Sailor Moon Eternal

by SetsunaKou

This is a full length novel over 1000 pages long of the 6th season of Sailor Moon, our 'Eternal'. The Wedding of Serena & Darien is attended by some familiar shooting stars cutting across the night sky, finding loves of their own in the Outer-most unlikely places. Romances blossom for the Inners, as a dangerous new enemy's threat could destroy Earth & the Sailor Guardians of it...

54. Chapter 54 - How the Dark Moon was Born

We do not own "Sailor Moon" nor any of the characters.

"SAILOR MOON ETERNAL"

The 6th Season of the Sailor Moon Saga

Chapter 54

"How the Dark Moon was Born"

Silent Night. Holy Night.

Once everything settles down, on a quiet drive to Michelle's town mansion, Alex Starr keeps one eye on the lightly snow dusted road, and the other on the hushed couple cuddling in the backseat.

Soon after this journey began, Michelle and her reunited companion seemed to be lost in one another. Somewhere between getting reacquainted in many a physical embrace and that as well upon the astral plane, in spaces of long silence where Alex was certain many things were being unsaid aloud, much was being passed in the minds of the two psychics.

I trust you, Michelle. Really I do. It's him I don't trust. How can we be sure that this isn't some devious plot of Metallia's Heir to worm his way into your affections again?

Suspicious and angry thoughts run rampant in her protective mind as Alex harshly jiggles her own sleepy lover awake in the front seat beside her.

"Sn-Snore! Huh?! I wasn't sleeping, Ally! Really, I wasn't! Just storing up energy for later, heh heh!" Sayer pokes Alex's forearm with a mischievous grin at the night she had promised which he had just been dreaming of. But then he frowns at the cold shoulder she gives him instead when the tall golden blonde woman departs from the red Ferrari. She slams the car door without so much as a whisper of a smile, never mind that anticipating glance he would usually receive whenever they arrived home this hour for a little night music later.

"Hey Rob! 'Chelle! We're home…if you didn't notice." Shrugging, as if all was back to normal again, Sayer pops his head over into the back seat with a snide wink at all the mushy mushy stuff obviously going on between the reunited couple, who did not immediately appear from the car.

Not like me! The vital young man bounded right out and ready to go hit the sack with his wife in that cushy mansion after his long, hard day. Right, Ally? Sayer gives Alex a wink followed by his most come-hither smiling finger caress which the tall golden blonde shakes off indifferently.

Frowning, Sayer chews his lip when Alex ignores his advances completely. She instead physically takes hold of Michelle by the arm to escort her up to the Moreau city mansion, leaving the dark eyed singer and his pale silvery counterpart trailing behind.

"Hey, Rob? Can you ever figure women out?" Sighing after his palm slaps the Ferrari hood to vent his frustration, Sayer comments to his returned brother with a familiar friendly smirk—as if not a thing had transpired in between—with not a question as to Star Healer's reformation to the side of good once again. For Star Fighter was the kind of soldier who had come to learn that things said and done on the battlefield were best left there.

"You're asking me? I still think you're a crazy lion tamer for ever taking that one of yours on, Sayer." The paler head says to his darker haired companion as Robin Starr gestures towards the unreceptive glare that the intimidating tall female had thrown in his direction as she ushered Michelle into the house. "There absolutely will be only one woman I'll ever be interested in 'figuring out' the beautiful mystery of for the rest of my life." After the offhanded swipe at his arch nemesis, Robin muses absently with a smile, beyond grateful for Michelle's forgiveness and courage that had brought him back to the light. His mind was so obviously attuned to his aqua sweetie whom he was trying desperately to win back the trust and prove himself fully to her once again, despite her partner Uranus' obvious disdain and distrust—though perhaps well-deserved—towards him.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. We've put our gorgeous pair of ladies through hell today." Sayer sighs as well, recalling the fierce battle and even more trying, almost devastating aftermath that could've occurred had not his merciful golden angel interceded on his behalf.

Ally, I heard you begging for me, swearing at me, your tears crying for me… And then you actually saying that you loved me! That I'll never forget…What a turn on…

Watching his sleek wife's well exercised body move up the outside mansion steps to lead her partner into the house, this tantalized Fighter gets all excited inside, just thinking how his astoundingly attractive and uniquely antagonistic Amaralexis Sokova Starr was the only woman he would never tire of solving the intricate puzzle of, yearning to discover more of her enigma every day. More than ever now that Sayer Starr knew she felt the same way when it came down to the idea of losing one another, when tough guy Alex Sokova always had tried to be so standoffish and abrasive previously.

I knew you loved me. Just wasn't sure it was as much as I felt for you…But I guess I can't blame you. I am a pretty heroic, talented, witty and good lookin' guy, after all.

There was an awful lot be brashly excited about after all these life and death adventures, feeling they all deserved some reward now that the battles were darn near over and Rob was back to being right in the head again.

So every aspect of their lives together could go back to normal now, right?

However, this early, early Christmas morn doesn't begin quite the way Sayer had expected. After a few quickie good nights to their tentative hosts, he had hurriedly gotten undressed, cleaned up and bedded down in Alex's designated, now 'guest room,' of this pristine mansion of Michelle and Robin's that had never yet been lived in as intended after the newlywed couple's interrupted honeymoon months ago.

C'mon, Ally! It's kinda still Christmas Eve! There's only a few hours left before Christmas morning gets rolling!

But the conquering hero found his own bride unforthcoming. Peeking his head out of their elected second floor bedroom, Sayer puckers his lonely lips down through the exquisite pearl and gold railings at his promised lover seated opposite Michelle and Robin in the drawing room. The reunited two were cozily nestled together on the pure white velvet Victorian loveseat that Michelle had especially bought and imported to please her particular new husband's discerning taste in antiques.

Alex had been feigning reading the pile of mail found at the door while she was hovering like a hawk over the pair for several minutes.

"Ally? It's waited this long already. You can read that boring stuff in the morning. Why don't you just come to bed now? It's getting, umm…pretty late." 'Lonely' was the word Sayer's tormented body was searching for as he tries to tactfully extricate his partner from her unnecessary surveillance of the two wedded adults downstairs.

"In a while, Starr. There might be something important here that requires my urgent attention." Alex shrugs his pleas off, not once taking her eyes away from the pair of front of her who were non-stop holding hands. The tall, frugal woman was not really interested in the unimportant bills and ads that she was supposedly leafing through.

"Not like there's anything important in here that needs your urgent attention!" Sayer's let down lips purse even further into a grimace. The twenty-year-old young man, irritated and disappointed of broken promises on this proposed 'special night,' slams the door for some overdue rest, though his lately lonesome body was badly aching for something else.

Big sigh.

Noting her partner's annoyed exit, Alex finally silently vows to make it up to him as she had promised—perhaps on a later date, though—Michelle's safety and well-being was much more important than a few hours of pure bliss…

Well, never mind that right now.

Alex's mind calms her own twenty-one-year-old physical needs as she keeps an intent eye on her other partner.

The one she had sworn to protect and care for always, no matter who or what came along their way.

"Amara, dear. The mail can wait until tomorrow when all my regular staff will be returned from their holiday. Why don't you go and give Sayer that Christmas/late anniversary present you had promised hi—" Michelle suddenly breaks from her long gazing in Robin's beautiful green eyes again, looking so innocently into Alex's dark, dark green ones the clairvoyant woman could feel had been watching them all the while.

"Would you like anything from the kitchen, Michelle? A drink, perhaps? Why don't I make us some of your favorite tea? That's how you always used to like to end the night after a long day." Alex declares more than asks, giving Robin dagger eyes as she strides into the kitchen. It was growing more than obvious that she intended to stay for a while in the drawing room with them, even though she was desired elsewhere.

"Alex would have preferred if I didn't come back, wouldn't she?" Robin murmurs to Michelle softly as he comes up for air from the astral plane, so to speak, away from the gentle swim through the sea of their minds together.

"Of course not, Robin dearest! Amara is the sweetest, most warmhearted person in the world—" Michelle's standing up for her beloved cousin's goodness of heart towards all mankind was interrupted by the slew of crashing pots and pans as Alex searches for a certain evasive one to boil water in the kitchen.

"You were saying, Michelle…my darling?" With a sweet smile, Robin whispers the last word with quiet affection that he truly meant inside, knowing how it would please his wife to no end.

"Oh, Robin dearest! I am beyond incandescently glad that you came back to me! So happy there are no words! So very—" Michelle finds herself suddenly wrapped up in a promising embrace.

"Really, Michelle? Weren't there times you regretted…us?" Robin whispers onto her cheek, pulling back just enough to look into her eyes—the sea of her beautiful blue eyes he could drown in.

"Never once, my dearest! Never once. I've had no regrets about you and I never will for the whole of my life." Michelle closes her eyes idyllically, waiting for the kiss her silver fox's eyes were promising hers…

"I've missed you so terribly, Michelle. I was so…lost and lonely without you in my life all these months. And worst of all, powerless to do anything about it, except watch that wicked side of me take over." Robin murmurs on her cheek, pulling Michelle even closer to his lips and—

CRASH!

From out of somewhere above, hot steaming liquid suddenly, spills down Robin's black leather shirt and pants, making him jump up and squeal a high C.

"Oww!" The silver haired young man leaves Michelle's eager arms with the high pitched squeak as he jumps up from the no longer white, expensive antique piece of furniture now tea-stained.

"Oh, dear. I must've tripped. Here's your tea, Michelle." Handing a shocked and appalled faced Michelle her teacup, Alex ignores the poor creature she had just purposefully wronged as she sits down on the couch beside Michelle in the seat which Robin had just vacated. At the same time, Alex deftly grabs a hand towel off the tray that she had just 'accidentally' jilted over him and throws it over the poor, little wet silver seal's sopping head.

"I'll be back in a minute, Michelle." Robin swallows his natural anger with pursed lips as his big mint green eyes slit at Alex's wide-eyed innocent ones while he goes to get changed.

"Robin, dearest! Your silken nightclothes are inside the second drawer of the bureau next to where I showed you my negligee was in our bedroom! I'll come and help you change, deares—" Knowing precisely where each and every article of the well cared for and prized piece of her adored husband's favorite expensive clothing was located, the aqua curled young woman begins to stand, smiling in anticipation of seeing close-up and touching her svelte young man intimately again for the first time in ages—

"Michelle." Alex commands with a halting hand over her friend's arm.

"Amaralexis. You spilled hot tea on him on purpose! Why are you being so cruel to my Robin after all he's been through!? He's already had a horrible experience! I want to welcome him back here to his home now. My home is his home. I want everything to be as it was for us!" Michelle begins to sob hysterically as Alex begins to feel sorry for her coldness, for a moment.

But then the delicate innocence in Michelle's big blue eyes made her take authoritative command as the stubborn woman always had, to protect her softer partner.

