-9-
Sipping on a deliciously cool apple mint tea just outside
the hotel she was staying, Usagi waited for her friend in comfort beneath the Nemesis twilight. The night's breeze
carried the smell of wet grass, tickling her nose and making her smile. As she had seen from above, the greenery on
Nemesis was small but growing. Vibrant and growing, Nemesis was nothing like it was when she had first seen its
cratered, rough surface nearly a decade ago. Delicately, she plucked the wet apple slice that was inserted into the
glass's rim and began to nibble on it, wondering as she did when her friend would come.
"Princess!" came the cry from deep within the
hotel's shadow. Usagi turned and saw a purple-haired head coming out of the darkness.
"Koan," Usagi said, rising. Koan and Usagi hugged briefly and they each took a seat opposite each other. Usagi looked
at Koan and noticed that she too had changed since the last she had seen her. Before she had had a very carefully
manicured appearance, as if a great measure of her time and energy were devoted to her hair and wardrobe and makeup; now, though she was nowhere near slovenly,
she looked very much more relaxed and natural. Her hair hung loose and free, curling into ringlets just at the tips,
and she wore a simple black and red dress and sandals. Yet the simple delight and pleasure that had been present before
was still very much present, if not amplified. It was, Usagi realized, the comfort and confidence of
maturity. "How have you been?"
"Oh, very, very busy," said Koan with a deep
sigh. She glanced down at Usagi's glass, which was nearly finished.
"Oh, excuse me for a moment." Usagi watched as Koan quickly got up and went into the hotel, to return almost
immediately with two tall glasses in her hand, one of them another apple mint tea, the other topped with a raspberry.
She sat and set down the glasses on the table. "Where was I?"
"Very busy were you," said Usagi, after thanking
Koan for the drink.
"That's right, very busy." She paused to take a sip of her drink. "Mmm, refreshing. Anyway, my sisters and I have been swamped. You'd think that after a decade of us
bossing people around, they'd get tired of it and get someone else to do the dirty work, but no. 'Oh,
not-so-Ayakashi anymore Sisters, what are you going to do about this really trivial problem that we could solve for ourselves if we only bothered to but
instead are happily foisting on you because you're there and are sucker enough to do it for us?' That's
what we're doing."
"Do they really call you that? Not-so-Ayakashi anymore Sisters?" Usagi shared a giggle with Koan, something that she
could never have imagined back when they first met. The circumstances of the beginning of their acquaintanceship was
anything but auspicious, involving as it did war, time travel, and a concerted effort to assassinate her. With her
sisters and her bully of a boss, Koan had chased her a thousand years into the past. That was when Nemesis had been at
war with the Earth, laying siege to Crystal Tokyo. Usagi could still recall quite vividly the look of sadistic delight
that Koan had worn when she had tried to kill her when she was all of five years old.
But things were different now.
"Well, no," said Koan, after she had finished
laughing. "But the other parts are true."
Koan looked at the greenery and smiled proudly. "We're doing good work, though. Transitioning from a feudalistic mixed economy on
a permanent war footing to one that's peaceful and post-scarcity isn't what you'd call easy. But we're
making progress, capturing a lot of heart crystals and dream mirrors. In fact!
We're about ready to petition Neo-Queen Serenity for a planetary guardian."
Usagi looked at Koan's eager face and sighed
inwardly. Call them what you would, planetary guardians, Sailor Warriors, immanent goddesses of the celestial spheres,
they were the soul of the living planet made manifest, charged with guarding it. What exactly they were, was known only
to a very few, which included Usagi's mother. All of the other planets of the solar system had goddesses attached
to them and had done for untold millennia except for Nemesis. The worlds outside the solar system proper but which
still fell under the Pax Argentum either already had their own Sailor Warrior or were too small to need one yet.
When there was a convocation of guardians, rare though it
was, the goddesses of the solar system were given honors above the other, irrespective of their connection to Serenity.
They were unique, the powers of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and the others could feel it.
Why that was so was also unknown to but a few. Usagi knew that it was known but not what was known. As a status symbol, becoming appointed a guardian was considered not only a job for life but also highly coveted for its
status. Being deified within ones own lifetime was a heady prospect, and a mark of a world's entrance into maturity
and power. As such it was highly politicized and politics were something that Usagi was hoping she could
avoid. One would imagine that when one was on a mission to save the universe one could avoid power brokering and
glad-handing. Oh, well.
