Chapter Four: Sermon of Despair
The group had walked in silence for much of the way. Yamito was leading the way with Suteki close at hand and the girls had been trailing with straying expressions on their faces, some endlessly searching the new figures for some kind of deception while the others just seemed eager to arrive. It was obvious none of them entirely trusted two. The figure in the lead expected nothing less, not offering or allowing any conversation with them or even allaying their fears about his true intentions. True, his mind was dwelling on Usagi and Rei, both for separate reasons, but none of that showed in face. Conversely, Usagi and Rei were both unable to get him out of their mind, but for equally different reasons. Usagi was smitten by him, not exactly in the way that she was smitten with Mamoru – that wholesome love that lasted over millenniums and endured the harshest of trials – but rather as a sort of suppressed lust for his commanding presence, for those dark eyes that captured the strongest of wills into a net of intrigue. The most pressing question on her mind was how someone so beautiful and benevolent-looking could have such a potent and dark aura around him. It still made her feel slightly sick just being this close. But she was determined to break the paradox of Yamito.
Rei just looked on with anger, mistrust and resentment. Yamito was akin to her, to her ability to sense the unnatural and woo the flames. Yet his was a power greater than hers and that bothered her. She cringed when she thought of how the flames bowed to him, how they worshipped him when he passed, yet she could not dismiss the dark aura around him either, seeing in it a great and terrible thing that outweighed his impressive control of her beloved flame. Naturally, she felt the same things Usagi did, taken by those dark eyes and the conflict between his scarred heart and whining soul. But she would not admit those feelings even to herself, for she had to be strong in order to protect the others – to protect Usagi. Thus, she stayed a good distance from Yamito, her wine-colored eyes locked on him and not allowing even a moment for deception. She would watch him.
Suteki, meanwhile, had been walking without real purpose. He desperately wanted to tell the girls about them, to share their common experiences and somehow grow a bond that all of them desperately needed, but Yamito had forbidden it outright. It bugged him. He had always trusted in the nature of things and that honesty would always lead to a path of happiness; this outlook was only supported by the fact that he was miserable in not being able to tell the girls the truth. There was no real resentment towards Yamito about it, but he did sigh in the wake of his silence. With his arms behind his head, an air-headed look defined him to the girls and he just stared up into the warm sky, marveling at the moon that had been long lost to his own world. Sometimes he forgot how beautiful the moon was. It was good to see it again. Every once and while, he looked back to them with yearning eyes, wanting to speak, but also admiring their finer qualities. Usually Kage would have been there to stop him from such a blatant and perverted glance, but recently he had been freed of that inhibitor. Now, he was free to be as worldly as possible. Freedom was a guy's best friend.
"Have they moved?" Yamito suddenly said, breaking all of them from their trances.
They had arrived in front of the theater. It was run down and broken, with a broken sign and broken doors crying to the city for condemnation or restoration, neither of which would happen in such a packed row of equally decrepit buildings. However, due to the obsolete architecture, the archaic innovations and the status of the foundation, it was especially regarded by the passers as disgusting. It sat like an eyesore on the block. Many plays had been produced there and halfway through its existence, it became a movie theater, which then became an adult movie theater and house of ill-repute, only furthering the masses' criticism. Despite a valiant run of both highs and lows, it was now in shambles, left to be a shell forgotten in the daily passing of a million people. The only thing that had kept it from being torn down was the owner of the block, who only prolonged it because the businesses around it still trudged on day after day and any slight disturbance of the neighborhood's fickle chemistry would certainly spell disaster. The building just wasted away in neglect. It served as a torrid reminder that all things eventually decline without care.
Kurai, sitting patiently on the bench out in front of the building, had finally risen, only looking the group of curious girls long enough to recognize them before looking back to Yamito, giving him the full attention that the matter required. "Not as far as I can tell. They remain here…unmoving," he replied.
Yamito nodded shallowly and looked about. He was very grateful that Kage had filtered once more into the city and was no where to be found, for that was an element of their group that was not going to be productive and would only hinder his plan. However, a frown came to him, but only because a third of his much desired revenge was at fingertip's delight and ready for him. He was once again pressing on the thin line of alliance he still retained with Kage. That couldn't be helped. However, he also grateful for the opportunity to prove that this new world and its privileges were something handed down from the heavens themselves. He would gladly pass on this matter to the rightful defenders of this Earth.
"What about Kage-sempai?" Kurai asked and garnered all attention once more. Knowing that it was already decided that they would not speak of him, Kurai took a great step out of his character and confronted Yamito about him, if only to give the jaded young man a voice in matters that were quickly slipping away from his hands. He knew how furious Kage would be if he found out revenge was once more within his grasp and Yamito had shunned him.
