An Inevitable Outcome Production

In Association With
Naoko Takeuchi
and
CLAMP

Tomaranai mirai o mezashite
Having the infinite future in mind
Yuzurenai negai o dakishimete
Embracing the dream that I will never surrender

THE INFINITE FUTURE
An Alternate History of
The Together Again Universe

Chapter Three

April, 1994

At the end, only a high pitched scream marked the youma's passage. No cards fell from a spectral body; no eggs cracked open to release a brief shadow. Only a scream, fading out slowly rather than being cut short.

A moment after it faded completely, Beryl walked out of her laboratory, stripping off the rubber gloves as she did. She didn't meet Usagi's eyes as she headed for her sanctuary's garbage disposal.

"So what happened?" Makoto asked from where she was seated on the couch beside Usagi.

"Self-destruct feature," Beryl replied calmly. "Set up to kill the thing if it believed that it had given away any information to jeopardize the master."

"Then it did give you something!" Usagi exclaimed.

The archmage shook her head. "If so, I don't know what it was. And elementals are stupid by definition -- it might have thought that a noise it made gave the entire game away. Wasted effort," she concluded, sighing.

Usagi shook her head. "No it wasn't, Naru-chan," she stated with quiet firmness. "Now we know that whoever we're fighting against doesn't care any more about the lives of its pawns than it does about its victims. Now we know that we don't have to hold back."

Makoto saw a stricken expression cross Beryl's face for a moment, but only for a moment. P> There was a knocking at the door. Beryl flinched, and then made an intricate gesture with her left hand. At once, the dark walls and ornate, ancient furniture of the sanctuary vanished and were replaced by a bed, desk, and wallpaper appropriate for a sixteen-year old Japanese girl -- which Beryl herself became at the same time. Osaka Naru's voice, very different from that of Beryl, spoke up. "Yes, mom?"

The door opened, and Osaka Beru looked in with a concerned expression on her face. "I could have sworn that I heard someone screaming in here --"

"I'm sorry!" Usagi interrupted. "It's just these math problems!" She gestured at the papers that were strewn across the bed. "They're soooo tough, and, well ..."

Beru smiled wearily. "I see ... well, try to keep it down, all right, Usagi-chan?"

"Right!" Usagi waved as Beru gently closed the door.

"Nice save," Naru said admiringly. Usagi grinned at her for a moment, a grin she returned -- and then Naru remembered herself and turned her smile into a fierce frown.

Makoto sighed as she watched the exchange between the two of them. "Anyway ... what do you think about this story that this Ryuuzaki told Ami-chan and Minako-chan?"

Naru frowned and shook her head. "I don't know what to make of it. It doesn't sound anything like any of the realms of the Umbra that I know about ... but there's more out there than any adept could ever learn about in several lifetimes."

"Minako-chan said that something about the name -- Cefiro -- sounded familiar to her," Usagi commented. "She wanted to know if it was okay to consult with --"

"Oh. Him," Naru snorted. "Please. Do you honestly think that she's after anything other than snuggle-bunnies?"

"He does do magic, Naru-chan," Makoto replied wearily. She smiled suddenly. "And I've never seen you turn down an opportunity to consult Endymion-sama about something."

"That's different," Naru snarled.

Their grins answered for them.

"Oh, tell her to do as she pleases," she sighed with disgust. "In the meanwhile, I'm going to start doing some more divinations. Unless you'd care to watch me read entrails --"

"UmmymomsaidshedkillmeifIwaslatefordinnerbye!" Usagi was out the door almost before her voice reached Naru's ears.

Makoto got to her feet. "I've got a date with Umino later tonight ... are we gonna go check on Hououji?"

Naru nodded. "I'll come get you after my classes at Mugen Gakuen are done. Be prepared."

The tall girl nodded ... and her eyes narrowed. "Just one question, Naru: did the youma really have a self-destruct feature?"

"No."

* * *

Umi's joy at seeing her parents recover quickly from the youma attack lasted all of ten seconds -- about how long it took for them to volunteer her to help "Kimano-san" fundraise for the Azabu-Juuban Relief Syndrome.

Now, that did it make it convenient for her to meet with the Senshi the next evening, but the principle of the thing bothered to her. Also, she didn't mind lying to her parents, but the difficulty involved in thinking up creative stories about the fundraising irked her.

"So what do you do with the money, anyway?" she asked Ami.

"Well, we don't usually get large sums, so we generally save it up for when we need special equipment, or for emergency transportation," Ami replied as she sipped her tea.

"And now that you have gotten a large sum?"

