Chapter Fifteen
LadyPrin
Disclaimer Applies.
"LET HER GO!" Rei cried from below.
Beryl laughed.
"What makes you think you can command me? Haven't you noticed that you're in no position to give commands, nor make demands?" Beryl asked mockingly.
Rei's face flushed with anger.
Beryl grinned nastily.
Beryl's hands started to grow into claws, just like the shape shifter's ones, only longer.
"Let her go Beryl!" Mina commanded in a strong voice.
Beryl didn't even glance at her.
"I said let my bodyguard go!!!" Mina commanded again.
Beryl's head whipped around and she stared at Mina; her hands were only inches away from penetrating Serena's heaving chest.
Mina stood there proudly in the middle of her companions, covered in many different colors of blood, and holding a sword in front of her.
Beryl's eyes zeroed in on the sword.
It held the half Moon crest on its hilt.
When Beryl hadn't been looking Mina had picked up Serena's sword.
Beryl, now seeing that sword in Mina's hands, took it to be Mina's own.
She lowered her hands, but only slightly.
"Prove to me that you are the Princess whom I seek and I shall let her go." Beryl said suspiciously.
Mina took a deep breath, and then she held the sword up high, where the Moon's crest was level with her forehead.
"I sure hope this plan works!" Was the thought that was going through all the Sailor Scouts minds as Endymion and his people watched on in curiosity.
Mina becomes enveloped within gold light. When it fades she is wearing the traditional white dress of a Moon Princess. Her hair is done up in Odangos, though the streamers are shorter than Serena's is. And a small crescent moon burns gold on her forehead.
Queen Serenity's head jerks up and she looks around.
Her vision is a bit blurry, but her memories are not. She remembered Beryl dropping the illusion of being Fireia, and hitting her with a dark energy blast.
Her vision clears, and she stands up.
"How did she get so close without me knowing?" She wondered. "Why didn't she kill me?"
The answer to her second question came to her.
"I'm such a fool!" She cried in her mind.
Then her head jerks up as she feels the power of a Sailor Scout course through her.
"Mina is putting plan Substitute Princess into action. Time to do my part."
Serenity made a tiny mind link to Mina, and fed to her through the mind link, some of the power of the Impearium Silver Crystal.
"Hold it Mina! I'm coming!"
Beryl could see and feel the power of the Impearium Silver Crystal radiating off of the other blond haired girl.
"So I've been after the wrong one all along have I?" Beryl asked Serena, though she didn't wait for an answer.
Which was just as well, Serena didn't have one.
Beryl made a motion with her hands, and the shape shifter pushed Serena over the side of the hill, down the side opposite her friends.
She slid down a fourth of the way and was caught by someone.
"Umf!" Sammy cried as the weight of Serena pushed him back into Lita.
Lita managed to steady them all before they all went tumbling down the hill.
"Are you okay?" Lita asked Serena.
"It's you!!! I knew you'd come!!! I knew you were real!!! I'm fine!!!" Serena whispered happily and fast. "Listen, there's this very evil and horrifying woman up there!!! She's trying to kill someone! At first she thought it was me she was after, but now she thinks it's Mina! She's going to try to kill Mina! We have to stop her!!!"
Lita put her hands onto Serena's shoulders.
Serena winced slightly, but Lita didn't notice.
"Calm down. She knows what she's doing!" Lita assured her. "This is her job."
"I know, but still!" Serena cried pleadingly.
"Sammy!" Lita cried as she looked past Serena on up the hill.
Serena turned around and saw Sammy running up the hill as fast as he could.
Serena and Lita ran to catch up.
As he neared the top he pulled from somewhere a hidden lethal looking dagger.
Before Serena and Lita caught up to him, he made it to the top of the hill.
Beryl still concentrated on Mina.
Before she had time to turn around Sammy lunged and drove the dagger straight into her back, right between the shoulder blades, and into Beryl's black heart.
As the shape shifter made a move to kill him, he jumped off of Beryl and rolled down the hill toward the other Sailor Scouts.
When he reached the bottom of the hill, he looked up with a triumphant grin, but that triumphant grin slowly faded away.
The shape shifter quickly plucked the dagger from Beryl's back and Beryl's purple flesh sealed the wound.
"That was really plucky!" Beryl said unworriedly. "But it takes more than a dagger to the heart to kill me, Princess."
"I know, Beryl." Mina snarled at her.
"That's Queen Beryl to you, brat!" Beryl snarled back.
"The title Queen demands respect. I have no respect for you Beryl, and so as Princess I don't recognize the self proclaimed title of yours." Mina spoke like a true Princess. Which she was, she just wasn't the Princess of the Moon, though she was the cousin to her.
She spoke proudly, but within, her mind was in turmoil.
For years she and the Queen had practiced this plan. Mina would change her clothes and hairstyle to look like the Princess, therefore it would not be a straightforward illusion and thereby not right away detectable as one.
Then the Queen would open a link to her and pass some of the Impearium Silver Crystal's power to her. So that Beryl would see the power surrounding her and thereby believe the story.
But Mina was not a Moon Princess, so she could not command the Impearium Silver Crystal's power. Because she was related to the Princess, was the only reason she could hold the Crystal's power inside herself, but hold it was all she could do.
The longer she held it within her, the more it destroyed her.
She did not have the power needed in order to live with the Crystal's power in her veins. That power was only held in the Serenity line, and only after having grown over generations.
Mina doubled over as the pain became too much to bear.
"I'm sorry my Queen, I can't hold any longer." She thought as she fell to the ground, her dress disappearing along with the crescent moon crest.
At that moment Beryl let fly a big ball of dark energy.
Mina was too weak to block it.
Before any of the other's could move, the soldier who had eavesdropped on Endymion and Andrew's conversation earlier, leaped in front of Mina.
He threw up his hands and a big ball of pure energy flew from them to hit the dark energy in mid air.
Both canceled out the other, and they both disappeared without harming anyone.
The soldier then transformed himself.
His ears became pointy, his hair grew short and brown, his eyes turned green, and his uniform became dark blue with green and pink stripes around the tunic.
"Just who are you!" Beryl screamed in rage.
"My name is Prince Alan, of the Showma Galaxy." He replied defiantly.
Beryl recognized his name and Galaxy.
"You . . ." She muttered at her eyes blazed with red-hot rage.
"You will not hurt her." He commanded.
"Things are getting interesting." Lita muttered as she and Serena rounded the side of the hill and saw this turn of events.
Before Serena could reply, a gold clad hand reached out of thin air beside her, took her by the wrist, and jerked her out of space and time.
The hand pulled her through multicolored lights that were so bright and moving at so fast a speed that Serena had a headache before it was over.
Then the hand pulled her up and out of the moving lights.
She was pulled forth from inside a large cauldron.
She leaped over the side and turned around to look at the cauldron. How she had ever managed to fit in there she didn't understand, for it was not big enough for anyone but a small child to fit in.
"Welcome Moon Princess to my domain." A familiar voice spoke to her, resounding off the dark stone walls of the small dark room, where the only light came from inside the cauldron.
It was the same voice that had told her how to use her forbidden birthright, the same voice that had taught her so much.
She looked around to see a woman, about a head taller than her, standing just a little behind her.
The woman wore a sleeveless white shirt. Her short skirt looked like sharp gold petals of armor, and she had the same gold petals around her shoulders. Her hands were gloved in gold gauntlets, and her head was adorned with a gold metal helmet.
"Welcome to my domain, Moon Princess." The woman repeated with a slight bow. "I am Sailor Galaxia, Protector of the Galaxian Cauldron."