Silver Millennium Soldier
-20- Identity Crisis
by
Mike Macdonald
(Age: 27)
copyright 12-10-2006
Age Rating: 18 to 127
Mercury's EMS readings never changed as she went from gate to gate: the only dark presence her scanner detected was that of the shadows, themselves, dancing silently with the glow of the monitors in the wall. The airport was completely deserted.
"Guys, I'm not picking up a thing," Mercury said. "Whatever was occupying this place, I think it left."
Her scanner put away, Mercury approached one of the large terminal windows and looked out at the runway. The sun had finally gone to bed, leaving to the airport's runway lights the only source of light for miles. She looked down and found the small excavation site where a construction crew had been repairing the runway after the previous year's crash; heavy sacks of quick-drying cement were stacked along the large hole with several jackhammers and picks, and a cement mixer which had been left running presumably during the chaos of the airport takeover. Someone was making their way around the site toward the sleeping jets. Mercury's heart jumped.
"Mars Bar?" Moon said over the palm computer intercom. "Anything on your end?"
The figure on the runway halted and looked about.
"No dice," Mars said.
Mercury laughed to herself. "Hey, Mars, I can see you from up here. You gave me a bit of a jolt."
"Do I look as stupid as I feel wandering around out here?" Mars said.
"You look lost."
"Can the chatter, guys," Moon said. "Keep these lines open."
"Ten-Ten, March Hare," Mars said. "Croquet grounds are clear. Returning to Tea Party. Alice out."
"Was that a joke?" Moon laughed. "Omigod, her sense of humor has returned, ladies and gentlemen!"
"I thought we were keeping the lines open?" Mercury said.
"I just wanted an excuse to say that," Moon said. "Sounded cool."
The crackle of an electric circuit closing; the monitors flickered and died, plunging Mercury into total darkness. Startled, she whirled around and stared into the shadows, straining her ears for sounds of movement. She saw and heard nothing.
"The power just went out," Mercury said.
The line was silent.
Mercury's EMS visor slid over her face yet again for a readout of the room, just in time to catch a moving shape so black with negative energy and ill-intent that the scanner was barely able to provide feedback, its leg in the midst of delivering a chest-level kick.
***************************
Mars shuddered, the victim of another nagging sense of unease; stronger than the one she felt at the hospital, so sudden and so potent she gasped out loud and froze in her tracks, taking in her surroundings with all of her senses.
"Hold it," Mars said. "I just got a bad premonition. Everyone regroup right now."
One of the upper-level windows exploded fifty feet away, vomiting forth a cloud of glass and Mars's blue-haired teammate, who bounced and sprawled on the pavement like a lifeless doll. The moment her friend hit the ground, another sense of dread hit Mars emanating from a mobile staircase a hundred meters beyond; it roared to life, tires squealing, and stampeded toward the semi-conscious Mercury who'd only begun to regain her senses.
With no time to radio for help, Mars broke into a mad-dash toward her fallen teammate. The staircase moved at a speed that its engine surely wasn't capable of on its own, gaining more momentum with every passing second and swiftly closing the gap between itself and Mercury. It was only ten feet away when Mars leapt into her friend and bowled her over, and the pair rolled to safety as the vehicle roared past and skidded into a J-turn. Mars was already on her feet again, channeling energy into her hands as the machine revved and screeched and started toward them again, only driving a few feet before Mars pitched a blazing sphere into the core of its engine and blew it to scrap with a thunderous blast.
Mercury was too weak to stand and remained on her knees, clutching her right shoulder. Her sudden shout alerted Mars of another staircase approaching from behind, charging too fast for her to stop; it clipped her leg and put her on the ground, but she still managed to fling another fireball en passant and turn the vehicle into a storm of metal fragments, one large piece of shrapnel whizzing just past Mercury's head, which she ducked with a shriek as yet another staircase came to life.
"Careful!" Mercury cried. "Go for the tires instead!"
Mars drilled her focus into the front-right tire of the approaching mobile staircase and liquefied it with a blue burst of flame. The machine swerved and veered off-course, crashing into the terminal wall and toppling on its side.
Mercury's face was wet with tears from the pain in her shoulder and the nasty scratches on her face, knees, and elbows she'd been awarded with for surviving the fall.
"You okay?" Mars asked. "That looked like it hurt."
"He got the drop on me," Mercury said, fighting the urge to cry. "I can’t move my arm…"
Mars knelt by her friend and examined her shoulder; it was badly bruised and swollen, and Mercury let out a child-like yelp when she tried to move it for her.
