Life during Wartime
Outline version
[Cal & Ti back from missions. Ti takes break heads home to Topass
who's watching Hematite & Alan. Cal back to coordinating CT military
efforts]
[Later - Takes break to visit Senshi chamber, talk to Minako. Discovers
Tom has broken in (his way of checking security). Visit
respective spouses. Tom gives Cal info he picked up from
Maxwell while checking in on Californian resistance]
[Cal stops to pay respects to Rei. Suddenly she begins waking up &
the shield fluctuates. Stops but neither knows what it means.]
[Emergency call from Artemis. Azurite has returned to CT two members of
her lesser senshi foreign legion, Sailor Caledonia and the critically
injured Sailor Foxfire]
[Cut to Azurite & Fiona. Medical SciMages unable to treat Hitomi. Pyrite
arrives and uses sensing abilities to modify healing spells to bypass
senshi magical resistance. A & F head for Azurite's palace quarters to
crash while H being treated. *Have Azurite comment Palace quarters spartan
as haven't had them long. Have house in CT but that's been turned over to
several refugee families for duration of emergency, housing shortage in
now overcrowded CT.]
[Margrave and Arachne drop by to cause trouble]
[Pyrite visits, Hitomi serious but should recover. They can visit later.
Tells Azure welcome will have to wait as staff briefing due. Fi decides
to catch up on sleep rather than get in the way. En route Azure confirms
suspicion Pyr must now know Sailor Foxfire is not a lesser senshi but he's
going to stay quiet about it as it isn't vital info and it's important to
her that it stays a secret.]
[Staff briefing - Various military operations including tie into "Casablanca
Revisited, rumours about Dark Crystal. Capable of breaking through shield?]
[Most urgent items dealt with, time to intro Maxwell data]
"Now that we're all up to date on the military situation I've got some
new information about the Nemesians origins to share. While this has
definite historical interest it's of questionable contemporary usefulness.
But it does clear up one of the mysteries about the Nemesians."
Calcite paused to open the folder. "You've all heard the Black Moon
leadership raving about how the invasion is payback for Serenity exiling
their ancestors when she created Crystal Tokyo. Those of you who know
history will have never heard of this happening. Those of us who were around
at the time are equally in the dark as we don't remember her doing anything
like that. But now we have an answer brought to us by Starhunter, from Mike
Maxwell. A name some of you might remember."
Margrave nodded, "Last of the Mazaels ... gloomy guy when I knew him.
Blamed himself for Beryl's invasion, at least for the timing. Figured if it
hadn't been for him she'd have broken through years later when the Senshi were
ready to handle her instead of things being so touch and go. Me? I figure it
was good training. Toughened 'em up for the other waves of invaders. Not to
mention making life easier for all of you here who were glad to get out of the
Dark Kingdom ASAP." She smiled slightly, "It must've been about the mid 21st
when I found out he'd been celibate since his little foray into the Dark
Kingdom. Fell hard for a youma and never got over her death. Poor man,
living in such pain, shutting himself off from life's greatest pleasure. It
touched me deeply!" As she'd expected everyone was looking at her with
varying degrees of cynicism. She had laid it on far to thick even for the
Crystal Tokyo natives present. "So I gave myself a little project and looked
him up." Her grin widened, "If he'd fall for one youma who couldn't possibly
have been as drop dead gorgeous as me then there was no way he'd be able to
resist me."
Azurite snorted. "You went out of your way to seek him out? What
happen to having so many vying for your charms that you've always had to turn
clients away?"
Margrave's grin widened. "Oh, I've never had a shortage that way. Why
would I? No, it just seemed like a waste that a wizard of his caliber was
languishing alone. Not to mention that I've always found it handy to have
powerful men at my beck and call." Calcite immediately became fascinated by
the documents before him and hoped this conversation took a different turn.
"So what went wrong?"
Margrave shot a glare at Azurite. "It's hardly my fault if I couldn't
seduce someone as screwed up as him. I underestimated the depth of his
obsession with her ... that and his low threshold for innuendo. Took me a
while to realize subtle was hopeless and try the direct approach." She shook
her head. "You'd expect a wizard nearing his first century to be a bit
more worldly. The number of times I thought he was going to start
nosebleeding ..." She let it trail off as she remembered accosting a
furiously blushing wizard in the halls of CTU. Sort of pathetic really. But
Azurite was about to gloat over her failure so a pre-emptive strike was in
order.
"As I said he was really obsessed with his dead lover. Why else would
any man turn me down? I did everything I reasonably could, even looked up
whatshername's description, fashioned a glamour of her and dropped by his
apartment ready for action." Thoughtfully she added, "Only time I ever wore
another youma's guise on business. That is if you don't count Sailor
Arcturus."
"WHAT!"
Margrave ignored the interruption. "Sadly even that didn't work. He got
real miserable, broke down crying then asked me to leave after he pulled
himself together. Pity, he could have been useful to me and it would have
been good for him. There's no joy in self denial." Margrave shook her head,
"I can get any man in his right mind but Maxwell was scarcely that. As I
said, obsessed! Wonder if he's still hung up on her? Probably not, it's
been almost a millennium."
