======================================== Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Orion A pretty original fanfic by LeVar Bouyer Episode #315: Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi ======================================== 20 April 3035 Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaiian Islands, American Confederation There was an expectant air in Honolulu that day, a feeling that weeks of war might be coming to a conclusion. One could feel it in the smiles of the soldiers, the guarded optimism of the diplomats. The tension simply wasn't there, and Sailor Mars saw it as a good sign. Then again, the final peace agreement that lay before them might have something to do with it as well. "So," said Mars, "final recap. Ronowski-san, you will pay to the Crystal Tokyo treasury a sum equal to that required to account for two-thirds the cost of recovery, including but not limited to repair of infrastructure, resettlement of those displaced from Hokkaido, expenses incurred by the Royal Army, replacement of all lost Royal Sea and Royal Star Navy ships, and pain and suffering reimbursement." She paused; having a father who had started out long ago as a lawyer helped at times, especially at rattling off long legal documents. "In addition, you will admit to and accept full responsibility for initiating and provoking an unwarranted attack upon Crystal Tokyo. You will apologize for your actions and present yourself before a World Court for trial on the charges of crimes against humanity, specifically for unwarranted declaration of war, use of cruel and inhumane weapons, specifically the heart buster, and conspiring to overthrow an undisputed government. "Furthermore, you will resign from your position as President effective immediately, and hold a democratic election at the earliest possible convenience, whose impartiality and fairness will be overseen by Crystal Tokyo officials. In return, the American Confederation will retain its military, and its generals will not be executed. In addition," she continued with a very slight smirk, "we will not raze the entire continent to the ground. "This agreement will also apply to the Russian Confederation and the European Union. Are there any questions?" It was basically the surrender agreed to over the past several days. In retrospect, Ronowski had to admit that the senshi were shrewd negotiators as well as fighters. The entire proceeding had been bent to give Crystal Tokyo the advantage and, he had to concede, to give them the psychological edge as well. Again and again they had hammered to the point that he had no remaining confidence. There simply wasn't any choice, though; best to take what he had coming. "No questions." *** The following morning, at 08:55 local time on the twenty-first day of April, while Crystal Tokyo awoke to face another day of war, President David Ronowski, President Alexander Rostov, and Prime Minister Wilhemina Cabot sat down at one side of a long wooden table. On the other side of the table were Sailors Mars, Uranus, Cassiopeia, and Moon. Around them were assorted commanders, diplomats, and dignitaries, assembled on a promontory overlooking Pearl Harbor. U.S.S. Arizona had rusted away long ago, but there was no escaping the history that permeated the place. A war had begun there, long ago. Now it was time for another one to end. Between the two sides was a piece of paper. Sailor Moon put down the ordinary ball-point pen. She was signing on behalf of Her Majesty. However, she had chosen her senshi uniform to sign the agreement in. Her pink ponytails waved slightly in the morning breeze. "Here. It's your turn." Rostov looked back between his two co-conspirators, with a slight accusing look at Ronowski, and a longer look at Cabot. Then, his face taut, he picked up the pen and signed. "There. May Russia have mercy on me for bringing them to the brink of destruction." Even Sailor Uranus recoiled from the bitterness Rostov had made clear. 'No-one is as hard a critic as themselves,' thought Sailor Moon. "Um . . . Ronowski-san?" asked Moon. The charismatic man had lost his charisma; the optimistic leader had lost his optimism, and David Ronowski had no doubts that he would soon lose his leadership as well. He would be lucky to escape assassination, and if he wasn't overthrown, his political enemies would make hash out of him. He had relied on the military before to maintain order, but with the army all but destroyed, and with those who remained openly demanding a change of government, he couldn't continue to rely on them. All he had was tradition. He sighed. Once he had boasted that his family had a history of losing, all the way back to Grandpa Bruckner in the twentieth. He had boasted that he and he alone broke that tradition. Now it seemed that traditions really could turn out to be hard to break after all. Trembling, he picked up the pen and signed his name. He couldn't bring himself to ratify the moment