"You dislocated your shoulder," Mars said. "Hang on. This is gonna hurt real bad."
Before Mercury could protest, Mars took a solid hold of her arm and jammed the joint back into place with the sound of fresh celery snapping. The blue-haired valkyrie howled at the moon with all her strength and crumpled herself like a piece of paper, panting and sobbing for several minutes.
"What, no 'thank you'?" Mars said with a sympathetic laugh.
"What for?" Mercury whined.
"It’s gonna be real sore tomorrow. I’ll treat it when we get home."
**************************
Sailor Moon stood deathly still; the baggage claim had no windows, and so she may just as well have had a black bag slipped over her head when the monitors suddenly shut off. Fortunately, the Tiara Disc's blinding sheen remedied this once she commanded it to hover at the center of the room. It allowed her to see even better than the flickering monitors had.
"The power just went out," Mercury said over the palm computer intercom.
Moon looked around the newly illuminated baggage claim with a cocked eyebrow; suitcases and tote bags continued to cake-walk along the metal baggage carousel at the center of the room, and the conveyor belt on the right wall still went about its business silently carrying skis and golf bags. Jedite must have only pulled the plug on his victims' light source. That usually meant "trap".
Mars's voice came on next. "Hold it. I just got a bad premonition. Everyone regroup right now."
Ditto, Moon thought.
She turned around to leave and reeled backward from a cold, wet blow to the face like a water balloon fired from a baseball launcher. She tried to call her glowing companion to the rescue but her thoughts were disrupted by the burning sensation in her eyes and the overpowering smell of seawater. Another hydro-ball burst against her head, and another to the chest. She caught a glimpse of the black-haired blue-eyed woman walking swiftly toward her just before another water bomb smashed against her face, backing her into a set of golf bags. The woman was saying something angrily, but Moon was too disoriented to make it out.
Moon's hand fell on the leathery handle of a one-wood as Tethys grabbed her hair to pull her up. She sprung to her feet and broke the club in two across her attacker's face with a loud snap, but though the woman cried out in pain the maneuver did not damage her face; it didn't even leave a welt. When Moon swung again, her opponent's skin flickered and the weapon passed right through her like water. Tethys retaliated with several kicks to Moon's ribs and head, and a salvo of lightning-quick punches to the face. Moon tried to knock the wind out of her with a swift spin-kick to the abdomen and instead seemed to kick through a frozen lake; her leg returned with the stinging cold of the arctic, and as the shock distracted her the elemental grabbed her by the throat and flung her onto the mock carousel at the room's center.
Sailor Moon managed to slow her attacker by slinging a suitcase into her face, but the water elemental's rage made her unstoppable. The glowing Tiara Disc dove to its mistress's rescue with shocking results; Tethys's skin glimmered again and took a featureless blue-green hue, and the weapon splashed harmlessly through her as it assaulted her in its wasp-like attack pattern. Her body solidified long enough to thrust her foot into Moon's chest as she tried to stand again, then returned to its aquatic form as the Tiara Disc swept in for another attack.
The weapon returned to its original shape at Sailor Moon's brow, taking all the light in the room with it. Tethys was startled for only a moment, but long enough for the valkyrie to dart past her and flee the baggage claim. With the elemental in hot pursuit, she scrambled through the corridors, shot around a corner, and found herself in the airport strip-mall. She immediately veered into the first shop and ducked behind the checkout counter. She held her breath and prayed.
Her head felt like it would pop, if her lungs didn't implode from lack of air first. The scent of the ocean tickled her nose as the sound of angry footsteps clomped past her hiding place, then stopped with a hiss; the elemental was furious that she'd been ditched so easily. A voice was shouting somewhere. Moon had dropped her palm computer when the first hydro-ball hit. Was Mars trying to call her?
No, it was a man's voice. The water creature was wearing a headset, and Master was calling for her urgently. Another angry snarl, and the salty stench was gone. Apparently, something had come up that was more important than killing Sailor Moon. Given her inexperience, this could have been just about anything. Sailor Moon sighed, and took a few minutes to rest. The swelling pain in her head was gone, replaced by a hammer-like throbbing one. Reaching up to rub the sore spot, she winced at the telltale sting of raw skin, and her gauntlets came back stained red.
With a gasp, she leapt to her feet and ran to find her comrades, praying that they weren't already dead. She had no way of knowing how long she'd been preoccupied with Jedite's lieutenant.
