Chapter 10
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"You're…"
"The ruler of Crystal Tokyo? Your future self? A snappy dresser?"
"King Endymion." Mamoru nearly choked on the words; his sword lowered a fraction, forgotten in the shock. All this time, all of the horrors he'd faced, pain he'd endured…and he'd been inflicting it on himself, from thousands of years in the future?
It took him a long moment to take all of it in. Yes, there in front of him was King Endymion, his extremely purple future self. But he seemed different from that initial revealing moment, and now he was beginning to recognize all the changes. His suit, normally an iridescent lavender, fitted tight with an expansive cape (suitable for flipping at subordinates) was a much deeper violet. The white embroidery work that had adorned the other suit was replaced by black sequins, stitched in a harsh flame pattern. The cape was black, and seemed much longer, gathering around his feet. His long staff still housed the Golden Crystal, but it was lacking in luster, as though someone hadn't polished it in a century or two. His face was distorted in something of a sneer, which was disconcerting, and made all the more so by the violent, ghastly scar that took up much of the right side of his face, jagged and spindly, like a flesh-colored spider. In his graying (purpling?) hair, there were black streaks.
"I'm so glad you recognize me, Mamoru. I was afraid our fight against the Black Moon had been forgotten. You have had a lot to fret about in recent years, haven't you? I've gone through a few changes, myself." The king laughed again, a sound Mamoru was really beginning to hate. "Oh, Mamoru, you thought the situation was bad enough before. Now you find out you're the world's biggest masochist! Man, it's rough to be you."
He paused. "It's rough to be me? Us? I never have worked that out."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Mamoru suddenly regained his fighting stance, sword tip pointed right at King Endymion's throat. "Why are you trying to kill me?"
"Because--" the king sighed in mock exasperation, the base of his staff rapping against the ground to punctuate each word, "You. Are. A. Problem. You are the chink that causes the machine to fall apart, the butterfly that causes the storm, so to speak. You, Chiba Mamoru," here he jabbed the black-haired man in the shoulder with his staff, heedless at the very lethal sword within inches of his throat, "are the worst thing for this planet's future that could possibly exist."
Mamoru was well aware of the fact that he had a thing for self-depreciation, but even he liked to think that this was a slight exaggeration. In fact, while he still questioned his positive influence on the planet, he did not find himself so useless in the grand scheme of things as to dig himself into the negatives just yet. So he failed to see how, exactly, his not being brutally maimed by an evil clone of his girlfriend was actually a bad thing. "What the heck are you talking about?"
Endymion smiled in a way that Mamoru found remarkably unpleasant, and he made a mental note to never try and duplicate the expression on his own identical face. "Oh, Mamoru. Here you are with your whole life ahead of you, so young, so innocent. You have never truly seen all the horrors this world has to offer. You've no idea what your future has in store for you."
Mamoru had to disagree with his first point. Certainly, twenty years of experience was nothing compared to the centuries that the king had seen, but in that brief span of time he had seen more pain and horror than any of his pre-med peers, who liked to think that they were tough enough to face the dead and dying on a daily basis. Mamoru liked to think that he had a very good idea of what horrors the world had to offer, regardless of his age.
As for his future, as far as he knew, he was supposed to be spending the majority of it in a very sparkly crystal city with lavender hair and a pink-haired slip of a daughter. To see the changes the king had undergone, however, he wondered if some other things had not changed since he last saw them. The tiniest trickle of cold doubt stirred in the back of his mind, like the incessant dripping of a faucet that would not be ignored. He was careful to hold it in the back of his mind where it belonged, however, not allowing his face to betray his doubts. "I've seen my future."
"Buzz, wrong again! You have not seen the future, Mamoru. What you have seen is -a- future. A future that, at one time, may have been considered possible. But with all the things that have happened since your little trip to the Gates of Time, did you truly believe that your future would remain static? Have you never asked questions as simple as why there were only four Sailor Senshi in Crystal Tokyo, when you are now aware of more? Your future changes, Mamoru. It fluctuates with every step taken, every minute decision made, from what color socks you put on to what university you decide to attend. Some courses are more steady, more inevitable than others. Crystal Tokyo, for example, will most definitely come about, with the presence of a few important factors. What Crystal Tokyo actually becomes, however, is another matter entirely. The place, the time, the era, that is known as Crystal Tokyo, carries as vast a definition as can be. It can be the utopia that everyone so dearly hopes for. Or, it can be hell on Earth."
"What you're saying," Mamoru interjected, a little dubious, "is that the Crystal Tokyo I saw has become impossible after the last few years?"
"Precisely. Since we last met, you've changed your path a thousand times. The Death Busters, the Dead Moon Circus, Shadow Galactica." The king ticked them off on his fingers. "They all changed the future in ways you simply can't imagine. The Crystal Tokyo you saw has been completely erased. In its place…"
King Endymion shuddered, a spasm that moved his whole body involuntarily, even his face. The rough spider scar on his face seemed to crawl with it. He tried to suppress it with that ugly, disconcerting smile. "Let's just say no one's called it a utopia for a century or six."
Mamoru found something about him pitiable, and lowered his sword away from the king's throat. He was more confounded and intrigued than angry, at the moment. "You said I should have questioned the number of Senshi I saw in Crystal Tokyo. But how could I have known about Uranus and the others back then? We hadn't fought the Death Busters yet; our paths were far from crossing."
"Your logic seems solid enough." The king began to pace about, waving his wand as necessary – and sometimes not – for emphasis. "At the time, you had never met them, so, by all accounts, neither had I. But since then, the Outer System Senshi have been added to your – our – story. That was the first domino to topple, the first support beam to fall, in the beautiful kingdom you knew. The timeline changed, Mamoru. I -watched- it change before my eyes. Suddenly, they had always been there. I recalled back recent weeks, months, and all the memories that had before lacked them were different. Their participation in defending the Earth from the Black Moon family was quite impressive, and without them, we surely would have become the wasteland you remember."
"Wait. You're telling me that, when the timeline changed to include Uranus and the others—"
"The Black Moon never reached us. They landed their ship in the Sea of Japan and came marching inland, a sea of black drones, and those Senshi were there to greet them. Usako wanted to fight, but her four Guardians held her back, as did I. If the battle came too close to palace grounds, only then would we leave its walls." The king grimaced, as though recalling the memory left a sour taste in his mouth. "It was a wise decision, on our part. Yes, Mamoru, we stopped the Black Moon, but at a heavy price. Uranus, Neptune, Saturn…"
He paused, trying to gather himself. The hand that held his staff began to shake, as though it was a war injury he could not control. "We were watching; everyone was. Japan, the world – everyone saw the carnage unfolding on live television. The Senshi cut through their droid army as though they were paper dolls, and then stormed the ship. We don't know anything about what took place inside the ship for another half hour, but the next thing we knew, the enormous ship shot into space, hissing and sparking, as it split at the seams. About one hundred miles into the air, it exploded. It was the most beautiful, terrible thing I'd ever seen. It was like the greatest firecracker ever invented. It didn't even seem real, just a special effect in one of those awful Armageddon movies. But it was real. The clouds that filled the sky were real, blocking the sun for hours, then days, then weeks. The debris that washed up on shore, that had been strewn far inland, polluting the water systems, was real. The fact that six billion people had watched Sailor Senshi, the most powerful warriors the galaxy had ever known, become nothing more than vaporized ions was real."
King Endymion laughed. It was a dead laugh, carrying the weight of hundreds, thousands of dead, wounded, ill, crippled. "We were ruined, Mamoru. That ship had carried enough weapons – bombs, missiles, lasers, things we'd never dreamed of – to blow this planet out of the solar system. Not to mention the alien metals that made up the ship itself. The debris from the explosion changed everything it touched. Nothing was clean or safe anymore. Japan and the west coast of America felt it first. Most of the cities there are still almost entirely uninhabitable. You saw a crippled city, Mamoru. What I saw, what I -felt-, was a dying planet. All because you fought the Death Busters, and the Outer System Senshi joined your ranks."
