Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Unmei no Hoshi ❯ Episode 7: Shin no Star-seed! Unmei no hoshi no Chaos ( Chapter 7 )

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon: Unmei no Hoshi

Destiny of Stars

by P.H. Wise

Episode 7: Shin no Star-seed! Unmei no hoshi no Chaos

(The true star seed! Destiny of stars in chaos)

The day of doom has come! Can Tetsuro and Arashi hope to win against the Church of Dagon? That which has lain dead but dreaming for countless millennia has at last begun to stir... Here is the beginning of the final battle!

Key: Speech surrounded by < > is intended to represent Japanese.

~~~~~~

Endless stars

A guiding light

That once was warm

But now it's bitter cold

It's freezing hearts

It's freezing souls

Soon icy shades will cover all

It pretends to be alive

It pretends to be alive

Be alive
Be alive

Be alive

"Gallow's Pole" - Demons & Wizards

******

Arashi and Tetsuro stared in horror as Terra's starseed darkened to black, giving off a noise very much like pieces of glass being ground together. Tendrils of darkness burst of from the ground and wrapped around the false senshi's body.

Arashi screamed out a futile denial of the events unfolding. "KAZUKO! NOOOOOO!!!"

Tetsuro, on the other hand, simply screamed; a horrible, wordless, soul-rending cry of despair. His armor faded as the cry faded, eventually leaving him in his normal, human form.

The inky blackness fell away from Terra, revealing a creature that was... much changed. Tall, menacing, cloaked in fire and shadow, Terra-phage loomed over the two humans, her very presence seeming to radiate a malevolence towards all living things.

The crowd of chaos spawn gathered around the group began to make a sort of hissing, gurgling sound, a twisted mockery of true human laughter.

Tetsuro sunk to his knees, shaking his head in disbelief. This wasn't happening. This could NOT be happening.

But it was, and neither his nor Arashi's denial made any difference.

Terra-Phage unfurled her newly acquired black demonic wings and gave a cruel mockery of a smile as she murmured, "Brother, dear. I'm so glad you came to play."

Hyali nearly trembled with rage. "What is this!?" he demanded. "Where is the true starseed!?"

Arashi laughed bitterly at the priest, which sent his glare her way almost immediately. After a few moments, she spoke to him. "Terra was never a true senshi, priest," she said, her face full of both grief and anger, "She only thought she was. Don't you know anything?" She shook her head faintly. "Besides, Endymion represents the Earth, not 'Terra'."

Hyali's face nearly turned purple with his rage. The name of this thing that he had created came to him. Phage. He snarled as if he were some kind of beast and not a man at all, and then spoke to the newly created Phage. "I wanted a true starseed, and instead I got you. So be it. Destroy these two humans, Phage. They are no longer useful."

As Tetsuro stared at the creature that had once been his sister mutely, still shaking his head, still unwilling to accept what had happened, Terra-phage cast a critical glance at the priest, which seemed to further enrage him - so much so that his skin actually writhed in the light of the moon.

"You dare to disobey me?" Hyali asked quietly. The change in his voice was astounding - the explosive anger was gone, and his voice had become cold and intense, and somehow, it was now many times more menacing than it had been when he had simply been angry.

A cruel smile flashed across the phage's face, and then was gone. She leaped at Tetsuro, a sword appearing in her hands as she did so. Its blade was the colour of the ocean at midnight, and on it were inscribed many evil runes. The sword seemed to give off an icy chill.

Tetsuro made a half hearted attempt at dodging. Perhaps he didn't believe that she would really hurt him. He was wrong. Though her first attack left only a shallow cut (the best that could have been hoped for considering how poor an attempt at dodging he had made), her second hit him dead center, going right through his stomach and out the other side. Tetsuro stared into his sister's eyes, an expression of grief and of disbelief written on his face. His entire body was wracked with a great sob before he sank to the ground and lay still, a pool of blood rapidly forming around him.

