Chapter 6 "An Uneven Partnership"

Author's Notes:
1. I'm having enough trouble writing right now, so my editing
(such as it is) is even worse...sorry about the spelling
errors. The trouble is my inspiration has been running
off in other directions lately...but a recent word from
Fushigi Kismet reigned me in a bit. I've mentioned her
works before, but *read* them *read them*, *read them*. She's
a wonderful writer...

On with the show!
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For a second the silence expanded around them, robbing the world
of all its colors, and warmth. Pluto screamed, but the sound of her
voice did little to express her pain, shock and confusion.
She sprawled forward, her hand grasping the small golden, crystalline
key-hole lock of the door.

"No..." She said, finding her voice. "Not possible...it's not
possible..."

She stood up, holding the key-hole lock and her staff
and shouted "DARK DOME OPEN...."

Nothing happened, except a grey mist began to pour from the
lock. She shouted again. Nothing happened.

And again. And again--until Diamond grabbed her arms.

"STOP SHOUTING!" He didn't yell, but the words were said with
enough force to get through her panic. "It's not doing anything.
What happened, just now?" He sounded utterly calm, the silver
quiet of his voice only hinting at the storm underneath.

"I don't know..." Her eyes shut, her mind reaching for help
somewhere, but there was none. "The door vanished, and
I felt this pain rush through me...something is not right..
it's like Time itself disappeared!"

"It did...it did.." A voice laughed as a grey hooded figure appeared,
becoming solid out of the smoke.
"Did you forget about me, Guardian...I can see you did, but that
was your mistake! The first time you sent me back into the Prison,
but I'd already weakened the door...and this time, when you lost
control, I was able to destroy the time corridor itself...and
all time in your world is over except for what exists right
here...and I'm going to destroy that as well!"

Diamond dropped his arms from around the quivering Pluto. Instinct
took over, as a blue light flared from his forehead. "You
speak too soon, don't you!?" Light flared as wind whipped forward
from his hands hitting the creature.

"Stop that.." It moaned. "Stop..I say....Stop..." It whined,
slinking to the ground... "STOP..." It started laughing rather
insanely "BECAUSE....its tickling me!" The creature replied snickering.
"You can't hurt me!" It laughed sending a whip of some grey mist
straight out which caught Diamond around the chest and dragged
him forward.

"Diamond!" Pluto gasped, but then focussed her mind.
"Dead Scream" She whispered as the globe
of energy emerged and struck the creature causing it to lose its
grip. Diamond stumbled onto the ground.

"A kitten's scratch only annoys me!" The Entity swore as two whips of
cords came forward to catch them both. Pluto felt
her throat constrict with the pressure. The entity taunted
"Now its my turn..."

A strange whirling of pink roses whipped forward dispersing the
cords and driving them back.

"WHAT?" The creature whined.

"Who you mean... I'm Neo-Sailor Moon, champion of Justice, righter of
wrongs, and the one who's going to teach you a lesson!"
She broke off, pale-pink ponytails swinging as a young girl, about
15 or 16, dressed in a suit very similar to Sailor Moon's appeared.
"MOONLIGHT DREAMING DEVASTATION" She announced as white lights in
the shape of roses speared forth from the small sword she held.

"Say Dark Dome Close, Pluto, hurry" a boy's voice whispered in her
ear, during this attack.

"Dark Dome Close!" She repeated

The entity screamed and vanished. "I'll get you eventually!"
It laughed even as it howled, drawn into the small golden
lock of the door. "For all eternity will be mine to destroy!"

"It's gone...for now..."The girl said. "Pu, I mean, Sailor Pluto,
are you ok?!"

"Who are you?" Pluto asked stunned. The girl looked familiar and
yet didn't.

"Its a secret" The girl said winking out of existence.

"Don't worry." A small boy of about 13 said. He appeared from
nowhere standing in the same place where the girl had stood
"When you need help, I will come."

"Who are you?" Pluto and Diamond whispered at the same time.

"I am Elios, protector of the land of dreams..."

Pluto nodded, having heard the legends of his existence. Again,
he was another person she'd never met before. She'd wanted to, though,
both for his closeness to Rini, and because his duty had a similar solitary
quality to it. "Am I asleep, in a nightmare?"

