Starlit Ruins

by Simon Woodington

His anger, and resulting augmented fear were plain, facing the five righteous warriors as they did. In more than a year, the multiverse had skewed his plans dramatically, somehow twisting the result to their favour, so that they now confronted him with power of which he was understandably wary. It was more than he could have foreseen. Yet he merely glowered at them, like some hateful statue, unmoving, almost attractive in his domineering lance of eyes and face.

  It was the moment.

  'Why are you alive?' he began, his voice deep, resonating with his dramatic emotions. 'If nothing else, I must know that.'

  Usagi stared impassively upon him, surrounded by her remarkable friends, encircled by a glorious silver light. She said nothing, leaving her pure existence to justify where words could clearly not.

  You are not meant to lose.

  Phate's words rang with unmarked clarity in the minds of each defending warrior. Air surged through her lungs, her angelic body, as confidence flowed. Astonished by her audacity, he snarled dangerously, nearing the bladed edge, anger further darkening his bearded facade.

  'Usagi Tsukino, there is one item, beyond all I have caused to be wrought upon you, that you must know.'

  Usako! Summon me!

  But we don't… we… oh, yes, we do! Usagi decided, bowing her head abruptly, seemingly ignoring their furious opponent. Slowly, each of the five women nodded, even Ami, who wore a hesitating smile.

  Five successive utterances of brilliant holy light ushered in the presence of the same in total familiar beings.

  'What is this trickery!'

  "Mamoru!" Usagi cried, comforted by the arms he used to shield her as well as acknowledge their unavoidable bond. There was a great pause as Uraki-Ayo's intent was halted by the multiplication of power before him.

  I'm glad you're persistent, she thought, resisting an urge to kiss him. What about the Neo Senshi?

  Even facing his fear of Galaxia, he shuddered at the impressive force that had assembled before him.

  The troops are powerful enough. They'll be fine, he assured her. Nasura trained them well.

  Usagi set her assured, unflinching glare upon him. With a hateful snarl, he clenched his bony fist around a hardwood staff of pulsing invisible energy, and caused a hole in the fabric of reality, which strained back into time, to form before them. At first, it was dark, revealing nothing, as a wall of grey stone would. As he spoke, however, images of a forest, of the dawn of events drawing to this point, began to form. 'I am impressed. Genuinely, personally impressed. None of my senshi, not even your clone-sister, Jisuruka, has succeeded as you and yours have. You and I… no other greater power next to the kindred souls of the universe shall ever be known again.'

  Your arrogance serves you well, Uraki, chimed a silken tones of entreating death.

  Usagi watched in concealed horror, a scene she had not been witness to; Rei beaten aside like a great paper doll by the powerful elemental lion, and as she fell in a torn heap, the spell wavered, as if a stone had been skipped across its pond. The Usagi of past arrived, gasping and crying out at her friend's near deathly wounding.

  'You could have evaded this.'

  There were eleven unmistakable sharp intakes of disbelieving breath, and a throaty, omnipresent female chuckle. The image portrayed the sailor suited leader turn to the flame lion rather than take Sailor Mars into her trembling arms. Those same arms trembled with an overwhelming rage and sparking agony as Mars passed on, pushing crimson in a final breath through her lips and slumping into a motionless heap.

  Within the image, even as Usagi's somewhat trebly voice rose in a jarring scream, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus gave cries of heart-shattered defeat. Usagi's pain fueled her power, pushing it beyond the limits she would never have known until then. A hedonistic scarlet light flashed into existence around her, shattering the blue portal which had barely formed, dissipating the beastly flame lion with an unearthly roar, and introducing such violence to her friends that they would spend months in the hospital to only wind up paraplegics for the remainder of their lives. The image slackened like a dropped curtain, and faded out of effectiveness, as well as reality.

  'The cost, as incredible as your current lives, could have saved you so much, Usagi.' A hand had appeared in the darkness, gloved in white, virgin silk. He took it, bringing it gently to his lips. 'But consider the possibility…' he smiled, taking the slender arm out of the shadows and drawing the rest of her white gowned body into the remote, off-white light.

  Usagi then drew in such a length of air that she felt somehow nauseous of it.

  'Usagi, no…' Ami whispered in a high, wan voice.

