A Battlefield on the Side of Mount Olympus, Mythic Era
Thirteen Years Since the Awakening of Sailor Saturn
The sky burned. Sheets of flame spanned horizon to horizon,
broken only occasionally by roiling black clouds shot
through with volcanic red, from which black lightning struck
the ground, blasting whole villages into smoking craters.
It was the end of the world, the Twilight of the Gods. It
was the coming of Dahok the Destroyer. Greece was on the
brink of a devastation unmatched since the sinking of
Atlantis.
Callisto stood amidst the turmoil and looked around her. She
stood on a small rise of ground on the side of Mt. Olympus,
at the top of which the gateway to the Gods' realm existed.
The maelstrom swirled above her, centered on the stronghold
of the Gods. Conflicting emotions warred within her. A part
of her exulted in the unleashed chaos which must surely
proceed the entropy which consumes all things. A part of her
was terrified and revolted: at the destruction, at Dahok,
and most of all at herself. She looked at her hands and knew
them now. They were the hands of a murderer. She checked
herself. No god-warrior's sailor toga. She wore the black
leather armor she had worn years before when she had fought
Xena. She was an adult again. She was Callisto.
"Welcome back, Callisto." Ares' voice carried to her despite
the gusting winds around her; he stressed her true name as
he spoke. She turned to him as he materialized in a blast
of steel-cold light.
[Roll Credits: "You're Still the One," Lucy Lawless version]
Episode Five
Echoes from the Past! The Mythical Warriors Return
On the Side of Mount Olympus, Mythic Era
During the Final Battle Against Dahok
"Ares," she began, then paused. The sound of her deeper
adult voice seemed so strange to her now, yet it also seemed
over twenty years familiar. She shook her head. "What have
you done?" she asked in a voice of quiet seriousness,
desperation creeping in.
"I've released the Goddess within the sailor," he said
proudly. "You are a fine force for destruction in your own
right Callisto. The Gods will shortly fall to Dahok, but you
still have time to join us and help usher in a new age! An
age of fire, and bloodshed, when all 'goodness' passes
forever from the Earth!" He threw up his face and laughed at
the heavens.
She looked around again, and saw Serafin's body at the base
of the cliff. Her daughter Phobia, the very image of her
mother, had thrown her to her death just moments before.
Then Ares had grabbed Sailor Mars and brought her down here.
She reached out with her Godly powers and sensed that the
Inner Senshi had all fallen. Phobia and Sailor Saturn were
locked in a struggle over the kidnapped boy, Solan, on the
edge of the cliff above her. She could tell, somehow, that
Xena had released as much of the Saturn Power as she could
without unleashing ALL of it, and Phobia still stood there,
defiant. There was no sign of Pluto, but Callisto had a
hunch that wherever Hades was fighting, his daughter would
be at his side.
"You remember it all now, don't you?" sneered Ares. "The
power. The fighting. The hatred. The sheer blind will you
used to shape your life as *you* wanted to!"
"I've learned about the wrongness of blind will from Xena,"
she began to protest. It was hard, so hard, to say anything.
She could feel her, the other Callisto, the madwoman, raging
inside. By the Gods, the blood on her hands. She looked at
them in shock again. Her crimes . . . unbelievable!
Unforgivable! Yet. . . Xena and the other warriors had. Her
eyes widened as the implications of what she'd seen sank in.
"Give up this façade as Sailor Mars. Come to my side as
Callisto."
She remembered how it ended. How it had begun anew. Her
companions. How she had recently met the handsome boy Solan,
who Xena was strangely protective of. His mother had
mysteriously disappeared, he had confided to her. Could she
have been Xena's mysterious companion, Gabrielle, whom she
had heard so much of? Wait, the blond ninny? She knew her,
she'd killed Perdicus and then, no, wait, Gabrielle was
Minako, she had turned out to be Venus, and had gone back to
the future after Velasca had died. . . She gave a small cry
as her memories spun out of control, threatening to
overwhelm her completely. She chose one and focused on it.
Solan. Her heart ached. She shut her eyes tightly for a
moment and focused.
Ares was right in front of her; she could feel it. Her eyes
snapped open upon his handsome, evil face. Reflexively she
threw an eye gouge at him, shrieking like an enraged falcon.
Grinning, he easily blocked it. "Well, that's a start. But
let's not take TOO long."
Something sat wrong with Callisto. With the return of her
memories had come the return of all her tactical skills,
almost equal to Xena's. Perhaps, in some ways, superior.
What was going on? Phobia had begun opening the portal high
overhead but she hadn't finished. Was it really the fight
with Xena that was stopping her? Or was her power somehow
incomplete? As far as Selene had been able to divine, Dahok
would be satisfied if Xena released all her power and
destroyed the world for him. Was the so-called portal a
sham, a trick to get Xena to destroy the world with the
Saturn Power? And why had they kidnapped the innocent Solan?
Why else would Ares have tried to enlist another God at the
last minute? What if Phobia wasn't the key? She had acted
strangely all along, as she began to prepare the way for her
demonic father. Sometimes cosmic powers required a sacrifice
but if that was all then why the delay? She could have
rushed through the ritual and ripped the portal open by now,
surely . . . Something was missing from her plan and as long
as it was, there was still hope.
"Callisto!" bellowed Ares. "I admit that I prefer you quiet
like this, and not running off at the mouth, but enough
musing. Time's up. Choose sides NOW!"