"Yes," began Usagi, "my holdings in the
Asteroid Belt are also trying for it, though I'm not sure even Ceres is quite ready. Certainly I won't be
bringing it up with Mother until the population rises and the environment becomes stable." Which meant that
Nemesis shouldn't either until it did the same.
"Mmm," muttered Koan tonelessly. Then she brightened. "Did I tell you any gossip yet?
Did you tell me any?"
"No," said Usagi, glad that the conversation was
moving away from politics.
"Well, Biggest Sister is getting married!"
"No!
Who?"
Biggest Sister Petz, apparently, was marrying a very nice
fellow from Kinmoku, a quite-far planet but one that was firmly allied with Earth. He'd come to Nemesis to help
with the forests and oceans and become quite enraptured with Petz and vice versa. Cue whirlwind romance, mistaken
identities, arguments and tempestuous reconciliations. And in a few months they would be wed. Which was, in Katz's opinion, very well for Petz as before she had still been mourning the death of her previous crush,
despite the very little time they had had together. Or, as Koan put it, "She was right up herself."
Usagi shared a great deal of gossip herself, including that
perennial favorite topic Venus, whose love life needed advanced calculus and fractal geometry in order to understand.
That Venus was juggling with the hearts of Mars and Mercury was well-known, but that she was also trying her hand at matchmaking was not as well talked about,
as the results were either so successful as to be boring or so disastrous that her involvement was lost in the fallout.
Jupiter's recent roving eye was also touched upon. Usagi also complained at great length about her
brother. As the youngest sibling, Koan had little constructive comments, going so far at one point to try to make Usagi
see things from Mamoru's perspective. As his point of view was that of a monstrous little goblin, Usagi saw no
reason for it and said so quite firmly.
At one point, she was asked about her own love
life. "Well, I've been busy with school. I haven't had time to
date, really." She said this matter-of-factly and as off-hand as possible.
Koan was not impressed.
"Really? No
young buck catching your eye? No foreign ambassador wooing you? No ancient
spirits swirling romantically to your side?"
"No, none," said Usagi. There had been a boy, once upon a time, but that was long ago. The conversation, after
some prodding by Usagi, went back to more general gossip.
It was only after all this wonderfully freeing talk that
the subject of Usagi's purpose was touched upon. "I have to assume that it's something
important. It's not as if Earth and Nemesis were next door neighbors or anything."
"It wasn't that long of a trip," protested
Usagi.
"But not so short to be done on a whim," said
Koan. "So why?"
Usagi set down her newly-refilled drink and stared into
Koan's eyes. Telling her family was one thing, telling a friend, even one that shared so much history with her, was
another. "I'm searching for something. I've been told by those
that know that something's coming, a dark and dangerous something."
"End of the world something?" asked Koan.
"End of everything, past, present and
future."
Koan looked thoughtful but unafraid, an inherent core of
optimism and faith in the world strengthening her, which would have been impossible before she was purified and redeemed.
"So how can we help?" she asked.
Usagi smiled gratefully at her. "I need your time machine."
-10-
She stood in a vault, its dimensions changing and turning
wrong. Sometimes it seemed to be bigger than worlds, other times as small as a closet.
And then it turned strange and indescribable, causing her pain and nausea whenever she tried to concentrate on it.
At the heart of the vault was a mirror, elevated on a low altar. When Usagi came closer, she saw that the altar
and mirror were fused together, a wedding between the volcanic basalt of the altar and the strange black matter of the mirror.
Though it reflected light, the mirror also seemed to absorb it, a property of the Black Crystal that lay as the foundation of Black Moon power and
technology. All traces of that spiritually poisonous crystal were gone except for this, a mirror capable of sending
someone through time chiseled and crushed into shape from a large piece of Black Crystal. At the height of
Wiseman's power, it would have been sickening for her to be here. Yet now only there was only the dizziness of the
chamber and the absence of something, some vital something, when she came near the mirror.
And for a mirror, it didn't really do its job
properly. The chamber and the light were reflected, yet Usagi, like a vampire of myth, did not show up. She had been warned about this by Koan, who had reluctantly let her come into the last piece of the old order, kept deep and safe
within the depths of Nemesis's ground. As she walked around the base of the altar, looking for buttons to push or
some such, she noticed a change on the surface of the mirror from the corners of her eyes. Instead of not showing her,
there was an infinite number of her. Usagi looked behind her, thinking that someone had set up another mirror to
reflect the light back and forth forever. Yet of course there was nothing there.