Mamoru was still confused, confounded, and otherwise unconvinced. "But none of that was my fault. I didn't choose to meet Michiru on the street when she dropped her mirror. It just happened. I didn't cause the Black Moon ship to explode. How does -that- make me, as you say, 'the worst thing for this planet's future that could possibly exist?'"
Some of the king's original demeanor returned, and through the pain evident on his face, he smiled grimly. "Patience, child. I'm getting there." Mamoru bristled at the word, but remained silent. "The disintegration of our planet may have been more than enough to decimate what hope we had for a strong kingdom and a bright future, but I'm afraid that was only the beginning. Other enemies saw our chaotic state and weak defenses, and began to attack rampantly, shattering the peace we had enjoyed for so long. Our Sailor Senshi, already grieved by our losses, fought them off as best they could, but wounds were deep, and they grew deeper by the day. There were some of us who could not stand to be in the same room as each other, so great was our grief that century-long friendships collapsed into animosity." He gave Mamoru an ironic smirk. "I'm sure, given recent events, you can relate to this."
"To top it all off, another change to the timeline was made--what should have been a wonderful thing, but which immediately turned sour under the new circumstances. In your recent past, you fought the Dead Moon Circus and the Golden Crystal within you awoke. Rather than lending me new strength, it made me all the more sensitive to the planet's horrible state. Every pain of broken earth, every poison that seeped into its surface became mine to suffer on a constant basis. When I was not hospitalized and pumped full of enough drugs to make me nearly comatose, I was confined to a bed and in excruciating pain. Needless to say, I was unable to do much of anything in this state, least of all give the planet the strong leadership that it so dearly needed. Without me to help her, and with her own Senshi falling apart around her, Serenity closed in on herself. All her good intentions seemed to do nothing to change the sad state of her kingdom. It all seemed too little too late, and she began to give up. Her power, I'm afraid, faded with her. The Ginzuishou, as you are aware, is only as strong as the heart of its user. The most powerful crystal in the galaxy became little more than a trinket when ruled by a confused and bitter heart." Mamoru pictured his Usako, so sweet and shining and holding within her the power to create or destroy worlds. He could not imagine her broken and defeated, could not see the regal queen that she would become fading into an empty, frail woman, her purity tarnished.
The king took a shaky breath, and Mamoru noticed for the first time that he was not wearing a mask--not even the lavender one that the king he had known had worn. It made him look that much more vulnerable, with only the twisted scar to mar his face. "Somehow, through all of this, Chibi Usa, now Lady Serenity, and her Sailor Quartet, remained strong. They retained some of that shining optimism that our own team had once carried, and as they aged they fought bravely. When they made their final journey through time to aid Sailor Moon in fighting Galaxia, they were beginning to reach the peak of their potential. With that last battle with Galaxia, however, the queen's own will truly shattered. As each of us were killed in this time, she watched each of her loved ones--even the loyal felines who had aided her so much in my absence--fade from existence. Even when we returned, she was... not the woman she had been. The pain had been too great for her. She went into a depression that she never came out of. With both of us incapacitated, our daughter took over more and more of the responsibilities. Though she would not officially take the throne in our place as long as we both lived, she was queen in every other sense of the word."
He was no longer even looking at Mamoru, so lost was he in his own tale. Lavender eyes--they had not, Mamoru noticed, changed from the color they had been before, remaining the light purple that Endymion's hair had once been--gazed into the darkness beyond Mamoru's faint golden aura. "Contrary to many doubts about her abilities, Princess Lady Serenity proved herself to be more than capable, and for a time, it seemed that at last our kingdom was gaining the stability and strength it needed. Efforts were being made to reverse the effects of that devastating explosion that took place so many centuries ago, and slow as the process was, I was beginning to recover. Between the Sailor Quartet and what remained of the old Senshi, our enemies were held at bay, and the battles settled down to a more moderate level. For once, we began to have hope again..."
Everything about this conversation felt surreal to Mamoru. Here he was, listening to the words of a reflection of himself, listening to the events of a time that he could not fathom, hearing of the futures of people he was close to. He thought that he should be impatient, that he should be concerned about where all of this was leading, but he was somehow entranced by the king's words, drawn easily into the story despite himself. He did not even notice how his sword hung limp at his side, forgotten.
"But our hopes were fleeting," the king continued. "New enemies came, pooled their resources, raced one another to be the first to bring us to our knees. I will not trouble you with names and details; there were so many. And then came the most devastating blow of all. She was taken." The king gripped his staff so tightly that his hand began to tremble again, and his eyes would not meet Mamoru's. His voice was barely a hoarse whisper. "Chibi Usa... it is unimaginable what was done to her. Through it all I could feel it. With these damn powers, I could feel what they were doing to my daughter. The rescue mission failed, most of our Senshi lost. And when they... when her death came, it was a mercy. For her suffering to end. The queen was inconsolable. She... followed soon after. By her own hand."
Silence stretched out as the king allowed that to sink in. Mamoru was barely breathing. He felt like his whole body had turned to ice, numb and motionless. The glow that surrounded him had dimmed almost to the point of darkness, but he failed to notice. Usako. Chibi Usa. They were... he had to remind himself that he was in a time that was hundreds, possibly thousands of years prior to these events, and that his Usako was safe at home, without a single care worse than whether she would pass her next math exam. But it did not change the raw knowledge that someday, someday they would die. They would die in pain. They would die needlessly. And all while he watched it happen.
"That was when I decided..." the king continued slowly, himself motionless and sagging, not at all the powerful ruler that he had seemed to be, "I decided that there could be no price greater than what we had paid. I decided that the risks involved in messing with the time continuum were nothing compared to the pain of leaving things as they were. I wanted to change everything that had ever happened to us. With even our time guardian gone, I had nothing to hold me back. I had studied extensively the cause and effect that created the changes made to our timeline when my daughter was still making her trips to the past. I now used my knowledge to study all the possible changes that could be brought about by adjusting the past."
He gave a bitter smirk. "My efforts, unfortunately, were mostly fruitless. It was impossible to prevent the events that caused things to go downhill in the first place--such as the attack of the Death Busters--and any other attempts at change would either make no difference or only worsen the situation. Somehow, the chain of events that created our living hell had become indestructible, and the fall of what we know as Crystal Tokyo, inevitable."
Endymion advanced on his stunned former self, who had cast his eyes on the floor, unable to fully understand the horrific story he'd just been told. "You see now, Mamoru? All we can do is stand back and watch as the people we love most are taken from us, as the planet we live and die for is consumed from the outside in. We can't fight. The Golden Crystal never was much good for anything, except to gather the pain from others like a bloody little satellite dish, and broadcast it back out a thousand fold. You found that out when you met your Shitennou, didn't you? You watched them hurt and hurt again, and you could never heal them fast enough.
"Would you like to know what your Shitennou are like in that future, Mamoru? Do you want to know what kind of suffering you cause them?" The king grabbed Mamoru's arm as though he intended to wrench it off. His grip was much stronger than Mamoru had anticipated. "Would you like to hear about Jed's endless drug addiction, his staggering police record? Neff's crippling, violent alcoholism that left more than its fair share of battered women – and men – in its wake? Malachi's horrific delusions of the Dark Kingdom, kept at bay by a potent drug cocktail that left him half-paralyzed, unable to function? Zory's futile struggles to keep them all alive, working three dead-end jobs, without any passion or hope for his future, watching his friends drown in a misery that they will never be able to describe? When I started this whole process, to fight you, I never had any idea that they would be reawakened. They had lived average lives, unknown to you, before you introduced them into our timeline. They were damned with the rest of us."
