifiable villain?"

Once more silence permeated the room and Kage waited for an answer that would never come. The snowballing that had occurred with his remorse had finally taken over, leaving him incapacitated in his own mind. Perhaps what thrilled him most was that he didn't care anymore. "These girls were human and I killed them all because they bothered me. In fact, all humans bother me. I think that anything that isn't a flower bothers me now. I want to crush anything that bothers me and watch it squirm under my foot until it dies. I want to make this a world of flowers. To do that, I have to be a villain. Do you think I make a good villain?" he asked her again, this time rising from the table and taking her eyes up with him. She still dared not move, but all of her wanted to run as he stepped around the table, his feet padding across puddles of blood and broken bodies until he stood before her, looming like a nightmare she couldn't believe she contrived. "To be honest, I think I've gone insane a little. It's a pretty weird feeling, but I think I like it. That means that really the only thing keeping you alive, my disgusting little slut, is the fact that you have what I want." Kage continued to petrify her, his voice cold and metallic and his movements ruthless to her breathing. Her chest was refusing to fall back down after that initial breath of his approach, so she stood erect before him as his hand reached out to grope her body. However, his fingers stopped short of touching her breasts and his eyes darkened. "You foul thing. You're still Anubis's little bitch and I wouldn't soil myself by touching you. Do you really know how much I hate you?" His hand moved up past her neck and to her chin, tracing back along her jaw without touching her skin. Then, a sudden pain ripped through Eve's ear and she yelped, cringing in pain as her hand shot to her ear. A warm, sticky feeling stuttered her heart and she stared wide-eyed up at him.

Kage, idly looking at the ornate earring in his hand and the trickle of blood down his fingers, seemed somewhat appeased for the moment. With his eyes moving back to her, his smile turned absolutely wicked as he licked some of her blood from his finger and let a deep chuckle up from his belly. It was finally more than Eve could bear. She slowly stepped backwards from him, a welling hiss of curses stuck in her throat and burning tears in her eyes. Within an instant, she had turned and fled from him. Kage stood, once more, alone in the room.

Without any deliberation, he turned back to the table and gazed upon the flowers. The task took only a moment, but soon he leaned straight once more and let out a deep sigh. The earring now hung on the stem of a prominent flower in his display. Though the earring still had a small trace of blood on it, Kage felt the overall effect was exactly what he desired and set to sum up his art in one word.

"Perfect."

The entire section of the palace began to fill with a sinister laugh and the repeated screaming of the word that seemed to encompass his admiration of all of the flowers.

For some time now, the darkness had been laughing in Mamoru's face. For what seemed like ages, he had been trapped in a place that had no walls and no doors; just an endless realm of blackness and cold existence. He was somewhat annoyed at the lack of substance to this place.

However, he had finally come across something that he had no preparation for and no ability to conceive of why he would find what he found. Consciousness was something of a dream-state for him and he somehow knew that the part of him that was present in the place was not his body, but his soul. Still, this provided answers to the questions that were burning at the front of his mind. Here he had no Usako to take refuge upon, no grand scheme of tranquility to enforce his idealistic philosophies. There was only one thing that existed here and the very fact of it defied his logic.

Out of all people, why was it him?

"It's you. What is this place and what am I doing here?" he demanded, looking at the lumped figure before him; a figure lingering on some astral plane in a shielding position, for there was no ground to speak of.

The figure said nothing.

Yamito seemed like a shadow of his former self, according to Mamoru. This foreboding warrior had always given him for a certain level of concern, but there was something different about him now; something cold and distant and not consistent with anything Mamoru knew of him. Yet, he still expected that the reason he was here was because of the silent Scion.

"Answer me! Were you the one who brought me here!"

This time Mamoru approached, his face showing the trepidation associated with this unknown that had come into his life. He was no fool. There were times when he absolutely knew that this young man had invaded the love that he shared with his soulmate Usagi. Yet, he had never confronted either of them about it.

Until now.

"Stay away," came the brooding warning from beyond his back. Mamoru had been becoming very tired of looking at his back, but the warning did give him enough sense to linger just beyond the touch of the intense heat that still lingered about Yamito, even in a place that was not physical reality. Another reason Mamoru hesitated was the element in Yamito's voice that completely shook his resolve to confront him.

Yamito was shivering. He was engrossed in fears like that of a child. Mamoru couldn't see it, but he could hear it in his voice and see the visible tremors in Yamito's form. It sent chills down his back. Perhaps Yamito was as innocent in the place as he was.

"I see you finally found each other."

This time it was another voice entirely and Mamoru was instantly on alert. His eyes instantly shot to the only other figure in sight; the only other thing in sight. It was a man, sitting much like Yamito was but facing them both. A flawless gray cloak covered his entire body but for a wrinkled, tired mouth visible in the unnatural ambient light. A hood covered the old man's face, but the eyes that held back under the shadow were ones that Mamoru winced at and faced the man with pure intent. The object lazily leaning within the old man's frail grasp was something that put him on alert; a long, weathered scythe with a jagged-toothed blade. Though terrifying in appearance, the weapon seemed far more than a mere elderly man could handle. As if reading his thoughts, the old man's creased lips broke into a crude, rotten-toothed smile.