********************************
Mars helped her injured friend to her feet, but the question of whether or not she would be able to walk on her own was strangled in her throat by another sense of dread, one much worse than before, accompanied by the deafening, continuous hiss of the twin hearts of a steel behemoth. Through the black of the night a large set of glowing eyes pierced as the beast approached, its wings spread like the fearsome serpents of legend, its blinding eyes fixed on the two valkyries as it moved steadily toward them.
"Oh, God," Mars said.
Mercury's scanner was up and running in an instant: the jetliner was a shimmering black void of unearthly energy, exactly like the man who'd ambushed her from the shadows minutes ago. He was not at the cockpit, or in any other part of the plane.
"I don’t see him inside. He’s controlling it remotely."
She then noticed a similar black shape off in the distance; the air traffic control tower had the same readings as the plane, except the telekinetic energy it emitted was linked to the approaching jetliner like the strings of a marionette.
"He might be in the control tower," said Mercury.
"Let’s find out," said Mars, channeling energy into her palms.
As Mars clasped her hands together a small star exploded within them, creating a mass of liquid flame the size of a basketball, the shape of which Mars commanded as if it were clay. With steel focus and a quick gesture, the fiery sphere stretched and molded into a flaming bow with strings of searing starlight. A blazing arrow formed in its proper place as she drew the bowstring back, and, with a sharp twang, it cut through the air like a small comet to the front-most window of the control tower. The arrow pierced the glass and detonated, shattering the remaining windows and shaking the structure in its foundation. When the smoke cleared, the tower look as if it had been hit by a meteor. Both Sylvan soldiers could now see the figure of Jedite through the tower's gaping mouth, coughing and stumbling from the aftershock.
"Tethys!" he screamed into his headset. "Where in the blazes are you?"
"He’s there, all right," said Mars.
"Hit it again before he kills us," said Mercury, rubbing her sore ribs.
Mars drew her weapon's string back again, creating another blazing arrow and taking careful aim at the center of the tower's new opening. Hopefully the next shot would kill him before he could teleport away. When she was certain she would not miss, Mars released her second arrow, and watched it explode in mid-flight as a dark blue missile intercepted it. There was nothing left but a cloud of mist.
Mars and Mercury whirled around to face their new adversary, the water elemental Mercury instantly recognized, standing by the construction site. In an instant, Mars drew back another arrow and sent it toward Tethys's head, but the Nereid intercepted the shot with another hydro-missile that exploded with far more disastrous results: The cloud of vapor this instance created swelled and spilled over the runway like a dam had burst, enveloping the two Sylvan soldiers in the misty embrace of the ocean shore on the coldest day of winter. Mars's weapon was extinguished in an instant. The air became thick and wet, almost impossible to breathe. Worse still, all they could see through the fog were the metal colossus's glowing eyes. Even Mercury's EMS scanner failed to read anything beyond it.
"Do something!" Mars shouted.
"What can I do?" Mercury shouted back. "I can't freeze it and us, too!"
The Jetliner was no longer moving, but that was hardly a comfort; even channeling all her energy to keep herself warm, she could not fend off the biting cold like Mercury could. She would start hyperventilating at any moment. It hardly mattered, though, since the humid air was growing thicker, and in another minute the pair of them would probably suffocate. Mercury glanced back at the mist's controller and found her smiling. Jedite had teleported out of the tower and now stood beside her, laughing to himself. He watched the girls suffocate with a look of amusement most people reserved for a witty sitcom.
"Chief!" Mercury shouted into her palm computer as best she could. "Where are you? We need your help out here!"
Jedite chuckled and fixed his cuffs, no longer watching.
"Finish the job, Tethys. We're running late."
Mercury and Mars began to swoon. The cloud surrounding them was condensing, closing into an inescapable watery mass. Mercury could barely breathe to speak. Her eyes burned terribly.
"Chief!" she gasped. "Please don't be dead! Where are you?"
From across the construction site, behind the pair of villains, another voice responded, and Jedite's smile vanished as soon as he recognized it. He and Tethys glanced over their shoulders to find Sailor Moon, though somewhat battered and wobbly, standing on the other side of the ditch next to the cement mixer, with her glittery weapon in hand and her gaze fixed on the water elemental.
"Think fast, bitch," Moon said, and flung the Tiara Disc at Tethys's head.
Jedite leapt back to distance himself from the kill zone, and Tethys's skin flickered like before as she reverted to her elemental form to avoid the disc's lethal blow. And the disc, two feet away from striking the Nereid, arced downward and sawed deep into the stacks of cement bags, unleashing a tremendous gray cloud that quickly enveloped Jedite's lieutenant. With a cry of agony she staggered back, her mouth agape and her eyes bulging. The cloud dissipated in moments as Tethys's liquid body absorbed the cement; her shiny blue surface became gray and gritty, her features sagged and dripped onto the concrete. Legs buckling, she swayed dizzily to and fro and finally succumbed to her increasing body mass, tipping back and collapsing on the ground with a grainy splat as Jedite watched in astonishment. His most dedicated servant was now a quivering mass of limestone sludge oozing around his boots.