"I…don't want to believe it, but all of this…" Mamoru whispered, looking at the faint outline of his shoes, the bottom of Endymion's staff.
"You can't deny that the people we love, the planet we love, is only hurt by our existence, Mamoru. You know it as well as I do." The king's grip was a little less intense, though Mamoru could still feel the sting. "I couldn't eliminate all of the things that had happened to Crystal Tokyo by stopping the Death Busters, or any of that. I had to go back to you, at this critical time – away from Usako and the Senshi, so that there would be no interference. Had it not been for the Shitennou, the task would have been simple. They complicated matters infinitely, but they are a final, terrible example of the pain we cause."
King Endymion let go of Mamoru's arm, and took a step back. "When I revealed myself, you first asked me, 'why am I trying to kill you?' Do you see now, Mamoru? Has our terrible story explained it to you? At its simplest, it is a complicated form of suicide. We are useless, a burden, a catalyst for suffering; we always have been, and continue to be so. All we can do is allow horrible things to happen. I want that to stop before it ever begins. I want to kill you, so that you will never become King, so that I never exist, and the slate will be wiped clean. It will mean Small Lady, as you and I know her, will never exist. It will mean heartache for Usako. But is it a price I am willing to pay, in the hopes that my planet will not become a wasteland? Yes, I'm certain of it. Usako will always be Queen. The Earth will be the utopia it's destined to be. But it will happen without us."
He smiled his ugly, humorless smile. "By any means necessary."
Mamoru swallowed. "I still fail to see why my not existing would prevent any of that from happening. Okay, for the Shitennou, I understand, but everything else... I never caused any of that."
The king twirled his staff in his hands, watching the tarnished crystal at its top shimmer in the wane light. "You remember, Mamoru, how I said that Crystal Tokyo will inevitably be established, with the presence of a few important factors? There are only two necessary elements for its creation. The first is Serenity. The second is you, Mamoru. Do you see now? Without a Crystal Tokyo, there will never be a Black Moon Clan to attack us, and the dominos that fell after that first event will never occur. Something will arise in its place, certainly. But it will be nothing so grand and devastating as the one that would be brought about by your own hand. Earth will continue as it is, peacefully, normally. As I'm sure you can understand, I could never bring myself to destroy Usako, even after all these years. So I am left with only one option. To take myself out of the timeline."
Mamoru's sword slipped from his hand, and clattered to the floor.
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"Kunzite! Would you wait up?"
"Fuck, is he trying to run a marathon?" Jadeite whined, two other uniformed Shitennou at his heels. Kunzite had become a distant spot of white in the darkness, occasionally appearing in a swirl of dark cape beneath the glow of a streetlight. All of them, even when transformed, were feeling the effects of their injuries right now. Nephrite's aching lungs and throat were making him lag behind, and Jadeite was getting sharp pains in his ribs every time he took a step. But Kunzite, injured though he was, must have undergone some mighty quick healing, because he was showing no signs of slowing down. Whatever miraculous force had healed him must have also damaged his ears, because he was deaf to their shouts.
"I sure as hell hope we don't have to fight anything, because when we get there, I'm passing out."
"Are we sure we can't teleport there?" Zoisite panted. Out of all of them, he was in the best physical shape, having mostly been healed after Mamoru had nearly pounded him into oblivion. Where normally Jadeite was faster than anyone in the group, the smaller blonde now kept up with him easily.
"Can't," wheezed Nephrite from behind, using words sparingly between his attempts at breathing. "Someone sealed the base. Whole thing is blocked. Have to get there manually."
Zoisite's forehead creased in confusion. "Someone created a force field that huge? Who could do that?"
"Honestly," Jadeite watched Kunzite disappear into the Humanities building, a cold tingle up his spine, "I'm not sure I want to know."
-----
The silence stretched out as the king allowed his words to sink in. "How do I know I can believe you?" Mamoru asked suddenly, more boldly than he felt. "How do I know that you didn't make all this up? I mean, for all I know, you aren't even who you say you are. You could be just another clone like all the others."
His words were met with a bark of laughter from the king. "Well I must admit, Mamoru; I would be pretty disappointed with you if you did not at least question what I've been telling you. But come, now; you know as well as I do that I'm no clone. While you were pretty easily taken in by Lunette, who, I will have you know, was my best creation yet, even you could tell the difference, couldn't you? Those powers of yours aren't for nothing, Mamoru, loathe as you seem to be to use them to their fullest potential. You can sense what is human and what is not. I am no imitation. And this..." he raised his staff, presenting the golden sphere at the top in which the Golden Crystal could be seen glistening, "is no toy." He brought the tiny iridescent globe near the black-haired man's chest, and Mamoru was surprised to feel his own crystal flare up in opposition. Light shimmered out from both himself and the staff, but Mamoru could sense in the air the friction that crackled between the future and present crystals. The king smirked, the spider on his face shifting unpleasantly. "If the Ginzuishou of two different times touch, the planet can be destroyed. I wonder if the results would be the same with two Golden Crystals?"
He pulled the staff back, relieving the tension in the air, and leaned it up against the statue behind him. "But I'm not here to destroy the world. Rather, to save it."
Slowly, as if being poured from molten steel, the king's staff began to change its shape. It remained amorphous only for a moment, and then in a great flash, solidified. It was now a sword, not unlike the one at Mamoru's feet.
King Endymion held the blade out, turning it in the meager light, examining his handiwork. "Not bad. Not bad at all. I knew there was just enough left in it for one more party trick."
Realizing that the king intended to keep his word, and he was about to become a Prince-kabob, Mamoru scrambled to pick up his sword and prepare defend himself. Just as he was about to grab the hilt, the king lunged for him. He swung his own blade somewhat inexpertly, but managed to hit his mark. Mamoru yelped in pain and fell on his back, grasping at the new wound - the king had slashed him most of the way across his bicep, around his arm and to his back, and it was definitely no papercut. He could already feel warm blood trickling down his arm, and he clutched at his arm, trying to staunch the flow. His future self meant business.
The king kicked his sword to him, as though it was a small and unfortunate animal in his way. It rolled across the floor and came to a clattering stop next to his leg. He looked down his nose with a smug grin, twirling his somewhat bloody sword impatiently. "I suggest, Mamoru, you pay a little closer attention. I don't intend to pull any punches."
Mamoru gritted his teeth, swinging his feet underneath him to get his balance. He ignored a white flare of pain as he reached for his sword. It wasn't as bad as some he'd received recently, but it was going to make fighting difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.
A flash of silver, and pain exploded in his opposite shoulder, throwing Mamoru onto his side. "Hurry it up," the king ordered jauntily, "I'm a busy man, and I do not like to be kept waiting." The black-haired man hissed as he felt hot blood seeping from beneath his armor. The king was cutting beneath the tiniest of chinks in it, as though it were not even there. He was finding weaknesses in it that Mamoru himself was not aware of.
With all the speed and strength he could muster, Mamoru lunged for his sword a second time and pushed himself upright, rounding to face himself of the future. His mind raced with the new information the king had given him, the state of his future, the knowledge of his own horrible path. Was it right for him to be fighting back, knowing what he did? Should he struggle against what he himself of a different time had decided? Would it be better to give in, to resign himself to his fate? He sidestepped a slash of the king's blade, nearly having his ear taken off. His opponent had every possible advantage--he knew Mamoru in every way, knew every weakness, because he had once been Mamoru. Age seemed not to have slowed him at all; on the contrary, the purple-haired man's movements were quicker, sharper, more alert than those of Mamoru, who was already worn down by his fight with Lunette.
