To make life easier for the readers, "journal entries" are marked with -#- at the start and end.
-#-
The Purification.
Huh, 'The Brainwashing' is what it should have been called. A 'spiritual cleansing to stave off the darkness', the pulp authors of Crystal Tokyo like to call it.
Is it just me, or do words like that belong in a child's fairytale? Are people really so simple that they could believe such a pile of unmitigated whitewashed rubbish? While we're at it, perhaps we should all link hands with Mr Fluffy the Friendly Bunny and giddily skip down Happiness Lane.
There was, I vaguely recall, once a saying about cures being worse than the curse, or the cold, or something like that. The Purification was such a 'cure'.
The rebellion was over. Every rebel still alive and accounted for, besides me, was in space, heading towards whatever Fate chose for them. I was hiding out in the ruins of Osaka. Like most cities, it had been destroyed in the final fights before the Ice. Unlike Tokyo, however, there weren't over a million survivors of the time in the Ice.
There were only scattered handfuls.
Tokyo's bane also proved to be the catalyst for its boon. It was... is a mystical nexus point for trouble. As such, it did - and in some ways still does, in fact - suffer from a higher than normal rate of monster attraction. This bane also proved to be a boon, because it also attracted anyone who could throw around a magical spell or energy beam to the city. At the time of the Great Enemy there were quite a few teams of paranormals - from all around the world - living in Tokyo, all of them itching to blast whichever hapless monster happened to get in their way.
This concentration of 'heroes' in one area proved to be the rest of the world's downfall. There were no Senshi in Chicago to stop the invading monsters. None of the fangirls of the Senshi - all those other Sailor women - were in Kiev to save the people. No Star Warriors in Berlin, none of the Elemental Guard were in Melbourne. No Neo-Knights to protect Mexico City, no Crystal Protectors to stop the deaths in Beijing. No me to help Hong Kong.
We were all in Tokyo, and the rest of the world burned.
Oh, there were a decent amount of survivors here and there, you people are not alone, I assure you. In a few places, there were still protectors of one kind or another to delay the destruction. Here and there, the normal armies lasted long enough against the supernaturally superior foes to make a difference. And finally, the Ice destroyed the remnants of the enemy, and all it took then to be a survivor was having lived long enough for the cold prison to have saved them.
It is a grim testament to the enemy on how few that turned out to be.
My thoughts wander. What was I... oh yes. Osaka. I had just killed off a youma that had been threatening a band of ragged refugees when my senses, attuned to massive energy usage, made me turn towards Tokyo's general direction.
It began not with a bang, or a flash, or the singing of an angelic choir. It began with a sigh. Was it Serenity, sighing at the 'burden' of having to go to the effort of mindwiping the people? A sigh from the collective people, in sheeplike anticipation of their own free-wills' doom? Or a sigh from the planet itself, as it mourned the start of the 'cleansing' - the amputation of a large and important part of its soul?
Perhaps it was only me, sighing in despair as I saw the final evidence of the defeat of the rebellion. The white glow of the light of the Purification washed over the wrecked city like a wind-blown mist, settling on the people who had come out of their shelters to watch the spectacle, human instinct having served them as well as my energy senses had, to tell them that something was happening.
As the light settled first on, and then into everyone, I saw expressions of peace start to cover their faces, like... like a DAMN drug haze. I felt the power seep into me...
The mixing of my power and Serenity's is literally the textbook example of how certain energies - magical or otherwise - don't, shall we say, interact very well. Luckily the power of the Purification was so necessarily diffused that the usual (quite spectacular) pyrotechnics did not occur. But the point remained: the Purification did not... could not work on me. I was the same after as before, if in more pain from being bathed in the ginzuisho's stream.
So I stood there, my fists clenched in pain, as history was made. The people around me wept - presumably from some sort of 'happiness' at being half of what they used to be. I felt like weeping too, for in a large and important way, humanity died that day. For without hate, rage, all the 'negative' emotions, can we truly be called human? I don't have the answers, but I do know that this emotional castration was one of the worst things I have ever seen. No. No, not one of. It was the worst.
