What is this that stands before me? Figure in black which points at me Turn round quick, and start to run Find out I'm the chosen one Oh no Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath ---An Alternate Reality, the Present--- Ants. Filthy, stinking little ants. Making noise, making more ants, playing in the sun. Ants. There were once ants of every shape, size and color. There were firefighter ants, doctor ants, store clerk ants, student ants, construction worker ants... Senshi ants... There were the four ants who tried to form a containment field around Mugan Academy. There was the pink-haired ant who lost her pure heart. There was the time ant, momentarily putting off the inevitable. There were the two dyke ants who in the end realized all their struggle was for nothing. Finally, there was the queen ant who foolishly surrendered the grail and inadvertently help to usher in the Age of the Great Silence. They were all gone now; all of them. All the filthy noisy ants, crushed under the heel of the Messiah of Silence. And ever since the world had been cleansed, all had remained silent, dark, undisturbed. But now... Now someone was disturbing the immaculate tranquility of the beautiful new world, walking around, raising a ruckus, extinguishing the perfect darkness. This inexcusable transgression could not be allowed to go unpunished. The new ants had to be crushed as well, lest they further desecrate the holy sanctity of the new world. It was time for the Messiah to rise once again from her tomb. Within the dark bowels of what was left of Mugan Academy something dark and oily began to slither. A second soon joined it, then a third began to curl and wiggle. The basement floor became alive with black squirming tentacles resembling thousands of eels or snakes sliding against one another. Slowly, from the midst of the dark horrifying mass a body began to emerge. It was a young emaciated woman with chalk-white skin, sunken eyes and a black five-pointed star on her forehead. The tentacles moved in a frenzy all around her, lifting her up, encircling and entering her. As she at last came to the surface with arms outstretched, the tentacles receded. The herald of the Tau Nebula and Pharaoh Ninety was needed once again. A pair of nostrils flared open and took in their first full breath in over ten years. The woman opened her black eyes, smiling maniacally in the darkness. ---Tokyo, the Present--- "Hoshi!" the child's mother screamed as she ran out of the grocery store, "Hoshi!" "You monster!" Mars shouted, "She was just a child. How could you?" Sailor Jupiter angrily started to stride toward the scientist, "You can't take us all on." she snarled as Venus likewise stated to approach. "Oh no?" Saeko asked mockingly as she brought the orb up to point at Jupiter, "Watch me." Before she could use the weapon, a gigantic lightning bolt landed in front of her from the sky, moving from right to left in front of her and tearing a two foot wide trench into the concrete of the parking lot. The Sailor Senshi present moved back shielding their eyes from the intense light produced and the flying concrete debris. Looking back, they saw a young woman who looked a bit like Usagi but with a different hair style come from above and land between them and the scientist. The woman narrowed her eyes and clenched her fists as bolts of static electricity encircled her body and shot out from her, causing the glass front of the supermarket as well as every car windshield and parking lot light within a hundred feet of her to explode outward. Michiru, still within the store, used the diversion to run to the back and transform. Saeko took a step back, a look of fear now evident on her face. "You?" she asked, "They sent you back for me?" "What did you do with the Lady Minerva, Saeko?" the woman in front of her asked as her eyes began to glow white, "Tell me now or..." "Wait a second," Sailor Venus asked, "Just who are you supposed to be?" Saeko looked at the blond in front of her inquisitively, "They don't know?" she asked. A grin slowly appeared on her face, "Of course! You were told not to tell them, weren't you? Mustn't cause ripples in time, must we?" she asked sarcastically. Sailor Neptune snuck out the back of the grocery store. The newcomer intentionally ignored Saeko's comments as she continued to come toward the scientist. "You're coming with me to answer for your crimes," she said, "But not before you tell me where Lady Minerva is." The scientist began to slide her hand into her pocket. She had four flash grenades smuggled into her prison cell, and had used two already, "She's free!" she exclaimed, "Don't any of you understand; I freed her!" "Deep Submerge!" Sailor Neptune yelled from behind, aiming the attack at the scientist. Saeko quickly aimed the sphere at the attack coming towards her and in a flash of blue light it disappeared. ---An Alternate Reality, the Present--- "And then what happened?" Hoshi asked as she held her hands up to the fire to warm herself. Sailor Minerva had the tattered blanket she'd found earlier wrapped around them both and was telling her a childhood story. "Well, then Urashima reached home and learned that three hundred years had passed and everyone he knew was dead. Feeling sad, he remembered the jewel encrusted box that the queen of the Dragon Palace had given him and opened it. But the box contained his true age, and..." Minerva stopped as she heard something like the distant sound of thunder. She saw in the distance a blue light flash once again, and began to prepare herself for another new neighbor in this hell she found herself in. What she got instead was a very nasty surprise in the form of Sailor Neptune's water attack shooting out of the beam at high speed towards her and her companion. The child started to scream in fear. Minerva had no time to question why her friend's attack was appearing out of nowhere; she had to act and act fast. "Great Shield!" she shouted, surrounding herself and Hoshi with the force barrier just in time. The attack ricochet off her shield and was sent careening into the giant statue made up of skulls near its base. As the thing exploded near the support structure, the entire figure shook. "Oh shit." Minerva whispered as the statue of skulls started to noisily collapse. It sunk violently downwards up to its knees, a cloud of dust and debris rising up to its abdomen before it began to tumble the rest of the way sideways. Hoshi buried her face in Minerva's shoulder and covered her ears, scared of the noise. Minerva looked on as a