Mamoru swung wildly and was easily deflected, as though his every move had already been predicted. The king grimly held him off, did not allow his younger self a single opportunity to break through. He pushed Mamoru back, sent him stumbling across the uneven ground. Another slash, and a cut appeared across Mamoru's cheek. Not as deep as it could have been, thankfully, but deep enough that it stung, and blood quickly began to seep down his face.
His stomach sank as he realized that this battle could only end one way: past or future, he was going to die.
-----
He clattered through the darkened hallways, steel-tipped boots creating an unfamiliar echo in a building that was accustomed to soft-soled sneakers. Malachi's knowledge of the place led him unhesitatingly to where he needed to be. Left at the Coke machine, then right, then down another flight of stairs...
His cape was a swirl of brown and royal blue at his heels, the gold on his uniform glistening even in the dim light. His jacket was pristine and white, conveniently reset to the way it had been before the carnage of the most recent battle. Silver hair danced behind him, shimmering drop earrings dangling from his ears. He was a figure out of legend, strangely anachronistic in this place that he, as Malachi, knew so well. He passed by a painting of an armored knight seated on his white horse, and almost smiled at the irony.
Mamoru was still blocking him out. His efforts at getting an answer from him were futile. It was maddening, like screaming into a phone receiver and hearing nothing on the other end, not even sure whether he had been disconnected or if anyone could hear his frantic shouts. He was just short of sending out the telepathic equivalent of a global broadcast, which would make every human and inhuman organism on the campus with a scrap of intuition receive a message essentially saying, "have you seen this prince?" Considering he had no idea just what enemies he was up against, however, it did not seem at all prudent to alert all parties involved that he was on his way. He had to have some element of surprise, after all.
"Kunzite! Wait! One! Goddamn! Minute!"
The frustrated shouts of one blonde, slate-eyed guardian echoed up and down the corridor, accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing and the rattle of boots, reverberated all around him. Finally, the other three had caught up. What on Earth had taken them so long, anyway? He came to a stop, impatiently tapping his foot, as they came around the corner.
"Man, you'd think after choking me," Nephrite wheezed, bringing up the rear, "the guy would slow down just a little bit, for my benefit. But nooooo, we wouldn't want to do that. We'd rather have poor Nephrite just wheeze himself to death!"
"Are you quite finished yet?" Zoisite grumbled. "We heard you the first twenty times."
Jadeite shook his head, and steadied himself on the wall to catch his breath. "Man, I know we've got a Prince to save, but you just set yourself a record for landspeed, Kunzite! Getting there first won't do you any good; I love you to death, but with a broken shoulder--"
"Hey!" Zoisite marched up to their white-haired companion, examined him from head to toe with keen scrutiny, and then stood on his toes to get up into Kunzite's face. "And where, exactly, is your sling?"
Kunzite shrugged with the shoulder that wasn't broken. "I took it off. It was hindering my movement."
Zoisite made a noise that was somewhere between a snort and 'argh!' "It was hindering your movement! And what do you think will happen, Kunzite, if you don't keep it immobilized? You could damage it permanently!"
"And if I left it on, it might prevent me from doing something that could protect the Prince, which, considering his track record, could leave him permanently -dead-." Though it didn't register on his face, and he would never admit to it, Zoisite was quite intimidating when he wanted to be, despite the fact that Kunzite could probably sit on him. "Taking that into account, I'm not especially worried."
"God, you are such a pig-headed--"
"Guys!" Nephrite cut in, putting himself between the two guardians - with his back to Kunzite, just in case. "Catfight later, Prince's-ass-saving -now-. Okay? Okay."
Jadeite craned his neck, looking up and down the hallway. "Anyone remember where that vent was? We'll probably have to go in that way - it'll take too much time and energy to teleport."
"Egads!" Zoisite covered his mouth with a gloved hand, feigning shock. "Jadeite just had a good idea! He must be a clone! They've infiltrated our ranks!"
"Oh, cut it out, funny man." Nephrite rolled his eyes, and then stepped out of the long-haired sandwich. He pointed up another flight of stairs, to a custodial closet that had been fenced off with yellow tape, its door ajar. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's over there."
-----
Mamoru slammed against the unyielding rock so hard that he was certain he had broken something. Blood was spilling from his nose (or maybe his mouth, though it may have been both). Gashes seemed to have sprung across his entire body, forming with such rapidness that they may have been mistaken for a fast-acting skin disease rather than battle wounds. If the king intended to take him apart one piece at a time, he was certainly doing a good job at it. It was as though the purple-haired man were toying with him--so many times he could have pressed the blade just a little closer, shoved just a little deeper, and Mamoru would have met a very swift and untimely end. But instead it was feather-light sweeps across his skin that brought on searing, hot pain and slicked the hilt of his sword with blood beneath his hand.
And it was wearing on him. As fast as the golden light surrounding him healed his wounds, he was still losing blood from every gaping slice in his skin, and his constant mobility was only helping to pump it out faster. He pushed himself shakily to his knees, and managed to get one foot beneath him before the king's blade came arching above him. He blocked it with his own matching sword, forced all his strength upward, away from himself and toward the king's chest, and managed to shove him away. It won him just enough time to get back up again.
Endymion chuckled darkly. He had barely a mark on him to show for their fight. "You surprise me, Mamoru. All I've told you, and still you fight back? A few days ago, you were practically throwing yourself at your enemies over one tiny lover's quarrel." He spun on his toes, aimed a backslash at his glowing opponent and was met with resistance from his twin sword. The prince gritted his teeth, struggling against the king's force. The purple-haired man sneered. "You would think, knowing that you are the cause of all this misery, that your very existence brings nothing but pain to those you love, that you would accept this. I would have thought that you would understand our position, here. I would have thought that you would value your loved ones more than yourself. I'm not doing this for myself, Mamoru. I'm doing it for the people you're so fond of protecting."
Though Mamoru wasn't about to admit it out loud, the king did have a point, in his own really obnoxious sort of way. If what everything he said was true - and really, what good would it do for him to lie? - then what was the purpose of fighting back? If he loved Usako, and Chibiusa, and the Shitennou as much as he said he did, wasn't it better just to let the King off him, than stay around on this mortal coil and screw everything up for the people he cared about? Why was he fighting?
"Maybe I don't believe you," Mamoru snapped. "Maybe…maybe I think you're full of shit, and maybe you aren't even my future self!"
Endymion stared at him in disbelief. "God, was I ever really that stupid?"
"Hey--"
"You don't believe I'm really your future self, huh? Then how would I know that up until the age of eight, you couldn't get into a car without screaming? That you used to sit next to Tanaka Yuuko every day in third year of junior high, not because you especially liked her, but she smelled just like your mother? That right when you died before Usako's eyes, the Golden Crystal held tightly in Galaxia's claws, your last thought was 'I really should have taken out that life insurance policy?' That--"
"Okay! Okay, I get it already!" Mamoru pinched the bridge of his nose. While a simple clone might know about their battles, might even know the civilian identities of the Senshi, there was no way of knowing such intimate details of his childhood (and what he was thinking at the exact moment he died in the airport). Unless…
"So, are you done putting up a fight yet?" the king queried. "I'm getting awfully sick of waiting around to die."
Mamoru hesitated, and he would be lying to himself if he did not admit that he was seriously considering it. But it seemed... odd, somehow, to fight so long, to come so far, only to meet such an anticlimactic end. If he gave up now, then what was the point of any of that? Why had he struggled through the past three days, shed blood, sweat, tears, if all it meant was that he was prolonging the inevitable? He had faced this same decision before. In the playground, with the little lolita girl and her oversized butter knife, he had tried to give up. But in the end the choice had been taken out of his hands, hadn't it? The lethal blow that had been intended for him had been stopped. Because Kunzite had taken it for him, just as any of his Shitennou would have done. Kunzite, who had jumped in front of him without hesitation. Kunzite, who daily endured his own internal battles, just to be with his Prince again.