Turning back to the mirror, she looked at her reflections, which descended down into the endless depths of the mirror.
They stared back at her, doing nothing. Usagi waited, knowing that sooner or later something weird and
disturbing was going to happen soon.
She was not disappointed.
Soon enough the foremost image overshadowed all the ones behind her and stood tall and proud. A haughty,
malicious smile bloomed on her face as a black, inverse crescent shone on her brow. Usagi's reflection changed
still further, as her hair went from raven black with blue highlights to its natural pink color, growing and reshaping itself as it changed until twin sharp
cones rose from the sides of her head with long tails trailing down to the ground from them. Her clothes changed as
well, becoming a black velvet evening gown slit very high with burgundy lace sleeves. A black choker with metal studs
encircled her neck. Usagi supposed that she looked quite evil, in theatrical, juvenile sort of way. It was a child's idea of evil and adulthood-stark, clear, sadistic and sexualized but without any subtlety to it.
Usagi recognized the image immediately of course; it had
haunted her for so long. This was the so-called Black Lady, the 'woman' she had been turned into when possessed
and seduced by the Wiseman back when she was a small child. She had become convinced that she had been abandoned by
everyone, unloved and consumed by a guilt that made her want to burn down the world in a petulant fury. Love turned
sour, twisted about with ideas of possession and power. All other emotions became stunted and empathy disappeared.
Looking at the Black Lady, Usagi said the first thing that
popped into her head. "That dress makes my hips look chunky."
The Black Lady said nothing, only smiled.
"And burgundy makes my skin pasty and sick."
Still nothing.
"Like an ugly, pasty vampire. Hello? Anyone there? It's at this point
you're supposed to, I don't know, make me fell bad about stuff and junk."
"As you wish," said the Black Lady. "But all I have is the truth."
"Yeah?
What's that?"
"You are on a fool's errand because you are a
fool."
"Insults now."
"Where are you going?
What is this nebulous threat you're fighting against? Have you seen proof beyond what Pluto has told
you? If she truly wanted to help you, why not do more? Tell you
more? And, indeed, why you?"
These were all questions that Usagi had asked herself since
starting on her mission. The exact same questions, in fact. "You have any
answers there or are you just going to pepper me with more questions?"
"Then here's an answer," said the Black Lady
triumphantly. "You are being used. You are a cat's paw in a greater
game and once your limited utility is done with, you'll be thrown away without a second thought. You are
nothing. Worthless. Useless. When you
could have been great, you threw away greatness. When you could have been free, you shackled yourself with, what, other
people? Parasites. You will never be as free as me, never be as strong as
me. You are pathetic."
"Now you've really gone and hurt my
feelings," said Usagi. "I remember what it was like having you in me, and you're nothing but
strong. You weren't ever really a person, because people are their feelings and you only felt. You were never me, but something put in me to make me sick."
"I am the real person and you are my shadow,"
stated the Black Lady. "I define the reality and you are the negative space.
All that I am, you are not because you are nothing without me and I am everything. What are you now but a
student, one of a billion, lost in the crowd, comforting yourself with memories of past glory. Little worm, why
won't you die and let me grow?"
"Shut up. Just
. . . be quiet," said Usagi.
Suddenly this wasn't as much fun as it was before. Maybe it never should have been.
She felt a suffocating dizziness, as if there was no more air in the world and try as hard as she could, she could not catch her breath. She'd felt contemptuous for the Black Lady, for all that she represented, all that she had gone away from. And now she was angry at her, a vicious, mindless anger that clawed away at her reason, telling her to hit and hit and never stop
hitting. "Let me by, so I can go into the past."
"Easily said and easier done," said the Black
Lady. "But where would you go? You haven't a clue, do you?"
"That's where you're wrong," said Usagi,
triumph coming through her voice. "I do have a clue. And it's this: it
doesn't matter."
She had been thinking about this, thinking about this long
and hard on the way to Nemesis and while waiting for Koan. Why Nemesis? Why was
this place the first stop? Then it hit her: if the enemy, whoever it was, was attacking time and causality, then they
were monitoring travel through time. This was why Pluto had sent her to those time periods through her
dreams. And it was also why she would not help her more directly. So it
didn't matter, really, where and when she went because as soon as she moved through time, the enemy would know.
Usagi was indeed bait. She was the bait and the trap all at once. But only if
she survived.
"There's the rub," said the Black
Lady. She laughed then, a high, cold bark of vicious amusement. "Then step
on through. But remember, you will never be rid of me."