No, that was an understatement. Kage would possibly break away completely at such a scandal, so Kurai was eager to advocate an alternate solution to the problem. Yet, with a stern look from Yamito and the understanding that one was as equally stubborn as the other, he sighed and looked away. Yamito was almost looking to aggravate Kage and Kurai couldn't understand why. Although he yearned to question it further, he didn't have the personality to ask.
Yamito turned to the girls without even offering an answer. Instead, he offered a warning. "What you will find in there may be more trouble than you bargain for. The four creatures you will face are powerful, treacherous and emulate the names that label them. Give them no moment to maneuver you. If you hesitate, you will perish," he said, gravely and with no reservations. The warning warranted questioning glances, but he merely stepped aside and showed them a loose board on the front doors, pulling it aside to provide entrance and a final offering, "I wish you luck."
Not one of them worked this way and the girls knew it, not moving from their places and opposing the three young men with fervent objections that lingered as silence over their troubled eyes. This was a place of unstable ground, and Rei was the first to object. "You expect us to just go into this place on your word only and, should we find these creatures, destroy them without appeal? That's not how we do things! How do we know this isn't a trap?" she declared and stepped closer to him, for dual purposes, her eyes locked in his as a test of her resolve and control. Yet, Yamito just stared at her, saying nothing.
This was a great leap of faith. Under normal circumstances, the obvious conclusion would have been to suspect a trap as Rei had said, but Usagi was lost in the thrill of it. Her mind had been stewing with the thoughts of him, for those dark eyes that seemed to pierce all that they gazed on. She could offer no protest and slowly looked from Yamito to the entrance into the theater, trying to ignore the beating of her heart at the thought of it. Mysterious stranger with dark eyes. Foreboding enemy in a dark place waiting for them. Conflict between one she loved and one she could no longer keep from her mind. It was intoxicating and viciously undermining to reason.
Before any of the others could give her protest as well, she slipped into the shadows, making her way on blind faith that Yamito was telling them the truth. Shock overcame the others, glancing between each other, but then quickly followed, with Rei in the lead. Only the cats and the strangers were left outside, one looking awkwardly at the other.
"Are you telling us everything, Kurobashi-san?" Luna said, her voice reflecting the concern and the restlessness in her heart.
Luna's apparent suspicions caused Yamito to glance down at her, his lips pressing and his eyes slipping that hidden sadness to the surface, if only for a moment. The resemblance was startling. Even though he felt that he could trust Luna just as he had trusted Anul, Yamito moved from the mangled door and felt easier in a shadow, shaded from full sight and able to let out a sigh in response to the question.
In the end, he did not even attempt to answer, but rather retreated to his mind, to play out the thousands of horrors that were sure to happen in the belly of the theater. Those girls would find out soon enough just how much of the truth he had told.
A stale musk was thick in the theater, so thick that it was like pushing through a dense fog along a riverside at night. Dust burned their noses as they walked through the hollowed place, but it was so dark that any threat would be hard to defend against. So far they had only seen the dead remnant of the lobby, with faded posters and windows too far gone to attend to. Several hallways led off in different directions, but most were either cluttered with rubble or clutter that walking down them would have meant stirring the innards of this waning beast and possibly disturbing their allotted foe. Yet, the lobby was cramped and only had one real hallway, one that led deeper into the building, sloping downward towards an all-intending darkness that could not escape their view. Hopefully, these enemies would be in a wider area with more lighting.
Usagi was now Eternal Sailor Moon and she walked cautiously, her heart lodged firmly in her throat. Even though she had been through so much, there was still an element of fear that snuck across her skin when she went headlong into situations like this. The things that waited in darkness were always more terrible when standing in the light, when the illumination controlled the eyes and the shadows moved around them. Indeed, a terrible fear snuck into her; a fear that she would slip into that darkness, but it was soon cast away with the sounds of her friends. She wasn't alone.
"Do you really think they were telling us the truth?" Super Sailor Mercury asked as she came up next to her, as tense as Sailor Moon but equally assured by the proximity of the others. The transparent visor was flittering with indicators as her computer tried to find these Priests, giving her twice the amount to look at, yet she managed flawless between the two planes of sight. Yet, so far she hadn't had much luck.
"I think Yamito-san was telling the truth. Whoever hurt all those people are in here; I just know it," she replied, firm in her belief that she could rely on the sadness in those dark eyes as gauges for his sincerity.