"If only it were that..." Elios replied. "Sailor Pluto, let me explain.
First, I apologize that I cannot do more to protect you directly." He spoke with such seriousness that on an ordinary boy's face it would have seemed out of place. "Neo-Sailor Moon is a dream of mine, and I lent her to you to guard
against that creature...but once I use a dream of mine in that way, I cannot
use it again."

"Do you know what is happening?" Pluto asked.

"I can guess. All time has been removed from this plane of existence,
except for that which is around the two of you--a small field of
"real time" around the staff. Everything else you see is part of
my realm, the land of dreams."

"This isn't real?!" Diamond shut his eyes as if to block that horror
out.

"You two were holding on to the one thing that blocks that entity
from stopping time completely, and thus you were saved from being
erased from eternity. Everything else was drawn inside that corridor.
If you two had been drawn in also, everything would have ceased
to be--including my land of dreams."

"But, then how is this dream world possible at all? It looks exactly
the same as the real world..."Diamond frowned as he rubbed a foot in the grass, the earthy scent spilling up towards him. "Wouldn't it disappear if all time were as you say, drawn inside that corridor?"

"Dream time works differently than real time." Elios gestured to the surrounding fields of crystal. "You see these things only because
they are what I dream of. Thus of all things in my realm, they
have the most substance and definition. Other things change and fluctuate
with much more rapidity. You two, by being alive, are helping
to anchor this world outside the time-sink."

"Is there anyone else left?" Pluto asked. She stared at the city
before her.

Elios lowered his head, in an almost equine manner. "Not as they
presently exist...and if the thing attacks the two of you--"

"But can't you stop it, like you did before?" Diamond demanded.

The boy shook his head. " Only for a little while. My
power can help protect if the Entity attacks, but it cannot beat him
down forever. Dream-power and real power are different, and real
power must be used to seal him away. When
I helped in the real world before, I focussed my power through the Sailor Scouts, and in particular through Sailor Moon. If you find her--"

"She's gone...when it happened, she disappeared into the time
corridor!"Pluto's skin, despite its honey darkness took on a grayish
cast as the blood fled from her face.

Elios seemed to grow even paler. "I'd feared something like that...I couldn't
feel ...feel the dream of the one most precious to me, and I wondered
if she'd gotten too old so suddenly for me or if something had happened
to her. Now I understand." A deep sadness filled his eyes, but he
looked up at the two of them, and determination edged out the
sorrow. "You need to find Sailor Moon. Only she can stop that entity."

"But how...I just said she disappeared with everyone else!" Pluto said softly.

"She did and she didn't. He hasn't eliminated the past, he
has only blocked access to it, but the future is what he's drawn
inside the corridor. Yet without a future, the past exists more
in my dream realm than in the real world."

"How do you know this?" Diamond asked suspiciously. He hated feeling so
uninformed and helpless in such a crisis, especially a child
purported to be guiding him.

The boy raised a hand which he moved in an arch formation. "Dreams
contain many things besides wishes and feelings, and watching over
different dreams gives me knowledge. I am far older than I look,
Diamond." A small rainbow gleamed where the boy's hand had travelled,
which mutated into a field of flowers. All the flowers faded but one,
which spun in the hand of a small boy with eyes like sapphires who held it up to another. The boy's lips said "Brother!?" before they blossomed into
a smile. Suddenly the boy's face crumbled as he turned to stare at
a cloaked figure pulling a man who looked like Diamond away as the
vision ended.

Diamond stumbled backwards, all composure thrown to the winds.

Elios winked at Pluto, and Pluto felt the incredibly inappropriate urge to giggle at the look on Diamond's usually composed or condescending face. Yet she needed to remember the circumstances. "If he's blocking the
time door, how do we get to the past?!!?"

Elios shook his head "I'm afraid my knowledge does have limits.
However, if you could find the origins of the door,perhaps you could
duplicate the door's construction. I can send you through the
dream forrest, to find a dream of how this happened. Yet which
dream reflects the true history will be up to you."