"Yeah, yeah," muttered Usagi. The Black Lady slowly turned into a silhouette, a blank void in the shape of a woman inside the mirror, the long hair fluttering
in an unfelt breeze. Usagi took a deep breathe and stepped into the mirror, with all the light in the world bleeding
away slowly as she did.
-11-
"Lost girl, why not wail out at an uncaring
world? Shine forth your light and have it swallowed by the darkness," came a voice from nowhere.
Usagi looked around and sighed deeply and
disgustedly. "Oh, come on."
Inside the mirror was a long and high tunnel, long tapering
poles on all sides holding up nothing except a fragile reality inside a world of the same sort of eye-bending distortions and wrong geometry. It was very similar to Pluto's own Corridor of Time and Space, which was used to traverse distance and duration. However, there the tunnel was tiled and columned, beautiful if gloomy and silent save for the strong winds that whipped around it,
threatening to blow people away. This tunnel was sickening and, instead of the amoral danger of its counterpart, it was
definitely predatory and even malicious.
And of course the constant insults didn't help.
Usagi looked around for the source of the voice and
eventually found it, a wavering figure ahead of her in the tunnel. As she came closer, she saw it was a hunched figure
dressed entirely in robes. Only his hands could be seen, their dark surface running with a wan rainbow pattern like a
black oil slick on darkly violet waters. This was the figure of the Wiseman, the immanent aspect of the Death Phantom,
the malevolent spirit that was the heart of Nemesis.
Yet the Wiseman was dead, defeated and purified out of
existence at the end of the war that he had started. So who was this joker?
Nobody that she really wanted to talk to, whoever or whatever he was. She walked by the Wiseman, not even looking in
his direction, let alone talking with him. Yet out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that he was drifting along
beside her. They said nothing to each other. Pressure built inside of her as
the silence between them continued. Finally, unable to stop herself, she shouted, "Well? Aren't you going to continue? No, shut up!
Just keep shutting up, you stupid floating bag of nothing. I've had it up to here with the lot of you, with your
'darkness' this and your 'foolish' that. Can't you ever come up with anything more original, or are
you so thick that even the mayor of the town of Thickness, Thicky McThick, thinks you're too thick for a vote?"
"You have no thoughts in you, girl," said the
Wiseman. "All I have are words, but they were once enough to make you turn from your friends and family."
"You make one little mistake when you're a kid and
they never let you live it down," muttered Usagi. The Wiseman laughed, a strange echo distorting it.
"If you had a face to punch, I'd punch you in
it," said Usagi. "But I know what you are, now. I've figured it
out. You're not even a ghost; you're what gets left behind when everything else goes. You and her back there aren't even properly sentient. Recordings on the wind,
mindlessly repeating what's already been said."
"I am a shadow of a shadow; a lingering feeling after
a gaze has passed; nostalgia," said the Wiseman, placidly enough. "Yet even a record can teach
something. And I teach you this way: how did you get here?"
"Eh?"
"All those that traveled to the past through the
mirror had a shard of the Black Crystal. Yet you did not. You did not even
bring the Silver Crystal with you. Yet how did you get here? How are you
traveling to the past?"
"I, uh, I." Usagi was flabbergasted. The Wiseman was right; all the old Nemesis technology depended upon the Black Crystal, a poisonous stone that grew and flamed and
gave strength to its users even as it chipped away at their humanity. All those that went to the past wore fragments of
the Black Crystal, usually as an earring. Yet she had not. Indeed, the mirror
itself had not worked until she came near it.
"Think on that, as you make your way through time,
trying to stave off the destruction of everything."
Usagi was silent.
Up ahead she noticed a glimmering light, one that indicated the intersection between the tunnel and regular time and space.
She walked toward it, knowing where it was and also knowing that it was the perfect place for her to make her trap.
"You had no need for the Black Crystal. You never have. The power is always in you, my Black Lady." The Wiseman floated away from her, even as the light grew stronger. Usagi remained silent,
watching him go. He paused at the very interface between the tunnel and the light and lifted his strange, swirling
hands to the edges of his robes. With a single motion, the Wiseman pulled the hood away from his head, revealing a
sickeningly familiar face. It was her brother, Mamoru, his eyes sad and angry at once, yet his countenance taut and
grim. On his brow was the inverted black crescent of the Black Moon Family.
"A final word, this time of warning, my sister. Beware the children."
The light overtook Usagi before she could say anything.