"If I did that..." Mamoru said softly, so softly that the other Endymion could barely hear him. He twisted the hilt of his sword beneath his hands--when had they parted blades, anyway?--and stared down at the ornate design in the metal. "If I did that," he repeated carefully, as though to keep the tremor from his voice, "then what would happen to them? You make it all sound so neat and painless--take me out of the timeline and everything will be perfect again. You're right, Usako will be fine. She'll always be fine. And she'll always have exactly the kind of support she needs, no matter what happens to me. But you said nothing about them. They wouldn't be, would they? This would kill them... beginning with Malachi. I don't even want to think about what would happen to him... to them."
The king sneered. "You would rather they suffer?"
"They would suffer more without me! You can't pretend that they wouldn't. To me I'm nothing; my life would mean nothing compared to this planet and the people around me. But I mean everything to them. I'm everything that they live for. If I were to die... they would not even hesitate to follow me. And that's just not a decision that I can make. I would sacrifice myself. But them... I can't sacrifice them."
The purple-haired king shook his head incredulously. "It's easy to forget that I was ever such a child. You have not even learned yet that the lives of four people are nothing compared to the wellbeing of many. You cannot even begin to understand how little they are truly worth in the grand scheme of things."
"I also fail to understand how I could ever become someone who thinks so little of the people who fight for him," Mamoru snapped, his loathing of his future self growing by the minute.
The king shrugged. "What can I say? Rule the planet for a couple hundred years, and you start thinking a little differently."
"Then I'll hope to never become what you are."
The future Endymion raised his sword again. "Oh, trust me, Mamoru. You won't."
-----
Kunzite stepped over the yellow tape and kicked the charred door rudely aside, causing it to lurch on its single unbroken hinge. Everything inside was blackened, wood reduced to splinters, metal twisted into knots, plastic bottles melted into surfaces. A normal human being caught in such a blast would have been, at the very least, seriously injured. At most... well, it was fortunate that they had a very durable Prince. The destroyed air vent gaped at the back, appearing suspiciously large, and he passingly wondered whether anyone had questioned why a utility closet required an air vent large enough to fit a grown man inside. He vaguely thought that perhaps they should track down some blueprints to see whether any other suspicious passageways led to the underground base, but at the moment he had much more urgent matters to attend to.
"Hold on!" Zoisite snapped, grabbing his uninjured arm. "You're not going down there first."
The white-haired man shook off the small blonde. "Like hell I'm not." Ignoring further protests, he hesitated only a second on the crumbling edge of the dark, yawning hole at his feet, before stepping neatly off the floor, and vanishing in a swirl of cape.
"Is he fucking mental?" Jadeite shouted, stumbling over the yellow tape as he nearly got his foot caught in it. "There could be anything waiting for him at the bottom of that vent! Wouldn't it be a good idea to, I don't know, check it out first?"
"You're right, Jadeite," Nephrite confirmed, hobbling over the tape. "We should have sent you down first as a test dummy. Then at least it wouldn't be any real loss if there were danger at the bottom."
"Oh, ha ha. Watch me fall over with laughter. Just don't complain to me when we're short one leader."
-----
He landed, catlike, on his feet, but not without lurching to his knee, clutching his broken shoulder. Kunzite hissed a curse under his breath. Okay, so maybe Zoisite had been partially right about keeping it immobile. Banging his way down an air vent was not exactly the wisest thing to do to his injury, especially with his sling removed. But he would not be letting the blonde know that he had been right any time soon, and it was not the time to be worrying about himself just yet. He hastily got to his feet and moved away from the vent, for fear that someone else would come crashing on top of his head, and began to investigate his surroundings.
What he saw brought on a much louder and more colorful curse.
It was nearly pitch dark down here, but his eyes adjusted quickly (having power over darkness carried some advantages, after all). But even with the benefit of sight, the situation remained frustrating. Nothing but archways in every direction, each one as dark as the next. And no clue as to which one lead where. He had accompanied his Prince down here the first time, but he had been sitting in his pocket at the time, and thus missed out on seeing the direction he had taken. Kunzite turned furiously, staring at each archway in turn, as though some clue could tell him what direction Mamoru had taken, but every one of them looked infuriatingly alike, and the purple light that had first attracted the dark-haired man down one of them was nowhere to be seen.
He glared up at the vent he had recently vacated, clenching his jaw to keep from shouting up at it that they had better hurry up and get the fuck down here, or they would be paying for it when they finally did.
Fortunately, they were saved from their imminent rebuking, as a shrieking Jadeite came rumbling down the vent, landing squarely on his solar plexus, in what could have been his greatest unintentional belly flop (at least since that time they had the inflatable pool out in the courtyard). For their parts, Nephrite and Zoisite managed the descent with a little more grace, though they definitely did not stick their landings, either.
Kunzite eyed them with no small amount of annoyance. "You know, for people who were taught to sneak up on the enemy, you guys are pretty shit at it."
"We learned from the best, you know." Nephrite brushed off his cape and straightened out his jacket cuffs, trying to regain some of his dignity (which is hard to do, when you end up landing quite primly on your rump).
The chocolate-haired guardian did his best to examine the locale, though he himself did not have the benefit of night time vision. It was, to say the least, a very strange sort of nostalgia. He knew this place, suddenly; the blueprints unfolded in his mind as though he had simply found them in the record room. He remembered being here, remembered the way it smelled, remembered the way everything felt damp and moldy, remembered "do not fail me again, Nephrite, or I will not hesitate to simply feed you to Metallia-sama herself!"
Zoisite noticed Nephrite's full body shudder. "Hey, man, are you--"
"Fine. I'm fine." Nephrite rubbed his forehead, as though there was a memory in there that was trying to physically work its way out, and he was pressing it back with two fingers. "It's nothing."
The small blonde didn't believe him for one second. Before he could offer any sympathetic words, however, Kunzite took off down the hall, suddenly struck with an idea - or maybe just a late onset of complete madness, no one was entirely sure.
"Hey!" Jadeite exclaimed, finally getting to his feet. "Christ, man, could we at least execute a plan before you--"
"Either get off your asses and follow me or go home!" the white haired man bellowed, disappearing into one of the many divergent hallways.
The three remaining guardians exchanged a look of sheer exasperation, shaking their heads.
"Next time we see the Prince, I'm having a serious talk with him about this whole 'Kunzite is the esteemed leader' business," Jadeite groused, as they all proceeded to chase down the aforementioned esteemed leader, not knowing what, exactly, he'd just gotten them into.
"Kunzite, for fuck's sake!" Zoisite shouted, doing his very best to catch up with him.
"Nephrite, doesn't this hall..." Jadeite panted, catching what glimpses he dared of the doorways that opened onto blackness on either side.
"Yeah, it does." The brunette wheezed back, somehow managing to keep pace with him. "Don't know how Kunzite knew that, though."
Kunzite should have known better than to try and outrun a small, enraged blonde whose patron animal was a firebird, because somehow Zoisite's shorter legs carried him within reach of his white-haired leader, at which point he grabbed a fistful of brown cape that trailed behind him and pulled as hard as his thin body would allow. The effect achieved by this was that Kunzite was very nearly strangled by his own momentum, and stopped short to prevent such a thing from happening.
"Just what, may I ask, are you doing?" The white-haired man rounded on Zoisite.
"Getting you to listen, since you have apparently gone entirely deaf today. Has it ever occurred to you that we might do with some kind of plan of action before we go running into the unknown? And what makes you think you have any idea of where you're going?"
Kunzite glared at the other Shitennou as though they had overlooked some incredibly obvious thing. "You can't tell me you don't feel that."
Zoisite wanted to snap something sarcastic back, but his leader's words were like opening a door he had forgotten was there. And on the other side of the door was... light. Warm, living light that danced and flickered like the flame of a candle, so completely real that he could almost see it there in that dark hallway. Why hadn't he noticed before...?