"Michelle. I just want you to be careful and take this slow. Things may not be as they were anymore. I realize Healer has done some good to make amends. But still, he was our enemy trying to kill you and everything the Princess stands for, just a few hours ago. Our war still rages until Metallia is destroyed. As Soldiers, we can't let our guard go down again so easily due to our emotions. Without testing if he's legit for a decent interval of time to see if that dark side of his truly expunged, you can't just pretend that he's completely trustworthy—" Unwilling to leave her best friend unattended, Alex starts to explain her necessary harsh standpoint, feeling responsible as her cousin's lifelong protector.

That's when Robin comes back into the room in a more casual shirt and slacks rather than the silk pajamas that he would not ever wear in front of Alex's scrutinizing eyes, even at Michelle's request.

You look so perfect, just like you used to, my Robin-dearest. How can I make her see the darkness has gone and you are that beautiful soul I fell in love with and gave all of myself to? Michelle's quivering eyes light up at her adorable one, with reminiscent smiling tears to see him as cute and normal as he appeared in her dreams again, as their souls brush lightly, with the same familiar ease as before.

"Listen…please, Alex. There's no pretending. I'm coming to you with my hands open. Just as I did back then. I love Michelle just as much as I did before all of this happened. Maybe even more so now, because I realize what I almost lost." Robin's soul reaches out to mentally squeeze Michelle's hands which a jumping to her feet Alex was defensively standing guard over.

"Seriously, I thank you, Uranus, for keeping her safe all this while. But please—let us try to take back what was stolen away for too many months by my weakness. Precious time lost when I should have been giving Michelle first blissful moments of our marriage instead of destroying all her dreams. Please let this be Michelle's decision. Trust her to judge me. I will leave her alone any time she asks me to go. I promise you this, though I don't know how I could go on without her. But let me try to be me again to prove myself to her. Please..." Succinctly blunt, Robin Starr doesn't mince his words, filled with emotion, his scratchy voice catching on the dreaded word 'alone' as his large, pale green orbs encompass both Michelle and Alex in his honest petition.

But it was the next sentence echoing someone else's broken heart sentiment eerily from just hours ago that caught Alex's hard heart off her guard to perhaps rethink her harsh saint cry.

"She makes my life worth living." Robin's starlit mint wide eyes lock with Michelle's tearful ones as she physically reaches her hand out to him past Alex and he grasps it with so much gratitude and love it was evidently palpable in the room.

The strong woman felt the emotion well, seeing herself reflecting in the light green eyes of the little shrimp gazing unapologetically into her dark ones with the same challenges they did that time ago when he first returned to this earth. He had dared to come to her then, swallowing his arrogant pride and any fear the formidable woman usually employed to throw up roadblocks and frighten away other prospective past suitors. Robin had asked for co-partnership with Alex over Michelle's beautiful soul.

'How can my life keep going on? You made my life worth living…' Starr…

Hearing her own inconsolable song reverberate through her soul for her own nearly lost lover, Alex's true heart begins to soften—ever so slightly—as remembers her tortured heartbreak disturbingly reflected in this Robin Starr's green eyes looking up at her sincerely.

"I didn't trust you then, Shrimp. I still don't trust you now." Breaking her silent glare, Alex speaks after staring down Robin back directly. Michelle felt both of her beloveds' firm determination to prove to each other that they meant business as she holds her breath feeling like a helpless child as she did before.

'For eternity where the strength of our love has no limit! Together, come heaven or hell…'

With a deep intake of air, only able to hear her own maltreated star's smooth voice serenading her mind with a sense of overwhelming peace and faithful love, Alex suddenly gets up and leaves the room.

"But, for her, I'm going to believe you." Alex and Robin stay locked eye to eye for a long moment. Michelle releases her held breath, clapping her hands together over her smiling mouth.

"Merry Christmas, Michelle." She was satisfied enough, trusting she would be right there the second Michelle needed her. There would be no next time if that shrimp wanted to survive the whirlwind named 'Uranus.'

If you ever do a single thing to ever hurt her again, even the tiniest bit, God help you.

But what was love without trust?

"Merry Christmas, Amara, my love. Thank you." Michelle mouths to the hallway towards Alex who now moves out of sight to her own closing bedroom door beyond in the city mansion. The deep soulful child of Neptune holds her hand to her beating chest for the woman who loved her enough to trust her with her own heart, when in the past she trusted no one else in this universe to even come close to it.

Oh, Amara, are you…? In silently reaching out for the first time in a long time to her Sailor partner with her appreciation, Michelle, with wide eyes, suddenly sensed something entirely new and unexpected developing within her best friend…

"Yes, it is Christmas, Michelle." Calling her suddenly intrigued attention back to him, Robin whispers tentatively. 'I can never thank you enough for the gift of the endless sea of your love which brought this storm-tossed soul home.' His soul sensitively offers hers as Robin freely reaches out his hand and his open mind down to the adoring faced young woman, just as she remembered from that very first time they had contacted each other's souls, as he takes her fully into his arms.

'But I'm going to try my best for you…'

Once again this night the Sailor of the Star Healer lays bare every crevice of his mind wide open for his oceanic maiden of Neptune to explore and swim in freely once again. Every exciting sight, every exhilarating sound, every arousing touch promised them both to have and to hold each other from this day forward as husband and wife, now and forevermore again, never to be parted henceforth…

…Starting with a kiss…

---

Quietly Alex closes the door behind her, sighing as she leans her aching head back against it.

Love is such a crazy thing.

She comments silently to herself for the thousandth time this night as she unbuttons her shirt and zips down her pants. Stalking over to the mansion's second story window, Alex looks down to the snowy night, daybreak only minutes away, with the beautiful cityscape at rest.

Its citizens were now thankfully awake from their energy drained slumber to enjoy family time in the peace that Alex herself sensed to be short-lived. All of the Dark Moon's henchmen may have been defeated or reformed, but Metallia was still on the horizon.

Although, closing her eyes tightly, Alex uncharacteristically prays for this peace to last. With much gratitude to God for His handiwork of miracles this day that still was reverberating love and friendship in her that she had never realized before. Alex makes a Christmas wish for today's miraculous perfection to go untouched, for at least the remainder of this silent night.

Opening her eyes to gaze at the icy window's reflection, Alex could see him lying there, her Sayer's face so peaceful, so cutely darling and softly smiling as he slept. His thin, lanky arms were wrapped around the pillow—her pillow—as if he were trying to gain the comfort and warmth of another in its stead.

Slipping into the bed with deft grace, Alex easily slides into Sayer's warm, outstretched arms, caressingly replacing the pillow with the warm body he really was yearning for. His slumbering hands then slowly conform around her fit and slender, tight form. As if in a dream, the navy blue ponytailed young man starts to already caress his mate, as Sayer revels in just letting the feeling of Alex's sure arms wrap around him, again taking him as her own.

After all, for a short time this evening, this intense Fighter believed he might never have had the chance on this earth again to trust his star to her winds, so he desperately wished to share his tremendous love with the woman who was his everything now.

"U?" He whispers, languidly dazed, gorgeous blue eyes opening as she willingly prepares to give her lover the same Christmas and first anniversary present combined that she gave to him last year. Despite her overwhelming responsibility as a Soldier and the final battle looming closer than ever, Alex had learned the hard lesson well this dark night to cherish what she had been blessed with.

"Sorry for the wait, Starr. But I'm here for you now, my fantastic soldier." Leaning over a gratified Sayer in a now complimentary turnaround play from the 'pathetic soldier' she had dubbed him earlier, Alex offers her patient lover her every warm touch and utter attention he had been longing for. Alex's truest present to him though, was the complete trust of her innocent flower which she had kept so delicately hidden from the cruelties of this world so that no one would have known it even existed beyond her cold, harsh façade.

But, for her deserving hero, after all they two had been through today, this guardian of Uranus would now devote all her tender emotion and intimate passion that she had only revealed to this shining star whose radiant joy had composed the inconceivable song of 'us' which Alex Starr vowed to never allow to fade. For all the days of the coming future's uncertainty, she would fight the winds of tomorrow for her true love, her true friend, her true Fighter, to keep him beside her like this for always.

And as the light of day erased the dark of night, the Sailor of the sky inwardly prayed now with renewed belief in that wondrous God beyond the physical heavens—Who had generously granted her so many precious miracles on this Christmas night—to never allow their race to be run separately ever again…

---

This fragile Christmas morning dawned bright and early for many of the Sailor Scouts as each of the four Inner Guardian heroines finally find their way home from the distant shores they had each been successful in preserving. The Amazoness girls return as well, with three extra passengers, Dracon, Swanette and Cattana who were welcomed, along with Aquamarianna and Garnet, by the Moon Princess to join in the holy day's festivities, starting at Serena and Darien's decked-the-halls apartment home.

Serena, with a heart of gold as large as the universe, welcomes all her former enemies into her Christmas tree and lights decorated hearth and home, as new friends. Her fellow Scouts follow her magnanimous lead likewise—although, there were those who grumbled under their breath of the sudden change of hearts of their enemies—namely, Rei.

The holiday slowly progressed with much merry making and last minute present surprises being messily wrapped, as the big get-together with many of the young women's families was to take place at the Starr residence. The rural estate was deemed large enough to host the entire big group, all wishing to spend this happy day of hopeful peace on earth together with loved ones close, more than ever.

Susan had assured her friends that the Christmas dinner they had planned at her and Terry's house ages ago was still on, and that she would be just fine, in fact, glad to meet with their cherished friends. Terry had graciously recruited most of the obliging girls to take control of the cooking and serving of the long list of holiday groceries which he and his brothers, Sayer and Robin, had gone on an early morning outing—their first one back together as a normal trio of siblings again—to fetch from the store in his nearly nine months' pregnant wife's place, as all of the family got together for this last Christmas of the millennia.

Yesterday's catastrophic events made each Guardian thoughtful of their relationships in this fragile life, they remembered what had happened, yet said nothing of their own individual tribulations. The Sailor Soldiers were thinking only of the hearth and home and what friends like these meant, this get-together all the more special a time for the fierce battles they knew they had yet to face.

So, they all ate heartily of Susan-mama's cookie and pie and cake recipes that chef Lita luckily was in charge of the kitchen to dole out menial tasks to those who were less talented in the culinary arts.

"What happened to Tara?! Geez-Louise! She's just a kid!" GULP

Young Sammy had almost fallen over at seeing for the first time his now a third his age, little—really little!—girlfriend whom he did not quite know what to make of. Especially since he had bought a 15-year-old teenaged size pale violet dress for his favorite Sailor Scout's Christmas present.

Girls! Sheesh!

The four Amazoness girls made quite a ruckus in the kitchen to cause frustration. Ves Ves and Lita were both vying for control as they order their bustling guests about to help with the monstrous meal for the 30 people gathered at the Starr's sprawling rural home.

