Character Sketches #1, Sailor Mercury - Part III, "Mercury"
Chapter 7: An old friend, and plans for battle

Messenger:	Fellow citizens,
	I could cut this story short and say:
	"Oedipus is gone,"
	But what was done was not done shortly,
	And my story breaks away from brevity.

The Sailor Senshi, minus Mercury and plus Tuxedo Kamen, lay on cots in a military medical tent. They had fought long and hard, but to no avail. Half of Neo-Tokyo was being leveled, the other half was filled with fleeing citizens, and a four-star general was demanding the authority to use nuclear weapons.

"For the thousandth time, General," said Moon, "if we use nuclear weapons to save Tokyo, there won't be a Tokyo left to save! Haven't you remembered Hiroshima and Nagasaki? 'Never again' we said. And I'll be damned if I let one of my own, a Nihonjin, set one of those things off in our own country!"

"Sailor Moon, do you have morphine in that bloody IV? Aren't you thinking straight? If you were out there fighting instead of laying here and whining about injuries...ma'am, I have boys dying out there!"

"General." The word came from Luna, and it was cool as ice. "I think it's time you left."

"Or what?"

"Or this," said Sailor Moon. "You're relieved."

"What?!? In the middle of a campaign?"

"Yes. Now get out before my guards assist you."

Mars began to rise, and the general got the message. He departed, shouting about crazy monarchs. Sailor Moon flopped back in her bed. "Maybe I should have let him do it."

"No, Sailor Moon!" But the idea had definite appeal. They had fought youma for ten straight hours, without a break. They had found dozens of new ways to take out their opponents. But despite their victories (which dwarfed all of their previous wins), the youma kept on coming. Even now, as the Dark enjoyed free rein over the city, the souped-up JSDF forces were still at it.

The senshi would still be out there too, if it hadn't been for mitigating factors. Luna and Artemis had berated them, telling them again and again to rest themselves, but the sailors had gone on. In the end, it took Sailor Venus to collapse from exhaustion before they stood down and retreated to lick their wounds. Now they were on glucose solutions and trying to rest up for the next round.

"Good news, guys," said Artemis, walking into the tent. The nurses went on with their work; they had gotten used to talking cats, much as they had gotten used to tending to injured superheroines. "The US says that they're sending three Army divisions over here on the double. Similar offers are coming in from Moscow, London...hell, even Beijing is making a few noises about helping out. We're not alone."

It failed to cheer them up. There was only one reinforcement that would satisfy them, and her name was Sailor Mercury.

"She could be anywhere," consoled Luna. "She could even be on the front lines! Communications at the front aren't too good, you know."

But it was a hollow hope, and they all knew it. The only thing that could prevent Mercury from coming to their assistance was the Grim Reaper, and he had been doing a land-office business on that day. All they could do was sit back and try to recover. It had been a terrible feeling watching Tokyo get leveled the first time. Having to see it happen again was enough to send even the light-hearted Moon into depression.

She raced through the crowds of people. Slowly, the people she passed began to recognize her, and soon the wave of recognition swept from the beginnings of the crowd to the end. After awhile, she was making high leaps, trying to avoid the fleeing refugees who tried to shake her hand.

"They think I'm a savior," she thought. "Heck, maybe I am!" The military had failed, the senshi had withdrawn to recover, the work of the past thirty years was turning into charred rubble; little wonder that they looked upon her as their only hope.

She raced on to the field hospital, cries of her arrival proceeding her.

In the tent, the senshi perked up. Something was going on out there. Lots of shouts, not all of them military. Had civilians broken through the camp's perimeter in search of safety? Were things taking a tragic turn for the worse?

The shouts got louder, and all at once ceased. They heard footsteps coming to the mouth of the tent, and then the flap flew open. It revealed a female with short-cropped hair. Her skirt flapped a bit in the wind.

"Sailor Mercury!" they all shouted at once.

"Hai," she said.

"God," interjected Mars, "she even *sounds* like Ami!"

"I am," she replied. "Or rather, I am now. You met me as Athena Minerva, remember?"

And then all was chaos for a bit.

"So," said Sailor Moon once things had calmed down a bit, "where *is* Sailor Mercury?"

"Right there."

They all turned to see Sailor Pluto, who had, in inimitable fashion, come out of nowhere.

"Nani?" said Tuxedo Kamen. Too many strange things were going on; he couldn't spare the additional mental resources to ponder Pluto's appearance. "Not that Sailor Mercury, we're talking about Ami!"

"There can be only one Sailor for each planet."

"Only one?"

"Well, there's one exception, who you haven't seen. And that's part of the problem. It's for the sake of that exception that you must face Hastings again."

"Yeah, great," said Mars. "But this still doesn't explain where Ami is."

Pluto bowed her head. "She is no more."

"No." Mercury's denial came as a whisper.

"Yes. And get that look off your face, your Majesty." Sailor Moon looked up, startled and guilty. "There's no bringing her back this time, ginzuishou or not."

"But...the future of Crystal Tokyo-"

"-is no longer existent." She had to be hard on them. It was their only hope. "I warned you that it was only a possibility. And that possibility vanished the moment Hastings reappeared on Earth."

"My daughter!" Kamen and Moon said it simultaneously.

"She never existed. But she was supposed to, and that is why we have no time to waste. We must set things right."

"But..."