The confidence in this new stranger should have come off as strange, but all of them felt that sort of sincerity in Yamito. Sailor Moon was obviously taken with him but Sailor Mars only showed agitation. She showed it her pressed lips and rigid posture, carelessly scoffing when Sailor Moon had mentioned his name and glaring out into the darkness for its true self – an empty void. She wanted him to be wrong. The boy was like sandpaper across her skin, making her shift in her own clothes, as if an itch had suddenly attacked her back. However, there was no denying that she was, indeed, thinking about him. The others were too busy worrying about the fight ahead to give it much thought, but the three strangers waiting outside did weigh on their minds. It wasn't until they came into the main theater that they found their first taste of this new enemy.
"Soldiers, but not of the Scion. Due to some twist of fate, they are female?" called a voice, its tone resounding throughout the room as if a thousand lips had spoken it.
Despite having suffered a bland design and poor management, the theater had one farce of its legacy and that was the builder had possessed a musical ear that had commanded his attention to the main theater, where the bulges and corners of the cavernous room swooned with sound, making even the smallest peep sound like a sonata. The gaping maw of the stage, with a tattered screen still hanging for ghostly shows, welcomed the girls as they peered in and they heard the final tones of the voice falling away in the resonance of the room. Seats once plush with red velvet and wooden backs were now like decrepit teeth, some missing in gaps that told of miscreants tearing them from their roots and tossing them aside in piles. A few ragged boxes still hung from the walls about the mouth, with their plush accommodations now meaningless in the inherited tedium of dust and neglect. Although the outside of the building, and even the innards, were ravaged by time and misuse, it was the acoustics that caused the room to sing, showing brilliance buried under terms of harsh, unrelenting antipathy.
The rest of the senshi filed inside and began an extensive search for the creatures, glancing about for the owner of the ghostly echo and its essence. The voice played the acoustics of the room well and disguised a location of any speaker, so they were forced to fan out cautiously and take every step in care, knowing that Yamito's words were not spoken lightly. Although they could not find them yet, the addition of a different voice began to give them faith in those words and the warning latent in them. "I knew I'd like this place. They'll be a lot more interesting to play with than human girls," called the second, though with a bit more flavor than the first.
"Control yourself. Business before pleasure. Have you come to fight us, soldiers of this world?" called another. This voice seemed to resonate with leadership and they locked onto it. Somehow, it struck deep in their minds as familiar, but perhaps only because the build of the room played tricks with sound. Sailor Moon felt a chill run down her neck but she stepped forward anyway.
"If you're the one's attacking the people, we are. Show yourselves!" she demanded.
As if obeying her every desire, two figures moved fluidly out from the wings of the stage and presented themselves, their black cloaks merging flawlessly with the shadows in which they stood. To the left of the stage, where a pile of overturned seats were massed carelessly, another figure rose up from the darkness, as if growing right out of a black pool to loom ominously nearby. The final figure seemed to step right out of the wall to the side of the stage onto the cracked rim of a box, his cloak draping down like a waterfall of black dribble hanging from a wild animal's open jaw.
It was as was predicted; four hooded figures appeared in the theater, their motives unknown and their alliances shaded. It was yet to be determined if they were indeed the ones who were guilty of the heinous deed.
A moment passed between them all while each measured the other. It was the sort of silence that only existed before a fight and, for some of the senshi, that was the most uncomfortable thing. However, it seemed the figures were opposing in that emotion. "Then we shall fight. If you are the protectors of this world, you will have to die. How nice of you to save us time and come to us," the figure with the commanding voice called from the rim of the box. All eyes had moved to him and an eerie glow began to form on his robes, though at the back where they could only see the blush. "My name is Kiga. I am the first Priest of Anubis," he said and a flaring of dark symbols, symbols of ancient origin and use, appeared on the back of his robes, offering that pallid glow.
"Senso," snarled the figure near the chairs, his robes burning with the characters of his name as well.
Upon the stage, a third figure took a step forward and made a visible bow, snatching the eyes of the senshi like a poor puppet being abused by its master. "I am Byoki. Pleased to make your acquaintance," he said, his voice distinctly softer than the others.
"And I'm Shibo, newest to you all. Note the creepy identifying marks across the skins," the last called with a resonance of humor in him, spinning around and jerking a thumb towards his symbol. The marks remained on their robes by a seemingly thin line of ash marking the characters, but otherwise robbed the room of any more ambient light.
The senshi were a bit puzzled for a moment just as to what response to make at such horrid names, shades on the words for hunger, disease, war and death. They were terrible names, spoken in just enough tone to warn of their true meaning and the girls had gone on guard since hearing them.