Sipping on a deliciously cool apple mint tea just outside
the hotel she was staying, Usagi waited for her friend in comfort beneath the Nemesis twilight. The night's breeze
carried the smell of wet grass, tickling her nose and making her smile. As she had seen from above, the greenery on
Nemesis was small but growing. Vibrant and growing, Nemesis was nothing like it was when she had first seen its
cratered, rough surface nearly a decade ago. Delicately, she plucked the wet apple slice that was inserted into the
glass's rim and began to nibble on it, wondering as she did when her friend would come.
"Princess!" came the cry from deep within the
hotel's shadow. Usagi turned and saw a purple-haired head coming out of the darkness.
"Koan," Usagi said, rising. Koan and Usagi hugged briefly and they each took a seat opposite each other. Usagi looked
at Koan and noticed that she too had changed since the last she had seen her. Before she had had a very carefully
manicured appearance, as if a great measure of her time and energy were devoted to her hair and wardrobe and makeup; now, though she was nowhere near slovenly,
she looked very much more relaxed and natural. Her hair hung loose and free, curling into ringlets just at the tips,
and she wore a simple black and red dress and sandals. Yet the simple delight and pleasure that had been present before
was still very much present, if not amplified. It was, Usagi realized, the comfort and confidence of
maturity. "How have you been?"
"Oh, very, very busy," said Koan with a deep
sigh. She glanced down at Usagi's glass, which was nearly finished.
"Oh, excuse me for a moment." Usagi watched as Koan quickly got up and went into the hotel, to return almost
immediately with two tall glasses in her hand, one of them another apple mint tea, the other topped with a raspberry.
She sat and set down the glasses on the table. "Where was I?"
"Very busy were you," said Usagi, after thanking
Koan for the drink.
"That's right, very busy." She paused to take a sip of her drink. "Mmm, refreshing. Anyway, my sisters and I have been swamped. You'd think that after a decade of us
bossing people around, they'd get tired of it and get someone else to do the dirty work, but no. 'Oh,
not-so-Ayakashi anymore Sisters, what are you going to do about this really trivial problem that we could solve for ourselves if we only bothered to but
instead are happily foisting on you because you're there and are sucker enough to do it for us?' That's
what we're doing."
"Do they really call you that? Not-so-Ayakashi anymore Sisters?" Usagi shared a giggle with Koan, something that she
could never have imagined back when they first met. The circumstances of the beginning of their acquaintanceship was
anything but auspicious, involving as it did war, time travel, and a concerted effort to assassinate her. With her
sisters and her bully of a boss, Koan had chased her a thousand years into the past. That was when Nemesis had been at
war with the Earth, laying siege to Crystal Tokyo. Usagi could still recall quite vividly the look of sadistic delight
that Koan had worn when she had tried to kill her when she was all of five years old.
But things were different now.
"Well, no," said Koan, after she had finished
laughing. "But the other parts are true."
Koan looked at the greenery and smiled proudly. "We're doing good work, though. Transitioning from a feudalistic mixed economy on
a permanent war footing to one that's peaceful and post-scarcity isn't what you'd call easy. But we're
making progress, capturing a lot of heart crystals and dream mirrors. In fact!
We're about ready to petition Neo-Queen Serenity for a planetary guardian."
Usagi looked at Koan's eager face and sighed
inwardly. Call them what you would, planetary guardians, Sailor Warriors, immanent goddesses of the celestial spheres,
they were the soul of the living planet made manifest, charged with guarding it. What exactly they were, was known only
to a very few, which included Usagi's mother. All of the other planets of the solar system had goddesses attached
to them and had done for untold millennia except for Nemesis. The worlds outside the solar system proper but which
still fell under the Pax Argentum either already had their own Sailor Warrior or were too small to need one yet.
When there was a convocation of guardians, rare though it
was, the goddesses of the solar system were given honors above the other, irrespective of their connection to Serenity.
They were unique, the powers of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and the others could feel it.
Why that was so was also unknown to but a few. Usagi knew that it was known but not what was known. As a status symbol, becoming appointed a guardian was considered not only a job for life but also highly coveted for its
status. Being deified within ones own lifetime was a heady prospect, and a mark of a world's entrance into maturity
and power. As such it was highly politicized and politics were something that Usagi was hoping she could
avoid. One would imagine that when one was on a mission to save the universe one could avoid power brokering and
glad-handing. Oh, well.