"Look around you, Venus! Does this look right to you? Things went wrong when the Dark came, when your identities became public."

She took a deep breath. "There were to be two other sailors: but I lost their henshin sticks, and without them, they were doomed to a life of normalcy. It was undoubtedly the work of the Dark. That was my first indication that things were not going according to the timeline as I knew it." Pluto began to pace, coming close to whacking Jupiter on the head with her key a couple of times.

"The second was when your identities came out. That was *not* supposed to happen for several years. When these things happened, I went to the future to check things there. It was a wasteland. No humans, no life, nothing but darkness.

"At that point in time, when your identities were revealed, you were to be in league with Sailors Uranus and Neptune, and later Sailor Chibi-Moon."

"Who?"

"Your daughter, Sailor Moon. But she did not come back, Sailor Saturn is nowhere to be found, Nephrenia never came, Galaxia has been defeated by the Starlights alone: all things that were not supposed to happen!"

"Sailor Saturn?"

"Nephrenia?"

"Galaxia?"

"Starlights?"

"That's not important right now," said Pluto, cutting them off. "What is important is that things have to change, and there's only one way to do that."

"Go back into the past and set things right, beginning with your losing the henshin sticks?"

Pluto was impressed. "That was an extraordinary logical leap, Sailor Moon. At any other time, you'd be right. But this time," she continued, overlooking Moon's crestfallen face, "time travel will only make things worse. The timeline must be erased and begun anew, and the only force that can do that is the zenbunosuisho."

"The what?"

"I'm not surprised you don't know about it, Artemis. Its existence was a very closely guarded secret; only Serenity and her husband knew about it.

"The zenbunosuisho, or universal crystal, is the most powerful crystal in the universe, in existence since the beginning of time. It appears once a millennium, and grants the bearer a single wish, provided it is the right time, the right place, by a person of the right bloodline, and is done in the right way." She turned to Sailor Moon. "The ginzuishou that you carry was originally a shard broken off from the zenbunosuisho. It is less powerful, but still impressive; as you remember, it brought your friends back to life some time ago.

"That was the wistful dream of a fourteen-year-old girl, and you saw what power it had. Time was set back a year, your memories of those events were (temporarily) erased, and to this day few others know precisely what went on with the Dark Kingdom."

"Considerably less if Venus hadn't written her book," grumbled Mars.

"There is that, too," admitted Pluto. "but in any case, that was just a sliver."

There was definite hopefulness shining in Sailor Mercury's eyes as she spoke. "So the universal crystal can bring my parents back?"

"Yes."

She breathed a sigh of relief. Sailor Pluto didn't.

"But you must not."

"Nani? But Sailor Pluto, you just said she could!"

"Yes, Sailor Jupiter, she can. But she *shouldn't*. Haven't you been listening? Everything that you know of since the defeat of the Black Moon Family was *not* supposed to happen. Neo-Serenity isn't to emerge for centuries. Ami and David were not supposed to be married; she marries Urawa in twenty years. And despite the pregnancy test you had, Sailor Moon, Small Lady isn't to be born for a very long time."

Sailor Mars was aghast. "What about keeping the timeline pure? You just told us the entire bloody future."

Pluto looked back at her grimly. Then again, there were very few times Pluto didn't look grim. "Yes, I did. And for good reason: to get you to understand. If we succeed in returning the timeline to normal, none of you will ever remember this conversation. And if we don't, then there won't be much of a timeline left to pollute."

If anything could have made things soberer, that did. Sailor Mercury spoke up. "So if we can't bring back my parents, then how the hell do we get things to normal."

"Wish it so."

"Oh, just click my heels and say, 'There's no place like home?'"

"If you like."

Mercury threw up her hands and stalked off to a corner.

"So," asked Moon, "all she has to do is get the crystal, say she wants things back the way they were before all this mess, and bam! we're back thirty years in the past, with no Hastings, no Dark, nothing?"

"Partly. Although it isn't as easy as that. First, you must find where the crystal will materialize, and that is never known in advance, even to me.

"Second, you must get to that point before Hastings does. That will be near impossible; his forces have by now almost enveloped the world, and he will know instantly when and where it emerges.

"Third, once you have found out where he has it, the four of you must keep him and all his legions of Darkness at bay while Mercury gets the crystal and activates it.

"Fourth, after all this, it will be up to Sailor Mercury. She, in the end (providing everything else goes well), must make the final decision. She could still bring David and the original Ami back, but I cannot answer for the consequences if she does. At best, the paradox would result in significant portions of the timeline being wiped out forever."

Somebody had to ask, and Venus did. "And at worst?"

"At worst, the cumulative effect of so many time paradoxes will result in a catastrophic collapse of the universal wave-function."

"Oh, okay. I though something bad would happen."

"The universe would then be locked into a state of perpetual unchangingness."

"Oh. That was the bad part."

"Hai."

"So, what next?"

"One of the last things I know about this timeline is that Hastings is still based in Greenland."

"Great, we teleport there!"

"Not quite, Sailor Jupiter. First, we do something different. Sailor Mercury, would you care to join us?"

She came out of the shadows slowly. It was evident that she'd been crying, and Pluto was not unsympathetic. If it wasn't for the fact that the fate of the world hinged on their actions in the next few hours, she would gladly let Mercury stand down. But it did, and she couldn't.

"Now here's what you do..."