At the Time Gates, Sailor Pluto stared at the results of this world that had known conflict after conflict over centuries. Good had fought evil again and again. Worldwide acceptance of the Gifted had resulted.
King Arthur had actually existed. His Knights Of The Table Round had been Magical Boys, though with minor gifts, and a few Magical Girls. The result of THAT had been a certain acceptance of the idea of female warriors dating back to Roman times.
Sailor Pluto especially stared at the statue of Lady Gwendlyonne, standing between the statues of Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain, at the outer ring of Arthur's Tomb at Glastonbury. There was no bow in her hair, and the hair was shorter and braided so that it could be coiled and put under a helmet, but it was undeniably Minako Aino.
They had been reincarnated not once, but once in every era. Sometimes they had magical powers, sometimes they were talented individuals, sometimes they were just people in the background. There was a crowd scene in a painting hanging in the Louvre dating from 1412 that showed a trade delegation from China, with what was clearly Usagi Tsukino in traditional Chinese dress as one of that group.
Reborn again and again. Here was someone recognizable as Haruka among the guards of Marie Antoinette. There was a somewhat paler Mamoru Chiba serving under a Captain Horatio Hornblower. Here was a more European version of Rei Hino leading the charge into a zombie-infested mountainside, but it was the nun's habit that made Setsuna want to reach for a strong cup of tea.
Nor were the Nine Senshi the only Magical Girls reborn.
It wasn't until World War I (or the Great War, if you prefer) that a new factor entered the situation.
Combining new technologies, some timeslip event, and mystic rituals - the Steel Angel Project actually BUILT Magical Girls. There weren't too many of these at first, but it put certain ideas out there. Up until this point having an ancestor or family member turn out to be a Magical Girl or Magical Boy was a point of pride for the nonmagical in most areas. There were those in England who could proudly trace their descent from Sir Gawain or Lady Gwendlyonne, for example.
Still, things mostly followed the same historical track. World War I had a few more battles, and the first use of the terms Channeller and Mystech and Senshi being used in the press to differentiate between the various types of special combatants, though the term "superhero" also came into popular use as a catch-all phrase. (Eventually this would just be shortened to 'supers' to indicate those with some extra ability.)
Sailor Pluto checked the timeline further and discovered that the Senshi first fought directly against each other in World War II (or the Second Great War, however you wanted to define events) and it was the first for a few other categories as well.
The first animorph soldiers. Magic might not have lent itself well to mass production, but mage-bombs were first used - developed by Germany and first used against England. A scientist defecting to the other side ended up with the other side developing and refining the weapons.
Berserker Gas, Lightning Rods, Salamanders, Blast Cannon. All had been used as far back as the Napoleonic Wars, but now their use had become overshadowed by nonmagical equipment that wasn't as subject to being broken down by the opponents hexes. Vampires and werewolves made their brief appearances in the battles, only to find that their vaunted immunities weren't up to the standards of modern warfare. Not that such were deployed very often since those sorts of troops were difficult to control.
It was also the first time that a major divergence occurred in the way the battles went as far as Sailor Pluto could observe. Germany was mindful of the harsh winter conditions and fielded zombies along the Russian Front. Zombies were not the brightest of troops, but they could pull triggers and stab with bayonets. Werewolves of the Special 42nd Corps proved more clever and under better control than the average such, and did fairly well with the conditions there as well.
Helena Maximoff was recognizable as Haruka, except that she was a World II Ace on Germany's side. Skilled in personal combat, piloting her aircraft, and a Channeller - she became a formidable opponent as she gained experience. It ended with her Von Graaf Type II Assaultier shot down by an anti-aircraft gun after releasing a large mage-bomb in New York City.
Though the war lasted a little longer, the devastation was greater, and the fallout more problematic - the war ended pretty much as Pluto remembered it.
Of course, there were the kaiju and daikaiju afterwards. Just seeing the monsters now menacing New York City through the '50s and '60s brought a twitch to one of her eyebrows. Up until she got to Yukrana. A 12' tall cockroach. Icky icky icky. Albino mutant alligators were one thing, carnivorous watermelons another, but Yukrana was enough to keep her from ever visiting that city.
So necromancy had been banned by the Geneva Convention. No raising of deceased soldier or civilian populations for use as cannon fodder soldiers. Vampires, ghouls, guls, and similar creatures were also banned.
Enter the 1950s and 1960s where magic got a much poorer reception than in previous eras. Anti-magic crowds and the like. Some of those descendents who could proudly trace their lineage to such found themselves beset by people who were practically rabid anti-magic types. Especially after Mao's development of the Steel Demon Project. Take the basics of the Steel Angel, but include an armored shell that received a transferred human essence. This killed the human of course, but it gave the Chinese one tireless and darn near indestructible golem-style soldier every time the process worked.
China never signed onto the Geneva Convention, or at least the new government had not.
Now the Korean Conflict took on a different level of menace. Steel Demons, which was the Western name for the soldiers, the Chinese name making no sense after the translation other than it had something to do with rams and heroes, were resistant to a number of things including normal gunfire. Mass enough on them and you could still injure them, but it wasn't as if they would normally hold still while you did that. Still, the process had a lot of failures and there were only a few dozen of these soldiers fielded - out of hundreds of tries.
It was during the Vietnam Conflict that the Steel Demon II, aka Death Knight, was revealed. Stronger, more indestructible, and hundreds were unleashed. It didn't even last long enough to be considered a War. As tough as a tank, as manueverable as an infantryman, with no need to sleep or eat and with no blood loss even if injured - they were really only vulnerable to airstrikes with heavy firepower being involved.
China made one mistake though. They got cocky because their new weapon system and manufacture process had given them such an edge. Going after Taiwan meant using ships. Ships were vulnerable. Some scandal at home kept the American forces distracted, but they were still sufficient to slow the approaching forces for a mass evacuation.
It never became World War III, Pluto was pleased to note, despite the headlines and hysteria from certain groups.
Taiwan ceased to be, simply becoming another part of the People's Republic.
Enter the co-sponsored Japanese-American "Project: Supergal" where a project of empowerment was developed. It worked best with young girls, particularly after puberty, and especially in those cases where a girl had some genetic link to some great hero of the past.
Doctor Kumori Mizuno, Lieutenant in the Japanese Self Defense Force, was one of these. Though nobody outside the chain of command knew her by another name besides that of 'Sailor Aquarius - the Water Bearer'.
There were twelve of these new A-Rank Senshi as defined by those working the process. The various factors included genetic predisposition and psychological restrictions. They proved quite capable of dealing with Death Knights if they weren't taken by surprise. If they WERE, as Sailor Capricorn and Sailor Cancer found out - a Sailor could die as easily as any normal unenhanced human.
Things settled down, refugees from Taiwan and Hong Kong and other "disputed" areas ended up in a number of countries. Only a few thousand were deported to China where they quietly vanished.
Secret identities were kept going because of the anti-super backlash with few exceptions.
Setsuna was intrigued to find out that:
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Thu, 06 Jul 2006 09:42)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.