Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ After The Battle ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon. All characters belong to Naoko Takeuchi, with the exception of any original characters inserted by myself and others.

Rating: PG

Summary: The Sailor Star Seeds allow the senshi to be reborn again and again. But what happens when that power finally runs dry? It is now the era of Lady Serenity, and the children of the Sailor senshi are longing for answers as to why their parents disappeared...

Author's Notes: For those who haven't read the manga, the Amazoness Quartet is not totally evil and they actually become the guardians of Chibi Moon. They are put to sleep until she becomes "a real lady," which for the purposes of this fanfic, I chose to be now. ^_^

"And so, shortly being crowned the rulers of Crystal Tokyo, Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion were faced with yet another crisis, the invasion of the Black Moon. Which, as all of you should know if you did your reading last night, ended in a successful defeat due to Sailor Moon traveling from the past with the aid of Pluto of Small Lady..."

It was mid afternoon in 40th century Tokyo and the young sailor princes and princesses sat in their classroom, paying more or less very close attention to the lesson that Sailor Ceres was giving them. As future guardians of their planets, it was their responsibility to develop a well-rounded education, at least so said King Helios and Lady Serenity. It was the Asterroid senshi that the new queen had chosen to educate the young monarchs after their parents had passed away.

One of the children, a taller girl with ash blonde hair done up in a rough ponytail, scribbled down a message on a piece of scrap paper. Quietly as she could, she folded the paper and passed it to the girl in front of her, a child with dark brown hair and eyes to match. Seeing the note, she immediately took it and read to herself:

Hey Reika!

Want to do for some ice cream after this BORING class is over?

-Kasami

Reika giggled and began to write a reply, but suddenly a shadow passed over her paper. She glanced up warily to see rather irritated Sailor Ceres standing over her.

"Passing notes again in class, princess Mars?" she asked. Her classmates giggled and Ceres took the note away, crinkling it up in her hand. Kasami stuck out her tongue while Ceres had her back turned, but that too seemed to go less than successful.

"I saw that, princess Uranus." More giggles from the class and Ceres sighed. "Honestly from what Lady Serenity tells me, your mothers were both excellent students, but somehow I don't think they passed it on to either of you."

"Our mommy was the smartest," interceded a smaller child, this one with excited blue eyes and short curly green hair. A young man behind her with straight white hair that came to his shoulders bent down and whispered in her ear,

"Michiko, I told you not to keep calling out. If you do that again, you can't come to class with me anymore." Michiko looked shocked. Her big brother only used her full name was he was very serious.

"I'm sorry, Akio-chan. I'm sorry," she said.

"It's okay, Michi," he replied, reassuring he was not angry with her.

"Well, Sailor Neptune was very intelligent..." said Ceres, hoping she could in someway tie this series of interruptions and wayward conversation back to her history lesson. "But it was Sailor Mercury who first used..." A hand shot up in the first row. Ceres sighed.

"Yes, Anzino?"

"Why do we have to learn all this stuff?" she asked. "I wanna learn more about gardening. And how to host a proper tea ceremony. I think a princess should know those sorts of things." Ceres groaned. Here they went on this conversation again. And the princess of Jupiter was usually the quiet one.

"That's Juno's department," she explained as calmly as she could. "I'm here to teach you history." Anzino nodded, seeming to be satisfied with that, but then the Mars princess started in again:

"Why do we need to know history?" she asked, enunciating the last word like it was a fatal curse.

"Okay, that's it!" said Ceres, slamming her hands on the desk. A sudden hush fell over the room. Ceres looked up a bit embarrassed, before she went on.

"How about this?" she suggested. "Instead of hearing a history lesson from me, why don't we go speak to the ones who were actually there during all these events?" The children all looked curiously at each other. Did Ceres mean...?

"Marie," Ceres said, speaking to a small blue-haired child who sat in the far left row. "Fetch me the keys to the shrine, will you?" The Merciuan princess nodded and did as she was told.

Ceres led the group out the single-room school building and down the marble sidewalk towards a large crystal building. But gorgeous as it appeared, this place was not the palace. It served a much more important purpose than that.

Ceres fit the key into the oversized lock on the front doors, which swing open loudly to reveal the crystalline building's sole entrance. Marie stepped back nervously, but Ceres beckoned her onward, so she followed, along with her classmates. The inside of the was a little dark and maybe even a bit cold. The group gathered together closely to see what Ceres would do next.

Across the room lay eight stone pillars, four on the left side and four on the right. Each one was small, perhaps about four feet high and a foot and a half across. And in the middle was a golden staff, a sphere adorned with two wings, embedded in the ground.

"The shrine to the guardian senshi..." Reika whispered.

"We haven't been here since Princess Saturn's coronation," Anzino pointed out.

