Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon Underground #21 - The Love of a Future Child (Part II)
By Chiara Fazzi and Silvia Ghelarducci
Official URL: https://members.tripod.com/SM_Endless/Underground/
Official E-mail: the_crystal_kingdom@hotmail.com

** Out of Time **

Sailor Pluto, lingered with the look on the Time Door.
Even though she was its guardian, she couldn't and she MUSTN'T pass trough it. Queen Serenity has been clear: the Three Absolute Prohibitions. Not to leave that place, was one of them. Though, the woman asked herself, what could it even happen to me? Here I'm, guardian of Nothing, in a Nothing World.
From the age the Silver Millennium had been destroyed, she had always stayed there. Patiently waiting for the Moon Dynasty to raise as new. But, by the successing of so many centuries, Pluto had lost the hope.
Then, all of a sudden, that girl's appearence.
The child had talked about other Sailor Senshitachi, about Nemesis who had conquered Crystal Tokyo. And then, she had just grasped the Door for opening it.
That girl WAS the new heiress of the Moon Dynasty? Pluto's long captivity has finally came to the end? The woman would have finally been able to join the battle, with all the other Sailor soldiers?
Well, there it was only way for discovering it.
    "I beg your pardon, Queen Serenity" the senshi murmured, holding out her key-shaped Staff towards the Time Door and letting the Garnet Orb to set free a weak fucsia sparkle.

** Tokyo, Year 200X **

Myhannan surprise himself in spying Serenity and Actaeon in the Garden.
She had told him that she loved him. Now Actaeon had everything he had always wished, no? They could have conquered the world... And instead, he was there, gazing at her. That...
    "Princess of the White Moon" the capped one spat out with wrath, "I hate you!". Myhannan turned on himself and took the corridor back, towards the Throne Chamber.

Usagi blushed slightly. It was so strange, to feel the heart to beat so madly, just for having said your own husband that you love him. Oh, but it was like she had told him for the first time.
She had to drive him away from her presence. She had to find a way for setting herself free from those adorant eyes... Also for an instant only...
    "Maybe..." Usagi succeded to say. Her heart was beating so noisily, that Actaeon would also have been able to heard its sound. "You should and look for her. Chibi-Usa I mean, I wouldn't want her to...".
Actaeon nodded in silence and stood up, also he hand't want to leave her alone for nothing at world. Also if he had wanted to stay that way for ever.
Looking at his leaving figure, Usagi dropped on her knees. She gave a glance to her reflection in the water. Her face was red-hot, who knows if he had noticed it?

The first thing Myhannan found on his way, was the crystal chessboard.
The capped one resentfully kicked it off of his sight.
    "Princess of the White Moon" he shouted trampling over the shards, "I hate you! I HATE YOU!". Panting, he finally calmed down and, for few seconds, he kept gazing at what he had done.
    "If I wouldn't know you better, I'd say you're having an attack of jealousy..." a voice said. Quick as lightning, Myhannan raised his head,
    "Phoenix!". Though the tone of the guardian of fire had been ironic, his feature were everything but amused. All his figure was shining of a raging aura. "How... How dare you to be back there?" Myhannan screamed.
It was the first time, that the three-braided man had the occasion of seeing the guardian of the water so enraged. Myhannan, usually so repressed and pleghmatic, had felt discovered and was now yelling like and hysterique.
But Phoenix didn't reply. His hand raised, accompanied by the weak sound of the mantle's rustle. His golden rings shone brightly, delivering to the fingers a golden energy that went to form a sphere.
    "I'm back to kill you..." he said with dark voice. With quick gesture, the golden sphere left his hand and flew direclty to Myhannan. The capped man found himself umprepared to that attack, and was swept away. "I remembered everything and understood all your tricks" Phoenix's voice was cold and sharply, he approached the opponent in long strides. He grabbed him by his mantle and lifted him up to his eyes' level. "You've always intrigued in the shadow, until now. Conditioning us all". Phoenix shot a punch in Myhannan's face hidden by the wood, making him to fall back on the floor. "You, sickenign character!" the blue-haired man shouted, getting ready for a second energetic attack.
Curled on the ground, Myhannan helplessly reraised his head towards Phoenix: the love for Vulcan's princess had brought him to this...?!
    "Be cursed!" Phoenix exclaimed, towering over his foe and letting the energy in his hand to shine. Blinded by the light, Myhannan drew back his visage and his wood slipped aside.
Phoenix watched intentely the figure and stopped in the middle of his attack, realizing that that was... *a woman*! Myhannan was a woman?!?
Her skin was pale like a corpse's and his bluish hair were a tangled mass, looking almost alive. But the face came out from the hood was a feminine one. "It can't be..."
Unexpectedly, the woman formed a ball of silver energy and throw it at Phoenix, sending him to smash against the crystal throne. Then, she quickly stood up and run away, inthe darknesses of one of the corridors.
After a first moment of dismay, Phoenix set off in chasing her: a woman! How could it be??

**Tokyo, Year 198X **

A boy with short black hair and large bautiful blue eyes, sprang out of his house's door, towards the car box, leaving his parents on the threhold.
    "Hurry! Papa, mama!" he laughed, arranging a baseball hat on his head, "I can't wait to have this car excursion!". The man smiled, waving at the boy,
    "We're coming, Mamoru!".