"Yes," began Usagi, "my holdings in the
Asteroid Belt are also trying for it, though I'm not sure even Ceres is quite ready. Certainly I won't be
bringing it up with Mother until the population rises and the environment becomes stable." Which meant that
Nemesis shouldn't either until it did the same.
"Mmm," muttered Koan tonelessly. Then she brightened. "Did I tell you any gossip yet?
Did you tell me any?"
"No," said Usagi, glad that the conversation was
moving away from politics.
"Well, Biggest Sister is getting married!"
"No!
Who?"
Biggest Sister Petz, apparently, was marrying a very nice
fellow from Kinmoku, a quite-far planet but one that was firmly allied with Earth. He'd come to Nemesis to help
with the forests and oceans and become quite enraptured with Petz and vice versa. Cue whirlwind romance, mistaken
identities, arguments and tempestuous reconciliations. And in a few months they would be wed. Which was, in Katz's opinion, very well for Petz as before she had still been mourning the death of her previous crush,
despite the very little time they had had together. Or, as Koan put it, "She was right up herself."
Usagi shared a great deal of gossip herself, including that
perennial favorite topic Venus, whose love life needed advanced calculus and fractal geometry in order to understand.
That Venus was juggling with the hearts of Mars and Mercury was well-known, but that she was also trying her hand at matchmaking was not as well talked about,
as the results were either so successful as to be boring or so disastrous that her involvement was lost in the fallout.
Jupiter's recent roving eye was also touched upon. Usagi also complained at great length about her
brother. As the youngest sibling, Koan had little constructive comments, going so far at one point to try to make Usagi
see things from Mamoru's perspective. As his point of view was that of a monstrous little goblin, Usagi saw no
reason for it and said so quite firmly.
At one point, she was asked about her own love
life. "Well, I've been busy with school. I haven't had time to
date, really." She said this matter-of-factly and as off-hand as possible.
Koan was not impressed.
"Really? No
young buck catching your eye? No foreign ambassador wooing you? No ancient
spirits swirling romantically to your side?"
"No, none," said Usagi. There had been a boy, once upon a time, but that was long ago. The conversation, after
some prodding by Usagi, went back to more general gossip.
It was only after all this wonderfully freeing talk that
the subject of Usagi's purpose was touched upon. "I have to assume that it's something
important. It's not as if Earth and Nemesis were next door neighbors or anything."
"It wasn't that long of a trip," protested
Usagi.
"But not so short to be done on a whim," said
Koan. "So why?"
Usagi set down her newly-refilled drink and stared into
Koan's eyes. Telling her family was one thing, telling a friend, even one that shared so much history with her, was
another. "I'm searching for something. I've been told by those
that know that something's coming, a dark and dangerous something."
"End of the world something?" asked Koan.
"End of everything, past, present and
future."
Koan looked thoughtful but unafraid, an inherent core of
optimism and faith in the world strengthening her, which would have been impossible before she was purified and redeemed.
"So how can we help?" she asked.
Usagi smiled gratefully at her. "I need your time machine."
-10-
She stood in a vault, its dimensions changing and turning
wrong. Sometimes it seemed to be bigger than worlds, other times as small as a closet.
And then it turned strange and indescribable, causing her pain and nausea whenever she tried to concentrate on it.
At the heart of the vault was a mirror, elevated on a low altar. When Usagi came closer, she saw that the altar
and mirror were fused together, a wedding between the volcanic basalt of the altar and the strange black matter of the mirror.
Though it reflected light, the mirror also seemed to absorb it, a property of the Black Crystal that lay as the foundation of Black Moon power and
technology. All traces of that spiritually poisonous crystal were gone except for this, a mirror capable of sending
someone through time chiseled and crushed into shape from a large piece of Black Crystal. At the height of
Wiseman's power, it would have been sickening for her to be here. Yet now only there was only the dizziness of the
chamber and the absence of something, some vital something, when she came near the mirror.
And for a mirror, it didn't really do its job
properly. The chamber and the light were reflected, yet Usagi, like a vampire of myth, did not show up. She had been warned about this by Koan, who had reluctantly let her come into the last piece of the old order, kept deep and safe
within the depths of Nemesis's ground. As she walked around the base of the altar, looking for buttons to push or
some such, she noticed a change on the surface of the mirror from the corners of her eyes. Instead of not showing her,
there was an infinite number of her. Usagi looked behind her, thinking that someone had set up another mirror to
reflect the light back and forth forever. Yet of course there was nothing there.