"He's been blocking our senses, somehow." Kunzite answered, as though reading what was on all of their minds. "He's been keeping himself hidden from us so we wouldn't do exactly what we're doing now. Now you can go ahead and keep bickering with me, but somewhere down that hall the Prince is fighting on his own, and I've got a feeling that he's in no shape to be doing it."
He was met with silence, which Kunzite took to be unanimous agreement. With a stern look that said they would be wise not to be questioning his sanity in the near future, he recovered his cape from Zoisite's grasp and took off at a brisk pace down the shadowy hall.
It was a long, narrow passage, which met up with a second one on the far end, creating an L shape. When he made it around the corner, the other Shitennou well behind him now, something struck him square in the chest. White hot pain exploded in his shoulder as he was thrown back against the wall, a yelp escaping his lips. He staggered, his legs nearly giving out beneath him, but the pain resounding through his body did nothing to prepare him for what he saw when he looked up at his assailant.
A figure loomed over him, silhouetted against some dim, flickering light that trailed from around the corner. He was a tall, imposing person, with a cape draping from his shoulders to the floor and long, straight hair framing his face. His lips curled in a humorless sneer at Kunzite, whose stomach curdled as he thought that he had walked into one of his own most terrifying nightmares. No words would come to his throat, but in his mind all he could think was//how did he get out? How could he--/
"Miss me?" Staring at him with quicksilver eyes, glinting like the shine on the edge of tempered steel, was the other side of the looking glass. Kunzite, Lord of the Dark Kingdom, Feared Taskmaster, and All Around Unfriendly Bastard. He seemed bigger, more imposing than Kunzite himself ever remembered - he had apparently been quite the intimidating sight. His face was impassive, sharp features set in a neutral mask, apparently not too concerned with the damage he had cause his other half, or the unparalleled ruckus going on behind him.
Kunzite rubbed in vain at his now reinjured shoulder, wishing that maybe he'd listened to Zoisite just this once - much too late for that now, though. He hissed through his teeth at the white hot ache, a noise that gave his unfriendly other half a reason to smirk.
"I'll take that as a no."
"Why are you here?" Kunzite tried to stand, but the Dark Kingdom minion anticipated the move, and before he could even register any movement, he was on the receiving end of a rock hard punch to his throbbing shoulder, which sent him sailing backwards again with a grunt, this time sliding all the way to the floor.
His other self looked down with a certain sense of satisfaction, but was not given the time to respond - whatever biting remark he had in mind was interrupted by the clatter of boots around the corner, and a chorus of horrified gasps.
Even in the darkness, the trio could see the scene with horrifying clarity. Their leader, slumped against the wall, in obvious pain. And towering over him, a figure that looked, for a moment, like he was also their leader. His silver hair glistened as he turned his head, and he fixed them with steel grey eyes that caused an ice cold fist to clench in their guts. Jadeite and Zoisite stood frozen, unable to speak or breathe, but Nephrite pushed past them both, immediately on the offensive.
Red flashed for a moment, somewhere near his forehead, and then it turned to white, and suddenly he was standing behind the form of an immense ethereal tiger. It flicked its tail, ears back, eyeing the person before it with sharp, metallic eyes.
Somehow Zoisite managed to snap out of his initial shock. "Nephrite, wait! What if it's not--"
"I'm not waiting to find out," the brunette answered grimly, and the tiger began to charge.
It was as fast as, well, as fast as the wind. Giant and ferocious and little more than a blur in that narrow tunnel, it moved so fast that Kunzite, whoever or whatever he was, would barely have had time to dodge. But he didn't dodge.
He smirked.
As the tiger neared, the grey-eyed man swung a fist, rolling his body away from where the creature would have struck. With a terrible roar, the ghostly feline was flung against the wall as easily as the other, wounded Kunzite had been, and promptly vanished in a coil of wind.
He turned back to face the three remaining Shitennou. "Nice to see you, too."
"Why you--" Nephrite, not waiting long enough to be stunned, launched right into a good old fashioned physical assault. He lunged at the doppelganger, fist at the ready--
--which found itself in a vice strong grip, as easily as a fly ball caught on the baseball field.
The Kunzite double shook his head. "Still too slow, Nephrite. Much too slow."
Nephrite growled in response, trying to wrench his hand away, but the more he pulled, the harder his opponent clamped down on it. He tried another tactic - dropping low, he swung out his legs and attempted to trip Kunzite - but Kunzite thought faster, and before Nephrite had even connected the blow, he found a knee connecting sharply with his spine, and a sheet of blinding pain across his vision. Not one to let a victim go so easily, Kunzite grabbed the smaller Shitennou by his neck (unkind even in normal fighting circumstances, downright cruel on this day), and, hauling him to his feet like a rag doll, simply smashed his skull against a nearby pillar.
"Okay, jackoff, that's quite enough." Jadeite was not going to let that slide, no sir, and before you could say 'oh, come, now, there's no need for name-calling', the blonde had already summoned a very large, very angry water dragon. It sent a spray of sharp, cold mist through the air, but when it veered off to the side at the last second and dissipated into the air, the Dark Kingdom lord was ready with a derisive laugh.
"Still can't fight worth shit, can you, Jadeite?" he spat. "You honestly think you can knock me out that way?"
Jadeite, for his own part, was grinning from ear to ear. "Wasn't trying to, asshole."
Before he could even manage a 'huh?', the water dragon had reformed right over his head, and seeming to grin its own triumphant grin, executed a very remarkable piledriver that left their once exultant opponent in a heap on the floor - and, if one listened hard enough, one could almost swear he was whimpering.
Meanwhile, almost entirely oblivious to the two concurrent fights, Zoisite was tending to the real Kunzite, who was still in immeasurable pain.
"Just had to take the sling off, didn't you," Zoisite reproved, though it was mostly a weary resignation, not an actual reprimand. He gently prodded at his friend's collar bone, and could not hide a wince when Kunzite visibly bit back a pained yelp. "What'd he do to you, anyway?"
"Hit me," he managed to grind out over clenched teeth. "Knew just where, too. Something very fishy about it."
"You little bitch." The mysterious double stirred on the floor as Jadeite helped a groaning and coughing Nephrite to his feet. Still gasping for breath and looking like he was going to be sick with every heave of his chest, he pulled away from the blonde and grasped at the wall. Jadeite thought he could see blood glistening in his long hair, but it was hard to tell in this light. "Jadeite... don't... don't stop. Gotta... take him out."
"You might want to listen to him." The doppelganger sat up, an unpleasant smirk on his lips. He casually inspected his left hand, where blood showed beneath the cuff of his sleeve. As if fearing nothing from his potential opponent, he took a moment to lift the hand to his mouth and lick some of the blood away.
"Well, shit," the blonde muttered, not entirely sure he had any more tricks up his sleeve. His dragon appeared again, hissing vehemently at its still-standing opponent. It slithered rapidly through the air, poised to strike.
The double was on his feet with lighting speed, and when the water serpent struck, he was ready. There was a tremendous crash, like the sound of an immense wave falling, and the next thing that anyone knew, the dragon was struggling and thrashing about with the second Kunzite's hand clenched around its throat.
"Oh, you have got to be shitting me!" Jadeite gaped as he watched his creature--his own creature that was composed purely of water, mind you--helpless in the grip of the second Kunzite.
With a flick of his wrist and a cruel smile, the doppelganger snapped the water dragon's neck, and it dissipated in a cold spray. The hallway was deadly silent for a few too long moments, everyone taking stock of the others, trying to find a weakness, a next move.