with any words. "And Cabot-san?" Mina Cabot seemed casual about the whole deal. As if merely signing a check, she dashed off her name in flowing letters. "Que sera sera," she said lightly. "Hm?" asked Ronowski with a monosyllable. He knew her too well to believe that she'd be so unbothered by this. The senshi looked on, equally interested. "Life is a game of chance. One day you win, the next you lose. We lost." "There are those who say chance has no part at all," said Sailor Uranus mildly. "There is fate." "Fate?" Cabot laughed, apparently uncaring of the fact that she had just signed the war out of existence, and her political future as well. "Fate is an imp. *Fortune* is the empress of the world." She sat back and smiled. "You've won, O mighty senshi. Enjoy your victory." "And what is that supposed to mean?" asked Sailor Mars, but the woman from Buckinghamshire would say no more. "Very well," said Sailor Moon. She stood, and in a single undetectable yet obvious moment she was Princess Usagi Small Lady Tsukino, second most powerful person in the world, heir to a responsibility she now felt she could shoulder. "By the power vested in me by my mother, Neo-Queen Serenity, and the trust of her subjects, the people of the Crystal Millennium, I accept your surrender." She nodded to Sailors Mars and Uranus. "Order a cease-fire." Both were only too happy to acquiesce. *** The word went out at once. First to stop were the constant missile attacks, then the offensives. It really was rather easy in practice, after all; most of the Allies were already demoralized by the desertion of half their number, and the Crystal Tokyo troops just wanted the fighting and destruction to stop. In a day, the war of 3035 was over. It took a bit longer for news to reach the erstwhile crew of H.M.S. Osaka. They were on a light cruiser, awaiting the next transport back to Earth. Osaka was being towed to the Mars space yards, where engineers would try to repair the damage and complete the ship. There was a knock on the door. A mop of unruly red hair popped out from under the covers. Jen had pulled every string she knew to get this room and its large bed, and she wasn't ashamed at all, considering the benefits. "Who is it?" asked a sleepy voice. Another head, this one with brown hair, came up from under the covers. "Don't know," replied Jen. "Just a moment," she called out. Giving Eileen a quick kiss on the lips, she rolled out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt and some running shorts. Running a hand through her hair to regain some semblance of composure, she went to the door. "Yes?" she asked, opening it. "Sir," said the ensign, a young woman fresh out of the academy named Omitsu Hosokawa. She looked at Jen's attire and the figure moving about beneath the covers of the bed, drawing the obvious conclusion. She kept her composure, though. Given the recent news from home, it seemed that Omitsu would live to see her boyfriend on Earth again after all, and in that case a bit of dalliance on the part of the senshi would be forgiven. "This just came in." She handed Captain Sakachi a small folded message form. Jen took the piece of paper and read through it. "It can't be," she whispered. "It's for real," said Omitsu, bursting with joy. "They've declared an end to the war. It's over." Jen slouched her shoulders in indescribable relief. "Finally," she sighed. For all her studies of how wars began, were fought, and ended, she had never looked into the feelings of the survivors--for she felt that she had survived, not won, the conflict. She knew also that their work wasn't done. Crystal Tokyo and Japan would have to put themselves back together again. At the least, however, they would have that chance. The angel's thesis hadn't been as cruel as it could have been. *** In the streets of Crystal Tokyo, there were no victory parades, no celebrations. There was only a tremendous relief that the madness was over. It was now the twenty-second of April. Sailors Orion and America had returned to Earth, landing at the Shikoku spaceport in a decidedly less dramatic and desperate fashion than they had left. Their reception hadn't been very large at all: just the usual shuttle recovery crews who happened to be in a better mood than usual. "Welcome back," said Captain Tsuyoshi, who was officially in command of the spaceport. He was a big, burly, affable man who seemed to enjoy life. "Well done." "Thanks," said Sailor Orion, bowing as did her lover. "Just doing our jobs," she said, waving off the praise. "At least we came back. Eighty-two senshi couldn't say the same." Tsuyoshi's face darkened. "Eighty-three. Sailor Zubenelgenubi died this morning from wounds she suffered last Tuesday." Sailor Orion choked back an urge to scream in frustration. The fighting had stopped, but the dying continued. There were still many, many seriously wounded people on both sides. She forced herself to look on the positive side. "How about the