Diamond raised an eyebrow, pushing down his earlier embarrassment
"That's it? Is that all the help you can give us?" He asked almost coldly.

"I am already straining myself as it is to appear to you." The boy
met Diamond's gaze head on without flinching

Pluto shot an annoyed glance at Diamond "We are lucky he appeared
when he did. If this is the task before us, then its what we must
do."

Diamond bowed his head with a softly whispered "Then lets
start." Perhaps he had been in the wrong not to trust this
Elios boy as completely as Pluto, but caution coursed through his
veins now. What if this boy were an enemy? Could they really
trust him...yet something told him he had no choice. The only
reassuring part of all this mess was that he wasn't alone in it.
The girl, Sailor Pluto, certainly seemed to be adjusting well, and
since she trusted Elios, Diamond decided he might as well.

Pluto studied Diamond as he thought, almost as if she were trying to
determine what he was thinking about. She then smiled at Elios. "I
apologize for him. Please, if you know anything else..."

Elios took one of her hands. "I will tell you, of course. But my first
suggestion is that Pluto, as the guardian of this gate, the answer might lie in one of your dreams."

She nodded. "Then, I suppose that is where we should check."

Elios's form shimmered and the landscape around them vanished.

Everything faded away except the familiar shape of the door, and for
a second, Pluto's heart fluttered, until she realized she could
see herself standing in front. A dream, she thought to herself,
I'm in my own dream, or at least, fragments of a dream I've had.

Diamond tapped her arm gently, as he pointed to the man who was
with her. "He kind of looks like King Endymion" He whispered.

She nodded, as the scene before her gradually shifted into another
pattern. Now the man seemed to be pulling the staff away from Pluto,
and a second later the gate's doors flew open as two entities pushed
forward. The scene mutated again, the doors closing, leaving Pluto
and the younger-King Endymion look alike standing on a cliff-side
path of sorts, which overlooked a choppy wave torn ocean.

The scene shifted again, to a room in the Crystal Palace, where
the dream-Pluto froze in mid-sentence facing King Endymion. Her
hand gestured toward the "pseudo-endymion" who'd been with her early.

Diamond's focus shifted as the dreams reeled like a flood of butterflies.
He saw someone attacking Pluto and Endymion, only to end up lying
semi-alive. He could just make out her face--Zirconia. He knew her,
didn't he? He knew everyone of the people who had been in the Dark Moon
organization. He lost track of Pluto and Endymion, the woman before him
absorbed his focus entirely.

Guilt washed over him as he realized that it was by his
orders this woman had attacked and almost killed Pluto and Endymion.
That is, if this dream reflected reality. Like all his people, he thought
sadly, she'd paid with her life for a brighter future that never
arrived. Wiseman had not wanted them to have a brighter future, just
a darker past more full of misery. Diamond swallowed hard, suddenly
realizing the woman continued to be alive.

Her hand moved as she picked up a mirror from her pocket, staring at
her face in it. Like many of the women on his planet, he realized, she'd
grown vain about her physical beauty to the point that even at death all
she could think about was her appearance. Robbed of a beautiful world,
and dreaming only of revenge, his people had become rather shallow and fixated
on personal appearances. He cursed himself again for what he'd done. Could
he save her now, if he called out to her? But he knew all he saw
were fragments of past events, no matter how real the scene appeared.

The woman's mirror shifted so he could see the images in it. Instead
of her battered face, he saw a darker energy swirling behind
the mirror and the outline of another face there. The symbol
shifted across the woman's forehead from the Dark Moon to something
he couldn't make out. The change appeared too briefly for him to be sure of
it, as a huge explosion wiped the scene away in a scattered storm of black
crystal. When the explosion cleared, the woman's body had disappeared.

Strange lights and sounds streamed across the space in random intervals,
until he shut his eyes to block out the infusion of information.

"I destroyed the time bridge!?" Pluto asked, her question pulling him
around to where she stood staring at a different set of images.
After a few more shifts, each coming quicker than the one before,
the space around them became absolutely blank,
and then the image of crystalline trees rose up all around them.

Pluto sunk to her knees, somewhat exhausted by the barrage of dreams.
She put her hands to her temples and kneaded a bit.

