"What do you want?? Let me go!!" A crimson-haired woman shrieked as an over sized golden panter held her arm inbetween it's razer shrap teeth.
But it was more than the pain. It felt as though she were losing energy. She became weaker and weaker until finally she collasped into the panther's cruel grip, careing nothing of the pain.\
The ruby eyed cat then threw her aside, shredding the skin off her bare arm as she flew into the cold, night air.
Pharaoh licked the sweet blood from her coarse lips.
Crimson eyes flickered through the crowd which had so quickly gathered.
A young man in a black leather jacket whispered into his friend's ear. An eight-year old child tugged on her father's blue shirt.
"Pick me up Daddy. I'm scared."
The father stood,too stuned to move.
The panter stood, as well, save for two flickering eyes.
Everyone waited with baited breath.
She did not have much room left. Only needed a few more.
A young and slender girl bent to calm the weeping child.
Perfect.
Pharaoh moved forth one rugged leg.
It seemed everyone gasped.
Once again, Pharaoh moved her large eyes over the crowd.
And then without a single moments notice, she ran towards the too-skinny girl who stood bent over, stroking the amber hair of the young child.
Her muscles rippled sensitively beneath the pale night moon as she preceded to jump into the still air, headed straight for that girl.
The croud paniced and within seconds the street was empty, save for the girl, the child, and the stunned father. The fater who hastily moved to save his little girl, instead was knocked to the ground by the forefoot of Pharaoh. He landed head first onto the hard pavement, blood leaking from the wound in his silver hair, trailing down a path that lead to the child's soft leather shoes, curling into a puddle of bright scarlet. The child looked to her feet and opended her diminutive mouth to scream, yet before a sound could escape, she felt cold asphalt hit her back and travel up to her head. She shut her eyes so tightly it hurt and crystalline tears swam down her chubby cheeks. It felt as though her stomache caved in, only she could not open her eyes to see.
Air. Gritting her teeth she opened her small mouth wide to draw in precious air. Nothing.
Pharaoh cared not for the little girl pinned tightly beneath her over-sized paw. She cared only for the fair-skinned girl whom she held by two narrow shoulders beneath her powerful forehand paws.
A yellow-brown light overcame them as energy was transfered from one, helpless being, to the powerful panther that held her at bay.
* * * * * *
So she sat, kneeling besides the man's limp body. So limp. It was like a doll she once had given to her by her parents for Christmas one year. How it would bend at it's cotton waist when she held it. And when she first lay it down upon the hard wooden floor of the kitchen, it's head flopped limply to the side, resting on the shoulder of it's blue cotton dress. It held its arms out, uselessly. It was dead. She knew it from the eyes. How they would stare and stare. And the false smile painted ever so carefully with shining red paint.
Ree buried it in the garden the very next day.
Was it still there? Dirty with time, holes caused by countless worms and slugs who had long since stole the shine from her sparkling violet eyes.
This man was her doll come to life.
She had never told her parents what had become of that doll.
Her parents! Oh, had they noticed she was gone? It all happened with such haste. Did they think she lay beneath the warmth and comfort of her old, purple sheets? Head resting peacefully upon the soft down of her blue feather pillow?
A soft, purring whisper sounded. She looked up and in a distance saw Iris whispering for her to follow.
Ree took one long look at the lifeless form she knelt beside. And then, clucthing her stomache she let out a dreadful sigh. She rose. Gracefully she turned, letting her satin eyelids close over the world.
"Iris...." She whispered.
But when she opened her eyes, Iris had dissapeared from sight.
"Iris!" She ran sloppily to where Iris had been. And then she saw it.
And the child screamed.
Iris was there, standing stunned, stareing. "Ree, look."
A mess of three people and a massive golden panther played out a gruesome sceve before her.
The panther must have been ten feet long, for the child beneath it's back paw did not nearly touch the body of the flaxen-haired girl held beneath it's two front legs. A deep, orange glow filled with stars of white coarsed over the trio like a waterfall of light.
Five feet away a man layed with open eyes and open mouth, his face forever locked in a look of pure pain. Blood still poured from a great gash a top his head that crossed over his silver hair from ear-to-ear. It poured like a stream to the child's feet. There, a puddle forming of his blood and her from the cuts caused by the panther's rapter-like claws. Too round to be rapter's claws. Too sharp not to.
Ree closed her eyes once more.
Iris looked away from her, eyes locked upon the scene before her innocent, turquoise eyes. "Sailor Earth, use it." Iris bent her neck downwards. What was it? "Your, your...Sand Storm!"
Ree cocked her head in Iris' direction.
"Say, Earth Sandstorm Attack!"
What the hell?
She raised her arms out on either side of her body. "Earth.." it was almost a whisper. She imagined her her darkness the scene befores her, willing the innocents not to be harmed. Picturing the target as tough it stood before her. "Sandstorm..." louder, this time. She felt the power gather within her whole. She imagined it concentraiting into her two white gloved hands as she brought her arms around and above her head and she felt a ball of energy form. She pictured it there, glowing and bright. The color of mist. Swinging her arms forward she willed the ball of energy to...to..."Attack!!"
And then, dancing on the back of her eyelids she saw a ball of spinning, grey enery expand, becoming millions of tiny particles of sand. Hurling at impossible speeds to hit the muscular body of that beautiful panther. Hitting it and piercing it in a thousand different places.