Terry, Darien, Chad, Ken and kindly Mr. Hart—who had just about recovered from his energy drain unconsciousness enough to last through three slices of Lita's pumpkin pie, before dinner—had extended the already long dining table to about twice its size. The children—ahem, the younger batch of young individuals—still had to squeeze into the kitchenette table.

Which suited them all just fine, grown ups didn't know anything about having a good time! Especially when JunJun had dumped a scoop of mashed spuds down CereCere's pretty in pink, puffed sleeve dress front when she got too chummy. The situation left Sammy wondering which table he should go to as Tara was obviously a candidate for the little girls table now.

Sigh. My pretty guardian just had to be the cool soldier of death and rebirth, didn't she? Whoa, this is heavy…

As Alex had prayed for, the day did seem to start off peaceful enough. Not counting when Sayer and Robin rediscovered the 'fun' of argumentative brother status with full force; or when Rei's 'mean' insulting of 'stupid' Serena's burnt batch of Christmas cookies, resulted in a fountain of tears of more count than the tinsel Artemis had mischievously strewn across the floor with little Tara and Palla Palla; or when crazed cook Lita, driven distracted that her absent doctor fiancé Andrew was to be on call all afternoon until dinnertime, neglected to check the ginger with cayenne pepper switch 'accident' of Jun-Jun's, as the spazzed baker ended up trying to calm the agitated guests down with spicy not spiced gingerbread treats to unruffle frayed nerves, instead setting their warring tongues aflame; or when Mina's strict father, on leave from his overseas military tour, meeting Ken for the first time—how'd she manage to keep him a secret from her mom for all these months?—as the ditzy idol two-timer did her darndest to clumsily run back and forth between both the men in her life from crossing candy cane paths in the hectic Starr abode; or when Rei's gramps and Dracon had some noisily opinionated and rather uncouth disagreement on the subject of approaching women as Swanette cooed; nor rocking around Chad's accidental knocking down of the huge Christmas tree over a terrified Luna, Cattana and Aquamarianna—almost, had Terry, Sayer and Robin not done some fancy tap dancing footwork to keep it erect, each quick action hero, long limbed star man dexterously catching many a delicate ornament of Susan's. The tallest Mr. Starr was just able to rescue the engraved Biblical Nativity scene resin star he had brought as an early Christmas present for his wife from tumbling down; or when, having one too many a spiked glass of punch, Sayer, in trying to give Michelle a mistletoe kiss that Alex had deftly waltzed her friend out from instead had bumped into VesVes, CereCere, Amy and Greg, nearly causing them all to end up in a cranberry cocktail bowl toast mess on the beautiful ivory white rug near the piano room had Darien not interceded; or when—

The 'or whens' become too numerous when speaking of a party with a crowd of this size. Despite the chaos, everyone had a great time, gifts and eggnog toasts and wine being dealt out with smiles and laughter nonetheless. And as a special treat to top the evening off, Susan, in a special request to her handsome husband, was carefully brought downstairs by her doting Terry. He had anxiously insisted she stay in bed for a great deal of the festivities in her extremely full with child state. But seeing Susan's sincere desire to give her dear friends this gift from her heart, he had carried her down the long flight of stairs in his strong arms with ease.

With a soft caress back to her long, rose-scented tresses and a stolen kiss behind her ear he whispered cherished words of love, the romantic man had tenderly seated his beloved upon her burgundy and white velvet divan in their music room. The once solitary Soldier and lonely Guardian of Time's doorway, now a captivating wife and disarming hostess, received many compliments for so delicately playing her harp for her visitors' enjoyment. Susan beautifully performs on her ethereal sounding instrument with Terry's skilled finger assistance flipping pages of the Christmas carols his precious angel had learned to perform for this special occasion.

Soon, moved by Susan's heart-rendered strings, her Outer Sailor sisters, Michelle and Alex, join in as backup musical accompaniment on the violin and piano, much to Sayer and Robin's delight, with the Three Lights lending their harmonized voices to lead the entire group to sing some beautiful Christmas hymns together before it was time to leave the Christmas party.

Mina, under her strict army dad's watchful eye, had exchanged with Ken a chaste kiss and wave goodbye, for now, as they drove away; a tuckered out from doing all the cooking Lita was hanging on the sturdy arm of her own beloved Andrew (who had finally arrived, just in the 'Saint Nick' of time after playing 'Santa' at the local childrens' hospital, to enjoy her amazing turkey dinner), the overworked young physician kindly offered to drive his fiancée back into the city on his way back to work at the hospital, with Lita and sister Lizzie all squished and chattering in his little green turtle of a vehicle; even Amy was elated to find her mom offering Greg to come and stay at their place over the Christmas holidays while he was in town to give the young couple some time together. But Rei topped it all off when she was caught by some spying children's eyes giving a very happy Chad—to Gramps' footstomping disapproval as the trio were walking back to the temple—a quick peck on the lips beneath the mistletoe—which Terry playfully seemed to have hung up everywhere around his expansive abode.

All of the four girls—ladies, we should say, they now all nineteen years old and just on the threshold of uncovering the rest of life's treasures—each found the chance to spend quality time with their respective boyfriends on this hectic Christmas night. The battle-tested Sailor Soldiers just wanted to be with their true loves on this peaceful evening, as they each spoke nothing of yesterday's trials and dangers and fear—simply wanting some quiet downtime. Amy, Rei, Lita and Mina had their Christmas wish come true to think only of today—secretly giving a silent fervent prayer that there would be a tomorrow full of peace on earth to consider.

All in all, the whole celebration had generally gone rather well and could be called a success by everyone.

That is, until something occurred after almost all of the partygoers had headed home late into the evening with many warm 'Merry Christmases' farewell to their dearest friends, the Christmas festivities here at the Starr residence drawing to a close.

---

Rifling through his cache of Christmas prizes in that big expensive Saint Laurent designer leather duffel bag Darien had imported for her that Bunhead had generously donated to her special friend, Sayer wolfishly wanted to get home ASAP to model this year's Christmas present in front of the mirror. It was a pair of Speedo shorts made of a shiny gold stretch fabric with imbued red and green stars that Alex had humorously selected for him. Michelle had somehow finagled Alex to break up the 'silver and gold Christmas decoration' set her cousin had purchased for Sayer, to last-minute present her Robin with a matching silvery pair of shiny star men's swimming briefs that the penitent silver fox dare not refuse to wear at her behest tonight.

Terry, though an excellent host, also wished to see his guests off and get the children into bed for a similar reason. Susan, by chance, had spied a similar undergarment on an internet shopping site, but in a tiger striped velvet version and it had arrived in time for a certain studly scholar's present. She had urged her modest Terry to try it on for her, though the statuesque young man was little uncertain if he should get his Susan too excited in her state.

Our time to enjoy one another will come again soon, my darling…You must be patient, my eternal love, as your Time Lord will be patient…

Taking a deep breath, Terry's long fingers toy with his sharp knife carving at the remaining turkey breast for sandwiches tomorrow his Susan liked, as the responsible young man was expertly clearing up the kitchen in swift, fastidious fashion.

At the same pace as always…

Serena, Aquamarianna, Cattana, Swanette, and Michelle were attending to Susan and the children after bossy Alex charged the lingering men—under no uncertain terms—with the cleanup of Susan's very messy abode. That included a mountain of dishes and general cleaning of the dining table and all the spills and messes around the entire house incurred throughout the day.

Robin had crinkled his nose at his assigned job of picking up all the crumbled bits of wrapping paper. He was complaining in his good old arrogant idol style to the other men. Sayer and Terry both revel in those murmured complaints under his breath whilst Darien and a conscripted Dracon roll their eyes.

But under Michelle's secretly pleased, laughing gaze, she was watching from an admiring distance her adorable one's tight silk tush bending over so many times that she herself was growing delectably exhausted. But upon catching his bride's excited gaze, Robin finishes up his work at a quicker rate, with not a single complaint more. Perhaps, there was even a smile etched on his enchanted face as he and Michelle begin mind melding about a softer type of wrapping on a different plane entirely.

The holiday party just about officially over, the doorbell suddenly rings.

Terry, though fatigued, forces himself from the kitchen, where he had just finished carving the beast, to go to answer the door, wondering just who could be so late on this Christmas night after most of the guests had already departed for their own homes.

"Good evening, Mr. Starr." Came the deep, solemn voice of a man whose silvery hair was white as the snow falling down on his high cheekboned face when Terry opened the front door. The Sailor Star Soldier's guard went straight up at the sight of the man standing in the shadows.

It was just then that the women decided to make their comeback from tucking the children in upstairs and attending to a feeling poorly Susan—that mainly meant a load of feminine chattering and secret Christmas wishes shared between Serena and the older ladies proudly showing off their gifts from their sweeties. Swanette and Aquamarianna smilingly joined in with Serena, Susan, Michelle and Alex, who was silently rolling her eyes at all the nonstop silly, nonsensical feminine inane yapping.

The Dark Moon women were experiencing such genuine feelings here in the house of these people they knew not before. Susan had played the perfect hostess even in her near expectant condition—green tea, Christmas eggnog—which Alex had livened up with a dose of spirits that was her husband's gift hidden in her pocket for those above the age of twenty-one, Ahem not you Princess—and gossip passing back-and-forth.

Arm in arm with a bubbly Michelle—who obviously had been more than reconciled with her cute puppy of a returned hubby, from her satisfied attitude—Aquamarianna, who was feeling pangs of her own missing husband's loss at this very moment after seeing Serena and Darien and the three pairs of Starrs and their apparently happy marriages, gazes up now to find her own aqua eyes alight upon the greatest gift beyond all gifts to her hungry soul.

"Pearlellion?" She whispers, feeling dazed, as if in a dream. She looks to Michelle at her side for verification that she was not merely fooling herself that her husband was in fact physically here, flesh and blood, and not dead as she was led to believe.

Michelle's deep eyed nod, kind smile and little push gave Aquamarianna all the proof she needed.

"Pearlellion!? Pearlellion?! Where have you been?! I was so worried! Why didn't you come to find me—?" She flies to his arms, pushing past a hesitant Terry. She affectionately wraps herself around her husband, tears of joy springing to her lovely eyes as Aquamarianna looked up into Pearellion's face—

—and was taken aback by his cool, almost nonexistent embrace as his arms push her away.

"Aquamarianna, my Queen." Pearlellion fights himself, staying firm in his place in the thick shadows outside the door. He withdraws from his own need to hold onto the wife whom he had not seen nor heard from, in what seemed forever to the passionate heart beating within the surface of this cold man.

"Touch me not!" He commands forcefully, sadly keeping her want to embrace him at arms length by his pristine white gloved hands.

"Pearlellion…? What does this mean? Tell me! Why are your eyes so—?" She starts to ask, confusion creeping into her voice when she looks into her husband's familiar eyes, only to find something quite unfamiliar about his very gaze.

"My love." He quiets her questions with a commanding nod while exchanging eyes with Terry, who saw what the man was asking as the tall mahogany haired homeowner pulls Aquamarianna away with a gentle, yet firm hold.

