Sailor Moon Aeons.
Book 3: Crystal City.
Act 3: Wars of Future Past.
Episode 19: War and memories.
By Razor Knight
Last update: September 2, 2020
Moon looked around. This was just one of many ships the Nemesian fleet had, and it was an impressive vehicle. The technology in it was rather primitive (enough to allow a kid with a hammer to overload its generator,) but the magic in it was quite advanced.
But still not advanced enough to stop her.
It took her a few seconds, but she found what she was looking for. Phasing into the room, she saw it was as crowded as expected. Nobody in the room saw her, however, thanks to the one skill she had inherited from her mother, and, as she found out centuries ago, could be taught to others, although with a small caveat.
A Serenity could become invisible to all means of detection, for a while, to the point only other Serenities could sense them. And the form she had taught others was almost as strong, but could not make the caster invisible to any Senshi.
She could- Her allies could easily destroy any of these ships. Even the weakest of those currently taking care of this stealth mission had more power than what she had sensed in the Death Phantom - and these ships had a thousandth of that, at most. But she didn't want a bloodbath, she didn't want to kill any of these invaders. And her group, both old allies and newer ones, had agreed with her.
So this room had the magic crystal that powered up the ship's weapons. She just needed to drain it dry, and then do the same with the shield crystal.
It would be easier to blast the ship apart, but only slightly easier. But they needed to make sure the Nemesians knew these were no accidents. They came and went undetected, but were leaving behind a message for their leaders.
Junko looked at the spaceships rapidly leaving the atmosphere and smiled. "I gotta admit, it's satisfying to see those goons run away after hearing so damn much about what their war caused."
Usagi (the younger) nodded. "And for me, it's quite cathartic. As a small child, I only ever saw one ship, and it was scary."
"Is it true, though? You hammered its generator to dust, back then?"
Usagi looked at Mai. "Not quite. I just hit it as hard as I could, which, looking back, was far harder than a kid my age could. There were a couple times when I tapped on my Senshi powers, without knowing. Gin already admitted it was the Ginzuishou I had absorbed that let me do that. Anyhow, I cracked that generator, and it started to overload. Rubeus had not considered me a threat until then, which I'm sure was something he regretted for many years."
Hotaru looked at the others. "Everyone remembered leaving the 'package' there, right?" They all nodded. "Good. Let's wait for their reaction."
Opal was not happy about this. Dimando would not be thrilled to hear these news, but she knew the messenger would not be shot. "... And that is what we know about the attackers."
Dimando looked at the woman. As her name would hint, her hair had a different color depending on the angle of the viewer, and he had found that fascinating at a younger age, but now it was just her one distinctive trait. In any case, she was not bringing him any news he had wanted to hear. "So let me see if I got all of this. The whole Nemesian armada was disabled, somehow, in a span of minutes, their weapons and shields rendered useless, and nobody saw anything happening before the crystals broke?"
"That's... Dimando, the crystals did not break. Someone drained them. That small card is one of many identical ones we found, one in each ship, next to the shield generator."
Dimando looked at the card. It was a plain paper piece, and the words 'Would you kindly leave our world alone?' were there, along with a signature... "Neo Senshi?"
"There is no data on them, in the Earth information networks. The closest I've found is mages who are called 'Lesser Senshi,' weak magic users who 'play pretend' at being Senshi, defending civilians from threats..."
"Whoever did this was able to somehow remain undetected to both our people and our sensors. That is no weak magic."
Saffir nodded. "So whoever did this was not a weak mage. Opal, you say you found no information on these Neo Senshi, but that might be because... They were kept a secret not only from us."
Opal was, admittedly, not at the level of Saffir's deductive skills, but once given the right hints... "So the Senshi, who are in all but name the ruling group of the Earth, of the whole system, even, hid some of their kin from us, by removing their existence from public knowledge."
"Yes, and the magic they must have used means they were no rookies, no youngsters."
Opal nodded. "Urban legends say the Senshi live for centuries."
She felt it, that unsettling presence, a second before the man spoke. Wiseman. "Those are not just legends. Rubeus' team found something that confirms this. 'Sailor Pluto' was not a fake. Dimando might not have killed her. She is one who has the power to travel through time."
"Interesting. However..."
"Also, I cannot sense the Queen's crystal anymore. She is still alive, but the crystal is gone."
"If we found it..."
Esmeraude appeared near them. "I just got word from one of our spies in the palace. She saw the Princess talking to a green-haired Senshi, then the Princess vanished."