The deadly mist evaporated, and Mars and Mercury collapsed on their knees, gasping for air. When she regained her coordination and saw Moon standing near her vanquished enemy with an indignant smile, Mercury released a tiny laugh and waved weakly in her direction. Jedite's spirits were not so high. With an enraged scream, he took hold of the cement mixer with telekinetic force and flung it through the nearest gate window. His eyes burned green with unnatural light, locked onto Sailor Moon's as if he were ready to pounce on her. Moon's smile was gone, but she stood her ground as bravely as she could. Her allies were still prone and wouldn't be able to help her for another minute--all the time the well-seasoned colonel needed to do something horrible to her.
The glowing disc still hovered several meters overhead, waiting for its mistress's attack command like a trained falcon. Jedite scrutinized it, then looked back at Sailor Moon and took a deep breath. The blazing light in his eyes dimmed.
"Well played, Your Grace," Jedite said, biting his lip. "I must say I gave you little credit for cunning. And, regrettably, your ability to expire."
"I don’t appreciate pansy-ass inter-dimensional frat boys picking fights in my neighborhood," Moon said. "You gonna forfeit or do I have to put you out? I gotta say, I'm getting pretty used to the whole killing thing, and I'm really not fond of you at all."
"You have one shot," Jedite said. "Pray it does not miss."
He stood and watched her, his expression unchanging. Sailor Moon took a deep breath, but her stomach wouldn't calm down. Mercury was checking on Mars further out on the runway, both appearing in good health, but still too far away for comfort.
"Why did you call me 'Your Grace'?" Sailor Moon said.
Jedite stared a moment in surprise. Then he laughed.
"Goodness. Have those feline guardians of yours kept so much from you? They never told you about the prophecy?"
"No," Moon said. "What prophecy? What's it got to do with me?"
Sailor Moon jolted as the nearest gate window exploded from the force of the airborne cement mixer's return, and she leapt backward with a scream as the heavy metal tub smashed on the ground, leaving a deep pit in the concrete. Moon's weapon dove toward its target, but with one well-placed sweep of his hand, Jedite slapped the disc out of the air as if it were a harmless Frisbee. It clattered on the ground and reverted to its original gem-encrusted form. Moon was too surprised to react when Jedite teleported beside her in the next instant and locked his hand around her trachea. He could tear her throat out with a flick of his wrist.
The Colonel suddenly shouted in pain and dropped the valkyrie to claw at a red rose which had harpooned itself deep in the flesh of his hand. As he wrenched it free, a familiar figure floated angel-like down to the runway to join the two adversaries--the gallant stranger who'd come to Sailor Moon's aid so many times before. The moment he landed, the gent drew a three-foot blade from his cane and backed the unarmed Colonel away from her with a fluid display of swordsmanship fit for a swashbuckler. As the blade lashed out in a potentially lethal stroke to Jedite's heart, the Colonel vanished; the sword cut nothing but air.
The gent sheathed his weapon and returned to Sailor Moon's side as the other two Sylvan guardians joined them. Mars doubled over and panted heavily, still winded from the smothering mist.
"I can't seem to get away from you, can I?" Moon said as the gent helped her to her feet.
"You can't seem to stay out of trouble," the gent said.
"Thanks for showing up," Mercury said with a smile, slapping Moon on the shoulder.
"Wish I could return the sentiment," Moon said, brushing flecks of powdered cement from her sarong. "I'm getting slapped around by the bad guy, here, and you guys're all huggin' and kissin' over there."
"Mars went into shock for a minute."
"Oh, yeah? You all right, Mars Bar?"
Moon patted Mars on the back. She appeared ready to collapse and didn't look up.
"Stop…calling…me…Mars Bar…"
The steel behemoth snarled and awoke once more, pulling everyone's attention back to the blinding set of eyes at its front. The left engine's hiss increased to a deafening whine as its cylinder spun faster and faster with telekinetic energy, shaking and rattling the entire wing until something inside broke apart. With a burst of flame, the engine tore itself free and sailed like a guided missile across the jet yard, missing the rapidly dispersing group by a hair and knocking them down with its wake. It crashed and exploded in the base of the control tower, and Sailor Moon watched in awe as the mighty structure cracked, teetered, and finally, almost in slow-motion, collapsed into itself with an earthy moan. The jumbo jet still had another shot, and was gaining speed as it charged the group.
