Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ The Seneschal ❯ Distant Memories ( Chapter 3 )

The other side of the Galaxy... 22,230 BCE...

Pain. It encompassed her body. Her soul drowned in it. Everywhere, there was nothing but pain.

FOOL!!

Their voices had cried out to her soul before disappearing in a brilliant flash of light. She could feel her body hurtling through space.

Did you think such a suicidal attack would defeat ME??

Her uniform was in tatters. She had felt them. Felt them die. The three billion people that hadn't escaped.

You of all people should know! I am the STRONGEST!

The planetary symbol on her forehead was fading while the magic still left in her body fought to keep her alive.

Your sailor crystal is worthless to me now!

Her tears froze upon her face. She could feel her dying magic slowly fading away. And it hurt.

Die then in the depths of space!

You were once my friend. What happened to you?? Why did it come to this?

Something was pulling her. Tugging on her body.

Tractor beam?

She briefly opened her eyes and saw the great gaping maw of a black ship open to receive her body.

"She's quite a pretty piece of fluff, huh boys?"

Voices?

"How did she survive in space? She had no suit or anything!"

Talking about me?

"She's practically naked now! Look at that pretty tattoo on her back!"

"Like black angel wings..."

Laughter floated around. The girl felt some life slowly returning to her limbs.

My wings... are black? They used to be white...

The laughter turned to screams. Bodies fell to the deck with dull thumps.

She opened her eyes. A ragged man with a bushy red beard clung desperately to her bare forearm. His eyes were bulging and her hand was wrapped around his throat. The bodies of five other men lay dead and broken around them, their various weapons half drawn, their faces frozen in surprise. She opened her hand.

The man fell to the floor on his knees gasping for air.

She flexed her hands and stared at them. She had done this. Killed these men. It was her old fighting art. A form of killing that she hadn't used since becoming a Sailor Senshi.

But I'm not a Sailor Senshi anymore. It's all coming back now.

She felt the coldness inside solidify over her heart, making it like a ball of ice that beat within her chest.

I'm partially naked. These men were pawing my body.

"Where am I?" she asked the survivor.

The man, though taller and heavily muscled, cowered before the woman.

"You're aboard the Black Rose! We found you outside, so we tractored you in!"

The girl looked around the hold of the vessel. Contraband and weapons were stacked everywhere. The ship itself seemed to be a motley patchwork of steel and machinery.

"This is a pirate vessel, isn't it?"

The man coughed. "Yes..,"

The coldness of her heart expanded and encompassed her soul.

"Then I will take command of this vessel."

The man was still on his knees. His bearded face first looked angry, then resigned, and finally miserable.

"Yes... ma'am."

She stared coldly at him. "I will require a new name to be addressed by."

"What shall we call you then?" the man asked.

"You pirates already named me. From today on I will be called the Black Angel."

And I shall make Galaxia wish she had taken my crystal instead of leaving me to suffer!

Deep inside the Black Angel's soul, someone began to weep.

Lunar Prime, 6994 FLP (Founding of Lunar Prime), 739th year of Queen Serenity XIV, 20230 BCE

"They are bringing her in as we speak, Your Majesty," The chamberlain said in a hesitant voice. "But I strongly advise against it! She's extremely dangerous! We lost many men and ships bringing her in!"

The Queen nodded. She turned to the young girl that sat off to the side of the raised dais. The princess had two of her beautiful handcarved dolls that she loved to play with and was currently embroiled in a playful conversation with said dolls. It brought a smile to the aging Queen's face.

"Shall we take the princess back to her quarters?" The chamberlain asked.

"No," the Queen answered, "She should be fine where she is."

The mighty throne room doors opened and a large cluster of Lunar Guards entered. A diminutive figure in black strode in their midst. The Queen took in the figure as they approached.

She carried herself with an almost regal bearing. Her strides resembled that of a stalking panther and she moved with a flowing grace that even the heavy block restraints didn't seem to interfere with. Her eyes were the most prominent feature in the woman's beautiful face. They were dark brown but they were cold and distant, like the bitter depths of space. Her face itself was framed by the heavy braids of her brown hair that hung before her ears.

The woman's hands were encased together in a heavy steel block that was chained to her throat and waist. Chains connected to it from her ankles making the steel links jingle with each step. The curved tips of the Guards glaives were pressed to the woman's throat like a second collar of razor edged steel.