However, the obvious path was clear. Sailor Moon stepped forward and looked determined to find out why they were acting the way they did, for no villain acted in spite merely for the movement, but rather as a prelude to some great design. She wanted to know what that could be. "What possible reason could you have for hurting those people?" she cried defiantly to their names. Her passion always seemed to climax before she had to fight but this could have been one of the things which gave her strength. Courage was often a brother of passion.
The Priests were already used to seeing the Moon dominate the stars. However, Kiga seemed undaunted by her facade. He merely flicked a dull, grayed hand through the air from his cloak, giving them the first glimpse of their bodies and sounded off in a casual voice, "Must I explain? When a world contains great heroes, it also contains brilliant villains. You are the heroes of this world. Unfortunately, heroes always die. That's the reason." Casual sadism lingered in his voice, still pricking their recognition but lingering just out of reach of their understanding. No matter how hard she tried to ignore it, Sailor Moon was desperately trying to place the voice within the realm of her memory. The words had somehow lost their potency during her search and Kiga seemed annoyed, slipping his hand back into the void of his cloak.
But another of the senshi had something to say, stepping forward bravely and hollering for their attention, "Heroes don't die! They defeat evil whenever they battle and everyone knows good triumphs over evil." Sailor Mars's particular distraction was seemingly left at the door, leaving her to be the powerful soldier that often flourished as the team's backbone. As the Priests' attention shifted, her expression never faltered, glaring up at Kiga with fiery eyes, ones that had previously been reserved for the new boy in her mind. If there was one thing that she knew for a fact, it was the words she had just spoken. "Darkness can slip into our lives without us even knowing but we will still rise above it and find our happiness. No matter how strong our enemies, we'll always protect those we love!" she declared again, this time with even more eminence.
Kiga clapped a dark, echoing concession of compressing claps. "What a passionate speech. You are far more virtuous than the protectors we knew. You even care about complete strangers. How quaint," Kiga said nonchalantly. The line between them was defined by a knife edge. With little regard for the others, he dropped off the edge of the box and landed soundlessly on the tattered carpet of the theater, rising up his hand – a bare, deceiving hand. "Even a beggar can be moralistic. Let's see how well you defend your convictions!" he said and his cloak began to stir.
Suddenly, a fireball burst from his hand and blasted air through his cloak, giving them another brief glance to the beast beneath the cloak, proving that they were indeed the familiar arrangement of arms, legs and body. Had it not been for the briefly exposed sheen of his gray skin, Kiga could have been mistaken for a human, though his face had been masked by the burst of light from the fireball. It came like a comet to the senshi and forced them to scatter, swirling like a spray of ocean on shore. Fire curled across the entrance like a liquid and suddenly ignited the place, sending the temperature up into the realm of scorching pain. The dried materials were like gasoline, igniting by sheer proximity and turning the theater into a giant inferno.
Soon after the senshi had regained their footing, they attacked. The opening volley, surprisingly, was Super Sailor Mercury, for she had been closest and most contradictory to the fire. Her Aqua Rhapsody attack twirled through the air gracefully and returned the pain to Kiga, covering him with an icy spray and forcing him to yelp in shock and pain.
However, her attack didn't cause the intended damage. Kiga's hand had risen to stop the attack and it had saved him. The attack impacted his own power and scattered about him, soaking him with a chilling freeze but preserving his life only by the quick moments of his reaction. It surprised them all how easily these Priests were offended and the theater seemed to stand still in the wake of the injury. Although her attack had been kept from its holy mission, it did succeed in freezing his hand solid, making him recoil his hand and cradle it, staring at the senshi who had injured him with an entirely knew level of regard and understanding. "So, I see you're powerful. Perhaps we shouldn't take this so lightly," he said, directed more to his companions than to the senshi.
"Do you require assistance, Kiga? Surely the four of us can overpower these new soldiers as easily as the word is given," suggested Byoki, moving a bit on the stage in concern for his fellow cloak.
Although he was heaving in pain and annoyance, Kiga looked deeply at Sailor Mars, his mind already working in spite of the threatening glare. Her determination gave him a better idea and he smiled in spite of himself, standing straight as his hand began to shed its icy skin. "No, I think brute force won't be necessary. These soldiers rely on love and dedication to win. Perhaps we shall show them how temperamental love can be," he said with a slight chuckle, sending the senshi on their guard once more. The way they had come was now an inferno of flames and provided no place for the senshi to return to. The other Priests seemed to understand what was unfolding in Kiga's mind and they moved into better positions to attack, spreading about from their places as the senshi countered, making the dance begin amidst the flaming throes of the dying theater.