Mercury scanned the vehicle again and noted a dramatic change in its energy output.
"He's in the plane!" she shouted.
Sailor Moon called her weapon back into action, veering it through the cockpit windshield. The jet swerved left and right as the disc ricocheted around the interior, and finally returned to its mistress via smashing through the plane's rear emergency exit. The door tumbled and clattered onto the runway, wadded like paper from the impact.
Seeing the foolishness in running as a group from the speeding plane, the four heroes split and ran in separate directions. Mars quickly learned, to her dismay, that since she'd proven herself capable of dealing the most damage, the steel behemoth opted to chase her down first. One fireball after another struck the cockpit window, but couldn't even char the plane's hull without the proper level of concentration. Desperate and running out of breath, Mars dropped to the ground and let the beast pass over her, rolling out of the path of its tires. It immediately began to turn around for a second run.
Mars stood again, planting her feet firmly on the ground, and channeled all her energy into the jet's front tires. Moments later, they burst into flame and liquefied, dropping the plane's nose hard onto the runway, and its two rear wheels collapsed under the strain. To her horror, the plane still moved forward with increasing momentum despite the lack of proper friction, guided by an immeasurable telekinetic power. Jedite sneered from the broken cockpit window and began laughing hysterically as his victim turned and ran again. The four heroes, though greatly distanced from one another, were now aligned in such a way that he could easily wipe them out in one pass by arcing toward the terminal. He would grind every last one of them under the beast's hull like bugs under his boot.
The masked gent did not run. He leapt high into the air with a graceful flip and landed on the broken left wing, entering the jet through the open emergency exit. However, as he charged toward the front of the plane, Jedite surprised him by bursting through the cockpit door with a flying kick, connecting with the gent's abdomen. A surge of telekinetic energy catapulted the masked gent to the rear of the plane, smashing him against the back wall and incapacitating him. The plane remained on course during the scuffle, running down the three hapless valkyries who soon found themselves sandwiched between a jumbo jet and a very hard airport terminal.
"Mercury!" Moon said. "You got any of those ninja mist bombs handy?"
"Yeah," Mercury said. "As many as you like!"
"Well, toss one through the window!"
"Are you kidding? I can't make that shot!"
"Well, I can't do much good with the magic Frisbee not bein' able to see him clearly!"
Her eyes lit up. Amidst the panic induced by the charging jet in front of her, and for reasons she couldn't explain, the next thing that popped into Sailor Moon's head was her early days of training in the backyard with the annoying cat.
"Can you tell the bomb when to go off?" she asked.
"Yeah," Mercury said. "Why?"
"Please tell me that's a plan you two are discussing!" Mars shouted as she approached in a mad dash.
The distance between the group and the plane was shrinking at an alarming rate. Called to duty once again, the Tiara Disc hovered in front of the three Sylvan soldiers, awaiting its next command. She'd been training with it for a long time now. She could pull this stunt off no problem. Hopefully.
"Toss one on the Frisbee and blow it when I tell you," Moon said to Mercury.
The other two responded with funny looks, but with the jet grinding its way up the runway and only fifteen seconds from impact, there wasn't much time for discussion. Mercury molded a fist-sized ball of hail with a mere thought and dropped it right on top of the glowing disc. Sailor Moon held her breath and let the disc fly, carrying the ice sphere on its center through the air in the flight pattern of a mentally handicapped lark. Its movement was so peculiar that Jedite wasn't sure what to make of it--until it was too late--as it approached the cockpit and, when only inches away from the possessed jetliner, upturned and dropped the icy orb through the hole in the windshield.
It landed right at Jedite's feet.
Sailor Moon gave the word, and a vaporous cloud exploded throughout the plane's interior with such force that its hull shuddered and its windows burst and spat up heaps of mist and snow. The inside of the juggernaut became an arctic blizzard in an instant. It swerved wildly as its manipulator lost control, and the three Sylvan guardians took that as their cue to clear the runway. The plane bellowed in pain as it folded in half and came to a thunderous halt against the side of the terminal, creating a tremendous hurricane of concrete dust and glass shards that engulfed the girls in an instant and rolled them together across the pavement like leaves in the wind.