The Queen regarded the woman from her crystal throne. Despite the fact that all the Lunar Guards surrounding this prisoner were much taller, it was the prisoner herself who seemed to be the tallest person in the crowd.

So this is the Black Angel, The scourge of the galaxy. She barely looks out of her teens.

The Queen glanced over at her young daughter. The little girl had stopped playing and was staring at the Black Angel with a strange intensity.

"At last we meet, Black Angel," the Queen said in a commanding voice. She glared down at the chained woman.

The Black Angel merely smiled. Her eyes stayed unchanged.

"You must be the mighty Queen of the Sol system. The Kingdom of the Moon." the Black Angel's voice was a soft contralto, "Where is your king, Great Queen?"

The Queen frowned as the throne room filled with the gasps and exclaimations of the surrounding courtiers.

"You know where my king is, pirate." the Queen said coldly. "He fell before you eight years ago."

"Ah," The Black Angel responded. She nodded her head in an almost sagely manner. "So you will be taking your revenge then? After all, I am at your mercy... or am I? Do you really think these restraints can stop me, oh Queen? That these fools could kill me before I moved? Perhaps I could have your daughter's severed head resting in your royal lap before your Lunar Guard could even begin to press their blades."

The gasps and whispering grew louder as the Lunar Guards fingered their glaives. The Black Angel's speed and skill were legendary around the galaxy. It filled the old Queen's heart with a nervous energy. She briefly debated whether it would have been more prudent to have sent her daughter away as the chamberlain suggested.

No, it must be played out. Just as I've foreseen in my dreams.

"You speak quite arrogantly for a prisoner," the Queen finally said, "Could you actually perform such a cowardly act? I do not think we will find out."

The Black Angel's cold laughter echoed through the now silent throne room.

"Cowardly acts, my dear queen, are merely the acts of those who have nothing to lose."

The movement was sudden, almost blinding. The Black Angel brought her block restraint up, knocking one of the glaives aside. She ducked with the same motion, moving through the gap she created and hammering the nearest guard across the jaw with the heavy restraint. Suddenly, her hands were free.

The throne room filled with the shouts of the Lunar Guards as they tried to fight the sudden demon in their midst. The woman's restraints were now free from her body and were whirling around in one of her hands. Her speed was every bit as extraordinary as the legends said. One guard screamed as her other bare hand seemed to slash through his wrist, severing his hand from his arm. She let the heavy restraints go and they took down several more guards.

To the Queen, time seemed to slow down. She watched as the Black Angel leaped high over the heads of the remaining guards. She watched as the woman in black landed and moved in a straight line. A straight line towards the princess.

NO!

The Queen tried to jump to her feet. To move. Anything to stop the action she could see coming. She forgot the visions of her dreams in the reality of what was happening.

Not my baby girl!! Not Selene!

Selene stood up from her dolls. The woman coming at her had an empty face. Empty eyes.

"Why are you crying?" Selene asked.

Time seemed to stop in the chaotic throne room. The Black Angel's hand had been descending in a killing arc, but now it stopped, inches from the Princess Selene's unmarked throat.

The mighty and infamous Black Angel, scourge of the galaxy, the most feared space pirate alive, stared at this small girl with an expression of surprise.

"W-what?" the woman stammered.

"Why are you crying?" Selene asked again.

The Black Angel's hand fell to her side as she gaped at the princess.

"I'm not crying!"

"Yes you are," Selene said simply. She bravely reached forward and touched the woman's chest. "In here. You're crying in here."

The Black Angel fell onto her knees before the small girl. Her eyes were wide. "I'm not crying..." she whispered, staring at the princess.

The Lunar Guards started to surge forward, but the Queen held up a hand, stopping them. She stared down at the strange spectacle.

Selene knelt down and gently took the Black Angel's face between her small hands.

"They wouldn't want you to suffer like this. After all this time, they've long since forgiven you."

The Black Angel felt the warmth of the girl's hands suffuse her face. It traveled through her body and into her desolate heart. She realized that she indeed heard weeping coming from deep inside her soul.

"T-They do?" she asked. Her voice sounded small and vulnerable. Tears had started to course from the Black Angel's empty brown eyes.

"Yes, they do," Selene said with a soft smile. She pulled the Black Angel's head foward into an embrace. The woman buried her face into the princess's lap and wrapped her arms tightly around the small girl. She cried, her shoulder's hitching with each sob. Selene gently stroked the Black Angel's hair as the woman wept.