Arashi's jaw dropped open. Both her grief and her anger waxed as she gazed at the fallen body of Shiro Tetsuro. Sorrow threatened to overwhelm her, but she stubbornly refused to let it do so. She held on to her anger almost desperately, forcing it to grow in leaps and bounds.

Terra-phage drew the sword out of her brother's viscera, the moonlight playing off her face in queer ways. Blood dripped from the Blade of the Deep. On her face was a look of... regret? Or perhaps it was just the way the moonlight and the shadows moved across her face.

Arashi trembled, now feeling her emotions so strongly that she felt that she were about to explode. Tears waged war with a burning fury, and in the end, an uneasy truce was formed between the two. Filled equally with grief and with hatred, Arashi clenched her fists, and as she did so, her battle aura flared visibly.

As the Phage turned towards her, readying itself for its next attack, Arashi let out a scream of pure rage. Her battle aura grew in intensity until the air around her shimmered and crackled wildly. As she screamed, her right fist took on an unearthly blue glow.

Terra-phage simply stood there, waiting.

Arashi darted forwards, leaving a faint blue after-image in her wake. In the blink of an eye she had crossed the space between herself and Terra-phage and was lashing out at the creature with her glowing fist, desiring nothing more than to pound the abomination into the ground.

Terra caught Arashi's fist in the palm of her hand almost casually. She smirked and asked in a condescending tone, "Is that all your anger amounts to, Tenoh?"

******

Steven Marsh sat at the desk within his sister's room, peering into the mirror of true-seeing. She, the creature that he called 'sister', stood at his right side. His father stood on the left. He drew no comfort from their presence. His horror grew by the minute. He had seen the fate of Sailor Terra, and he was deeply grieved. It pained him even more to watch his friend, Arashi, locked in combat with the creature that had once been the girl that he liked.

As he watched, he felt the first faint stirrings of his own accursed blood; for Steven was indeed descended from the Marsh family of old, who took into their family the bloodline of the ancient Deep Ones. His skin became pallid, and he felt strange shiftings within his skull. These he undid with a supreme effort of will, and when they had passed, he nearly trembled with his relief.

'I never wanted this', he thought. 'I don't WANT to become one of... THEM. Did Mom and Dad ever try to resist it? What about...' he shook his head. He would not call that creature his sister. He tried to imagine what it would be like, once the change had taken place. Horror overwhelmed him at the very thought of it. 'Maybe... maybe Serenity can help. But... is it futile to try to work against it?'

And so he mused as he explored the mystery that predestination brings.

In time, he was drawn out of his musings by the need to see what was happening on Devil's Reef.

What he saw there struck him as very strange. Even as Arashi fought with the Phage, a strange glow seemed to come from her forehead. His first reaction was an intense and unreasonable fear - the sort of fear that is bred into the bones of the one who feels it. To him, that glow seemed altogether deadly and terrible, yet in a very different way than the way that the Phage or Hyali seemed deadly and terrible. He frowned deeply.

******

Arashi fought desperately against the phage, leaping over slashes, dodging kicks, and in general, barely holding her own. Theirs was like a battle between the wind and the lightning; let the wind blow as it will, the lightning still cuts through it to strike the earth below.

Very quickly Arashi realized that she was outmatched - the phage was playing with her. She ducked under a sword slash only to receive a kick to the face that sent her tumbling. She recovered from the fall just in time to avoid being bisected by another slash from the sword, and that only at the cost of receiving an elbow to the chest. One of the phage's sword strikes grazed her collar bone, leaving a rather nasty cut in both her skin and clothing. When the sword cut her... the wound went completely numb. Well, no, not numb... but cold; dreadfully cold. 'Kuso!' she thought, 'I need to be stronger than this!'

Knowing that it was hopeless, Arashi clenched her teeth and fought on, too stubborn to simply accept defeat. She leaped over the phage and landed on the altar. Then, using the altar as a springboard, she launched herself towards Terra-phage.

