"Christopher Angel" <cja124@mail.usask.ca>

Shieldsman: Act II
A Sailor Moon S Fanfic

All Sailor Moon characters the property of the people who have rights to
them.  Don't sue me.

***

7 - End of Exile

***

In a dimension near this one, shrouded in unending darkness, a crystal
stood.  The crystal was surrounded by crumbling stonework, the remnants of
a once proud and mighty kingdom.

A kingdom destroyed by five fourteen-year old girls, who wielded power so
great, so mighty, it could destroy a goddess like it was swatting a fly.

Such a concept should scare the people of this dimension.  It should
terrify and enrage them.  Yet there was only one inhabitant of this cold
and lifeless place, and he could only stare, in silent wonder, at the ruins
of the great civilization that he had lived in.

In the crystal that held him captive, he could only stare.

And rejoice.

***

"Oh wow," Apollo breathed as he entered the hall.  "She set all this up
with only six hours notice?"

Ares could only silently agree as they entered the grand ball that
Neo-Queen Serenity had thrown.  It it wasn't for Rei's steel-like arm
through his own, he was sure he would have stumbled.

The enormous crystal room was filled with people from all the nations of
the world, from ambassadors to heads of state.  The ceiling was filled with
amazing, intricate chandeliers that reminded them of crystal spiderwebs in
their beauty and intricate workmanship.  The sides of the room were lined
with white and silver tables, that were each topped by an amazing flower
arrangement that seemed to explode with all the colors of the rainbow.

To Ares and Apollo, it was one of the most awe-inspiring sights they had
ever seen. As they gazed in wonder, Rei couldn't help but feel a little
envious.  To her, this was merely another ball, yet to them, it was
something amazing and new.

Rei missed that sense of wonder.

"If you'll excuse me," Apollo said hurriedly. "I think I'm in love."  With
that, he disappeared into the crowds, his black and yellow tuxedo
disappearing into the crowds.

Ares groaned in dismay.  "Here we go again," he sighed as he straightened
his armor.  "I hope he doesn't get too stuck on this one."

"What do you mean?" Rei asked.  She gently led him through the crowds to
where she saw the other Inner Senshi clustered together.  She mentally
complained for the thousandth time about their having to wear their
'uniforms' at formal functions.  It was hard to look dignified in a sailor
fuku.

"Pol falls in love every five minutes," he explained.  "He seems to have
this knack for choosing girls that will dump him too.  His longest lasting
relationship was three months." He sighed again.  "And every time one of
them dumps him, he's in a funk for weeks."

Rei considered that for a moment.  "He'll grow out of it," she said,
remembering Minako's bout of the same condition.  "They always do."

"How depressing," he returned.  "You realize there's no chance for us
then."  Startled, Rei looked up at him, but relaxed when she saw he was
joking.

"Don't even THINK of it," she growled at him, tightening her grip on his
arm.  "You're mine, and I'll blast anyone who says otherwise."  It was
Ares' turn to look worried, but it was preempted by him groaning.

As the crowds broke, revealing the rest of the Inner Senshi, Rei saw what
made Ares groan.  There, beside a Minako who was almost green with jealousy
and a greatly amused Ami, was Makoto, blushing like a schoolgirl as Apollo
galantly asked her to dance.

Ares snaked his arm out of Rei's and quickly walked over to his brother.
He grabbed his brother's upper arm in his hand and dragged him off.  "Be
right back, family meeting," he called to the women as the two men
disappeared.

"What was that about?" Ami wondered, and giggled slightly as Makoto fanned
herself, trying to make her blush disappear.  "Mako-chan, you'd think you
were a teenager from the way you were acting."

"Why HER?" Minako seethed.  "The first cute guy in decades who's not
intimidated by us and he heads right to her!"

"Jealousy doesn't become you," Rei scolded.  Minako scowled back at her,
then regained some of her good humor.

"I guess I'm still bitter over Warren," she admitted.  The other women
murmured their sympathies over Minako's loss, remembering the sweet
laughing young man they knew who had dumped Minako after finding out she
was a Senshi.  He had felt like a toy of an older woman, and couldn't
accept the fact that despite her physical age, she was still a twenty-year
old woman in her mind.