Callisto blinked and looked at him sharply. It was the kind
of look a mongoose gives a king cobra. It was a part of her
dark past, but it felt *good* to use it again. Grinning
slightly, she replied. "Why Ares, I thought you knew!" Then
all the playfulness dropped out of her voice. "I've already
chosen." She raised both hands above her head and flame-
like power flared in both hands. The energy swirled into a
ball of fire above her head, a swirling, compacting mass
that began to shine like a radiant star.
"No! What are you doing??" demanded Ares, aghast. "That's
your godhood!"
"If being a Goddess means an eternity as the woman I was,
then I DON'T WANT IT!" she screamed. Fire emerged from
every pore of her body, surrounding her in a cloud of
crimson sparks which surged up and into the fireball
condensing in her hands. It became a perfect sphere, shining
with golden divine energy. Ares' jaw dropped in surprise and
confusion as he held his sword ready to parry a blast that
never came.
With a flash of light, the sphere of godhood spawned four
fragments, golden meteors each the size of an apple. The
comets flew to the four directions with small booms of
thunder from their speed.
The remaining energy, a portion equal to the four fragments,
fell back upon Callisto, covering her in a paler flame,
which wrapped around her then shrank and flowed again and
finally receded, leaving her thirteen year-old self standing
there in a new, undamaged sailor toga.
The northern and eastern fireballs swerved and headed
together at the ridge above Callista and Ares. Phobia
spared a laugh as she saw them heading at the downed bodies
of Sailors Jupiter and Mercury. Phobia was preventing the
Silence Glaive from striking down with the force of her will
alone. Xena continued to struggle in her telekinetic grip.
"I see your friends are receiving a warrior's death on a
funeral pyre, thanks, no doubt, to your former companion
Mars. Or Callisto as she's going to be called again!"
Xena cried with inarticulate rage and tried to press the
Glaive down. Black lightning started to crackle off her.
"Now, now, now," cautioned Phobia. "Don't be too hasty.
Though if you *really* want to destroy the world you're more
than welcome. It's only going to deprive me of a few weeks
of fun in the long term anyway."
The first fireball struck Mercury in the back where she lay
and engulfed her body in golden flame. Jupiter was sprawled
on her back, one leg broken and twisted beneath her, an arm
similarly crushed beneath a small boulder. A moment later
the second fireball struck her in the chest and golden
flames roared up. A moment later the roaring fires began to
subside.
Phobia returned her attention to Xena. Solan was still
sprawled on the ground next to her. Behind her back,
Mercury's fire began to shine silvery blue-white and
Jupiter's a bright green. As the flames faded away the
wounds the two had received were seemingly burned away. They
regained consciousness and stirred. Jupiter found her arm
freed from where it was pinned, and her leg straight and
whole again. As the two rose to their feet, each pointed at
the other in shock. Their uniforms had changed: they now
wore togas gathered at each shoulder, and had much longer
scarves acting as belts than they had before.
Phobia must have heard them, as she swung around. "What?"
she exclaimed in surprise. She focused her attention on
Jupiter as the more serious threat. "It doesn't matter that
you're up, you're helpless! The sky is full of pure chaos
and you can't call your lightning, Jupiter! And you,
Mercury, you're not getting the brat away from me either!!"
"I don't know how this happened but I'm not giving up
without a fight!" declared Jupiter. Further up the mountain,
she saw the blond hair of Eriæ - Sailor Venus - come into
view on the trail that led down to them.
Ares materialized silently and quickly blasted Xena. His
attack sent her flying, the Silence Glaive ripped out of her
hands. Phobia whirled at him. "About time!"
"I normally can't sneak up on Xena," he said smoothly. "But
you all did an excellent job of distracting her!"
Jupiter's eyes were closed tightly as she dashed off a quick
prayer to Zeus when she suddenly realized something and
opened them wide again.
"How could I not have known?" she said incredulously as she
took one step closer to Phobia. Phobia looked confused.
"Yes, you've cut me off from the power of the heavens but
it's still all around us! In the soil, in the air, in every
twig, every blade of grass, every flower petal. . .
The green light of bioelectricity began to surround her
prayerfully clasped hands. She drew them apart and, like a
seed, a sphere formed out of the greenish light that had
begun to surround her, drawing that energy into itself and
almost solidifying as a crystal sphere with one perfect
flower within it. Winds began rapidly swirling around her,
forming a helix of petals and leaves as the scent of a
cleansing rain filled the air. With a graceful flourish she
raised the sphere above her head.
"Petal Cyclone!" she yelled. The sphere of energy dispersed
into the wind streams around her, making them crackle with
energy, as she gestured at Phobia and the whirlwind leapt
off her and directly at her foe.
The Daughter of Dahok was caught completely by surprise at
Jupiter's new power and blown backwards and away from Solan.
Venus came dashing down the slope but Phobia had already
started to pick herself up. Suddenly Sailor Mercury leapt up
to stand next to Solan. Ares began to raise his hand when
Xena kicked his legs out from under him.
"I feel it . . . I feel it too!" she said. She put her hands
in front of her chest, holding the palms facing. Wisps of
mist trickled between her fingers and swirled together into
a sphere hovering between her hands. The sphere cleared,
showing within it a single huge, perfect snowflake. Then
streams of what might be taken for mist swirled within the
globe as the snowflake began to rotate. Similar streams of
snow began to swirl and arise around Mercury in time with
the sphere of power in her hands.