Ami's response was cut off by Minako's lusty sigh. "I've always wanted to see Paris in the summer ... when it fizzles."

"Sizzles," Ami corrected.

"That too."

"You're going to use my parents' money to --" Umi the irate began.

Minako giggled. "Calm down, Umi-chan. We'll probably put it in a bank for college or something. After all, the only real cure for `the syndrome' is for us to deal with the monsters once and for all -- so by doing what we do, we've technically earned that money."

Umi nodded grudgingly, and looked around at the outdoor coffee shop. At this early evening hour, the customers hadn't yet started to arrive in droves, and the three of them had a bit of privacy. "So when is this guy going to show up?"

"Oh, now," a masculine voice said behind her.

Umi whirled around, and looked up. Her heart caught in her throat. For a westerner, the guy was gorgeous. His gleaming green eyes, the light-brown shine of his hair, the quiet smile --

-- the way he staggered back when Minako grabbed him around the waist and cried "Aethan!"

Of course, that probably meant he was taken.

Bummer.

"I'm glad to see you too," he said in a full voice -- which Umi found remarkable, considering the hold in which Minako had seized him, which would have made it difficult to breathe.

Umi found what followed very embarassing: for nearly half an hour, Minako babbled about her life since she'd last seen this Aethan person, and essentially ignored both Umi and Ami, while he smiled and nodded at her monologue. Ami didn't seem to mind -- she pulled out a book and started reading.

After a rather long while, Minako finally deigned to introduce Umi (as "our new kouhai") to Aethan. He listened intently, eyes never blinking, as Umi once more told the story of the three girls who had sworn to become Magic Knights ... only to discover the horrid nature of their oath.

"I see," he murmured at the conclusion. "And now you believe that your adversaries pursue these young ladies, correct?"

Ami nodded. "A water demon of some nature attacked Umi-chan and her parents yesterday. We don't know if it came from Nemesis or not, but we'd be foolish to ignore the possibility."

Aethan nodded, his eyes half-closed. "Three elements of this story seem familiar to me. I should warn you," he added quickly, "that none of them matches exactly with your experiences, Ryuuzaki-san, but they may give the lot of you more information to go on.

"The first is the name of the mysterious world into which you were drawn -- Cefiro. A similar word exists in the Hebrew language, as part of the magical tradition of the Kabbalah. As far as I understand it, this sephiroth is the tree of life which supports the many `worlds' of the Kabbalistic cosmology."

"Many worlds?" Umi interjected. "But you said that --"

Aethan held up a hand. "Patience. These worlds are not actually `planets' like our Earth. Instead, they are ... perhaps the best term is states of mind. By concentrating on the idea of the world in question, the magician allows his mind --"

"Ahem. His?" Minako asked with a sweet and dangerous smile.

Aethan paused, and smiled nervously. "Traditionally, Kabbalah is studied only by students of the Hebrew religion -- who are traditionally exclusively male, Minako. It's not my fault --"

"Um, getting back to what we were talking about?" Umi asked. God, if I ever fall in love -- Hah! What an unlikely event! -- I hope I don't act as silly as those two do.

"Sorry. The magician can, by focusing on the idea of another world, more easily draw certain spirits to do his will. I think. I don't actually know very much about the Kabbalah, Ryuuzaki-san. As I said earlier, it is studied by students of the Hebrew religion, and they learn their holy books backwards, forewards, and sideways before beginning any such explorations. Even then, they don't use the magic very often."

"Clef said that we shouldn't use it when other methods would work just as well," Umi remembered aloud ... then remembered what else Clef had said, and felt depression rolling in once more.

Aethan didn't seem to notice. "Now, as for the other two elements which resonated. The first is the tale of a king named Pwyll, whose story comes from the land of Wales. According to the Maboignion, Pwyll met with a king of `the Otherworld' named Arawn --"

"Arawn?" Minako shrieked. "Isn't that the Lord of Death?!"

Aethan let out a long sigh. "Lloyd Alexander has much to answer for," he muttered, then continued. "No. The story of Pwyll and Arawn lacks a major feature of the mythic account of any journey into the land of the dead -- at no time does Pwyll meet a deceased cultural figure during his sojourn in Arawn's kingdom. No, Arawn is only a powerful lord among the sidhe. In any event, what is significant is that Pwyll winds up destroying Arawn's enemy -- something which Arawn could not himself accomplish -- and returns from the Otherworld with great boons for his own people. Do you see the resemblance?"

"No," Umi snapped. "I didn't bring back any boons, Mr. DeGales. None of us did."