Terra-phage brought her sword up to meet Arashi, intending to cut her in half lengthwise as she went by. Fortunately, Arashi was able to counter it. She pushed down on the flat of the blade as she went by, and then, pivoting on the blade itself, kicked the phage in the face as hard as she could. The moment she touched the blade, she felt strength flow out of her as if she had somehow been unplugged. A deadly chill spread through her hands, and she barely had the strength to flip backwards and out of range of a counter strike.

A counter strike from the sword, that is.

Terra-phage snarled, her mouth now bloodied from Arashi's kick. "It's time to end this," she hissed, cupping her palms and drawing them in towards her body. A dark energy began to gather there between Terra-phage's cupped hands, the very sight of which sent a chill into Arashi's heart.

"Tenoh Arashi! SHI-NE!*" screamed Terra as she let loose with her attack. As the energy left her hands, it seemed to take the shape of a mass of gnarled, decaying root-tendrils, each one of them glittering with the promise of a painful death.

*shi-ne ("she-nay") - Die

As the decaying root-tendrils flew towards her, Arashi shut her eyes and clenched her teeth, knowing that she could not dodge...

"WORLD SHAKING!"

"DEEP SUBMERGE!"

Arashi's face lit up with hope. She opened her eyes just in time to see twin ringed globes of energy, one yellow, one blue, burst through the phage's attack. Every soul in that defiled place turned and looked towards the source of the interruption.

(Unnoticed by any of those who were involved in the events taking place, a handful of rose petals drifted by on the wind.)

There, on the edge of the reef, stood two that Arashi had longed to see.

"The distant planet is my guardian deity! Soldier of heaven, Sailor Uranus!"

"The planet of restless oceans is my guardian deity! Soldier of the sea, Sailor Neptune!"

The Outer Duo had arrived.

"<Chansu!>" whispered Arashi to herself. The feeling was now returning to her hands, and hope allowed her to draw on reserves of strength that she did not know she had. Gathering her strength, she kicked out at the Phage in front of her. Terra-phage, distracted by the Outer Duo, never saw Arashi's kick coming. It hit her solidly in the throat. There was a loud crunching sound, like the noise of bones breaking (or, for that matter, chopsticks being snapped in half), and the phage staggered backwards before whirling to face Arashi with a look of hatred plain in its face. Its throat was crushed... and yet even as Arashi watched, the damage repaired itself. Her mouth dropped open in disbelief.

The crowd of lesser spawn rushed forward, needing no direction from Hyali. Meanwhile, Hyali stood in front of the altar cursing silently. It was plain to him that Alice Grant had failed, and now, it seemed, the Outer Duo was going to destroy him and all that he had worked for. The spawn were no match for Uranus and Neptune. Uranus destroyed three with a single world shaking, and then cut another into fourths with the space sword. Neptune faired about as well, killing two with a Deep Submerge and killing another with hand to hand attacks, and then blasting a fourth off the edge of the reef and into the water with a second Deep Submerge.

As the battle wore on, Arashi found herself facing off against another of the humanoid fish-frog creatures; a group of them had come between her and Terra-phage. As she fought she felt a strange tingling sensation on her forehead, but was too preoccupied with the fight to give it much thought. Yet while Uranus and Neptune were able to destroy large numbers of these creatures with ease, Arashi was hard pressed to defeat even one. In a melee in which dozens of these . . . THINGS were participating, the best she could hope for was to avoid getting killed.

She ducked beneath one the creature's ponderous swings and kicked it in the shins before hopping backwards and circling around the thing warily . . . until another creature struck at her from behind. Arashi barely had time to jump out of the way, and in doing so, left herself wide open to the creature that she had been fighting originally. Yet instead of taking this attack of opportunity, it blinked its fishy eyes in surprise and stared at her forehead, which gave her enough time to recover from the second creature's near miss. The fight continued, and although Arashi could not see it, on her forehead there glowed a strange sigil - a storm, bordered above by the line of the horizon, and below by the restless sea.

