Chapter 32: The Fruit of Love Creates a A Seed of War
"What is that?" Sailor Moon looked wide-eyed at the tree.
Eris laughed. "Let me borrow the seed's powers to show you the ugly truth of the war you started a long, long time ago..."
Her staff with it's encased gem seemed to open to reveal what seemed like an ornament apple, golden, breaking into slices as if it had been cut to eat to reveal it's ruby centre. There the seeds, the demon seeds of war glowed until the room was covered in black light and it's looming shadows.
And there, like a memory they saw the past unfolded in front of them:
"I used to go as Erida, the princess of the planet of Eris, but my brother, the first born by seconds, Aris was the one who was our leader– a winner of war, and a man whose powers like mine were made for destruction – senshi were meant to control darkness, but we've rejected that notion for too long. Whatever obstacle, it would crumble to dust with our powers...discord, the immense scream of death, the Symphony of Discordia! I watched from the sidelines, oh so removed. Minor Senshi. Sideline senshi. My brother, who loved to take on the face of the Moon's minor wars and strife...to show his prowess as a soldier left our planet to serve for yours; Like the others, I too knew what it meant to be a part of the kingdom...it meant grasping onto whatever weak validation you could find in your claim to the power and respect that should be HANDED to you as a senshi, as planetary royalty...it meant taking a role on the sidelines putting your powers to work. Long story short... I remember when the first threat of war hit ...a strange war... that was not just a war of good and evil. It was a war of the evil that had formed beneath the guise of the utopia of the Moon that had grown and found home from that rogue planet Earth. This tree of war is the child of the Moon and Earth the first sign of what was the end.
Love was made out to be a just and noble thing when it was the act of foolish love that created the demon of war itself.
Or rather... the blood of this tree. The blood that still runs in its veins, its roots. I came to the Moon to surprise my brother one evening only to find that a surprise attack had been set out on the castle and my brother had been on the front line.
In the gardens of the Moon Kingdom's castle I found his blood and the blood of fifteen other men seeping into the fertile soil of a lonely patch of garden.
The war had taken their souls. They're bodies nothing left then the blood water that turned the ground red.
I returned there days after. Time moved differently there. Plants grow faster...the soil different than here...but we aged slowly.
It took me those days in between to find out...what was this war really about. What had brought these men from the Earth which such passion and rage to the Moon? Why did my brother die for a Moon Kingdom that didn't care of his passing!?
It was when the seeds of a fruit unbeknownst to the Moon, native to the Earth, bloomed in the bloody soil of my brother's grave...I knew it was more that what it seemed: an apple tree began to bloom. It grew a strange colour...but the leaves on it were of apples...
A princess left her confines and took one of the few portals open on the Moon, a portal our dear Charon created into a place away from home. She tried to leave her little bird's nest for a moment, a caged pretty tiny bird that fell into the wilderness of the Earth. She found herself by the Tree of Eden, the mark of the grave of the first Princess of the Earth and before she knew it was in the presence of the Prince of that Earth; Endymion. In their infatuated exchange, she took one of it's blooms back to earth and planted it, unknowing this action would anger the hidden Beryl...the jealous girl who never was enough for the Prince Endymion. Perhaps like the jealous Diamond who fell to darkness too after being rejected from the Princess, Beryl found power in the darkest of evil places and a war began.
The reckless actions of not considering what it would mean to awaken a love that was wrought from selfishness – the Earth and the Moon, an eclipse that should never have happened. The reckless action of using Charon's teleport to visit over and over until he would be blamed for the enemy's accessibility to the Moon, and the reckless number of those who died for that selfish love, those who tried to keep the demons out. The expectation we were all to stand in the way of the enemy for the pair that created that same foe? The selfish action of putting a target on our solar system, of planting the seed of the Knowledge of War, the fruit of Eden corrupted by the two souls who let others die for their love. Who corrupted the pure seed and let it become a Jubokko...letting the blood of the men whose hearts were filled with rage...the men who were of both Moon, of Eris and of the tainted Earth turn into the tainted blood for the Kallisti Demons to be born!
An apple given to the most beautiful girl in the solar system gave birth to the demons of war.
