The Final Legacy

By Doctor Xadium Bear and this version of Tsukino Kousagi are the creation of Frank White Sailor Io is the creation of Nitemare_Angel and Euri Xadium's bloodied and shredded clothes lay on the ground in a tattered heap, a stark reminder of the prior night's events. Minako looked down at the pile sadly, picking up the remains of Xadium's favourite black velvet overcoat, absently running her fingers through a gash in its back. She had put that there. Well, Goddess Venus had. The past life of her past life made manifest, driven to a homicidal rage, the goddess whose legendary beauty and fierce anger had both enchanted and destroyed her husband. Minako couldn't stop the tears from rolling down her cheek as she looked at the rest of his outfit lying on the ground. Tan slacks, now red with blood that had gushed from his twin hearts. White shirt, a pulpy mess barely indistinguishable from the entrails that covered it. And his favorite waistcoat, now nothing more than strips of disconnected cloth. "X-chan..." she exhaled sadly, pulling out a golden pocketwatch with the word "DAD" stamped in the front. It had been a gift to him from Sakura, their future daughter, and now it was nothing more than a broken toy, the glass on its interior face cracked and shattered. Casting her gaze to the burnt-out, damaged TARDIS console, she saw past it, to the broken pictureframes that had been decimated in Venus' wrath-- pictures of herself and Xadium sharing their first kiss, relaxing by the sea on Honeymoon. More painful than the thought that she might be stranded in spacetime forever was the thought of what she had allowed herself to do to the one she loved more than anything in the world. "Hmm, that won't do.. won't do at all." Xadium's voice drifted across the TARDIS from the wardrobe room, where he was searching for a new outfit. Minako took some scant comfort in the sounds of him donning and then casting aside ensemble after ensemble. Venus had finally relented after slaying the Time Lord five times, leaving him with but one life left-- making him as mortal as anyone else. Minako looked to her left hand, which was trembling rather forcefully, quivering as she held the pocketwatch. Venus was left-handed. She knew that somehow. The Goddess' own grief was showing through, an echo of a corner of her soul that was still haunted over the bloody scene she had wrought. "It just isn't... me." The sound of a heavy overcoat being tossed aside could be heard. Minako knew something about regeneration, of course, having seen it twice before. A Time Lord's body would shift and change appearance, rebuilding itself to come back from a fatal experience. It was a process that was as unnerving for the Time Lord as those around them. Their personalities would change to be wildly different from what had come before, yet somewhere deep inside they were still the same people, in their soul. It was just as if certain aspects of their personality were given more priority than before and others less. The most obvious sign of this was the radical changes in wardrobes. Time Lords tended to wear the same or similar outfits a lot during the course of a life. It was an external reflection of their internal compass. Xadium generally had preferred elegant Victorian style garb, and before that formal suits. What would he like now, Minako wondered. Would he still like her? That last thought had shot into her mind unbidden, unwanted. If Xadium hated her now, she could understand it. She, through Venus, had hated him briefly for what he had done. No, not right. She had felt pain and sorrow for the choice he had made, and Venus had let her rage overcome her. The two had battled, but the goddess had won, leaving Minako to watch idly by, a prisoner in her own body, as a part of her personality that was usually the most sensual and passionate become the most destructive and lethal. Xadium had taken his time to get up after the last kill, his body stressed and worn from regenerating so many times. Minako reflected that when her husband had looked at her after that, there was a sad, defeated look in his eyes as he had regarded her. Then, without a word, stumbling in a detached, almost instinctive way, he had made his way to a special sealed chamber of the TARDIS called the "Zero Room"-- where one could heal and meditate, completely cut off from the outside universe. After that, he had come out, strode right by her, and gone into the wardrobe room to change clothes. "Perfection!" Xadium exclaimed, walking out of what was essentially a giant walk-in closet, clad in his new outfit. Minako barely gave it a once over before rushing to him. He was wearing black slacks, bright red socks, brown patent-leather shoes, a white silk shirt and maroon paisley tie, and on top of it all an unbuttoned khaki photographer's equipment vest, which was covered in a multitude of pockets, heavy and laden down with innumerable items in their pockets. He had retained his tinted orange glasses. Rushing to him, Minako grabbed the Time Lord forcefully, crushing herself against him tightly, pressing her lips to his and kissing him as deeply and passionately as she could. The intent was not to seduce, but to let him know her feelings for him-- to hopefully tell him that what happened last night would never happen again. Ever. Xadium instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed back, but it was a soft, almost clinical response, a curious exploration followed by a textbook sequence of maneuvers, almost like he was now merely doing what was expected of him. He allowed the moment to last for a few seconds, then pulled away gently, tasting her orange-strawberry lipgloss for an instant before gazing into her eyes deeply for a moment, as if trying to impart some kind of message, then stepping aside and