Hi minna!  I bet you thought I was dead or something.   No dice, I’m still around and still writing!  This is the second installment in by Super Special Personal Journal series.  It’s Terra’s and it’s written during the Crystal Millenium (that’s what I call the time period surrounding Crystal Tokyo).  Because of this I use the Japanese equivalents of the names (Terra = Terura, David = Debido, Sam = Shin, Sailor Keeper = Sailor Mnemosyne) and attacks (Ceres Cosmic Power, Cosmic Ceres Power = Cere Healing Exhaltation).  These are Terra’s reflections of the past, present, and future.  Don’t be surprised if you run into a lot of things that you don’t know about.  This story offers a lot of sneak peeks into what’s to come in my Sailor Moon universe.  I hope you enjoy, and yes, I am working on episode 4 of Sailor Moon KoC, don’t worry, it’s not dead either. 

I hope you enjoy!
Lady Ceres – sailorgabriel@yahoo.com


“I Walk the Golden Path”  -- By Lady Ceres

Excerpt from the personal journal of Terura Burobun,

People have called me the weakest of the Senshi.  I don’t deny that.  The first attack I could control was little more than a minor nuisance for the youma.  At least Mercury’s Shabbon Spray could blind them, confuse them.  My Vines Entangle did little more than to contain them for an instant, if even that.  My Tremble, supposedly a formidable attack when wielded by the Ceres Senshi of old, did little more than make the Senshi of Emptiness land on her posterior.  She stood right back up and then proceeded to nearly destroy me.  Debido once more came to my rescue.  His powers, even before he was rewoken, bested mine easily.  Flinging sub-atomic particles at a youma has a far better chance of hurting it than wrapping it up in magic vines.
It seems that of all the Senshi, except perhaps Moon, I am the one who most requires the protection of my Knight.  The powers of Ceres were never supposed to be destructive powers.  This is why I have never been able to call upon such destructive powers as Mars and Jupiter do.  Senshi Ceres was originally a healer, but when the outer planet Saturn was inducted into the Silver Alliance, her services were no longer required.  Senshi Saturn’s healing power easily surpassed that of Senshi Ceres.  Saturn could almost revive the dead.  Thus, the Ceres Senshi trained differently after that.  Most failed miserably at all forms of destructive magic, and only the most powerful ever made it to the highest levels of power.  There was no name for the magic these High level Ceres Senshi used.  It was not offensive.  It was not defensive.  It was not an energy attack, nor was it a physical attack, using weapons, like the higher level outer Senshi used.  It was something altogether different that the Ceres Senshi made up as they went along.  There were no masters to teach what was yet to be discovered, so the original offensive Super Sailor Ceres invented the attacks that were not attacks.  These attacks were almost like perversions of the Ceres healing magic, relying of the positive good of the Ceres aura to accelerate growth until it became a hindrance.  The Ceres Senshi were not altogether pleased with what they called the misuse of the Ceres aura, but most never attained the levels required to cast the amplified healings.
Because the training period for an effective offensive Ceres Senshi was so long, and because the fledgling Sailor Ceres was somewhat helpless in early battles, the Knights of Ceres were almost always selected for their powers independent of Ceres aura.  That is why Debido was selected as Ceres Knight.  Not for his power at Ceres summonings, but for his abilities to control matter and energy independently.
It weighs on my mind at times, this weakness I feel in battle.  Even after I received the Ceres Emerald Jadestone, I could not preform the spells that a Quantum Crystal merited.    My Ceres Healing Exaltation was a ghost echo of the Moon Princess’s Moon Healing Escalation.  The Ginshozu is the controlling Quantum Crystal, to be sure, but our attack powers should not be that different.  Celeus tells me that I simply had not been trained in the handling of the Crystal, and it is true that Iris forbid me to touch it, or even think about it, but Usagi, Sailor Moon, had no more formal training than I had.  She was not even supposed to be a Senshi, let alone a Crystal carrier.  The Ginshozu was not meant for that kind of use.  It was a soul crystal, a nexus, not an resonance amplifier.  Our crystals drew their power from hers, and if it had ever been completely drained, then ours would have been completely useless.  The carrier crystals cannot be charged from an external soul source, like Ginshozu can.  They must be charged from within by the Ginshozu.  Carrying the Ginshozu into battle is very dangerous.  It is a powerful weapon, that has worked to our advantage, but should it be lost . . .	
The resonance stones and crystals are merely crutches.  The Silence Glaive may be powerful, but no Cosmos Senshi Saturn, the Senshi of legend, ever cast a Death Reborn Revolution with a Glaive.  The Glaive is a strength, but also a weakness.  If someone were to take the current Saturn’s Silence Glaive away, I doubt that she could cast such power as a Revolution, nor could she call upon it for a Surprise.   The Cosmos Senshi never relied upon weapons or focuses.  Some even trained themselves off the need for a constant flow of planet aura.   These Senshi drew their power wholly from their own spiritual projections.  For them to be able to wield that much of their own astral power was phenomenal.  
