Sailor Moon Married Life Chapter 9
Moon Storm Risen!

        Mina stood anxiously next to Rei's bed as Serena helped her into
it.  "Are you sure you don't need any help, Rei?" she asked.

        "I'll be fine," responded the wounded Warrior of Fire and Soul,
"Just trash the jerks who did this to me."

        Mina slowly turned and walked out of the room and shut the door.
She was in the cozy house's living room before she allowed her shaking
knees to give out beneath her.  If she hadn't been quite so reluctant to
part with Kevin, if she had just left as soon as she had gotten the
communicator call, she would have gotten to the fight in time to keep
Rei from being hurt.  Tears seeped from her tightly clenched, quivering
eyelids.

        There were times when she felt so. . . inadequate next to the
other Senshi.  Serena and Darien, Alex and Michelle, Lita and Ken, all
of them were in relationships that had been ordained when the universe
began. Each couple so perfectly right for one another that to be with
anybody else would change the intricate balance of the universe.  Even
Rei-chan and Amy-chan, through their marriages, didn't resound with the
same rightness that those of the others did, were happy.  Gods!  Even
Sonya-san and Heather-chan were at least resigned to their fates.  And
to make matters worse, as far as the mundane affairs of everyday life
went, she couldn't cook well, was a disaster at keeping her things in
order, and every time she tried to do something special for one of her
friends, it seemed to backfire on her with results ranging from humorous
to disastrous.

        "Do not sell yourself short, Mina-chan," said Sonya.

        "Easy for you to say, Sonya.  You didn't just cause one of your
best friends to be injured."

        "Neither did you, Mina, though I understand your feelings well
enough."  The ten-thousand-year-old warrior did something totally
unexpected: she sat down on the couch next to Mina and held her arms
open to her.  Mina took the invitation and allowed Sonya to hold her as
she cried her eyes out over the damage that she had been powerless to
prevent.  Sonya whispered comforting words that had been worn into her
over long centuries of life.  Eventually, Mina's tears finished and she
was down to the occasional sniffle, worn out but relieved.  Her ragged
breathing slowly smoothed and before Sonya truly realized it, she had a
sleeping Senshi in her arms.  She gently spread Mina on the sofa,
sweeping matted blonde hair from her face and covered the rest of her
body.  Walking out of the room, she saw Artemis pad by.

        "Artemis, would you go and lie down with Mina for a while?  She
needs some fuzz therapy right about now."

        "All right, Sonya."

        When Artemis walked into the room, Mina appeared to be sleeping
peacefully, but as he got closer to the couch, he saw what a fiction
that was - she fidgeted nervously in her sleep and moaned as a nightmare
lashed her.  He settled down next to her, began purring, and felt her
settle down.  His tiny sandpaper tongue flicked out and washed the tears
from his young charge's face, and Mina giggled in her sleep as the rough
tongue tickled her sensitive skin.

        After about a minute of this, she let off a huge sigh and turned
over, much of her tension and anguish relieved.  Artemis settled into
the crook of her arm and quickly fell asleep, still purring.

        Sonya let the door close.  It was difficult for her to hide it,
but she often felt like all of the Senshi were her children.  Perhaps
that was because she had only allowed herself to have one of her own
since the Silver Millennium.  She thought of her dear love, Chronus,
dead and frozen these past ten thousand years.  Queen Serenity's final
magical gesture had been unable to reach beyond the Moon.

        Especially dear to Sonya, though, were the Neo-Queen of the Moon
and her four soul-sisters and Inner Senshi.


        Serena dreamed that she was watching her own death in the Silver
Millennium.

        Prince Endymion was dead, his cooling head resting in the lap of
his love.  He had been so alive, bright and joyful just hours ago,
enjoying the presence of his beloved Serenity, so unlike the still body
that rested there now.  Her tears dripping from her face in the light
gravity of the Moon as she cried for her lost love.

        "Dear Endymion, I cannot go on without you.  When you died, any
part of me worth living for died with you."  Serena watched, horrified
as she realized what her past incarnation was about to do.  "Mother, why
couldn't you have told me the truth?"

        Her slim hands wrapped about the hilt of his sword and she
pulled it from the scabbard and held its cool steel against her belly.
She whispered, "To die with honor, when one can no longer live with
honor," and pressed the blade against herself, feeling it push her
stomach inward before parting fabric and flesh, as if even though her
mind had resigned itself to her fate, her body still resisted.  Strange,
she thought, one would think that you would feel pain from something
like that.  Instead, she felt blessed relief, as though by separating
her flesh she had separated herself from her pain and fears.