He met her angry gaze with a cool expression. "I daresay it's a bit early to be engaging in such self-condemnation. If nothing else, you brought back magic, didn't you?"

Umi opened her mouth to give an angry retort ... and swallowed it. The annoying guy had a point.

"In any event, we turn now to the last and most disturbing of the parallels. Minako, would you care to go pick us up some fresh drinks?"

"Nice try, buster."

"Sigh. Very well. Don't blame me when you have nightmares. In many cultures, there is a belief that the king and the land which he rules are one. In more contemporary eras, this has become scarcely more than a justification for the continuation of monarchy ... but in ancient times, there was a darker side. If the land failed, it was because the king had failed in some way. He had offended the gods. And there was only one way that he could make restitution." Aethan paused. "The king would have to die. He would be sacrificed, his blood offered as a libation to the gods, and it was usually a very bloody death."

His voice grew suddenly speculative. "It was just recently that the preserved corpse of one such `prince' was discovered in England. The forensics experts who examined the cadaver believed that it was a more recent murder, until they examined the contents of his stomach, and found that his most recent meal had been --"

"I'm gonna go get those drinks now," Minako interrupted, and jumped up and ran off.

Aethan smiled thinly. "-- deliberately burnt bread. So you see, Ryuuzaki-san, while the specific instances of your recent adventure elude me, there are many parallels to things with which I am familiar. That leads me to my theory."

"Which is?" Umi asked faintly.

"What you experienced, child, was not real. It was the creation of a powerful magician -- of this world. He awakened your powers within you, f or what reason I am not prepared to speculate ... but much of what you saw and did in that place was no more yielding than a dream."

"But it felt real!" Umi protested.

Aethan's eyes narrowed. "Young lady, there are a score of illusionists on this world who could easily convince you that the sky was bright green, if they were of a mind. I could do that, though not quite so easily. Rest assured, they could make you believe that you were in a magical world more real than anything you can possibly imagine." He suddenly stood. "You have heard my professional opinion, Ryuuzaki-san. If it turns out that I'm wrong, be a dear and come tell me, all right?"

"Where are you going?" Ami asked, startled.

"To speak privately with Minako-chan, ere I leave. And I fear that I must leave very shortly. Good day, Mizuno-san, Ryuuzaki-san. I hope it all works out." And with a quick smile, he was gone.

Ami turned to look at Umi. "What do you think?" she asked.

Umi shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I really don't know. Before now I'd have sworn ... and if he's right, then how do I know that anything is real? This could be the illusion."

Ami watched the younger girl lower her face into her hands ... and then started back as Umi rose up again. "No! I refuse to believe that this is an illusion! Nobody could make my parents act as goofily they do in some illusion!"

Unlikely reasoning, Ami thought faintly, but undeniable. I hope. "But what about Cefiro, then?" she asked gently.

Umi shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it was real, maybe not. It doesn't really matter to me one way or another." She sounded as though she were trying to convince herself of that. "It's Fuu that I'm worried about ... if it was an illusion, then she developed a crush on an illusionary boy."

At that, Ami couldn't help but smile. "Umi-san, trust me. They're all illusionary boys, in one way or another."

"Huh?"

"Every boy I've ever met was hiding something about himself, either from himself or from everyone else. It's almost compulsive. Let me tell you about my friend Mako-chan's boyfriend ..."

* * *

His name was Umino Gurio, and he'd never been in so much trouble in all his life.

Now, something must be understood about Umino. He liked his life. For the past two years, everything had been going his way. He was good in school, his acne had finally begun clearing up, and he had a beautiful, gorgeous, sexy, tough, uninhibited girlfriend.

But into each life some rain must fall. And where there is rain, there is thunder.

Wow, thought Umino as he tried to look inconspicuous on the train. Maybe I should look into being a poet.

The rain and thunder in Umino's life arose from the fact that his girlfriend was a Sailor Senshi, and so he was expected to help her out in her battles against the forces of darkness whenever he could. Happily, that usually didn't mean actually fighting said forces. Only once so far. And he'd only been mildly fried, clawed, and energy-drained that time.

It had been worth it, though.

Umino quickly arrested his thoughts of why it had been worth it. People who suffered nosebleeds for no apparent reason while riding trains were not inconspicuous.

Usually, what the Senshi needed from him was information; specifically they often wanted him to use his contacts to get gossip on people or places that they thought might have some connection to their adversaries. His current task was thankfully rather rare.