Wiseman seemed lost in thought for a second. "I can sense her... In the past."
Dimando was impressed, but not surprised. Wiseman surely had a lot of tricks he had yet to show them. "Why the past?"
"They need that crystal." Esmeraude guessed.
"So the Princess will ask a younger version of the Queen for one?"
"Considering all the other 'impossibles' we have seen up to now, I would guess that."
Dimando looked at Wiseman. "Can you-"
"Travel through time? I thought it impossible. It is not a thing I can do."
Esmeraude looked at a small screen that appeared in front of her. "Oh my, what are the odds... Rubeus's group just found a 'leak' in the palace's network. Their science division apparently had blueprints for a 'personal time jumper' but never built it, and kept the blueprints hidden due to their dangerous applications."
Dimando smiled. "Tell him to pass those blueprints to the scientists. They can use them to figure out how to make a few for us."
"As you wish," Esmeraude said.
"Opal, I know you might not like this, but I need you to keep up the attacks. Hit other countries, those 'Neo Senshi' can't be everywhere at once."
"What if they still just disable our ships again?"
"Then we know my plan worked. You have to keep these 'Neo Senshi' busy so they won't follow us back to the past."
"... And they'll think keeping us here fighting their 'decoys' will stop us from following them to the past."
Takamaru whistled. "Holy crap, we're the decoys for the decoys."
Hikaru smiled at that. "Mom said she did that, during the Dark Kingdom wars."
"Huh?"
"She didn't know at first if she was the 'Moon Princess,' but when General Kunzite tried to fool her into leaving Tokyo undefended, she followed him, because she knew other Senshi were around. She kept Kunzite busy, while the Tokyo Senshi searched for the Moon Princess."
"With all due respect to our elders," Takamaru said, "How did they not figure out Sailor Moon was the one?"
"A fair question. We eventually did," Hotaru said, "we were teenagers who barely knew anything at all about magic. To us, just assuming Sailor Moon was the Moon Princess was... A huge leap of logic."
"Also, she was different back then. Growing up is a thing that happens to people."
Hotaru smiled at her wife's words. "My first impressions of our dear Queen Serenity, or Usagi as her name was, and still is, were... A bratty, lazy crybaby who was quite selfish and complained about having to fight."
"... Wow."
Hotaru sighed. "Then again, back then I was someone who kept her emotions to herself, had a hard time seeing friends as something that was needed, and would have probably laughed - internally - at falling in love with another girl. I knew what was going on with Haruka and Michiru even back then, but it was just... Not for me, I thought. First time I realized what I felt for Chibi, I was shocked."
Usagi smiled as she thought back to those days. "For a while, I was confused, when I met mom back in the past. I thought it was a joke, that blonde girl was the same as mom? But she changed my mind quickly. She always protected me, even though I did not - could not - tell her who I really was. She got hurt, she saw her friends get hurt for my sake, and just kept on fighting. Even when alone and outpowered by Rubeus, she showed courage. She was as afraid of Rubeus as I was, but she did not abandon her friends. I think the moment I saw her beat Rubeus - with my help, though she could have won even against reactor-powered Rubeus on her own - that was the moment I knew it. That was Sailor Moon. My mom."
Hotaru nodded. "She... For a long time, she kept wearing that mask, the lazy, selfish girl. She became a Senshi, but at first didn't want all that responsibility. When we found out she was the Princess, she was still doubting herself."
Usagi smiled. "And Rei made her see she could see through her mask as easily as mom could see past Rei's snark and grumpy attitude."
Takamaru shook his head. "Sorry, that's quite hard to take. Queen Serenity, the most powerful being in our system, the one who is one formality away from being the queen of the whole Solar system... Didn't want to be a Senshi?"
"She was a normal girl for fourteen years, and would have continued to be that, if not for the Dark Kingdom's return." Hotaru sighed. "Let me tell you how I discovered my own powers. I was a weak kid, with barely any stamina, an introvert, I had no friends and pretended I didn't care. But one day when I was twelve, I was targeted by a group of thugs... I'll let what they wanted from me to your imagination. Thing is, I had no chance to escape. I could only run for a block and a half before they caught up. But as one of them grabbed my wrist, I felt something 'crack' in my mind. Suddenly I felt a strange energy, and the man was screaming in pain. I didn't know what I was doing then, but I was draining his life away. I was too confused and scared to stop... Or perhaps I didn't want to stop."
