Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ The Fragility of Time ❯ "Phoenix Rising" ( Chapter 19 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

The Fragility of Time
BOOK TWO: "Falling Towards Apotheosis"
Chapter 19: "Phoenix Rising"
Author: etj4Eagle
Email: etj4Eagle@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/etj4eagle
Lasted Edited: 12/6/00

Disclaimer: A reminder I own none of the characters of this story,
all rights are owned by others. However, the unique circumstances
of the story are mine. If you distribute the story, do only
so freely and inform me of where you post it.

_______________________________________

BOOK TWO: "Falling Towards Apotheosis"
_______________________________________

Streaming in, the warm morning sun bathed a room's occupants, a
mother and daughter with its warmth while they silently slept. With a
slight stretch, one of the two sleeping souls opened her eyes to the
new day. Instinctively her gaze moved down to the sleeping form of
her daughter, still curled up in her arms. With a joyous smile she
relaxed, content to let her daughter continue to sleep. She enjoyed
mornings like this one when she could leisurely wakeup while she
watched her daughter sleep in her arms. The two, mother and daughter,
remained like that for a quite while until the child finally awoke.

Opening her eyes and looking up at her mother's face she said,
"Morning, Okaa-san."

"Morning muzume." The older one replied. "Come lets get dressed and
then head on down for breakfast."

The younger one quickly agreed and mother and daughter headed into
the bathroom to get ready for the day. If asked, neither of the two
would have been able to tell you what day it was or what they would
be doing, but somehow they knew it to be a day of relaxing and
dressed accordingly. Though if either of them had bothered to look at
the calendar they would have noticed that it was a school day and
they were extremely late for class.

Hearing noise upstairs, Ikuko quickly heated up some breakfast for
her daughter and granddaughter. As she placed the final item on the
table, the two now awake souls swept into the room. Their stomachs
rumbling they quickly dove into the food with no more than a
"morning" to Ikuko. Greeting her daughter, Ikuko stopped in mid-
sentence as she got a good luck at her daughter.

Sleep had not come easy to Ikuko last night, both she and her husband
knew that a very good chance existed that they would never see their
daughter again. Her hands that evening had held the proof that Usagi
also agreed with that sediment. She had held the letters, which Usagi
wrote, the same as those that a military commander would write to the
families of a fallen soldier. Actually in this case the analogy was
quite appropriate, as weren't those what those girls were? But, then
sometime around three in the morning, she felt a wave of warmth pass
through her body and knew that things were going to be all right,
allowing sleep to finally overcome her body.

What she had not expected was for her daughter, Usagi, to be changed
by that power she would have to wield. But now she realized that was
a foolish thought. By grasping hold of the power that was hers to
command, Usagi would naturally have reverted to her true form, the
Moon Princess. Usagi herself was no more; instead, the one who sat in
front of her at the table was Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom.
Yet, this realization did not falter Ikuko at all. A few weeks ago,
it would have been disastrous, but now she realized that her daughter
would always love her. Plus because of the rebirth, she was just as
responsible for the kind of queen Serenity would become as the past
Queen Serenity.

That realization had given her a slight start, but what had now
utterly knocked her mind for a loop was something else, something no
one had mentioned as being part of the transformation. Yes her
daughter was Princess Serenity, but she also now had large wings
coming out of her back. What kept coming to her mind was images from
one of those Christian chapels she had visited a while back with
their depictions of angels, for her daughter now looked like an
angel.

* * * * * * * *

The noise of the moon princess coming down the stairs had stirred
Luna from her catnap on the sofa in a nice ray of sun. Walking into
the kitchen to see her princess, she opened her mouth to address her,
but instead simply fainted when she got a good look at her princess.
The reactions of Luna and Ikuko went unnoticed by the two eating
their breakfast. Instead, their attention was utterly devoted to
consuming all the food in front of them as quickly as possible. There
normal appetites were ravenous, but today their appetites made their
normal ones look small. Of course, it was with good reason,
considering the amount of energy they had expended the previous day.

Recovering, Luna walked over to the table. "Serenity-san I am glad to
see that you are okay. I take it that you managed to defeat the Dark
Kingdom."