walking over to the TARDIS console, inspecting it. He did not speak. He had not spoken to her since his awakening, only mumbling to himself about things scientific and technical. Minako stood there, breathing deep for a moment, feeling dizzy, like she had been buffeted about by a windstorm. What was that? she wondered. Was that a token kiss? Did he even feel anything? Did he care? The warm, comforting glow of his emotion towards her-- something she could sense in the very depths of her soul-- was completely gone. She stood there, feeling cold and alone, wanting to cry, but at the same time she couldn't, because the look he had given her had been as deep and caring as he ever had before. She knew he was trying to show her that somewhere inside he was still the same man. But still... all the signals were totally mixed-- even more so than the last times he had regenerated. What did it all mean? Unable to come to any conclusion, she simply followed Xadium to the console and idly watched him as he tried to repair the damage she had done to it. Whereas in the past, she had broken it out of simple error, this last time Venus had deliberately assaulted it, and the effects, therefore, were much, much worse. "What's going on, koibito?" Minako asked, desperately trying to make conversation in order to take her mind off the memories of what she had done, knowing even as she asked the question that whatever technobabble gobbledegook her husband uttered would go straight over her head. She had gotten a little more technically literate since hanging around him, but not enough to understand the subtle intricacies of TARDIS repair. As it turned out, she needn't have worried about her lack of understanding. Xadium simply made a small verbal grunt in reply and returned to his work, pulling off more panels and rewiring circuits with a slow, but determined intensity that seemed to consume him utterly. "Fine, ignore me," she muttered under her breath, checking herself a moment too late when she realized that she had given voice to her thoughts. "I'm not," Xadium replied absently, in a somewhat clipped, but not impolite, tone as he spliced some wiring. "this is just taking a great deal of my concentration at the moment, Mina." Minako subconsciously moved back a step. Her brain knew he wasn't brushing her off, but her heart felt that he was. She bit her lower lip in frustration, hands tightening a little. If the Time Lord sensed her discomfort, he did not show it. In fact, he barely seemed to notice her at all, treating her more as an obstacle to be evaded as he moved around the console, splicing wires, soldering leads and pressing buttons. She had seen him get lost in his work before, but for the first time since they had met so many years ago, there seemed to be a vast impersonal gulf between them she did not know how to cross. A sinking feeling in her stomach, Minako turned away to leave him to his work. She had not moved a inch, however, before a light touch on her shoulder stopped her. "Can you help me hold this down?" Xadium asked, gesturing to a lever mounted in the side of the console. Minako nodded happily and rested her hand on the lever, pressing it down as Xadium placed his hand atop hers. The sensation was warm and soft, familiar, yet subtly different. Working together, they pushed it down, and the TARDIS shuddered for a moment as its landing sequence began. "X-chan..." Minako began slowly in an apologetic tone. "Ano..." she paused, unsure about how to broach the subject. She looked up into his eyes, the brown eyes that were the same, but not the same, looked up at the face that was not his face, yet it was. "I.. I..." Tears began to well up in her eyes as she tried to bring herself to confront the horrible memories from the night before. His blood was still under her fingernails, she realized, a stupid little detail floating to the surface of her mind. Xadium gently pressed a finger to her lips to quiet her down, and hugged her warmly. It was a sweet, quiet moment that seemed to drag on forever. Subtly, he threw a lever which opened the TARDIS doors as he released her. "Welcome back to the year 2005!" The Time Lord suddenly exclaimed in a loud, exuberant voice, causing Minako to jump in shock. She briefly shot him a nasty look, but the bright grin he gave her melted her temporary ire away. "Allow me to carry you over the threshold, milady," he continued with a grand gesture, scooping her up off her feet and carrying her out the door in much the same way as he had taken her into the TARDIS their honeymoon night. Minako gasped, first in pleasure then in revulsion as they stepped out the door into the bowels of a smelly, noisy, ancient starship. ... "The year 2005, huh?" Minako asked dully as Xadium set her down. Xadium frowned and straightened his tie. "Yes, well..." he began. "Perhaps the variables were a bit off, somewhat." He cracked his neck and made as if to inspect a cooling pipe. "Uh-huh," Minako replied dimly, looking around. The ship was packed with people in scruffy, dirty clothes, smelling of pain and misery. Yes, it was a smell, a kind of malingering odour that washed over everything in the place. The older ones shuffled about slowly, from place to place, while their children bobbed and weaved around them, too young and innocent to be buried under whatever collective burden had weighed down the souls of their parents. "Yes, well concentration's bit a bit rough these last few hours," Xadium replied testily. "For you see, I've been just dead on my feet lately." Minako almost recoiled at the barb. The acid tone took her greatly by surprise, being as it was a 180 degree turn from the man who had just recently swept her off her feet. "Sorry," Xadium exhaled tiredly, waving a hand in apology. "I'm not exactly myself at the moment." He gave her a