  'Hello Usagi-chan,' she smiled, trailing her free hand across the span of silk across her thighs, up between the delicately detailed silk half covering her cosmetically augmented breasts, and to her affected pout of a red lipped mouth. The smile itself was no event, it was the twisted emotions dancing in her dreadfully familiar eyes that nearly drove Usagi to fearsome tears.

  'What are you trying to pull, Uraki?' Mamoru snarled boldly, stepping forth vocally.

  'Aren't I what you always wanted?' she hefted her breasts with a nasty, unpleasant grin. 'Just the way mine liked 'em.'

  Shocked, Usagi faced Mamoru, and queried of him with her eyes and the soft expulsion of his name. 'No,' he denied faintly. 'You know my heart, Usako. That's never what I wanted.'

  Wistfully, she nodded, reading in his heart the very truth and feeling that without it, her doubt would have certainly led her astray of his undeniable loyalty. Her eyes fell upon the parallel of herself, and took to unconscious study.

  In this oversexed woman, Usagi read the difference in the choice. By turning that angry power to sustain Rei rather than allow her to perish, she had demonstrated love, and integrity. Somehow this had kept her through the torturous years of life on the besieged Earth of the rifts. And yet… the woman before had succumbed to her more base desires. The ultimately rare, but thwarted thought of having a man dominate her, as some willess sex object, to turn around and use the ginuizisho against friend and foe alike, to forsake her mother's wish and partake of the self-forbidden sake she knew her mother kept. To plunge into every iniquitous lure that tugged at her soul, to deny her higher self. The righteous, the loving, the moral.

  'I know you,' Usagi stated surely, gripping all the more tightly to Mamoru's calming firm hand and arm. 'And yes, I did make that choice. We were the same girl once, but not anymore. Uraki-Ayo seduced you.'

  'So? You think I don't know that? I know you too angel girl,' her alter replied tartly. 'I know inside there you're curious what it's like to abandon yourself to your animal, hentai thoughts. I mean, come on, you never had the courage to seduce Minako. I did. Her being crippled just made it more interesting.'

  Usagi snarled disgust.

  'Oh really,' she huffed, thrusting her noticeably wider hips against Uraki-Ayo. 'What about Rei and Minako? Didn't you ever wonder? I didn't get to see it, but oooh, wow, don't you wish had it on tape?'

  'You bitch!' Rei growled ferally.

  'There's plenty more angel girl,' he threatened, seeming to ignore Rei as she caressed Uraki's thigh suggestively. 'Like how I let my Mamoru role-play me against my will…'

  'Stop!' Usagi finally flared, the idea firing a searing flare across her consciousness, and summoning a dark presence in her stomach. The innocently coloured but diametrically opposed young woman fell silent with a triumphant smirk. Rage boiled within the angelic Usagi. Her darker counterpart was winning.

  'You are a lie!' Mamoru declared. 'What does this prove, that you have forsaken your Moon Kingdom.'

  'Moon Kingdom?' she paled, turning to Uraki, who waved his hand negatively.

  'He has tricked you, Princess!' Mamoru asserted.

  'Shut up!' Uraki snarled vehemently, taking a step forward.

  'What does he mean?' she asked, her face as a lost doe. 'Princess?'

  'He is confused,' he assured her. 'If you are a Princess, it is of my Kingdom here. Forget him
. Remember how he treated you.'

  'Hm,' she mused, Uraki's desire settling itself back upon her subjected will.

  'I have nothing to hide,' the angel Usagi stated, a rush of uncertainty teasing emotional vertigo and making her head spin. There was silent moment where she attempted to clear her emotion webbed thoughts. 'I have nothing to regret, except maybe what I have not done…'

  'Oh please,' the other drawled, bored already. 'Save the 'I'm holier than thou' speech for someone who gives a damn. I've watched you all those years. I know how I would have loved to abuse the demon hunter powers you had. Just so, so cool. Too bad you're a kissy-face-angel-pie-lovey-dovey-goody-two-wings now.'

  'What do you want?' she demanded vehemently. Her dark twin seemed not to notice her words.

