Sailor Moon
"Betrayal of the Fifth Planet"
By Koy Kragh (koyn@utdallas.edu)
Chapter 2 - "The Black Wolf"
--- Disclaimer
Sailor Moon is a great anime series, but it's not my idea. That credit
goes to Naoko Takeuchi and Kodansha. The North American dub (and all rights
to the series thereabouts) belong to DiC. I'm overjoyed that DiC is bringing
the series back to NA, and I'm not attempting to infringe on their or
anybody else's rights.
This is a fictional story, any similarities between the characters in
this story and any person/people living or dead are not my fault.
--- Author's notes
This will be one BIG story by the time I'm done. If you don't want to be
reading TONS of chapters, then don't start this fanfic.
You probably would have figured it out pretty quickly on your own, but
I'm basing this story 1,000 years ago, in the Moon Kingdom. I haven't found
much background/research material for this time-period in SM, so I made up..
er.. embellished a few things to add atmosphere. If you want to see a quick
breakdown of what I envision the Sailor Moon past was like, then look in
the MOONHIST.KOY file that should be available with this fanfic.
One last thing . . . OK, say you read this, you like it/hate it/want to
kill me, etc. Praise, comments, flames, snaps and the like can be sent to
koyn@utdallas.edu. Death threats, curses, virii, etc. should be mailed to
harf@moron.org. Marriage proposals can be sent to me, please include picture
of Grand Cherokee.
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Chapter 2 - "The Black Wolf"
Three cloaked figures make their way through the dark, humid night. Their
cloaks obscure their features, hiding even the most simple information about
them and lending a sinister air to the trio. They move through the forested
area leaving little, if any, trail. Their footfalls are silent as they creep
slowly towards the small town of Prosperity. In fact, the three would be
sneaking into town quite effectively except for the two who are arguing in
voices that seem slightly, but barely, softened towards a whisper.
"I don't know, Serenity. We're supposed to be your guardians, and here
we go taking you along with us on a journey that may end up being very
dangerous."
"Rei, I understand your concern; but Endymion told *me* to go to Prosperity,
so perhaps whoever we're supposed to meet will be looking specifically for
me. Besides, right now do you really think leaving my mother and myself in the
same place without significant protection is a good idea?"
"She's right, Rei," states the third figure. "Right now, keeping
the Queen and the Princess separate is probably the best thing we can
do. If anything happens to one of them, then the other should be safe."
The three continue walking for a few minutes in silence. Just as the
town comes into sight, Rei stops. The others halt as well, waiting and
watching for any sign of trouble.
"You're right, Makoto," says Rei. "I'm sorry Serenity, I know we need
to bring you along. It's just that I have such a bad feeling about this."
---
"What a dump," thinks Makoto as the three girls enter the Black Wolf Inn.
"And it looks like the clientele aren't exactly the refined sort that the
Princess is used to."
The three girls move towards an empty table in the back and the
princess from Jupiter scans the room for potential trouble. Immediately,
she notices three other figures who wear a cloak like hers. However,
unlike the princesses, the other three haven't pulled back their hoods.
"Hmm," she thinks. "They're not sitting together, so either they aren't here
together or, as ridiculous as it sounds, they're trying to not attract
attention."
As they take their seats, Makoto notices a group of rather rowdy and
drunken men at a table nearby. "They seem much less sinister," she thinks,
"but they may end up presenting more of a problem than the other three.
Perhaps bringing the Princess in with us wasn't such a good idea after all."
The three had gone to great lengths to hide their appearances, but no
amount of dirt and messed up hair could completely cover the air of
beauty and regalness that surrounds each of the senshi, let alone the
Princess herself. Of course, this is exactly what attracts the attention
of the four men drinking at the nearby table.
Makoto nudges Rei when she notices the four men approaching their table.
The two girls glance towards them, but appear to take little notice.
"I haven't seen you three around here before, have I?" asks the man who
stands nearest the table.