*******************************
The stench of powdered concrete and jet fuel choked the air. When the dust finally settled, an hour since the disastrous crash, the devastation was heart-wrenching: one-fourth of the airport was now a bed of rubble, lying upon which was the ruined jetliner. Further out, the air traffic control tower lay in pieces. The facility would be closed for the rest of the year. The three valkyries sat on the ground, observing the scene in silence, panting and wheezing from exhaustion. Several moments passed with not a word being exchanged, each of the three too tired to speak any further. Then they started laughing.
Survivors. The word flew through Sailor Moon's mind on a banner. A sense of calm like the site of a demolished building, where the sounds of unrest still ring in the ears and make it hard to believe that the nightmare is past. It must have been how the soldiers she read about in History felt at the end of their struggles.
"I quit," Mars coughed.
Mercury looked up. "Quit what?"
"Smoking…I quit…as of today…How's your arm?"
"Hurts," Mercury replied, rubbing her shoulder.
Mars laughed. "So put some ice on it."
Sailor Moon stood and looked out at the devastation. There was no sign of her guardian angel. She hadn't seen him since he leapt into the plane to stop Jedite's rampage. She let slip a tiny gasp and ran toward the wrecked juggernaut, prompting her two comrades to follow. Gnarled and broken, it looked like a wounded bird, awaiting death's approach with quiet dignity. A river of jet fuel ran out of the underside and slithered across the runway, its fumes so overpowering Moon stumbled once or twice from light-headedness.
Something shifted nearby, startling Moon and the others, and a hunk of plane keeled over and clattered on the concrete, revealing the handsome white suit of the masked gent as he diligently searched through the rubble. His eyes met Sailor Moon's and he stopped in his tracks. When a smile of relief drew across her face, he seemed taken aback, and returned the smile as he approached her.
"I was afraid you didn't make it," she said.
"I feared the same of you," he replied. "I'm glad you're all right."
His outfit was stained with dust and oil, his mask cracked down the left side under the eye. His once perfect hair was now tattered like straw. He still looked a million times better than she did at that moment, but somehow his marred appearance sent her heart into overdrive. The imperfections proved him human and not a dream. Not some silly fairy tale motif, but a living, breathing person. Someone who cared about her unconditionally.
She'd never been so close to him before. His eyes were a light hazel with rings of blue around the outmost edges. They were gentle eyes, like an older sibling's or a loving parent's. He opened his mouth to say something when Mercury cried out, and directed everyone's attention to the front of the plane where another figure had begun to emerge from the wreckage, at first only a silhouette, but with distinct, searing green eyes--Colonel Jedite, blood seeping down one side of his head, his hair and uniform stained with fuel and lubricant, faltered in his step as he stalked toward the weary amazons. He finally stumbled and collapsed on the ground with a wheeze, less than ten feet away from Sailor Moon's feet.
"Stay where you are," she said, brandishing her discus.
Jedite held up his hand as he struggled to sit upright. The expression on his face told her he was too exhausted from pain to threaten her any longer, and she put her weapon away.
"A child…A bloody child in mythril armor…You've nothing left to fear of me, Your Grace…"
With another wheeze, Jedite managed to prop himself up on his knees, fixing his glare on the blonde Sylvan guardian, wishing he could somehow physically share his hatred with her.
"I am through," he continued. "Do as you will with me. My failure will only be met with death on my return to Her Majesty, Queen Beryl. Have your gallant knight cut me down and end this affair."
"Tell me about the prophecy," Moon said.
Jedite laughed at this, and nearly keeled over. It was another minute before he gathered enough strength to speak again.
"The prophecy," he finally said. "The blessed daughter summer solstice born, with pristine eyes of blue and green; The valkyrie of noble blood unites three kingdoms under one great queen. 'Twas the anthem of the Silver Millennium. Your guardians spoke not a word of it to you?"
The words pierced Sailor Moon's heart like a nursery rhyme long forgotten. All the images floating in the broth of her memory stirred to the surface and fit together piece by piece into a fresco of the beautiful queen of the ivory kingdom and, standing at her side, yet somehow entire countries away, her daughter.
She'd seen her daughter before in many of those cursed dream visions, standing at the head of that marching line of armor-clad amazons. The princess of the Sylvan Kingdom; the blessed child with golden hair and bright blue-green eyes; the theater commander of the Silver Millennium Soldiers.
Sailor Moon choked, clutching the locket at her bosom.
"No," she said. "No, that would mean that I'm…No, that's not right. No."
"Aye, 'twas your duty," Jedite went on, the hatred in his heart surfacing in his hoarse voice. "'Twas your solemn duty as that queen, and your only task was to accept your mother's burden as the Silver Crystal's keeper. Do you remember how that little faerie tale ended?"
