To make life easier for the readers, "journal entries" are marked with at the start and end.
-#-
'Her Majesty, Neo-Queen Serenity, ruler of Crystal Tokyo, and all she surveys'.
I think I may become nauseous.
When I was young, politics meant nothing to me. What would I care, as long as I could do what I want? It was a pretty typical attitude of the time.
But as the Great Ice receded, as I lay there, shivering, gathering my shattered strength, I saw Serenity rise above the ruined city on 'angels' wings. I saw the nearby survivors gazing at her, crying out in awe. I saw some kneel and grovel, and I felt the bile rise in my throat.
Sailor Moon. Sailors Procyon, Formalhaut, and Terra. The ten members of The Rising Stars, drawn from such diverse countries as Pakistan, Indonesia, Spain and China. The five member Brazilian team whose name I have regrettably forgotten. Every member of the Australian team, The Southern Cross, except for Opal. The Italian girl who liked to dress like Zorro. That Englishman who used a rapier. And at least twenty other people with power, one of whom sacrificed herself, just so that I could continue to fight. And, of course, the ordinary people. Soldiers, salarymen, husbands, wives... normal people.
All of them dead, in the last fight to protect the Earth. My friends, my sister, dead.
And after all that, there, being worshipped like a deity, was Serenity.
It was sickening, to see all the sacrifice forgotten for just one person.
Never before had I been so angry as at that moment. It was then that the plan to 'purify' the people and to make Crystal Tokyo was announced, as people proclaimed Serenity as their queen.
All of a sudden, I couldn't not care about politics anymore. Within an hour, I had found others who would not submit to Serenity. Within a day, we had joined up with other groups, including Sapphire's. Within a week, the rebellion was nearing full force.
And within a month, the rebellion was over. But not for me.
Never for me.
- Entry in a small, half-burnt diary, which had been left in the ruins of Osaka. Dated, with an accuracy surprising for the time, 2373
-#-
The man idly snatched a newspaper that was half hanging out of a covered rubbish bin. He settled the bag containing his cloak and other 'future' clothes higher up on his shoulder, before opening the paper. He slightly favoured one side, the only indication his accelerated healing had left of his wound, besides a hastily repaired patch on the cloak in his bag. It had taken just under a week of solitude, and a decent amount of energy, but he was back to full health.
"I don't suppose you remember which horses won at the track in the next couple of weeks? Just imagine the bets we could make..." he said to the crystal hidden underneath his shirt. After a small pause, he harumphed, and smiled. "No? Are you any good at pachinko then? Cards? I'm sure we could find a blackmarket game somewhere. No? Then what use are you, anyway?" The man grinned, turning his attention back to the news.
He scanned the paper, ignoring almost everything as pointless trivia, although some articles did give him faint twinges of nostalgia. He grunted when he reached one article. "'Buses disappear near temple', eh? And three Senshi sighted. My, up to three already. Looks like the Senshi are still in the 'new urban myth' state, my friend. All they rate is a couple of lines in the 'odd happenings' section. Buried underneath all the other 'important' news. Ah well, the world shall have to take notice soon enough. At least for now, people still have their blinkered innocence."
He closed the paper, and was about to toss it back into the bin, when he noticed the date. He blinked, his eyebrows furrowing as he looked at the inked page. "Something..." he muttered, looking around. He found what he was looking for, a digital clock set in a store's display, and frowned. "Two hours... Two hours to..." he shook his head, and tossed the paper into the bin, striding for the nearest place away from the public view.
He stepped out of the shadows of a tree in a small park that was set in one of the districts of Osaka. The man looked around as he kept to the shadows.
"What is it about this place, this time that I still remember it after so long?"
He concentrated, searching his memories, before he sighed. "I can't remember. Was there some sort of accident here? A youma attack? Did someone I know die here?"
He clenched his fists. "Damn my mind, I hate not knowing! For me to remember a time and place after so long, this had to be important."
He waited, leaning against the tree, watching the people who walked on the nearby paths, as the time passed. Sometimes, he spared a minute or two to looking at the younger people who played on the play equipment, and on the grassed areas, but soon his gaze would start to wander again.