"Shine . . . Snow . . . MIRAGE!" she called out as she
pushed the sphere and the ice storm surrounding it away from
her and streaking at Phobia. She, in turn, lashed out with
her telekinetic powers at the attack. Part of the giant
snowball was shaved off with a blast of her mental power,
but the remainder struck the woman and flash-froze her where
she half-crouched.
"Don't think you have a chance in winning!" shrieked Phobia.
Her gaze met Jupiter's and she lashed out with her power of
nightmares. Jupiter's face went slack, then her whole body
became rigid as she struggled to fight free from her inner
demons.
"It would have been easier the other way but I'm going to
kill Xena's brat for what you did!" She threw a telekinetic
punch at Sailor Mercury and knocked her flying through the
air. Then she looked down at the ice around her and it
shattered as if a hail of invisible fists were beating on
it. Meanwhile, Xena and Ares were fighting in the grass. Or
rather, they started there and proceeded into a battle of
rolls, flips, punches, and painful grapples that took them
further along the summit and towards another cliff edge.
"What do you mean??" asked Solan as Phobia made right for
him. "Are you saying Xena is my mother??"
Phobia smiled sweetly and raised the sacrificial knife.
"Yes," she said.
"PHOBIA!" screamed Callista as she vaulted over the lip of
the cliff. Phobia glanced at her in surprise; she had
expected Ares to convert her or kill her. "Sailor Mars,"
the demon daughter said consideringly.
Callista had been holding her right arm behind her back. Now
she whipped it forward. There was only a split second to
register the small, egg-like ball of fire she held in her
hand before she hissed in a derisive tone, "Snake Fire!" and
a lash of flame like a dragon's tongue lanced out, struck
Phobia, and engulfed her in a killing fire. She screamed in
pain, and near despair.
"No! By his pure soul will I open the final gateway!"
Behind her, Sailor Moon materialized, holding Hades' Helmet
of Invisibility in her left hand and the Princess Scepter in
the right.
"Moon Princess Illumination!!" As Phobia turned to look, a
beam of pure light showered out and blasted her.
Ares had struggled to his feet and was about to kick Xena
over the edge of the cliff when Sailor Venus leapt down the
slope and entered the fight.
"Rolling Heart Vibration!" she yelled as she threw her
attack, a tumbling golden ball of sparks, at Ares. Xena did
a backwards roll and came to her feet while Ares was
staggered by the power of love.
"I'm not done yet!" Ares swore as he teleported away from
the two sailors. Solan was staring at Xena, his jaw
dropped. So many things made sense now; in turn she could
not meet his gaze, but he saw a tear begin to trace a line
down her cheek. First she had hidden him, then she had
vanished for over a decade only returning to fight Phobia.
And now?
"FATHER!" screamed Phobia as renewed blasts of Mars' fire
and Moon's light combined to end her miserable life. Her
essence dispersed into the air, and, being born without a
true soul, into oblivion.
"No more 'Daughter of Darkness,'" Ares calmly said as he
materialized on the edge of the summit. "But the 'Son of
Light' was the more important anyway. It ends now."
Solan turned to face Ares. There was a strength to his face
reminiscent of Xena's, and Ares paused at that; just for a
moment.
"Yes, it does, it ends NOW," said Solan. He looked up to the
heavens, to the point of the vortex swirling high above them
where Dahok was trying to break through the Olympians'
defenses and come into the material world. That thing had
haunted his nightmares for months now, trying to seduce him.
Trying to get him to open a dark doorway that existed in his
nightmares. From Phobia's own careless mouth had come the
words that proved all the lies for what they were, confirmed
by Xena's tears. But there was another doorway that existed
only within his dreams, and he hoped it was something that
could stop this madness. It was time to stop willing, stop
forcing, stop hating. It was time to stop trying, and to
simply open his heart.
The doorway of his dreams swung wide open and exploded with
light and fantastic images. Golden light began to build
around Solan. Within it were flickers of other colors: the
silvery white of purity, the green of growing things, the
orange-red of passion, the blue of bravery. A bud made of
pure golden light emerged from Solan's forehead and began to
blossom.
"Oh shit," said Ares, who then prudently teleported away.
A pillar of brilliant golden light shot straight into the
heavens, piercing the eye of the dimensional storm.
Fantastically, the light around Solan grew stronger as well,
as droplets of golden light fell like rain. He spread his
arms and the light rushed outward in a speeding wave. Xena
thought for a moment that she saw a golden crystal flower
atop his forehead but then the light became blindingly
bright and even she had to avert her eyes.
"By the Gods!" Venus said to Moon. "Solan had a power as
well! But can he defeat Dahok with it? He's never used it
before!"
Sailor Moon looked up at the shaft of light that had pierced
the sky, and saw it wiping away the dark clouds as it
expanded. "I don't think he has to do anything, Eriæ, I
think he's just released the light within himself. The light
Dahok wanted to steal, and corrupt." Venus nodded in
understanding as Solan's light continued to spread out,
reaching from horizon to horizon within just a few minutes.
The raging inferno in the clouds was eradicated, the fiery
rain of destruction completely stopped. In the highest
realms where the Gods fought with Dahok, the light shone
forth like the dawn of creation and utterly blasted the
Destroyer. It screamed in denial but in the blink of an eye
the greatest threat the world had ever known simply ceased
to be.
