Earth*ling Rated PG How many miles to Babylon? Three score miles and ten. Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again. Yes, if your feet are nimble and light, You can get there by candlelight. -children's nursery rhyme What makes you human? A heart, beating fast and furious inside your chest? A mind, rapid and rational in its calculations? A soul, unpredictable and emotional all at once? Perhaps it is the eyes and how they either sparkle like the heavens, or stay cold and grey like a remorseless stone. Perhaps it is the way you whisper sweet words into the ears of the one you call your lover, teasing them with your tongue--or the way you scream and shout at those you deem justified to feel your wrath and scorn. Or perhaps it is the unexpected growth. That strange maturity which only a human being possesses. A heightened awareness of self and world. One that grows and develops with each passing year and experience. Perhaps it is this that makes you human: your curious ability to ask, discover and learn. You learn throughout life. You learn new things each day, or reaffirm old lessons with new potency. You can learn to love all the more. You can learn to hate all the more. To live is to learn. And death is the final, the most mysterious and terrifying lesson of all. Yet the question drives you forward. And you humans dare to try and answer it. Ask someone from the world of Naoko Takeuchi: what makes you an earthling.... -His lordship Chaos hislordshipchaos@hotmail.com EARTH*LING October skies had never looked more appealing than they did that one afternoon. The winds flexed their softened muscles, rolling through the streets in playful gangs, escorted by a parade of scarlet and golden leaves. Autumn air left the world inside Tokyo warm and inviting. Cloudless blue skies beckoned for a lazy day. With regret, Usagi had to decline from their offer. A prior engagement was written upon a schedule carefully kept in her mind, and she had no intention of forgetting it. The years in passing Galaxia's attack had been kind to her and her friends. Unexpected peace settled down upon the Earth, a chance for them all to pursue their own dreams and agendas. There was the risk of something small falling into the city and making itself not-so-small, though. There was always the risk, and always would be the risk. It forever remained the responsibility and the fate of the Sailor Soldier. Those christened with a power unlike any the planet had seen had a duty. But today the duty had no place in their lives. Usagi let her legs move her body at a brisk pace, the uniform of a high school senior ruffling around the contours of her form. Whenever she stopped for a moment, be it at an intersection where the lights were not in her favour, or whenever she wished to get her bearings, or whenever she simply wanted to admire the beauty of the world around her, the winds seemed to be two seconds behind her in step. They would rush her from behind and let her long blonde hair flutter in the air. Their efforts, playful and vain, made Usagi smile quietly to herself. Not so long ago she had begun to hear a song within the winds. There was no definitive rhythm. No identifiable instruments. A symphony of serenity. The ministrations of the tilted Earth just made sense to her. Even when all had decided to be silent she could close her eyes and hear something strange and beautiful. A fragment of a song that would never be fully heard by just one soul alone, and would never see an end. Her school bag clasped at the handle in her right hand, Usagi listened to the new bars of this eternal song. It was a melody different from the one she had heard last week amidst a gentle autumn rainfall, equally different from the piece she had chanced upon last night while trying to stargaze out her window. Always different. Always beautiful. But then the melody changed. The winds were as they always were, as blustery as they had been all day. Now they carried with them a tremor in the sidewalk beneath her feet, echoing of vibrations that drilled deep into the heart of the world. Agitation was leading to disarray. Harmony broke down. Fluctuations in the unnamed song no longer made any sense. A reaction to a new sound permeated the air. Usagi turned her head and looked back the direction she'd come from, and found only a few other pedestrians roaming wherever they pleased. No one in particular caught her eye. No one resonated with a pitch that send an involuntary shiver down her spine. A stray peripheral glance saw the time on her wristwatch. Two hands pointing to a potentially late arrival. Mamoru would be waiting for her, was probably already waiting for her at the cafe. Usagi feared he might have