And now I present what will be the first in a series of Suburban Senshi Expanded Universe Mini-fics that will lead the way to the 4th Anniversary realtime RP event, "the Infinite Crisis of Suburban Senshi." I hope ot have a new segment out each day. You'll get a few bits today to help fill out the backstory-- Dr. Xadium
T-4272: Day of Defeat
Laughter cascaded through the darkened, pitch-black sky as Chaos Galaxia watched the "Light of Hope", the sword forged out
of the heart of her liberated Sailor Crystal, Chibi-Chibi, crack and crumble into dust as Neo-Princess Serenity watched on, sad for
what had happened to the small girl, but unwavering in her belief that fighting was Not The Way.
"It's all over!," Galaxia bellowed as the Sailor Starlights looked on in shock and betrayed suffering. "The Light of Hope you believed in is now in pieces! Now, no one can stop me!"
"No! You're wrong!" Serenity shot back, eyes brimming with the defiance of the righteous. "No! You're wrong! Nothing is gained by fighting! Because we end up hurting each other!"
"Hmph!" Galaxia snorted. "You don't have a soldier's courage or pride, do you?" She looked down contemptuous against the naive
fool who dared challenge her. This blasted child! Blessed by her macigcla crystal that had easuily given her one victory after another, what did she know of sacrifice? What did she know of the pain of losing one's self to Chaos in order to seal it? how dare she lecture the one who had given everything-- her entire being-- to being peace and safety tot he galaxy for so long!
Eyes filled with steely resolve, and furled by her sureness of her righteousness, Serenity continued, locking gazes with Galaxia. "If a soldier's pride means hurting one another, I don't want it!"
"What?!" Galaxia hissed in rage, taken aback by this spitting upon the very philosophy that had guided her life as a Sailor Solider.
"Have you given up, Sailor Moon?"
Slowly, Serenity issed forth a reply from the depths of her heart, her voice getting stronger and louder as she continued. "No, I haven't! I love this world!Even though there are lots of sad or difficult things...... I like this world very much because I could meet everyone! I know you know....how wonderful this world is!"
The young woman looked up to Galaxia, hoping, praying that her words would reach the noble spirit of Galaxia trapped in the chaos-wracked frame standing before her. She began to rise up to meet her eye to eye
Galaxia did not pause, her anger growing more by the second. "Stop joking! This world can't be protected by someone who won't fight! It's because of your weakness that all your friends are gone!" Her fists trembled with rage. It had been so easy to take the crystals of thsoe senshi. They barely even put up a fight. What the hell was wrong with them? Did no one else care about
doing their duty as warriors against the terrors of the night? Were they ALL as spineless as this one?
"They're not gone!!" Serenity cried out. "The Starlights told me... that if I don't give up, they're always with me! It's possible that everyone is really gone when I give up. So, I won't give up! Never!"
Galaxia's rage grew as her face grew into a mask of hatred. "How vain! By giving up fighting and losing your soldier's pride...what can you do?" She unsheathed and extended a black blade, crackling with Chaotic force, its power boosted by her own rage at the antics of the little girl who seemed to have no conception of how things worked in the universe at all. Did the think her little toy gave her the right to spit in the eye of the others who had to suffer through pain, grief and loss to achieve the pyhrric victories that barely held back the demons at the edge of the world?!
Serenity kept coming closer to Galaxia. "I won't give up! Because I believe! The world I love... this world everyone tried to protect... ..that small hope left in your heart! I believe in it!"
A blinding white ki aura lashed out from Serenity as the pure brilliance of her beliefs shrouded her body in a cloak of hope, sincereity and hope for the future. The universe itself shook from the power of her heart reverberating out through the stars. She reached out a hand to Galaxia.
"Believe in this," Galaxia said coldly, bringing her sword down in a swift stroke, the sharpened hatred of its blade tearing into the shoulder of Serenity, a gusher of blood exploding outwards into the space between them. As chaotic force began to ravage Serenity from within, her blue eyes went dark, and her soul whimpered "no..." weakly.
no... i reject....