It takes a great deal of astral energy to cast a spell like Flame Sniper, more than any one human has.  This is because there is so much energy lost from the transferral from spirit plane to the temporal plane.  Generally, this power is borrowed from the planet’s aura power, the astral presence of that planet.  However, Cosmos Senshi Venus and Cosmos Senshi Uranus were said to have had such discipline that they trained themselves to harness their own astral self and channel it through their bodies and hands, so that all energy loss was trapped by their bodies and recycled.  Of course, it is true that if one of them had lost control of the transfer while they used their body as medium, then the would have died almost instantly as a Shock or a Shaking ripped their very molecules apart.  A transformation is somewhat less dangerous for the Senshi, but it requires utmost concentration, as any distraction may result in the loss of the binding energy.  If this happens, a transforming Senshi will de-transform and then the energy of the transformation will explode out like a shockwave, maiming and possibly killing all in the near vicinity, with the exception of the Senshi, who stands in the so-called eye of the transformation.  
It has been millennia since the last of these Cosmic Senshi treaded the paths of the living.  I daresay even Sailor Pluto would be hard-pressed to even remember their legends, but as keeper of the history of Crystal Tokyo I now carry the tomes of Sailor Mnemosyne, the senshi who once kept the histories of the Silver Millennium for untold years.  Now she has gone to her peace, may she forever dimple our memories in respect and love, and I am the new recorder.
The position of recorder I can at least handle effectively.  I was never one given to the thrill of battle, not like my dear Lady Makoto, and many times I was much more of a hindrance than a help.  My mind returns to the period after I first ascended into my Sailor Ceres form after my reincarnation.  Thank the goddess that the blessed Demeter let me keep my memories, I deeply pity the others because they remember so little from their previous lives.  When Sailor Mnemosyne restored my memory for the final time, she confided to me that she could not restore the memories of the others because there were no memories to restore.  Demeter locked my memories away, Queen Serenity, or the Moon Goddess, eliminated their memories completely.  They cannot remember their past loves, happiness, or sorrow.  All they can ever know about their history is what they are told by the cats of Mau and what they read in the histories that I keep.  When the option of learning about their pasts first was opened to them, they flocked to my musty library.  However, as time progressed, their enthusiasm waned.  
I once found Lady Minako weeping helplessly beside a volume of the narrative history of the Princess of Venus.  The volume she had taken was a history of her past self, and despite her deep need to recall the emotions and passions recorded in those pages, she could not.  She was weeping, I believe, because she had finally grasped an inkling of her past.  The tome had managed to conjure up a vivid picture that she could almost remember, but the image would not stay concrete in her mind.  It remained just a page in a book, however the recognition hovered mere inches from her grasp.  She was weeping, she told me later, because she could almost grasp it, almost remember, but try as she might, she could not capture it.  It seemed so familiar, but she did not know why.  She had started weeping when she realized that it was always going to feel like that.  The closest she would ever get maddeningly dropped short of her goal.  She finally realized what price she had paid with her reincarnation.
None of the senshi visit the library to read the histories any more.  It pains them too much and their reward, in their minds, is too little.  Not even the cats of Mau, whose memories are far from complete, even read them, except to do research in the ancient tomes.  I am the only one, besides my Debido, and of course Celeus, who has a true appreciation for the wealth of this history.  I do not blame the others, these books represent something unattainable to them.  Something unattainable yet something that they want desperately.  I can see it in all of them, although none admit it.  The only solace they have is in dismissing the past as irrelevant and living only in the present.  I have never questioned Mnemosyme’s choice.  I was the only senshi who would carry on her job with a good will.  It would have been torture for any of the others.
Sometimes it is not pleasant for even me.  Earlier today Luna was researching subjects for new entries into the Central Intelligence files.  Apparently I am one of the rare examples of soul children developing against my will.  I still remember Chaos and Void with amazing clarity.  They were projections of the anger and emptiness I felt when I returned to the Ceres Temple to find Titanite and Aspen attempting to unleash the power of the Ceres Emerald Jadestone for destructive purposes.  I still do not understand the lesson Demeter wished to teach me by creating those senshi.  Perhaps it wasn’t a lesson for me at all, but a lesson for some other, I do not know.
I have asked myself many times how it was possible for my soul children to be more powerful than I was.  How can a part be greater than the whole?  The only answer I have come up with, other than divine intervention, is that my power as a senshi was locked away in their souls and bodies.  It is true, I certainly had more success with my attacks after the two senshi were absorbed back into my soul, but that can also be attributed to the fact that the Ceres Emerald Jadestone was back under my control.  
I have come to a reckoning with those two parts of myself.  I accept then as part of my own will and soul although it was very difficult at first.  For a very long time I locked them away in the dark recesses of my mind, unwilling to deal with the reality that they represented.  However I have come to terms with them now and accept their doings as my doings.  They are as much, or more, me than my dominant part is and I cannot deny that any longer.