rain of skulls and dust began to deflect off the force field. Unseen by the Senshi, a dark figure was exiting the remains of a building at that very moment not far away. ---Crystal Tokyo, 3043--- Lady Pluto looked on as the deterioration in her beloved's condition continued. Her wife was no longer fading in and out of solidness, but rather back and forth between mere transparency and near invisibility. She could feel the ripples within the time stream, multiplying with every second as not just her Minerva but countless other lives were slowly dissolving. Soon, history itself would begin to realign itself to exclude them all, the over five hundred in the present, their ancestors going back over a thousand years, and the woman she held in her arms. The most infuriating thing for Pluto was she couldn't remember what had happened. How could there be a gap in history for the Princess of Time? There were two possibilities to account for this, neither one being very pleasant. The first being that time had already begun to realign itself to accommodate for there being no Minerva. As such, memories of their time together were already starting to fade. The second was that somehow a mental block had been placed on her around or shortly after the time of the events, preventing her from knowing what had happened. She wanted with all her might to go back herself after the scientist, to hurt her, to make her suffer just as she and her beloved were now suffering. But she couldn't leave Minerva. Not now. Not when any moment may be their last together. Her love opened her eyes a crack and smiled weakly, "Don't cry." she whispered, "Lady... Lady Jupiter will... save me..." Pluto held her close, noting how cold she had become. "How?" she asked, "How can you be so sure?" Lady Minerva's smile widened ever so slightly; her memory was a bit better than her wife's. ---Tokyo, the Present--- Sailor Neptune stood there stunned as what had just taken place, "That... That's impossible." Saeko pulled her hand out of her pocket and detonated the third flash bomb just as Sailor's Uranus, Moon and Mercury arrived. Emi managed to get her right forearm up just in time to shield her eyes. The others were not so lucky. "Damn it." Emi muttered as she reached down quickly with her left hand and touched the pavement to ground herself, releasing the stored up charge of electricity safely into the earth, "How many of those things does she have on her?" , Promptly rising again, she saw that the woman was running for the streets. "Emi!" Sailor Moon called over, "What..." "The street to the left of the store." she said, "Usagi-chan, where does it lead to?" Every Sailor Senshi present with the exception of Sailors Moon and Uranus were stunned; she knew who Sailor Moon was. Uranus answered first. "The subway." the sandy blond answered as spots continued to dance before her eyes, "She heading back to the subway." Emi quickly took off in pursuit. She was almost to the curb when an extremely angry looking Sailor Pluto landed in front of her. "Where is she?" she demanded. Looking at the blond rapidly running her way, she aimed her staff at her as Sailor Saturn arrived. "You!" she ordered, "Who are you, where is..." "Damn it, not now!" the blond yelled as she started to run past her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Saturn start to block her path. Emi frowned; there was no time to stand still and explain what was going on. Saeko had to be stopped now. "Jupiter low shock." she muttered. The two bolts that escaped her body struck both her friends, knocking them to the ground as she continued after her quarry. For Sailor Mercury, who now had her vision back, the sight of both Saturn and Pluto twitching on the sidewalk was enough to answer every question she had about whether or not Usagi's "sister" could be trusted. She took off after her. Sailor Venus, seeing Mercury run off after someone in pursuit, followed. As Emi ran after Saeko, and Mercury and Venus ran after Emi, Sailor Pluto clutched her staff as she slowly got to her feet, a look of unbridled rage present in her eyes. ---An Alternate Reality, the Present--- As the dust cloud continued to hang in the air, Minerva looked down at her young companion, forcing a smile. "Hoshi, it's over." she said reassuringly. The child looked up into her grey eyes and frowned. "Sailor Minerva-sama, where are your friends?" she asked, "Where are the other Senshi? Where's Sailor Moon?" Minerva stared silently into the girl's trusting face, trying to think of what to say. Before she could form a response however, her attention was taken by a rattling sound. Looking away from Hoshi she saw that all the skulls and debris from the statue were being pulled back by an invisible force, almost like the backdraft from an atomic blast. The cloud of dust likewise was pulled back, and as the Senshi watched the statue of the angel of death slowly began to rise again. She also began to realize that the rattling sound was from the thousands of skulls knocking into each other. In under a minute the figure was whole again, once again holding her arms up in offering to an invisible force. Minerva held Hoshi as she lowered her shield to get a better look. "A crude likeness, I'll grant you." a woman's voice said, "But don't you think trying to destroy it is being a bit too critical?" Minerva turned to her left to see a figure standing some thirty feet away, clothed in black with dark hair that reached the ground and followed her like a wedding train. On her paste-white forehead she saw a black five-pointed star. Her features looked vaguely familiar, but twisted to look dark and sinister. Her lips were black, and her eyes... Her eyes looked soulless, lifeless. With a start, Minerva recognized the figure before her. "H... Hotaru, is that you?" she asked. The woman in front of her tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. "Hotaru?" she asked, the name initially having no meaning. Then, a cruel smirk appeared, "Oh yes. Hotaru. Another ant. A coward who in the end lacked the courage to do what would've been necessary to stop me or the one I serve." Minerva nervously began to take a step or two back, "If you're not Hotaru, then who are you?" "I am the holy herald of the Tau Nebula, the servant who serves under the divine auspices of Pharaoh Ninety. I am Mistress Nine, the Messiah of Silence; the divine, immaculate silence which you and your child have sacrilegiously seen fit to desecrate. Prepare yourselves for your penance."
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