        As Serenity grew rapidly lightheaded and faint, she watched with
a detached fascination as the wound quickly dyed the front of her lovely
white gown a bright red, and water fell from a burst pipe overhead onto
the dead man and his dying lover.  "Do not fret, dear Endymion," she
whispered as though her love could still hear her, "I don't feel any
pain.  A little fall of rain can hardly hurt us now."  She laid out next
to her prince and with the last of her strength hugged him and brushed
her cooling lips against his cold ones as her heart labored to maintain
any kind of blood pressure with such a massive break in her circulatory
system.  Her dying brain imagined that he had whispered, "I'm here."  It
was so, so hard to form the words, but she forced them out, "That's all
I need. . .  to know."  Her eyes closed, and her last dying words were
heard by her horrified mother, as she saw Princess Serenity's body
shudder one last time, Endymion's sword lying beside her in a position
only she could have put it in, a wide pool of their mingled blood
ringing them in a perfect circle as they lay in a position that seemed
that they had fallen asleep together in.  Serena couldn't hear them, but
her memory, gripping her with how cold she had felt in those last
seconds, that last final cool-down to oblivion, supplied them for her.
"Ai shiteru."  Her final words were so characteristic: not a plea to the
universe, not a promise of posthumous revenge, not even a call for
mother, but a declaration, the one that she had made to Darien, and he
to her, countless times.  'I love you.'

        Serena bolted upright, body dripping with sweat.  Darien was
strangely still asleep, but there was another comforting presence next
to her, and she latched onto it and cried into a sympathetic shoulder.

        Serena slowly became aware of whose shoulder she was crying
into: Sonya's.  Embarrassed, she tried to back off, only to find Sonya's
gentle, yet insistent arms staying her.

        "Serena-chan," said Sonya, very aware that this was the young
woman Serena, not the wise Queen Serenity, "I have watched the eight of
you grow from tiny children into adults, and I love you as if you were
my own daughters.  I once had children of my own, thousands of years
ago, but it has been far too long since anybody has needed me to behave
as a mother and not as a councilor, save for Heather-chan and, in the
future, Reenie.  But this day, it seems that all of you seem to need me
as a mother."

        "Mom's wonderful, she and Dad have been nothing but supportive
since the wedding, but she and Dad don't understand what it's like to be
Sailor Moon."

        "They can't - it's just something completely out of their field
of experience."

        "What happened to your children, Sonya?"

        The Guardian of Time absently ran her fingers through Serena's
unbound hair as she spoke, "All but one died on Pluto the day the Silver
Millennium ended.  The last was a child whom I had about the time Homer
was writing the Odyssey and the Iliad.  I was feeling a sort of midlife
crisis, becoming entirely too impatient with my role as the Guardian of
Time, and I fell in love with a man from Greece, the ancestral homeland
of the Royal Family of Pluto.  My lover grew old and died within thirty
years.  My son lasted nearly three centuries before succumbing to the
effects of age."

        "I know a bit about this.  Lita. . ."

        "Ken has been made immortal.  I know not how or why, but he will
live forever."

        "I'm so happy for him and Lita," said Serena.  "I would have
felt terrible if Darien and I were going to be the only ones who could
have our true love for all eternity.  Does Lita know yet?"

        "My dear girl, Ken doesn't even know yet."

        Serena's eyes flashed with sudden anger.  "Sonya, you don't know
how many times Lita has woken up Rei, Amy, or me during one of our
occasional sleepovers, crying quietly because she's going to live
forever and Ken has at best ten decades.  You owe it to them to tell
them!  Put this anguish to rest, Sonya, and allow them to get on with
their lives without that Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads."

        Sonya opened her arms and stood up, saying, "Thy will be done,
My Queen.  Now sleep peacefully."  She cast a light sleep spell, and
Serena slumped down to the mattress.  Before she left the room, Sonya
gently moved the slumbering girl into a more comfortable position.