"Sailor Moon. You had granted my request once before. For which I'm eternally grateful." King Pearlellion then turns to a shocked Serena, whose eyes open wide at him, all gazes moving towards her.

"Please, I have just one more favor to ask of you. You are my only hope, Madame." Pearlellion pauses to dramatically bow before the absolutely speechless and floored Princess of the Moon.

"You see, what I wish for you to do is simple. You must kill me." The short and to the point speech stuns those all around. Aquamarianna's heart fills with dread as she tries to rush to Pearellion, but Terry holds her back.

"What?! King Pearellion—why?!" Serena stumbles over the words, she never wanted to be the executioner to anyone, especially not the husband of someone who had become such a dear, good friend as Aquamarianna had in their time together.

"I have thought long and hard of this, Moon Princess. But there is no other way." His eyes look forlornly upon his wife's devastated ones. "My brother has been wholly absorbed into the collective of complete evil energy, its darkness has utterly overtaken him. The black hole he was controlling now controls him, turning matter into antimatter. And since that fissure had occurred, my brother, Lord Opalsen—Garnet come here." After his eyes had connected with Terry's—who understood something of what had happened to cause that fissure of antimatter which had swallowed Lord Opalsen whole in England, because Eternal Sailor Star Maker had been a vital, albeit unwilling part in causing the dark negaverse man's demise—King Pearlellion catches sight of his redhaired nephew.

He gazes into the boy's now much different eyes with great concern heard now in his once smoothly booming, now thin and tinny voice.

"My brother—your father's—very being has been turned inside out by that wretched darkness, my boy. It was his own evil ambitions that brought him to it, no Sailor Soldier was truly at fault for his iniquity, with Metallia alone to blame. He would have been completely evaporated into the nothingness, but upon his return to the Negaverse, I could not stand by and watch that happen to my own flesh and blood. I could not let him be lost into it for all eternity. Despite everything that had happened between us—Opalsen is my brother yet. So, in order to stop his soul from being entirely eaten away, with the last vestiges of my power, I merged my own physical body with his essence. As a result, I too, now am being slowly, spatially sucked into the darkness. It is only with every strength left in me that I am able to keep this form for you to view me in short spurts. But it is only in the shadows I must remain in order to keep stable and not spread this ruination to anything I touch. For any person I touch also will become enveloped in the same empty nothingness I am racing towards. Ultimately, I am dying inside each time I encounter any brightness, I can only emerge on a deep, moonless night such as this. For I have discovered, even man-made lighting, never mind the dimmest light of the celestial objects above are excruciatingly painful to me as a result. Please end my suffering, and that of my poor brother's worthless existence within me. Do it now, I beg of you, before our joined existences become too evil with no goodness left within for our tortured souls to evade the darkness again. End our captivity in the shadows that endanger the lives of many others who live in the bright light I will never again see." His sunken eyed face was drawn and there were obvious signs of stabbing pain on his comely features before anyone was able to respond to his shocking words. Pearlellion takes a step back, away from the glare of light of the open door, away from the brightness and into the shadows that he was slinking back into.

"My King! Wait! There must be some other way! These good people don't want to destroy you! I need you with me! We'll find some other way—we must!" Aquamarianna struggles from Terry, rushing out the door and cornering her cowering husband.

She is surprised when he grabs her arm suddenly in his gloved hands and shakes her hard.

"Be quiet, woman! You don't know what you're saying! You don't really want to be with me! These people are not good as you say they are! They're the ones who did this to Opalsen! They are the ones who killed his wife, worthless wench though she was! Just as they are the ones who have brought this curse upon me as well! They are simply fooling you, woman, tricking you, as I know you are fooling me now, too, foolish creature!" The long wavy haired aqua woman was crying by the time he finishes spitting out the merciless words. Then she is pushed forcefully and angrily away, directly to bash into Michelle by her beloved husband's heated wrath for the first time as Aquamarianna looks into Pearlellion's eyes.

His dark eyes cloud up with pure black ebony where the whites should've been, his pupils filling with an eerie, deep raging, evil glow. She feels the man she loves losing himself to the evil blackness overtaking his body that was lashing out at her, as more of him was absorbed into the malevolent bleakness.

"Pearlellion! You don't mean this! Stop this!" She cries out the door as the dark shadowy figure of the King flies down the lonely country road, disappearing into the forest surrounding the estate. "Pearlellion! Please come back to me!" Aquamarianna races down the driveway after him.

"Aquamarianna! Wait for us!" The Soldier of Love and Friendship's loving compassion cries out as Serena Shields recklessly rushes through the crowded doorway to race right out into the cold dark night on her new friend's tail.

"MOON ETERNAL POWER!"

"Let's go, Sailor Scouts!" Instantly metamorphing, Tuxedo Mask makes the unnecessary command as Terry already wordlessly was first after the shadowy figure, Alex next shoving everyone else out of her way only a second behind him in pursuit of the quick Moon Princess' jackrabbit start. The rest of the Sailor Guardians, with Dracon, Swanette and Garnet as well, all follow on their high heels, dashing out without their coats uncertain into the pale snow, watching each Soldier transform mid-run into the country road.

"MAKER ETERNAL POWER!"

"URANUS ETERNAL POWER!"

"FIGHTER ETERNAL POWER!"

"NEPTUNE ETERNAL POWER!"

"HEALER ETERNAL POWER!"

"…MAKEUP!"

"Please don't shine any light on him, anyone! He'll be injured!" Eternal Sailor Moon calls out compassionately, putting these handicapping reins on her small group of Sailor Soldiers. Sailor Uranus and Sailor Star Fighter were just itching to illuminate the skyline with their brilliantly bright celestial powers, but both exchange a nod at Sailor Moon's understood bequest.

Out into the cold, flurrying night, the gathered Sailor Soldiers race into a desperate search for a desperate man. But the Dark King was practically invisible in the shadows which had fallen over this particularly dark, rural section of the un-illuminated outskirts of the city.

Each alerted Sailor had glimpsed the evil madness in Pearlellion's eyes just before he left, witnessing that there was wicked destruction evident in them. They had seen that the evil eating at his once untainted soul which had given its last cry for help just a little too late. And now there would be nothing to stop him from releasing the dark absorption within his power upon the rest of the peaceful countryside here.

"Where's he gone?! It's too dark! Dammit!" Just dying to let out one of his kicking fireworks show, angry Eternal Sailor Star Fighter impatiently places his hands upon a pair of very feminine jut out hips, putting everyone else's squinting eyes and scrambling search in the darkness into impatient words. They all had followed Aquamarianna's lead to this point, until she, too, had lost Pearlellion's shadowy trail.

"Fighter! Behind you!" Eternal Sailor Star Healer intuitively foresees the dark form about to attack Star Fighter's vulnerably paused stance. Star Maker knocks his more impetuous partner out of the way just in the nick of time for Fighter not to get touched by the ebony shadow hand reaching out to him. The split-second save was further proof why the three Starlights were destined to stay together as a team.

"Absorption! Absorption!" The figure swoops and swishes by, a cold chilly wind in his wake as even those with the best night vision could see nothing of the impending danger but a wisp of a shadow on the winds.

"Everyone, watch out! Pearlellion has taken his gloves off!" Tuxedo Mask displays high in the dark night air the discovered pair of white gloves he had just found in the snow that the King had minutes ago claimed to be the only protection against the touch of being devoured by the evilness now fully encompassing his soul.

"Can anyone see him? I don't want him to hurt himself!" Eternal Sailor Moon asks, her big eyes trying to calculate the phantom shadow's practically invisible movements.

"Maybe he ran away?" Dracon answers hopefully as Swanette clings to him, he not being the bravest member of the group anyway.

"No, he's definitely still the area. I could feel the evil palpable in the air." Eternal Sailor Neptune psychically assures them, her powerful mind searching to track the shadows down when—

"Queen Metallia was right in trying to be rid of you, Sea Witch! And you, as well, our 'dearly beloved', traitorous Heir!" Even as his already deep voice becomes huskier, more strained and definitely more maddened, the shadow monster takes a fatal swipe at Eternal Sailor Neptune and Eternal Sailor Star Healer both. Both deftly duck and roll to the snows in one rhythmic motion out of the way, dovetail holding one another close to cover any exposed skin on each other's bodies after their joined minds had heard the warning of a rush of dense air over their heads followed by an almost immediate—

"URANUS SPACE SWORD BLASTER!" That too zings wildly close over their heads to crash into a nearby fir tree in its stead, hacking down a large piece of the conifer's trunk that falls to the ground with a bang, just missing hitting Tuxedo Mask who was standing in the rear.

"Uranus! Pearlellion's shadow was clearly moving in the opposing direction just seconds ago! You mustn't just randomly shoot at this enemy until we can pinpoint his precise location! Blind aiming will only get a team member hurt. And didn't you take heed of what Sailor Moon asked of you?!" The supercilious Prince of the Earth chides the rebellious soldier who ignored him completely. Darien was not one of her favorite people in the world as she focuses her honed senses on studying the strange wind pattern suddenly batting the tree line instead.

"I wasn't aiming for Pearlellion. There's another shadow out there." In a deadpan, serious voice Uranus announces to him, her pensive eyes slitting at the dual incoming points of darkness traversing the winds her alert senses owned.

"Yes. You're right, Uranus. I feel two distinct presences now." Healer announces, taking a step closer to Uranus as Neptune at his side nods to her Outer Soldier partner in agreement with her fellow clairvoyant.

"King Pearlellion's physical body is being turned as dark and evil now as his brother Lord Opalsen's shadow, which he had taken on to preserve him, though the act threatened to consume them both. Opalsen must have retained all but a shadow left of his soul, yet somehow found a way to have indeed separated into two disparate shadow entities." Neptune explains spacily as she tries to grasp the flitting around wisps of the different consciousnesses in the shadows dancing in the darkness about them.

"Great. That means we've now gotta watch out for a pair of loser invisible men." As Fighter slaps his fist into his frustrated palm, the residual pale blue star energy he unwittingly generated was just enough to shed a tiny ray of light in the just right direction by some lucky serendipity. "Hey! There's one coming your way! Watch out, Bunhead!" Fighter makes an impressive leap, scooping up Eternal Sailor Moon in one strong arm while knocking Tuxedo Mask down flat beneath them both. Star Fighter allows the pitch black swish of an angry poltergeist to just breeze over the prone trio as he lays flat over them.

"Geez, Tux, you put up some major offense. Good thing for you I'm a professional football tackler. Nice abs, though. We should work out together more often." With a saucy feel around the red faced man's leg-stradled torso, Fighter remarks with a simpered wink from atop of Tuxedo Mask's downed caped body that the slender Starlight had wrestled to the ground. Then the brash Starlight leader gives a friendly shove to a wobbly Serena's rump upwards, as a mortified Star Maker runs over to steady Eternal Sailor Moon on her feet in a more chivalrous manner.