"What *is* this power?" demanded Hera.
"The dreams of the Earth," replied her sister, Demeter.
"Gaia herself has chosen her Champion."
If the Gods could gulp with apprehension, several of them
would have.
"Then the Mythic Age is nearly ended," added Athena. "We
knew we would have tenure only until such time as the Earth
chose her own champion."
"Already?" demanded Apollo as Solan's power began to fade.
The sky was blue once again, and while the damage below had
not been erased, the Earth was renewed and meadows
throughout Greece had begin to bloom.
"Not immediately," replied Hestia. "But our remaining time
on Earth is now measurable. It is time to begin making
preparations for our departure."
"We have Ares to blame for this!" cursed Hera. "My own son!
A traitor!"
"What should we do with him?" asked Zeus, somewhat amused by
the turn of circumstances.
"Give him to Selene. Let HER punish him." From Hera, this
was a cold fate indeed, for she hated the Titan of the Moon
for an old slight and for being a Titan of power possibly
greater than her own.
Down below, Solan was cradled in Xena's arms. He was
exhausted, but otherwise well. Xena's eyes were shining as
only a proud mother's can.
"TUBULAR!" yelped Aphrodite, as she appeared in a blast of
golden light that included party streamers, rose petal
confetti, and small pink fireworks.
"Celebrating, I see," Sailor Moon observed.
"Oh yes," she said in a gloating tone. "And wait until you
hear what the Gods are going to do about Ares. . ."
The sailor god-warriors smiled at each other and began to
chuckle in anticipation.
A Burnt Village Somewhere in Central Europe, Crystal Era
As Twilight Falls
Mythic Sailor Mars sighed as she wandered among the ruined
town. The devastation brought back just a hint of memory of
her home village of Cirra, which in turn had sparked
memories of Ares' failed attempt to return her to her evil
self as 'mad goddess Callisto.' She remembered a little of
the past Xena had tried to erase --just a little. Just
enough. She picked among the ruins. This village had been
burned months before, if not longer.
Examining the rubble, she concluded that she had definitely
traveled out of the era she had come from. The question was,
did any of the other sailor god-warriors survive? She
believed that she had divested herself of her godhood, but
what if some trace of her former immortality had allowed her
to live though the temporal assault? What if the others were
all dead?
Her heart beat quickly with apprehension as she stopped to
ponder her options. She finally decided to follow the smooth
black road that lead out of the blasted village. Surely a
road so perfect must lead *somewhere* important! Callista
set off at a fast jog.
The Free City of Paris, Rive Gauche Neighborhood
Inside Nemesite Headquarters
There was a blast of scintillating steel-gray light, and
Peridot appeared in the middle of the room, a well-built,
dark-haired man standing behind her. Upon the initial
flash, Citrine had upended the desk he was working at,
scattering papers everywhere, and crouched behind it. The
twins had run to each other's side and grasped hands. A
crackling black aura had immediately begun to form around
them.
"Situation yellow, stand down," Peri said coolly as she
waved her hands to the side. She tittered, in a manner very
similar to her sister's. "Everyone, I have a new ally to
introduce you to. This is Ares, the mythological God of War.
He wants to help us conquer Earth and drive the remnant of
the Moon Kingdom to its final end."
The trio of Dark Moon commanders gaped at her for a few
moments before Citrine stood up and vocalized what they were
all thinking. "Peri, have you GONE STARK RAVING 'ROUND THE
BEND??? A Greek GOD? You can't be serious!"
"She is," said Ares in a scoffing voice. With a casual
twitch of his left hand he sent a lethal blast of lightning
directly at Citrine, who immediately teleported in a coral-
colored fractal blast. The blast blew out the window behind
him, sending shards of glass and twisted remnants of wrought
iron grillwork showering down onto the pavement below. Ares
chuckled. "Not bad reflexes, I guess I'll let him live."
"Droid Terminus! Take him!" rang Citrine's voice from
somewhere behind them. Ares leisurely turned to face an
assassin-droid charging at him. This one had the appearance
of a human body with assorted spikes extruding from every
inch of it. Contemptuously, Ares blasted it into a pile of
scraps.
"That's enough!" commanded Peri, stamping her foot
petulantly. "Both of you!" She suddenly gasped in shock.
Citrine had teleported to the side again and was already in
the middle of summoning an elemental attack. He was standing
in a burning, sunset-like cloud of energy, with his right
hand raised in a commanding gesture and a line of dark force
forming behind him at heart level. Ares did not make any
additional movements, just stood and nodded approvingly; at
Peri's scowl, Citrine aborted his attack.
"Oh very good Peri. Your visitor's tantrum cost us a
valuable droid!" he scowled at Ares, who smirked back.
"Admittedly, it did prove he's powerful."
"Neo-Queen Serenity is the last remaining child of the
Titans," Ares offered placatingly. "As the last of the Gods,
naturally she is my enemy. And the enemy of my enemy is my
ally."
Behind them, the twins simply watched the whole exchange in
silence, hands held, minds joined. Peri's alliance with a
stranger was shocking. Citrine's elemental attack, teleport
reflex, and tactical capabilities were all complete
surprises to the Zircons.
In short, they suddenly felt very, very vulnerable and moved
closer together.
Ares walked over to Citrine. He got quite close and sized
the relatively shorter man up. "You're a *very* effective
fighter. I respect that." He smiled, in a way that might be
considered warmly.