**Tokyo, Year 2000X **

Hotaru opened and reclosed her eyes, with a grimace of pain painted upon her face.
Souichi looked those dead eyes incapable to see, dilating to look almost unnatural and then, to close. The girl's crisis were happening with growing frequnce. It was like something was putting her heart under stress.
There it was a second horrible contorsion of that beautiful body, while her legs were keeping still and well stretched, under the covers.
    "Honey, I'm there" doctor Tomoe took his daughter's hand and squeezed it. But Hotaru couldn't hear him, she went on suffering madly and no medicine could even ease her pain. "Hota-chan..." the eyes of the man filled with tears. If she had gone on that way...

*    *    *

Usagi gathered a bit of fresh water in her cupped hands and wet her cheeks. Her blond curls slighlty damp, fell over her crescent moon in the middle of the forehead.
    "Ah my heart" she murmured, pressing one hand over her breast.
The surface of the water trembled, wenting all rippled. Puzzled, Usagi leaned again the visage over her reflection. The water rippled even more, deleting the gold from the hair and the blue from the irises of her image. There it was a new face of woman staring at her, from the pond. "What?" Usagi gasped moving back, ready to escape. But the feminine image was quicker than her. A pale hand passed the water's surface from part to part, closing on Usagi's arm.
    *You're mine!* a voice hissed in the princess's mind and the pale hand, dragged her into the poll. Usagi opened her mouth in order to scream, but the water filled her lungs in the space of a moment.
    <Actaeon! Actaeon, help me!> Usagi's body was swallowed into darkness, at mad speed. Suddenly, as part of her slumbering couscience had awoken, <Endymion!> she thought. That was the last name that her mind called, before fainting.

Endymion!
Mamoru raised his head...
Who was Endymion? It was him? The blond prince always called him that way, but Mamoru didn't remember anything of that Endymion. Or maybe yes?
And that voice... Who was that voice to?

**Tokyo, Year 198X**

A Chopin's melody melted sweetly with the noise of the motor. The small Mamoru, passed his arms beyond the back of the sear for hugging his mother's neck. Sei, the woman, rested her cheek over his small hand back.
Amasu Chiba lifted for a moment his eyes from the road to the sky. Big grey clouds were quicly gathering over them,
    "Maybe it's better to head home..." he murmured thoughtfully. The woman nodded, squeezing his son Mamoru's hand: it was really strange the weather to change with that rapidity. There it was a faraway rumble and then, a light split the obscurity. A blinding column of light was shot on the way, right in front of Chibas' car.
    "What...?!?" the man used both the hands for turning frantically the steering-wheel,
    "AMASU!" Sei cried. With a screech of brakes, the car flew out of the street.

**Tokyo, Year 200X**

Actaeon exited again in the sunlight...
Where was the child?
    "Chibi-Usa! Serenity!" he called... No-one: the garden was desert. The prince started to feel a strange sense of inquietude.

*

Usagi opened her eyes... Cold... Dark...
    "Howaido Tsukino Ohime-sama (The Princess of the White Moon)..." a voice never heard before spelled. A feminine voice, ancient and cruel, "What an honour".

*

    "Papa!" Hotaru arched the back in fearful way.
    "Hotaru! Hotaru!" Souichi seized the daughter's wrist, "Oh God!" there it was nomore... there it was nomore heartbeat!! "Hotaru!!" the man tried a cardiac massage. "You can't! You can't... Hotaru! HOTARU!!!"

**Tokyo, Year 198X**

Sailor Silvermoon put one hand in front of the kid's face, senseless on the rear seats of the car.
    "He's alive" she murmured, retiring her hand. Amasu and Sei's corpses were laying on the front seats, the woman had kept the hand of the child in hers, till the last moment. Maybe right that had saved him.
A second beam of light rained down the sky.
    "Here they come" said Sailor Shinymoon. Magicmoon and Goldmoon got ready to the battle.

**Tokyo, Year 200X**

Usagi lifted her face... Her sight met a blood-red dress and then, climbed onto a feminine body, being seated on a huge throne made of hardened lava. That figure filled her with consternation.
    "You... who are you?" Usagi found the courage to ask. The woman smiled as she stood up from the throne. Her skin was deadly pale, looking almost transparent, and her eyes had off-white irises, while her tangled hair, had the same color of the metal.
    "Atashi wa Kuroi Tenpi, Chino Hoshi to Chikano Okami (I am the Black sun, Star of Earth and Mistress of the Underground)" the woman in blood-red replied and, bowed back the head, she bursted into a baleful laughter.

[To be continued]

Notes:

A quick note, just for not letting you to get lost. When we talk about Queen Serenity, we refer to Usagi's mother, ruler of the Silver Millennium; when we talk about Princess/Neo-Queen Serenity, we refer to Usagi and when we talk about Lady Serenity, we refer to Chibi-Usa, future princess of the Crystal Millennium. We know it's tangled, but hey, here it's the problem of having many generations named by the same way ^^;

The names of Mamoru's parents, have been invented by us:
Chiba Amasu -> to save Earth
Chiba Sei -> Living Earth