Diamond knelt beside her. "I could barely see or process
all of that!" He hesitated slightly before asking "Did you learn something!?"

She looked up at him. "That stirred some memory of mine, but I
can just start to feel it move...but then my head..."

Diamond put his hands on hers, and began to slowly stroke in a complicated
pattern of swirls. He brought her hands down, and began to work the
pattern up her arms.

She stared up at him, caught off guard by the unexpected contact, the
pain in her head, and the tenderness with which he moved his hands.

"What are you doing!?" She inquired at last.

"Should I stop?" He dropped his hands immediately, and started to
rise. "This is an old technique of massaging different pressure points to
relieve pain... On my planet, we often couldn't grow plants for medicines,
and we learned to control pain in other ways. ." Sadly he couldn't
help but think how true that was, not only had they learned to control
pain, they'd also learned to inflict it.

Pluto tilted her head in wonder. His touch had taken all the pain away.
She began to push herself upright again, but felt his hands steadying
her.

"I'm ok, thank you." She said. Her tone indicated appreciation as much
as they did a warning. He promptly let go and reclaimed a polite
distance. She felt an urge to take back the words, or at least repeat
them differently, but then another image caught her eye.

She was drawn into the vision with its dizzying explosion of sensations.
First, she saw a black so deep that she forgot what light even meant. Then,
she felt a coolness course down her body, as faint trickles of blue-white
light tickled her peripheral vision. Her body shot forward into the unknown,
plunging into an ocean of wind and heat. The scene shifted, jarring her
incredibly. Trees rose up stretching for the sunlight, as soft dew kissed everything awake. A woman, rather like Neo-Queen Serenity stood, her silvery
hair cascading down loose over her back and dress. Her hands held a strange
crystal, sparkling red-white. The red came from the reflection of the blood
pooled by the body of a large dragon like creature, underneath the snout of
which a man's body could barely be made out. The Queen smiled entranced
by the gem in her hand, but tempered by a hint of sadness for its cost.

The scene shifted. Now the earth glowed innocently above, while the woman
turned a small girl in her arms, rocking her. The girl, too young to
understand her mother's feelings was pleading for some game. The woman
kept staring at the planet reflecting the light of the sun, a sadness so
raw only a child could miss it. "Your father..." She whispered briefly.

Nausea rose in Pluto's stomach, but the kaleidoscope of dreams gave her
no respite. Now she could see the woman standing before 4 young women.
She raised the crystal as strange objects emerged from the bodies of
three of them. Bright light blocked her view and the images dissolved
into something else.

The Queen stood staring at a group of people, no not people, for their
features were entirely too different from humans. The eyes too long,
the ears too pointed and the colors too brilliant on their hair and skin.
They handed the Queen a small branch of something, which grew next to
the crystal. The Queen nodded and the crystal glowed, the wood splitting
and the door forming. The group of strangers vanished through it, the
giant door hanging from nowhere, leading to nowhere. The Queen
waived a hand, and a small girl, one of the four Pluto saw before,
came forth. The girl turned her head violently, and Pluto found herself
staring at herself. The dream faded without a sound.

Strong arms held her, rocking her back and forth. "It's ok, it's ok..."

She couldn't breathe she realized, feeling the too rapid rush of air in
and out of her body. Slowly she regained controlled, slowing the panic
and the sensation of falling.

She crooked her head around, and the arms released her so she could
turn around. Diamond's grey eyes peered into her. "What happened...
This time, I saw nothing but you...and you started thrashing about like a wild
animal."

"I'm sorry." She said. "You didn't see anything?" She asked confused.

"Not a thing. I'm not sure how these dreams work...the last time I
did see something, but not this time. I take it you saw something."

She nodded. "The door, if this dream is correct, came from some kind
of tree originally. And, at some point, from my other dream, I lost
control of this staff and two entities attacked. The first was the
Wiseman, but the other...the other is the creature we're fighting
now." She shook her head. "I didn't want to remember, but I must...
I tried to forget. I did try, but ...it happened so long ago..."

