[FFML] [SM] The Last Ride

[David McMillan]

Aaron Nowack wrote:
> So, just barely, I'll manage to avoid going through 2009 without
> releasing a fanfic.
> 
> I'm not sure this has any purpose for existing other than exorcising
> some scenes that wouldn't get out of my head, but maybe someone else
> will get some entertainment out of it...
> 
> 
> The Last Ride
> A Sailor Moon Fanfic
> By: Aaron Nowack

	It's my type of story: one last unsung, unwitnessed stand against the 
darkness, just for the principle of the thing.  It's well-written, I 
like the scene cuts with foreshadowing and call-backs from the future.
	But... this bit:
> ***********************************************************************
> 
>         The music of the youma was not known to any human, save Nephrite
> the Arch-Traitor, who made a brief study of it during the long years of
> his imprisonment.  None of his peers, nor his queen, cared to learn of
> the fearsome chant-howls, and the knowledge died with him.  He learned
> that the youma music involved the emotions that ruled their lives -
> hatred and fear - and not more complicated concepts like specific
> events.  He never made the connection between one particular fear-chant
> and the last ride of the High King.
> 
> ***********************************************************************

	Doesn't quite work.  Or rather, it works in and of itself quite 
splendidly, but there's nothing to *support* it later.  Endymion Sr 
basically chops down one low-order youma, wins a stardown with Jadeite, 
then gets curbstomped and tortured to death by Beryl.  There just 
doesn't seem to be enough there to carry E-Sr into the annals of Youma 
lore.

> ***********************************************************************
> 
>         The death of Endymion, Lord of the Crystal City and High King of
> the Earth, took the better part of an hour, and he died in tremendous
> agony, but he did not cry out once.  Weeks later, Beryl - proclaimed the
> High Queen of the Earth by the survivors of the High Lords of Terra -
> led her armies across the astral sea and plunged all the worlds into
> darkness, and when that darkness lifted the age that gave it birth was
> long forgotten.  Yet, on the farthest world, a lone soldier still stood
> a long vigil over the Gates of Time.  From her post she had witnessed
> Endymion's final battle, and in the fullness of time, when a Crystal
> City rose once more, she would go to that city, and tell a son of how
> his father died.

	This last bit, OTOH, makes a near-perfect capper.  Not *quite* so 
unsung a Last Ride as we might otherwise have thought....