It was a side effect of their longevity.  They could live for thousands of
years, but their attitudes and reactions would always be those of a woman
their apparent age.  It was like the traumas and bitterness they had in
their lives simply washed away over time.  Unfortunately, so too did the
great joys and happiness.  A part of what made their eternal lives
tolerable, the fading effect was both a blessing and a curse at times.

"I should warn you, Mako-chan," Rei continued, "Pol tends to go overboard a
little when it comes to women."

"I noticed," Makoto breathed.  "How on earth did he do that?  I FELT like a
schoolgirl all over again."

***

Ares and Apollo stood in a corner of the room, talking.  Their voices were
hushed, but anyone could see that Ares was not happy about something.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded.  "Listen to me, do NOT go
after the Senshi!"

"But sh...they're hot!" Apollo protested.

"They can kill you without breaking a sweat!"

"But they're hot!"

"They're five hundred years old!" Ares insisted.

Apollo rolled his eyes, and spoke slowly, like he was speaking to an idiot.
 "But they're HOT!"  As Ares' opened his mouth to continue his argument,
Apollo continued.  "Listen to me, bro.  YOU may have been waiting your
entire multiple lives for Sailor Mars, but _I_ have no such woman waiting
for me.  They're everything I've been looking for - hot and single."

"You're not going to listen to me, are you?" Ares asked in resignation.

"Not a chance," his brother returned cheerfully.  "Now lets get back, I
want to see how well Lady Makoto dances."

***

The two men returned to the waiting women, and Apollo was quite vocal in
his disappointment at Makoto's disappearance.

"She said something about talking to her Majesty," Ami helpfully supplied,
sipping her wine.

"What is it about her, anyway?" Ares asked while he returned to Rei's side,
drawing her close as she slipped her arm through his.

"She reminds me of an old girlfriend," Apollo admitted sheepishly.  The two
men looked on in confusion as Ami began to choke on her wine, and Minako
pounded her on the back.  Rei bit her tongue to prevent herself from
laughing out loud.

"Which one?" Ares asked, as he and Apollo exchanged a shrug over the
mysteries of womankind.

"Kaitlyn - wait! There she is!"  He started to dive into the crowds after
her.  "Wish me luck!"

"Makoto does look kind of like her," Ares mused, then shook his head and
looked at Rei.  "Now what was that all about?"  As the others explained the
joke, he was torn between laughing out loud and groaning in frustration,
but settled for a sigh.  "I suppose turnabout is fair play, but I don't
know who I feel more sorry for."

Rei's eyes were locked on Ares' face as the man looked at where his brother
had disappeared.  She suddenly realized that sense of wonder she had was
never lost, it was just...unused.  This man before her was Kaneda, yet he
was not.  The differences were enough that discovering everything about him
would be as much a joy as it was the first time with Kaneda.

What surprised her most of all was realizing how much she loved him.  She
could feel his connection to her in her soul, and knew it was mirrored in
his.  She tightened her grip on his arm and began to gently drag him
towards the doors.

"Where are we going?" Ares asked her as she led him out the doors.
"Shouldn't the guests of honor stay for longer than fifteen minutes?"

"We made our appearance," Rei said primly.  "There's something I wanted to
do for a very long time, and I'm very tired of waiting."  She steered him
through the halls in the direction of her quarters.  Reaching the door, she
opened it and shoved Ares through.  Grabbing for the shoulder of her
leotard, she began to take it off.

"Uh...Rei?" Ares said, backing away as Rei shut the door behind her.  "How
long?"

The halls of the residential wing were silent until a muffled cry shattered
the peace.

"FIVE HUNDRED YEARS?!"

***

Silence filled the remains of the hall where the great crystal stood.
Almost invisibly, a small crack began to form on the crystal's perfection,
quickly forming into a lattice of fissures that covered the once-beautiful
and horrible crystal.

The crystal shattered with a cacophony of sound that echoed over and over
into the ruins, fading as it was swallowed up by the dead, still dimension
it inhabited.  The occupant, a tall, handsome man with blonde hair and
green eyes, fell to the ground, unconscious.

After many hours, the man groaned and worked himself up to his hands and
knees, heedless of the cuts the shards of crystal inflicted on him.
Slowly, he pushed himself back until he sat on his heels and looked upon
the devastation that surrounded him, and began to laugh.

