UsAgI iS dEaD uSaGi Is DeAd HiP hIp HiP hOoRaY
by DARK DAY FOR
ANIME

Diclaimer - Sailormoon is owned by Takeuchi Naoko and Bandai,
so
these characters really belong to them.  I'm just abusing them in
a
manner most would describe as nothing short of scandalous.  I hope
nobody
sues me for it.  I have to eat, and if you've seen me,
you'll quickly
realise how much it must take.

Part Three
Bleeding With The Times




Setsuna was having something of a problem sleeping.  And that
was unusual.
Setsuna NEVER had trouble sleeping.  Well, not often.  
There wasn't
anything she ever worried about.  Well, not often.
What will come did come,
in that order, and exactly as she expected
it to.  There was very little
about time that was a mystery to its
guardian.

	Not this fine day,
though.

	She lay in her bed, tossing and turning.  Her sheets worked
their
way loose, which annoyed her even more.  She was getting up
every five
minutes to readjust them.  The sensation of the wrinkles
against her back
was too much.  Then she felt too hot underneath the
blankets and threw them
off, only to feel too cold and drag them
back on again.

	7.15am.  She'd
been in bed for less than an hour.  She could
see sunlight cast through her
window.  Sunlight had never worried
her when it came to sleeping.  She was
used to the darkness.  The
day was anathema to her.  It wasn't much
sunlight, anyway.  Could be
cloudy out there.  Maybe rain later....


Umi.....

	She made a compromise and slept on top of her bedclothes
with
the heater on.  It seemed to do the trick, even though the
fuzziness
of the blanket made her itchy.  But still, she tossed and
turned.
She had things on her mind.  Weighty things.  Not things of
the
future, but of the past.  She'd never worried about that before.


Ocean of the Mind....

	A vision of Usagi.  The Usagi she remembered.  The
REAL Usagi
of the Silver Millenium.  Serenity.  She was elegant, beautiful,
and
happy.  Setsuna wondered how it was possible that such a person
could
have been reincarnated as the current Usagi.  The ex-Usagi.


Uuuuuuuuuumiiiiiiiiii......  (chuckle)

	She shuddered.  The future had
become awfully muddied since
she had allowed the others in on her vision of
death.  Setsuna
turned.  Why had they so willingly chosen to kill a girl
who, only
this time last year, they were willing to die for?  Setsuna
turned
again.  Of course, the vision was extremely graphic.  Their
deaths,
in full colour no less.

	"Sleeping on the job?  Tututututut, this
will never do."  The
voice was annoying.  It permeated her thoughts, as
confused as they
were, and wouldn't allow her the benefit of sleep.  She
turned.  It
sounded like a voice she knew.  Whatever that meant.  She had
known
a lot of people.  Within the span of an ordinary life, one gets
to
know an unbelievably large number of people on a personal level.  In
the
span of HER life even those who had been terribly close had
faded into the
recesses of memory.  She reached out for the voice,
and the face of a
woman, about her age, with similar features and
dark black-blue hair
appeared.

	Setsuna was standing in the middle of a grassed plain.
The
plains of central Asia, long long ago.  The Silver Millenium.
There
was nobody living here now.  Not at this time, anyway.  Yet this
was
the place....  Where she was... born?  Yes, that was it.  She had
been
born here....  She thought.

	"No shit, Sherlock."  Said the woman who
stood opposite her,
leaning against a tree.  "Its been a while, Hecate.
Nice to see
you're the same old screwhead you've always been...."

	Setsuna
felt the weight of time weighing on her.  Rather
heavily.


	Usagi plodded
along the streets of early morning Tokyo.  It
felt good to be doing it,
too, because only hours ago, she thought
she was never going to experience
this feeling again.  Not within a
physical body, anyway.

	She had left
Jadeite at his apartment.  The poor guy looked
like he was in need of some
rest.  It had been a busy night for him.
Usagi felt like she'd just slept a
year.  She was bright, refreshed
and full of energy.  Oh, how full of
energy she was.

	Before she'd left, she told Jadeite that she was going to
go
home.  He had been against it, but she just couldn't resist the look
on
her parents' faces when she walked in that front door this
morning.  After
resisting seeing them all of last night, resisting
seeing them in their
grief, she would pounce through that front door
with a "surprise", and
everything would be hunky-dory.  Bugger the
fact that there had been over a
hundred witnesses to her death.  She
was alive and well now, and that was
all that mattered.