She heard it's roar of pain, both in the ringing sharpness of reality and in her mind's eye.
She pictured it, sailing into the cool night air, landing on it's side, fifteen feet from where it had been. Blood, trickling, stainging it's lovley coat of gold. Bright streaks of rouge overtook it's whole
And then, Sailor Earth opened her eyes.
She saw the panther as it had been in her thoughts, motionless, colored in an oddly beautiful maroon.
Like a child she connected the dots of red which had fallen like rain to the concrete floor. Her eyes traveled over the body of the lifeless father, to the pool of blood beneath the child. Her ice blue eyes stared up at her. They would never move again.
And the skinny flaxen haired girl.j The pale hair mingled with blood and sweat was all she could see of her. She had been trown to the side of the road into a mound of upturned earth.
She lay motionless upon her stomache. Face-down into the gruesomely cruel mud.
And then her chest rose, struggling all the way up, and fell back to the wet earth. She was alive.
Sailor Earth closed her eyes and sighed. When she her eyes once more, she was facing the bloodied body of the beast. It wasn't moving.
Good.
It's chest heaved
the tail that was facing her twicthed, slightly. She noticed for the first time a hint of ebony at the end of that wip-like tail.
A drop of blood fell from the only cut upon that wretched tail unto the white line in the road.
A drop of water fell from the heavens.
Pharaoh lifted a massive paw upright, summining all strength she drew herself up onto that leg, till it buckled at her knee.
Her nose grazing the road, eyes closed tights, she ordered all her other legs to straighten.
And then she raised her head towards Sailor Earth and opened those crimson eyes.
Ree felt her whole body lock into place. Struggling with the air she let out a silent sigh, losening herself as breath escaped through her cruedly chapped lips.
Turning her eyes to the ground, she hardly took notice of that massive creature heading for her.
She felt the power rise in her once more.
Iris backed away. What was Ree up to?
Sailor Earth felt various strands of hair-her hair-gather around her, tickling her cheeks, playing games over her eyelids.
Pharaoh, now pleased with the small distance between her and her prey, prepared to attack, waiting so patiently in that agrovating stature that so caused the anxiesty to highten within her victom.
Grey mists of pure power began to circle Ree. Now she closed her eyes.
And Pharaoh pounced.
Sailor Earth smashed her white gloved palm to the ground, opening her eyes, screaming, "Stone Riser!"
In middair it caught her. Stone pierced through the shoulder of the beast's front leg. Pharaoh gave out a cry of pain as she slid down the stone, rippin that leg in half. It caught her inbetween the bones of that paw. And there she hung in a mess of flesh & blood.
Sailor Earth still knelt. She did not have to look up to know. To see the stone spikes fifteen feet high surround her so closely. That above her head dangled the dying body of that beautiful golden panther. How it hung, caught by the bones in her own massive paw.
Ree relaxed her arms allowing them to rest peacefully upon her knees. One knee turned up, one parallel to the earth. Head bowed. Hair trickling down her cheek like a brilliant stream of blood.
The rain came down harder.
Wind rushed through her hair causing her to look up.
A cloud of silver & gold surrounded Pharaoh. It got thicker & brighter until she could see no longer the panther that she had killed.
And when it seemed the mist could get no thicker it began to clear away.
And Pharaoh was gone.
Iris slithered out from behind a large stone spike. She catiously walked over to where Sailor Earth knelt.
Iris looked up into her solem azure eyes and she sat down next to her knee.
Together, they sat.
Sailor Earth tought of Pharaoh. What had become of that beast? Was it truely dead?
Iris sat, eyes starring straight. Her little heart pounding hard against her velvet chest.
How had Sailor Earth known of the Stone Riser when even Iris did not?
In the distance, lay the body of the eight year old girl. Dirt flew to her face and stuck there with no warm fingers to flick it away. The little mouth so full of blood was slightly open as though she were whispering to an invisible friend.
And her father in the distance, face horror stricken, body forever tense.
A stone arch blocked sight of the only surviver. The too-skinny flaxen haired girl who looked so familar to Ree.
A silver tear fell from Ree's tender cheek. Slowly, she bent her neck down.
* * * * * *
Pharaoh's chest struggled to rise, it struggled to fall. Her tail twicthed to and froe, a snake struggling to break free from some trap.
Silver heels clicked together on an unseen surface. And the girl with the hair to match the panther's golden coat made herself known.
No. That was only a shadow. Her hair is lighter, almost white.
Emerald eyes widdened at the sight which lay before her. She hurried to the great panther, kneeling to rest her head upon the hard crust of blood dried onto satin fur.
"Oh Pharaoh, my darling sweet Pharaoh." With the palm of her other hand, she held up the ruby crystal she had kept concealed beneath the warmth of her jacket.
Pharaoh took it carefully with her icy fangs. Closing her eyes the orange power of her mixed with crimson power of the crystal until all the orange became red and gathered within the ruby.
Pharaoh hadn't energy to drop the crystal & as her jaws losened, Krystillia took it from her weak-yest so muscular jaw.
She hugged Pharaoh tighter as the panther's eyelids began to fall.
A black sandpaper tongue reached out to graze the thin arm before her, once more.
And as the tongure retreated & the eyes fell shut, her chest rose once more & fell then, forever.
Krystillia's eyes overflowed with tears & a river of silver rushed down her cheeks, landing to wet dried blood.
That Sailor Senshi would suffer.