to wait longer. She turned her head again, crystal blue eyes sifting through the colourful storefronts and blur of moving cars. Neon signs that had yet to see light in the night, sparks in the dark, laid dormant high above her head. The skies stayed calm and cloudless; and their music was changing. The clutter of crackling static ignored her ears and moved into her heart. Usagi clutched at her breast when she began to hear with frightening clarity the source of the symphony's breakdown. A new and convoluted system of notes and chords unlike any she could fathom or describe grew louder. She turned her head one more time. And she found the source. The boy could have been no older than eleven, standing no higher than her shoulders. Rebellious bangs of perfectly brown hair dangled around his eyes and stuck out everywhere else. A set of grey earphones clung to the base of his neck, connected to the bumblebee-yellow walkman fastened at his waist. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his beige, baggy pants, with a white shirt proclaiming a message of '34T L33T' at Usagi. His smile was misplaced and wrong. It was the smile of knowledge and experience no eleven year-old boy could ever possess. At first it was the alien smile he wore that made Usagi certain he was the source. He was standing across the intersection from her, patiently waiting at the edge of the sidewalk as cars moved between them. His eyes never leaving her form. Eyes a colour Usagi was unable to place. Eyes that did too much dancing, even for an eleven year-old boy. His eyes. There was something shifting in the darkness of his pupils. Pure chaos. And Usagi suddenly realized who the stranger before her was. It made her mouth go dry and her heart skip a beat, turning her legs into stone and her will into liquid nothingness. The lights changed and the flow of traffic abated. Ignored by the handful of other pedestrians crossing at the walk alongside him, the boy worked his path to fatefully intersect with hers. The closer he got the more she could see the chaos in his eyes. He never stopped watching her, though his head remained pointed straight ahead. The boy paused as they brushed shoulders, facing opposite directions but sharing the same destiny of war. "Walk with us," he said, giving neither request nor instruction. But his voice was even and calm, so unlike the raging manifestation she had seen two years ago atop the studios of Galaxy TV. When she looked back at this single encounter days, weeks and even centuries later, Usagi failed to find the reason she slowly turned around and walked by the boy's side as if they might be brother and sister. A part of her resolve to find a resolution and end, it might have been. Under its influence, there was a definite possibility. But the true answer never revealed itself to her, even in the aftermath. "Are you startled to see us?" the boy asked, looking ahead and not at her. If not for his eyes and smile he could have passed himself off as human. His steps were smaller than Usagi's, as his legs were smaller than hers, yet he kept pace with her. She could hear the echoes of the song being broken apart before them, and the shards of symphony slowly mended together in their wake. Whatever it was creating, the effect was only temporary. Usagi mutely nodded to the boy's question. "We guessed as much when we saw your expression as our eyes met," the boy said. "Your earthling eyes...so hard to duplicate. There is something in them we cannot create for ourselves." The vice on Usagi's throat loosed itself, and she heard herself stammer in a quiet voice, "But...but I--" "Eternal Sailor Moon did nothing," he/she/it stated. Chaos stated. "You say to people you shattered us into a million pieces. That we now dwell in all their hearts at once? Chaos cannot seek to dwell where it already exists, Neo Queen. That is rather pointless. And redundant. We were with humanity from the start. No need for us to crowd ourselves. You are beings with an impure quantity of chaos. We are chaos in its purest form. So we are Chaos." Usagi felt stupid in nodding. Her own eyes kept alternating between watching the sidewalk ahead of her, and watching the boy walking beside her. The boy never showed any of her unease, and of the two of them he probably looked the most normal to anyone passing by. Her chest was starting to loose its constriction, no longer threatening to crush her. "Wh-What happened to you?" she asked. The knuckles of the fingers clutching her school bag were starting to whiten. The boy searched in his mind for an appropriate word. "We were...exiled. Banished. Cast aside to the farthest depths of this universe. Luckily, you did not realize this, Neo