Mother always told me “Never look into the eyes of the burning sun!”
“But mother, that’s where the fun is!”
Manfred Man
“Still you do not answer!”
Still Doll
Kanon Wakeshima
Tokyo
21st Century
Sakura Jinja
“CPR! Now!” screamed Ami.
The medics went to work. I was not going to lose somebody else I cared about, no way. I had lost my Ojii-san, my father, and others were dying, now this? Enough was enough. Hadn’t we done our share to keep the universe in balance already, fuck this all, not Usagi too? I’d lost everything, but no, not her, not the bunny.
“We have a pulse. She’s okay,” the young sandy haired med tech said to Ami as she sighed with relief, wiping her brow.
“Thank the kamis,” I sighed, falling into a chair, hanging my head and bursting into tears of relief and emotional exhaustion.
“Dr. Mizuno, what is it?” one of the med techs said, as he watched Ami using her Sailor Computer, ignoring the fact it was not standard issue medical equipment.
“I don’t like this; she’s in a state of deep trance-like sleep, a sleep that is unprecedented in terms of such disorders. Rei, we’re taking her to Tokyo Hospital, I have a friend their, who just might be able to help her.”
“Oh kamis, I hope she’s going to be okay,” I said, feeling a rush of panic.
“She is healthy, she’s in no obvious danger, but I’ve got to get her looked at and I can’t do that here, so everyone let’s move!”
Tokyo Hospital Dream Research Unit
Mamoru had driven us to the hospital following the ambulance. I was tense and more worried now, and I knew that Usagi’s sleep state was not of a terrestrial type. As if reading my thoughts, the news on the radio began talking about the Great Sleep pandemic hitting Japan and creeping across Asia towards Europe. I shuddered.
“Is this going to ever end?” Minako said, stroking Artemis, who blinked at Luna who was doing her best to keep me calm.
I thought the worst was over, on one level, yes but Usagi was sleeping and nobody could wake her.
All over Tokyo people were dropping like flies, some had died as the result of accidents: cars smashing into buildings, bridges, poles, trees, aircraft falling from the sky, industrial accidents.
People were in a raging panic and fires were breaking out everywhere, smoke filling the night air. Crime was out of control, the Yakuza and Shachihoko would definitely be taking advantage of the chaos, of that I had little doubt, not to mention the lowbrow independent criminal element would be having a field day.
The wards were piling up with sleepers, some out for more than seventy-two hours and counting.
Dream Realm
“Sunedra, they’re monsters, you must get back, and I will handle it – Moon Cosmic Power Transform!”
The ground had opened up; the creatures looking like mummies from a bad B-grade horror film weren’t laughing or goofing around. They were menacing and moving in a staccato manner in our direction.
“Sailor Moon, I can help. You don’t know how to fight them. Things work differently here, you aren’t in your world anymore,” the mermaid feline girl said, floating in mid-air, moving her arms as if performing an exotic dance routine, generating some kind of attack move.
“Affinity Moon Quake!” I launched another attack, for I couldn’t just stand there and not help.
The zombies growled and though buffeted by the turbulence from my attack, they spat streams of what could only be like that gunk a blowfly excretes before devouring its victims, in this case, I was on the menu and leapt back leaving poor Sunedra to deal with the assholes, but I needn’t have worried.
“Destiny is my child. The waves of the eternal dream are mine to command! Be gone oh children of Anubis!” she shouted.
The conch she brought to her lips was a crystalline shell; even prettier was the sound it made. So enchanting in fact, it was like having your heart tickled. Yet deadly as far as the zombies were concerned, much like acid.
The gawky creatures, rank upon rank having fallen to their knees, covering their pitiful excuse for faces, disintegrated into piles of dust and filthy rags.
“Wow! How did you-“
“Later, for now, we best be going. More will come and we have much to do before you can go home, Usagi,” Sunedra said, her sea-greenish locks swirling about her graceful form.
“But tell me something, if this is all a dream how does it impact on our reality?” I knew it was a stupid question, but I had to ask. ” Okay, I’m getting that the dream realm isn’t as passive as I first thought, but the youma, in the physical world, do they come from this place?”