Zoisite shot a conflicted look at his leader, who still could not stand up, try though he might. Kunzite waved him on with his good hand, a clear invitation to 'go kick some butt already, I'll languish here on the floor, no big.' So it was with the intention to kick butt that with clap of his hands -- "and I swear to God, if one person makes a comment about fairies, I'm going to dance on their spleen" - and in a flash of heat, a firebird sprang to life out of the concrete. It was seconds away from taking flight when a familiar scream stopped the little blonde dead in his tracks, the firebird gone in a hiss of smoke.
"Prince!" The reaction was like a reflex - in their varying states of injury, each of them lunged for the unprotected doorway. Not one of them reached it before the Dark Kingdom lord, however, and with a simple shrug, he sent them all flying. Four distinct groans brought another pleased smile to his face.
"Not today, lads. I'm here for crowd control. Been given very strict instructions for you not to interfere." The double circled the four prone forms, kicking his better half in the shoulder just to hear him scream in pain. "Tsk, you've gotten soft. I'd never scream like that…"
"Good thing I'm not you, then," Kunzite hissed, desperately trying to get to his feet. Zoisite scrambled toward him with intent to help, but was intercepted by another careless shrug by the doppelganger. The small blonde shrieked as he was sent flying into the darkness of the unlit hallway, and hit something hard with an unhappy thud.
The white haired leader growled low in his throat. "I am so sick of you, you know that?"
"Never would have guessed. Come on, kid, are you going to stand and fight, or just languish on the ground? Your Prince--"
"Don't you say one word about my Prince."
A clever retort seemed ready on the doppelganger's lips, but Kunzite was ready for it. Out of the infinite shadows to his left came two sparkling eyes, and then--
A bone crunching sound, like a building being toppled, shook all the walls and sent debris falling from the roof. To his credit, the tortoise smiled serenely down at its creator, having executed a brilliant belly flop right on their foe. He could be heard screaming muffled obscenities from beneath the creature's underbelly, but try though he might, he could neither make it move nor escape its brute force. Kunzite knew its longevity was limited, and this was their chance to get in. They had one shot.
"In or out, guys, we need to go now!" Against his better judgment, he used both arms to vault to his feet. The resultant pain was just about enough to kill him where he stood, but he'd suffered worse and would probably again. There was no longer time to be wasted. This ended now.
-----
"It's been fun, Mamoru," said the King, easily dodging a clumsy thrust, "but this has to end now."
Mamoru said nothing in reply, but continued to swing. It was now easier to ask where he wasn't injured - what remained of his clothes held itself together by a few haggard seams and buttons. His cape had been cut nearly in half, dangling by a few stubborn threads. His armor looked like it had just been salvaged from the junkyard. A cut from his forehead to his chin looked like it could split his face in two if a stiff breeze came along. He was a dead man walking.
But at least he was still walking.
---
The white-haired man lunged forward, three other Shitennou fast at his heels. At the end of the corridor he could see flickering shadows, what should have been the Beryl statue somehow changed into some grotesque abstract shape. And then two forms danced into view before it--a dark silhouette that was a stranger to him, and a second one of golden light, whose aura looked dimmer than it should have been, and who looked like he should not have been standing.
"Prince!" Kunzite redoubled his efforts, every part of his body screaming in protest, his eyes never leaving his Prince-
He struck something with all the unrelenting solidity of a concrete wall, unable to stop the shout of pain as his shoulder grinded with the impact. He sank to his knees against the corner--where the real stone wall met the invisible barrier he had collided with, very much defeated. "Prince--oh fuck." He leaned his head against the transparent wall, but nothing would make it any less tangible and solid, and still he could see, tauntingly close, his Prince bleeding and hurt and entirely on his own.
"Oh no..." Zoisite put his fingertips to the barrier, as though watching his friend make a very painful collision with it was not enough to verify its existence. Touching it was like touching the clearest, coldest glass.
Jadeite forced himself to turn his back to the barrier and to the sight of his Prince and that ominous foe, before their own adversary took advantage of their grief. What he saw made his heart drop into his knees. "Guys"
Their opponent was already on his feet, which would have been expected, if Kunzite's tortoise had disappeared. But... it had not yet disappeared. The strange man had somehow pulled himself out from beneath its immense bulk--so immense, in fact, that a good portion of it seemed to disappear into the wall--and was standing before the creature's massive head, and--Jadeite could think of no reason for it--petting the thing. In a way that could almost be called loving, his hand moved up and down the tortoise's black jeweled beak. The tortoise opened its incredible wisely smiling beak, just as Jadeite had seen it do to devour their enemies, and then proceeded to nip playfully at his hair.
"What the hell are you?" Nephrite growled.
"It's a funny thing about tortoises," the doppelganger stated conversationally, as the black giant nudged at his cheek. "They don't see incredibly well. They aren't able to, for example, judge eye color. And yet they can navigate themselves with greater precision than any man-made device ever could. This is because they employ senses that humankind cannot even begin to fathom. They sense things that people do not." The tortoise gave a final affectionate nip at his bangs before vanishing into the darkness.
"You aren't Beryl's Kunzite," Zoisite said slowly, reluctant to take his eyes off of Mamoru for one instant.
The double smiled his unpleasant smile. "He tried, sometimes, to summon her, but she would never come to him. If he had succeeded, likely she would have crushed him. She never did much like the Dark Kingdom." It took Jadeite a moment to realize that "she" was the tortoise, and it was a strange sort of revelation to realize that Kunzite's pet monster was female. He supposed he had never bothered to ask before. "If your apparent leader had been a little bit wiser, he would have figured out immediately that there are very firm seals in that part of his mind that would have set off warning bells if they were disturbed.
Zoisite dared to glance at the aforementioned leader, wondering how he was taking this, but he seemed not to hear a word of it. His eyes were riveted on the battle raging beyond the barrier. "Prince..." he muttered through gritted teeth.
His twin sighed. "Oh dear, did I break him already? He's certainly much weaker than I expected"
"You didn't answer my question," Nephrite said sharply. He looked like he had recovered slightly from the struggle, as he was no longer leaning on the wall for support. "What are you, just another clone"
"Haven't you noticed," the doppelganger replied, "that every clone you have encountered is nothing more than some inferior mutation of the original, and not at all a perfect copy?" He smirked. "As you can see, the inferior one in this room is certainly not me"
"I really hate to break it to you, buddy, but you've got pink hair. That? That is pretty damn inferior." It had been so hard to see it through the darkness, but as the only light in the place--that golden, flickering light that ever reminded them of how desperate they were to get to their Prince--moved into just the right places, they could see the pinkish tint near the doppelganger's scalp, fading into the colorless white that they were so familiar with as it neared the tips.
The man ran his fingers through his hair. "I rather like it, myself."
No one seemed much interested, though, and an unsettling quiet settled over everything, punctuated only by the deadened clanks and clangs of a swordfight slowly being lost. Mamoru had clearly been fighting a long, long time - if he doesn't die, I'm going to kill him, thought Kunzite sharply - and whoever this enemy was, they clearly knew his every move before he even made it. That, too, seemed strange. Just like…
"Amazing, isn't he? Not your Prince, don't be silly, I mean him." The Dark Kingdom lord pointed to the silhouette, with an undeniable reverence. "He's everything your precious Mamoru always had the capacity for, but refused to be. Ruthless. Vengeful. Brilliantly cruel. It's a shame they both have to go."
"What?" The stunned query came from four places at once, every Shitennou trying to piece that information together.
Zoisite got his act together first. "You don't mean--"
"What, he's fighting himself? You can't honestly expect me to believe you didn't see it coming." Mamoru screamed as his opponent took a cheap shot at his legs, slicing near through his calves, sending him toppling to the floor. The sight brought a happy sigh to the doppelganger's lips. "Taught him everything I know. Beautiful, just beautiful. And the end must be in sight, if he's playing that dirty."
