SOUL MATES
Chapter 9: "Fear Factor"
A Sailor Moon fanfic
By Bill K.
Sailor Moon's shoulders slumped. The dragon had just rejected the offer Helios made of sanctuary for him in Elysian. And it had seemed like the perfect solution, too. Why, she wondered, did peace-making have to be so difficult?
"I am disappointed," Helios responded, "but I will respect your decision. May I inquire as to why you choose not to come to Elysian?"
"I am a creature of this world, Dream Guardian," the dragon explained. "I am tethered to this world, spiritually as well as physically. Were I to go somewhere else, even to a paradise such as you describe this Elysian to be, I would soon wither and die. Were it possible for dragons to leave this world, we would have done so long ago. But this Earth is our mother, our source of sustenance, and we cannot leave."
"Then please don't leave!" Pallas wailed. "Pallas doesn't want you to die! And Pallas would miss you terribly!"
The dragon seemed to smile as he glanced at Pallas. "And that is another reason why I cannot leave. I would not wish to cause Pallas such distress."
"Well, that's appreciated," Sailor Moon said, clearly frustrated. "But that doesn't come close to solving this problem."
Out of the corner of her eye, Sailor Moon noticed the female dragon beginning to stir. Turning, she faced the dragon, Moon Tier in hand. The dragon seemed to wobble a little as she raised up to full height. Her eyes took a moment to focus. When she could see clearly, she stared directly at Sailor Moon.
"What did you do to me?" she asked. "While I will confess it was - - quite pleasant - - it was also quite incapacitating. Do not do that to me again."
"Keep your temper and I won't have to," Sailor Moon replied. "I apologize for intruding on your territory. As soon as we get this sorted out, we'll leave."
Before the dragon could respond, Pallas stepped forward.
"Please, Miss Dragon-Ma'am, please let Mr. Dragon-Sir stay here!" she pleaded. "He doesn't have anywhere else to go! And he's very nice and you'll like him a lot! Please don't make him go! Please . . .!"
Before Pallas could finish, the female slipped behind her cloak of invisibility. Pallas stopped and stared, fearing it meant a refusal. She was about to renew her efforts when Sailor Moon put her hand on the Senshi's shoulder and signaled for quiet. The male dragon slipped behind his cloak, too.
Moments later, a CDP observation drone appeared over the top of the trees. It cut its altitude so that it was eye level with Sailor Moon and hovered before her.
"Hello, Princess Usagi," the drone said, a CDP local officer speaking through the drone's communication system. "We're honored to have you here on Chikubu Island. Is there a problem we can assist you with?"
When the CDP contingent of ten officers arrived in their hover truck from the station in Nagahama, they didn't know what to expect; only that they had orders to subdue any violence, disperse any belligerent groups and maintain order. They didn't expect what they found.
Several locals were setting fire to some trees on the bank of Lake Biwa in a small clearing south of some resort cabins. The locals turned when they heard the hover truck pull up. Some went back to burning more trees while the rest watched the CDP squad suspiciously.
"Hashimoto, get those fires out!" ordered the squad commander. An officer pulled out a PDA and began typing instructions. "The rest of you, disperse this mob!"
"Leave us be!" shouted one of the mob. He was the man from earlier, the father of the teen girl. "There's a dragon here and we're going to burn it out!"
"You will drop your weapons and disperse!" the CDP commander ordered. "You are in violation of several local and national ordinances!" The squad of officers advanced on the mob. Two of them, brandishing limbs used as torches, held the torches out in front of them to keep the CDP at bay.
Overhead, a CDP drone flew over the tops of the trees. Detecting the fires, it advanced until it was hovering over the nearest burning tree and began spraying chemical fire retardant on the flames.
"Don't put it out! There's a dragon there!" bellowed the mob leader. "I've seen it! It attacked me! Attacked my daughter! We've got to burn it out! It's afraid of fire!"