Diamond's hand gently brushed the sweep of her hair away
from her face. His gaze rested on the shadows at the corners and
underneath her eyes. "You need a rest."

She shook it off, so it fell to the ground.
"I can't rest...not until I solve this, and stop that creature!
This is a dream world, and the world I know is in peril. I cannot
rest. I will not rest. How could you even suggest it!?" She exclaimed
one hand raised as if to strike.

He met the angry gaze without any flinching but said nothing.
"If you want to continue, then we will."

"The time bridges.....there *were* two..." She sat up suddenly.

He turned to her. "What?!"

"Diamond, what I saw earlier unlocked memories of mine that I'd
tried to hide. A long time ago, when I lost control of the gate,
Wiseman created pathways between different points in time. He
only used one, which I destroyed--"

"But the other could still be active."Diamond completed her thought
"The visions I saw showed Nemesis exploding...but I was hovering
over its surface in the ship from Crystal Tokyo. The planet couldn't
have exploded...so something else must have happened to it."

"What did you see?" She asked quickly.

He began to explain the spiraling series of events that he'd glimpsed.

She stopped and pulled something out of her pocket. A small
watchlike object, its screen showed the events Diamond attempted
to describe.

"What is that?!" He asked looking at the scrying device.

"Something Crystal Tokyo's computer guardian gave me a long time ago...
Or rather, a few days ago...I was travelling forward in time when I
received it, and I had forgotten about it. It shows visions of
other times, rather like projecting the dreams a psychic might see."

"So you can see into other time frames with this?"

She nodded. "If I visualize what you're telling me, I see something...
But when I try for other times, I'm getting blanks..it really is if
all time has stopped. The only things I see are you and I."

"Future or past?" He asked, watching their screen selves talk.

"I don't know..." Her eyes widened, a blush
spread across her face, the device falling from slack fingers as she
turned around.
Diamond caught it, and stared at the images of himself and Pluto
locked in a deep, rather sensual looking kiss. That stunned him,
until he noticed that their clothing was entirely different than
what they wore now. It reminded him of the things they wore back
in the period of time targeted for the Black Moon attack...

"It must be malfunctioning." She said, turning around grabbing
it out of his hand and putting it away into her pocket. "Something is wrong with it, perhaps because the rest of time has disappeared. I
apologize."

"Why?" He whispered "And at least we know its capable of showing the
future..." He kept his tone deliberately neutral, calming. Did she
find the thought of kissing him so distasteful? If so, how in
earth was that to be the future? He had to admit to himself though,
he didn't mind that prediction at all. He shook himself to redirect
his wandering thoughts. Why was their clothing different? Where
could that have come from?
Inspiration struck then, as he reconsidered
the images he'd seen in the previous dream of Nemesis's destruction.

"If we have a future, and a past, then time is existing where
we are... Perhaps, if we could somehow "She sighed, stopping.

"What if what happened was not an explosion in terms of matter being
destroyed, but that the second time bridge was knocked loose from its moorings
and began to randomly swing through dimensions? If that is what
happened, we may be able to use that bridge to get to another time than
the one we're in now. And because we're there, time would be
real there too..." He gripped her hand as he continued
"I'm not sure how to activate Wiseman's bridge, because my powers are
different now, so this may not work as I remember." He
said. "But at least finally, I'm not useless." A blue glow
spread from his fingers as he curled them together then released
them outward, then tilted his hands together and pulled them
apart as if to rip something.

"Let's go..." He cried as a wave of displacement hit both of
them.

"What did you do!?" She cried as they stepped out into a dark
cavernous pit. The setting seemed vaguely familiar--it was
the central core of Nemesis. An odd feeling permeated the
atmosphere making everything feel out of synch.

"I teleported us to Nemesis's core...As I thought...all time
isn't trapped, or we couldn't move at all since time and space
are obviously parts of a whole. If we exist, then everything
else exists. We just need a way to get to it, and this
time bridge, broken or not, is the way to do it."

She turned and stared at him. "I'm not sure of what you mean at all."