Tetsuro, meanwhile, was struggling to his feet. Although he was horribly wounded, having suffered such grievous injuries as would kill a normal human, he was not without a significant degree of magical power. It was that power alone which kept him alive, if barely. With great effort he managed to summon his armor, which increased the healing effect of his own magic. It was very fortunate that none of the spawn of chaos took notice of him, as will be seen here.

Terra-Phage had come face to face with Uranus. Both Uranus and Terra flashed forward, their forms almost seeming to blur with the speed of their movements. Their blades met, and the Space Sword sheared clean through the Sword of the Deep, breaking it off halfway up.

The Phage stared at her ruined sword in amazement, which was all the delay that Uranus needed to fire off a World Shaking into Terra's face. Her winged form, broken and smoking, went flying off the reef and into the ocean below.

Into the ocean also went Tetsuro, who, seeing his sister's defeat, and despite the grievous injury that she had given him, and despite the monster that she had been transformed into, loved her and dove in after her, thinking only of her safety.

And then Hyali saw Arashi's sigil.

And everything went to hell.

******

In one blinding moment, Au'ru-mt'yali realized that what he had strived for was not yet lost. He had been mistaken; Shiro Kazuko did not posses a true starseed. However, Tenoh Arashi, the daughter of Heaven and the Sea, did! The sigil glowing on her forehead proved it! With a cry of exultation, he leaped forward, moving with inhuman speed. Before Arashi could react, he seized her and released a blast of golden energy into her back.

Arashi screamed.

When Uranus and Neptune saw what had happened, they also screamed.

"<ARASHI-CHAN! MASAKA!?>"
"<HIME-CHAN! NO!>"

Their daughter was a Sailor Senshi!? And it was discovered ... just in time for her to die, and her starseed to be used by this 'Hyali'?

The red-head fell forward, staring down at the pure glowing crystal that had emerged from her chest with a sort of horrified fascination. Slowly, she brought her hands around it and attempted to push it back in... and then Hyali seized it and held it aloft, shouting out in triumph. She felt a peculiar sense of separation... a pearl of awareness that contained everything that was her was stripped away... she was floating away... and then with all the shock of a rubber band stretched to the breaking point, she and the pearl were separate, neither feeling the other.

As Uranus and Neptune looked on in horror, Hyali placed the starseed on the evil altar. A beam of blue-gray energy shot up from it almost immediately. That seemed to drive Uranus and Neptune to action.

"TEMPEST LANCE!"

"IMMERSION SHOCK!"

So the Outer Duo cried as they loosed their most powerful attacks at the being called Hyali. As their attacks flew out at him, the blue-gray energy fell between them, forming a sort of dome around the altar. Their attacks splashed ineffectually against this barrier.

The few surviving Things, in the meantime, retreated behind the barrier. They were not stupid - they knew that they were at present no match for the two Senshi - and they had no great desire to die.

"GREAT LORD DAGON!" cried Hyali in a loud voice, "WITH THE OFFERING OF A TRUE STAR-SEED, AWAKEN FROM YOUR LONG SLUMBER! THE STARS ARE RIGHT!"

And so he chanted as a horrible vortex of energy began to form in the air above the altar.

But Dagon did not hear him. He was far away, and cared not at all for the cries of a small creature on a distant backwater planet.

However, his cries were heard, and the offering was accepted. A mighty and ancient Thing stirred in the Deep. Hyali's eyes went wild as he continued to cry in a loud voice; this time, however, his cries were in no way understandable to any of the humans present. "TELEKKI LI TELEKKI LI IA CTHULHU RY'LEH FTAUGHN..."

Arashi shuddered uncontrollably, feeling a great chill spreading throughout her body, starting in her heart. She noticed that her body was becoming.. transparent. She was fading.

The Abyss rose before her, coming to claim what did not belong to It. She stared at It, her eyes wide, and It stared right back at her. She screamed, but the sound was faint, as if coming from a great distance.