The men are only slightly drunk, but obviously so. They each stare at the
trio of girls with expressions that do little to hide their desire. Makoto
feels herself becoming angry at the men; "if they only knew who we are!" she
thinks. Glancing sideways, she notices the Princess's reaction seems to
match her own.
Suddenly, a wave of fear passes over Makoto as she realizes the situation
they are in. "What if they do figure out who we are? How will they react?"
she thinks. "We'll have to be careful, now I wish we'd had time for better
disguises. But, even if they don't discover our identities, it's obvious
their intentions are less than honorable. How are we going to get away from
them and still meet our contact? We dare not use our powers, but without
them, what can we do? These men aren't tremendously big, but they do look like
they could put up a good fight, even in their drunken state. Plus, there's
four of them and only three of us."
Before Makoto can muse on their problems any more, her attention is drawn
back to their small table as Rei responds to their accosters. "I doubt you
have," she says, "we haven't been through here before."
"What is she doing?!" wonders Makoto. Glaring at Rei, Makoto gives her
her best "don't screw things up!" look and prays Rei can handle these guys
better than she handles Serenity.
"Really?" asks the man. "Well then, you'll just have to let me and my
friends show you around." The three men behind him chuckle a bit and look at
the girls hungrily.
"I don't think so," responds Rei. "We're waiting for someone right here."
"Oh. Well, I don't see him anywhere around." The man makes a cursory
glance of the small Inn, and then continues his harassment of the princesses.
"Why don't you let us keep you company until he gets here, eh?"
"Excuse me." This voice was new. It came from another man, one of the
cloaked figures Makoto saw when she came in. "I don't think these fine ladies
want to be bothered by you right now."
"Yeah?" replies the 'leader' of the four men. "Well I don't think I care
what you think. So, why don't you just go and sit back down?"
"I'll ask one more time," says the cloaked man, "leave the ladies alone. I
don't want to have to get rough."
"Oh! You don't want to get rough do you?" laughs the first man. As he
does, he and the other three men turn towards the cloaked figure. It is
obvious to Makoto that there will be a fight. Unfortunately, she can't think
of any way to help.
Sighing, the cloaked man removes his hood. "I had hoped to avoid this, but
you leave me no alternative." As he says this, one of the men in the
background lunges towards him. The cloaked man catches his arm and sends him
crashing into a nearby table.
The other two men charge towards him. He ducks and rolls to his left,
tripping one of the men. As the man falls, the cloaked man kicks into his
stomach, then gets up to face the other man. His second attacker swings at
his head almost before he can get up. He leans away from the blow and is
caught from behind by a chair that the first man to go down swings at him.
On the ground, the cloaked man shakes his head as if to clear it. Suddenly,
he somersaults forward into a standing position. Turning, he catches the man
who threw a punch at him with a high kick. Surprisingly, the man goes down,
knocked out.
The other three men seem a little wary of their opponent. They stand back
a little. Halted, but not beaten. The four men stand looking at each other.
Then, the three remaining brutes flank the cloaked figure, hoping to defeat
him using their numbers.
The cloaked man looks around himself calmly, taking in the situation. When
the three men all charge him at once, he is ready for them. Spinning to his
right he catches the man who was on his left in the jaw with his right fist,
then follows up with his left into the mans abdomen and a right to the head.
The man goes down. He pirouettes to face his two remaining attackers and ducks
beneath a blow from another man. He sweeps the man's legs out from under him
and knocks the man out with a swift backhand to his head.
Makoto and the other patrons admire the man's fighting ability. But, it
appears to Makoto that he made an enormous error and forgot the fourth man. As
the final man comes up behind the cloaked figure, Makoto thinks to yell out a
warning, but there isn't enough time.
Suddenly, the cloaked man's hand jerks backward and his final opponent flies
backwards towards the far wall.
"Amazing!" thinks Makoto. "And he didn't even touch. . . him. . ." Now,
Makoto understands. The cloaked figure is Ronan. She thinks frantically,
trying to find a way out of the Inn before the man can return to take them
into custody. However, it seems that the other patrons have discovered the
cloaked man's secret as well, and they don't seem to be very happy with him.