His eyes roved the area, constantly searching for danger. His eyes stopped wandering when he spotted a boy of about fourteen or fifteen years. The boy, who had short black hair, was dressed in one of the local school uniforms, and was currently smiling nervously, was walking towards an empty park bench that was sheltered by some well-kept bushes. "Gods," the man breathed as he caught a glimpse of the boy's light brown eyes. "Was I ever that young?"
He pushed away from the tree, his eyes never leaving the boy. His right arm reached up, ready to catch the boy's attention. "I could tell him, my friend. About you, about me, about what's going to happen. We could warn him, set him down another path. He doesn't have to turn into me."
He sighed, shook his head, and lowered his arm. "No, you're right. If not me, then whom? There is no-one else to stop the madness of Serenity. I cannot afford such selfishness." He leaned back against the tree again, his eyes once more searching for the expected danger, although his gaze constantly wandered back to the younger version of himself, who was sitting on the bench, apparently waiting for someone.
The man blinked when a small, black-haired girl, the same age as his younger self, and dressed in a school dress, walked over to the park bench, and sat down next to the boy. The two teenagers talked, and then, nervously, held hands, relying on the bushes to hide them from the public's view while still getting the thrill of such a public display.
The man watched, as the couple kept talking, until the girl placed a finger on the boy's lips. She looked around for anyone watching, completely missing the one spy, before she turned back to the boy, removed her finger, and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then, she smiled, said something to the shocked boy, and ran off, giggling.
The boy sat there, blinking, for a few moments before he shook himself out of his coma and ran after the girl.
The man blinked, watching the dwindling figure of the boy. "Not an attack," he whispered. "Not a death or a horrible wrong. So much I have forgotten, so much I wished I could forget. And yet, after over nine hundred years, I still remember the time and place of my first kiss."
He clutched his arms together, and bowed his head, shutting his eyes. "No, my friend." he whispered to his crystal. "No, I am not alright."
He shivered slightly, before clutching his arms tighter to his body. "I haven't been alright for a long, long time."
-#-
The rebellion was over. My fellow rebels were either dead, exiled to space, or, like Onyx, simply gone. Exile seemed to be my destiny too, after my defeat at the final battle.
But I was too angry to let myself be exiled from my planet, after all that had happened.
To think that at the mockery that was my 'trial'(more a public audience with the 'Neo-queen'), they dared to act like exile was awe-inspiringly merciful.
If being thrown off the planet that had born, raised, and supported you, if being thrown off the planet that you fought time and time again to save and protect, if being thrown off the planet that people died, DIED to help you protect, if being thrown off your home planet, the planet you love is MERCY, then by the GODS, never, EVER show any mercy to me AGAIN!
There's no mercy in planetary exile, none at all. To rip something as precious as one's home from you is, as vulgar as the analogy is, like rape of the soul.
It's the sort of thing I've come to expect from Serenity.
Exile? I wasn't going to accept that. And so I escaped.
It wasn't easy to do so. But their mistake was in thinking that if I was drained of energy and away from my crystal, that I couldn't do anything. They obviously didn't know what the crystal truly was. If they had, they would have put more guards on it than they did on me.
Such a pity that, for them, no?
- Part of a set of journal entries kept in a small house in Western Europe. Dated from the late 2400s/early 2500s, the journals were severely age-damaged when found in 2761.
-#-
The man knelt in an empty part of a cemetery, and stared at the well-grassed ground.
"Mother. Father. Sister." He bowed his head, and sighed. "I know, I know. None of you are dead yet, not in this time. But I don't think I could face you all, alive and breathing. Not after so long. I can barely face you all like this."
He slowly took off his sunglasses, placing them in his shirt's pocket. "That was one of the few advantages of my long life. Not having to face you all in the afterlife, of seeing the shame in your eyes..."
The man rested his hands on the grass. "We all do what we feel we must. And I must do this, I must kill Serenity, I must ensure Crystal Tokyo is never built. I must stop her. But that doesn't mean I don't have regrets."
The man bowed his head. "Momma, Poppa, Sis. I'm sorry."
The cloaked man leaned on the building's edge, looking down at the three Senshi, Moon, Mercury, and Mars, who were facing a youma and Jadeite.