"Hai," replied the Moon Princess. Then pausing she continued in
sorrow, "but the others. they all fell defending me. Only me,
ChibiUsa, and Mamo-chan survived. Though I don't know how we got back
here."

"But, Serenity-san the others were all in their beds this morning.
Artemis and I checked in on each of the Senshi five hours ago. And,
they were all asleep in their bed, not looking the worse for wear."

"But how is that possible?" wondered Serenity.

"The Ginzuishou, it did it once before sending you all into the
future. Somehow it must have been able to bring them back to life and
send all of you home."

"Oh, thank-you, thank-you Luna." cried Serenity as she got up from
her chair and grabbed the cat up into a hug, swinging her around.
With the spirits of the two girls significantly brightened over that
news, one final question remained on Serenity's mind. "Luna, why are
you calling me Serenity instead of Usagi?"

Recovering, Ikuko laughed a little at her daughter's question before
suggesting "Honey, why don't you go look at yourself in a mirror."

ChibiUsa took that moment to actually look at her mother and almost
fell over with what she saw, while wondering how she could have been
so blind to miss it this morning, especially those wings.

"And be careful of things on tables dear." Ikuko suggested to her
daughter who was now beginning to get up from the table.

"Huh?" replied her daughter as she left the table, which was followed
almost immediately by the crash of the table being abruptly cleared.
The sight of her mother sending dishes flying to the floor while
dashing to the bathroom knocked ChibiUsa into a fit of giggles

Very soon after Serenity was back in the kitchen. "Luna what
happened? Why am I in this form? I can't change back to my normal
form."

"Serenity you used the power of the Ginzuishou last night right?"
with Serenity's nod she continued. "How exactly did you use it,
including any thoughts that might have been in your mind."

Before Serenity could begin, Ikuko made an excuse to leave taking
ChibiUsa with her. She had suggested that it might be best that
ChibiUsa being only a small child not here the details, but really
Ikuko herself did not want to know how close her daughter had come to
death. Maybe in the future she would want to here the whole story,
but now the events and her worry were too fresh for her to handle.

After her mom left, Serenity began her description of the battle
against Metalia to Luna. Retelling the events of the battle took
fifteen minutes, and she only had the final moments before she
surrendered her body to the darkness to tell. "And then as I felt
myself dieing after the battle with ChibiUsa in my arms, I thought
about how I wanted to always be able to protect her from any harm and
how useless I had been at times protecting my daughter."

Thinking for a moment Luna replied, "Your majesty while I don't know
much about the Ginzuishou, I believe I know what happened. The one
thought on your mind with your death was your desire to protect your
daughter and the Ginzuishou responded to that wish. As long as you
maintained your duel forms of Usagi and Serenity, your powers were
limited. They had gotten stronger, but as Usagi you can't use any of
your powers, which hampers your ability to protect ChibiUsa.
Therefore, to fulfill your final command it had to cause your final
form to take over, just as it gave life back to the other Senshi so
that they could protect the two of you.

"The power needed to achieve a single resurrection should be beyond
the ability of any wielder of the Ginzuishou. I don't know how it
happened, only that it is a miracle. You talked of a sudden surge of
energy when all the eight planets of the Silver Millennium seemed to
join you, somehow that must have given you the power needed to
achieve the miracle you requested.

"As to why you now have those wings, I do not know. Your mother, when
she reached maturity with her powers, would have ethereal wings when
her aura was present. But these seem to be something different.
Something is different between you and all previous queens of your
line. Though that was already evident by the awakening in you of a
new Sailor Soldier. What it means I am not sure."

* * * * * * * *

Earlier in the morning hours, the city of Tokyo had begun to awake
and face its first day following the threat of subjugation by the
Dark Kingdom. Until recently, the people had attempted to avoid
remembering or thinking about what these monster attacks might be. It
was not till the massive battle in one of the city's parks, which
involved a flight of attack helicopters that people began paying
attention to these attacks instead of dismissing them. But once again
this morning the populous awoke to a feeling that everything was
okay, with any thought of those monsters in the back of their mind.
What had been front-page news had suddenly become fit for nothing
more than the tabloids.