"He's Ronan!" yells one of the townspeople.
"Get him!" yells another.
The people in the Inn slowly converge on the man. He glances around,
himself seeming a little worried now. "Great!" he says. But, actually, it
seems to come from two places at once. Then the man is joined by another
cloaked figure. "You had to use magic, didn't you?!" This voice is female.
"Well, I didn't see you helping out any!"
"Maybe I wouldn't have had to if you hadn't waited so long to approach
the girls!"
"I had to make sure it was them! Look, we don't have time for this right
now, let's get them and get out of here, okay?!"
"Right" Saying this, the woman turns to the girls and runs towards them
as the man begins fending off the townspeople with a show of magic. Keeping
the people back is not hard because of their fear of magic.
As the woman approaches them, Rei and Makoto stand to defend the Princess.
"Whoa! Wait a second!" says the woman. "Look, no time to explain. We've
been sent here to get you. . ."
"Yes, we know," says Makoto, preparing to attack the woman.
"Wait! We were contacted by Prince Endymion of Earth three days ago and
asked to meet you here. Look, right now you're going to have to trust me, but
like it or not, you're coming with us!" With that, the woman grabs the
Princess by the hand and begins to walk out with her in tow.
"Hurry up!" says the man. "I can't keep this up forever."
"We're leaving." says the woman.
"Great." The man stops the light show he set up to scare the locals, and
turns to the small group standing in the center of the Inn. He closes his
eyes, whispers a few words, and the five of them vanish.
---
And reappear nearly a half-mile outside the city. The five figures stand
on a path that runs among the trees, much like the one the princesses had
used to enter the city on.
"Well," says the cloaked woman, removing her hood, "that was sure exciting,
Charlie."
"What's that supposed to mean?" asks the man, obviously Charlie. "Are you
implying that was somehow my fault?"
"Of course. If you had gone to them as soon as they came in we wouldn't
have had to bother with all that."
"What?! Look, number one, I think we would have ended up fighting no
matter what. Number two, neither one of us was sure that these girls were
the ones we were supposed to meet. Endymion did say there would be *six* of
them. Plus, we've all heard that the Ronans already captured the Queen and
her daughter after they escaped. Sure, we played it down as propaganda, but
we couldn't rule it out; and these girls could have been another trap set by
the RSF to flush out a few more of our agents."
"Hmm. . ." says the woman. "Well, let's move on before they find us
again." Turning to the girls, the woman introduces herself, "my name is
Ysayne, and this is Charles. We are Ronan, but we are part of a group of
Ronans who are loyal to Queen Serenity. We have, or had, agents throughout
the Kingdom. Unfortunately, King Tor's Ronan Special Forces hit us pretty
hard just before their attack on the Moon. We've lost contact with most of
our cells. Almost everyone we had here on the Moon was wiped out. Only a
handful of us are left here. Endymion contacted our leader because we're the
best chance you have of getting out of here."
"Okay," says Charles, "first thing's first. Before we can take you to our
base and start figuring out how to get you off-planet we need to pick up the
rest of your group. So, where are the other three?"
Apprehension suddenly consumes Makoto once again. "What if these two really
were sent by King Tor to bring us back? How can we know they belong to the
same group Evelyn did?" Suddenly, she has an idea. "I hope you don't mind,
but I'm afraid I'm a little hesitant to simply trust you, even if you do say
you were sent by Endymion. May I ask, in order to verify that you were sent
by the prince of Earth, what the last thing he said to us before our connection
was severed was?"
"Well," responds Charlie, "he wasn't exactly sure when you lost his signal,
but he was saying 'There you should be met by' when he lost you."
"That's right," says Serenity. "Okay, we'll take you to my mother."
---
Several miles south of Prosperity, eight travelers walk away from town
and farther into the forest. The six Royal fugitives among them trod along
wearily, but show little outward sign of their fatigue. The other two lead
the way southward, all the while arguing quietly about one minor thing or
another.