"Oh look, there's Mr Swank." he noted as Tuxedo Kamen made his entrance. He sighed when he saw Sailor Moon's lovelorn gaze. "Gods, girl, you were infatuated with him this early? It's sad, really, to see such puppy dog devotion to a man like that. Huh, it didn't take Endymion long after her death to get all cosy with Serenity."
He paused, and then glared down at his crystal. "Those centuries in the ice don't count in this!" He looked back up, and winced. "Looks like this Jadeite man has some sort of personal grudge against Endymion, from the way they're fighting." He shrugged as the Dark Kingdom general and the tuxedoed fighter slightly drew away from the main battlefield. He owed Jadeite some pain for that youma's ambush a while back, but it wasn't overly important to him who gave that pain.
The Senshi on the other hand... He looked back to them, and growled when he saw the girls being blasted around by the youma.
"Ah... curse it! They're fighting like amateurs! Without them, I may not find Serenity until the Ice. I'll have to help, just in case something goes wrong." He stood, brought his right hand up, and threw a small beam of green energy into the ground, right before the youma. Everyone, including Jadeite and Tuxedo Kamen, looked up at him.
"Evil agents of a cursed realm, cease your destructive ways immediately." The man paused for a moment, trying to think up more things to say, before inspiration struck. "Sailor Moon, I told you I would be here to help! But as long as you are confident in your own abilities, your own inner strength, and the strength shared with you by your comrades, you are the only help you will ever need!"
The man winced, and whispered to his crystal "Gods, what a bunch of stupid rubbish. Perhaps I should tell them to 'believe in the spirit of love' or that 'good always triumphs over evil' while I'm at it. Still, what do you think? All I need is some snappy clothes and a frontal lobotomy, and I could be Endymion."
He raised an energy shield as the youma fired an attack at him. Flashy, energy draining, and probably unnecessary, true. He could have dodged, but would that have impressed the Senshi anywhere near as much? Probably not.
"Come on girls." he whispered. "Big, bad youma paying all her attention to poor little me. Perfect opportunity to--"
Sailor Mercury blanketed the area with fog, blinding the youma for Sailor Mars' follow up, her fire attack.
"Ah yes," the man whispered, dropping the energy shield. He couldn't see through the fog, not normally anyway. But his energy senses could penetrate the murk, he could see the energy trail of Mars' attack, see the auras of the Senshi, the youma, and Kamen. Jadeite had retreated, by the looks of it. "Now, as always when she was alive..."
Sailor Moon threw her glowing tiara, disintegrating the youma.
"Huh, and they thought they had moral grounds to call me a killer? Still, the seeds of the future are there. The fight is in their blood. I suppose that, at least, you have to respect, if nothing else."
Sailor Mars watched the man in the tattered cloak jump down in front of Sailor Moon. Her eyes narrowed. This wasn't right, normally when she saw someone, she got at least some vague sense off of them, some indication of their nature, or their life. And when she didn't it didn't feel like what she saw when she looked at this man. Instead of seeing nothing, it was like she was looking at a... well, some sort of a null-spot. Like he should be generating a huge aura, but he was somehow masking it.
And what reason did he have to mask his aura, if he was a friend? For that matter, how could he hide his aura like that?
She saw Sailor Mercury using her computer to scan the man, hiding her motions behind Sailor Moon as she did so. Mars smiled, at least Mercury had enough sense not to trust some stranger.
The man said something to Sailor Moon, glanced at Sailor Mercury, and then spared a look at Sailor Mars. He grinned as he looked at her, and then turned back to Moon, saying some sort of goodbye.
The man walked back towards the building he had jumped down from, tensing his muscles, ready to leap.
"Wait!" Sailor Mars cried out in an authoritative voice. "Who are you?"
The man paused, and relaxed his tensed muscles. He turned back to the Senshi, cocked his head for a moment, and then said curiously "Tell me, do you believe that you are reincarnated warriors from a Moon Kingdom?"
The Senshi gasped.
"How... how did..." Sailor Moon stuttered. She closed her mouth, and looked at the other girls.