        *       *       *

        In a work room, Luna was curled up on the desk that Amy was
hunched over, the analytical half of her TACS (see Chapter 4) computer
system connected to Rei's state-of-the-art computer, a 333MHz Pentium II
running a beta version of MacOS 8/Intel.  The tiny megacomputer was
doing most of the real number-crunching, with the Pentium's high-power
video board translating the data into real-time SVGA video feedback via
a conversion filter between the magically-based palmtop and the
electrically-operated desktop.  Each Senshi owned a similar machine (and
Amy once joked that Serena and Rei used their computers more often to
fight one another in the Quake "Sailor Moon Total Conversion" Deathmatch
mode than they did to do schoolwork), but only Rei's and Serena's had
the necessary conversion equipment to run parallel with Amy's computer.

        Luna said, "Let's replay time indexes three-seven-nine through
four-zero-zero, Amy, at one-twentieth speed.  I saw something."

        Amy fast-forwarded to the timeframe that Luna requested and
began to play it through in slow motion.

        "That's it.  Running managraphic survey. . .  It's magical, all
right!  And in the morning, we'll be able to counter them."


        Lita sat up in bed as she had for many nights in the past,
staying awake long after Ken had dozed off.  The idea that she would be
young and beautiful centuries after her true love was dust was too much
for her to bear, and she cried, her sobs shaking her body.  Lita never
cried like this when Ken was awake - she didn't want to burden him with
this problem.  She heard Sonya enter the room.  "You love him."  Lita
pulled the sheets up over her breasts, her pale satin skin glistening in
the Moonlight.  "Don't bother - you don't have anything I haven't ever
seen, and more.  A hundred centuries of life tends to wipe out whatever
prurient interest you once had."  Lita defiantly held the sheet tighter
to her body.

        "Yes I love him, damn you," Lita whispered vehemently, "I love
him with all my heart, even though I know I'm going to outlive him by
ten centuries at the least."

        "Damn me?  Why is it my fault that you love him?  It was
ordained before the stars were born, certainly long before my time - as
if I could have changed it."

        "So that's it?  So I'm doomed to a mere five or six decades of
happiness and then an eternity of misery?  All because I'm a Senshi and
my love isn't?"

        "No."

        "What do you mean, no?  You saw Serenity and Endymion on the
Final Night.  Serenity killed herself rather than live without her one
true love, but I can't do that because I'm duty-bound to her, and I
can't do that to her because it would break her heart."

        "I mean that you are not doomed to a mere five or six decades of
happiness and then an eternity of despair.  The gods may be petty, but
they reward a good turn done to them.  Your Eternal Love is exactly
that: He will be eternal."

        "What?"  Lita could scarcely hope that what Sonya said was true,
for fear that it wasn't.  The sheet dropped to the bed as one hand flew
to add a third anchorpoint on the bed so she wouldn't overbalance and
the other to her mouth.

        "Ken is immortal, just as you are.  He will not die unless he
wishes it to be so, or unless he is killed."

        "Sonya. . . Princess Setsuna, I love you."  Lita's voice was
absolutely ecstatic with her knowledge that she wouldn't be lonely again
after a mere few decades, though she felt sorry for some of the others
whose true loves either were long-gone or would be in a mere eye blink
compared to their lifespans.

        The sound of her true name, spoken by one of the girls whom she
so loved, caused Sonya's shoulders to begin to shake, and suddenly she
found her own reserve crumbling.  Sensing what her ancient friend
needed, Lita allowed Sonya to cry on her shoulder.

        "Dear, sweet Charon," sobbed the Guardian of Time, "Why did you
have to be so stubborn about the Passing?  Why did you have to be on
Pluto instead of at the Gates or on the Moon?"

        "Charon?"

        "My Eternal Love, the one who was supposed to be with *me*
forever.  Had he been at the Moon, he would have been resurrected with
you.  Had he been at the Gates of Time, he would have been spared from
the destruction of the solar system's worlds.  But he wasn't, and he's
dead, which is how I know that you must be more careful.  You can be
killed, and your deaths would have a devastating effect on Serena.  How
can she love as she does and still have the strength to go on?"

        The answer came to Lita before she even needed to think about
the question.  "Because we love her in return, and she gets her strength
from that."

        Sonya left the room and Lita gently kissed her husband before
she went to sleep.  For the first time, her dreams were filled with
happy images of her life together with her true love in Crystal Tokyo.
The same kind of images that she was certain filled Serena's dreams.