Which was good, since there was a nasty word for people who followed other people around wherever they went while trying to remain inconspicuous, and Umino didn't really want to go to jail.

On the other hand, Hououji Fuu made it disturbingly easy to follow her. For the past several hours she had simply sat on the train, her hands folded in her lap, staring out through her glasses. The train ran from Shinjuku to Ueno and back again, and she'd made the run several times already.

She just sat, stared without giving the impression of sight, and listened to her Walkman.

Umino wondered, among other things, what had happened to this girl and what was her choice in tunes.

The train pulled into another stop, and Umino let out a discrete sigh of relief as he saw Mako-chan and Naru step on. Mako-chan favored him with one of her dazzling smiles and sat down beside him, while Naru cast a quick look in Huouji-san's direction and then look away while standing up in front of the two of them. Aside from the four of them, the train compartment had been emptied of all its other passengers.

"Nothing?" she murmured to him.

"Nada," he replied, using an English idiom one of his Internet buddies had told him about. "She just sits and listens to that thing --"

"`Furai Mii tu da Muun', by Frank Sinatra," Naru informed him. "A fairly recent recording, call it mid-eighties. Imported tape."

Umino stared at his childhood friend for a brief moment before pulling out his casebook and writing the information down under Huouji's entry. (Later, much later, he would write the fact that Naru had produced the information in her file, which was hidden and in code and which, unbeknownst to Umino, she had read and laughed her head off about.)

"So what should we do?" Makoto murmured.

Naru shook her head. "I don't know. From what Ryuuzaki's told us about her, she's a very formal type. If someone were to just walk up to her and start talking without a proper introduction ... I doubt that she'd listen."

"Maybe the best thing to do would be for us to wait for her to get off the train, and then you can keep following her, Naru-chan," Umino suggested. "I mean, I'd do it myself, but I think she might get suspicious since I've been following her all day --"

"-- and you want to get on with your date with Mako-chan," Naru finished his sentence, looking at Hououji with an appraising expression.

Umino laughed nervously. "You read my mind."

"Yes."

He closed his eyes and wished that Naru's reply had sounded more sarcastic. Or less cold. It almost felt like her voice had lowered the temperature a few degrees.

"Geez, it's chilly for April," Mako-chan declared. "I'm gonna shut the window. It's letting the breeze in."

Umino felt himself slump a bit. Of course. The wind. Perfectly logical, rational explanation. On the other hand, the breeze had come up awfully suddenly, so perhaps --

"The breeze," Naru muttered. "The ... oh shit, GET DOWN!"

Obeying two years worth of training, Makoto flung herself to the floor and pulled Umino with her.

In the instant after, the windows of the train exploded inwards, filling the compartment with glassy shrapnel.

* * *

Hououji Fuu blinked.

She had been absorbed in the quiet elegance of the American music for some time now, but there appeared to be some manner of disturbance to which she should probably turn her attention.

Thus, she lifted her head to look at the whirling form of smog- filled air and glass that stood a few feet from her. Its general features reminded her of a bird.

Oh dear. Akuma-san. She turned off the music, and silently awaited her fate.

"Majiku Naito," the being of wind hissed.

Of course. It would be connected to that. Oh well, I knew that punishment would be forthcoming eventually. Of course, I rather expected a more human executioner, but it matters little.

It began to move towards her, slower than she might have expected of something made largely of wind.

"Hold!" a harsh sounding voice snapped in a tone of authority. Both Fuu and the demon turned to look in the direction from whence it came.

A girl stood there, with red hair blowing in the wind. She glared at the beast. "Perhaps you are of a sort that does not know me. If so, I do forgive your insult. I do not forgive your assault on my person, futile though it was."

Fuu blinked a second time. Wait. If the windows blew inward ... why was she not cut to ribbons? For that matter, why was *I* not cut to ribbons?

And *then* Fuu noticed the strange red glow in the air around her. Her eyes suddenly jerked back to the girl. It's her, she realized. Somehow, *she's* doing this.

The girl lifted her left hand up and extended it before her. "By the Friends of Man, come forth." An black iron staff appeared just beneath her hand, and she seized hold of it, whirled it so that it stood lengthwise for a moment, then slammed it into the ground. "By my True Name, let the True Form be revealed!"

And in an instant, the girl became a woman. Her hair streamed out to a greater length, and the sailor uniform she wore disintegrated into shreds of fabric -- which reformed into a dark blue gown. A glowing form around her brow gained solidity, becoming an iron crown.

"I AM BERYL! FIRST MAGE OF THE KINGDOM OF EARTH! WHO IS THIS DOG SHIT THAT COMES BEFORE ME?"