"Please, just give me an honest answer." The man said. "Do you believe that?"
"Yes." Sailor Mars admitted. "I suppose we do. Why?"
The man was silent for a few seconds. Then, he reached up, drew back his hood, and took down his goggles so that they hung around his neck. He ran his left hand through his green hair, before he looked at Sailor Mars.
The girls blinked, all of them except for Sailor Mars was slightly blushing. Hiding underneath those rags was someone who looked like this!? Sure, he looked a bit serious, but besides that, he was quite handsome.
"Mars," he said quietly, softly. She looked into his strange eyes, and blinked. "Rei-chan." The girls gasped when he said her name, and Mars paled. "Don't you remember? Back in the..." he paused, desperately searching his memory for the right name. He stepped forward and took Mars's hand to cover his pause; she was too shocked at his using her real name to protest. "...in the Silver Millennium, you and I... don't you remember? We were lovers."
What little blood that hadn't already drained from Mar's face escaped, leaving her as pale as a sheet. Then, all the blood rushed back, as she blushed beet-red.
"I see, it's too much, too soon." the man noted, letting go of her hand. "I shall go, and see you another day. Goodbye, Rei-chan." He turned, ran five steps, and leaped to the top of the nearest building, leaving two Senshi staring at their third member.
-#-
Sailor Mars. Through one of those vagaries of chance, I know her true first name: Rei. I always make it a point to call her that, it annoys her no end when we're trying to kill each other. She usually retaliates in kind; when you've fought someone as long and often as we two have, you tend to learn each other's 'buttons to press', so to speak. We try to press them all, every time we meet.
She was the first Senshi I ever encountered. I was fighting some strange birdlike monster, and I was losing. It was only my second fight, I was inexperienced in combat. Mars pulled me out of a tight situation.
She never let me forget it too.
We get on like a house on fire. Screaming, casualties, lots of damage to be cleaned up afterwards.
We never really did like each other much, and once it was clear that we were on opposite sides during the rebellion, we moved on to hostile enmity. And then, when she discovered the hate I had developed for Serenity, things turned... bitter.
Over the years, I have developed... an immunity, shall we say, to her mystic senses. Well, not truly an immunity, more that I have trained my power to mask myself from her scrying powers. She cannot find me through her fire, or detect me in a crowd by aura alone. Of course, she developed the same abilities with regards to my aura detection abilities: she was never one to be outdone.
We've fought a fair amount of times over the centuries. Every time I make a scouting mission to Crystal Tokyo, in order to try and spot weaknesses in Serenity's power, she always finds me somehow, and then we always fight. It's almost a game between us.
One day, one of us will slip up, and it will be game over. I can only hope that it will be her that falls.
- Recording of a monologue at a small eatery in Crystal Tokyo, 2756. Four minutes later, Mars entered the establishment. This recording was found in the ruins of the eatery during the later cleanup.
-#-
He couldn't stop laughing. He sat in the shadows of a building's roof, letting the humour wash over him. "The... the look on her face!" he gasped, between chortles. "Oh mercy, I haven't laughed like this in centuries! Hahaa! Let's see her find a way to get even for this one!"
He pulled the crystal up to his face, composed his face into quiet seriousness, and calmly said "Oh, Rei-chan."
His serious facade crumbled, as he shook from trying to contain the laughter. Finally, he gave up, and went back to laughing.
"Would you two be quiet!? I'm TELLING you, I've never seen that guy before in my life! I've got some wacko with weird eyes out there who knows who I am, and all you two can do is swoon!?" Rei crossed her arms, furious, still blushing. After the battle, the other two Senshi had followed her back to the temple. Luna had been waiting for them there, and Usagi had been all too glad to tell the lunar cat all about 'Rei and her lover'.
After that, Usagi and, somewhat surprisingly, Ami had proceeded to pelt Rei with questions about the man, some of which had made the temple maiden want to wring her teammates' necks. Luna just resisted the urge to sigh at their arguing; everyone except Rei seemed more concerned about this 'lover' statement of the man's, rather than the fact that he knew who one of the Senshi was.
"Don't be so mean to me Rei!" Usagi wailed a second or two after Rei's outburst.