He shut his eyes. "We don't have the Time-Gate, but we do have this
bridge...its here somewhere and if I can feel it, you and I
are going to find Sailor Moon in the past...and then we're
coming back and she can seal that thing away and restore
this world." Pluto began to feel an even stronger wave
of displacement hit her. She fought the urge to scream, as
everything faded away.

She awoke slowly, her eyes blinking rapidly to impose some order on the
waves of light and patterns of shadow. What had happened to her after Diamond had attempted to pull them through time? Something must have
happened, for she no longer saw the crystal trees of the dream forrest nor
the scarred cavern of Nemesis's core. Instead, she was in a small room.
The walls were mostly bare except for a few well placed paintings. A huge
picture window led onto a balcony, through which she saw
maybe twenty other buildings bathed in the last golden-honey drops of
the sunset.

She sat up, her hands pushing against the soft padding of a sofa. Clearly
wherever she was it was not Crystal Tokyo. She stretched, noting that
her body felt different, though she couldn't describe how. Slowly she swung her legs down off the sofa from where she'd been laying. Getting up, she
surveyed the room again before facing the window again to glimpse the
city outside.

The light had faded now, and the interior of the room began to replace
the city-scape. "Tokyo" She thought. She was back in the past.
Yet what period of time was this, and in who's apartment was she?
She looked up,and found herself staring at Darien.

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When the excruciating pain stopped, Diamond breathed a sigh of relief.
He felt drained by the exertion of his powers in such an unfamiliar way.
Whatever evil Wiseman had done, Diamond had to admit he'd certainly
made using magic much much easier. Yet Diamond knew he'd rather
endure this kind of pain that ever again be led down such a destructive
path.

Hoping to ease the stiffness in his body, he stretched. Why
did he feel so odd? He was lying down, he realized, as he tried to stand.
The room he was in was
dimly lit by the fading light of the sun. He'd never seen anything
like it really. Small rabbits
danced here and there across the walls, on the bed, a cute motif
that made the room feel cozy, feminine and juvenile. He turned,
his hand catching a picture of three people. "Sailor Moon"
He thought staring at Serena. The man he knew as Endymion or
Tuxedo Mask, though also in an untransformed state, stood behind
the girl holding her. The pleasant smile on his face echoed in
the adorable grin on the small pink haired child who stood between
them. As he stared at it, the sun set completely leaving the
room almost completely dark.

A small chime of sorts rang out. He heard footsteps, and then
he heard a woman's voice call out "Serena, are you home?
Darien's on the phone...he said its important."

After a second, the steps came closer, as did the voice.

"Serena, I know you're in there...You can't fool your
mother! Come on honey, don't you want to talk
to your young man! Tell him to come to dinner tomorrow..."
The voice said something else Diamond couldn't make out
as he looked for a place to hide. He must be in her
room, somehow. Lucky to find her so quickly and yet, he had to be careful who
saw him in the past. For all he knew, they still thought
of him as an enemy. If only Pluto were still with him....

"What's going on Serena? Are you allright?" The door
started to open and light from the hall
flooded inside. Diamond dodged into the closet. He was
surprised at how well he fit inside, because at first he'd thought
it too small to fit his frame. The dim light must have
deceived him, he thought thankfully. He didn't relish
having to explain to this woman why he was in her daughter's
room. Yet even still he couldn't quite get the door closed.

"Ah hah!!!" The woman exclaimed flicking on the light "Sleeping
already, and I bet you haven't done your work for clas--" She
stopped staring at the empty and still made bed. "What's
going on?" She said to herself, turning around, and noticing
the closet door.

"Serena! Come out of there! What on earth has got into you?"
She said tugging Diamond's arm. He was surprised so much
that he fell forward in a tumble of stuffed rabbits, bears and
other assorted toys.

"Sometimes, honestly, I think you still act 8 instead of
18..." her mother chided. "Didn't you hear me tell you Darrein
is on the phone?" She handed over the handset to the cordless phone.

Diamond stared at her curiously. What on earth did she mean?
It was at that moment Serena's mother stepped out of the way
of the large ornate mirror above the dresser.

In its reflection, he saw only the room, the woman, and Serena. Serena's
mouth was completely open with shock, for a brief second until
she disappeared, and his head hit the edge of the bed.