Toma shook his head. "You're wrong, Margrave. Far as he's concerned
B'dekka was his one and only. I'll bet that ten thousand years from now
he'll still be mourning her."
Margrave rolled her eyes. "Abyss! And I thought Rei had hangups but at
least she lets her hair down occasionally!"
It was Von Tramp who put things back on track. "Mind giving us
youngsters a little background. I have no idea who you're talking about."
Calcite nodded. "Sorry Henry. Okay, briefly Mike Maxwell is, far as I
know, the last descendent of the Mazael clan. A family with much longer roots
than the Ainos as it can trace its ancestry back to the Silver Millennium.
Amazingly despite not being immortal they preserved the magic and history of
that time throughout the ages. Admittedly the history got a bit warped but
that's sort of inevitable over god knows how many generations. The Mazels
were committed to preserving the ideal of magic as a force for good so they
took a dim view when black magic resurfaced and pledged themselves to wiping
it out. Unfortunately the black mages had organized themselves into their
own clan and kept passing their knowledge onto their descendents. So the best
the Maezels and their opponents could do was stalemate each other. Tom?"
Starhunter leaned forward and took up the narrative. "The way Mike
explained it the dark mages originally organized themselves into a group
named the Brotherhood of Darkness." He paused a moment before adding, "I
suspect they might have been founded by a branch of the Maezels that wanted
to use their knowledge of magic to assume power but that's just speculation.
Anyway the Maezels declared war and thought they'd wiped out the Brotherhood.
In a sense they had, when it re-emerged it was called The Society of Shadow.
Since then it's had a hundred names, the Black Circle, the Illuminati, the
Openers of the Way and so on. By the time Mike was head of the Maezels ...
actually the only one left, they were calling themselves the Ancient Cryptic
Recondite Order of Necromantic Ysian Mystery." Henry frowned as he thought
over the name.
"Wait a minute! The name ..."
"Was an intelligence test. Any member who got it moved to the higher
ranks, everyone who just accepted it got to be on the goon squad. This is
where I come in, they resurface with big plans and Mike needed backup. Since
the Senshi were busy and everyone else was MIA he recruited me. To make a
long story short the Order's powerplay failed and they were scattered. We
began hunting them down over the next decade and a bit until the Acolytes
arrived and forced everyone with powers to band together. You all know how
that turned out. Anyway after that the Order disappeared which was very weird
since the mana wells were unsealed and they didn't have to settle for scraps
of magic anymore. But we couldn't find them. Oh, there's been no shortage
of necromancers and black magicians since, my hunters have been busy keeping
them under control. But they postdate the unsealing, what happened to the
order was a mystery. Until now."
Tom took a dramatic pause so Nanaka (Rei's deputy) broke in with a query.
"Is this Maxwell the same one who helped found Crystal Tokyo University then
left abruptly on its hundredth anniversary?"
"Bingo! Mike had a fairly major policy grievence and after a few years
he figured they weren't going to change their minds so he left."
"Policy grievence?"
Tom coughed, "Yeah well ... see you have to understand that Mike's an
anarchist so he was never happy under a monarchy even one as benevolent as
Serenity's. Not that he'd have been happier under any other form of
government but I digress. Getting back to Mike the straw that broke the
camel's back was when Serenity banned teaching high magic after one of the
university's graduates grossly abused his knowledge. Mike fought the decision
tooth and nail, he kept saying, 'High magic doesn't kill people, people kill
people!'" Von Tramp snorted.
"Great, a wizard who talks in bumper stickers. What else does he say?
How about, 'They can have my magic wand when they pry it from my cold, dead
fingers'?" Titanite shook her head.
"No, you're getting your wizards confused. That was what the Deathlord
said to Rei-chan when she told him to surrender or face the consequences."
Sailor Polaris cast her mind back 900 years. "Come to think of it those were
his last words ... unless you count 'AIIEEE!' Though she didn't so much pry
it out of his fingers as scoop it out of the ashes ..." She caught the look
her brother was giving her and shut up.
"The upshot of all this was that after the Deathlord disaster caused a
shakeup at CTU Maxwell severed his ties with Crystal Tokyo and walked out.
This left a major vacancy on the CTU faculty . However by one of those odd
coincidences that happen around here with alarming frequency at about the
same time Pyrite and Azurite were growing tired of living behind glamours
and false identities. You can guess who took Maxwell's place as head of mana
reseach. As for Maxwell he dropped largely out of sight but we knew he was
out there somewhere. I've long suspected he helped found the CAF but I didn't
know for sure until now. None of which matters, what's important is what he's
discovered." Cal whispered a command and the hologram of Nemesis reappeared.