Citrine smiled mockingly in response. "That's nice. Let's
get something clear. The twins behind you are now in a state
of psychic rapport and even if you are a God I don't believe
you could survive THEIR combined destructive power." Ares
glanced over his shoulder at Jacinth and Hyacinth. He lost
his smile. Citrine nodded approvingly at the duo. "Good
work, you two." Ares turned back to Citrine, who continued
on. "Peri's our Mission Commander, if she says we can work
with you, we can work with you. I . . . simply found her
statement too shocking to give it credence. You have proven
that it may be true."
"It is true. I am a God," said Ares, in a boastful way that
seemed to imply that his godly prowess was more than
physical.
Citrine made a face. "Please, you're not my type," he
muttered. Ares blinked, perhaps a bit surprised but not in a
judgmental way. He nodded, as if something said made sense.
Peridot cleared her throat. "Excuse me boys, but if you're
done being macho with each other, could we get back to the
business at hand? Destroying Crystal Tokyo, conquering the
Earth, all that good stuff??" She looked very put out with
both of them. She turned to the twins. "Stand down. Now."
They hesitated, but as she continued to glare at them, they
released their handclasp.
Jacinth suddenly gasped. "Wait, I sense something . . . a
power inimical to ours, fairly strong, and nearby."
"What?" snarled Peri. "No! Not now!" she stamped her feet
like a small child throwing a temper tantrum. Ares blinked
in surprise; the twins merely looked at Citrine.
"Where?" he snapped. Jacinth closed his eyes and accepted
Hyacinth's offered grasp. "Elevation, lower, ground I
think, direction southwest, approximately thirty meters."
Citrine narrowed his eyes to slits -- he refused to shut
them in front of Ares -- and cast his own formidable
empathic powers sweeping in that direction. He smiled
cruelly. "I sense someone nearby but she's panicking; not a
senshi, then, but an agent. I'll deal with the intruder."
His eyes opened fully and he disappeared in a blast of coral
and black fractal static.
The Free City of Paris, Rive Gauche Neighborhood
Outside Nemesite Headquarters
Umino Naru was running like the hounds of Hell were after
her, because she figured they were. She'd been using the
best surveillance equipment available to spy on the
suspected Dark Moon terrorists. She hadn't expected to
stumble upon their command base, much less to set off
psychic alarms. And someone in there was calling himself the
mythical god of War? Probably a combat android, or monster
of some kind, she thought to herself.
And even more disturbing, she had some kind of a charge of
energy? That they could detect? This was bad, very very bad.
Dimly she noticed that she'd just run past the suavely
attired young man from the club, and that he was lounging
indolently against the alley wall. She spun around and
raised her arm as he shoved himself away from the wall with
a smirk.
He opened his mouth to say something but the energy blast
she threw at him cut him off. Citrine flickered out of
existence in his fastest teleport yet. She spun around,
backed into the center of the alley and turned again.
Citrine reappeared on top of a closed garbage dumpster. She
heard the slight clang made when his weight was applied to
the lid, spun with her right wrist pointing and her left
hand holding it, and fired another blast. This time he
tumbled off the edge, somersaulted in midair and landed on
his feet only two meters away from her.
"Very nice, wrist blaster I see -- I was expecting a
powerless, helpless mouse and instead I found a tiger."
"Flattery will get you nowhere, scumsucking Dark Moon
bastard!" she bellowed as she fired a volley of blaster
shots, strafing the air. Citrine was forced to teleport to
the roof of the building behind him to dodge the bolts. They
worried him, since the attack was purely mechanical, he had
no way to gauge its strength other than from *her* emotions,
which were quite confident.
"I'm sorry," his voice rang out, dripping sarcasm. "I'm not
the "bastard," that would be Topaz. I'm Lt. Commander
Citrine, Nemesis Intelligence." He teleported again, this
time directly behind her, and used all his strength to
telekinetically hover in mid-air. It took just a moment to
get his balance, and she didn't hear him. He lashed out with
his right arm and caught her around the throat. Reflexively
she grabbed for him with both hands and he dropped to the
ground to brace. Surprisingly, she immediately shifted her
hands to get a better grip on him. Though not a top hand to
hand combatant himself, Citrine knew one when he fought one
and that in just one second more she was going to throw him
or somehow reverse the hold.
Which is why he immediately teleported to the loft, upside
down, and released her. Stunned, Naru fell a meter to the
floor and landed on her hands and knees. "Watch it, she has
a wrist blaster!" cautioned Citrine as he vanished again.
Peri whirled around locked gazes with Naru. Her emerald
green eyes flared and waves of coercive mental energy
stabbed out, paralyzing the Crystal Tokyo security agent.
"Her will is amazing," Peri muttered. "Disarm her quickly.
We'll have to use handcuffs." Citrine hastened to comply.
"We'll have to do a full mind probe on her, you and I
together," Peridot continued. "She must be one of their top
agents, and probably has high security access."
"We could certainly use that knowledge," Citrine commented.
"I sent a test squad to the palace in Crystal Tokyo and they
were stopped cold by Sailor Moon, who apparently is STILL
around to help them!" He turned and looked at Naru in mild
surprise. "How very interesting. I sensed, *close, personal*
affection for Sailor Moon from you. Yes, you are definitely
a catch." He turned back to Peri. "What happened to our
'guest'?"