Ami cleared her throat. "He did know who you were. And remember, he did say it was back in the Silver Millennium. I know I can't remember much at all about that time. Practically nothing, in fact. Is it hard to believe that you can't remember your..." she blushed, "friend from back then?"
"What about him knowing my name then? Don't tell me I had the same name back then too! And how can he remember, if I can't!? What about you, Luna, do you remember this guy from back then?"
The cat sweated. It was hard to play the wise advisor when you really couldn't know half the things you were supposed to, thanks to a shot memory. She didn't remember the man, but that certainly didn't mean anything. "Ahem, I couldn't tell you. He was wearing a hood the times I saw him. Perhaps if I could see his face, I would be able to tell you."
"Maybe he just got lucky, and remembered more than us," said a recovered Usagi. "And then, maybe he remembered his lost love, torn from him by the cruel hands of time. And so he searched, and finally found her, working as a simple..."
"Hey!"
"...temple girl. He starts to approach her, but no! First, she whisks away to fight, and he follows, ready to defend her from harm, finally doing that duty tonight." Usagi gasped from her long supposition.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, Odango-atama!"
"Actually..." Ami interposed quietly, "it sort of makes sense. It's one way it could have happened, anyway. If he did remember you from this Moon Kingdom, he might have just found out your name by finding you. And that may have been why he met Usagi those times she told us about, so that he could be sure he was on the right path."
"Doesn't it worry you how easily this man penetrated your disguises, if he could track down Rei like this?" Luna asked. "There's something not quite right about this man. Be careful around him, especially you, Rei."
"Hush, Luna, it's obvious that Rei and this guy were meant for each other. It's true love, drawing a couple together." Usagi sighed, as Rei's face started to turn purple. "Sort of like me and Tuxedo Kamen."
The man watched as a gigantic illusion of Jadeite appeared over the city, challenging the Senshi to a fight at Narita airport. "Gods. That has to be the stupidest waste of mystical energy I've seen in centuries."
He watched from the shadows of a runway, his cloak merging him with the darkness, as the three Senshi girls ran away from telekinetically controlled planes. "My mistake, this is the stupidest waste of mystical energy I've seen in centuries."
The man shook his head. "That man has absolutely no appreciation of energy conservation," he muttered. "The fool must be either stupid, glutted on energy, or only capable of fine control on gigantic objects. Otherwise, he would have had the sense to animate a couple of trucks or cars or something. Faster, more likely to hit, several, several tonnes less of vehicle to push around..."
He shook his head, watching. "Oh look, how cute. Endymion's playing hero." The man watched Jadeite apparently take out Tuxedo Kamen, and groaned when the general insulted the Senshi. "This isn't worth my time. The man's a fool, even this young the Senshi should not be pushed so lightly. The girls will tear him apart."
He turned, and walked away from the fight. "Huh, to see all that energy being wasted in such an unbelievably crass display of macho desperation. It's enough to make me want to cry. I need to get away from this foolishness for a while."
He rubbed his chin as he walked out of the airport. "You know," he said to his crystal, "I must have months, maybe a couple of years before Serenity appears. There is so much here I could see again... Two weeks away couldn't hurt, could it?"
He stopped rubbing. "You're no help. Fine, five days. Even someone like me needs a break, once in a while. I haven't had a holiday in twenty years."
Two days later, in a small village in northern Scotland, a green-haired man approached the mayor, and, in slightly accented but otherwise perfect English, said "I heard from the papers that you have a werewolf terrorising this place. I can bet no-one believed you, no-one took you seriously."
"I believe you. I take you seriously. And I'm here to help you."
The man calmly tossed the newspaper back into the bin he had taken it from, back in Japan from his working holiday. "And old Zap-happy makes four. From vague memory, Venus should be the next one to be found, now that Jupiter's here. How curious that the media are starting to take serious notice of the Senshi."
He resettled the clothes bag on his shoulder, and looked down at the lump under his shirt that was the crystal. "I don't know exactly when Serenity comes. But my guess is that it will be within a year or two. Still, even with all that time, I have to find more energy, just to be sure of it. My holiday was very... energising, but I need more. A lot more to be sure."