“Kind of, the Dark Kingdom is the realm of nightmares, and not even Beryl or Metalia know its true depths let alone understand it. Beryl is a possessed, or was, soul or consciousness. Metalia is the spawn of a dark solar deity that had sought to devour your planets before they had completed their gestation cycle when only the elemental kingdoms reigned. This is big picture stuff Usagi, and as the daughter of the Ginzuishou, you need to know the nature of things.”
“Okay, I’m up for that.”
“Okay, I will show you; that is often the best way to get wisdom, ne?”
I nodded, my odango looking a little worse for wear as I walked towards the feline mermaid and took her proffered hand and we were off on an adventure that gave me the experience of a lifetime, perhaps several.
As I listened, I was putting it all into perspective as I could see it all unfolding before me, simplifying everything it wasn’t that much unlike watching the sea from the inside out, and seeing just how complex, yet pretty it all was.
“Wow, Sunedra, this is totally wicked!”
“I thought you’d be impressed, Usagi. You see, they dream to help everything else work properly.”
“Yeah, and so pretty too I have to admit,” I said, still drinking all this in. I could spend eternity doing that, but there were things we had to do.
“As for the Shachihoko, they will be punished, not by me, or you, but themselves as the threshold is about to be crossed, and as for Metalia, she will know fear and seek a way out, but more of that later. The dream dolls shall soon march.”
“Dream dolls? I get the feeling these dolls aren’t the cute ones I’m thinking of, aren’t they?”
“Oh, under more pleasant circumstances perhaps, but on this occasion, definitely not Princess Usagi.”
Sunedra showed me the well of imaginings. I saw their glittering bodies catching the light of the moon as they exited the flying mirrors now all over the city. Other things were happening also, such as the ensemble of the dead and a host of supernatural entities walking the streets of Tokyo.
“No, it couldn't be her, Tetis. She is leading a group of senshi,” I looked again and couldn’t believe my eyes, strange alliances for sure. “What the hell is going on here? These are my future daughter’s personal guard.”
My eyes swept over the obsidian multitude. I felt a surge of power and love washing over me; I was in a state of bliss. The dolls were the souls lost to the darkness now liberated, on their way to punish those who would have them enslaved.
Tetis, who was a maverick, with her own agenda working for Nehelenia according to Sunedra, but the Youma Queen’s motives for this unholy alliance were noble in that she sought to destroy her benefactor, Queen Metalia. Her motives had little to do with helping us overthrow the Shachihoko, but cut a slice of Metalia’s empire for herself.
Of course, she would continue to use brute force in the waking world to create her dystopia. I could not allow her to do this and had to study the layout of the politics of this amalgam of dark, grey to light actors on this stage playing the physical and supernatural domains against one another as in a game of chess.
Sunedra explained that these girls were drawn forth into the hub of the Old Quarter via a device located in the warehouse district of Tokyo; the mirrors were also exit points for these doll-like girls that were soon to march on our enemies. Science and mysticism conjoined in a bizarre relationship that was mind boggling to say the least. Tetis and the senshi for Crystal Tokyo were serving as necromancers, calling up this legion of the dead to attack Metalia’s youma armies and the Shachihoko, Yakuza and anyone else stupid enough to get in her way.
Tokyo General Hospital Dream Research Unit
Here in Japan we are a more open-minded people when it comes to these things, the fact that we are a tad over-conservative in some areas has weighed us down, ne? However, this is changing. I was glad to be a part of the new frontier movement of science and culture.
My own contribution lay deep within the field of sleep and dream research. I was of the opinion that the many denizens of the dark were in large part responsible for the upsurge in paranormal phenomena and mental instability amongst young people particularly in the West in recent years. The mind was a gateway, not simply a complex neural miracle.
My research into post-quantum membranes leading to alternate universes was the subject of my investigations into the unconscious that had all of a sudden taken a most unexpected turn.
My current dilemma, I had to strengthen the settings on the Dream Catcher software to keep out what I loosely termed, ‘the nasties’ things that if given a foothold in the waking world could cause utter chaos. I loved the work of early pioneers such as Jung and later others like Denise Lyn and Amerita Hiroshima, but I was in a league of my own. A consortium represented by this woman calling herself simply, Tetis, had contacted me.