Ceres said nothing, but walked up and knelt in front of the staff, as she were addressing a royal monarch, only no one was there. She then held up her pink energy ball, the source of her power, and released it. The ball remained suspended in mid-air.

"Sailor Cosmos, please appear before us," she whispered. The children all looked curiously at each other, especially the younger ones, whose last visit here was still only vague in their minds. Sailor Cosmos? It couldn't be. Yet, at Ceres' words, the staff left forth a warm white glow and from this light stepped a small fairy-like figure. Her beauty was undeniable, a kind expression with bright blue eyes, full of love and compassion for everyone. Her long white hair was done up in two heart-shaped buns. She looked over towards the person who had summoned her and smiled warmly.

"It has been a while, Sailor Ceres," she said.

"Yes, your majesty, Sailor Cosmos," Ceres replied.

"Don't call me 'your majesty' anymore," said Cosmos. "My daughter Lady Serenity is your queen now."

"Of course," said Ceres with a polite smile. "But I can't help but speak with respect to the one that defeated Chaos."

More gasps from the children. Chaos was a being they had only heard small bits of information about, mostly from Marie who read ahead in the books Ceres had given them. And the rumor surrounding him was shrouded in mystery and evil power.

"Cosmos… you defeated Sailor Chaos?" Reika asked in shock.

"I told you," said Marie matter-of-factly.

"But how did you defeat him?" Akio asked. "And how did it become Crystal Millennium?"

"My my, so full of questions," said Cosmos, unable to repress a small giggle. "I suppose Ceres has taught you well." At this, Ceres beamed, and Cosmos continued, "But I'm afraid I can't tell a story like that without the help of my friends." She held out her hand towards the four stone pillars surrounding her to the right. "Please wake up everyone." At Cosmos' words, each pillar began to emit a soft glow, each its own color.

From each of the pillars on the left arose a cloud of mist, blue from the first, red from the second, green from the third, and orange from the fourth. But these clouds did not stay shapeless for long. Each one seemed to form the body of a woman, a ghost which had given up her body, but still managed to thrive enough on some unseen energy to take on the appearance of her old self. They were Cosmos' old allies, the sprits of the inner senshi.

The first girl, the blue one sitting on the pillar closest to Cosmos, had a kind and intelligent face.

"Hello, Usagi," she said.

"Hello, Ami," she replied. Michi looked up curiously.

"U-sa-gi?" she asked, trying to repeat the strange syllables as best she could.

"That was my earth name," Cosmos explained. She then turned to the opposite side, where the other four pillars lay and at Cosmos' command, from these merged the former queens of Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Saturn in a similar fashion, first as nothing more than a cloud of mist, but then transforming into the familiar figures Cosmos had known so well.

"It's been a while," yawned Haruka as she stretched out her arms. She then glanced down at the children standing and looking up at her wide-eyed as they could be. "Ah, I see you brought the kittens with you."

"Kittens?" Kasami asked, turning her nose up.

"Oh, stop teasing them Haruka," said Setsuna. "After all, we should be welcoming them. It's not like we get to see our children that often."

"That's right," Rei chimed in. "You keep that up and they won't ever come to see us." At this, the group of them began to giggle, a sound that warmed Cosmos' heart, reminding her of those times so long ago when all of them were simply innocent high school students.

The moment, though pleasant with the aura of reunion, was also stagnant with the sense of loss. While the older children were mature enough to understand exactly why it was their mothers had to live this way, the younger ones had yet to fully comprehend it.

"Mama... can't I hug you?" Michi asked, walking up to the shrine of the water senshi. Michiru looked down at her innocent daughter, eyes on the verge of tears.

"I'm sorry, my angel, but you know you can't," she said, trying to keep a smile. "Our bodies were lost to the Cauldron seven years ago, we only survive now in this shrine because of Cosmos' power." She tried to explain the scenario as rationally as she knew how, but it only seemed to make things worse.

"But I miss you..." Michi said. Seeing it was only making his mother more upset, Akio reached over and picked up his younger sister, holding her close.

"Perhaps this isn't the best time," he said.

"Don't talk like that," said Makoto. "You children are the most precious things to us. Even if we can't touch you, we want to be a part of your lives."

"I know! Why doesn't Cosmos tell a story?" Minako suggested, trying to lighten the mood. "That's what you came for anyway, wasn't it?" Ceres nodded.

"Yes, we wanted to hear about the battle with Chaos and the birth of this new millennium."

Cosmos nodded. "It's true this brings back a lot of sad memories, but it brings a lot of happy ones too..." She looked over the faces of the children standing before her, so full of life an innocence, a desire to grow and learn. And hear of a past that even Cosmos could not hide forever. "Very well," she said at last. "I will tell you everything."