disarmament?" "It's going rather smoothly." The three began walked from the disembarkation gates to the elevator that would take them to the train station. Sailors Orion and America would be returning to Crystal Tokyo, where Serenity was to address the nation for the first time since the Selenite crisis in 3029, six years ago. Those events seemed to Sailor Orion like a fairy tale: something that had happened to someone else, something that she had only heard about secondhand. They turned a corner and entered a much smaller corridor. "As per the agreements, all heart buster devices are being confiscated and destroyed. Sailor Mercury is to go to the AC next week to make sure all records of how to make and used the damned things are destroyed, and to find out how they learned to make the things. The Allies *still* won't admit to stealing any secrets. "Prisoners of war are being exchanged next week. There weren't a whole lot on either side, actually." He fell silent for a bit. At least one sailor, Wezea, had gone out in a suicide attack rather than be captured, and that basically summed up the fighting spirits of both sides. Finally they arrived at the elevator. "Well, sailor senshi, I'll see you later." "Bye," replied Sailor Orion with a bow. The doors closed on his grateful face. *** Neo-Queen Serenity stepped onto her front porch. The balcony of the Crystal Palace was rarely used. It was mainly a holdover from the old Palace of the Moon Kingdom. It was made from fine marble, white with small veins of darker material running through it. More notably, while the floor of the balcony, which sat two stories above the ground and overlooked the main entrance into the Palace, was bare except for a carpet in winter, the railings were covered with climbing roses, a peculiar breed with thorns that would prick neither senshi nor royalty. Thus, Serenity fearlessly gripped the rails and looked down. The courtyard of the Palace was full of people here to see the queen give her remarks. The first couple rows of spectators consisted of sailor senshi; the very first row being super sailor senshi. At the left end of the third row stood Sailors Orion and America; their train had been held up while another train had priority, and so they were a couple minutes late. The balcony itself was fairly empty; only Serenity, her husband, and her daughter stood there. Out of sight behind them in the shadows were the other planet senshi, except for Sailor Pluto. Serenity still seemed a bit tired from protecting the city; up close one could see the lines of fatigue that the ginzuishou hadn't erased. 'Or,' thought Mercury, 'that it couldn't, not after Serenity had stretched herself to the limit.' There was so much that had yet to be defined regarding the ginzuishou's abilities. Serenity spoke. "My friends, we now stand at the dawn of a new era. With the end of this foolish war, we need no longer debate the sovereignty of Crystal Tokyo. Never again shall such needless conflict arrive, for it has been established that no nation anywhere has the right or the obligation to interfere with another law-abiding government. For too long we have lived under the assumption that there are two parts to the world: those of the Crystal Millennium and those who are not. Now, our toughest challenge lies in learning to live together. In learning to forgive." She looked down at the roses, the crowd silent before her. "Some would say this is impossible. After all, terrible things have been done on both sides." She looked up, eyes blazing. "But let us not forget that some of our greatest victories are not won by guns or by magic or by superior firepower. They are won by love. "Three thousand years ago, one of the greatest philosophers proclaimed that the greatest commandment is to love thy neighbor, and to love your enemy. Now I say to you that we must do the same: that we must love our enemies, and in so doing remove the necessity of labeling anyone as our enemy. Thank you, and good day." *** That evening, the most powerful woman in the world stood on another balcony, this one far higher and affording a view of the Pacific. Serenity leaned on the roseless banister, more tired that she had ever felt in her life. She looked up, and a shooting star streaked across the black night. She yawned. "You spoke well," said a quiet voice behind her. Serenity turned, and she could not hide her surprise at who stood there, back lit by the light from inside. "Sailor Pluto!" "Good evening," she replied, bowing. "It's been a long time." "Indeed." By now Serenity was once more serene. "I assume you have a good reason for your absence the past half-year?" "Yes." "Then let us hear it." Sailor Pluto didn't look taken aback at all. "Your Majesty, have you ever thought, I mean *really* thought, about my job?" "To preserve the time stream and protect it from any alterations, no matter what the reason." "Very good," replied Sailor Pluto with a smile, shifting the Time