"They're almost as bad as you and Rei," jokes Ami to Princess Serenity.
The Princess smiles in response, and so does Minako, who walks nearby.
Serenity thinks about Ami's words briefly, but her thoughts quickly
return to recent events. For the last three days the girls had traveled
with the Queen. Their voyage had been rushed, and they were constantly
worried about discovery. The level of stress they had been under the past
few days had been tremendous, but they hadn't noticed because of the
danger they were in. Now, the Princess starts to relax, and she is
surprised at just how tired she is.
"We're getting close," says Ysayne, interrupting the Princess's thoughts.
"We'll just have to get past the sentry and the camp is a little farther on."
"And getting past me shouldn't be too hard," says a new voice from just
inside the wooded area left of the path.
"Jason!" exclaims Charlie. "You nearly scared me to death. Don't do
that."
Laughing, Jason steps onto the small trail they are using. "Sorry,
Lo. . ." seeming to catch himself, he continues, "Charles. I see you found
them. Thank goodness; we were starting to get anxious. Stephane was
starting to believe those reports that they were captured." Turning to the
Queen, Jason says, "I'm glad to see you are safe, Your Majesty. Our leader
has been working on a way to get us all off-planet. He's the one you
really want to see; just follow these two to the camp. They'll show you
around."
"Thanks, Jason," says Charlie as the sentry walks back to his position
among the trees. "Like he said," states Charles, "it's just a little
further up the way."
"Charles, why did Jason almost call you something else before he caught
himself?" asks Makoto, a little suspicion evident in her voice.
"Calm down princess," he answers. "My name really is Charles. However,
I used to be known as 'Lord Charles' of Rona. We've stopped using our
titles since Rona no longer recognizes our status. We have been dishonored
in the eyes of our homeland. The titles are a display of a status we don't
have, of honor we are fighting to regain."
"You have not been dishonored in the eyes of the Moon Kingdom," replies
the Queen. "You still have your status in our court."
"Thank you, Your Highness. However, I'm afraid we, as Ronans, feel a
close connection with our home planet. Our sense of duty, honor, and
loyalty require us to fight to regain your position for you; but doing so
brings us shame and dishonor in the eyes of our homeland. I don't think I
could ever tell you how much that hurts us, or how much it hurts to know we
can never go back."
The group continues walking in silence. The Princess is troubled by
Charles's words, but postpones thinking about their significance until
after she has rested. As they walk, Princess Serenity feels an odd sense
of calm fill her. "I know we are far from safe here," she thinks to
herself, "but I guess knowing someone else has taken responsibility for
our safety is comforting."
Soon, they enter a small clearing lit by a few small torches. Inside,
the Princess can see four tents set up. One is much larger than the others
and she can see two men standing about a table inside. The two men seem
to be talking together. One of them stands by the entrance to the tent,
watching the other man pace its length.
"Right this way," says Ysayne as she leads the group towards the large
tent.
---
"We don't have many options, Nathan," says the man seated at the table.
"And we have fewer and fewer avenues of escape the longer we wait."
"You're not thinking about leaving before we find them, are you?" asks
Nathan.
"No, of course not," answers the first man. Looking down at the map before
him, he continues, "They are the whole reason we are fighting King Tor. To
leave them here in danger would be counter-productive. Besides, we promised
Prince Endymion we would find and rescue them."
"So, what do we do?"
"Well, we won't know how to get off-planet or even where we can go until
we know when we can leave, and we won't know when we can leave until Charlie
and Ysayne get back." Resting his head in his hands the man sighs heavily.
"We need to plan, but we can not until we find them. Everything is spiraling
out of control, Nathan. Before, we had a chance of standing up to the Ronans;
now, they've devastated our main resistance forces on the Moon. Plus, they've
effectively cut off our communications with our cells on the other planets.
We can't even continue the resistance until we get to Earth." Standing, the
man begins to pace the length of the tent.
Nathan begins to say something to his leader and friend, but a sound
outside the tent draws his attention. Looking outside he sees six cloaked
figures heading towards him led by Charles and Ysayne. Turning to face the
man inside he says, "I think Charles and Ysayne may have some good news for
you, sir."