	And then there would be the matter of the Senshi.  Oh,
how she
salivated at the thought of first meeting them this morning....  If

they were at school, of course.  Usagi felt a strange pleasure run
through
her as she flexed her fingers.  A strange action.  She
looked at her right
hand.  Two of the fingers seemed to be quivering
slightly.  She rubbed them
with her other hand.  Can't be anything
wrong with this body yet.  It was
as new as a babe in arms.  She
ignored it and went back to her previous
thoughts.

	How to deal with them.  They had to be punished, of
course.
They couldn't be allowed to do what they did to her, and get
away
with it.  And that included Luna, Artemis, Naru, Chibiusa and
even
Mamo-cha....  Chiba-san.  "That bastard."  Usagi thought to
herself.
"Loved me, did he?  Told me time and time again I was the only
thing
in the world that mattered to him.  I believed all that!"

	Usagi
leant against a wall.  Her right hand began to quiver as
she felt tears
come to her eyes.  Tears of bitterness.  Then she
noticed the hand and
grabbed it with her other.  A twisted smiling
expression crossed her face.
"Stop it!"  She said through clenched
teeth.  "Stop it now!"  The hand, as
if obeying her verbal command,
settled.  She stood away from the wall and,
wiping the tears from
her face, continued.

	Usagi reached her house at
7.20am.  She rang the doorbell and
waited.  It took a while, but she heard
someone shuffling up to the
door, unlocking it.  The door opened....


"OOOOHAAAAAYOOO....."  Usagi's welcome came to a sudden stop
when she found
herself face to face with Captain Kikotsuka.

	Who appeared a great deal
more suprised to see Usagi than
Usagi did to see her.  Indeed, the police
investigator let out a
short, strangulated scream that was most unbecoming
her position.


	Setsuna was sitting now, in that field of grass.  The
other
woman stood a short distance from her, staring at the mountains
on
the horizon.  It looked to Setsuna as if the sun was rising over
those
mountains.  The woman had the most contemptuously smug smile
on her face.
Setsuna remembered many an occasion where she had
tried to wipe that smile
off her face, by force.

	"So, you killed the Princess...."  The woman
repeated slowly.
Setsuna wondered if her amazing capacity to reiterate the
obvious
could have sounded any more deadpan.
	"I didn't want to."  Setsuna
found herself hugging the Time
Key.  She wondered where it had appeared
from.  The woman also
seemed to carry a staff with her.  Similar to her
own, but crowned
with a trident.
	"It doesn't matter if you didn't want to.
 You did.  Its done
now."  The woman seemed to be impatient with her
green-haired
counterpart.  "A very unwise decision, too, if you ask me."

"I'm not asking you.  I didn't want to kill her.  But it was
agreed upon by
the other Senshi."
	The woman turned to Setsuna.  "Which senshi, Hecate?
The
Inner Circle?  Again?"
	"Naiad, you know I must bow to the wishes of
the Inner Circle.
Even with my powers, my capacity to manipulate the flow
of time, I'm
still a slave to the wants and wishes of others."
	"And that
is why you have always fallen prey to their darker
sides."  the woman whom
Setsuna had referred to as Naiad gestured
dramatically, the plain dress she
had been wearing forming into that
of a Senshi.  Even Setsuna's nightgown
was forming into her own
Senshi fuku.  The pair of them looked like
bookends, each other's 
opposite.
	Naiad paced around with frustration.  "I
have told you, time
and time again, follow your instincts.  Your instincts
told you to
leave well enough alone.  You should have followed them."
	"I
couldn't ignore the vision."
	"STUFF THE VISION.  Everything to you is
vision this and
vision that.  I'm amazed you've been able to endure this
torture for
so long."
	"You chose the easy way out."  Setsuna pulled her
knees under
her chin.  "You may have given into the madness.  I shall
not."
	"The mind is the biggest ocean of all.  Forgive the High
Miko of
Water for not wanting to swim that ocean, even to its
deepest, darkest
regions."  Naiad ran a hand over her mouth,
smiling behind it, her eyes
alive with a blue flame.  Setsuna
glanced sideways at her.
	"Where have you
been, all this time?  Why aren't you and the
other Mikos reincarnated,
yet?"

	"Who says I'm finished swimming that ocean?"  Naiad rattled
the
rings that hung around the spokes of her trident.  "Not to fear,
Hecate, I
am alive, but not conciously so."
	"That means you have to be asleep at the
same time as I am for
this conversation to occur...."
	"Yes, well, I seem
to live as stressful a life as you.  The
capacity to delegate your
designing duties at whim to suit your new
found schedule.  Ah, I wish I had
that luxury in this life."