Staff from one hand to the other. "You paid attention." The smile vanished. "Now suppose I were to tell you the heart buster made its return because of a deliberate negligence on my part?" Neo-Queen Serenity stood very still. "Is that something you think you are likely to say?" Sailor Pluto looked at her monarch with an overwhelming expression of sadness. Sometimes even having just a vague idea of the future was too terrible to live with. How much more painful would it be when she broke the news? "Allow me to explain something. Do you recall the Second Sailor Wars?" "How could I forget?" "So you remember its conclusion." "Yes." "But it wasn't truly a conclusion, was it? The story continued back into the twentieth century." Serenity's eyes clouded with the thousand year old memory. "Yes, there was more." "H.M.S. Ursa Minor disappeared deep into geologic time. H.M.S. Ursa Major crashed into a deep sea trench and was recovered several decades ago by the North American Confederation. From that wreck, the NAC, and eventually its allies, discovered and utilized the secrets of the heart buster gun." There was a long pause. "And you allowed this?" "I understand what I did, perhaps better than you ever could. Before you judge me . . . and you *will* judge me . . . perhaps you should know something else. I don't expect you to understand the true workings of what I'm about to say. I really don't think it would even be possible for you to do so, not without living as long as I have. I simply ask that you hear me out." "When have I ever done otherwise?" asked Serenity wearily. "Never," came the reply. "So. I permitted this tampering of time to proceed because the alternatives were unacceptable." "Unacceptable?" "Put simply, I decided the consequences of the time tampering were preferable to the consequences of no tampering." "But . . . you can't do that!" "I did." Serenity reeled. It was one of Sailor Pluto's most steadfast rules: never ever manipulate time to change the outcome of events, no matter what the reason, and never permit anyone else to do so either. To permit otherwise would be to open a Pandora's box of exceptions and special cases. What could be so important to make Sailor Pluto break her sacrosanct rule? "Is it me? Did you do this to save me?" "I did it for many reasons." "In other words, yes." "If Ursa Major had not been recovered, the war would have gone on further. The Allies, driven to desperation after repeated failures to break through the line, and without being punished by a single strong backbreaking attack such as the one Orion and America spearheaded, would have . . . taken certain measures. The . . . remaining senshi, with nothing to lose, would have retaliated, with repercussions they could not have been aware of, for reasons you cannot know. Then, after half the land surface of Earth was covered with radioactive glass, and three-quarters of humanity was dead, Sailor Saturn, as senior remaining senshi, would have been forced to eliminate what remained of Earth . . . out of mercy to those who survived." "So you say that this . . . this utter madness is the best of all futures?" "It allowed the maximum balance of simplicity and minimal temporal interference, and saved the most lives in the long fun." "Really." Sailor Pluto shrugged. "I didn't expect you to forgive me. I don't. In fact, if you were to order my execution it would be perfectly understandable. Unwise, but understandable." "Sailor Pluto," said Serenity, the pain in her voice evident, "if I ever proceeded to that point, I would be unworthy to wear this crown." The senshi opened her mouth as if to say something, but changed her mind in midstream. Instead, she hummed a soft melody to herself and stopped abruptly. She tapped her staff on the floor twice, and the air shimmered slightly. "It's not over yet, Your Majesty. Please step inside the doorway. It will be safest." *** <> *** By now they thought of it as their hill, overlooking the Bay. The two sat on the grass, watching the tide roll in. "Funny, isn't it?" asked Eileen. "How it takes almost the complete loss of everything you love in order to make things better." "Better?" "The allies have disbanded, the weapons are back in storage, the war is over. All it took was near-annihilation." "It could have been worse," replied Jen, the history doctorate shining through. "We could have lost." Eileen gestured north towards Hokkaido. "With victories like these, who needs losses? How could things get worse?" Jen prepared to reply with a lecture on Pyrrhic victories. She couldn't follow through on it, though, for at that point the sea jumped, and the earth shook as it had never shaken before. Never ask how things could get worse. They have an unnerving tendancy to demonstrate precisely how, in the worst possible way. ================================== Begun: 7:25 31 July 1998 Finished: 12:03 8 August 1998 Final draft: 9:36 23 August 1998 Final edit: 15:33 26 February 2001