Remember, class -- once we have pulled the cottontail pin, Mr. Plotbunny Grenade is no longer our friend....
THE FINAL DAYS OF THE SILVER MILENNIUM
As part of Beryl's covert pre-war maneuvering, the Earth Kingdom begins suffering from an increasing number of terroristic attacks against its stability and infrastructure by low-grade youma operating in unprecedented numbers. With the hit-and-fade attacks too widespread and random to be countered by his limited number of elite magical warriors, but at the same time too powerful for his unpowered regular forces to manage, the King of Earth decides to create a new class of 'middle-weight' combatants not magical warriors, but magically enhanced soldiers, augmented enough to defeat the rising threat, or at least hold out until heavier reinforcements can arrive. The result is to be a unit composed of ten thousand volunteers, their life energies intermeshed such that each soldier's life is supported by all the rest, granting enhanced durability, healing, and resistance to most youma magical attacks, and with each soldier's death passing his strength on to his fellows as a final gift.
Unfortunately, thanks to her control over the King's already-corrupted Guardians, Beryl learns of the project and embarks on a plan of sabotage, beginning with the selection process. By the time the ten thousand are assembled for the great Working, better than half the volunteers are Beryl's minions, witting or otherwise, and with the Guardians' assistance she intends for the Working to forcibly convert the rest, granting her an entire covert army already inside the heart of the Earth Kingdom's defenses.
But the King's mages are not so clueless as Beryl assumes, nor as helpless the Working ends with the ten thousand newly-enhanced soldiers battling each other on the palace's ceremonial grounds, Beryl's hand tipped, and the Guardians exposed as her pawns.
Forced to kick off her conquest prematurely, Beryl nonetheless succeeds almost entirely: the King is slain in the first hour and the kingdom falls within a few more. The only fly in the ointment is that a handful of the ten thousand, forming an ad hoc bodyguard, have fought their way clear of the palace and obtained transport to the Moon Kingdom, along with Prince Endymion, whilst the remainder of the loyalists made a desperate forlorn hope against their turncoat brethren.
In the end, it matters little. Beryl pursues Endymion to the Moon, and the remaining soldiers die alongside their prince, and the Sailor Senshi and their princess. Queen Serenity's final strike to seal away Beryl's forces takes the turncoats among the ten thousand as well... but her final act of hope, sending her people forward to be reborn on Earth in a later age, gathers up the loyalists. With their life forces still enmeshed by the King's final Working, many from both sides of the ten thousand are scattered across the following milennia, with their enhancement oddly skewed by the interaction of the conflicting magics, no memory of their past lives, and only a sense that they must find each other and finish what the fall of the Silver Millennium began. They will become the root of countless legends and myths, but their war will not end until....
TODAY
During the first conflict between the newly-awakened Sailor Moon and the forces of the re-emergent Dark Kingdom, due to blind luck, the life of the mysterious warrior Tuxedo Mask is placed in dire jeopardy. He survives, but around the world, the survivors of the reincarnated ten thousand, loyalist and turncoat alike, stop whatever they are doing and turn in the direction of Japan....
The Gathering is now, in the Juuban ward of Tokyo. And as the Immortals converge upon the battlefield where the final battle of the Silver Millennium will finally be concluded, they will have to come to grips with the fact that the mythology they wove for themselves out of dreams and shards of memory was a lie that there need not be only one, and that there is no Prize... except victory in a war none of them remember, and few would care about if they could.
Loyalties will be tested. Sides will be chosen and changed. And two desperate handfuls of beleaguered amnesic warriors will find themselves forced to join forces against a united foe which dwarfs them in both power and numbers....
----------------------------------------------------
Well, okay, *I* thought that making the reincarnates natives of Earth rather than "Senshi Support Force X" from the Moon was a bit more original.
I think it could really work, though. If I ever get around to trying to write this, my intention is/was to basically dump the established "Highlander" timeline(s), which is a mess anyway, and just grab all the neatest characters from the movie (There was Only One!) and the TV series and dump them into SM Seaon 1. About the only one I couldn't reasonably drag in would be Ramirez, dangit....