At the various military bases, while orders had not yet come to stand
down from their heightened alert, the personal were treating the
happenings as a completed campaign. For some they might wonder in a
few years whether these engagements actually happened, but for one
that would never be the case. He had a cat's collar and a child's
earring, shaped like a crescent moon, to always remind him of what
really happened. He knew where the first came from, and would have
not been too surprised to learn that the second had also come from
that kitten he had taken in.

Elsewhere in the city a gaijen man now in his fifties ran. The
previous few days he had taken his morning runs with the members of
team two. But, today he was not so much interested in a training run,
but a nice relaxing one allowing him to think. This morning when he
woke up, he knew something had changed something was different. From
all his years as a spook, often in the streets of Moscow, he had
learned to trust his instincts.

Partial confirmation of something being up came when he had turned on
the morning news. At first it had seemed normal, but then he realized
the problem was that it was too normal, something was missing from
it, the something of course being the normal concern about the ever
more destructive battles between the Sailor Senshi and those
monsters.

Yet even that did not seem to explain the feeling of change he was
feeling. The oddness about the sudden change in everyone's attitude
struck him as strange. But as Chavez had said, "That must mean that
the good guys were victorious boss." He could not argue there, and it
did feel as if the Sailor Senshi had defeated the enemy. But, yet he
still could not shake the feeling that everything had changed, that
"nothing was the same anymore".

* * * * * * * *

Clark was not the only one who sensed the change. Father Morgan had
felt the new age dawning when he awoke in the morning. His morning's
meditations only confirmed it; the coming of the Messiah was a step
closer. With excitement in his actions, he quickly sent off an email
to the Vatican informing them of what he felt. Then with a smile he
stood outside his little chapel to great the morning while hoping
that the Messiah would pay him a visit this morning.

* * * * * * * *

Of course, not all really welcomed the warm good feeling they awoke
to in the morning. One individual in particular awoke extremely sick.
Not feeling good one bit Rubeus attempted to make himself feel better
by hurling a sphere of energy at the chair in his room. However, his
attempt utterly failed, his sphere fizzing out after a mere few
centimeters while he collapsed to the ground in pain.

he wondered. Struggling to his feet he went
to the window to look out upon the day, the beautiful day did not
help his mood. Desperately trying to grab strength he grabbed the
Dark Crystal fragment that he still held, clutching it to his chest
as his body passed out.

As he came to, he realized that something was not right, he was
no longer in the physical world, but in the spiritual world
that the Wiseman now inhabited. Looking up, he saw whom he
expected to see.

"Wiseman what is wrong, something has happened."

"The younger self of Neo-Queen Serenity has used the Ginzuishou
on an unprecedented scale. What you are feeling are the side
effects of the crystal attempting to destroy your body. The
power she unleashed was so massive that it reached around the
globe. You are lucky; if you had been of lesser abilities, you
would have been destroyed.

"I can heal you, but be careful she can destroy you easily.
Only I have the power to challenge her. For the time, even
forget about the rabbit, your priority is helping Prof Tomoe
complete his gate."

With that, the robed figure of the Wiseman extended his arm,
his skeleton hand becoming visible as a force of dark energy
flowed from it and into Rubeus. As the energy flowed and
enveloped his body Rubeus felt himself feeling better and
stronger.

"YES!" cried Rubeus when he opened his eyes back on the physical
world. With a smile, he threw out his arm and launched a blast of
energy at the same chair as before, though this time it was utterly
obliterated. "Well rabbit you get to stay with you mother for now."
he mused to himself before heading out of his room to begin his day
with a visit to the good professor.

* * * * * * * *

Out in the dark reaches of space, an object made its final
maneuvering adjustments. The first of these adjustments had only come
less than twelve earth hours before. Soon it would begin the process
of breaking, first taking it out of super-luminal transport and then
slow it down for reentry. By the next morning, its occupants would be
at their destination, where they hoped to finally find survival. This
was their last chance for survival; if they could not find it here
then they would die.

* * * * * * * *

Eudial looked up from her computer to see Professor Tomoe sanding in
front of her. "Tomoe-sensei what can I do for you?" she asked.