"PRINCE!" Though it was futile and he knew it, Kunzite pounded on the barrier with one hand, desperate to make any noise, cause just the tiniest splinter that would open the barrier up, to show his Prince they were there, he wasn't going to die, he wasn't… "Prince, please, hang on! We're coming! Mamoru!"
"Soundproof, my little cabbage. Good college try, though. The punching was a nice touch." Kunzite was now face to face with himself, a snake's grin on the mirror's surface. "Does it hurt, knowing you can't help? That he's maybe got a minute left, and you're over here, crippled and whimpering? Does it wound you to your very core? I certainly hope so."
"You foul, disgusting waste of oxygen. Even Hell wouldn't take you."
His double smiled nastily. "That's why they gave me to you."
"There must be something we can do," Jadeite whispered to Zoisite, his level of panic rising with every syllable. "Can't we attack the barrier with all we've got? Bam, bam! Tiger, tortoise, a little dragon for good measure, crack it wide open?"
"And risk it ricocheting back on us?"
"It's our only shot, Zoisite! I'm not just going to stand idly by while--"
"NO!"
All strategizing was interrupted by Nephrite's sudden outburst - Kunzite had to look away from the staredown --
"Oh my God. Prince!"
-----
Mamoru struggled to get to his feet, but it was absolutely no use, not with the King standing on his chest, all of his weight leaned in. It was certainly not helping the breathing process, either.
"Game over, I win. Or I lose. Or both!" The king leaned over his younger self, a weary smile on his face. "You fought hard. I didn't realize I had that much in me when I was younger. It's a shame it never did anybody any good."
Desperately defiant to the last, though he could not stand and fight anymore, Mamoru did the one thing he'd been wanting to do all evening - he spat directly in Endymion's face, all the better because his mouth was full of blood. For his part, the king simply wiped a glove across his face, acquiring all sorts of very icky colors.
"Trust me, I've had a lot worse thrown in my face the last six hundred years." As though he was picking up a wayward shovel, the king kicked Mamoru harshly in the chest, just to get his momentum going, and ignoring the desperate body-wracking coughs, grabbed the younger prince by his throat and squeezed just a little too tight.
Mamoru did not want to think 'so this is the end.' He wanted to believe that he'd suddenly get another surge of energy, refreshed and renewed, and he'd just blow his future self's head off like a piñata at a birthday party. But above all else, Mamoru was a realistic guy. The King had done this on purpose. He had worn his past self down to the end of his last reserve, that not even the Crystal could hope to refill now. He could barely think, let alone fight back. The best he could do was glare defiantly to the last.
"I hope you know," he said weakly, stifled by the king's hand, "how much you're going to hurt Usako. How deeply you're going to break her. I hope, in this minute, you think about her, up in that room with the rabbits and pink sheets, every last bit of her innocence, crying herself dry. The girl we'd give anything for, just to make sure she never cried or wanted for anything. I hope the image of her makes your last minutes in this timeline the most unbearable of anything you've ever imagined."
"I don't have to imagine the unbearable, Mamoru. I lived it. I was cursed with longevity for the sake of my planet, and I'm going to save that planet as the last thing I ever do." There was something in the king's eyes - just the tiniest glint of honest to God remorse. "Usako will pick up the pieces. She fought Galaxia, for Christ's sake, with no one by her side, with only the strength of her will. But I have only ever brought her suffering. It's over. Yours, mine, hers. Over."
Surprisingly, the last thing Mamoru heard was a desperate, almost throaty "I'm sorry, Mamoru." And then--
The king clenched his free hand into fist and literally put it through Mamoru's chest - there was no blood, no ripping of flesh, he simply pushed his way through as though the black haired man had simply been made out of cardboard. Mamoru let out an ear-shattering scream as the king reached further, grabbing for something, rummaging around as though in a box in someone's attic. Finally, deep within the ribcage, still a little warm - the Golden Crystal.
Over the sound of his own screams, a voice that both was and was not his own flooded his head in the most deafening of whispers. "I'll let you have this one parting gift, Mamoru. Look to your right. Look at them just one last time."
How he could have done it, with the immeasurable pain and the ice cold hand clamped around the center of his very being, he could not imagine. But somehow his head rolled to the side. Somehow his eyes opened. Somehow he could see, through the light of his own soul flickering on their horrified faces, his four guardians, frozen in fear, watching him take his final breaths. And the last thing that Chiba Mamoru ever did, before the end came, was beg--his future self, fate, or any invisible entity that may have been listening--that they would not have to watch it happen.
But they did.
The King's hand tightened into an iron grip around the Golden Crystal, and Mamoru's breath froze in his throat, his mouth open in a final, silent scream. "Goodbye, Mamoru." And in one single motion, the Golden Crystal was ripped from his chest.
His body seemed, to Kunzite, to fall in slow motion. His eyes rolled up and his head tilted back, his arms fell slack at his sides and his legs lost their strength, or their will, to stay up. And then he hit the floor, with what appeared to be such a painful, undignified crash that Kunzite nearly winced, as though he actually thought that Mamoru could feel either of these things. The heap of fallen Prince lay at the King's feet, and did not move again. Above, an immaculate golden flower bloomed in the King's hand--the golden crystal, in all it's unbridled glory. It was the only source of light in that vast hall, and it cast the scene in a surreal, unearthly glow.
It seemed, for a moment, that the whole world held its breath.
Kunzite did not remember feeling the barrier vanish before him, only that he was scrambling forward--first on his knees, then lurching to his feet--all his senses numbed, and the form of his Prince getting closer and closer. And then he was there, and scooping him up in his one good arm, cradling his head in his lap. It was okay, now. He was here, and it was going to be okay, just like it always was...
Zoisite knelt beside his Prince, and all he could see were his partially lidded eyes, and their vacant blue depths gazing out at nothing. He pressed a tentative hand to Mamoru's throat, paused as long as he could hold his breath. And then he pulled his hand back as though burned, and clasped it to his mouth instead.
"Zoisite," Jadeite half-whispered, as though fearing that he would wake their Prince, "is he...?"
Zoisite shook his head, and tears were already streaming down his face. "There's no pulse," he uttered between knitted fingers.
Nephrite stumbled back, away from the very real nightmare before him, away from his greatest horror come true. He turned and saw the King, who had released the Golden Crystal and allowed it to hover between them, the light blinding the brunette partially obscuring the other man so he appeared to barely exist at all. Leaning against what remained of the shattered statue, he seemed impassive to all that was happening. He was seeing their grief, and seeing him, and he didn't care at all.
Suddenly every ounce of pain inside Nephrite turned to blinding rage, and he sprang upon the lavender-haired King with a snarl no less terrifying than if his tiger had uttered it. He aimed his fist for the very center of the King's face, swinging with the weight of his entire body.
His knuckles collided with solid marble, shattering its surface and nearly shattering his hand in the process. He stared, stunned, seeing his hand running straight through the center of the King's head up to the wrist. He could even see its outline, and it was becoming more visible by the second. He pulled his hand out, and saw that the King was no longer as tangible, as real, as he had once been. He looked at Nephrite with weary, sober eyes. "Your Prince is dying, Nephrite. And so am I."
-------------------------
So.
Hi, everybody.
We bet you've been wondering where we've been, and why this took us so damn long.
If it's any consolation, Anne got a 4.0 last quarter? ...We thought not.
In the event that you have questions about this chapter or the one that follows - sorry. We're not spoiling a darn thing, because that's no fun at all. However, we promise it will not, we repeat, will -not- take us six months to finish the next chapter and explain everything you want to know and stuff.
Thanks for your patience, everybody. We hope this was worth your wait.
(PS: To Shabopo - yes, Anne does indeed live in the Bay Area, also about 10-15 minutes from Palo Alto. Should you want to know exaclty where, please don't hesitate to harrass her via email.)