"Just get off me." Tuxedo Mask slicks his hair back at this bothersome soldier cracking jokes at such a time with grabby hands, no less, on his own wife as Sayer scoops up Tuxedo Mask's knocked off top hat and returns it to the apparently irate man.

"How about a little gratitude, fella? You must've got your hat on too tight." Fighter saucily complains of his rude rival for a certain blonde Meatballhead's affections.

"Are you uninjured, Princess? I apologize if Fighter was too…brusque…in his brash rescue attempt with his natural reflexes." Maker quite gentlemanly expresses regret to the young woman more than a whole foot shorter than he as the tallest Sailor Starlight does his level best to straighten out Eternal Sailor Moon's triple upturned skirts and ruffled wing feathers that his roughhousing brother had ill-treated.

"I'm okay, Maker. Thanks." Eternal Sailor Moon smiles as Eternal Sailor Star Maker was kneeling down to gently smooth out her tangled back ribbons and long hair strands. "I just wish we could find some way to help Pearellion survive this trouble, for Aquamarianna's sake. If only we had more time to figure this out!" Her clear blue eyes were filled with tears for her enemy, proving to the thoughtful and intelligent man before her that she was indeed his pure-hearted Princess, too.

"Time? I vow to do everything possible in my power to assist you in your unsparing efforts to restore this poor creature to dignity, Princess, should we encounter the chance." Just rising from his knees, this caring Soldier proved the chivalry of his recent knighthood was justified. The vexed Moon Princess found strength in this handsome Time Lord's reassuring smile that spoke volumes of his capable mind already mentally proposing hypothetic variables as the bonds around his wrists begin to glow.

"Ungh!" But just as the words had come from his lips, Eternal Star Maker was knocked backwards and thrashed into a corner by the invisible enemy who apparently viewed Maker as a real threat, if past experience was any judge.

"Maker!"

"Maker!"

"SPOTLIGHT FIGHTER HEALER ELECTRIC KEYTAR!"

Fighter and Healer simultaneously cry out for their third brother who had just taken a hard hit from the vengeful shadow of Lord Opalsen. But thankfully, the dastardly villain's shadow hand's intended swipe at Star Maker's bare shoulder—that would have sucked Terry into the black hole's dearth—was neatly averted by the timely new power combo's spontaneous team-up to save their third member.

In a show of brotherly solidarity, true understanding, and daresay, real affection, these two polar opposites had rarely displayed in the past, Eternal Star Fighter and Eternal Star Healer instantaneously work together. Using the vast power of his mind like a virtuoso easily playing his half keyboard, half guitar 'keytar' electric instrument's keys, Star Healer soulfully conducts with his mentally created portmanteau synthesizer in perfect timbre key for Star Fighter to sing the chromatic scales, just like they used to do as singers practicing.

But this time, focused in exact intricate micrometers, Fighter's crystal clear notes were arranged in perfect rhythm with his brother to aim his exact absolute pitch lasers to create a concentrated musical zigzagging beam over Eternal Star Maker's targeted chest. The masterfully arranged tonic tones deflect the hungry shadow with Fighter's dancing notes weaving Healer's electrifying shield to rather bounce off Maker's now laser-magnet mesh coated bare skin.

As if strumming an invisible electric guitar, Eternal Healer had employed all his musical skills as well to masterfully fashion an EM forcefield between the earth's opposing poles with his powerful mind while using Fighter's precision aim to accurately focus it directly over Maker's body. Healer was utilizing both stars' natural conductivity to carefully imbue a thin electromagnetic layer concisely over Eternal Star Maker's exposed skin.

As Fighter flawlessly croons varied frenetic, yet flawlessly hit notes, meteoric metal particles rain down from the exosphere of space to be infused to his cosmic lasers. Simultaneously, Healer smoothly serenades his red hot magnetic electroplating to entirely coat over their third Starlight's exposed torso without scorching Maker's skin whatsoever in an incredible new power combo. As never before, to Neptune's utter delight and Uranus' secret admiration, Healer and Fighter duet together as one voice, singing their hearts out in perfect tempo to keep up the electro-forceshield to save the brother who had always been that calming cohesion between their fraternal friction.

"What are those crazy idols up to?! Singing the shadows to death?! Those bitter old men are just going to pick us off as targets now! How on earth do you stop two shadows in the dark if they cannot even be seen?!" Dracon queries, holding Swanette and Cattana both close to him for protection—either way you viewed it.

"Throwing a little light might do the trick! Hmph, can't leave anything to these dumb old people." The youthful voice answers saucily from behind them in the darkness with sarcasm as Tuxedo Mask and Eternal Sailor Moon look down to see a sea of little girl faces all standing directly behind them in their nightwear. And each little hand was armed with a big bright flashlight.

"Go for it, girls!" VesVes commands to her entourage, unaware—or unconcerned—of the painful damage and excruciating injury that beaming light on the subject would cause their invisible assailants Serena had warned off her other Scouts from inflicting.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Six beams of light go on full blast, aimed directly at the dark sky overhead where the moon remained shrouded behind.

"C'mon Cere! Turn yours on where Saturn told us to already, will ya!?" JunJun not so gingerly nudges and scolds her friend's underpowered flashbulb beside her, vexed after having already had to load the batteries in for her prissy friend.

"But, JunJun! I've already broken my nail now on the faulty switch!" Fashion conscious CereCere whines, JunJun was growling as she grabs Cere's malfunctioning flashlight, pushing down on the switch hard with a vicious click after giving the equipment a fierce shake.

"Oh, JunJun! You're so strong!" CereCere sighs, fluttering her still starstruck eyelids at her tough friend's touch. JunJun rolls her own eyes with a pleased smirk, aiming both of their flashlights up at the black skies. —

"Umm, girls. That's not gonna do anything! You need some major power energy to light up this dark a street! Not just waving those stupid weenie flashlights around!" Sammy Hart interjects, having enthusiastically abandoned the handheld video game he'd been preoccupied with in Darien's dull car he was about to be driven home in, to instead follow the action outside. He twists his lip at kindergarten age Tara, Cattana and the Amazoness quartet who had been slumber partying upstairs. The young girls all in their slippers were trying to muscle in on the adult fight they had all snuck downstairs and outside to partake in.

"Why doesn't superhero Sailor Moonface just blow something up already with her Eternal Moon tiare magic?!" Ever the pessimist when it came to his older sister who just happened to be his former favorite superheroine, avid action movie rubbernecker, Sammy taunts at Serena with the dare.

"Like, stay out of this, Sammy! It's way more complicated than that! I'm still str-ate-gi-zing!" The angst-ridden yellow-haired heroine turns on her younger brother, the responsible adult in her just managing to refrain from sticking her tongue out at his annoyance. That is, until the squinting meatball headed Moon Princess spies a certain something intriguing suddenly appear in little Tara's childlike hand in the darkness.

"He~ey! Where'd you get that from, Tara?! Rini's not here again sneaking around somewhere—is she?!" Eternal Moon nearly flips her wig upon glimpsing, wide-eyed, the familiar magic object in all its sparkling pink heart and golden bell glory, but in another small girl's thin—but no longer frail—hand rather than the plump one it was last seen in. Half excited—and half dreading—seeing that little pink pipsqueak, Eternal Sailor Moon peeks around the perimeter. With the crooked scarf she had just knit him as a Christmas gift still in her hand, the clumsy winged soldier of Love strangles Tuxedo Mask's just as curious neck in search of their erstwhile future daughter.

"My beloved Rini left me this in a gift wrapped Christmas package she left with Susan-mama for me just before she went home to the future. In the note attached, she told me I would need it tonight, and who my friends and I must ask to help us light up the sky." Tara pleasantly answers with a big bright smile at the forever friendship thoughtfulness of her pink Easter egg hair colored best friend, just a time hop away.

"Who are ya gonna call with that girly heart trinket thing? The Ghostbusters?! Hmph! Bell ringing is definitely NOT gonna scare those bad-ass shadow jerks away." Considering himself an expert on fighting the occult—at least online—Sammy dourly comments with superior crossed arms. His years of computer video game playing made the teen rather jaded.

"I don't care if he's the Moon Princess' little bro. Who votes for using these flashlights to clobber this sourpatch kid and shut him up?" Annoyed VesVes threatens with a snide smirk in the dark that PallaPalla raises her hand to, in all too ready agreement, voodoo dollie already being pulled out of her always full of surprises pocket.

"Believe in Christmas dreams, Samuel! You'll see!" Sprightly little 'six-year-old' Tara Tomoe must have felt—still somewhere buried in her subconscious awaiting maturity—something for this boy she had timidly once called her boyfriend as her other diminutive little hand slips into his bewildered fifteen-year-old one. Then the other four colorful girls follow Saturn's lead as she aims her flashlight that was almost too big for her to grasp in her one small hand to light up the night sky towards a certain celestial body hiding way beyond the clouded skyline.

In conjunction with her four Asteroidal friends beginning to glow as they surround around Eternal Moon, Tara holds up Mini Moon's heart shaped 'Twinkle Bell' carillon high to the still night air. As she does, the silent rings of her guardian planet, though thousands of light years away, begin to spin at an increased rotational velocity. At the same time, the celestial asteroids named Vesta, Ceres, Junos, and Pallas gather in the cosmos to emit twinkling lights which reflect upon Saturn's eight vanishing ecliptic orbit rings. The bright colored intensified shines of which were only waiting for a rainbow dream to penetrate through Metallia's dark mist cover to be carried on wings down and illuminate Earth…

"Please, Pegasus! Twinkle Yell!" All five young female voices cry out the call to the keeper of dreams with closed eyes full of youthful dreams and hopes as Tara rings the heart enclosed bell right before Sammy's bedazzled eyes. Not a few seconds later, the jaded young man was sure he caught a momentary glimpse of a flying horse spreading its feathered white wings and lifting its gleaming unicorn horn of gold to pierce the black sky. An array of maroon, deep pink, neon green, sky blue, violet and pink beams shimmer down like a powerfully concentrated searchlight shower that refract colors upon each of the falling Christmas snowflakes, making the entire evening sky over them festively brighten for several minutes.

When Sammy opens his eyes, the small dark haired child whose hand he had been holding was transformed into an adolescent Eternal Sailor Saturn now. She was no longer aged five or six, but at the moment appearing to have aged to approximately fourteen, one year eclipsed for each of her guardian planet Saturn's eight vanishing and reappearing rings Mini Moon had just helped her touch.

It took the innocent belief in the minds of all these children to make the grown-ups realize that no dream was impossible on Christmas.

Suddenly a low roar and haunting cackle could be heard as the shadowy shape of a man, about to leech his dark intention over Eternal Sailor Moon, flickers across the vision of one of the winged rainbow searchlight beams gleaming down from above.