"Eudial-san something has happened to the lab experiments. Something
last night managed to destroy every single one. I would like you to
see if you could figure out what went wrong, and also send in a clean
up team. This is going to knock us behind schedule, so it's important
that we get the replacement experiments set up as soon as possible. I
am going heading home for a bit, I will be back later."

"Of course, I will get right on it." Eudial said as she rose from her
desk. "Oh Tomoe-sensei how's Hotaru doing, I heard about what
happened yesterday."

"She is doing is doing fine this morning. Not quite sure what
happened yesterday, guess she hasn't totally gotten over those
fainting spells." he replied. Professor Tomoe had not told anyone
what had really happened yesterday with Hotaru, he still had trouble
believing it himself and it also terrified him when ever he thought
about it. "But I know of something that will cheer her right up." And
with that, he departed the office and then the building.

Eudial watched him leave Walking down to the lab, she wondered what
could have destroyed them all.

Opening the door, she expected to see shattered glassware everywhere.
Instead what she saw was a pristine laboratory, one even devoid of
that unsettling air it normally housed. she thought. Walking
up to the lab bench she picked up one of the beakers to look at it.
Instead of the organic broth that it normally contained, it now only
had a layer of dust at its bottom. Pulling out a bag she poured the
contents into it and sealed it, maybe my friend in the geology
department might be able to make something of this.

Leaving the lab a half hour later, she had been unable to find any
more clues as to what had happened. Her interest peaked as to what
had caused the damage; she first walked over to the geology
department to drop the sample off for analysis before heading back to
her office. With a smirk, she noticed that the professor's five other
research students for that lab had all called in sick today.

* * * * * * * *

As the morning sun rose high in the sky, one other child awoke,
having slept late. Stretching she did not immediately recognize her
surroundings. Still half asleep, she walked to the window to pull
open the curtains and saw 20th centaury Japan staring her back.
"Small Lady" escaped from her lips as she fully awoke, remembering
where she was and her need to quickly find her charge. While the urge
to find Small Lady had been reduced by the night's sleep, she still
felt out of place here and wanted to find her charge and also see her
mom and pop soon.

With a yawn and a stretch, she shifted her clothes so that they once
again looked fresh. Opening the door to her room, she found a platter
with some food and a note. Bringing in the platter, she first dove
into the food, and then having satisfied her hunger opened the note.
Upon opening envelope, two pieces of paper fell out. One was a ticket
to Tokyo on the bullet train and the other a quick note from Sasami,
the girl from the restaurant last night, wishing her luck.

With her hope lifted, Diana tucked the note close to her chest and
headed out of the room with the ticket. The ticket would enable her
to be in Tokyo by nightfall.

* * * * * * * *

Arriving back at his house, having obtained the necessary forms,
Professor Tomoe headed up to his study. Sitting down at his desk, he
began filling out the forms. He had always hoped that one day he
would be filling out these forms, but had assumed it to be at best
far out in the future. But here he was filling out the forms to send
his daughter back to the public schools.

Before the death of his wife and his daughter's resulting illness,
she had attended school. But with the weakness her illness brought on
and the other students becoming scared of her, he had pulled her out
of the school system to be home schooled. Doctors had been unable to
diagnose the source those violent episodes followed by blackouts,
which had scared her classmates. But if Rubeus was right, they were
caused by that demon inside of her, which he had now neutralized.

He knew that her one desire in the world was to be normal like the
other children her age. The first step in achieving that would be to
return to school with them. He felt her fainting spells and periods
of weakness had gotten sufficiently sparse that she could now return
to school. Unfortunately, her previous classmates would probably
still remember her, so he was applying for her to attend a different
school. This would give her a chance to start fresh and make more
friends like that child ChibiUsa.

Finishing the forms, he put them together and to the side of her
desk, he would deal with them later. Probably the best time would be
sometime this afternoon, he needed to get Hotaru a fuku as well, so
might as well combine those two trips. Reclining back in the chair a
smile crossed his face as he imagined Hotaru's happy face when he
broke the news to her at lunchtime.