"The almighty Ares went back to his own base for now. We've
got a job to do for him."
//"For now,"// she appended telepathically, along with a
sense of someone watching. Citrine smiled in complete
understanding. "We'll probably all have to work together to
crack this woman, [sense of comprehension] we'll even need
to tap the twins [glee] to augment our own meager
[amusement] mental powers."
//"I didn't know you could project a sense of emotions!"//
she replied telepathically.
Citrine grinned more widely, and just for a moment, Peri
suddenly felt incredibly protective of him, a warm affection
like the brother she'd never had, then it passed. It was
replaced a moment later by the merest trickle of fear as she
realized that she had no mental defenses against a full tel-
empath. But then again, she mused, would Ares?
Deep Space, the Eridani Corridor, Crystal Era
Nemesite Light Cruiser 'Pasha'
From space, it could be seen that the *Pasha* was adrift in
a small, sparse asteroid field, and that a fairly large rock
had melded into the side of the ship. Inside, Rei and Topaz
were trying to improvise repairs to the jump drive.
"This always looked so much easier on Star Trek," Rei
muttered. She was kneeling on the floor with a system panel
open, wires and circuit boards gingerly pulled out. Topaz
was sitting on the floor near her, his injured leg flung
straight out and his other bent to provide something to rest
a data pad on. He was holding the reader in both hands and
scrolling back and forth in an attempt to decipher the
schematics. The incredulous look he had was not heartening.
"Can you see a small gunmetal colored box, about ten
centimeters square, with a sphere coming out of the top of
it? It would be all the way to the back," he asked Rei.
Rei crouched down, her head on the floor and her knees
tucked up. If she had been in senshi garb, it would have
been embarrassingly revealing to Topaz. Fortunately, she was
wearing a nice dark gray pantsuit. "I can't see back there.
Can you give me a little light?" she reached back, expecting
to be handed a flashlight from the open toolkit. Instead
Topaz made a 'hmm' sound and a soft radiance flowed into the
open panel like a luminous fog. "That'll do," Rei said in an
appreciative tone. She tried to press her face in a little
closer. "I think I might see that box you were talking
about. The round part on top is about the same size as the
box, like a ball rolling out of a package?"
"Yes that's it, is there a spindle coming down into it?"
"No, I don't see anything like that."
"Are you *sure*?"
Rei scrunched in, and tried to peer past some wires. "Very
sure. There does seem to be something broken off above it
though." She turned on her side and tried reaching inside,
but was unable to touch the assembly. "I can't reach it."
"Broken, are you sure?"
"No, it's too hard to see."
"If we could just move the box out of the cradle it's
sitting in and get our hands on the spindle to check. . ."
Rei thought for a moment and then shifted positions. "Let me
try something," she said. She lay down beside the panel and
lifted her hands into a steepled position. She fixed the box
in her gaze and then closed her eyes and concentrated. Topaz
thought she might have been whispering something very
quietly when he suddenly sensed a surge of psionic energy.
Rei's eyes flung open and the box moved, popping up slightly
and to the side. She gasped as if she'd been holding her
breath for a full minute.
Topaz spoke with a touch of amazement in his voice. "You're
telekinetic."
"Hmm? Oh, yes, well, it's nothing compared to being Sailor
Mars but I've always been able to move little objects if I
concentrate on them."
"You must be an amazing teleporter," he said. Rei found the
comment rather incongruous and turned around and sat up to
face him.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, in the very old days, people didn't understand
telekinesis and got it confused with the way ghosts and
astral projectors manifest. True telekinesis doesn't involve
pushing an object with mental energy--it's a case of tuning
in to an object's space/time coordinates and changing them
at a higher level of reality, thus causing the physical
object to shift, to slide in physical space. Teleporting is
like that but it also involves a dimensional aperture so
that the object doesn't move through intervening physical
space, and that part of the process is linked to energy
powers. So if you have telekinesis and energy powers, you
should be able to learn to teleport very well indeed. They
might need training but they definitely have the latent
ability."
"Your people seemed to be doing a lot of levitating and
teleporting. So I guess you would know."
"Oh that? That's nothing compared to what your teammates
did. I think Wiseman gave most of them that power and it's
the 'other' telekinesis, invisible energy holding them up,
so what they really have is a double dose of energy powers.
They just don't have both range and precision. "
"Well, that's interesting but we can't teleport except as a
group. As a gestalt."
"A psychoportive gestalt? Very interesting. But perhaps you
haven't explored the ability sufficiently?" Topaz queried.
"Are any of you stronger or better at teleporting than the
others? YOU for instance?"
"Actually the Queen is the strongest. She has on occasion
teleported by herself." Rei thought of the time Nehelenia
had taken Mamoru and Usagi had become Eternal Sailor Moon
and gone after him all by herself. She shook her head at the
memory.
"Is she telekinetic?"
"No."
"Can she generate a pure force shield?"
"What? What does that have to do with anything?"
"Some constructs called force fields are just energy walls,
and they usually look it. But some, the highest order, in
fact, are . . . 'lines' I guess you could call them, drawn
in the continuum at the higher levels of reality. Those
'lines' are also a function of telekinesis.
Rei thought about it for a moment. There HAD been times,
usually when Usagi had turned into Princess Serenity, where
she'd generated barriers of what they'd assumed were pure
force--they certainly weren't of any kind of elemental
energy. And there was the time she'd sent Eudial flying out
the window with a wave of her hand. . .