"It seems that in the wake of the founding of CT the remaining members of
ACRONYM got scared. While magic was back they had just seen the champions of
light restore the entire planet and defeat an enemy that had resisted every
scientific, military and magical strike against them. They were outpowered
and outclassed. What they wanted more than anything was a secure place to
retreat to and build their power. It appears that somehow they managed to
open a warpgate to Nemesis and fled Earth in a mass exodus. That was almost
a thousand years ago and over the centuries the story of their arrival became
twisted. Now they no longer talk about the exodus, it's become ..."
"The exile!" Everyone looked at Azurite. "So instead of telling their
kids they ran away rather than risk facing Serenity they decided to make the
story more heroic. They were brutally booted off Earth and condemned to rot
on Nemesis because Serenity opposed their beliefs." Next to her Pyrite
stirred.
"Realistically I'd have to say a group of dark mages is hardly likely to
pass on an unbiased account to their descendants."
Margrave snorted. "So we've got a group of spoiled brats looking to
repay Earth for an ancient wrong that never happened in the first place.
Wonderful!" Then she looked thoughtful, "Actually that kind of reminds me of
back home. Ah, the good old days."
"Shut it, Margrave." There was no particular force to it, Azurite and
Margrave had long made their opinions of each other too obvious to emphasise.
"This is fascinating from an academic standpoint and would make for an
interesting study of how this belief has shaped their history but I don't
see it doing us much good. They wouldn't believe us anyway and there's plenty
of them more interested in conquest and loot than righting ancestral wrongs."
"I tend to agree but keep it in mind. If anything useful occurs to you
let me know." Calcite noticed Pyrite checking something on his terminal but
paid it no mind, his cousin was always working on something.
It was after he dismissed the group that Pyrite asked him if he had a
minute. He waited until they were alone before asking, "What's up?"
"I don't know if it's anything useful but a possible significance that
probably escaped Mike occurred to me."
"What?"
"I know we missed most of the Great Darkness but we know the whole story.
How for the final battle all the world's magic wielders gathered in Tokyo."
Calcite nodded. "Now thanks to the senshi we know that the Uncanny Sisters
travel into the past, lose most of their power and settle down in Tokyo. As
they haven't been sighted recently they may already have gone back."
"Maybe but what's the connection ... ah, you mean they would have been
part of the gathering?"
"Right. Presumably they kept quiet about their origins, either from fear
of being thought crazy or even worse from fear of being believed. But those
were exceptional times, they may have let something slip." Pyr linked his
compucard into the table's holo projectors and 4 familiar women with black
cresent tattoos appeared. "Cooan, Beruche, Calaveras, Petz. I was trying to
trace them. Cooan stayed in Crystal Tokyo after the change, she died in 2082.
Some of her descendents joined yours but considering how many citizens can
trace their bloodline back to you and Mina that's more or less inevitable.
Beruche and Calaveras waited until things calmed down in the outside world
then migrated with their families, Beruche to California, Calaveras to
Singapore. With the external datalinks down I can't check what happened to
them later. Immortals being few and far between I imagine they're long gone."
"I expect Rei kept tabs. We can check her records when we have some
spare time but right now ..."
"I know, there's a war on but this could be important. Here's the thing,
there's no record what happened to Petz. It's like she vanished into thin
air ... or to another planet."
"What are you suggesting?"
"Just this ... things were desperate towards the end of the Darkness.
They thought it was the end of the world. What if one of the sisters let
slip that even if they fell it wouldn't be the end because humans dwelled on
another place in the solar system. That another human habitable planet
existed." Calcite stared at him and Pyrite continued.
"I keep thinking how did ACRONYM open a gateway to Nemesis. There would
have been flux conditions during the early days of the unsealing but even so
they'd have had a much better chance of opening the gate with something to
attune it. Something Nemesian."
"Are you suggesting Petz gave them the key to travelling to Nemesis,
journeyed with them and became her own multigreat grandmother?"
"It's a possibility but we don't know if she either volunteered to help
them or survived the gateforging ceremony. Maybe they kidnapped her but maybe
she never quite fit in and was homesick. We've no idea. Of course I could be
way off, maybe she just decided on a low profile, dropped out of sight and
moved to Australia or something. Though could be significant that unlike the
other three there's no record of her having any children in the years
preceeding the Acolytes so she had the least ties to Earth. Of course the
records from back then aren't complete, especially from the years of the
Darkness and the only people around back then who might know are too busy
powering the shield to answer any questions. But the chance remains that it's
the final link in the time circle. Just something to consider."
Calcite groaned aloud. "I really hate time travel."
"It does mean you live in interesting times ... metaphorically speaking."
[Endymion shade with frozen Serenity. Mulling over the fact that his
temporally displaced state allows him to send dreams to his younger self
which ties up another loose thread from R]
[Later. Hitomi wakes up, Azurite and Fiona there. Will move her out of CT
ASAP]
[Life goes on in the beseiged city]
[End]
Credits:
[Usual SM & SME credits]
ACRONYM name devised by Sam Ashley aka The Evil Midnight Lurker What Lurks at
Midnight
(
geocities.com/tokyo/temple) (
geocities.com/tokyo)