* * * * * * * *

While Usagi was discovering that she was no longer quite Usagi and
possibly something more than even Princess Serenity, Ami sat in her
advanced math class taking a test. Or at least she was attempting to
take a test, but for the first time in her life, she was finding that
the answers were not forth coming. She had raced through the test
with her normal speed, but then halfway through, she hit a brick
wall.

She attempted to look at the unfinished question that lay in front of
her, but her attention kept being drawn back to the clock. She had
woken up this morning with her thoughts in a daze, but she had
thought that had finally dissipated when the bell rang this morning.
But now for some reason the haze had chosen this most annoying time
to return.

Looking back at the clock she noticed five more minutes had passed,
getting frustrated she hit her head on the desk, hoping to knock some
sense back into her. Instead the thought of the Usagi's empty desk
and the smaller desk for her cousin set next to it from her previous
class came to her mind. She did not know why she kept dwelling on
this, Usagi was probably just sick today, nothing wrong with that.
But her mind seemed to keep screaming at her that she was missing
something. She did not know why, she liked hard facts, but she had a
feeling that this something she was missing about Usagi was the cause
of her haziness.

Glancing back at the clock, she saw that she only had five minutes
left. Beginning to panic for one of the few times in her life, the
adrenaline drove the haze its worries out of her mind again for the
time. Clear headed she dove back into the exam, attempting to finish
the second half before the clock ticked the end of the exam.

* * * * * * * *

While Ami attempted to complete her exam and Usagi and Luna puzzled
over the princess's transformation, ChibiUsa relaxed in the embrace
of her grandmother in the living room, perfectly content. For the
first time in many weeks the worries that normally plagued her were
gone for the moment. In the back of her mind, she knew that Rubeus
still had to be dealt with, but she had seen her mother take care of
him before, and therefore was not too worried about him now that the
Dark Kingdom was destroyed.

Her mother's true form taking over had also added to her feeling of
being at peace. While she loved Usagi, she just felt even better
being in the embrace of Serenity than Usagi, even though the two of
them were the same person. She guessed it was just that she grew up
knowing her mother as Serenity and not Usagi. She figured it was
going to be tough now avoiding calling her mama in public.

Stirring she got up off her grandmother's lap and headed for the
bathroom. As she was washing her hands, she looked up into the
mirror. Looking at her face, her eyes narrowed. Looking again to
ensure that she was not dreaming she brought her now shaking arms to
her forehead. When she felt only skin and the golden crescent moon
remained she finally lost all composure and dashed from the bathroom
shrieking with joy.

A startled mother and Luna saw the child dash into the room. Opening
her arms, Serenity managed to catch her daughter, who immediately
wrapped her little arms around her neck. She could feel the joy her
daughter was emitting, and after giving ChibiUsa a moment to calm
down she asked, "Muzume what is it?"

ChibiUsa pulled back enough to look at her mother in the eyes before
answering. "It's the crescent moon, it has not been visible since I
was born. Finally I truly am your daughter and heir to the power of
the moon." And with that, she fell back into her mother's embrace
with a renewed burst of tears.

Serenity held her child in her arms, knowing what this meant to her
daughter. She knew of ChibiUsa's torments that had led to her first
trip back in time. This little mark on her head finally put all those
demons to sleep. And the presence of the sigil also probably meant
that her daughter now could learn to control the magic of the moon.

* * * * * * * *

All across Tokyo, people went to work, play, school and so on with an
extra spring in their step, instinctively knowing that a great evil
had been lifted even though most of them no longer remembered that
evil. And for those who readily remembered the events of the previous
days, they did not puzzle too much over the sudden disappearance of
any talk about those events. For in many parts they were happy that
the nightmare for the moment had vanished and the warm feeling they
felt did not let them worry for more than a moment.

As the day marched on, the glow from the Ginzuishou's magic finally
began to fade from the planet, leaving behind a planet that would
unfortunately not know peace and tranquility for much longer. But for
the moment, its Guardians rested comfortably and at peace, not
exactly forgetting who they were, but not yet remembering it either.