Even as much as I enjoy my position as the recorder of the Crystal Millenium, it has put a great strain on my family and friends.  I rarely see any of them anymore.  Because of my duty I leave this bubble of time in the royal library very rarely.  My Debido is the only one who ever comes to see me regularly, besides Celeus.  Celeus may as well live in the time bubble with me.  It has caused some strife between he and Phoebe.  She will not even speak to him any more and forbids their kittens to come near the bubble.  Celeus claims it is his responsibility to look after me, as he is and shall always be my guardian.  I have argued with him countless times.  His family needs him.  I must stay in the bubble, he has no reason to.  He will not relent though, and I do not have the heart to drive him out.  It seems he has made his choice too.
 As I said before, none of the other senshi come to visit me more often than once every tow or three years.  Even my own son and daughter, Shin and Twig, do not come often.  When I first became the recorder Twig came often.  She would play around my feet as a toddler, and later, as she grew older, she even began to read the books that I record.  She hasn’t come for a long time, and the last time she did, she was very distant.  
She resents me now, she must.  I have missed so many of the milestones in her life.  It is true, Debido has been a good father to our children, but I was always her favorite.  She has never understood why I put the histories before her, why I value books more than my own daughter.  I now understand why she was so happy to be with me when she came to the past.  I had time for her then.  She was the most important thing in the world to me and I lavished attention on her.  
She was eight then, as time passes in Crystal Tokyo, she is eighteen now and has come into her full power as Sailor Persephone.  Debido tells me that she grows more beautiful everyday and that she is being courted by Prince Elios’s younger brother.  I wish desperately that we could have a normal mother daughter relationship.  There are so many things I want to share with her.
There are times when I curse this path I have chosen.  I know intellectually it is the right way, that if I were not here then there would be no one to record the history, no one to record the mistakes and triumphs of untold centuries.  I did not accept this job for the quasi-immortality it grants, but rather because if there is no history written, then the utopia that Neo Queen Serenity and the others strive for is pushed even father off and the experiment of the Crystal Millenium has been in vain.
Crystal Tokyo is not a utopia, and at the rate it is progressing it will never be.  It is a time of peace that is true, the Pax Lunaris has been the longest time of peace in eons, however peace does not create a utopia.  It is my hope that some time in the distant future my records will help a future incarnation of the Neo-Queen to create something that much closer to the Crystal Utopia than the current Crystal Tokyo.  As long as we can learn from our mistakes then the utopia is attainable.

This, the third day of the rabbit in the one thousand twenty-fourth year of her majesty, Neo-Queen Serenity,

Lady Terura Burobun
Royal Recorder