"It's all right now," Selene murmured, "It's all right now."

The crisis had passed. The old Queen could feel it in her heart. Something wonderous had happened. She turned to the Lunar Guards. The injured guardsmen were being helped by others.

"Clear the throne room," she commanded.

"But Your Majesty!" the chamberlain exclaimed, popping up from behind the column where he had been hiding.

"I am unused to people questioning my orders, Lord Chamberlain," the Queen said in a calm voice, "Since the last time I checked, the royal crown of this kingdom rested upon MY head."

The chamberlain's face paled and he quickly turned and relayed the order over the protests of the guardsmen.

Soon the throne room was empty. It was just the Queen, the princess, and the strange woman in black who now knelt before the small princess with wet cheeks and a bemused expression. The princess herself had returned to playing with her dolls, seemingly oblivious to the Black Angel and the Queen.

"Your daughter is quite amazing, your highness."

The Queen sat down on the steps of the dais, looking at the Black Angel.

"She is indeed."

"She made me remember things I had tried for a long time to forget," the woman said, "and she helped me to heal some ancient wounds."

"That you were once Sailor Andromeda?" the Queen asked.

The woman snapped her head around to stare at the Queen.

"How did you know?" she demanded.

"You forget. Selene is my daughter. Some of what she is and what she can do comes from me."

The woman shook her head in amazement. "I haven't been called that name in two thousand years. I didn't think anyone would even want to remember me."

"Nobody would ever forget the Mad Senshi," the Queen stated simply.

The Black Angel winced, then turned away.

The monarch of the Moon Kingdom went on. "The story is an old legend now. The two mightiest Sailor Senshi fought. Galaxia and Andromeda. But Galaxia was more powerful, so Andromeda destroyed her own solar system in the hopes of vanquishing the mightier Galaxia. But Galaxia survived, and Andromeda was forever named the Mad Senshi for killing three billion of her own people."

"I no longer have my Senshi powers. They were lost to me."

"Nothing is ever completely lost," the Queen said, "Somewhere inside you, the remnants of your powers still remain. Perhaps someday you will find them again."

The two women sat quietly for a moment, watching the young princess play with her doll.

"What will you do with me?" The Black Angel asked in a quiet voice. "I am a pirate and a murderer. I've plundered thousands of worlds over the last two millenia. Your husband died because of me. I should be put to death."

"You were just lost, Yumiko," the princess said suddenly, turning to look at the two surprised women with her bright blue eyes, "But now you aren't lost anymore."

"How did you know my real name?" Yumiko asked in amazement.

"Your heart told me. It was Yumiko who was crying in there." the young girl cocked her head and smiled. The golden crescent on her forehead seemed to glow for a moment. "Stay with us, Yumiko. Stay and be my friend. I won't let you be lonely anymore."

Yumiko turned to princess's mother, a serious look on her face. "Let me stay here as a guardian to the princess. She will be as a near sister to me and I will protect her with my life. Her and those who come after."

The Queen stood up and walked to her throne. She picked up her scepter, atop which rested the Silver Crystal, symbol of the great Moon Kingdom. The time had come at last. A moment that had been foretold in her dreams.

"Kneel before me, Yumiko," she commanded. The former Black Angel knelt before the Queen.

"Will you pledge your service to House of the Moon for as long as you live?"

"I will," Yumiko said.

The Silver crystal flashed.

"Will you accept Princess Selene as Queen and support her fully when the time comes?"

"Her and those that follow. I will always support them."

The Silver Crystal began to glow. It bathed the throne room with silver white light for a moment, then subsided.

"Arise Yumiko," the Queen intoned, "Arise as Seneschal to the House of the Moon."

Yumiko stood up. Upon her brow glowed a silver crescent. She felt the warmth of it filling her with a feeling of acceptance.

Selene clapped her hands and laughed. It was a musical sound that echoed through the empty throne room. She stood up and grabbed Yumiko's hand.

"Let's go play!"

Yumiko blinked for a moment, then let herself get dragged off by the exuberant princess.

The old Queen sat down tiredly on the throne. A great weight felt like it had been lifted from her heart.

With this act, a new era will be born when Selene ascends the throne.

The Queen smiled.

A thousand years of peace and wonder. A Silver Millenium.

Now the legendary Sailor Senshi of this system will rise once more... Just like in my dreams...