* * * * * * * *

While others headed home to play or study, a maiden sat down in front
of her fire to begin her daily ritual. Some might quibble about her
calling the flame hers, but she knew that this fire, its strength and
purity, belonged to her. A trained priest or priestess could
partially control the fire in hope that the scared flames might
reveal guidance. But her powerful aura more than controlled it. Being
of the same nature as the flames, it bonded and became one with the
fire.

Within moments of tasting the power of Mars, the fire had reacted by
opening the eyes of its mistress to memories, which had become fuzzy
and to memories forgotten. The spirit of the fire danced and
flickered through her soul revealing what had been forgotten. This
task took from when the shadows first began to lengthen till when
they had given way to complete darkness. Now having completed its
first task it once again desired direction. Its semi-consciousness
traveled across the bound the two of them shared and melded with its
mistress's mind.

The maiden, clothed in a simple Shinto shrine robe, knelt in front of
the fire chanting. The words she chanted held no special power,
instead they put her in the proper mental state to establish control
over the fire. As a side benefit, she also had better control over
her spiritual powers of Mars in this state, enhancing her control
over the fire. A few days ago, she would not have been able to
achieve anywhere near the control that she now held of the fire.

Before then she was only a Tehran with the dormant power of Mars, but
now her body had been transformed and the power of Mars never went
dormant. Now truly the Senshi of Mars, her thoughts and desires were
plainly discernable by the fire. Before even with the aid her dormant
power lent, she still was only a Tehran, and the fire could not
really bound with a Tehran. But now during her meditations the two
became one.

The power of Mars fueled the spiritual aspect of the flame, providing
it with the energy it needed to search for the answers its mistress
desired. Finding the question she held, the flames used that power to
search for the answer. Rei knelt in front of the fire chanting and
focusing on the question she desired to know. With a roar, the flame
flashed up in front of her, obscuring her view of everything in the
whiteness of its bright light.

When her vision returned, it was not that of the room of the fire.
Instead, she stood on a hill overlooking a majestic city built
entirely out of crystal. In its center, a palace reached skyward. The
breeze brought forth a sweet smell and a feeling of utter peace.
Extending her senses, she was surprised to find nothing more than
that of a utopia; no evil of any kind permeated anywhere. she wondered.

As soon as those thoughts began to cross her mind, she felt the
shiver of something not right. Actually it was more than that,
something was dreadfully wrong. Whipping her body around she looked
for the source of the problem. But, just as with the previous sense
of perfection, the sense of pending doom radiated from everywhere at
once, from the very fabric of the megaverse itself. Drawn, her gaze
moved to the crystal spire of the palace, and as she centered her
gaze, it exploded into a shower of crystal shards. The damage did not
stop there however; instead as each shard fell and struck another
part of the city, it too exploded into a shower of shards. The trees,
animals and the Earth itself were not exempt from the destruction.

Rei suddenly found herself looking at the Earth from space, watching
as it erupted in a shower which caught the other planets in the solar
system destroying them, and finally catching the sun, setting off a
chain reaction that raced through first the galaxy and then the
cosmos itself.

With a frightened gasp Rei tore herself from the vision to find
herself once again in the room of the sacred fire. Her pulse racing
crazily and her body drenched in sweat, she tried to understand what
the fire had shown her, but could find no meaning, only more fear.
Glancing at the fire as she stood up, she saw an angel turning to
face her with an expression of warmth. Looking up at the face of the
angel, she recognized it at the same moment she felt a sudden great
fear and the image exploded into crystal shards, flying into her
body. With a scream Rei's aura pulsed ending her connection to the
fire and her now limp body fell to the ground.

* * * * * * * *

A radar officer passed away the slow hours of the night watching his
screen. These early warning systems had only gone in about a year
ago, over the renewed fear of a rogue state launching an attack.
Though the intercept technology was an utter joke, but to save face
they manned these radar stations round the clock and had some
purposed "intercepts" to launch in case.

He wondered how he had gotten this post; this was not what life in
the military was supposed to be. But somehow, fate had contrived to
stick him in this boring backwoods position. He only hoped that he
would be able to rotate to some other post soon. Heck, this job would
probably have been fine if it was located in say Vegas and not here
in the middle of nowhere.