Faced with the cold hard truth of Galaxia's blade rending her body, Serenity was in shock, both physical and mental. Here was someone her high-sounding words had failed to reach-- a being whose convictions and beliefs were equal... and opposite to her own. Just as she believed in the overarching power of goodness to heal, so too did Galaxia believe in the power of Chaos to corrupt. And Galaxia's own desire to protect, to bring order and peace to the univere by any means neccessary, the resolve she had forged aeons ago fighting the Chaos Senshi that had sacked her world-- that primal desire to avenge, to cleanse, to prevent it from ever happening again-- it was winning.
Serenity knew her life was ending. The Blade was pressing through her flesh, severeing nerve, tendon, muscle, vein and artery. But she could not-- must not allow this to pass. She had stopped Metallia before via force of will-- this would be no different.
Willing every last particle of her being to this end, Serenity used the part of her that had become Ginzuishou over the years to divert, shape and flow reality. She pulled herself and Galaxia down into the core of the planet, the rock and mantle swirling and reforming around them, hollowing out a giant cave where they now stood in a pocket of atmosphere, a large howling black
plain upon which the warriors stood, almost frozen.
Around them, time changed. Serenity and Galaxia appeared in the sky again, recreated, and this time, as Serenity wished, Galaxia's blade broke, and the warrior broke free of her bonds, becoming pure and reviving all her victims. The world was saved by the purity of a young girl, as it should be. Everyone lived, and everyone was happy. Time moved on for the universe, and history recorded the world as being saved. It didn't seem to be any different than the miracle that had reshaped the world after
Metallia's attack some years ago.
But it was. Even as a part of Usagi-- her Id-- continued to live her life in peaceful bliss on the surface of this remade world, living and
loving and even time traveling to the 31st Century, deep in the bowels of the planet. her original body remained standing almost perfectly still, Galaxia's blade tearing into it nanometer by nanometer. The grains of sand were falling in the hourglass of life that
defined the existence of this new Earth. For once the blade-- now held back only by Serenity's Ego and super Ego-- finally cut down the real Serenity, like a rubber band stretched to breaking, the world she had saved would shatter back to Galaxia's vision-- a blasted, ruin hunk in space filled with naught but her battle thralls.
But no one knew of this horrible sword of Damocles that hung over the world... not consciously anyway.
T-66
Sakura Xadium Aino stood at the controls of her TARDIS, hands gripping the shiny polished steel surface of one of the main panels.
It had been just a few short hours since FBI agent Fox Mulder-- obsessed with following up on a strange common message being found in the memories of alien abduction victims undergoing hypnotic regression-- had triggered the end of the world.
Pulling away at the console with all her hybrid strength as a Time Lord and a Sailor Soldier, she began to rip the frame apart, wincing the metal warped, circuits sparked, and a strange glow began to shoot out from the console-- the first rays of power from the power source of the TARDIS-- a link to the fantastic energies that lay at the singularity point of a black hole.
Soon, Sakura knew, that power would be released, and it would tear into her body, suffusing her energy just before tearing her apart into nothing more than leptons. But in that instant before she went-- she would have total power. For one instant of planck time, she could channel that force. And channel it she would. Wistfully, she remembered.
Remembered how earlier that day Mulder had come to the house looking for Sailor Moon. Remembered how he had told the fantastic tale that subjects under hypnosis all claimed to see a bloodstained blond girl standing at the end of the world, so tired, so loney, in such pain. Remembered how he had found the American transfer student, Serena-- an alternate universe version of Usagi herself (although she did not know this) and hypnotized her, thinking he was going to hack into the mind of some kind of god-force that ran the world.
Fox Mulder tried to touch the mind of God. Instead, he tapped into the mind of Serenity, which, already weakened due to its slightly insane Id having time traveled away to the future, and so tired of being stuck in seemingly infinite detente with Galaxia-- released its ego into Serena, finding the freedom it so desperately sought. As Serena left to live her life possessed by the ghost of her alternate self, Serenity's Superego, now unsupported, began to falter.
At the center of the Planet, Galaxia's blade sped up, cutting faster now. Serenity's life began to ebb. The world began to waver and crack, its restored matrix, the embodiment of a martyr's final wish, beginning to fall apart.