"I was directed to restore peace to this area and to disperse or restrain anyone causing a disruption," the commander replied. "Put those torches out and disperse."
"No!" the man shouted. "We're not going to let this thing lurk around here, waiting to pick us off one by one! We've got to destroy it! At least drive it off! The safety of our families is at stake!"
"Drive what off?" the commander demanded.
"The dragon! Haven't you seen the news streams?"
"I've seen them," the commander said. "So far, though, I haven't seen any evidence beyond a few eavesdropped conversations and some dubious witness testimony. I don't see a dragon. All I see are some burned trees and grass."
"It can turn invisible!" bellowed the man.
"Then how do you know it's here?"
The local man stared, his eyes bulging, trying to come up with a response and failing. By now several CDP officers were forced to use their shock clubs to disarm others in the group. The leader's shoulders slumped. His jaw clenched in frustration. He allowed the CDP commander to relieve him of his torch.
"Go home," the commander advised him. "The palace is aware of this situation. If there was a danger, Queen Serenity or the Sailor Senshi would be dealing with it."
"That's what they said before the Dark Moon Invasion," muttered the local.
The man trudged off, followed by the others in the group. As the CDP watched them go and began setting up a command post, the commander glanced back at the bank of the clearing. There were six scorched or burned trees and burned grass back some twenty feet from the bank. If a dragon had been living here, the commander mused, it wouldn't want to now.
"Thank you, Commander," Endymion said from his chair in his office. "You handled the situation as best you could. Maintain the status quo until further instructions." Breaking the connection, Endymion sat back in his chair. "Now if only my daughter would call."
"Artemis did inform you of her location, didn't he?" Luna asked.
"Yes," Endymion replied. "I can't imagine what's happening on Chikubu Island, but whatever it is, she can probably handle it. I just hate not knowing."
"The burden of parenting," Luna commented. "Your Majesty, were you aware of Dr. Mizuno's intent to post her findings on this dragon she scanned?"
"No, I wasn't," Endymion straightened up. He got up out of his chair and headed for the door, cloak sweeping behind him. "Maybe I need to have a word with Ami."
The King entered the Senshi lab on the first floor of the palace. He found Ami furiously typing on a crystal pad, surrounded by a dozen virtual reality screens. The woman was so focused on what she was putting into the database and the extrapolations her artificial intelligence programs were making that she didn't even notice his approach. Endymion looked at the screens. He recognized some of them as biological and zoological analysis, but much of the science was beyond him.
"Oh, Endymion!" Ami exclaimed when she finally noticed him standing next to her. "Look at this information! This is a completely new genus! I can trace some of the evolutionary genetics back to the Species Plethodontidae, but it's as if there was a large evolutionary lurch in the past, with one branch becoming the common salamander and this branch mutating into, well, this! It's so fascinating!"
"Ami," Endymion began.
"Look at the anatomy scans!" Ami continued, pointing to a screen. "Breathing apparatus similar to both the North American salamander AND the African crocodile! Amphibian lungs and the ability to filter oxygen through the skin, allowing it to breathe under water and on the surface! And the bony exterior resembles the crocodile as well! I wonder if somehow some DNA randomly mutated to resemble the crocodile, but I would have to study this for years to even begin to guess what could have caused it!"
"That's nice," Endymion said. "Ami . . ."
"Did you know they subsist on light energy absorbed through the skin and converted to energy through photosynthesis?" Ami marveled. "There's no other creature on the planet who can do that! Imagine if the genetic sequence could be mapped and transferred to other living beings? No one would starve so long as the sun shone!"
"Ami."
"And flight!" Ami exclaimed. "If anecdotal legend is to be believed, these creatures are capable of flight! But there are no wings! No visible means of propulsion or defiance of gravity! How? How do they do it?" She gazed at the screens, enraptured. "Oh, it's such a grand puzzle."