---
For a moment, he was confused. Then, he saw his friends just outside the
tent's entrance. Behind them, he could see several figures. Almost
immediately, he could feel the majority of his worries loosening their grip on
his soul, taking with them his secret fears that their cause may have been
doomed so soon after it began. "Please, come in," he says as Nathan moves
just behind and to the left of him. "Always concerned with my safety," he
thinks to himself.
"Well, sir, we found them," says Charlie as he enters the tent.
"Yeah, but we had no little amount of trouble getting here," adds Ysayne.
"Trouble?" he asks. "Is the camp in danger?"
"No, no," answers Charlie. "I just wouldn't go back to the Black Wolf any
time soon."
"Well," interrupts Ysayne, "we'll just go now and leave you guys to plot
and plan. Excuse us." Ysayne and Charles leave the group, giving them a
little more room in the now cramped tent.
Facing the ladies, the leader of the resistance focuses his attention on
the tallest of the group. Automatically, he recognizes her as the Queen,
but he notices something else about her. He can't quite figure out what he
senses about her, he just knows there is more to her than there appears to be.
"Queen Serenity, my name is Kieran. I'm glad to see you and your entourage
are safe."
"Yes," she replies, "your people brought us here with a minimum of
difficulty." She pauses a moment, looking thoughtful. "Kieran. . . I have
heard your name before, and your face is very familiar." Looking at him again,
she seems to remember. "You are Prince Kieran, of Rona, are you not?"
Kieran's face darkens, but he keeps his voice formal and respectful. "Yes,
Your Majesty. But, that was in the past. Now, it's just Kieran." Out of the
corner of his eye, Kieran notices one of the princesses stifling a yawn.
Glancing at the faces of the others he sees their immense fatigue. "Well, you
must be tired after your long journey. Your Majesty, I'll have someone show
you and the princesses where you can sleep tonight. Tomorrow morning we will
leave."
"Thank you, Kieran," responds Queen Serenity. Kieran exits the tent with
the others and calls for Stephane help them get settled. Watching the others
walk away, Kieran's thoughts return to their escape route. He turns and
re-enters the tent.
"Now, we can make plans. Nathan," Kieran says as he motions towards the map
on the table, "come look at this."
---
Makoto glanced back over her shoulder to see the leader of the Ronan
resistance walk back into the tent. Looking around at the small camp, she
suddenly notices how few tents there are. "Stephane, where is the rest of the
camp?" she asks the woman showing them around.
"What do you mean?" she replies. "Oh! You're wondering why the camp is so
small." Stephane stops walking and turns to look at the group. "Kieran didn't
tell you?"
"We were not with Kieran very long," answers Queen Serenity. "Tell us about
what?"
"Well. . ." starts Stephane. "I'm afraid you've caught us at a bad time.
You see, we have many agents throughout the Kingdom, and we had moved a large
number of them here to the Moon to stage a defense. However, King Tor's Ronan
Special Forces found us here and on most of the other planets. Fortunately,
the RSF concentrated their strength here, and they were defeated elsewhere
allowing our people to go into hiding and regroup. Unfortunately, they ended
up devastating everything we had here. We were barely able to get Kieran out
alive; if Nathan hadn't refused to leave his side we might not have. As a
result, there are only eight of us left here on the Moon out of an original
force of nearly two-thousand."
"Eight?!" exclaims Makoto. "Ysayne said there was only a handful of you
left, but I figured she meant at least thirty! How are eight people going to
get us past the entire Ronan army?"
Stephane glares at Makoto for a moment, then answers her, "Princess, Kieran
and the others have been evading the Ronans for two years. They know how to
do this. I've only joined in the last few months, but I trust them with my
life after what I've seen them accomplish. Besides, you really don't have any
other options."
Stephane turns away and begins walking again. She leads the others to the
three tents near the center of the clearing. "You can use these to sleep
tonight. We'll be leaving in the morning."
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