"Well, alright, then. It's our turn to ask questions, correct?"
Pluto asked. Saturn nodded, curiosity alight in her eyes. Uranus and Neptune on the other hand were behind some trees somewhere to there right, from what they could hear of Uranus trying to talk to Neptune. Neptune was not answering a word, and her silently fuming aura could be felt from quite a distance.
Ryouga sighed.
"Well, I suppose so."
"Uranus. A*0-1. Explain."
Ryouga scratched his head.
"Um, uh, alright... You want the long version or the short version? Because the long version is pretty damn long, if I say so myself..."
"The short version first, and annotate later, maybe?"
Saturn said, and Pluto nodded to that.
"Very well, the short version first, then. Once upon a time, there was this Senshi who was happened to be Linked to a bloody massive black hole around the center of the Galaxy. And several other Beings, Senshi and otherwise, who gradually ended up being all karmatically entangled with her, him or it. Oh, they weren't all reborn in a matched set like some Beings seem to try to do, but more often then not, they were born around the same time and the same places, and they'd get to know each other, and well, you know the drill, I suppose."
Ryouga sighed, again.
"Alright, here goes - I don't remember everything, not even close to everything, so keep that in mind, 'kay? I mean, I can barely remember being this "Sia" she was talking about - though I can see why she'd want to remember that life, now that I think about it. She was this chipper bright thing with a long pigtail down to her knees, then, if I'm not mixing her up with her other incarnations, and she even had this loving if not very conventional family, and was even fairly popular. Though the main attraction of that particular lifetime was that it was one of those lives in which she could say It wasn't my fault without having to bury certain memories six feet under, in my opinion..."
Ryouga ran his hands though his hair.
"Because, you see, when A*0-1 fucks up, she - or he, or it - fucks up bad."
"Hey, c'mon, Neptune... Don't be mad at me...."
Uranus smiled to see Neptune unbend at long last.
"You idiot. A Barrett Trap."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! But it wasn't even a real Barrett Trap, I'd de-coupled the Sacrifice Cannons a while back anyway -"
Neptune sighed, burying her face in her hands. Uranus sat next to her, staggering a bit.
"But then I actually saw her and felt her aura and all those memories came pouring back and - Hey, I won. I really did. Yeaaaah!"
"You're drunk, Uranus."
Uranus blinked.
"I am? I didn't think one could get drunk in senshi-form!"
"...Alright, you're groggy, then. And now I'm wondering just what kind of memories are sitting around in my subconscious, just waiting to go off like gigantic fire rockets."
"...Eh."
Uranus patted her, gently.
"What was she to you?"
"...'Overkill'?"
"Yes."
"I..."
Saturn murmured, quietly.
"I have plenty of memories I routinely give the "six feet under" treatment, too, I believe..."
"Oh, so do I."
Ryouga snorted.
"The more you remember, the more you don't wanna."
Pluto groaned at that.
"Oh, yes. Or rather - 'The more you remember, the more memories you want to rebury.', in my case, anyway - In a 'How could any incarnation of mine have been so stupid, or insane, or -'"
"Or just plain unlucky, yeah..."
Saturn, Pluto and Ryouga looked at each other, sighing.
"Well anyway, when A*0-1 messes up, she tends to mess up bad, as you could probably guess. Kina - Uranus - was talking about Lancran and Benare and -what was the other name, Ha'shel? Well, I don't remember Ha'shell but I do remember Lancran and Benare."
"Wait, those are all A*0-1's incarnations, correct?"
Saturn asked.
"Um, yes."
Ryouga closed his eyes a bit, remembering a small sickly little red-haired girl.
"Benare - she was just a kid and unlucky as hell, and it probably wasn't even half her fault, now that I think about it, but at the time - well, she was the one who'd been taken over by some kind of Chaotic parasite at a rather young age, they got her though her father as I recall, and eventually got totally taken over. The entire planet she was living on then got eaten, as I recall - gaah, she's supposed to be 'Sailor Overkill' and she couldn't even throw a bloody parasite out, or just burn it, all it would have needed was a mere fraction of her power - "
Ryouga stopped, noticing that Saturn had gotten rather green in the face, and Pluto had walked over a couple of steps towards her.
"...You okay?"
"Yes. Please continue."
"...Parasite problems?"
"Well."
Saturn mumbled.
"Yes."
"Ahh, sorry... Bad memories, eh?"
Pluto gave him a quiet but eloquent glance.
"Alright, enough about that - next, Lancran. Well, she was - okay, she was a problem, but it was partially our fault, I suppose - "
Ryouga sighed, remembering a tall slender red-haired girl.
"Most of us were Senshi and such, then, but with no proper past memories to speak of, and - we'd thought she had to be the Princess of our plant at first. As things turned out, she wasn't - and she didn't take the news well. ...Neither did the rest of us, to be fair, I supposed. We felt betrayed and wanted her out of our Star System - well, except for the true Princess, she didn't want her exiled - A*0-1 felt betrayed and wanted her 'proper place back and the imposter Princess gone' were the words I believe, and she ended up blasting a fair part of said planet away. Oh, she recreated almost everything she'd blasted, once she came to her senses, but there were a fair amount of Starseeds which had been just blasted away OutSystem, and the loss of data and energy, and - well. The only thing good about that little debacle was that she left without making a fuss after that. Which may not really have been such a good thing, as some other nasties came a-calling some time after that, but - oh, anyway, that was Lancran."
There was a long silence.
"But that - "
Saturn muttered, looking at Ryouga accusingly.
"Oh, yes, we were stupid like a stupid thing too, thank you, I know. Gaaah. Not to mention, what was that word? Uncaring, right. Though the word Lancaran used was 'ungrateful', I believe..."
Pluto coughed, then.
"When they were fighting - Uranus mentioned a 'Silicore', I believe?"
"Silicore."
Ryouga paused.
"Oh, right. That was when she was part of that project to get insta-Senshi at low to no cost - just find de-Linked Senshi Starseeds and Link them to a spare planet without any Senshi at the moment."
Ryouga looked at Saturn and Pluto, and coughed.
"It really was an revolutionary idea at that time and place, you know?"
"All new things have to start someplace."
Pluto commented colorlessly. Saturn simply gave a tight nod.
Ryouga wondered just what they had been before they'd become "Pluto" and "Saturn". Well, he could think about that later.
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(Posted Tue, 22 Aug 2006 11:15)
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