	There was silence between the two.  They
watched the sun rise
even further.  "Naiad..."  Setsuna muttered, so softly
the other
woman almost missed it.
	"What is it?"
	"What am I going to do
now?"  There was another period of
silence between the two.  Then Naiad
turned and began to walk away,
turning and pausing briefly.
	"You made your
bed, Hecate.  Now you have to lie in it."  The
blue-haired woman made a
sound, like a soft, inane chuckle, then
continued on her way, eventually
fading into a spray of blue.

	Then nothing.

	"Oneesama..."  Setsuna
managed to get out, before she fell off
her bed, crashing onto the floor.


"I...  Itaaaiiiiiii!"  Setsuna had landed face-first. She 
struggled to her
hands and knees, rubbing her saw chin.

	"You bitch!"  Setsuna cursed.
"Make my bed and lie in it
indeed.  You know this isn't over yet.  You
bloody bitch!"


	It had taken the Tsukinos some time to bring Captain
Kikotsuka
around.  First, there was the fact that they had all fainted at
the
sight of Usagi.  Then, once they had come round (thanks to Usagi's
best
efforts) they spent much of their time hugging their daughter
and telling
her how much they loved her.  It took Usagi's newfound
cool head to remind
them that the Captain was lying in the hallway
floor.

	But before that,
they had to calm her second-in-command,
Akunatsuka.  The burly 45 year old
veteran had seen a lot in his
time, but never the resurrection of someone
he KNEW to be dead.

	"B..bb...bbbuuut I saw her....  I saw her face and
its her for
sure.  I know it was her who was dddddeadddd....."
	"Yes yes
yes, I'm quite sure, Akunatsuka-san.  Sit down in
this chair here for a
while, okay?"  Kenji guided Akunatsuka to a
seat on one side of the
loungeroom.

	Kikotsuka sighed and stared at him.  She was being seated
in
a large armchair by Usagi and her mother, on the opposite side of 
the
room, and had been handed a glass of water.  Why, she didn't 
know, but she
drank it all.

	She and Akunatsuka had been with the Tsukinos all night.
More
to ask them about Usagi than anything else, for obvious reasons.
After
all, it was one of the more unusual deaths they had ever been
involved
with.  Most of Usagi's chest and stomach had been blown
clean out.  It was
not often that they had to deal with a murder
investigation where the
victim died from being struck by a missile
sent by something the equivalent
of a rocket launcher.

	It had been hard for them, though.  The parents
were clearly
and understandably upset.  So Kikotsuka had opted to stay with
the
Tsukino's that night in the hope that talking to them on a
more
personal level would derive some clue as to who might have
been
responsible.  The thought had, more than once, gone through her
mind
that, trying to find the killer of a schoolgirl everyone
seemed to like was
going to be next to impossible when one
considered the method of her death.
 Nobody who even had a millionth
of a reason to have done it had the
capacity for committing such a
ferocious act.  And so, it all seemed to be
heading for a classic
dead-end scenario.  Kikotsuka Aoi hated dead-end
scenarios.  She
hated any end that smacked of being a loose one.

	None of
them got any sleep that night, except Shingo.  After
having to take them to
the hospital so they could identify their
daughter was enough of a minor
hell to leave both parents rattled
beyond rest.  Before any of them knew
it, the sun was rising.  Ikuko
had offered to make everyone breakfast,
rather blearily.  Aoi said
she would help, but Ikuko said there was no
need.  Aoi had watched
the poor woman, looking washed out and tired,
stagger into the
kitchen and start on making toast and coffee.  Akunatsuka
was with
Kenji in the loungeroom.  The two of them were chatting quietly
with
the tv on in the background.  It was about then that the
doorbell
rang.  Ikuko turned in confusion, looking as if she was about
to
drop the coffee jug, when Aoi stood.

	"I'll get that, Tsukino-san.  Its
more likely for me than
you."  Aoi turned and began to shuffle her way down
the front
passageway....

	Which lead to the current situation.  After all
of them had
positively identified Usagi as being the dead victim, they
found it
extremely hard to cop that she was now sitting, very much alive,

in front of them.

	Aoi, recovering fully from her turn, watched as the
Tsukino's 
joy turned into suspicion.  Usagi was now bailed up by the both
of 
her parents, being asked a barrage of questions.

