"That recently," drily said Sailor Pluto, walking alongside the ancient being.
"Yes, indeed," said Kachoo without any sign that he had registered the sarcasm. "It was a glorious time. There was my race, of course, but we had retired from much of anything. Our race had pretty much run its distance and we had settled into a slow but dignified decline. There were all these new races running about, getting into the same sort of trouble we had long ago."
"Do tell," said Pluto, wondering why the message to her had mentioned matters dealing with time and space.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I am telling. We'd watched a number of quite promising races pull themselves out of the muck and begin the long road towards civilization and even the stars." Kachoo shook his head in imitation of the human gesture. "Some of which, alas, fell short of their promise."
"I take it this has something to do with the Gates Of Time?" Pluto asked, wanting to cut the extraneous chatter down.
"Yes, I was getting to that. At least two, it might have been three, races developed a temporal blockage/filtering system to cut down on some of the problems associated with time travel." Kachoo pointed with one tentacle towards a holographic display. "Do you see that?"
"Some near humanoid race? The general shape is right, but those jaws and ears give it a somewhat ludicrous appearance," commented Pluto.
"Perhaps. They were Iravni, and their pinnacle of creation was something called the Time Dampener. Something to cut down on time manipulations and paradox ripples," said Kachoo. "At least that's what they considered their pinnacle. Everyone else thought it was their nonstick bakeware. Stuff was damn near indestructible."
"So they had something that performed a service much like the Gates Of Time," said Pluto revising her estimate of the creature. It certainly didn't look clever enough to do such a thing.
"Yes, up until they discovered that they'd locked themselves into a fairly hopeless future," said Kachoo. "They wanted a future utopia and ended up locking the local timestream into a narrowing static loop. Finally the thing broke down and unleashed a paradox storm. Entire solar system got stuck in between moments in time. Eventually the moment passed, must have taken five hundred million years or so. Shattered almost everything."
Pluto eyed the creature. "If you're talking a cataclysmic space/time rupture, I don't see how anything would survive."
"Well, I did say their nonstick bakeware was pretty nifty," said Kachoo. "Some of it survived. Really impressive work when you think about it. Even now it's traded as a really hot commodity - rare collector's items."
Pluto glanced at the alien and tried to guess if he was serious or this was merely some bizarre alien humor.
"Well, the Iravni weren't the only race to set up some problems at the time, and one of them was a race very similar to the natives of this world," said Kachoo, beginning to walk again. "This particular race was a trade partner of the Iravni for quite a long time as such things are reckoned among fledgling races. This particular species had a strong aptitude for magical energies and created a powerful item that regulated magical energies. It had some drawbacks, vampiric tendencies and such. Even went so far as to bind the reincarnation cycle of their inhabitants into a caste system via a mechanism known as the Galactic Cauldron."
Pluto stopped and looked back at the jackass-creature. "That was an ally race of what would eventually become the Silver Millenium?"
"Yes, actually, though there were the Sailor Wars and a group of refugees from that ending up in this star system with one of the regulatory crystals," said Kachoo. "Glad you could follow along."
That stopped Pluto. "There's more than one ginzuishou?"
"Ginzuishou, soul gems, all variations of the same theme. In your case the use of the Imperial Silver Crystal causes an imbalance much as the Iravni Time Dampener did. Either a Dark Crystal or simply attracting chaos. Either effect ends up the same."
"So is this why you requested my presence?" Pluto asked.
"Oh no. Not at all," Kachoo brought his Earthly Governors up on screens. "Excuse me. I realize you're all quite busy, but I thought you should know about this rather unexpected development."
"What is it?" asked the hologram of Doctor Mizuno.
Another screen appeared, this one showing the familiar velvety blackness of space and some unfamiliar spiral shapes that resembled sea shells in some odd manner. "These," said Kachoo, "showed up two hours ago. I really did not anticipate this."
"Some other alien race?" Governor Kemp's hologram asked.
Kachoo nodded in a human fashion. "Yes. They hail from the region of space you humans have designated the Horsehead Nebula."
Doctor Mizuno winced as that was considered an evil part of space in her own culture's mythos.
"They are known as the," here Kachoo's speech went into a set of buzzing clicks, "though I believe the translation into human terms would be 'The One True Race Destined To Rule Or Devour All Others' and their neighbors call them 'those buggy bastards'."
"They don't sound terribly pleasant," noted Governor Kemp as he wondered if this was a real alien menace or something that Kachoo had come up with per their prior conversation.
"When they come across a less developed race, they move in and convert the native population into a sort of genderless soldier-drone that they use to further subjugate the race. They're fairly insectile, have a Queen-Mother, and a complete lack of manners." Kachoo brought up a series of images of insectile creatures that looked vaguely similar. "They have their own drones and workers and warriors - similar to the insect hives of your own world. Apparently they detected my gravitational signals and came to investigate. As they have tried to attack more advanced civilizations in the past, and not been successful, they are being cautious at the moment."
"How advanced are they?" Pluto asked, trying to estimate the odds of going against them as Senshi.
"Their warriors are roughly on a level with your Senshi, and they are a magically inclined species," said Kachoo. "Teleportation and similar magics. This is a colonization group - used to set up a new Hive, so figure about 1000 warriors. The remainder would be drones, workers, an immature Queen, and converted soldier-drones that would correspond to one of your yoma."
"So if you leave, then we'll have to fight those," guessed Doctor Mizuno.
"Yes. They'd probably wait a few of your months to make sure I wasn't returning," admitted Kachoo. "Giving you a sort of grace period. Plus their ships aren't very fast in normal space. They do that hyperspace between solar systems, but have to drop out roughly 15 astronomical units from a solar body due to gravitational curvature in hyperspace. Not terribly sophisticated in that area."
Eyeing the now-sinister shapes, more than Kemp was wondering if the alien was manufacturing a menace to keep the uppity humans in line, or if this was accurate - in which case how would they fight off this new menace?
"Who came up with this idea for a contest?" Uranus asked with a certain degree of frustration in her voice.
"What's wrong with it?" Mercury demanded.
"It's a stupid wussy contest," Uranus informed the bookish contest. "We're on international television, fighting for the entire Mediterranean Sea, and you've got us doing this?!"
"B-12!"
"Hit! A-4!"
"Miss!"
Uranus groused about not having a proper rematch.
"Would you have preferred we fight the Contra-Senshi again?" Mercury asked. "Europa is faster than any of us, has a physical strength nearly sufficient to juggle train engines, is tough enough that she can shrug off a combined 'dead scream' and 'silence glaive surprise' and is better than you or Jupiter in terms of fighting skill. Oh. B-13!"
"Aaaaaah! You sunk my battleship!"
"We could win this time, now we have a better idea of their tactics!" Uranus argued.
"D-11!"
"Hit," acknowledged Mercury. "This was a calculated risk on my part. D-11."
"AHHHH! Hit! D-4!"
"What do you mean 'calculated risk'?" Uranus scowled at the little plastic boardgame.
"Miss. This is a game that requires logical thinking and an idea of the other person's tactical mindset," explained Mercury. "Whereas Europa has quoted Sun Tzu and Wei Lei when I've spoken to her. She would not employ the same tactics if we repeated a contest. By utilizing different contests on each occasion, we increase the chance of being able to put our opponents off guard at least initially. D-10."
"AHHH! My poor submarine!"
"I believe that ends the game," said Mercury, calmly meeting Uranus' gaze. "Victory validates my tactics, doesn't it?"
(Posted Sun, 14 Sep 2003 12:44)
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