The world had changed, and I had not changed with it. Though it would take the Crystal Tokyoites almost another century to name me as such, it was at that moment, as I watched the energy glow depart, that my choices narrowed and I truly became an outsider.
And so the Earth was purified. Its ability to generate monsters was cauterised. Forever our planet was 'free from the tyranny of new monsters springing from the Mother soil'.
There was just one thing. One small, insignificant thing. Barely worth mentioning, really. Oh, just a small problem.
Most of the monsters that had plagued us didn't come from Earth.
- Words told to a small village in the south-east part of South America by a man who helped bring an end to a 'plague of demons who had threatened our village', as the village heads put it. The tale, apparently from the mid-25th century, was retold to members of Neo-Queen Serenity's Royal Guard when they offered the village their protection in 2482. The offer was politely refused.
-#-
He leant against a building, blending in with the shadows. His eyes followed the battle as his lips barely moved, whispering to the crystal that hung unobscured from his neck.
"Look at them. Four-strong, and still nothing compared to what they will become. The unlikely leader, the quick-tempered bitch, the living light bulb lighter and... and the ice girl. All we need is the happy psycho, and we'd have the complete matching set of inner flunkies. I wonder if Serenity came before or after the outer ones joined the cavalcade of fun?"
He blinked as Jupiter and Mars got caught in an energy attack from the youma. "You really have to admire their courage, eh my little friend? Look at them. Look at their auras. So weak, when you consider how powerful they turn out to be. So weak, and yet they still fight. They still win." He paused as Sailor Moon healed the youma, turning it back into a very dazed young man. "They just do it very, very badly. Look at them. The mightiest women on this planet, a bunch of amateurish young girls. How depressing."
The man turned his head slightly, his eyes picking out a faint, retreating aura glow. "At least Endymion was about as useful as he ever is. 'I have faith in you, Sailor Senshi. Now fight this dangerous beast while I run off'. Simpering little coward."
He shook his head, closing his eyes as he leant his head back against the cool concrete. That thing that Endymion had been holding, as he leapt away. That crystal... he couldn't remember ever seeing anything like it... not that that meant too much when it came to him. But he knew crystals. He knew a lot about them. And it worried him that these crystals that the Senshi, Endymion, and that Dark Kingdom pansy of a general had been squabbling over, they all seemed familiar. Worryingly familiar. These crystals they were like... like a reflection in water, a picture so distorted that you couldn't make out the true shape of the mirrored image.
And what, he wondered, did they reflect? There was something about these crystals that made him uneasy. And being uneasy made him edgy. But then again, being edgy kept him alive.
"I've got to get home! I'm not going to get a full night's sleep now, thanks to Zoicite! It's not fair!" a voice wailed from nearby.
He turned his gaze to a dark patch of trees, his eyes half-lidded from boredom. It had been, after all, just another youma attack. Maybe the crystals, and the similarity of Moon's 'healing' attack to some of Serenity's tricks had been worrying recent additions, but it was all still pretty boring.
The man's eyes picked out the four Senshi's auras, and he pulled the hood of his cloak slightly further down on his brow, an involuntary sign of puzzlement. Why had the girls retreated into a pile of bushes? A sudden pressing need for nature's toilet? Or perhaps they had hidden clothes there, to change into whatever civilian identities it was that they had. Or maybe...
His eyes widened as he saw the auras shift and change. "Gods..." he hissed, straightening against the wall. "What in all the hells...?" He rubbed his eyes, and stared again. They were curious auras, to be sure, but they didn't radiate the same patterns as the Senshis' did. He blinked once, as the auras crept out of the darkness, resolving themselves into four girls dressed in completely normal clothes. There wasn't a ridiculously short skirt in sight. Not one of them was making a silly hand gesture. They looked... they looked like ordinary girls. These couldn't be the Senshi, could they?
He frowned as he heard snatches of the girls' conversation. One of them comparing someone to her sempai. The blonde saying something about a 'Mako-chan' cooking dinner tomorrow. And, after a few more snatches of conversation, something about an odango-atama. His eyebrows raised. Odango-atama?
"We'll see you at the temple tomorrow, Rei," the tallest girl called out to the girl with long black hair, just after the four had separated to walk to their individual destinations.