        Worn out, Sonya went to the bedroom set aside for her and
Heather and laid down on her bed.  Heather's was nearby but empty, as
she was spending the night in the tent outside with Reenie.  Her
thousands of years of loneliness were something of a blur, but the
decades when she had been with other people were as bright and clear as
if they had happened yesterday, and she remembered vividly her sleepouts
with her friends on the Moon, and smiled wryly as she heard Heather and
Reenie as they occasionally got too loud with their gossiping.  Fate had
been kind to the Warrior of Death and Redemption; when she had been
restored from babyhood, she had been turned into an eight-year-old, half
her former age, but the same age as when Souichi Tomoe had made his
desperate bargain with Pharaoh 90 for the life of his daughter.  She
could truly live the years that she had spent possessed by Mistress
Nine.  Sonya was now helping Tomoe-sensei raise Heather, and was fond of
the Professor, after a fashion.  Sonya closed her eyes and was
completely surprised when she fell asleep before her mind registered
that she was going to.

        From their window, Alex and Michelle were covertly watching over
Heather Tomoe and Reenie Chiba in their tent as the girls finally
(around three AM!) hit their sleeping bags.  Alex whispered to Michelle,
"Methinks that Sonya-chan has a thing for Tomoe-sensei."

        "I thought you were about to say something about Reenie and
Heather."

        Alex looked nervously over her shoulder.  Fortunately for her
and Michelle's continued health, Serena the Psychotic Mother from Hell
was nowhere to be seen.

        "What are you so worried about?"

        "I don't feel entirely safe saying things like that about
Reenie.  After all, you never know when Serena might be lurking about,
and you know how protective she is of the Small Lady."

        "Agreed.  Sometimes I speak before I act."

        "Remember that little debacle with those movies we gave Lita?"

        "I think she threw one of them away rather than watch it, for
which I'm grateful.  That thing was just. . .  wrong.  I wish I'd known
about it before I gave it to her."

        "As far as mistakes go, that one was a king-size, A-Number-One
mistake, with a twist of lime."

        Alex kissed Michelle lightly on the lips and led her off to bed.


        About six AM, Darien was woken by the soft sound of his newborn
daughter beginning to whimper.  He looked at the figure in the bed next
to him; Serena was sound asleep, a faint smile on her lips.  Darien
didn't have the heart to wake her, so he crept over her warm body,
avoiding the black cat that was curled up on the foot of the bed and
noticing that Serena sprawled out across the place he had just left,
picked up Irene and, gently bouncing her, walked out of the room.

        Imbrium walked up to Darien and smiled.  "How's the little
Princess of Earth today?"

        "She seems to be doing just fine, Imbri.  How's the Princess of
the Sea of Storms," replied Darien, using Imbrium's official title.

        "Just like her sister, she hates titles," responded Imbri
dourly.  Then she brightened and asked Darien, "How would you like to
help Lita and me make breakfast?"

        Before he could respond, Amy came in and said, "Darien, I need
Serena, Sonya, and Rei to help with something."

        Darien shrugged and handed Irene off to Imbri, then went in to
wake Serena.  He shook her lightly and she responded by rolling over,
eyes closed and lips parted.  Darien brushed his lips against Serena's
and she responded to his kiss, eyes half-opening.

        When they came up for air, she teased, "Now that's what I call a
wakeup call, Muffin, but it's only six."

        Amy came in after Darien and said, "Serena, I figured out how to
bulletproof our magical defenses so none of us will get hurt like you
did yesterday, but I need your help, or, more accurately, I need
Neo-Queen Serenity's help."

        Serena sat up and quickly did her hair, throwing on a bathrobe
after she did so.  Rei was standing on her crutches and Sonya was next
to her in the living room.  Serena said, "Tell me what we need to do."

        After the plan was explained, Rei and Sonya assumed their
Princess forms, and then Serena became Neo-Queen Serenity.  Amy became
Princess Ami, aimed her transformation wand at Serena, and said,
"Mercury Planet Power!"

        Princess Rei followed suit and called, "Mars Planet Power!"

        Princess Setsuna finished by saying, "Pluto Planet Power!"

        Neo-Queen Serenity's body glowed with a soft light as she
manipulated the magics.  Then she sent small glowing streaks of light
into each transformation wand, transformed back into Serena, and
collapsed back onto the couch, asleep, as Rei, Amy, and Sonya powered
back down.  Amy looked at Serena, wondering if she should be concerned,
and Darien said, "That's normal for her after creating a spell of that
magnitude.  I wouldn't be too surprised if she spends the whole morning
sleeping off a drain like that.  Illusions and constructs, those are
fairly easy for her, but affecting something that's magical in and of
itself, not to mention has as many protective spells cast on it as those
wands do, that's another thing entirely."