"You... Killed him?"
"No. Pluto showed up, knocked them all out, and phased me to her 'gate' before I could. I was still scared, panicking, afraid of what I had almost done. Pluto let me attack her until she could calm me down - it dodn't take long, as I burnt all the energy I had taken from that man quite quickly. She told me who I was, what I was. Helped me explain it to dad. She was the first person I ever called a friend."
"That's... I guess I should be glad. Hearing that makes my training as a Senshi sound easy."
Hotaru sighed. "Yeah. Usagi's awakening wasn't as bad, she 'just' was told her dreams of a normal life were over, and had to save her friend from being killed by a monster who looked like her friend's mother... And then had to fight youma on her own, helped only by a talking cat who kept nagging her to get better at it."
Hisako chuckled. "Oh, I guess I can understand why she didn't want to be a Senshi, that sounds like a mess."
"She started using another mask, though, even after she started training." Usagi said. "She kept telling herself she hated fighting, and only did it for her friends, for her world. It was her mother's death that made her drop that mask - and her 'secret identity' - for good."
Hikaru cringed. "I remember mom told me about that. How they became known to the world. And how Aunt Usagi was a lot less cheerful for a while."
Hotaru nodded. "I was there. I was the one who revived her mother, but I know Usagi at that moment was not herself. She had been regretting having to kill youma, but the second her mother fell, she transformed in public, blasted one of the youma to dust, and managed to overpower the other one, who was the leader of the new youma forces. She told me later that, if not for a bit of self-restraint kicking in, she would have done something awful to that Goshenite woman. Something she would have regretted later on, but would have enjoyed at the time. It was sad to see Usagi be creeped out by her own thoughts..."
"Okay, putting all those nice, heartwarming tales from the past aside," Hisako said, the sarcasm in her voice made very clear, "we need to focus on our current mess. We only got all of those ships because they attacked one place. If they split up, we might-"
"Be outnumbered," Usagi finished. "Don't worry, we've got reinforcements."
Hisako blinked at that. "Oh right, the Demon Hunters."
"Emi, Aki and Maria have gathered their best for this war. The relatively few who could pull what we did."
Hikaru frowned. "True, they can drain the crystals, but they would need to be quite strong to-"
"They'll do it in teams, use their own version of the skill I taught you to go in and out unnoticed, and then use a group spell to share the burden of draining weapons and shields."
"How many Hunters are we talking about?"
"A bit over a hundred."
"They have so many powerful hunters?"
"Our three old friends are the current leaders of the whole organization, as the last previous 'Elder' died centuries ago. There's a few hundred Hunters out there whose power would rival a Guardian Senshi in battle. Their mana reserves would be lower but in a quick battle? Some of those Hunters I met could win against a Guardian."
"Wow. Good thing they're on our side."
"Good thing for them," Usagi said, "as either mom or I could pull a repeat of the first 'Demon Wars' as they call it, defeat all of them on our own. Heck, Kyouko and Junko could do it too."
"... Serenities are that broken, huh?"
Kyouko smiled at Mai's words. "Just be glad we stopped at Triple Senshi." She looked at her daughter as she said that, and Junko shrugged. Yup, that girl wasn't going to make her a grandma.
Dimando looked at Rubeus. "Go. Use our new devices to hunt down the Princess. If we kill her, the Neo-Senshi will have failed."
Esmeraude was shocked. Killing a child, that- She noticed Wiseman looking at her, his eyes shining in the darkness of his hood. No, she could understand it, it was the only way. They needed to win this war. Even if it meant becoming monsters.
A/N: Fun thing is, Opal has the hair color of a Mary Sue, yet she's basically doomed to fail and (comparatively) a weakling. Yup, I made her have the looks of a Mary Sue, and the everything else of a normal character.
Also, 'flashback episodes' are sometimes needed, as long as you don't go Naruto on them. "Hey guys remember that guy I killed five minutes ago? Let's watch it again!"
Jokes aside, I did explore many of those things back when writing the second book, but I wanted to try having characters look back at those moments, helped by my not-as-bad-as-back-then writing skills.
And that last scene with Esmeraude was a nod at the old anime. I may not use the dumb 'become a green dragon of jealousy' plot point of dumbness, but the Dark Moon did, figuratively, become monsters for the sake of their goals (or maybe they always were, Wiseman just made it worse,) but Esmeraude was a bit more literal than the others about it.