Rei? REI? That was Rei!? But... but her aura wasn't the same. It wasn't the same at all. Whatever it was she had done to disguise herself, it was no simple glamour. What in all the hells had the girls just done? His eyes narrowed as he shifted his now completely alert body off the wall.
'Let them have their private lives', he had thought when he had first encountered Sailor Moon, after his time journey. 'They can do what they want, as long as they lead me to Serenity', he had decided.
But... "There is no way I'm going to let this slide." He started to follow the dark haired girl, keeping his distance, often letting her out of physical sight, using his energy tracking abilities to keep him on her tail.
He sighed. Stalking. How banal. Next he'd be 'finding out the Senshi's secret identities and threatening to tell the world.' He sighed again. He missed the old Mars. If he had tried to follow her, by now they'd have been in a bitter battle filled with insults, taunts and threats where one or both of them could quite possibly die. Damn, he was starting to miss those fights. They'd been a lot of fun.
Still, he couldn't let this lie. He'd thought auras to be almost unchangeable. Certainly, they could get weaker or stronger. But to be able to change them so radically? He'd sooner believe that Sailor Venus was one hundred percent sane.
But these girls may have somehow just done it. And if it could be done, that meant that Serenity could be anyone. His fists clenched. Anyone. Within a year or two, hundreds of young girls would imitate the hairstyles of the increasingly seen Senshi. Especially the most distinctive hairstyle, Sailor Moon's. Serenity's hairstyle.
If Serenity's aura was masked like the Senshi's apparently could be, then he had to find out how to see through the glamour. Finally, he had something to occupy his mind while he waited for Serenity's appearance. He'd find a way around this curious little magical effect. There certainly wasn't much else to do, besides the occasional hunt for youma.
And, he mused to himself as he crept through the shadows, who knows? Perhaps this was the key to ending it. Perhaps he could be a lot closer to finally finishing this than he had ever hoped.
Rei crept across the temple grounds, hugging the night-blessed shadows, as she tried to sneak to her room. She wasn't so worried at whatever punishments her grandfather might give her for being out this late, but she could just hear the words if he caught her: 'Out seeing a boyfriend, eh? Starting young?' would probably be the least embarrassing line used.
She could do without the old man getting the wrong ideas about her - it was bad enough when he was trying to get her friends to become temple maidens. She could just see him embarrassing her in front of the other girls about it, if she let him get any funny ideas. And so she snuck.
"You're distributing your weight wrong," a voice whispered from so close that Rei almost had to clutch her chest from the sudden leap of her heart. "And you should drape that dark hair of yours over your face. That way there's less chance of you being seen from a window."
"Who's there?" she hissed, glancing around, readying her defences. "Come out or I'll--"
The green-haired man stepped out of a pool of shadows, one hand raised in a gesture of peace, the other carrying the handle of a bag. He had changed out of his cloak, and back into his streetwear. Rei's eyes narrowed slightly; she hated the way he could just pop up like that. How did he do it? How did he hide in shadows when he was wearing a white shirt?
Her eyes narrowed even more. A dirty white shirt. Her nose wrinkled slightly. More pressing questions were put aside for a moment, as she asked, slightly acidicly, "When was the last time you had a bath!?"
"A while," he admitted. "The public baths cost money that I can ill afford right now."
"Well you smell disgusting. And what do you think you're doing, sneaking up on me like this? If you want to talk to me - something you should have done a while ago, I think - you could at least have the decency to do it during the day!"
His smallest lingering doubts that this wasn't Mars disappeared. He'd recognise her subtle social touch and gentle way of speaking anywhere. Besides, complaining about his hygiene had always been one of Mars's favourite opening lines in their fights. Except for that one time when she had caught him while he was in one of Crystal Tokyo's public baths, of course. But the less remembered about that particular fight, the better.
"Who are you? Really?" Rei crossed her arms and scowled, still angry at the humiliating interrogation her friends had subjected her to after this man's little 'revelation'.
He cocked his head, considering the question. Dozens of words ran through his head - killer, crusader, lover, hater, rebel, hero, villain. He discarded them all. Trite, hackneyed, none of them truly meant anything. There was no true way to answer the question without revealing the truth - and who would believe that? In the end, she was an enemy. But that didn't mean he had to lie to her everytime.