At the same time, other forces were converging. Among other things, the energy waves from the 31st century time gate explosion that had occured after Sailor Mercury's failed bid for power had finally reached Earth of the present. If they hit Serenity, her weakened body would surely fail, and her illusion would end, everyone's lives crashing and burning to a horrible halt.
Yes, Sakura thought, as she tore apart her beloved TARDIS, the Time and Space machine she had rebuilt with her own bare hands, the energies of the Eye of Harmony lashing into her, killing her, empowering her. If she did nothing, the world would end in just under five days. But if she took the power of the vortex within her, and spread it out with her dying breath, she sould make a barrier-- a barrier that would hiold back the end... for 66 days. After that, the world would implode into pure Chaos.
"Save Serenity II..." Sakura said, sounding confident to the end, even as she died, her TARDIS exploding around her and fusing with her energy to create a barrier against the oncoming storm. "Save her, before it's too late. Stop Galaxia from killing her, or in 66 days, it's all over."
And with that, Sakura Xadium Aino was dead, herself and her TARDIS exploding into an arc of golden light that tore across the heavens and space and time.
T-32
Soul Society, The Other World
"So you bastards," 11th division Captain Kenpachi Zaraki, a tall, muscular and quite insane Death God with long spiked hair-- cackled, brandishing his mottled, chipped and damaged Zanpakutou, (soul slayer) blade, Who wants to take me on?"
There were over 500 seated officers from various divisions of the 13 squads of Soul Society-- the spiritual guardians of the afterlife-- watching on and shaking theior heads, muttering. Zaraki was beyond insane. He was a fighting juggernaut who had risen to his position as Captain by killing the previous captain of the 11th squad. He fought with sheer brute force and even kept one eye covered by a patch so as to contain his immense spiritual power and give his enemies more of an advantage. No one was fool enough to challenge him for the captaincy of the 11th squad-- no one who wanted to remain alive, anyways. Well as alive as anyone in Soul Society could be.
"I'll take you ALL on!" Zaraki bellowed, the gleeful bloodlust in his voice carrying across the assembled throngs. "Come on, doesn't anyone here want to give me a good fight!?"
"No one would DARE challenge you, Ken-chan!" chirped Kenpachi's lieutenant, the short and adorably cute little girl Yachiru Kusajishi.
"GAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
There was a loud cry from the sky above. All heads turned to look at the source of the noise.
"Hmm?" Zaraki asked curiously, back turned to the source of the sound, only slowly turning to face it.
From high in the air, covered in golden energy, plummeting from high orbit, having somehow breached the dimensional
plane, the spirit of Sakura Xadium Aino, clutching her sword in a desperate attempt to balance, screamed through the sky
at stupidly high speed. Literally and vocally.
As Kenpachi finally locked onto the source of what he guessed was a battle cry, he was smashed through three hundred feet of pavement by the out of control Time Lord landing directly atop him. After the dust of the terrible explosion subsided, everyone flocked to the rim of the gigantic crater in the middle of the 11th squad grounds.
Sakura moaned, half-concious, twitching in pain, hand clutching the blade of her sword Arataka. Under her, knocked out cold due to the chance supersonic impact, was the prone form of Zaraki Kenpachi.
"11th Squad Captain Zaraki Kenpachi has been defeated!" A generic death god yelled in shock as a murmur ran through the crowd. "By an unknown outsider!"
TEN MINUTES LATER
"I have looked into your soul, and it is pure, the carrier of the Blood to Vanquish Evil of the Shinguuji clan. Your soul would have come here anyway. Under the rules of Soul Society," the First Divison captain intoned, stroking his long beard, "since you defeated a sitting Captain in front of at least 200 witnesses, Sakura Xadium Aino, I hereby bestow upon you the rank of Provisional Captain. You will lead the third squad until a permanent replacement from within our ranks can be arranged."
Sakura just blinked and nodded dumbly, not even quite sure where she was. She didn't even know when the black robes of the Shinigami and white captain's jacket of 3rd division had been slipped on her.
So much for the peace of the Grave.