He laughed long and hard, his hysterical merriment fading by inches into
heart-rending sobs that wracked his shuddering body.

"What have I done?" he cried into his bleeding hands.  "By all that is
holy, what have I DONE?"

Still crying, he used what was left of his dark powers to create a portal
to the dimension he came from.

It was time to go home.

***

The darkness looked down at its former host and raged.  It was unsuitable
now.  After five hundred years of imprisonment in that crystal prison, the
man had managed to force the darkness out of his mind and construct the
barriers to prevent his repossesion.

If the darkness had fists, it would have punched holes in walls.  It it had
a mouth, it would have screamed its fury.  But it was merely a spirit.
Less than that, in fact. It was nothing more than a parasite, a force that
needed to live off of others to live.  After nearly eleven thousand years,
it was healthy.  It could wait days, even weeks, to find a new host.

But it would not enjoy it.

It watched its former host open a portal and dived through it moments
before it closed.  Entering the new dimension, it tasted the currents of
power and was satisfied.  There was an abundance of the energy it needed to
live, and there were many like its former host here, many of them far more
powerful than he had been.

Yes, this would do nicely.

***

"I can't believe I woke up at noon," Apollo complained as Ares dragged him
out of 'their' room.  "I'm going to be so messed up for practice."

"I wasn't up until a few minutes ago myself," Ares admitted.

"Oh really?"  Apollo asked innocently, and grinned as his brother blushed.
"So THAT's where you were last night."  He clapped his brother on the back.
 "Well...all in a good cause!"  He dropped back a few steps as Ares glared
at him.

The two entered into a large room with a high ceiling.  The walls and
floors of the room were covered in mats, and in several places they saw
practive dummies and other implements.  All in all, it was a world class
training room.  It even had a mid-sized fighting arena in the center.

"I could get used to this," Apollo said approvingly.  He pulled off his
shirt and straightened his trousers, and sat on the mat to remove his shoes
and socks.  "If we had a gym like this back in Manchester, I'd have kicked
your butt long ago."  He stood and unwrapped his bokken, starting into a
few warm up exercises.

"Whatever it takes for you to accept your inadequacies," Ares taunted
good-naturedly.  "I'm willing to go along with your delusions."  He pulled
off his own shirt and shoes, and reached into the bag he carried, drawing
out a thick triangular wedge.  With a little fiddling, the wedge fanned out
into a two foot wide circular shield.  Ares cracked his back and rolled his
shoulders.  "So what'll it be?"

"Well, I was going to take it easy on you and say Third Kata, but since you
had to make that crack about me being delusional..." Apollo let his voice
trail off and his brother winced.  The Katas were a series of forms the two
had created so they could practice with each other.

"Ninth Kata?"  The Ninth was particularly brutal for Ares, while being
relatively easy on Apollo.

Apollo grinned evilly.  "You bet your life."

***

As she watched the two young men go through forms and spar, Rei leaned
against the wall, a little smile on her face.

"They're not bad," Haruka said beside her.  Rei looked over at her, and
only long experience enabled her to resist her desire to pull away.  She
looked Haruka up and down, and remembered the changes that had been wrought
by Serenity and the Ginzuishou.  Where once Haruka Ten'ou had been a woman
with a strongly masculine character, Haruka Ten'ou was now a strongly
effeminate man.

Rei had to agree with Serenity's decision to acceed to Haruka's request.
It was obvious even in their teens that Haruka had been a man in soul, if
not in body.  Still, it was hard to reconcile the fact that Haruka Ten'ou,
who had been born a woman, and still was one whenever Sailor Uranus was
around, was now a man.  Truth be told, unless you had known Haruka before
and after his transformation, it would have been hard to notice much of a
difference.

On the other side of the tall, blonde man, Makoto snorted.  "Get a grip,
Haru-kun.  I've been commanding soldiers for almost four centuries.  The
only way you'd beat either one of them is as Uranus."  She pointed to
Apollo, who had just made a pair of slashes at Ares.  He swung downward in
a diagonal arc, then switched his grip to an underhanded one in the blink
of an eye and followed with a rising slash.  "Notice how he swung that
sword?  That requires incredible speed and coordination.  He's been
practicing martial arts since he was very young."

On Makoto's other side, Ami smiled slightly.  "Oh, and nothing about Ares?"
 She was rewarded with a slight blush.