The man blinked, and settled for the best explanation he could use. "Who am I, Rei-chan? I am a man with too many memories."
-#-
I have been called a lot of things over the years. A lot of names, a large deal of which I have forgotten. I tend to give myself nice, simple names when I need an alias. Ryu. John. Abis. Miguel. Hikaru.
Other people, however, like to give me grandiose ones. It is like they believe that a name can somehow encompass my nature or something. I only remember a few now: Orion of the Crystal, The Final Hunter, The Ageless Wanderer, Starchild, Youma Destroyer, Grim Protector...
Soulless Killer, Murderous Bastard, Evil Scum...
The names come and go. A couple have stuck with me, however. The first is what I am most commonly known as to the Crystal Tokyoites. Simply, they call me Outsider. I think it came from something I said in one of my earliest battles with Mars - 'I am on the outside looking in, Mars, and I do not like what I see.'
Hah, I wouldn't even remember that quote if the Tokyoites hadn't used it as the banner quote for practically every biography they have attempted on me. To their polite and close-knit society, the name they gave me is probably supposed to be a subtle insult. As far as insults go, it suits the people of Crystal Tokyo: it's as pathetic as they are.
There is another name. I suppose, out of so many centuries of names, it is the closest thing I have left to a true one; it is the name closest to my heart. It is also happens to be what the Senshi and the Royal Couple call me. It is the one I chose, when I was a rebel. And most importantly for me, it's an easy one to remember.
I think it was just before our ill-fated attack on the Senshi's encampment. The others in the rebellion wanted me to select a name.
Because I did not achieve hibernation, like almost everyone else had during the Great Ice, I had already begun the spiral into the haze that is my atrocious memory. After all, I already had over three centuries of memories to contend with, most of them about the seeping cold, when most everyone else only had to deal with flashes and glimpses of the ice to intersperse their normal lifespan of memories.
One of the things I lost to that memory haze was my name. It's funny, really. To keep sane in the icy forever, I thought about my friends, about my enemies, about my family. I thought about all the power I had pumped into the Great Enemy, and how it had still stood, seemingly unaffected, afterwards. I thought about life, love, should haves, could haves, would-haves-if-onlys. And I dreamed - of peace, of happiness, of freedom. Especially freedom. I dreamed of having power to escape the ice. Dreams of power...
And it helped, it helped me to survive. But I never thought, I never dreamed about my name. And when I freed myself, I realised I could not remember it. And it didn't matter.
All that mattered was the fight I was about to engage in, alongside the other rebels. We had gathered. We had seen our efforts to divert Serenity from her selfish power trip fail. We had weighed the options - leave or accept Purification, and found them wanting. We prepared to force a new option. We prepared to fight. It was all some of us knew how to do.
We knew it wouldn't be as easy as one flashy battle. They had the impetus of legend on their side - the Senshi had been famous by the time of the days just before the Ice, and Serenity's appearance was just a legend that hadn't had time to be called that yet. To get support for our side, we knew we had to project an image that inspired people.
It was Onyx who suggested it. 'We fight for our Earth, let us take on names that reflect this'. Or something like that. It helped that taking on new names, new identities would protect our families from any paybacks, by either the Senshi or by the slavedogs that were some of their oh-so adoring populace.
I admit, I was ambivalent to the idea. What is in a name, after all? A name wouldn't stop raging fire, or crackling electricity, or will-chilling ice. As to protecting my family, I no longer had any outside the rebels. And so, as the others selected, I stood, I watched, and I did nothing.
But the others would have none of it. I knew Opal and Sapphire from before the Great Ice. Diamond, apparently, had seen me in the final fight, when I was at the peak of my sacrifice-given energy. And Onyx... well, who knows how Onyx found out anything: he was annoying that way. They were all confident in my abilities, they all urged me on.
And they all agreed. For the good of the group, I had to select some sort of name. Something appropriate to the others, to show our rallying of diverse people, all as Children of the Earth.