"Yes," she said slowly. "The queen has demonstrated that
ability in the past."
Topaz nodded smugly. "I thought so."
"So you think all the powers your people and mine have are
some kind of psionics? Not magic?"
"What is magic but a different way to tap that same power?
You're just using the symbols and myths of the human race as
sort of a psionic macro."
"A macro?" she said incredulously. "So you don't believe in
the kami," Rei said with deceptive casualness.
"No, I don't mean that at all. The spirits--the kami as you
call it--are merely lifeforms existing at different levels
of reality than we are usually able to perceive. They have
their own energy and power, and human belief can affect
them. They're real."
"With a clinical analysis of the kami like that, it's small
wonder so many of your people fell in with Wiseman," Rei
said in a challenging tone. "I can't believe you'd regard
the spirits of nature like some energy-lifeform aliens!"
"Now you're oversimplifying. And don't blame science for
some people's soullessness," Topaz shot back. "Science is
just a tool, people have to take responsibility for what
they do with any tool or power. It's just very easy to try
to worm out of that responsibility--but you still earn the
karma."
Rei was silent for a moment. "I think that it's too easy for
people to fall into that trap. That's why I think it's
better to be spiritual. You don't forget you're part of
everything and that there are repercussions to everything
you do."
Topaz nodded. "As long as you don't let emotions and faith
distract you from truths that you know, but find
unpleasant."
"In other words," she began.
"There's a place for both. There have to be both extremes to
end up with a balanced compromise position," he finished.
Rei nodded thoughtfully. "Not bad," she said grudgingly.
"You too," he replied, and then smiled. "Oh! What about the
assembly you moved?" Rei blinked in surprise as she'd
forgotten about it. She turned back and looked.
"Nothing else there. Just a thing like a half-sized turkey
baster, and it's broken off, like I thought before."
Topaz said something in a snarl under his breath. There was
a pause and then he said, "That's the jump core. We are
officially screwed."
"THE CORE?" Rei shrieked, pulling back out and staring at
him aghast.
"The pan-dimensional spindle should be sitting just touching
that box, which is the subspace wave emitter."
"What if we got our hands on the broken spindle, could we
repair it?"
"No, that is NOT a system we can repair here. And while
there was a spare, it was in the section of the engine
compartment that interphased with the asteroid. We are
stranded here in the middle of deep space. And to be quite
honest, we don't have all that much life support left."
The Free City of Paris, Rive Gauche Neighborhood,
Wine Cellar Inside Nemesite Headquarters
Naru slapped herself.
It wasn't her choice, but she found herself unable to
control her right arm at the moment and so it delivered a
stinging blow to her right check. Peri twittered at the
sight. Naru thought her laugh reminded her of that horrible
woman who'd ordered youmas to kill Nephrite, her first
crush. Peri was sitting in front of the stairway up and out
of the wine cellar on a small stool. She'd folded herself up
atop the small seat like a crouching cat, arms clasped
around her knees, and grinned and leered at Naru while
trying to chisel away at her will. She seemed aroused by the
thought of making Naru her puppet.
That almost scared her more than the woman's actual ability
to control her body.
She didn't know how she'd resisted the woman's telepathic
commands. Certainly, she couldn't resist her ability to take
direct control over her body. It was just that . . . after
all the times she'd been attacked by monsters of one kind or
another, after all the flak she'd taken in school after
hooking up with Gurio-kun, after finding out her best friend
not only was Sailor Moon but a magical princess as well --
and now the ruler of the planet -- she'd be *damned* if she
was letting some, some, Dark Moon *trash* into her brain to
play with it.
Peri then had Naru slug herself. The blow was hard enough to
knock her off the cot they'd put her on. It wasn't the
first time she'd been knocked on the floor. Peridot had
tried some kind of neural blast on her earlier. She'd glared
at Naru, green light flared, and suddenly the redhead felt
like she was in the middle of a field of live wires. Sure,
she'd thrashed around on the floor in pain for a few minutes
but did that compare to the pain she'd suffered trying to
pull those spikes out of Nephrite? The time she'd eaten
Minako's cooking? Or the soul-numbing sensation of *all*
those times her life energy (or some portion of her psyche
made manifest) had been sucked out of her? No. All the
while she was writing in agony, she kept thinking "upstart
bitch, upstart bitch, upstart bitch!" and picturing herself
choking the life out of Peri.
It helped.
A lot.
"You *are* resistant for now, I'll give you that," Peri
sighed with melodramatic disaffection as she uncurled her
legs and stood up. She smiled wickedly. "But, nothing else.
Without food and water you'll weaken quickly. I will break
you like the brittle thing you are. Citrine seems to think
we could combine our powers to completely re-write your
personality. My memory tricks have proven effective in the
past with mid-level military personnel. Just think, we could
turn *you* into our assassin! And then you could kill the
queen for us! Wouldn't that be some lovely irony? Queen
Serenity killed by one of her own spies!" Laughing shrilly,
she sealed up the wine cellar's door and departed.
Some time later Naru staggered to her feet and over to the
bare cot against the far wall. She lay down on it, pressing
her back into the cool, slightly damp bricks of the outer
wall. She closed her eyes and let sleep reach for her. In
the distance there was a green light, but it was so much
more pleasant than the poisonous color she'd quickly
associated with Peri.