"Beriru?" the demon muttered, apparently confused.

The moment of confusion cost it dearly. Beryl hefted her staff over her right shoulder. "Fool to not recognize me. And twice the fool to have made glass a part of your form. Like calls to like -- the dullest child knows that. Come forth!"

At once, every shard of glass that had fallen from the broken windows rose into the air, and raced towards the demon like a bullet. They rammed into its body, which grew darker and more defined with each fragment. Yet as it did, it also ceased to move.

"Mako-chan," Beryl snapped. "I can't hold the glass in place and heat it at the same time. I need some lightning."

Behind her, another girl -- this one as tall as the woman -- rose up from the floor. She cast a quick look down at a boy on the floor, but he seemed unharmed, only very still. Angrily she glared at the demon. "Right," she snarled. "Jupiter Cosmic Power ... MAKE-UP!"

Lightning danced around her -- and then she stood in a shortened version of her uniform, with a tiara on her brow. Her hands slammed together before her chest, then fell to her right side. "Sparkling -- VITAL -- PRESSURE!!" she shouted, and a globe of electricity flew at the demon's body. It exploded, but seemed to make no difference to the creature.

Beryl's eyes began to glow.

With dawning comprehension, Fuu watched as the glass, melted by the heat of the lightning strike, oozed and flowed around the polluted air that made up the rest of the creature's form -- sealing it in. In less than a minute, a motionless glass statue stood where the demon had.

With a satisfied look (approaching a sneer), Beryl marched toward the statue, and whispered words that Fuu could not quite make out. The glass perceptibly stiffened as she did so. Jupiter dropped down to examine the young man on the floor, and let out a sigh of relief as she found him to be uninjured.

"Hououji Fuu, I presume?" Beryl inquired of her.

"Yes. And you are ... who, again?"

"You may refer to me as Beryl. To make a long story short, another creature like this has already attacked one of your associates, Ryuuzaki Umi."

The girl blinked in surprise. "She has told us much of your story," Beryl confirmed. "We suspect that there may be a connection between our work and your experiences. Are you willing to help us determine what that connection is?"

Fuu nodded once. "I hope that I can be of some assistance to you. I have heard stories of the Sailor Senshi, of course, though they don't mention --"

"There's a reason for that," Beryl interrupted. "Look, Jupiter here can probably fill you in on the details just as well as I can, but I have to get this spirit back to our headquarters. Jupiter, will you be needing to get him to a hospital?"

"No, he's okay. Just fainted from the excitement."

"Good. Standard cover-up -- nobody saw anything, you were all too scared." Beryl turned back to look at Fuu. "We'll talk later." She clasped the statue carefully, and dropped into a circle which opened up under her feet.

"Beryl-san is rather abrupt," Fuu commented.

"Yeah, that's one word for it," Makoto agreed ruefully, shifting back to Sailor Jupiter. "So, Hououji Fuu ... what exactly did the three of you call yourselves, anyway? Knight Water, and so forth, or --"

Fuu blinked. "Actually, Sailor Jupiter-san --"

"Kino Makoto."

"-- Makoto-san, we never had any need for names of those sorts. And in any event, even if we had, I am not at this moment a Magic Knight, and so --"

"Actually, you are," Makoto interrupted again. "Ryuuzaki was able to call up her powers, so there's probably no reason that you couldn't."

Fuu stared at the Sailor Senshi for a moment, then closed her eyes. She reached down into the windswept plains of her heart ...

... and found nothing.

To Be Continued

Author's Notes

This one is for Richard Lawson, in thanks for providing me with a much needed pick-me-up story while writing some of the more depressing bits of this one.

The story of the body of the sacrificial victim to which Aethan refers is quite true. "Lindow Man" was discovered in 1984, and is believed to have been killed at some point between AD 50 and 100. Most of the information I've presented about him comes from Anne Ross and Don Robbins' work "The Life and Death of a Druid Prince: The Story of Lindow Man, an Archaeological Sensation".

"Akuma-san" doesn't really refer to "Mr. Devil" (or Mr Satan to you Dragonball Z fans out there). Fuu is, as I have been at pains to point out, very formal, and always addresses everyone as "YourNameHere -san" -- even monsters!

Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi and brought to North America by DiC and Mixx Publications. Magical Knights Rayearth was created by CLAMP and brought to North America by Mixx Publications. This story, while incorporating elements of motion pictures and magazines held under copyright by others, is copyright 1998 by Chris Davies.

Nobody Sue Me Okay?

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