Queen. Neither did Galaxia, for that matter. She has yet to appear and resume the fun little game we played so long ago." He abruptly nodded his head left, and changed directions. Usagi changed with him, with a knot in her stomach and dread in the song left momentarily tattered behind her footsteps. She had no idea where he was taking her. Or what would happen whenever he decided they'd reached their destination. "We spent centuries in the darkness where stars do not shine," the boy continued, speaking as if the aftermath of the worst war this planet had yet to see was nothing more than the banter one might hear amongst giggling schoolgirl friends. "Licking wounds. Biding time. Asking ourselves how it was possible we found ourselves here." No other words could have sounded so ominous. But confusion set in as Usagi thought about them. "How could you be gone centuries when it's only been--" "Do not presume to understand time," the boy stated sharply, chiding her with a human tongue. "Its essence is far more complicated and entangled than you could imagine. We understand it much better. Therefore we have reason to speak of it with greater authority." "What do you want?" Usagi demanded, sounding a lot calmer than she'd expected herself to be. The boy smirked. "To talk. Nothing more. Conquest can wait for a more few centuries. We both have the time to afford. No, we wish to ask you questions, Neo Queen. This was deemed our best means." He brought one of his hands in front of his face. All of a sudden Usagi seemed to mean nothing more than a passing and utterly trivial thought as the boy studied his palm. He decided to wiggle his fingertips in succession. "It took us some time to get accustomed to moving within such confined quarters. But we were not without practice." Galaxia. Usagi both shuddered at the memory and felt a surge of angered passion rise within her. "If you want to talk," she said. "Then here I am." "And here we are," the boy agreed pleasantly enough. His eyes, darkness and light impossibly all at once, glanced over at her. He read her expression with impressive accuracy. "You're afraid." "I have good reason," Usagi said, perhaps a little more softly than she should have. It told of her vulnerability. "The last time you came, you nearly took everyone I cared about from me." The smile upon the boy's face changed slightly, the amusement going almost sinister. "We did no such thing, Neo Queen. That idea was all Galaxia's. Because she had already sealed us inside herself, we merely fuelled her impulse. Gave her the power she desired." "That was still wrong," Usagi stated fervently. How long until Mamoru realized something was wrong? How late did she have to be? The longer she walked with this boy, the more steps she took alongside Chaos' newest host, it felt like it was darkening her entire world in pitch midnight. But the boy could not read her mind, and he answered her charge without knowing her silent petition for intervention. They stopped at an intersection, waiting for the lights to change. That other people were standing close enough to hear him didn't matter. "You call Chaos evil," he remarked. "That is--how is it put?...ah yes--the pot calling the kettle 'black'. You have chaos, Neo Queen. You all do. One way, shape or form, chaos dwells within. Always has." The boy shrugged and went on. "Chaos is not inherently good. Chaos is not innately evil. Chaos is chaos. It is unpredictable, irrational, emotional, immediate. It is not pure anarchy, but a balance. If you can tell me that you earthlings possess none of those traits of chaos, then I shall ask no more questions and leave. Tell me, right now." Usagi kept silent. Unable to bite her tongue because she knew of the truth behind the challenge. Yet unable to answer with something to keep herself feeling cleansed from being in Chaos' presence. The adrenaline flood was starting to make her feel nauseous. Was the Silver Crystal reacting to the entity lurking somewhere within that little boy? The lights changed in their favour. They crossed together. Buildings began to melt away into the green realms of a local park. "You keep saying 'we'," Usagi said, admitting how much that aspect of the boy's speech unnerved her. "Is there more than one of you?" "Chaos is a part of everything," the boy answered. "We speak for all that is chaos, as we are its purest embodiment. We thought this made the most sense. It confuses you?" Usagi nodded. "If you are the single-most embodiment, then there's only you. No one else." "Then I shall switch," the boy stated firmly, more to himself than to her. Making up his mind. "I can't get answers from you if you are distracted." A flock of white and grey pigeons took flight as