Suddenly, the sense of evil and menace around Devil's Reef seemed to increase tenfold. That which had lain dead but dreaming for countless millennia was at last beginning to stir, and madness was in the shadow of its wings. Out of the vortex came a nightmarish warbling cry. The gate to Ry'leh was opened.

But more importantly, the stars were right.

******

At the Marsh home in Boston, Steven Marsh stared in horror at the image that the mirror showed him. Arashi's body was fading away. The gateway was open. Although Uranus and Neptune had managed to defeat the last of the minions, they were blocked from getting close to Arashi because the kekkai lay between them. That didn't stop them from loosing everything that they had against it. But gradually, their battle cries grew more and more desperate, until with each attack, new tears flowed from their eyes.

"HIME-CHAN!" he heard Uranus scream. If Arashi heard her father, she made no sign. Perhaps she lacked the strength.

Steven looked away from the mirror, covering his eyes with one hand. Out the window he could see a pale, watery light growing in the north, and yet it brought no comfort, for it was cold and fell, and it illuminated nothing - it simply Was. He shuddered and closed the blinds. This was the End. He heard the stirring of his own blood in response to the call of the Awakening One, and knew then that he and everyone else on this planet was doomed. He doubted even if Serenity herself would be able to stop the One once it fully awakened.

As the stirring in his blood gained power, he began a terrible metamorphosis. His forehead swiftly became narrow, and his eyes bulging like those of a fish. Scales began to grow on a newly formed ridge along his back, and small gills appeared on his neck. His fate had at last come to claim him.

His sister smiled.
Steven screamed, resisting this transformation with every fibre of his being. Yet at the same time, he embraced it with every fibre of his being. He reached deep within, grasping for something that might help him in this battle, this fight for his very self. Yet that which was within his heart of hearts sang in time to the song of the Awakening One. Frantically, he called out for help, hoping, praying that some aid would come to him.

None came.

Destiny is a strange thing. It weaves our lives into the great story of time without thought for our own wants and needs. To some it grants honour and glory; to others, horror and death. And to a miserable few, it gives an end far, far worse than death. Steven Jacob Marsh was one of these.

Deep in the darkness of that room, the creature that had once been Steven Marsh was sure of one thing. The triumph of the Shadow was here. Yet he no longer cared. He had been a fool to oppose his family. Now was the time of the great awakening! All who stood in its way would be slaughtered!

With those thoughts upon its mind, the creature went out into the night. Its sister and father went with it, and they were never again seen by mortal eyes.

******

Tetsuro crawled out of the water, carrying with him the broken body of Terra-phage, who was not moving. The strenuous activity involved in retrieving his sister from the water had not helped his injury. Although he possessed great healing abilities, they were now taxed beyond their limits. As soon as he reached the shore, he collapsed onto the rocks and lay there like a dead thing.

"It's over." said Uranus, watching with tear-streaked eyes. "Hime-chan is dying, and we can't do a thing to stop it." Her voice dropped to a whisper near the end, and she looked away. The worst part of it for her was that she knew *exactly* what her daughter was going through right now (or at least, she THOUGHT she knew). She had had her own starseed taken during the battle against Galaxia.

Neptune, on the other hand, simply watched, her heart having received a fatal blow when the starseed came out of Arashi. Now all she felt was numb; her heart was full of ice.

Unfortunately, Uranus was wrong. She DIDN'T know what Arashi was going through. What waited for Arashi at the end of her long fading was not death. Arashi was, little by little, ceasing to Be, making that slow descent into the nothingness that comes when your very self is stolen away. The pearl of awareness is all that would remain, and Arashi had become separate from that.

Meanwhile, a pale shape descended from above, landing near Arashi. There stood Alice Grant, clad in white. Tall, proud, and filled with an evil power. Uranus glared at the girl as she landed, but could do nothing to interfere.