"Ami," Endymion said, putting his hand on her shoulder. The woman turned and looked at him, her glasses perched on her nose. "I heard that you plan to post this information on the net?"
"Of course!" Ami gasped. "This is the discovery of the decade! It's an entirely new genus of life form, unknown for decades, perhaps centuries! Knowledge such as this must be shared with the world!"
"Because you think everyone is going to accept the existence of dragons in our midst calmly and benignly?"
"Well, of course not," Ami sobered, adjusting her glasses on her face. "Despite your and Serenity's efforts to eradicate fear and prejudice in the world, there are still those who react to the unknown by allowing their baser instincts to rule them. That's an unfortunate conclusion of modern psychological thinking." She stopped, as if hearing her own words for the first time. "You think publishing this information will create hysteria within communities located on large bodies of water."
"It's already happened," Endymion informed her. "CDP had to quell an incident on Lake Biwa because some locals were incited by the news streams. Right now there's enough lack of tangible proof so that most people will be skeptical or dismissive of the reports. But posting your findings would give those reports scientific credence and such incidents could possibly multiply."
The implication was clear to Ami. The woman looked visibly stricken and Endymion sympathized with her.
"You don't know what you're asking me to do," Ami squeaked. "To suppress knowledge goes against my beliefs. I understand why you're asking me to do this. But compliance just feels wrong." She looked up at him. "As if we're bowing to the superiority of ignorance."
"I think I understand what I'm asking more than you think I do," Endymion replied. "Don't think I haven't considered just what you put into words. I'm balancing that against the safety of the people, the safety of the dragons and the safety of the environment they exist in."
Ami looked back at the information displayed all around her.
"I won't forbid you publishing this information, Ami," Endymion said. "You know how I feel and you know the situation. And I know that you're someone I trust to analyze a situation and determine what course is best. So I'll leave the decision up to you."
With that, he turned and left, leaving behind a woman on the horns of a dilemma.
"No," Sailor Moon told the drone hovering in front of her. "We were just, um, looking around. My Senshi and I are here on a little vacation and I heard how nice the forests of Chikubu Island are. So I flew over to see them."
"I see," the CDP officer relayed through the drone. "If you wish, the drone can act as a guide for you, since you aren't familiar with these woods."
"No, that's all right," Sailor Moon responded quickly. "I wouldn't want to take it away from its patrols just to cater to me. I can manage."
The drone gained altitude until it reached its programmed flight plan, then sped off. Sailor Moon watched it leave, then exhaled as Pallas approached.
"The Princess fibbed!" gasped Pallas.
"Well, did you want me to tell it the truth?" Sailor Moon asked.
"No," Pallas squeaked. "But isn't fibbing bad?"
"Situational ethics, Pallas," Sailor Moon sighed. "I'll - - try to explain it to you when we get back home."
"You see?" the female dragon hissed as she slid from behind her cloak of invisibility. "Already your presence risks exposure for me! Leave this place and say nothing of what you saw here!"
"Again I apologize for intruding," the male dragon said, reappearing near Pallas. "I will do as you ask."
"Wait," she said suddenly, then hesitated. "I am not so cruel as to turn you out. You have no place to stay. This is a large bank." She struggled with the next words. "And you seem very well-spoken and wise. Perhaps," she sighed, "perhaps I could learn from you - - from your experience."
"Your offer is quite generous," the male replied. "But would not the presence of Pallas and her friends upset you and threaten to expose you to the world?"
"Of course," she answered without hesitation. "I would much prefer they stay away permanently."
The male seemed saddened. "Then I cannot stay."
"Why not?" the female gasped. "Your association with these humans has already exposed you once and will continue to do so! Do you wish no peace?"
"I do," the male replied. "But not if it comes at the expense of my friendship with Pallas. If you accept me, you accept that Pallas will at least visit me, and possibly stay. You do not wish that and I will not force you to accept those terms." He turned to Pallas. "Please climb upon me, Pallas, for we must leave."