I took the first fruit it gave me and found these demon seeds. The seeds only seem to listen to my bidding, guided by the hands of the other Minor Senshi like myself.
Like that the mirage seemed to fall down from above, as if it had been a barrier around them, dissipating, dissolving, revealing the dark liar they found themselves in before.
The scouts looked wide-eyed at it; it glowed, an odd dark aura, the blooms were of apples but were not the soft pale color of it's blooms, but deep red, like blood. Even it's leaves looked besmirched. Its roots seemed to create the appearance of hollowed skulls the way they bent – perhaps they were. They realized quickly that a snake had twisted itself around the tree, as if it was heading for Eris.
"Ah, Dysnomia you always had a way with entrances. Perfect timing." Eris smiled as the snake slithered over to her wrapping her way up the staff resting its face on her shoulder.
"It's not true." Sailor Moon blinked, pleading for a break in all of this.
"It is. In fact, my twin brother is gone because of you. A gift perhaps I am returning to you is the gift of the seeds of the fruit of war. When all of these blooms open the rest of those seeds will take more blooms; your Earth will be covered in these trees. If the humans you protect are as good as you say they will not fall victim to the seeds...their inner demons wont wake up...but of course we've seen so far they have so I suppose this is the end to that ideal space you'd like to perceive your reign to have. Everyone is still corrupt, people are still suffering; you have masked these demons with the pretty façade of the Sailor Soldiers just as you did long ago..."
"But we had no clue..." Sailor Mars dragged herself onto her elbows.
"Ignorance is bliss is it not? When the blooms open there will be a million seeds to find wind; a million hearts which can be corrupted. Even you succumb to demons of war, so I'd get of your high horse. When your world fades out we'll take over." Ixion's pride towered over her as the others came again out of shadow. "Perhaps if you give up now we'll let you save your family...or string a deal..." His cheeky smile rose; A Loki of the group. He knew well he was opening the stage to save Sailor Moon and take her as a prisoner of his power.
"None of them will join us." Sedna scowled. "Their pride is worth too much; they think they are righteous – as if it is not fair for us to rip their world apart as they did ours."
"An eye for an eye is not good logic..." Mercury called out.
"And yet when Pluto returned to us, you wanted us to give her back?" Varune raised a brow.
"Why start a war again?" Jupiter questioned.
"Because this time our war will erase your world; your world is a world that breeds war. It's a taste of your own medicine." Orcus' deep voice echoed. Dark and brooding he stood over them.
"An apple of Eden will destroy the world that created the apple of Eden: Ironic perhaps that the knowledge of forbidden love is the same as war? You corrupted the sacred fruit of the Earth." Eris proded.
"What did the Earth's people do to you exactly?" Tuxedo Mask wanted to make sure he could protect his Earth but his arms faltered under the weight of his body. The demons in raw form were powerful; too strong.
"Ah, the noble prince dare speak?" Eris smiled. "You denied the young maiden Beryl did you not? How cold must you have been? Jealousy is a flame, but a flame only starts a fire when it the fire burns with anger. Dare I mention that your Shitennou died because of you? Were turned to the darkness? Your friends became your foes? You gave a precious flower of your ancestor's most divine grave to a girl from another world; when has bringing a plant or a flower from another world ever ended well? Fiore surely attempted that and look where he is now..."
"Fiore? You..."
"I did nothing of the sorts. We hid in shadows, we watched and now we see a trend forming again...the same story really... you thought about how you could exist in your future, not about how the rest of us would have to exist when your love caused issues... somebody please, is it innocence? Or is it pure ignorance?"
Before any of the Sailor Scouts could protest a voice spoke up.
"Ignorance." Pluto's voice. Stone cold. Hard. A voice they'd only once heard briefly at the Gates of Time, when Pluto had mistaken Sailor Moon for an intruder. "I refuse to put my life down for this any longer..."
"Ah, so the girl really has taken our side." Sedna smirked.
"We'll take in a few more...if you get on your knees about it." Ixion's smirk seemed to catch from Sedna's, as his statures till loomed over Sailor Moon.
"Perhaps if they beg for their life." Orcus' deep voice wreaked of the sound of vengeance.
"Perhaps. But the question is... do you think you can face your lies now?"