"NO! OPALSEN!" At the last second King Pearellion intercedes, his shadow form pushing his deranged brother's shadow apparition away from siphoning both the Earth Prince and Moon Princess' essences into the shadow realm. But in doing so, he also knocked the more malevolent being out of the light and away from every Soldier's targeted sight.

"Eternal Sailor Moon!" Tuxedo Mask cries out when the despicable shadow of Lord Opalsen rebounds nonetheless to take another deathly dark shadow swipe at Sailor Moon. Darien was grateful to be able to distinguish the shadow now thanks to Helios, the protector of dreams, and Opalsen's ebony ghost just misses touching her wide white wings by millimeters had Tux not pulled her out of the way.

"TUXEDO LA SMOKING BOMBER!"

"STAR GENTLE UTERUS!"

"SATURN REBORN RIBBON REVOLUTION!"

"STAR SENSITIVE INFERNO!"

"NEPTUNE SUBMARINE REFLECTION!"

"URANUS WORLD SHAKING!"

"STAR DELIRIOUS KICK!"

The sky explodes with multiple celestial lights just as Saturn's Asteroidal spotlights were dwindling. The line of mercy was crossed for the group of Sailor Guardians who had been cautiously holding back at their leader Moon's command when she was attacked. So now, each Soldier wills their planet and star powers to extend just long enough for their powered illuminations to bring down the two vulnerable enemies.

But to Sailor Moon's horror, Pearlellion's words from before that any bright light would wound him as well was alarmingly true. No more proof was necessary, as each Sailor Scout gathered took their protective cue to light up the eastern sky with whatever luminary power they had within them now to catch and kill the pair of rooted out shadow spectres who had been stalking them.

Down Pearlellion's greyed to charcoal body drops to the ground, writhing in pain as VesVes, JunJun, CereCere and PallaPalla keep their flashlights trained on him, as Fighter's blinding fireworks show still lingers in the air of Neptune and Healer's reflective violin inferno.

Aquamarianna had to be held back by Dracon so as not to physically touch the fallen, now terribly wounded, husband whom she had dropped to her knees nearby.

"Pearlellion! Pearlellion! Stop this, please. I can feel you are still noble deep inside. Expel these shadows before they corrupt your soul any further! Please, before you harm anyone else." Aquamarianna pleads with him honestly, so proud that her husband had spared Sailor Moon before from his wicked brother, though sensing the darkness was yet infecting him.

"I don't believe you! You are betraying me again, woman." His voice now deep and scratchy like Opalsen's, Pearlellion rasps out in a cough, that evil shadow clawing its way into his every cognitive thought, making it harder and harder by the second for the king to reveal his true nature.

"No! Never again, my love! Sailor Moon has showed me how to be genuine and real! How not to deceive, and how to truly love! And I truly love you, Pearellion! I love you! I have always loved you and I always will, no matter what happens to either of us!" She cries, her wet, hot tears raining down over his cold shadowy form.

"My…love…?" His soul had not been totally integrated yet by the darkness, as the good part left in Pearellion reaches out to the wife he once adored. In the dearth of his greyed out orbs, Aquamarianna saw that light of hope still in his eyes for her, albeit a tiny spark amid the vast bleakness.

"Pearlellion! Hold on, my handsome King! Sailor Moon will do something to help you! If you don't believe in me, believe in Sailor Moo—! Ohhhh!" Aquamarianna's words that were indeed breaking through to Pearellion, were stifled by a heart stopping, deafening scream suddenly emanating from behind her and Dracon.

"Shut up, wench! My own wife is gone, Pearlellion, due to your treachery to our cause! I will not stand by and let you have your lover back, still alive in this bright world when mine has been annihilated! Your Queen must become part of the great darkness and join us in it to our doom!" Lord Opalsen's crazed voice booms out as his stronger, darker shadow comes to piercing life with greater powers than the king's. His shifty, ghostly form had been able to hide until he saw his chance to swoop in and claim yet another victim—the woman whom his lost Ruby had despised most in the world, her sister-in-law, Queen Aquamarianna.

"No!" Swanette suddenly cries out, jumping up from where she was crouching beside Dracon to instead shield the long aqua haired female at the last possible moment. She screams falling to the ground as dark shadows eclipse her body in a feeding frenzy.

"Sister! Watch out!" Cattana drops her flashlight and runs to her injured sister, even as struck down Swanette's tormented words screech out like a tortured bird's swan song.

"Cattana! Stay put! Dracon, Dracon—take care of her for me!" With her last breath of goodness, Swanette cries out in pain. All the while, her weakened, writhing body quickly darkens into a raven-like shadow to circle its black wings overhead at Opalsen's beckon.

"Swanny!" Dracon calls to his one and only true love as Cattana runs to his arms, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"The end is drawing near, Pearellion. Can't you feel it? The dark nothingness longs to claim us. The darkness is our future. You can't fight it. You can't resist it. Not even you. Can you, brother? You, too, belong to Queen Metallia, whom we both pledged our loyalty to. But I am no weakling traitor, like you." Opalsen's evil had thoroughly swallowed his soul by now as his slithering voice cackles ruthlessly, the darkness he had absorbed from Pearlellion, he was now the dominant half, expanding in vehemence. There was nothing left in this world for Opalsen to try to hold onto, his wife gone, his despised brother dispatched, as his thirst for raw power being mercilessly quenched...

Yet, could there be something that he cared for remaining that could halt his rampage?

"Has my own child been turned against me? Is he, too, a turncoat to the greater cause I will lead the dark army in serving? Swanette, bring me closer to absorb him into the collective!" Exquisitely ingrained with a perverted belief in evil to even corrupt his own offspring, as his latest minion obeys his order on swift wings across the dark expanse, Lord Opalsen fixes his phantom gaze upon the deep crimson red youth standing beside young Eternal Sailor Saturn.

"Father! Father! I'm not a weakling traitor! Take me with you! I don't want be here without you and Mum! It's not right for me to be with these people who bloomin' took you both away from me!" The hurt and pain of losing both parents proved too much of a trial for young Garnet's swaying loyalties. In his boyish youth he reaches out to blame somebody for his 'mum's' loss, and found the Sailor Scouts who were merely present at her own self-destruction the perfect candidates to blame.

"Yes, Garnet! I knew you were a fine, strong willed boy! Come and join me in true powe—" Opalsen's laughing continues as the invisible man's shadow eerily reaches to touch his son's outstretched, willing hand and—

"—NO! Don't listen to my dark side! Run from here, my son! You must leave here and forget all of this! Go live a real life in the light! Forget about this famil—ungh!"

"URANUS SPACE TURBULENCE!"

Whether dark or light, the split personalities of Lord Opalsen both fall as Eternal Sailor Uranus, having stealthily raced in at incredible speed to take the enemy's vulnerable opportunity and blast him hard with her own space sword's new turbulent power unleashed.

Racing all the time!

"Somebody hold back the boy." She orders coldly, feeling little compassion for the son of the soulless man who would murder his own child. Sleek golden yellow Uranus moves in closer to the fallen pair of shadow haunted brothers, prepared to kill the evil vengeful father as her tumultuous currents relentlessly thrash at Opalsen, threatening to tear the shadow creature apart to the four winds.

"Uranus! Wait! There's still some good in him!" Throwing her arms out in front of the enemy, Eternal Sailor Moon pleads, stopping Uranus in her tracks from deploying her winds. Serena then runs up to her taller Sailor Guardian, tugging on the Soldier of the wind's firmly extended arm which was about to orchestrate her full gale-force direct tumult that would utterly destroy what was left of Lord Opalsen.

Racing all the time!

"Sailor Moon! We don't have time for sentimentality! After all that's happened, this may be our one chance to gain the advantage over Metallia! You have to be tough for once! These are our enemies who chose to join the dark side! While I've got them cornered, just shine your light and put them both out of their misery!" Though her deep, raised voice seemed filled with rage, it was that same compassion for the tormented souls writhing at her wind-strewn feet that caused harsh Uranus to order the unforgiving words now.

"But I can't—!" Serena shakes her bun head, not wanting to hurt anyone ever like this!

"You're not the sole judge of this, Uranus! This must be done Sailor Moon's way, not your harsh one! The Princess can only be triumphant if we combine our strengths together as one!" Star Maker and Uranus verbally butt heads here on the battlefield as Eternal Moon stands between the two tall and determined soldiers glaring at one another as contentious music plays in the background.

Can't we ever see eye to eye?

"You're in some romantic fairytale denial, Star man, if you really think we can so neatly sugar-coat war and mollycoddle every villain until they reform! There just isn't enough time for that if Earth is to survive and we're to stop this evil from spreading to the rest of the galaxy!" Eternal Sailor Uranus practically growls her harsh saint cry as she ferociously plays devil's advocate. The cruel angel argues with her more gentle-hearted comrade as everyone gathered watches the passionate exchange in stunned silence. It was hard choosing sides, knowing both had the care of ultimate peace for this universe in mind.

A to Z, racing through pain! Has hope flown out the door for my life?

"Sailor Moon. She's right. Do it, before it becomes too late for my wrongs to be undone." King Pearellion's weakest voice comes out in a tentative plea as his dark eyes focus in on his wife, he wanting to die with at least her beauty still remembered within him. For King Pearlellion could feel the darkness about to absorb him completely, all his hope lost, with nothing and no one to believe he could be saved.

I don't know!

"No. There is Time, Princess. Please keep your faith in the unending hope a small child once taught me." Hearing a younger version of himself cry out in need of that one small voice to uncloud his confused depression, Time Lord Eternal Sailor Star Maker calmly includes both the Princess of the Moon and the Princess of Uranus in his deeply pondering, gorgeous purple eyes as Serena's wishful gaze darts back and forth between her two warring dear ones.

Love is not the end!

Eternal Sailor Uranus' eyes soften when they connect with her Princess' tender ones. Alex also sees Sayer's eyes keenly shining from behind Eternal Sailor Moon, reaching out to her to bend her rigid stance ever so slightly to see someone else's point of view for once.

All alone, I could never be right. Your passion I need!

"Fine, Moonface. You're a better Princess—and a better judge of character—than I'll ever be. It's your call, Time Lord." With a scoffed chuckle at both her husband who woefully fell in that prior 'misjudged' category and the jaded reference to her cold self as a 'Princess,' Uranus bows her knee to her peace-loving ruler.

Then she awards her sparring partner some respect with a nod, albeit with the mocking title, for passionately standing his ground.

But Terry couldn't entirely fault his obstinate sister-in-law here. He recalled that battle when he himself had almost lost hope, had not dark pink ringlet haired little girl, RiRi, in her childlike innocence, had questioned his belief back then when Sailor Moon's purity had given them all hope.

Now, it was his turn to imbue the darkness with hope.

'Answers have taken place of the questions because of the friend who taught me freedom, close at hand beside me always! I'll never lose my way again with you by me.'