"But why?" whined Pallas. "This is a nice place for you! You'll like it here, Mr. Dragon-Sir!" She sniffed. "If-if Pallas promises to stay away, then you can stay here and be happy!"
"But if you promise to stay away," he asked, "then how will I be happy?"
Pallas lunged forward and wrapped her arms around the dragon's snout as far as they would go, pressing her face against the scaly hide.
"Pallas is so very glad she met you," the Senshi sobbed, "but she wishes she never had! Then nobody would have found you and you'd be safe and happy!"
"The strife was worth it, Pallas."
Again the female slipped behind her shroud of invisibility. Alerted by this, Sailor Moon glanced up at the sky. She found the other Senshi approaching, the three astride Vesta as she mimicked the form of a winged horse. As they landed, Pallas and the dragon looked at them. As they dismounted, the Senshi looked at Pallas and the dragon, their eyes bulging. Vesta transformed back into a human. She looked like she wanted to charge them, but she was able to hold back. Her anger, though, was another matter.
"What the Hell are you doing running off like that, Pallas?" Vesta demanded. "You scared the life out of me when we couldn't raise you!"
"Pallas is sorry, Vesta," the Senshi said contritely. "But she was busy protecting Mr. Dragon-Sir and she didn't have time to call."
Vesta glared, first at her and then at the dragon, who met her gaze calmly. "OK," she grunted.
"Is there trouble, Sailor Moon?" Saturn asked. "We got worried when we heard the palace couldn't raise you."
"Nothing new," she sighed. "Just the same old trouble; how do you keep a secret that doesn't want to stay secret?"
"Sailor Moon," the dragon began, "I appreciate all your efforts on my behalf. It is heartening to know that there are some who can look past the exterior and see the being within. But you have expended too much of your time and energy assisting me. I have been forced to search for new homes before. I am quite capable of doing so again."
"You're sure?" Sailor Moon asked. "I kind of feel responsible, since we were the ones who outed you in the first place. And I have a whole lot of resources at my disposal. It might make things easier."
"Or more difficult," the dragon replied. "Your intentions are noble, but you do attract attention."
"He's got you there," Saturn grinned sadly.
"I would make one request," the dragon ventured. "Please allow Pallas to accompany me as we tour Lake Biwa in search of a new home for me. I promise no harm shall come to her and she may return at any time. But I would like her company - - and her counsel."
"Well," Sailor Moon sighed, "that's up to Pallas, I suppose." They all glanced at her.
Pallas looked down. She looked at the dragon. She looked at Vesta and the other Asteroids. Her lip began to tremble.
"Maybe Pallas could go with Mr. Dragon-Sir," she murmured shyly, "just until he finds a new home? She does like being with him. I-Is that OK, Vesta?"
Vesta's jaw tightened. She felt a hand close on her shoulder and looked: it was Ceres. Vesta inhaled.
"Yeah," she coughed out. "I guess so." Then she jabbed her finger at Pallas. "But if you get into ANY trouble, YOU CALL ME! UNDERSTAND?"
"Yes, Vesta," Pallas smiled.
As everyone watched Pallas and Vesta, Saturn nudged Sailor Moon.
"Call your dad," she advised her friend. "He's worried. And he's got some news on what's happening."
"Yeah, I guess I have to," sighed Sailor Moon. She pulled up her Senshi Communicator and punched in the King. Endymion picked up immediately.
"Well thank you for finding time for me, Honey," Endymion said with that tone of imperial sarcasm that she knew him for. Sailor Moon blew at her bangs in frustration.
Pallas climbed up onto the neck of the dragon. As the dragon began to rise into the air, she waved at all of her fellow Senshi. They all waved back except Vesta; Vesta just stared nervously, her entire body one clenched fist. The dragon continued to rise.
It was then they saw it. A small drone hovering nearby, recording the entire scene and transmitting it to a small launch a mile from the island shore.
Continued in Chapter 10