Sailor Moon's memories ran by in a slideshow across her eyes, one image after another of balls and banquets and social gatherings and unspeakable trysts. Glancing at the masked gent she found his expression similar to her own, as though his own past had been awoken. Indeed, she saw masked gentlemen in a number of those memories flashing by inside her head just then, but were any of them the man who stood beside her now?
"You forsook your duty," Jedite hissed. "You remember now, do you not? I see it in your eyes. The memories have haunted you from the beginning, haven't they?"
She did remember, all too clearly. She forsook the most precious responsibility in three worlds. In countless worlds.
The Italian countryside, the young woman who lived in the villa; duchess of the cities spanning just over that grassy mountain, all decaying with poverty and disease. Her people dying by the droves and she without so much as a clue of their existence. Even when locked away in her subconscious by the Patron of the Heart, Mind, and Soul, the guilt had tried to pound its way to the surface with such portraits. The Sylvan Princess, would-be martyr who favored the life of a young queen bee over bringing about the salvation of her people. She could not be bothered with such a chore. And her idle frolicking left her mother, Queen Serenity, without an heir, and allotted the suffering of Gaea's children the time it needed to swell into revolt.
The revolt which provided the House of Metallia the opportunity it had waited ages for. Beryl's royal family. The Metallias drove the Black Moon's ruling house to murder one another, then seized the throne for themselves, and while the Sylvan Princess was being smothered by the forces of those she'd wronged for so long, the Black Moon tore her perfect little world apart with its restless legions. Three kingdoms, and entire age, crumbled to bloody pieces.
Jedite struggled to stand, but lacked the strength and collapsed again.
"The world you live in now is your penance, shrew," Jedite said. "To suffer through age after age, incarnation after incarnation. And it has pleased my weary heart to know it, bastard spawn of arrogance. Murderer, terrorist, war-monger, call me what you will, for I am all these things. But the true villain is the debutante which gapes before me now!"
"You're full of shit," Mars said.
"I care not what you think," Jedite sneered, then gestured toward Sailor Moon as he began to laugh. "She knows the truth better than I. Ask her."
Sailor Moon held her head, weak and weary from confusion. She didn't hear her comrades as they spoke to her, trying to snap her out of her trance. Every individual human being, everything in the whole world as she knew it; an entire ecosystem resulting from a single seed oblivious to its environment and its own impact upon it, incapable of fathoming the sheer significance of its own existence.
The masked knight had vanished. Whatever memories tormented him, he must have felt they would be better faced in solitude. It strangled her heart; she would have given anything just to be in someone's arms at that moment.
Little good such a childish stimulus would do her. The whole thing was one ridiculous, tiresome story after another.
"Everyone I meet nowadays," she said, "babbles on and on about duty and reincarnation and destiny. And I'm fuckin' tired of it."
With that, her mythril armor vanished, reverting the braided valkyrie to her true persona. She tore the locket from her shirt and looked upon it with disgust, half tempted to throw it to the ground and watch it scatter into a billion crystal pieces. She then bent down and glared in Jedite's face, and, despite the tears welling up in her eyes, her voice did not quiver.
"I'm not a princess. I'm not a sword-swingin' super heroine. I'm not a legendary messiah whose decisions can make or break entire worlds. I'm an upper middle-class high school student. My name is Serena Babbit."
Jedite said nothing and spat on the ground at her feet. With a quivering sigh, Serena turned and walked toward the runway fence, and she didn't look back. Mercury followed, cradling her wounded shoulder.
With a dismissive glance to the Colonel, Mars said, "Tell your rotten Queen Bitchface not to send her lackeys over anymore."
Mars filed in behind Mercury with her arms folded as her eyes followed the noxious trail of the jetliner's blood whipping off into a point to her right. The horrid stench of destruction in the air turned her thoughts back to the ravaged city she saw the day she met Venus in the courtyard, to the smoldering, disemboweled children strewn about the street like crushed bugs. She thought of the boy in the hospital, his body lying silent and still while his soul screamed and writhed inside. The sobs of his family were still fresh in her ears, joined with those of dozens more across the city in a mournful chorus spanning decades.
Mars stopped and turned around again to look Jedite in the eye. He was standing now, weakly watching the valkyries depart.
With only a moment's focus and a tiny spark, a blazing trail of fire swept up the fuel stream toward the ruined terminal. Its snarl startled the others, who whirled around in time to watch the dark kingdom's colonel ignite like a screaming roman candle as the flames swarmed over the crash site around him. In the next instant, Jedite's throes of agony were drowned out by an ear-shattering explosion and the anguished howl of the steel behemoth as the blast tore it inside out.