Two hours before, Citrine had ended their fight by
teleporting both she and he into the loft the Nemesites were
using as their headquarters. He was intent on catching her
and was focused on her with the totality of his being . . . .
. . . Which is why he never noticed a woman hiding down a
side alley near their building. A woman wearing sandals and
a simple white tunic--you could even have called it a toga.
She'd climbed atop the building next to theirs and witnessed
the fight.
She'd continued to observe the building and noticed when a
light came out of a basement window. Carefully, she'd gone
down to the window and observed the man who had captured the
red haired woman, along with a slim brown-haired man, carry
that woman's unconscious form through a door and down stairs
apparently leading to a dungeon under the basement. She
waited. She saw a green-haired woman descend, and ninety
minutes later return, this time extinguishing the small
lantern hanging from the ceiling by touching a small lever
near the stairway up. (She thought it was very interesting
that she could sense a small surge of lightning involved in
that small glass lantern.)
The woman's voice had been high and shrill. Most of the
interrogation (for lack of a better term) had carried to
her. Some of it simply made no sense, but the name
"Serenity" certainly caught her attention.
She shook her head and began to work at the window's latch
with a small knife. It didn't take her long to get the
thin, ribbon-like blade through the crack and then maneuver
it to the latch. A few minutes more work and the narrow
window was unlocked and pulled open. She slid through the
gap and down to the floor of the cellar.
She gestured with her left hand and small sparks outlined
her hand. The illumination was minute, but sufficient to
pick her way across the cellar floor. The thick door to the
stairway down to the wine cellar stumped her though. It was
locked with a far more complicated mechanism than something
she could pick.
She put her ear to the door and leaned against it in the
darkness. Slowly, she sent her power coursing around it,
through it, until the door was covered in a sheet of emerald
and gold sparks.
"Who's there?" asked a hoarse voice.
"A friend," she replied, her lips nearly pressed to the door
to muffle sound. "Get away from the door, take cover. Do
you understand?"
"Do you understand?" she asked more insistently.
"Yes," came the muffled reply. She counted to fifteen and
stood up.
There was a lot of lightning around her, in the very walls
of the house. It would simplify things immeasurably. She
crossed her arms over her breast and a small rod extruded
from the top of her tiara. The glass sphere of the lantern
behind her exploded in an almost musical shower of glass as
energy streaked from its base to her. Around the room with
crackling, crawling sounds blue bolts of power rushed to her
brow and the lightning rod.
"Supreme thunder!" she hissed and unleashed a ball of the
power of the storm at the door. It blew open with a
deafening thud, fell onto the stairs with a clatter and slid
down partway before being caught on the stairs. Wan light
spilled upward and she saw a cot being tossed out of the
corner flanking the door. The red-haired woman staggered
into view.
"Quickly!" she hissed in perfect French. The other woman
dumbly nodded and clambered over the fallen door and up the
short, steep flight of stairs. When she reached the top,
she gasped and spluttered something in Japanese.
"We must hurry," the rescuer said.
"No you don't," snarled Citrine from the doorway. The
Nemesite intelligence officer was standing there in the
light from the upper stairway's lamp. His black hair was
wildly tussled, and he was wearing white pajamas with a
paisley print.
Naru cursed her weaponless state. "We are going now," her
rescuer said in a firm French voice. "If you try to stop us
I will be forced to harm you."
Peridot and the Zircon twins flickered into view in the dark
room. Citrine scoffed. Suddenly a bright coral aura
surrounded him, washing the room with reddish-pink light. He
had taken only a step into the room when he got a good look
at the woman in the process of rescuing Naru.
"Who are you supposed to be?" he asked, perplexed.
"Wait, it's HER, not the other one!" Jacinth spluttered.
"The power I sensed earlier is coming from the one in the .
. . is that a sailor fuku? I thought they had one big bow
in the center not a small one on each shoulder . . . ?"
The intruder smiled broadly. "I? I am just a daughter of
Sparta. But you may call me Sailor Jupiter."
'I certainly hope Pluto and Mars were right in their
suspicions,' she thought to herself. 'Because otherwise
we're both captured.' Lightning crawled over the forms of
both women and with a flare both disappeared, leaving four
Nemesites with their jaws down.
"I thought they couldn't teleport separately!" protested
Hyacinth.
"They can't," replied Peri. "But that woman --"
"Right," Citrine answered, still in a daze. "She doesn't
match the picture. At all. Hair color, height, features,
costume. It's all wrong." He turned to Peri, shocked. "That
bitch Serenity. She's replaced her senshi. With stronger
ones."
"She wouldn't . . . she couldn't!"
"Please, feel free to offer to me a better explanation."
Peri's mouth worked for several minutes and nothing came
out. "I thought not," said Citrine. "Damn! We have to move
base. She could have serious troops and more senshi here in
minutes!"
Hyacinth shrugged. "The back-up base is prepared. It should
take only a few minutes to relocate our unique equipment
there."
"It is a shame though," Peri mused. "I did like Paris. The
city has a wicked streak to my taste. Better here than that
. . . overgrown garden!" The others nodded in assent then
teleported back to their rooms to begin packing.
End of Episode Five
[End Credits Roll - See Episode 3]
Next time, on Mythic Sailor Moon:
Designs
of War! Ares' Plan Unfolds
Image: Mythic Sailor Venus being interviewed by the BBC