they made their way across one of the walkways. Trees towered to their left, and to the right retreated to allow for a large strip of green lawn. Young children ran and tumbled and played together, shouting out to each other, oblivious to the rest of the world. Usagi took one more step before realizing that the boy had stopped walking. She looked back, her long blonde hair still flowing with the winds in disarray. He was staring at the other children. Mild confusion marred his brow. "They are not like me," he said at last. "They are not like you, either." "They're only children," Usagi said, not entirely sure if she should be speaking in a motherly or matter-of-factly tone. If Chaos had wished to attack, it already would have done so. And with a more dramatic entrance. But its presentation with the body of a little boy made Usagi question herself. Made her question Chaos. Why was it here? "They are missing something you have," the boy stated after a moment's observation. "But they also have something this boy is missing." Usagi found herself smiling a little as she watched the children continue to play. A ray of hope despite the dread with its claws still sunk into her heart. "They're still children. They don't understand the world the way we do. To them, dreams are as real as people. They still believe in magic." With a frustrated sigh, the boy turned and left the children to play with their dreams and imaginations. Usagi waited for him to draw up beside her, and then they walked together once more. A fountain passed them by, water being spouted and gurgled into a large stone basin. The boy kept his hands buried in his pockets, and leaned over the edge of the fountain. Usagi could see him staring at her reflection in the water. And she could see the unearthly shimmer in his own eyes. "Why did you do it?" he abruptly asked. "Do what?" "I saw it through Galaxia's eyes, Neo Queen. You had the sword, and the command. Yet you refused to kill her." Usagi's blue eyes looked down to the ground. Now she was lost in her own thoughts and memories, and not the confrontation. "There was good in her. But you corrupted that." "You seal pure chaos into your body, expect there to be consequences," the boy stated somewhat harshly. "I did not ask to be sealed. You, though, were asked to kill her. But you refused." "There was still a chance I could save her! I had to take that chance!" Usagi cried out, now raising her head and staring down at the boy. Tears were welling up in her eyes. Everything she loved and nearly lost was being relived. And he was questioning it all. Chaos seemed to be mocking her passions, her fears. Everything that she somehow knew made her human. The boy continued to regard her with a passive, indifferent expression. Then, as she was still catching her breath from her outburst, he left the fountain's edge and began to walk past her. "Not all earthlings are as noble as you. Yet your nobility is your power. Perhaps that is why her starseed came here. Why I was finally purged." One hand left his pocket, and touched her wrist. His touch was warm. But it sent cold sparks prickling up her arm. "Chaos has a place in your heart, Neo Queen...but not the authority." His eyes looked ahead. Not at her. He was understanding in that moment. "That is why I lost." "Please," she asked him, wiping her eyes dry. "My name is Usagi." "And my name was given to me by ones like you. Otherwise I would have no name. But I do not care either way." Something shifted within his eyes, and his smirk softened into a smile. "Usagi, then." They journeyed deeper into the park. Fewer children were playing here. Random and distant people walked along paths that would not cross theirs. Usagi realized that for the first time, she and the boy were more or less alone. No one was watching. No one was listening. The boy gestured towards a park bench. "You can sit down if you wish. I find this body wears easily, and tires even faster." Usagi didn't realize how numb and weak her legs had been until she sat down. The will to move and walk vanished as she rested upon the bench. But she was keeping control in spite of the boy before her. This all seemed strangely different. Once, a year or so ago, she had thought one night of what might happen if Chaos resurfaced. If Chaos had survived. She had pictured an epic and vicious war, and nearly frightened herself for four nights on end. But now nothing was going as once thought. Chaos, true to its nature, was being unpredictable. And all she could do was sit and listen. And answer him. Somewhere inside the boy, beneath his skin and prowling within his heart, the entity lurked. Worked the legs as the boy paced casually in front of her, studying