"Ahh...heh," Makoto delayed, then shrugged.  "He was above average in
hand-to-hand before, now he's fantastic."  She paused for a moment.
"Frankly, as Crimson, he could out fight any of us in melee."

"And he's all mine," Rei whispered.

***

"Hey bro," Ares panted as he blocked a swing and countered with a leg-sweep
that was stepped over.  "Looks like we have an audience.  Shall we give
them a show?"  The two slowed their combat to make talk easier.

"How about the First Kata?"  Apollo suggested.  "Triple speed."  The First
was a form the two had designed for an exhibition at school.  Apollo loved
it, since it looked fantastic, especially run quickly.

"Triple!" Ares exclaimed with a grin.  "You ARE trying to make a good
impression, aren't you?"

"Well, you already made yours..." Apollo began cheerily, and ducked a
viscious roundhouse kick.

"Enough chatter.  Stance!"  The two men stopped fighting and got into their
starting stances.  Within moments, they were involved in a lighting series
of forms, that modeled the flow of a combat, control passing back and forth
between the two fighters.

***

As Apollo's baritone shouts and Ares' tenor voice rose and fell with the
pace of the form, their audience could only watch, amazed.  The three
women's eyes were captured by the image of the two men's bodies and the
movement of their muscled forms.  Haruka glanced at the women beside him,
and suppressed a chuckle at the slight flushes on their faces.

"Everything I said, multiply it by two," Makoto said in a breathy voice.
"They're fantastic."

"I'll say," Rei agreed, her voice husky.

"Oh my," Ami said softly.

"Haruka!" Neptune stood in the entrance to the practice room.  She had a
wry smile on her face.  "We've got a job, love."

"Ladies," Haruka said by way of departure, running out of the room.
"What's up?"

"Trouble."

***

As much as she had been expecting it to happen, Serenity was not looking
forward to the events that were about to occur.  She had known about the
man who stood outside her hall now for centuries, ever since she made an
idle scan into the former Dark Kingdom with the Ginzuishou.  She had
started the process that set him free, and was currently wondering whether
the choice she had made was the right one.

Mars and Crimson quickly walked into the throne room, and Serenity gifted
them with a stern scowl that didn't reach her eyes.  It was obvious from
the blushes on both of their faces they were...occupied when the summons to
court reached them.  Serenity smiled to herself. She and her husband
weren't much better at times.

She looked over her Senshi, and considered their reactions to what was
about to occur.  Anger, confusion, and distrust would run rampant among her
friends.  That they trusted her, Serenity had no doubt.  That they would
abide by her decision in this matter, she was confident.  Serenity just
hoped they would accept her choice.

Nodding to the guardsman at the door, she straightened in her throne and
slipped into the role of a Queen.

With a thunderous snap, the doors parted, revealing a man in tattered
clothing between Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune.  His face was bowed, and
he shambled forward between his two guardians like a zombie.  His blonde
hair was matted with dried blood, as were his clothes and hands.

"It has come to my attention that a very special person has come to Crystal
Tokyo.   This hearing to determine whether he should be allowed to enter
society, or if he is still a threat to mankind."   She paused for a moment,
and took a deep breath.  "Do you have anything to say on your behalf,
Jadeite?"

As she said the name, the man looked up, and Serenity was struck by the
haunted look in the man's eyes and the tears that streamed down his face.
From her Senshi, she heard gasps of shock and surprise, and one low growl
that she didn't recognize.  "I...I have no excuse for what I have done,
Sai...your Majesty."  He fell to his knees and bowed forward, placing his
head on the crystal floor in front of him.  "Nothing can atone for my
actions."

"You have that right."  Serenity turned to look at Crimson, and was shocked
by the sheer fury she saw boiling off him.  Mars watched him with fear and
confusion.  She reached out to touch him, but he drew his face back in a
snarl, and leapt to attack the supplicant man.

"DIE, TRAITOR!"

***

Notes:

Jadeite's eyes are blue in the show, but I changed them to green because it
works better.  Trust me.

Also, please recall I'm not using the classical Silver Millenium history.
Jadeite & Co. were NOT Endymion's pals/guardians/lieutenants.

--
Christopher "God-boy" Angel
cja124@mail.usask.ca      http://www.engr.usask.ca/~cja124