"You have nothing to fear from me, mighty prince of Earth. I am only as real as you are in this place, which is not that real at all!" he said, laughing with a hacking cough.

Mamoru had forgotten about Yamito for the moment and stared intently at the old man, not letting his cool demeanor fluctuate for a moment. "Who are you? What is this place?"

"You are nowhere, your Highness. You are in a place beyond representation in the lexicon. You just are," he replied, letting that craggy smile portray his amusement. The old man had yet to look upon the other, but he was not totally unaware of his presence. "As for me, I am many persons. At this moment in your time, let us just say that I am, indeed, time. I brought you both here."

Mamoru stared a moment, almost ashamed that he didn't think of it before. The old man had seemed familiar to him all because of the countless cards and pictures he had seen of that familiar character in popular belief; Father Time. It was a little too embellished and he almost smirked, but the reality of his situation was too dire to take lightly. "Why am I here? Where are the senshi and the rest? Why is he here?" Mamoru demanded, finally looking over to the still stationary Yamito.

The old man didn't move, but Mamoru got the impression that he was looking over at the silent Scion. His smile still stayed sly, but his tone changed only enough to cause Mamoru to notice. "The reason you are here is because of him. The reason he is here is because of you."

Mamoru scowled at the rhetoric and took a menacing step towards the old man. Though he felt a very real aversion to being here, he didn't simply rage at the proclaimed captor who lingered before him as a gaunt old man. There was something inside him that gave dire warnings to becoming too presumptuous towards him. "What does that mean! Stop telling me riddles and answer my question."

The old slowly began to stir, trying to find footing long enough to balance his weight and rise to his feet. Mamoru watched, his good nature tempting him to help the old man to his feet but the same warning in his mind keeping him from moving near to him. There was just something about this old man that didn't feel right. "At this moment," the old man said between laborious breaths, "what you want to know will be revealed soon. Time, conversely, has the power to reveal all things. The prince of the Earth will be returned as an oracle and thus serve his purpose in this task." Again, the old man answered without actually saying anything Mamoru wanted to hear, but something else soon caught his attention.

Yamito was moving to his feet also, but had yet to turn around. Mamoru watched him with no sense of exactly Yamito was now, for Mamoru had a unique ability to sense things about a person, especially human, and gage them. However, he wasn't able to sense anything about Yamito anymore, something that would have caused him great concern had they been in a situation where Usako or Rei was involved. However, right now, the old man was more of a formidable source than Yamito.

"Oh, the young one stirs. He, perhaps, harbors the most important question of all. He knows now the reason for all the sorrow and agony. He is the reason you return," the old man continued and started moving towards Mamoru. Mamoru was still looking at Yamito, but the old man's proximity was slowly becoming more and more alarming. When the shaky figure finally came too close, Mamoru stepped back once more. "I will send you with my avatar. She will see that you return safely to the princess," the old man said, his head shifting slightly as another figure appeared from the darkness behind him. Mamoru was in shock. Suddenly, everything became connected and this was no longer some obscure dream with no relevance. Sailor Pluto could offer nothing to him in terms of explanation or consolation, only stand silently at the side of the old man and stare at Mamoru.

"Setsuna?" Mamoru asked, his heart running a thousand miles in mere moments. When she didn't answer, he looked slowly back to the old man, who was no longer and old man. Now he was a young man, standing taller than Mamoru and holding a brilliant staff in his hand instead of an old scythe. The celestial orb embedded at the top of the staff sent a violet haze throughout the void and gave Mamoru the most unusual sensation he had ever felt. Upon looking at the young face barely visible under the hood, Mamoru stared uncontrollably into the pastel blue eyes and felt something pulling at the back of his brain; something from his life before. "I have seen you before. Who are you?"

The question caused Sailor Pluto to close her eyes and turn her head, but the man's face turned into a very soft smile. "Once, I was advisor to the queen of the Silver Millennium. Those on Earth who thought of me used the names Dis, Hades or Chronus. Although now I am and will be a faded memory to you, your highness, you will see me again as long as my wife finds your cause just. You truly have no conception of how fortunate you are to retain her loyalty," he replied, his eyes shifting to the side to a still silent Sailor Pluto. Mamoru was beside himself in shock and stared between the two, unable to fully grasp that bit of information. Wife? Hades? Advisor to the queen of the Silver Millennium? There was far too much going on here for him to take in such a short time, but already the haze around him was beginning to cloud his memory and impair his mind. Just as things were beginning to blur, and Sailor Pluto's sad face looked upon him with silent reprieve, Mamoru heard the man speak once more. "You will tell them what they need to know. You will continue the purpose of all of this and bring this task to end. Because of this task, Prince of the Earth, something that has never happened before will finally bring the gods and men closer together, and you will see this sacred event all because of this one, young man," he said, gesturing to the Scion standing equilaterally as the third point to a triangle.

Mamoru looked to Yamito just in time to see his face. What he saw shocked him, and he promptly faded away.