himself. "Interesting that you would call this a body," he remarked. He splayed his fingers. His eyes fixated directly upon Usagi. "It's such a fragile, flimsy thing." He held out his arm at shoulder level, his other hand reaching up and grappling sharply onto the wrist. "I just can't imagine what you see in something so finite." Suddenly he gave a hard yank on his arm, a sickening 'Crack!' resounding from somewhere within his body. His fingers twitched, convulsed as his wrist was twisted and reformed into a new, contorted shape. "Should I really be able to do this?" he inquired, still gripping his arm, wrenching it again. The limb contorted even worse than before, accompanied by a ripping sound from inside. Yet the boy seemed completely unfazed by what he was doing. Numb from any pain as he twisted his wrist a third time. More dull snappings of bones and muscle echoed across the park, his skin starting to bulge as the broken skeletal frame screamed to punch through his thin layer of epidermis and expose the flesh within. Usagi placed a hand over her mouth and suppressed the impulse to vomit from the horrific noise. She suddenly wanted to run, to leave him and his questions behind, but her legs had gone from lead to stone. She was trapped upon the bench, helpless save to watch. "I don't understand," the boy sighed, releasing his shattered arm. It hung limp at his side, twisted into a new, grotesque shape. The pinky and ring finger twitched in unison every so often. "I know so much about myself, about what is Chaos. But I know so little about you earthlings. After you defeated me I sought to understand why. No answer came elsewhere in the galaxies. So I had to come here." The boy noted how pale Usagi's face was, and glanced down at his broken arm. Something churned within eyes not human, and the arm bulged like a balloon. Without a sound it writhed and pulsed and then became normal again. He played with his intact fingers. "What did you do to him?" Usagi asked, forcing down the palpable fear and revulsion in her throat. "Who?" "That boy's body. What have you done with him?" He laughed, and walked towards the bench. His arm worked as if he had never tried to destroy it, aiding him as he climbed onto the bench. While Usagi sat, he stood and looked up to the cloudless skies above. "The boy was already dead when I found him, Usagi. An unfortunate altercation with the front end of a moving car. I took up residence in his form. Removed him from where he laid, bleeding and lifeless on the street. Then I came here to find you." Again, such an answer was one she had not expected to hear. It left Usagi unable to reply at all. It played with her mounting confusion. "Chaos learns, Usagi," the boy stated. He squinted upon catching the intensity of the afternoon sun, and held his once broken arm over his face. The shadow cast over his eyes let him watch the endless blue. And let Usagi see the haunting glimmer of chaos in those sockets. "I am more than just an entity who has only one little thought beating around inside itself. You more than anyone else values life. To take this boy's life would have ended this discussion before it began. That much I knew from our last encounter. So I sought out one whose body was no longer their own. Alas, it means I am on borrowed time." The boy stood there and held out his arms as if to balance himself. And he walked the park bench's perimeter back and forth like a toy soldier. Saying nothing but content to hum a song that Usagi recalled hearing on the radio a few days ago. Suddenly he stopped and turned his head. Something recognizably Chaos but unrecognizably not was there. The boy kelt down next to where she sat, and she looked at him questioningly. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers. It was a kiss Usagi had not been expecting, not one she wanted. Yet it was not forced upon her. The touch of their lips was brief, gentle and exploratory. He pulled back only after a few seconds, a look of puzzlement on his face. "An answer...and even more questions," the boy sighed. If it had been any other person--if it had actually been a person--who'd kissed her, she would have slapped them across the face or run away. But the boy's kiss was so oddly foreign and inexperienced. And the lingering taste from his lips upon hers was of solar winds and cosmic streams and darkness without a name. Usagi looked up at the boy, vaguely aware that her fingertips were lightly pressing against her mouth. "What did do that for?" she asked. It was only a question, with no indignation or anger or fear behind it. "Memory," the boy answered, studying his shoes and his hidden bewilderment. "Your memory. A man named Mamoru. You longed to see him again, to