Hearing his wife's echoing song full of encouraging hope in his heart at this appointed moment in time, Pluto's updated Time Rod, merged with Starlight energy now, materializes once again in the genius young man's hands as Terry's true love sends their now shared time weapon to him. Gleaming with his wife's pride and hope in him, its purple gemstone star affixed between Susan's silver heart talisman, reverberates in perfect rhythm with the bonds surrounding Terry's wisteria mist illuminated wrists as he digs deep within Time's endless stream with his boldly inspired and star enhanced new theoretical vision.

"I—" Hesitant to bring harm to even her worst enemies, the angel-hearted Moon Princess kneels down to Pearellion to look into his pained eyes. Seeing the blackness ravenously eating away at them, suddenly she stands with a look of quiet decision on her pure face looking up to Eternal Star Maker, who nods.

"We believe in you, Princess." Eternal Sailor Star Maker joins Uranus in a bowed knee at Eternal Moon's feet, his gorgeous eyes full of trust and confidence. The vigorous pair share with the blonde heroine their deference and their assurance on either side of her as Neptune, Healer, and Fighter soon join them on their knees surrounding this special Princess of the Moon, all devoting their glowing energies to her.

"ENDLESS MOON FRIENDSHIP HEALING…!" Sailor Moon feels Maker's gentle music orgel play back through time and space an encouraging soft symphony along the strings of her shaken heart to bring her a certain peace. She leans on the noble Star Soldier's generous strength and leadership to reshape the future, Eternal Sailor Moon sings out the remedial call with everything in her power.

Emotional Serena's own sweet heart aches at how the cruelties of this world could be so terribly divisive on every single person, made especially painful when her friends—her family—clashed. And so, her increasingly serene soul explodes in pure light to mend all the tears as Eternal Sailor Moon's Eternal Tiare appears in her hand as she lifts its long silver stem up to the cloudy skies above…

"…FOREVER FAMILY MILLENIAL SHINE!" The light does indeed explode from everywhere, from within this special young girl destined to be everyone's Queen. In response to Maker's starlit prayer, from far across the galaxy, an incredible fireball shine cuts across the darkness from without the cloudy Christmas skies. Its orangey osmanthus flower scented glow forces the ebony dark to give way to the Moon's power for a few precious, ephemeral seconds.

The no longer hidden moon's celestial body displays full and gleaming as never before everyone's astonished eyes as it clears through the clouds of the night to pierce through the evil darkness and begin to clear their darkened hearts, too.

"Swanette!" Dracon, to his credit, runs to catch his shadow wing deprived, plummeting love, catching the weakened birdlike female's tainted, dark body with his bare hands. In doing so, he, too, becomes part of her shadow darkness, in a willing choice to save her life.

"Dracon! Why did you—?!" Swanette whispers through her pain, the small, good part of her yet in a genuine, forever pure love for him still unblemished.

"I go where you go, mon chere." The playboy from New Orleans kisses his 'dear's' feebly smiling physical mouth just in time before Swanette, as she had once been, was fully absorbed in that black nothingness' shadows his quivering form was now polluted with as well.

"My boy." Feeling the warmth of Sailor Moon's shining light perforate through his dark heart, Lord Opalsen's true voice groans through with less evil and with more gentleness that he had exhibited towards his only child in a long time. The wayward father, with his dying breath, wanted to reach out to the son he did indeed care for as a parent should, still somewhere deep inside that Moon's light of goodness had revealed.

"Father!" Garnet reaches out and grabs firm hold of his dying father's hands, he also being absorbed into the thinning out shadows, the wayward child not wanting to be anywhere else but at his father's side now that his mother had been taken.

"Swanette! Dracon! Garnet!?" Cattana, not knowing what to do, follows Garnet's lead and races into the warm, blinding light that Sailor Moon was creating, shaping, tenderly generating in amazing, time and space molding ways that the Moon Princess was not even aware before she could accomplish.

Tearful Cattana's broken heart cried to be with the sister who raised her in the only family she had ever known. She looks from glowing all-white Eternal Sailor Moon to tall fatherly figure Sailor Star Maker, whom her good friend, Tara, had proved could be trusted at the Moon Princess' side. Then, gazing into Tara's wide, innocent, smiling eyes that gave her reborn hope, Cattana bravely takes hold of her sister Swanette's wispy, shadowy hand that could now be faintly glimpsed in the pervading moonlight. The weakened, older sister sheds a tear that her baby sis was now going to die in this darkness, too.

And yet, Swanette felt something comforting in both of them dying well together, thanks to Sailor Moon and the others of this bright world, she giving a squeeze back to her beloved younger sibling's hand. She had anguished over who would care for her sweet little Cattana if she was gone. And now nothing else mattered because they were still family, suddenly finding hope in being touched by the timelessly basking moonlight…

The non-obscured moonlight, brilliantly sparkling, slowly and deliberately breaks down the shadows of people they once knew as enemies to Serena, whose kindness now counted many of them as friends. She continues to generously shine her light, radiating so gorgeously, so splendidly, that Eternal Moon's sparkle could be seen around the world, empowered by her pure prayers being heard way up into Heaven for this shattered family to live in peace…

"Aquamarianna, my love, my Queen! I want you to stay here and safe in this present time. You must remain on this beautiful earth for our child to deserve the future I could never provide you both with." The dark shadow he was, now quivering into a half-black, half white partially healed form, Pearellion's incredible mental willpower and stamina of mind gave him the ability to fight the impossible and whisper these final words to his beloved wife.

"No, Pearellion! I cannot live without you! Here or anywhere. In the past or present, in the darkness or in the light! You have given my life everything I've ever needed—a future filled with love." Whispering back to him in tears as she touches a hand to her full with child stomach, Aquamarianna leans over his distressed, disappearing form. The dark Negaverse King, along with the others Metallia's scourge had tainted, seemed to melt into the shadows under Sailor Moon's blinding, ultra-bright light.

Grasp!

"Pearlellion, I love you!" Aquamarianna makes the ultimate decision to cling to her true love no matter what. She grabs at her husband's varied grey, phasing in-and-out hand, giving up the life she could have lived here on this bright Earth with their child to instead die with her beloved King.

But rather than the finality of death it grimly promised to reap, the darkness enveloping them both instead dissolves in an overwhelming light of hope. Amazingly beyond belief, the melting away shadows suddenly are sucked up into Eternal Sailor Moon's life saving tiare, right into the healing heart atop of its gleaming fuchsia jewel in a blinding luminance.

"The light of hope the child showed me…You truly are the one God foreordained to change reality, Princess. This is the moment Time has whispered of to this humble man. Please raise your endlessly pure Moon heart high to the skies that we must shift together to find these unfortunate souls the air of freedom they cry out for." Still covered by his Starlight partners' armor of caring that coated his warmed heart and starlit eyes when no one else could come close to her burning radiance, Eternal Sailor Star Maker boldly strides over to Eternal Moon's blindingly luminous side. His pledge to Serena before that 'there is Time' becomes even more evident in his crystal clear purple eyes full of determination and purpose linking to her shivering blue orbs awash in the awesome moon's rays.

Feeling not just Maker, but all of her beloved Guardian Scouts sending her their swirling hearts of love, a tearful Eternal Sailor Moon takes firm hold of her now extremely heavy and exorbitantly gleaming tiare staff which was positively too bright for normal human eyes to gaze upon, extending the beacon of hope as high as she could up into the sky beyond the clouds covering over the earth. Her glistening eyes then gratefully affix to Terry's determined ones when the Time Lord's new Starlight Time Rod, spilling over with lustrous star heartened love energy, appears in the air when his hand beckons, to crisscross an 'X' across Eternal Moon's pure heart tiare aimed up at the moon above.

But struggling nonetheless with this hard choice's weightiness, she was only able to raise it even higher into the night sky when Star Maker's one strong, long fingered hand extends to gentlemanly steady her tensely trembling forearm.

"It may not be much, Princess, but may I lend you my strength?" Star Maker's genuine eyes both literally and figuratively reach out to the Moon Princess who was not only proverbially burning her candle at both ends to achieve this incredible dream, which intellectual innovator Terry Starr's confident gaze was proposing in this monumental moment of need.

Serena need not comprehend all of the academic details or big word scientific theories our genius boy Terry Starr did, but she trusted Star Maker implicitly to carry out this Christmas miracle. Because we are the very best of friends. Serena smiles, sensing this was a very important moment in her life when she must rely on God's gift of true friendship more than ever.

With a nod of understanding, the Time Lord's gleaming dimensional wristband transfers through his fingers his pure star energy to Sailor Moon in their shared warmth's touch. Maker was effectively combining their strengths as one for this great purpose as he simultaneously keeps his Time Rod balanced with her weighty Moon Tiare above both their heads.

Before the last rays of the moon above eclipse again to the overwhelming night, the darkness shrinks back as Eternal Moon transmutes into her persona as Princess Serenity in all her pearlescent glory. This blessed child of the Moon calls in all the moon's coruscating shine as every one of her Sailor Scouts around her, and the others wherever they were throughout the city, devote their energy to their Princess.

"ORIGIN MAKER HIDDEN MOON ROTATION!"

Spoken in one voice in perfect tandem with Time Lord Star Maker's gentle—yet deep and commanding—tenor that initiates the powerful words, Princess Serenity's more solemn and serene voice was full of compassion and love as the now glistening silvery-haired bunhead reaches deep into her deep soul. As he tenderly holds her thin arm up high, the corresponding gleaming silver crystal sparkles on Sailor Moon's chest as the tiare she and Maker together tightly clasped between her hands cascades into pure silver light. It beams an effervescent light which travels like a silver bullet straight through the sky, traveling up, up, up until it becomes no more than a twinkle as it hits the revealed full moon dead on center.

The chaste brilliance of the Moon rejects the evil darkness enclosed within it. But through the kind, beautiful heart of its ruler that had shown great compassion to send on that beam of pure silver caring, the shadow tempted souls of seven once decent people struggling with their very existences to the refuge of that same hidden celestial body not so far off, though just one second out of time.

Serena was totally trusting Time Lord Star Maker's mastery of time and space in this audacious scheme. The gentle-hearted genius had cleverly enterprised to transfer the seven refugees' inverted shadows in order to survive beyond Metallia's reach as relatively normal humans again. They would be able to live their lives undetected on the other side of the hidden moon, though displaced in time.

Perhaps astute Terry Starr was raised up and placed here at such a moment in history by the Greatest Force in this universe to facilitate Sailor Moon. The gifted young Star soldier combines his timely star power with Princess Serenity's gleaming radiance to spin the polarity of the moon's normal rotating axis at a precise revolution point opposing to send the beam of light those shadows were safely riding upon just one second's step out of time. Working together with her radiant light, Maker would initiate this ingenious design to use his Time Lord granted powers to shrewdly place this destined family into a different dimension on the dark side of the Moon. That continually shaded, phased hidden section of the luminary—made breathable through Star Maker's vast knowledge of chemistry and mathematical calculations—would be capable to sustain the lives of those still partially enshrouded within the dark shadows, partially enveloped in the light.