I wanted to meet her to discuss the work, but she proved an elusive individual and her people were equally mysterious. When I found several active realms pushing into our world over a year ago during the early development of my Dream Catcher program, she was at least willing to fund the work.
The technology is my brainchild, and so I am rather protective of it. Never had I thought that I would become the subject and catalyst in my own research program and all because of a girl with the oddest hairstyle reminding me of bunny ears.
Who am I you might ask? My name is Professor Mao Setsuna, I am a dedicated researcher stationed at Tokyo Hospital. The day I was called in on the strangest case yet, one of a growing number of such incidents reported in the city over the last few days I will never forget as long as I live, that that is an open-ended question indeed as it turns out but I digress.
The moment I took the girl’s glowing, yes I said glowing, hands in mine she began to talk. I thought it some kind of incantation.
The room began to fade and walls of soft gemstone as that was the only thing I could think of to describe it enveloped me and plunged me into the world of the supernatural.
Yuki Sikito, my lab assistant found me hours later slumped in my chair, still gripping the girl’s hands, but when I opened my eyes I saw things in a whole new light.
What happened to me you might ask? I had fallen into a well, flailing, screaming, and trying to grab… something, anything but it was no use. The shaft, if I can call it that, more like your proverbial rabbit hole, terrified me.
I know, it sounds hard to believe but that’s what it felt like, me, of course, playing the role of Alice, the lost butterfly, and the swirling sinkhole of light, the Venus flytrap.
I saw her then, the young girl. She was some kind of monarch, but all glittery, her strange golden hair covered in what I could only describe as faery dust. There she was, hovering before me, in a vertical position, feet bare, toes pointing downward. I was staring at a living figurine of translucent crystal, arms outstretched eyes of azure blue so bright I almost winced.
She was surrounded by a cloud of, hmmm, let me see, ah yes, stardust I think? Whatever it was, she was pretty, and she continued to hover a short distance away.
“Help me, if you can please… what is all this?” I squeaked, my hair blowing out behind me, and my lab coat flapping in the strange warm breeze swirling around my trembling body.
“Setsuna, don’t be frightened. Take my hand; it will be okay. I am Usagi, you need to trust me.”
I began to cry. She took my hand, pulling me through the mother-of-pearl membrane. Closing my eyes, I began wailing like a banshee. Getting a grip on myself, I surrendered to the experience for what else could I do.
I found myself flat on my face, the girl with the funny hairstyle kneeling beside me in one of the Sailor outfits, and, she had wings, crystal wings at that. I lifted myself from my undignified position and gasped as I noticed I was near naked, in a black outfit, the skirt I would probably wear to a rock concert or something, a party perhaps. The daring top, left my abs bare, I felt like a dressed up Anime doll, but it started to feel right somehow.
“What is all this, Usagi? I do remember you, Sailor..., Moon?”
“Yes, the very one. You are Pluto, we knew each other in-“
“The Silver Millennium, oh it hurts, the memories on steroids, ah!” I pressed my hands to my head as the bright light almost blinded me, and when it cleared, and the pain subsided, I remembered it all, the weight of the Garnet Rod in my hands grounding me in certainty. I used it to stand up.
“You okay, Pluto?”
“Give me a moment… That is one hell of a wake-up call!” I gasped, shaking my tumble of dark emerald loose and blinking.
I was in the twilight zone, gone fishing, mad as a loon, totally wasted on a dose of moon dust, but it was all too real as we walked and talked in this pretty and strange world of crystal skies and gemstone insects, birds, animals and other wonders.
“I need you to slow down time,” Usagi said, I did a double take. “We need to allow the dream dolls time to enter the physical plane and to free the White Moon Child, Nehelenia, trapped in the dark mirror. I think after you hear what Sunedra has to say you will agree.”
I nodded, measuring the significance of what she wanted of me. Was it right, could I do this, should I? I would speak to the Mermaid-feline and make my decision then once I’d heard her out, but I sensed Usagi was right about this despite my initial reservations.
“Okay, lead on Usagi, I will speak with her.”
“All right, come!”