Turning back to the mirror, she looked at her reflections, which descended down into the endless depths of the mirror.
They stared back at her, doing nothing. Usagi waited, knowing that sooner or later something weird and
disturbing was going to happen soon.
She was not disappointed.
Soon enough the foremost image overshadowed all the ones behind her and stood tall and proud. A haughty,
malicious smile bloomed on her face as a black, inverse crescent shone on her brow. Usagi's reflection changed
still further, as her hair went from raven black with blue highlights to its natural pink color, growing and reshaping itself as it changed until twin sharp
cones rose from the sides of her head with long tails trailing down to the ground from them. Her clothes changed as
well, becoming a black velvet evening gown slit very high with burgundy lace sleeves. A black choker with metal studs
encircled her neck. Usagi supposed that she looked quite evil, in theatrical, juvenile sort of way. It was a child's idea of evil and adulthood-stark, clear, sadistic and sexualized but without any subtlety to it.
Usagi recognized the image immediately of course; it had
haunted her for so long. This was the so-called Black Lady, the 'woman' she had been turned into when possessed
and seduced by the Wiseman back when she was a small child. She had become convinced that she had been abandoned by
everyone, unloved and consumed by a guilt that made her want to burn down the world in a petulant fury. Love turned
sour, twisted about with ideas of possession and power. All other emotions became stunted and empathy disappeared.
Looking at the Black Lady, Usagi said the first thing that
popped into her head. "That dress makes my hips look chunky."
The Black Lady said nothing, only smiled.
"And burgundy makes my skin pasty and sick."
Still nothing.
"Like an ugly, pasty vampire. Hello? Anyone there? It's at this point
you're supposed to, I don't know, make me fell bad about stuff and junk."
"As you wish," said the Black Lady. "But all I have is the truth."
"Yeah?
What's that?"
"You are on a fool's errand because you are a
fool."
"Insults now."
"Where are you going?
What is this nebulous threat you're fighting against? Have you seen proof beyond what Pluto has told
you? If she truly wanted to help you, why not do more? Tell you
more? And, indeed, why you?"
These were all questions that Usagi had asked herself since
starting on her mission. The exact same questions, in fact. "You have any
answers there or are you just going to pepper me with more questions?"
"Then here's an answer," said the Black Lady
triumphantly. "You are being used. You are a cat's paw in a greater
game and once your limited utility is done with, you'll be thrown away without a second thought. You are
nothing. Worthless. Useless. When you
could have been great, you threw away greatness. When you could have been free, you shackled yourself with, what, other
people? Parasites. You will never be as free as me, never be as strong as
me. You are pathetic."
"Now you've really gone and hurt my
feelings," said Usagi. "I remember what it was like having you in me, and you're nothing but
strong. You weren't ever really a person, because people are their feelings and you only felt. You were never me, but something put in me to make me sick."
"I am the real person and you are my shadow,"
stated the Black Lady. "I define the reality and you are the negative space.
All that I am, you are not because you are nothing without me and I am everything. What are you now but a
student, one of a billion, lost in the crowd, comforting yourself with memories of past glory. Little worm, why
won't you die and let me grow?"
"Shut up. Just
. . . be quiet," said Usagi.
Suddenly this wasn't as much fun as it was before. Maybe it never should have been.
She felt a suffocating dizziness, as if there was no more air in the world and try as hard as she could, she could not catch her breath. She'd felt contemptuous for the Black Lady, for all that she represented, all that she had gone away from. And now she was angry at her, a vicious, mindless anger that clawed away at her reason, telling her to hit and hit and never stop
hitting. "Let me by, so I can go into the past."
"Easily said and easier done," said the Black
Lady. "But where would you go? You haven't a clue, do you?"
"That's where you're wrong," said Usagi,
triumph coming through her voice. "I do have a clue. And it's this: it
doesn't matter."
She had been thinking about this, thinking about this long
and hard on the way to Nemesis and while waiting for Koan. Why Nemesis? Why was
this place the first stop? Then it hit her: if the enemy, whoever it was, was attacking time and causality, then they
were monitoring travel through time. This was why Pluto had sent her to those time periods through her
dreams. And it was also why she would not help her more directly. So it
didn't matter, really, where and when she went because as soon as she moved through time, the enemy would know.
Usagi was indeed bait. She was the bait and the trap all at once. But only if
she survived.
"There's the rub," said the Black
Lady. She laughed then, a high, cold bark of vicious amusement. "Then step
on through. But remember, you will never be rid of me."