Serena and Mercury held their throbbing heads and watched the colossal bonfire in disbelief. Mars turned back toward the fence, fishing a cigarette out of her armor and lighting it with a flick of her thumb. Apart from the crackling flames, the night was silent again.
*******************************
No one spoke on the drive home for over an hour. Rei sat in the front seat, taking a nap; she was so exhausted from running that meditation was too much effort. As soon as she got home she had plans to draw a nice, hot bath to nap in for the rest of the evening, or what was left of it. Amy sat in a reverse position in the back, watching the fire engines and police cars that passed them a few minutes ago, and their flickering lights that had always reminded her of dancing and frolicking forest sprites. When the last sprite finally disappeared from view, she turned around and sat properly again, watching her brooding friend in the seat next to her.
Serena was quieter than ever. She sat, unmoving, staring at the locket in her hands, stroking the gem at the center of its lid with her thumbs. She flicked the lever on its side and freed its melancholy melody to tug at her heart for reasons she still couldn't explain in spite of all the ancient memories she'd relived in the last few weeks. The ruined civilizations she'd supposedly descended from sprang back into her mind's eye, and her heart instantly broke.
Mina watched Serena in the rear-view mirror. She'd known the source of her silence the moment she climbed in.
They were off the freeway now. Serena shut the locket and killed the song, then turned her gaze out the window to the passing buildings and wondered what her family had for dinner that evening. The car pulled into a diner parking lot, and Mina killed the engine.
"We'll be along in a minute," Mina said, her eyes jumping between Amy and Rei. "I gather you haven't eaten anything in a while."
Amy and Rei looked at each other, then at Serena. They got out of the car without saying a word and went into the diner as Mina turned around in her seat and gave Serena her full attention.
"He told you, did he?" Mina said.
"Why didn't you?" Serena snapped, her voice cracking. "Why didn't any of you tell me? Didn't I deserve to know? Is that what the cats were whispering about at the meeting?"
"We thought we would have found you and given you adequate training before the enemy made their first move. You would have learned everything then, when you would have been prepared for it. I'm sorry. It must be quite a shock."
"The world sucks, and it's all my fault. How is someone supposed to handle something like that?"
Serena sniffled and wiped her eyes. Mina said nothing.
"But it's the fact that I haven't changed that really gets to me. I'm spoiled and disillusioned and I'm unfair to really nice people just 'cos they're different or weird. I make believe like I got it so bad, and I really don't! I got it great! I got a mom and dad who really care about me, and I have a house that's more than accommodating, and my family makes more than enough money to support itself, and I get an education a lotta kids don't have the privilege of...I don't deserve any of it. I don't deserve to be happy. I don't deserve friends. I don't deserve Molly or Amy or anybody. I don't deserve a damn thing. I don't-"
Serena's lungs collapsed, and when she drew another breath to continue her rant, it came in a deep sob, and she quickly lost control; the elder Babbit child's cork popped and weeks and weeks' worth of anger, pain, and confusion poured out into the car in one great mess. Mina's eyes swelled with a mother's warmth and never looked away from the bawling teen as she patted her on the knee and brushed the tears from her eyes.
"Doesn't that confession," Mina said, "prove that you do?"
Serena's fit subsided for a moment. She sniffled again and rubbed her eyes.
"Your struggle's over," Mina said. "You can be a normal girl again. That means you can put this new revelation to good use and change the person you were."
"But the memories won't stop!" Serena said. "I don't even know who I am anymore! Every time I go to sleep, I'm a princess with a pretty fairy tale kingdom, or I'm a duchess with a valley of flowers, or I'm an amazon with an army, or I'm a saint with a drove of poor foster children under my wing that depend on my protection, or I'm some other amazing storybook incarnation with some huge responsibility or some unforeseen destiny! I don't want to be any of those people!"
Serena took a deep breath and tried to calm down, her head still swimming with the events of that evening and the droves of other people's memories that had suddenly awoken to clamber for her attention.
Another deep breath. The riptide wasn't pulling her under anymore. She could breathe normally again.
"The only responsibility I want," she said, "is to be me. That's all I want. I'll never ask for anything ever again for as long as I live. I just want to be me."
Mina smiled gently, ran her hand through Serena's hair, pulled the sniffling girl close, and planted a tiny kiss on her forehead.
All at once, the memories silenced. The turmoil in Serena's chest calmed itself, and her breathing rate slowed. The exhaustion in her limbs finally overwhelmed her, and her vision began to blur. Her head was spinning.
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