Sapphire had chosen her name for the colour of her hair and fur. Opal had decided on his because apparently his father had been a miner of the stuff. Topaz had an heirloom that was made of that mineral, and Zircon just had an inferiority problem. Amethyst had always liked that particular gem, and for all I know, Onyx was always Onyx. The reasons for the rest of the rebels' names I have since forgotten, unfortunately.
Finally, tired of the constant urgings, I agreed to take a name. I looked at the gathered fighters. They looked back, waiting for my decision. I looked at my little green crystal. I looked back to my comrades, and I smiled, having chosen my name. Really, it was obvious.
Emerald.
- Personal diary, dated 24 March, 2731.
-#-
He sighed, resting in the steaming bath. Rei had, after trying to get a lifetime of answers out of him, offered this bath to him. He'd been mildly shocked, to tell the truth. That was the worst thing about the girl - just when you get used to her being a ravening bitch, she'd show a glimmer of kindness.
Then again, he had stunk. Perhaps she'd just got sick of trying to quiz him while keeping her nose wrinkled.
"So what's your story?" he called out to the bathroom's window.
There was no reply.
"Come on," the man continued, putting his hands behind his head. "You've been spying on me and Rei-chan from afar for the last half-hour." And if I'd thought you'd heard anything that could harm Mars, I would not be quite so ambivalent. After all, for all I know she may be the one who found Serenity."What's your story?"
A shaggy-haired head popped up at the window. "What is it with this Rei-chan rubbish?" Yuuichiro snarled. "My story? What's yours? I've never seen you before, but Rei's been hanging off of every word you've said."
"Naughty, naughty. Spying on a private conversation. How gauche. You're jealous, aren't you? You're actually jealous of some vagabond she dragged off of the street. That's sweet in a way, I suppose. But I don't know you, and that speaks more volumes than you shall ever know. Will you be there at her side as long as she needs you? I think not. I think that I know not, in fact."
"You're wrong." And weird. I sure don't trust someone like you around Rei. "I'll be there for her, as long as she ever needs."
"Some promises can't be kept, no matter the will that drives it. Remember that. Don't worry, my jealous little friend. I am not trying to win Rei over as a girlfriend or anything. We are merely..." he struggled for a moment, trying to think of a way to say it, before he gave up. "We sort of go back a long way."
"You're not interested in her?" Yuuichiro asked suspiciously.
"Let's just say she's a mite bit young for me. I'm interested in a more... mature woman than this young Rei. Now please go away, you are truly bothering me."
Rei stared at the temple fire, trying to wring the truth from the words the man had given her.
"Thank you for the bath, Rei-chan. I am grateful."
She gritted her teeth. "Would you stop calling me that? Do you know how much grief I'm getting from the others because of your 'lovers in the past' speech!?"
"I'm sorry," he lied as he stepped up next to her, staring into the fire. "Get anything?"
She blinked. "You know about the fire?"
"Psychic visions through an elemental medium? It's more common than you know. In the time I remember, you were quite well known for your fire readings."
She hesitated. "Emerald..." she grimaced - he claimed he couldn't remember his real name, and that 'Emerald' was the one she had called him by in the past - but it was still a stupid name for a guy. "When I look in the fire, I..." Pride in her abilities made her hesitate again. She didn't want to admit that she had failed.
"Can't see me?" he finished. "I don't know how you remember the Silver Millennium. But my memories came to me gradually. At one point, I had to do something as a defensive measure, or else I may have died. And that something is the reason why I can't be seen in your fire."
"But how...?"
"I can't explain it." Because if I did, he thought, you might work out a way around it.
"Fine. Fine, be that way. What about the fights? If you're my... uh... friend from the past, why don't you help more in our fights?"
"Is that what you want? Truly? To scream like a little girl until the big brave hero comes to save you?"
"That is not what I said! No, I don't want that!"
"Then what's the problem? Look, if you really need help, I shall give it. But until then, I know that you and the other Senshi can handle the tasks that have been sent your way. I have confidence in your abilities."
They stood on the temple steps, looking at the darkened sky.
"So you really can't remember your childhood?" Rei asked.
"No. No, as I said: just too many memories. Far too many memories. With all of it swirling around in my head, some things just inevitably disappeared. My name was one of them."
"Too many memories? What are you talking about?"
"How much do you remember of your previous incarnation?" Emerald replied.