	"....You're sure
you're alright?"  Kenji fired.
	"Hai, papa.  I'm alright."
	"But we SAW you
in the hospital...."  Ikuko rubbed her face.
	"That wasn't me.  Couldn't
have been me.  I mean, I'm here,
aren't I?  I'm alive...."
	"So where have
you BEEN all night, young lady?"  Ikuko again.
	"I...  uhh...  I can't
remember."
	"What do you MEAN you can't remember?"  Ikuko.
	"I... woke up
in the schoolyard this morning.  I couldn't,
still can't, remember anything
since class ended yesterday."

	"You can't remember?"  Aoi asked
offhandedly, raising an
eyebrow.  It had not been unusual, but there were
occasions when
strangers had tried to disguise themselves as crime victims
to get
into the lives of the family.  And Usagi's picture had been
flashed
across television bulletins on the late night news.  It
was
fortunate that the media hadn't been hounding the Tsukino's
residence.
"Before we proceed, may we be permitted to take a
statement from Usagi,
Kenji-san, Ikuko-san?"  The Tsukino's turned
to Aoi as the woman regained
her professional composure.  Akunatsuka 
bit his lower lip as she stood and
stepped over to the parents.

	"Wh...  What do you need to take a statement
for?"  Kenji
asked in confused tiredness.  His wife chided him, seeing in
Aoi's
request the hidden meaning.  Usagi didn't though.
	"Yeah, what?"


"Because we identified our daughter as dead."  She took her 
husband by the
arm and turned to Aoi.  "Kikotsuka-san...  I pray
that this girl is our
daughter.  But the girl we identified was,
also, most certainly her.  If
she is an imposter, you know what to
do...."

	"An IMPOSTER?"  Usagi
couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"What do you MEAN, an imposter.  I
AM Tsukino Usagi, not some poor
lame psycho trying to muck up your lives or
anything...."

	"We shall see about that, my dear."  Aoi gestured Usagi
to
stand from her seat.  Usagi sighed and complied, waving her hand in
a
gesture of contempt.

	"I take it this means I must go to your beloved
police station
hmmmm?"
	"Yes, you should take it that way."  Aoi smiled
back simply,
trying to hide any emotions over this.  Usagi stared at her,
then
Akunatsuka, then back again.  The glare was unsettling, to say
the
least.  Almost like being stared into by the dead.

	Aoi put that
thought out of her mind as she guided Usagi to
the front door.  Ikuko and
Kenji watched them go, the father still
confused by this turn of events.


"Is....  Is this really necessary?"  He mumbled.
	"Better to confirm than
to not."  Ikuko looked up at her
husband's sore, tired eyes.  It shocked
her to see the light of
hope that was there with Usagi's reappearance
fading.  "She
certainly looks like her, anata, and speaks like her."


"Yes, maybe it is her."  Kenji whispered.  "But there IS
something
different."  Ikuko looked at him strangely as the front
door closed,
shutting them off from Usagi and the detectives.


	Setsuna wandered the
streets.  She was most embarassed to be
seen in such roughly-picked casual
clothing, but she didn't feel
like dressing up today.  Even her hair was
messy.  A sure sign that
things were REALLY off key in her head.

	She
thought about going back to the shrine.  She may as well
chide the girls
for allowing the party to run so late.  She well
knew they would not be
expected at school today, the grief bit and
all, but still...  She was up
and running, why shouldn't they?

	Probably because they'd look like her,
thats why.

	Setsuna shivered.  The vision of her sister had left
her
feeling uneasy.  Naiad had often teased and tormented her in
visions
throughout her long life.  Lives, to be more precise, as of
now.
She and Naiad were very similar in many ways.  Naiad had been born
a
good year before her, as would be the way in the division between
Miko
and Senshi.

	They both commanded elements of time, and darkness.  They
both
had the capacity to see the possibilites of the future.  They both
had
guided, at some point, those around them, to achieve the best
possible
scenario.  They even shared similar personalities, taking
mutual joy in
totally confounding those around them.  Ah, the
pleasures of an enigmatic
personality....

	It was not long after the founding of the Silver
Millenium,
however, that things started to go wrong with Naiad.  She
became
more withdrawn, preferring her own company.  In the middle of
the
night, she would perform ceremonies in the main shrine of the
palace.
Nobody knew what for.  Her behaviour around others became
erratic and
eccentric.  She started playing with the minds of 
others, playing one off
another and studying the result.  Then she 
committed suicide.