"Yeah, yeah," muttered Usagi. The Black Lady slowly turned into a silhouette, a blank void in the shape of a woman inside the mirror, the long hair fluttering
in an unfelt breeze. Usagi took a deep breathe and stepped into the mirror, with all the light in the world bleeding
away slowly as she did.
-11-
"Lost girl, why not wail out at an uncaring
world? Shine forth your light and have it swallowed by the darkness," came a voice from nowhere.
Usagi looked around and sighed deeply and
disgustedly. "Oh, come on."
Inside the mirror was a long and high tunnel, long tapering
poles on all sides holding up nothing except a fragile reality inside a world of the same sort of eye-bending distortions and wrong geometry. It was very similar to Pluto's own Corridor of Time and Space, which was used to traverse distance and duration. However, there the tunnel was tiled and columned, beautiful if gloomy and silent save for the strong winds that whipped around it,
threatening to blow people away. This tunnel was sickening and, instead of the amoral danger of its counterpart, it was
definitely predatory and even malicious.
And of course the constant insults didn't help.
Usagi looked around for the source of the voice and
eventually found it, a wavering figure ahead of her in the tunnel. As she came closer, she saw it was a hunched figure
dressed entirely in robes. Only his hands could be seen, their dark surface running with a wan rainbow pattern like a
black oil slick on darkly violet waters. This was the figure of the Wiseman, the immanent aspect of the Death Phantom,
the malevolent spirit that was the heart of Nemesis.
Yet the Wiseman was dead, defeated and purified out of
existence at the end of the war that he had started. So who was this joker?
Nobody that she really wanted to talk to, whoever or whatever he was. She walked by the Wiseman, not even looking in
his direction, let alone talking with him. Yet out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that he was drifting along
beside her. They said nothing to each other. Pressure built inside of her as
the silence between them continued. Finally, unable to stop herself, she shouted, "Well? Aren't you going to continue? No, shut up!
Just keep shutting up, you stupid floating bag of nothing. I've had it up to here with the lot of you, with your
'darkness' this and your 'foolish' that. Can't you ever come up with anything more original, or are
you so thick that even the mayor of the town of Thickness, Thicky McThick, thinks you're too thick for a vote?"
"You have no thoughts in you, girl," said the
Wiseman. "All I have are words, but they were once enough to make you turn from your friends and family."
"You make one little mistake when you're a kid and
they never let you live it down," muttered Usagi. The Wiseman laughed, a strange echo distorting it.
"If you had a face to punch, I'd punch you in
it," said Usagi. "But I know what you are, now. I've figured it
out. You're not even a ghost; you're what gets left behind when everything else goes. You and her back there aren't even properly sentient. Recordings on the wind,
mindlessly repeating what's already been said."
"I am a shadow of a shadow; a lingering feeling after
a gaze has passed; nostalgia," said the Wiseman, placidly enough. "Yet even a record can teach
something. And I teach you this way: how did you get here?"
"Eh?"
"All those that traveled to the past through the
mirror had a shard of the Black Crystal. Yet you did not. You did not even
bring the Silver Crystal with you. Yet how did you get here? How are you
traveling to the past?"
"I, uh, I." Usagi was flabbergasted. The Wiseman was right; all the old Nemesis technology depended upon the Black Crystal, a poisonous stone that grew and flamed and
gave strength to its users even as it chipped away at their humanity. All those that went to the past wore fragments of
the Black Crystal, usually as an earring. Yet she had not. Indeed, the mirror
itself had not worked until she came near it.
"Think on that, as you make your way through time,
trying to stave off the destruction of everything."
Usagi was silent.
Up ahead she noticed a glimmering light, one that indicated the intersection between the tunnel and regular time and space.
She walked toward it, knowing where it was and also knowing that it was the perfect place for her to make her trap.
"You had no need for the Black Crystal. You never have. The power is always in you, my Black Lady." The Wiseman floated away from her, even as the light grew stronger. Usagi remained silent,
watching him go. He paused at the very interface between the tunnel and the light and lifted his strange, swirling
hands to the edges of his robes. With a single motion, the Wiseman pulled the hood away from his head, revealing a
sickeningly familiar face. It was her brother, Mamoru, his eyes sad and angry at once, yet his countenance taut and
grim. On his brow was the inverted black crescent of the Black Moon Family.
"A final word, this time of warning, my sister. Beware the children."
The light overtook Usagi before she could say anything.