"Almost nothing." She admitted slowly.
"Imagine if you could remember. Imagine all those memories floating around, mixing up..."
"You don't mean that the memories of your past life in the Silver Millennium have swamped the ones from your current life?" Rei was horrified at the thought. If it was true, if he'd lost even his name thanks to his previous life, then could it happen to her? To the others? Could they all lose themselves to the past?
"The time where you and the other Senshi served your queen is easier for me to remember than the time of my childhood. My childhood memories are not gone. They're still there, all the memories. But they're all shoved into the background of my mind, so fuzzy, so hard to grasp ahold of. Oh, don't look so worried, Rei. I doubt you will suffer from this problem of forgetting. Who knows, one day you may wish you could forget like I do. Besides, I still remember so much. I remember you standing calm against a swarm of monsters." And I remember ordering them to head off the other paranormals as I took you on in that final rebel's battle.
He smiled. "I remember another time, when you called a storm of fire to protect your queen." I also remember having to use a building as a shield when you threw that storm at me. "I remember you wreathed in flames, an angel of fire, an angry vision of beauty..."
She coughed, looking slightly embarrassed. "Don't you remember anything else besides me?"
"Hmm? Oh, of course. A fine palace, with the Senshi serving and protecting their queen. Jupiter tending a garden full of great trees in a small park near the palace. Villages being attacked by this or that monster. Snatches of words here, part of a scene there, and so on. Sometimes clear as day, sometimes as murky as night. But yes, a lot of my memories seem to be of you." Of course, there's a lot of Serenity too, but I'd be a fool to talk of her, I might let something slip.
"I see. Look... I don't want to be rude..."
Sure you don't, he thought.
"...but I'm already seeing someone."
By choice or by death, they will leave you eventually, Emerald thought. No immortal love waits in the wings for you, Mars. Come the future, you'll be alone. "That Yuuichiro guy?"
"What? Yuuichiro? No! No, it's someone else. Besides, even if you did know a previous version of me, you don't know this me and I don't really know you."
Actually, Emerald thought, in the future we know each other perhaps better then we know ourselves. Each others quirks, weaknesses, strengths, what we'll say, what we'll do, how we fight...
"You do understand that it couldn't work out between us, right?"
You sound like you're trying to convince yourself. Gods, if we weren't always seriously trying to kill each other, we'd make a... decent couple. How thoroughly depressing. The closest thing I have to a soulmate is the person who most wants to kill me.
Emerald smiled a reassuring smile, and said "It's okay, Rei-chan. I understand how you must feel, with someone like me dropping into your life like this, so soon after you find out who you are. Whoever this person is, he's obviously a lucky man." Lucky he doesn't get immortality and have to live with your 'forceful personality', that is. "I promise, I won't get in the way. I just want you to know, no matter what happens, no matter what is said, if you ever find yourself alone... I'll always be there. Always." No matter how much you wish it otherwise.
-#-
Nothing is forever. But what does it matter if it feels like it is?
The seconds, the minutes, hours, years, centuries tick by. How long until it is millennia? Or more?
How long until there is a resolution?
It's not about who I am. As nice as it would be to blame Serenity for my being a killer and an energy vampire, I cannot. I cannot blame her for my immortality, or even for my seemingly eternal quest. I chose to be who I am. I chose the side I am on. Those are all my burdens of conscience, for me and me alone to bear.
Crystal Tokyo, the Purification, the exile - voluntary and otherwise, the blinkered 'good-evil' attitude that defines Crystal Tokyo, and, I am almost certain, the Great Ice itself... Ah, now those are burdens for Serenity to bear.
We are each other's mirror, immortal reminders of who we are and what we did to become that. We are both children of crystal: humanity is but a distant memory for us both. We are the obstacles to each other's happiness - a free world for me, a truly safe one for her. We are each other's eternal hell.
It is irrational, it is stupid, and it is the height of foolish musing, but sometimes I think more than all the other things, more than the centuries of reasons, the things I hate most about Serenity are the things about her that remind me of me.
I think we are both tired of this neverending dance between us. Sooner than never, that is all I know, one day I die. Or she dies. Or we both die.