	The dark
pit of eternity opened wide within Setsuna's soul. Of
course, she should
have seen it coming, but she didn't.  If there
was anyone whose future was
blind to herself and Naiad, it was the
both of them.  They'd trusted in
others the happy future in the hope
that they, too, would partake in it.


Setsuna withdrew from public life after that.  It was the
biggest error of
all.  Withdrawing was what caused her to fail in
her task of protecting the
Kingdom, allowing its downfall.  She
didn't see that particular future
until it was too late to do
anything, other than let it happen and hope for
the best.  So, in a
way, Naiad was responsible for what happened to the
Silver
Millenium.  Of course, Naiad may have killed herself because she
saw
what was coming.  In which case, her death was a warning.  A
warning
Setsuna had chosen to ignore in her grief....

	The city seemed to
be closing around her as she plodded on.
She was so tired now, yet sleep
evaded her.  The city closed even
further in.  And further, and further.
Suddenly Setsuna snapped to
and realised that it wasn't her imagination.
The buildings were
rearranged, linked together.  "NO!"  She thought.  "Not
the Eternal
City!"

	Buildings grew out of nowhere in the distance, and
seemed to
go on and on and on and on....  Setsuna ran in blind panic.
Walls
and buildings closed around her.  She ducked in every
doorway,
through every gap, trying to escape the warped dimensions of
what
was forming around her.  The ultimate nightmare vision, the
Eternal
City.

	Everywhere she ran, everywhere she climbed, the city
existed.
An interconnected series of buildings, towers, malls,
arcades,
offices, whatever in an endless pattern that was everwhere.
There
was nothing for it in her mind.  She climbed the stairs of one of
the
tallest buildings....  She had to get to the top...  Had to
confront the
vision, or else her mind could be trapped, forever....

	And when she
reached there, and stared out at the city, going
on into infinity in all
directions, she screamed.

	Water dripped on her face.  She felt rain.  She
looked up at
the dark clouds, and realised she was back on the ground.  In
the
street.  Where it all started.

	And as the rain fell, she continued to
stare up at the sky.


	Usagi sat in the rear seat of the unmarked police
vehicle,
brooding quietly.  This was not the way things were supposed to
go,
she thought.  She was supposed to have her parents welcoming her
back
with open arms, and everything would be alright.  At least on
the domestic
front, anyway.  She hadn't thought about what the
police's reaction would
be to her reappearance.  Well, looks like
she'll have to wait to make her
dramatic reappearance in front of
the other senshi.

	Still, that could be
all the better.  Time to plan her revenge
against those little sailorshits.
 Those bitches who tried to kill
her....  More than once.

	More than once?
 Usagi stared out of the car window, a little
confused by her own thoughts.
 What the hell did she mean?

	Left or right.  Which way should I go from
here.  It can be so
difficult during the rush hour to get to the station,
especially
when coming in from this side.  Those weren't her thoughts, and
it
confused her for a moment as to how she got them in her head.  Then
she
remembered that she had tried to read the minds of Kikotsuka
and Akunatsuka
back in her house.  The link, with Akunatsuka, was
still open.  He, of
course, was driving.  But as for Kikotsuka....

	She hadn't been able to
break into her mind.  There was
something blocking her attempts.  She
wondered what it could be that
could resist her newfound powers.  She'd
only thought about
influencing their minds, almost as a throwaway, when
things started
to look a bit bad for her.  She was surprised when the link
with
Akunatsuka opened.  She could see his every thought, want and
desire
in a matter of moments.  She then tried it on Kikotsuka....  But
to
no avail.

	Rain fell against the front windscreen, and Akunatsuka
cursed
as they were caught by a red light.  "Jeez, its gonna take a
good
half an hour before we get there in this.  They'll close off
the
bridge for sure."
	"Just settle down, Kaji, there's no rush."  Aoi
turned aside
and saw a scruffy looking, dark-green haired woman staring
into the
sky, soaked with the rain.  For a moment, a smile crossed her
face.
She didn't know why, but it just felt.... right.

	Setsuna turned her
head and looked at the car, drawn by some
force.  She saw Usagi, who had
seen her.  Usagi smiled and pointed
her hand like a gun at Setsuna, and
fired.  The car moved on.

	Setsuna watched it go.  All she could do was
laugh.  And laugh
and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.

END OF PART
THREE

Any comments, criticism and outright abuse should go to

ayanami@merlin.net.au

All abuse shall be hung, drawn and quartered.  In
that order, 
even.  ^_^

DDFA