A sudden flurry of light on his screen grabbed his attention away
from his bout of self-pity. Looking at the screen he quickly saw what
had caused the warning lights to go off, a high-speed object on a
ballistic course had been detected. The object now boxed in red was
being analyzed by the sophisticated computer systems to determine its
target and country of origin, the results being displayed beside it
on the screen.

He sighed a bit in relief when he noticed that it was heading in the
wrong direction to hit his country, but of course, he still worried
about the pore saps that were the subjects of this apparent nuclear
strike. People whom the computer chose that moment to identify as
those living around Tokyo, Japan. And then the computer answered the
question, which had him confused: who had launched the warhead and
why only one. The final stats displayed on the screen revealed the
object to be of extraterrestrial origin. With a curse upon reading
the projected blast numbers, he picked up the phone to alert his
superiors to a major meteor strike.

* * * * * * * *

The large object racing through the Earth's atmosphere was not quite
the rocky meteor that one would have guessed it to be. Instead, it
was not much more than an energy shield containing three life forms,
not that one could tell that with any current Tehran technology.
Hence, the assumption that Tokyo was moments away from being hit by a
major meteor strike was not surprising. Those who were awake in the
wee hours of the night saw a fiery object streak through the sky and
slam into the ground.

Reaching the ground in only seconds, the object dove into the ground
for a couple hundred feet, leaving a trench of slightly molten rock
and pavement. The extreme heat being radiated from its energy shield
set off small fires along its path during the final moments of its
flight. With a resounding thump, it finally came to a stop and the
energy shield dissipated. With a quick look around, the passengers
vanished from the impact site, leaving nothing but a mystery to be
found by the approaching investigators.

Ami lived far enough away from the impact site to not have been
awakened by the impact and the quake was too minor to awake anyone
but the lightest sleepers. However, she still awakened, feeling once
again a familiar unease. Not sure why, she changed from her pajamas
into clothes and moved to her window to look out into the night. And
then instinct took over and with a flick of her wrist she called out
"Mercury Star Power, Make Up."

Around the Juuban district a similar scene played out, as the other
Senshi called upon their powers again. With the flow of power back
into their bodies, the haziness was burned away. Within moments, each
was on the roofs moving towards the impact site. Only Mars and the
two Sailor Moons knew before they called upon their powers what the
others could not remember but yet had not forgotten either.

Gathering on a building overlooking the site, the Senshi took a
moment to look at each other and revel in the knowledge that somehow
through some miracle they were all alive again. Each had an unspoken
question, that being of their leader and princess. Each hoped that
she was okay, but had a sinking feeling that she may have sacrificed
her life so that they could have theirs back. With two more pairs of
boots landing on the roof they turned to see their object of worry.

"Sorry I'm late" Sailor Moon said.

"Yeah she's a tad bit larger now, couldn't fit through the window."
taunted ChibiMoon while the others just looked at their leader
stunned.

* * * * * * * *

To the other side of the impact zone stood two new arrivals to earth.
Their arrival had been less smooth than they would have liked, but
given the circumstance it was the best they could hope for. Standing
against each other as the nighttime breeze blew by they looked out at
their new home.

"Do you think this world will do?" asked one of the two.

"I don't know, but it is our last hope. We don't have the energy to
return to space, and I am afraid the tree will die very soon as it
is." replied the other. Then looking out over the city, he continued,
"But we both felt it, that energy on this planet. It just feels so
right; it is what we need to feed the tree. One way or the other we
will obtain it." And with that, the two headed out into the night to
explore their new home.

Endnotes:
-Sorry for taking so long to get this chapter out, it has been
essentially done for a long while. But I do have an excuse at
least. I have been sick with mono these past few weeks.
Thankfully, it is a mild case, allowing me to attend my
classes, but that is all that I have been able to do.
-There were two other scenes that I wanted to add to this
chapter, but also I want to get it out so they will be held
over to the next one, and dealt in flashback/remembrance style.
-Well Ail and Ann are here and it is about time for Rubeus and
Dr. Tomoe to begin making their moves. And what about
Usagi/Serenity, what do these changes mean for her?