There are no other ways anymore. That is all that is left to me and her, an ending. Above all, I crave an ending.
- Part of a set of personal journals, found after the Black Moon Crisis in a well-kept house, in northern Australia. This entry was dated 2850.
-#-
He watched from the shadows as the (now five) girls detransformed after yet another fight. His eyes traced out the differences in the auras - before and after - and he slightly smiled.
He was close. He was close to an answer. Soon enough, he would figure out this... this disguise of the Senshi's. And then, perhaps, Serenity could die at long last, wherever and whoever she was.
"So..." Minako smiled, looking at Rei as she helped the temple girl get some food for the other girls. "I've been trying to get to know you all. I hear from the others that you're dating two guys. Someone called Mamoru, and some other guy...?"
"Don't you even think about starting."
In a high tower, at a moment of tragedy, seven crystals - parts of a whole - became one once more. The ginzuisho settled into the crescent of its owner's weapon, glowing with the light of rebirth.
Sailor Moon reached out.
And Princess Serenity clasped the handle of her weapon, ready to defend her love.
Emerald leaned against the park bench, his eyes closed. His face was relaxed as he drew power from the elements. The soft wind blowing through his hair and ruffling his slightly grimy, now off-white shirt. The electricity from the nearby sputtering streetlights. The steady heartbeat of the earth beneath him, the gently swirling water of the large park lake...
His face was relaxed from his energy meditation, his body semi-limp, although still tense enough to spring to a defence if needed. His senses, the mystical ones that had little to do with sight or touch or any such mundane workings, reached out, gently touching the auras of every living thing around him, making him feel like a part of his surroundings for once, instead of some sort of forever-outsider. A smile started to twitch at his lips.
He stiffened. His smile dropped as his eyes shot open, startling a couple who had been walking by. As the young lovers hurried off, Emerald turned his head to the left, staring up through the masking set of tree branches to the outline of a distant building.
"Serenity..." he hissed, his eyes narrowing as he slowly turned his body towards the tower. He stood slowly, never taking his gaze off the tall building. His fists clenched and unclenched as he stared at the monolith.
One step, two, then three, and he was in the light-lit shadows of one of the sheltering trees. With one final clenching of his fists, and set determination on his face, he faded from view, leaving behind his bag and the glasses he used to hide his eyes.
-#-
It pays to be patient. And I am an intensely patient man.
But there are limits. Civilisations have risen and fell in less time than my fight against Serenity.
The simple facts are that Serenity is an extremely powerful woman. She is openly protected by four of the five true Senshi that I know to be still living, and the fifth one, Pluto, is no doubt shielding her queen in her own way. As well as Endymion, there are the Royal Guards, all of whom have more power than normal humans. Finally, there is the Royal Court - a large deal of the 'lords' and 'ladies' are paranormals - offspring of various paranormal survivors of the Great Ice.
Against this veritable army I have myself and a small green crystal.
Oh, there are small pockets of humanity that count me as a friend, for destroying one threat or another to their village. Some youma too, for that matter - I do not kill as indiscriminately as some would like to imagine. But they are all farmers, normal people (and monsters), they are not fighters.
Or, for the ones that do have power, they are either, quite rightly, scared of facing Serenity, or they believe they have no reason to. I could not possibly use any of them in a fight, they would only die needlessly in a battle they could not win. Only once have I directly used normal people's help in Crystal Tokyo, and the entire affair with that TV show with the ridiculous animal mascots - where I had the support of two very young aides, Michiko and Kensuke - convinced me that solo was the only way I could go when it came to facing the Senshi.
It is a lonely fight. And at times, it seems that it will be a fight that I shall never win. However, I will not give up. I will never give up. But sometimes...
Sometimes I just get so very tired.
- Computer personal log (voice recording), left in a small dwelling in Crystal Tokyo that had been believed to be abandoned. The timestamp places the message just before the failed Serenity assassination attempt of 2876.
-#-
Authors Note: The idea of the rebels taking on their names was to give a way of explaining why the future Dark Moon clan members had theirs - Demand and Rubeus aren't exactly normal names. And most mineral names are non-gender specific. If I use the true Emerald in the story, I'll use the Japanese name for her - Esmaraude. Or something like that.