Arashi looked up at the girl who might have been her friend and said nothing. Pride stirred within her heart, but compassion also. 'Do I wipe the tear, or do I spit in her face?' The two emotions warred within her, and their battle stilled her tongue.

Alice, on the other hand, had plenty to say. She sneered at Arashi, and then taunted the fading girl, showing no mercy towards her as she lay dying. Yet Arashi's response was not one that Alice expected. She had made her choice, and that choice was this: in the face of certain oblivion, and to the one who had apparently betrayed her beyond all hope of restoration...

She smiled.

Smiled sadly and spoke.

"I'm glad you're all right, Alice. I was worried."

The words cut deeply into Alice's heart. She stumbled backwards several steps, as if the red-head's words had been a physical blow, and then stared at Arashi with amazement in her eyes.

Arashi continued to fade, small motes of light floating upwards from her body, and yet her voice was strangely clear as she spoke to Alice again. "I'm sorry," she said. How hard it was to say those two little words! Yet say them she did, for her pride had at last been dissolved. "I never meant to deceive you."

Rage flashed across Alice's face. "You're SORRY!?" she shrieked, kicking Arashi in the side. Alice's foot passed through the girl's now transparent form without damaging it, but it seemed to cause her pain all the same.

"YOU'RE SORRY!?" she shrieked again, louder this time. And then she fell to the ground and began to cry.

It was then that the music began. The mad cacophony of warbled, mindless, blasphemous sound that some have called the music of the spheres. There came the pounding of horrible drums, and the mad piping of blasphemous flutes from the places outside the ordered universe, where the daemon-sultan Azathoth, greatest of the Chaos spawn, gnaws hungrily in chaos amid pounding and piping and the hellish dancing of the Other Gods, blind, voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless, whose soul and messenger is Nyarlathotep.

Such a cunning melody; deadly and horrible was that which some have called the music of the spheres, but is in truth only the song of Chaos. The sound of it filled the Senshi with fear. Dark power began to surge out of the portal, and one by one, the stars of the night sky faded away as the heavens turned to an inky black. Only the moon remained, and he became as blood. The ocean began to boil and steam around devil's reef, and the reek of it covered all of the surrounding countryside.

As the music continued, all manner of indescribably nightmarish THINGS began to emerge from the vortex. There came a creature that seemed a bizarre cross between a scorpion and a swarm of bees, and yet all one creature. Also came a thing which held no definite shape, or beginning, or ending; one could tell where it was and where it was not, but the line between the two could not be discerned. Out of the vortex came the Night, flapping in on vast, membranous wings, and many things that were not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor vampire bats, nor decomposed human beings; but something that cannot and MUST not be remembered. Things came that no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, nor any sound mind wholly remember. The very firmament seemed to shriek in agony as Things Which Should Not Be came flopping out of the gate.

All across the world, those who slept fell into evil dreams, and those who woke found that the waking world was no better. The earth lay poised at the edge of great deeds and doom; of horror and death, and of deeds of valor not made less by the fact that none would be left to remember them. A great and nameless Dread lay on the hearts of the people of the world, save only in Crystal Tokyo. On that land, no shadow lay.

And as the parade of nightmarish Things came from the vortex, Sailor Neptune suddenly heard a familiar voice whispering into her ear.

'Talisman,' it said.

Neptune's eyes widened, and she looked about in sudden wonder.

'Talisman,' came the voice once more.

As she heard that word, new life was breathed into her heart. In the midst of horror, madness, death and darkness, something unexpected had just arrived; a thin and frail thing, easily crushed, and yet a thing that was greater than the Hidden Knowledge, and could endure even in the face of the Great Old Ones.

Like a great shining star it burned now in Neptune's heart, piercing even through the dread of the Awakening One that had been laid there.

Hope.

Blinking back tears, Neptune retrieved her mirror and pointed it towards her fallen daughter. Both she and the mirror began to glow softly.

And the horde of chaos spawn continued to pour out of the vortex.

--=- END EPISODE SEVEN -=--