kiss him. When our beings collided I glimpsed that. Then I was suddenly left in the dark of space, wondering why. Now I've glimpsed the answer. But it refuses to give itself up wholly to me." "Love is still a mystery to us," Usagi said. "It is something we all learn anew each day." The boy remained kneeling beside her, watching her expression and its seasons of change. Fear to confusion. Confusion to wonder. Wonder to a smile. "You desire both likeness and difference, yet you cannot stand them together. A strange paradox." He shook his head. "Companionship and solitude all at once." He got up, standing on the bench once more. A foot was moved forward, hovering in the air as he prepared to jump down. But instead he tripped and fell. For as fast as Usagi tried to move and catch him she was not fast enough. He bounced off the pavement, his face suffering the worst of the blow. Usagi caught him up in her arms once he slid and rolled to a stop. One palm cradled the side of his face. That palm was quickly stained crimson. Usagi sucked in her breath, cold dread washing away the transient calm of being in the company of Chaos. The boy's skin was torn, ripped like frail cloth or parchment. Usagi could see the thin layers of skin and blood and flesh. And beyond that.... Beyond that, beneath that, was Chaos. A churning defiance of all that she knew was right with the universe. Darkness without a name. The boy showed no pain. He gave no cry of dismay. He laid there, half caught in her lap and embrace. His small hand clasped Usagi's and brought it before his eyes for examination. Upon seeing his blood there, marking her palm, he touched the tear in his face. Fingers gently and carefully probing the gouge. "Damn. I see my time is up." The human voice was suddenly grated, sounding almost mechanical. Chaos was losing its grip on the humanity it had once possessed. The articulation it once held to communicate was being eroded by the sheer saturation of its presence inside a deteriorating skin. "A shame, Usagi." He sat up, carefully using her as a crutch in rising to his feet. Usagi rose with him, her own hands easing the process. "So many more questions I wished to ask. So many answers left unsolved." The rip of skin was growing, unravelling the boy's form. Spreading out like a spiderweb and peeling back like a fruit rind. Soon there would be nothing left of the boy. And there would be only Chaos. Usagi searched her heart and couldn't decide what she wanted to do now. And so she stood and let the boy choose for himself. He gently moved out from her touch, letting a few paces come between them. Now he was looking away from her, his back to her blue eyes, his own eyes gazing back up at the sky. His hands were shoved into his pockets, and from behind he looked no different than when Usagi had first seen him. The distant rumble of a plane overhead reached their ears. He tried to find the plane, but there was nothing in sight. "We shall meet again, Usagi: you and I," he said. "And it will be to renew battle, for I do have a grudge to settle. Chaos does not like to lose. But not yet, not for a long time. I have walked this city for but a few hours, and already I am filled with enough enigmas to keep me busy." The winds were stirring, but only in symphony. Without containment Chaos was placing everything out of alignment. The earth was not taking it well--or lightly. And then after a wistful sigh the boy turned his head back and looked at her with a curious smile Usagi knew she would never decipher nor understand. "Earth-ling...to Chaos, you make no sense." There was irony in that statement. Usagi would only think of that in the days following the encounter, for there were other things going through her mind as she watched Chaos take its leave. It left behind no signs of its arrival or departure. No piece of memorial save for memory itself. The October winds stirred Usagi back to life. And she wondered if it had all been a strange dream. She asked herself if she had been wrong in thinking Chaos had been shattered and hidden in the hearts of every human being. But perhaps a part of what made her 'earthling' had been shattered and hidden in the heart of Chaos. Lost in these thoughts, Usagi turned and walked out of the park. She was already long overdue for her date with Mamoru, and she idly wondered if he would even believe her when she told him why she was late. Why she was strangely quiet. And why, for a reason she wasn't entirely sure of, she was smiling. my warmest thanks goes out to kotetsu, who permitted me use of the concept of the 'symphony of serenity' from her own fanfic: the awakening of tsukino chibi-usa for amanda, who asked of me what made me 'earth*ling'....