The mysterious side of the moon's own dim dankness would theoretically make it possible for those seven to live again as they were, shadow antimatter reversing back into substantial matter there in the inverted darkness, out of time. Although, the evil may still be faintly resident within them—for evil was not a quantity to be rid of from without, so ingrained within them it had become. But placed upon this time dimensionally moving object circling the earth into the depths of space—tucked away just a second out of focus, safely to be lost in time to Metallia's wrath in this other dimension—was the 'Dark Moon' that Pearlellion, Aquamarianna, Opalsen, Garnet, Dracon, Swanette and Cattana, too, could from now on call 'home.'

The light of the Moon was mercifully bestowing them another chance at life again where they could choose to fight for themselves, apart from being enslaved as Metallia's servants, whether to be for good or for evil.

Falling to her knees, Sailor Moon's tiare's heart was gravitationally sent to the celestial skies above with the burning prayer for those people. Her heart goes with her new friends, and their descendents whose paths they had crossed before and had become friends with in full circle in the future—or was that the past?—as the Princess of the Moon's precious, life-sparing moonlight slowly begins to fade.

Princess Serenity, in her billowy white long skirt and lavender sheer bow, collapses from all the strain, right into her Tuxedo Mask's open, welcoming arms. But there was a soft smile on her face, knowing every energy selflessly offered was worthwhile to have been spent to do everything she could to give new hope to these seven individuals. Although, through the passage of generations, the Moon Princess would be become reviled and infamously known to these 'Dark Moon' citizens as their rivalrous captor, and not as the saving friend who only did this out of kindness and love to give them a second chance.

But someday, nonetheless, goodness would win out in the end.

"Well done, Maker." Uranus was surprisingly the first one to rush forward to steady Eternal Sailor Star Maker as he lowers his shared Starlight Time Rod with a prayer of thanksgiving to God once again this blessed night for the intuitive strength this humble servant was granted to help others shine their light that he would give his all to do again and again when called upon.

For the peace of this people of this world he had come to protect, for the safety of his Princesses, here and beyond, and the family and friends he had made along the way.

And most of all, for the love of his beloved Lady, Susan, whose beautiful heart had been entrusted to his care for eternity.

"You were right about letting people make their own choices." And to the mahogany haired man's quietly quirked smile, Uranus also manages to swallow enough of her pride to congratulate and capitulate that her 'lordly' brother-in-law was, for once, more correct than she after his imperative contribution. That in itself proved their Princess' effort was indeed successful to turn hard hearts around in friendship, giving all a second chance to live and love in mercy which the stubborn soldier of fighting rebellion had a tough time accepting easily sometimes.

"From time to time." Never at a loss for words, even as he catches his breath, Terry smiles softly at Alex, touching his heart that felt his Susan's relief wash over him as their Garnet Star Time Rod glistens down at him her deep caring.

After awarding Maker a thumbs-up from across the way at his difficult wife's hard-won praise, Fighter jubilantly gives a close by Healer a mighty fist bump. But it nearly knocks down the bowled over, slighter Starlight like a pinball, had Eternal Sailor Neptune not been there to hold him up, like his courageous young heroine always promised she would be.

"Princess Serenity." Darien whispers with a broad smile down at his wife, proudly holding his timeless angel's trembling body close. Likewise transformed to his navy blue and silver armor as he lent his bride his planetary strength, Prince Endymion of the Earth touches the ground. Through it, he could see visions of the future and the past which the Time Lord had intricately unlocked upon the hidden side of the phasing Moon unfolding for those people now in full view that he never understood before.

Looking at Terry and Alex's reconciled relationship in a pleased daze, feeling love and friendship around her strong, within her own beloved family circle again, Serena closes her eyes tightly. She selflessly begs for God to watch over Aquamarianna, Pearellion, Cattana, and all the rest of them she had sent out to the phased time dark side of the Moon to allow them to live their lives, hopefully in peace and away from Metallia's darkness that still grumbled fearfully beneath the earth down here below.

Thank you for giving us this Christmas present, God. Thank you for making gentle Terry brilliant in every way, for bringing all my dearest ones around to support me and for endowing us with these blessed gifts to do this for our new friends. Everyone deserves to have dreams. Everyone deserves second chances. Please, someday, let them find the goodness that had escaped them all here.

With an elated, indebted smile towards Eternal Star Maker standing in the midst of his fellow Starlight brethren, Princess Serenity places gratitude and praise where it was rightly due. As she does, her last wished hope for love and friendship shines brightly to every corner of the universe, one more time echoing in the palpitating light she had just witnessed.

And that endless Moon shine borne through Time buries itself to grow new life beneath the crust of the freshly born Dark Moon in a dimension shifted a momentary fraction of a second away from her own beloved celestial body's destroyed ruins of a Moon Kingdom. But even there in this dimension's reality on the surface of the lifeless moon, unawares, the momentous, overwhelming light inspired by one tender young woman's true Love, genuine Faith, and real Hope also begins to sprout tiny seeds of possibilities to perhaps someday flicker beautiful again…

---

Somewhere deep in the belly of the earth, dark and dank, a hideous sound could be heard seething a flame in crimson blood red, if there had been anyone present to witness the deafening cacophonic noise of the evil force cackling its wicked ambitions.

"Ha ha ha ha hah! Yes, family! Yes! In your simplicity, you have opened the fissure to the Moon Kingdom I crave to again destroy. My gratitude, Sailor Moon! You have rid me of those worthless cretins! The dark energy I've bestowed upon them now reverts back to me as well, you foolish human! Can't you see you have done me a great service, oh, just Moon Princess? Ha ha ha! I need those amoeba not and never did! They were just bait to make you do exactly as you just did! You foolish, foolish child! Now I can rule this world and the universe you have opened to me at last!" Metallia's eerie, maddened-glad voice dripped with sarcasm and disdain as she spoke to no one left under her command but the shadows of her subterranean cavern abode. "No longer do I require petty humans to do my bidding! But soon—very soon—I will be free from this wretched entrapment you have ensnared me in for these infinitesimal eons! Time is nothing to the Queen of all evil!" But Metallia's smoldering red flame burns a tick hotter as she broods over the interference of not only her hated nemesis of the Moon, but also of that interfering star from another galaxy now hailing under the Moon Princess' wing.

"I will destroy you and this world that you all love! All in the name of the dark forces I control!" The very heart of wickedness herself continues her devouring laughter with her now assured pending takeover. Metallia felt the energy she had transferred to her weakling minions slowly ebb their way back to her refractive soul as well as sense the insects she had left for bait leave the confines of this earth and her grip over them.

Though they were somewhere that clever new Time Lord had concealed them, Metallia sensed they were still very much alive, as she claimed her energies—for now—recalled back into the evil Queen's strengthening powers.

Cackling in arrogance, the malevolent creature bides her time, peering through the night's shadows she owned to spy upon her enemies while she lie in wait for all her energies to build to their maximum. Metallia had kept hidden the raw energies she had secretly siphoned from the burned out stars across the vast galaxy she had been able to glimpse through her traitorous bloodline, made her even more powerful than the last time.

And it was to be that much more than what she had clandestinely gleaned about her rival Moon Princess' abilities as she immerses herself in the evil bath, ensuring that her reign would, without doubt, be able to seize this fought-over planet known as Earth—and then destroy every living creature upon it that Goodness had once smiled upon.

Her dripping with evil laughter suddenly stops when her sights focus on the team of Sailor Scouts surrounding that loathsome Moon Princess who had dared challenge her and who had just sent her former servants of the dark Negamoon. She sees a silent child of death who would not die; and on the determined stances of the rest of the Sailor Soldiers who had relied on some fabled thing they called loyalty and trust. And then, to her wicked disdain, Metallia's vision falls upon the once Heir to her dark kingdom who had presumed to foolishly reject and resist her and her promise of ultimate power.

All for the love of a mere human woman.

"Hmph. The contemptible weakness called 'Love' that will reduce all to are indeed just like your father, offspring of my evil. And the same as your father before you, Sailor of the Star Healer, I have disowned you as you have disowned me. I will destroy you because I no longer require your presence in my circle of darkness you have already unlocked for me. You now, without me, have no more power or promise than the rest of your sorrowful, so-called 'friends.' But I erroneously believed your loyalty would be to me, flesh of my flesh that I could control you long enough to destroy from the inside out the other Sailor Soldiers who I believed would be too weak to stand against you, their once ally. But that is the last mistake I'll ever make. That daughter of Neptune, whom you have sold your soul to, was prepared to kill you, and still you have returned to her, shutting me out beyond all barriers. You see, young Heir, I no longer require to break down your mind barriers. I will break you, body and soul, as I will take my vengeance in slaying your now despised fellow Star siblings, and find pleasure in slaughtering the remainder of your worthless Sailor Soldier companions. At the end of this world, I will not be wrong. The potential you hold separately dormant must never be allowed to reach its full embodiment. The progeny of your joining with the Soldiers of this star system will never see a future! I, Queen Metallia, mistress of all evil, cannot be stopped by mere mortals! My wrath upon this hated world will soon come to fruition! But I scorn you, Moon Princess, I scorn goodness! I scorn all things bright! And most of all, I scorn that damnable love! Darkness will defeat light, as it was meant to— since the beginning! Darkness will descend upon you all for all time! For eternity, I will rule over the black vacuum of nothingness alone! Nothingness will return again to this universe—and beyond! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Metallic screechings of Metallia's warped ponderous laughter strengthens her evil as the earth's very core shivers in her cold bleakness.

Her dark evil wicked powers that the naïve Moon Princess had just added to were building, gaining, increasing, just as she had planned. That wicked gathering of darkness would soon be at the brink when it was appointed to be released upon this defenseless world.

And then, there would be no turning back…

---

Happy Thanksgiving, minna-sama!

I pray each and every one of my dear Sailor Moon friends out there have a blessed and wonderful day filled with joy and hope, good food and good times with your families and friends. ;) And, most of all, gratitude to God on this day we give Him thanks and praise for all the gifts granted us freely.

With Fanfiction's alerts and traffic stats on the fritz for months now, I do hope you're all able to see this latest chapter of our Sailor Moon saga that is quickly wrapping up, with only a few consequential chapters remaining to be typed up! Setsuna and I will be typing out another installment soon for her birthday week off! (Tanjoubi omedetou, onesan!:) Please, can anyone tell me if you can read the chapters? I'd really appreciate a comment review to say our efforts are not in vain! ^0^

I hope you enjoyed this Healer reclamation aftermath/ well-deserved Christmas party episode! I really wish to receive a review from someone out there! It would truly make our birthday special to hear from dear friends!

God bless you all on this Thanksgiving day!

'We thank Thee all our God, with hearts and hands and voices. Who wondrous things hath done; in Whom this world rejoices...'

Your friend,

HarukaKou