  'Obviously you're too angel-sweet for casual sex and multiple partners, drugs, telepathic trips playing with other peoples' minds, and all that fun stuff. But baby,' she leaned forward, displaying the ample crevasse between her unnaturally round breasts,'"haven't you ever just thought about it? Turning over the Astroturf to see what's under?'

  'You know I have,' she admonished, adversity proven strength in her tones. 'But I never acted on those feelings. I wasn't even until I became Sailor Moon that I even felt them. Besides, they were fleeting. No more than curiosity. I love my family, Dad, Mom, by brother, and Mamoru too much.'

  The miscreant Usagi rolled her eyes. 'Fine,' she moped. Her voice then turned callous, challenging. 'I just have one more question.' Usagi instinctively marshaled her defenses as she felt the sour, bitter manna coalesce within her alter's sultrily modified body. 'Who's stronger?'

  Usagi was immediately hard pressed to counter the strike of her shadow self, until Mamoru joined in, wrapping his free arm about her as he did so. 'Not fair!'

  It was clear to her that part of the cacophony of anger they blocked came from the outrage of her gaining what she could not; honest love. For in truth, Usagi gleaned from her alter's open mind, the Mamoru Chiba in her embittered life had become everything she feared; an abuser and an alcoholic. To evade his victimization of her, she had submitted herself to the sexual interest of whomever could, or would, stifle her emotional need, as well as turning to every mind blotting method she could find. The breast augmentation she had succumbed to out of fear of his randomly violent will. The rest, in desperate hopes of sustaining what remained of her sanity. The rest of the senshi, on the other hand, had collectively lived no more than eight months. Ami's mother had finally willed the release of her daughter from the life sustaining device to which she had been attached for three emotionally scarring months. Minako survived five, conscious, but depressed by her friend's taking advantage of her, while Makoto retreated her will to live last, no longer perceiving purpose in life, unable to do something as simple as walking.

  Her sole desire was to punish her angelic self for what she conceived and felt she could never have. However, as her emotional turmoil flagged, as she felt it pour through her hands in the company of the viscous but somehow unsatisfied lonely manna concentration, the inner shard of underlying doubt as to her true purpose came forth. For it is no surprise to learn that even all of her years of seeking companionship and acceptance through sex, mind-altering chemicals, violence, and other self nullifying means, she was not evil, only wanting.

  Uraki-Ayo felt only disappointment as his long term bedmate and mystic companion tumbled to her knees, the tears of nearly two decades bottled hurt pouring over her suddenly flushed cheeks.

  "Usagi," she rasped, a staggering cold roaring through her stiffening limbs. "Forgive me! I… never knew..!"

  The target of her pleas moved not, but soared to her emotionally, knowing intimately her skewed being.

  "I never had a mother," she wept, her eyes locked to her consummate dimensional compatriot. "Mama died when I was born… Please… forgive me!"

  As her eyes fluttered closed, she fell forward, but never touched the frigid, stone floor. Her lifeless form had departed that reality long before then. Usagi let her barriers recede, glaring with such intensity at Uraki-Ayo Ginzui that he was forced to gather his great store of spells and manna to maintain his failing confidence.

  Tell me Galaxia, Uraki-Ayo demanded boldly. Are these the fruits of manipulating Luna's alter self?

  This setback does not concern me. Nor should it you! The final hand has yet to be dealt.

  But it is backfiring! he thought desperately. He could see that her friends only cared more deeply now that the antagonist summoning alter-self had not inspired mistrust. The final hand, you say, my Queen? It has been dealt

  The time for words had passed. The time for action rose, and he heeded it. And a planet tearing flare of inconceivable rage it was. Imagine, as you would, white garbed soldiers, in silken robes and dresses, structured as a line of musket wielding warriors. Each clasping hand, perturbing, returning, and balking a force striking them as a sudden teleportation into the core of a collapsing sun. Continue, then, as they raise joined hands and arms to reply in kind, until they suffer unprotected, yet inflicting incredible damage upon the enemy.

  Imagine, then, as you only can, a planet shattering into numberless shards. Select a known image, a popular one, or simply create one. Make it remarkable, or uninteresting as you desire.

  For there are not the words. They do not exist for how awesome and horrific the final attack was.

  All that matters, is that they survived.

  Chapter 50

  Stand Your Ground