He sighed. "Looks like that Jadeite fellow's gone the way of dust. Perhaps the Senshi killed him at that farce of a fight at Narita airport. Still, with him went replacements for his operatives. This place is relatively youma free at the moment. I'm probably the only one in the city who finds that even slightly disappointing. Means I have to find alternative... energy sources."
The man hissed, his head whipping around to his right, his eyes widening under his sunglasses. "What in...?"
His gaze settled on two teenage girls, a blonde with hair gathered into two long ponytails, tied into balls on the top of her head, and a brunette with wavy, just beyond shoulder-length hair.
The blonde had an interesting energy, with an undeniably impressive, and vaguely familiar aura. But it was the other one that had screamed to his energy senses. No normal human could possibly have that much energy within her.
He took a step towards the two girls as they walked past on the other side of the road. He hesitated, started to take another step, and then stopped, his face set in a grimace.
He couldn't...
He cursed his weakness. She was a mystic battery, for pity's sake! Her power was rolling off her, the girl's energy was almost swimming around her! Draining her would be as good... BETTER than draining thirty youma!
He clenched his fists. No. Not unless he had to. Not because she was human and not a youma, he had long since cast off such ridiculously speciesist ideas. No, it was because she looked so innocent.
And gods help him, he couldn't destroy an innocent. Not unless he had to. He just couldn't help but feel like a hypocrite.
He looked at the brown haired girl, overhearing the blonde call her 'Naru-chan'. "So beautiful," he sighed, as the two girls walked off, his eyes firmly fixed on her aura, not her physical form.
-#-
What is beauty?
I look at the setting sun, all I see is the heat it radiates; another source of energy. A pristine lake is merely water, another element I draw upon. Flowers have minuscule life energy, their scent is just another smell.
I saw a pretty girl this morning; when I walked by her I didn't think about her body or her hair, or the perfume she wore. All I could think about is how much life energy she had.
I lay awake at night, horrified, from remembered dreams where I have drained my family of their life, merely for energy. Only a dream. My family is long dead, and not by my hand. But... if they did still live today, if all I needed to destroy Serenity was their life-energy, would I...?
I hide myself from the answer, lest it be "yes".
Is this what my life has become, an endless search for energy? Has my life so little meaning that hate is my only driving force? Is this all that immortality has to offer me?
Does it matter, if it gains me my life's goal, the end of Serenity and what she stands for?
No, no I guess it does not.
What is beauty? I no longer know. I gave up beauty long ago, in my quest to destroy Serenity's cause.
- Part of a series of diary entries, found in a library in Crystal Tokyo, 2802. Who put the journal there, and why, is unknown.
-#-
The man settled back against the building's roof, looking at the stars through the murk of pollution.
"Somehow, it's not the same, with all the smog and stuff in the way" he noted, pulling his necklace off.
He lay there, for a few minutes. "So many stars. What chance, really, did they have to find a world they could live on?" He sighed. "I must be in a melancholy mood, to think of the exiles."
"Still, so many stars..."
-#-
I read a history book from Crystal Tokyo yesterday. It was heavily biased in their side's favour, although that's no surprise. Still, I was surprised to find that they allowed that maybe we rebels weren't 'completely' bad, that 'maybe', 'conceivably' we were actually fighting because we thought our cause was right.
I won't go into what they said on me, though. They've had to put up with me for a lot longer than they did the other rebels, and they're not quite so 'forgiving' to me.
Still, reading the 'history' makes me wonder again, what happened to the ones who were exiled from Earth? Are they alright out there in the eternity of space? The chances of finding an habitable planet are so slim, after all. Far more likely that they eventually died in their ships, their supplies exhausted.
Sometimes, when I am camped outside, I will look to the starred sky, and I will try to imagine the descendants of the exiles, living on some decent planet out there, their children playing, free from Crystal Tokyo's brainwashing. I imagine them happy, and free, and safe.
Only my imagination. Only a dream. But dreams sometimes come true, don't they?
Don't they?
- Part of a series of diary entries, found in a library in Crystal Tokyo, 2831. Again, who put the journal there, and why, is unknown.
-#-