        "Yeah, but I wouldn't have thought it would put her to sleep."

        "Not in and of itself, one spell wouldn't, but she had to repeat
it nine times."

        Darien's prediction was only half true; at 9:00, Irene's crying
woke Serena and she went and fed her, then sat down and thoroughly
demolished the food that Lita put in front of her at the table.  At
11:00, the Chiba family went for a walk, Darien and Serena pushing Irene
in a stroller while Imbrium and Reenie talked animatedly.

        Everybody stopped short as they felt a draining in progress.
Serena took one hand off the stroller and smacked her forehead with it.
"Oh no, here we go again.  Imbri and Reenie, you stay with Irene in case
this is a decoy.  Darien and I will see what's going on and call you if
we need you."

        Much to Serena's surprise, there were no Generals around, just
youma.

        "Must be a slow work day," she whispered to Darien before saying
her transformation, "Moon Royal Make Up!"

        Darien transformed into his new armored form and pulled out a
rose bomb.  "Ready, Sailor Moon?" he asked.

        "You bet, Tuxedo Mask!"  She leapt to the top of a building and
looked for a likely target.  The five youma resembled the Doom and Gloom
Girls.  Years ago, the Girls had killed the Inner Senshi one by one.

        Serena was a lot more powerful now.  She pulled the Moon Rapier
in front of her eyes to charge it full of Crystal energy, then leapt
down, firing Moon Rapier Annihilation on the first youma girl as Tuxedo
Mask's rose blew up the second.  However, before Serena could recover
from landing, the third mummified her except for her sword hand in
negavines and kicked the rapier out of her grasp.  Disarmed, Serena
tried to scream for help, but only managed to waste precious air as the
vines tightened around her neck.  Her pulse was extremely loud in her
head and she began to see spots in front of her eyes.

        "Are you going to behave?"

        Without air, she could only nod yes.

        "Good."  The vines loosened so that she could breathe.  She saw
Tuxedo Mask - he was similarly entangled.  "The more you struggle, the
tighter the vines will become.  One person we tried this on kept
struggling until the vines crushed his throat, I sincerely hope that you
keep still.  Prince Roxix would be most displeased if I were to deliver
him Sailor Moon dead."

        "Selene Crystal Shards Slice!!!"  Serena felt the blast of air
that accompanied the crystals sliding perilously close to her skin, and
was suddenly freed.  She delivered a crushing roundhouse kick to the
head of the vine-youma, then grabbed the Moon Rapier and chopped the
bundle of vines holding Tuxedo Mask at the shoulder.  Then she sliced
carefully across the vines to free Darien.  As he came up, he yelled
out, "Earth Strike!" and his beam of greenish-white energy struck the
youma, killing it.  The third fell when Reenie called out, "Future
Strike!" and Serena dusted the fourth with a Moon Tiara Star.

        The leader was backing away frantically as Serena, Darien, and
Reenie rounded on it.  "No, wait, I. . ."

        "No way," the three said together.
        "Future. . ."
        "Earth. . ."
        "Moon. . ."
        "STRIKE!"

        "NOOOOOooooooo. . . "  Before the leader could get used to being
an only child, it was dust.

        "Yes!  Moondusted!" exulted Elder and Younger Moon as one.
Tuxedo Mask hugged them both and they headed out.  Imbrium had Irene's
stroller parked just out of harm's way and was watching it very
carefully, already powered down.  The baby giggled when she saw the two
Moons and Tuxedo Mask, and held her arms out to Serena, easily
recognizing her mother through the disguise magic.

----

Author's Notes:
---------------
The Silver Millennium scene is how Princess Serenity died in the manga.
Her dying words (except for where she says, "Ai Shiteru") are lyrics
from the song "A Little Fall of Rain" from the musical _Les_Miserables_.
The final refrain is:

        MARIUS                          EPONINE
"Hush-a-bye, dear Eponine,      Don't you fret, dear Marius
You won't feel any pain.        I don't feel any pain.
A little fall of rain           A little fall of rain
can hardly hurt you now.        can hardly hurt me now.
I'm here.
                                That's all I need to know.
And I will stay with you,       And you will keep me safe,
'Till you are sleeping,         And you will keep me close,
And rain,
                                And rain,
Will make the flowers. . .      Make the flowers. . .
                                 <Eponine dies>
grow.