THE FINAL DAYS OF THE SILVER MILENNIUM
As part of Beryl's covert pre-war maneuvering, the Earth Kingdom begins suffering from an increasing number of terroristic attacks against its stability and infrastructure by low-grade youma operating in unprecedented numbers. With the hit-and-fade attacks too widespread and random to be countered by his limited number of elite magical warriors, but at the same time too powerful for his unpowered regular forces to manage, the King of Earth decides to create a new class of 'middle-weight' combatants not magical warriors, but magically enhanced soldiers, augmented enough to defeat the rising threat, or at least hold out until heavier reinforcements can arrive. The result is to be a unit composed of ten thousand volunteers, their life energies intermeshed such that each soldier's life is supported by all the rest, granting enhanced durability, healing, and resistance to most youma magical attacks, and with each soldier's death passing his strength on to his fellows as a final gift.
Unfortunately, thanks to her control over the King's already-corrupted Guardians, Beryl learns of the project and embarks on a plan of sabotage, beginning with the selection process. By the time the ten thousand are assembled for the great Working, better than half the volunteers are Beryl's minions, witting or otherwise, and with the Guardians' assistance she intends for the Working to forcibly convert the rest, granting her an entire covert army already inside the heart of the Earth Kingdom's defenses.
But the King's mages are not so clueless as Beryl assumes, nor as helpless the Working ends with the ten thousand newly-enhanced soldiers battling each other on the palace's ceremonial grounds, Beryl's hand tipped, and the Guardians exposed as her pawns.
Forced to kick off her conquest prematurely, Beryl nonetheless succeeds almost entirely: the King is slain in the first hour and the kingdom falls within a few more. The only fly in the ointment is that a handful of the ten thousand, forming an ad hoc bodyguard, have fought their way clear of the palace and obtained transport to the Moon Kingdom, along with Prince Endymion, whilst the remainder of the loyalists made a desperate forlorn hope against their turncoat brethren.
In the end, it matters little. Beryl pursues Endymion to the Moon, and the remaining soldiers die alongside their prince, and the Sailor Senshi and their princess. Queen Serenity's final strike to seal away Beryl's forces takes the turncoats among the ten thousand as well... but her final act of hope, sending her people forward to be reborn on Earth in a later age, gathers up the loyalists. With their life forces still enmeshed by the King's final Working, many from both sides of the ten thousand are scattered across the following milennia, with their enhancement oddly skewed by the interaction of the conflicting magics, no memory of their past lives, and only a sense that they must find each other and finish what the fall of the Silver Millennium began. They will become the root of countless legends and myths, but their war will not end until....
TODAY
During the first conflict between the newly-awakened Sailor Moon and the forces of the re-emergent Dark Kingdom, due to blind luck, the life of the mysterious warrior Tuxedo Mask is placed in dire jeopardy. He survives, but around the world, the survivors of the reincarnated ten thousand, loyalist and turncoat alike, stop whatever they are doing and turn in the direction of Japan....
The Gathering is now, in the Juuban ward of Tokyo. And as the Immortals converge upon the battlefield where the final battle of the Silver Millennium will finally be concluded, they will have to come to grips with the fact that the mythology they wove for themselves out of dreams and shards of memory was a lie that there need not be only one, and that there is no Prize... except victory in a war none of them remember, and few would care about if they could.
Loyalties will be tested. Sides will be chosen and changed. And two desperate handfuls of beleaguered amnesic warriors will find themselves forced to join forces against a united foe which dwarfs them in both power and numbers....
----------------------------------------------------
Well, okay, *I* thought that making the reincarnates natives of Earth rather than "Senshi Support Force X" from the Moon was a bit more original.
I think it could really work, though. If I ever get around to trying to write this, my intention is/was to basically dump the established "Highlander" timeline(s), which is a mess anyway, and just grab all the neatest characters from the movie (There was Only One!) and the TV series and dump them into SM Seaon 1. About the only one I couldn't reasonably drag in would be Ramirez, dangit....