soulful gaze, the kind that melted her heart and made her think she was the only person in the whole universe at that moment. "Please give it time." She smiled back softly, and nodded. Xadium abruptly broke the mood by spinning on his heels, arms clasped behind his back. "Now then," he began, talking to himself rather rapidly. "the question is, where are we, and when?" He reached out and tapped a pipe. "Standard folded tritanium alloy, first used by the Terran Empire in 9034. Corrosion and spacewarp deformation factors indicate the ship has been in service for quite some time, putting the year roughly between 10 and--" "11,050" Minako interrupted absently. "Brilliant!" Xadium exclaimed, taking Minako by the shoulders, and looking her in the eyes with wild-eyed, almost childlike amazement. "How did you figure that out, then?" Minako just pointed to a giant display board with the date "November 22nd, 11,050" emblazoned on it. "Brilliant," Xadium repeated softly, almost paternally as he kissed her on the forehead. "So now we know the when." "Ano..." Minako began slowly, "does anything really important happen in 11,050?" Xadium had already turned away from her to examine his surroundings, but upon hearing the question, he spun back around and stared at her like she was mad. "Does anything important happen in 11,050?" he parotted in an almost mocking tone of disbelief. "That's what I asked," Minako replied, slightly annoyed. Xadium paced back and forth as he pondered this. "Does anything important happen? Important?" He gestured broadly at the people milling about. "People are being born, falling in love. Having children and dying. Somewhere there are workers stuck at a desk, longing for vacation. Elsewhere there's a dance doing on. Tears are wept, babies smile, people are getting drunk and others wait to die." Approaching her, he put his hands on her shoulders. "It's called life, Minako, and it's all terribly, vitally, incredibly, magnificently important!" Minako nodded numbly, watching him get carried away by the completion of universal zeitgeist. At least that's what she guessed it was-- she had heard Hotaru-chan talk about it once. As Xadium opened his mouth to continue his soliloquy, he was slammed into by a short person in a weathered brown cloak, who was clutching something close, running at high speed. "Do watch where you're going!" Xadium exclaimed in irritation as the interloper passed by. "X-chan," Minako snapped, pointing to a group of burly thugs barreling through the crowd, knocking over anyone and everything in their path. At the sound of Minako's voice, the person in the brown cloak suddenly stopped dead, turning to regard her-- but only for a moment. Turning again, she ran, as the thugs followed. The thugs seemed to enter a slow motion phase, whipping aside their cloaks and revealing large phaser rifles strapped to their sides. Minako's fist tightened and her fist clenched as she prepared to transform. "Don't transform," Xadium whispered. "You'll draw too much attention." "But they'll shoot her!" Minako hissed back, already beginning the process. Xadium dashed to one side and smashed a metal plate with his fist, ignoring the blood and broken bone, ripping off an emergency bulkhead control system, which he activated, sending a huge wall of metal crashing down between the thugs and the girl, allowing her to get away. Quickly, subtly, Xadium pulled Minako off to the side and the duo blended in with the crowd before they could be spotted. "X-chan," Minako said in shock, noting the force he had applied moments ago. "You're that strong?" "Must have been a defense mechanism triggered during regeneration, upping my mitochondric count and such in order to give me a chance to fight back on equal terms," Xadium mused as he flexed his hand, noting that his healing factor was working faster than usual. Xadium's body went limp, and his features blurred and twisted again, the cells exhausted and worn from the constant cycling. Regenerations were not meant to occur so quickly, without respite.Venus released her hold on his neck, and he dropped to the ground. "My life--" he rasped, too spent to move, to fight, to even care, "---is yours." Xadium waited for Venus to make final strike. "Some alien biodata might have gotten mixed in with mine whilst the genome was in flux," Xadium continued to ponder, now wrapped in his thoughts even as the sounds of phaser fire assaulted the bulkhead. "Alien of course being yours, or more precisely that of your Goddess Form." "So you're as strong as her?" Minako asked in shock. "Of course not," Xadium replied. "I'm just stronger than before, that's all." Even as Minako's mouth began to open for a followup question, Xadium spun around and turned his back to her, pondering. "Now what were they up to," he wondered out loud. Spinning around again, he took hold of his wife's hand. "Come on," he said authoritatively, pulling her forward as he set off in search of something. ... "I don't think this is the right way, X-chan," Minako protested, as he pulled her aside into a darkened corner, which was lit only intermittently by failing xenon tube-lights. "that person who was being chased went the other way." "What do I care about some errant vagrant?" Xadium asked almost haughtily as he looked around him. "This ship itself is a mystery more worth my time." "He could be in trouble!" Minako protested, looking around as well, irritation growing that her husband seemed so indifferent to the suffering of others. She jerked her head around in anger as he softly touched her cheek with his fingers. "How can you think of that at a time like..." she began angrily, voice trailing off as she found herself lost in Xadium's soft brown eyes, which were filled with compassion. "My dear," he began slowly. "Everyone on this ship is in trouble. Hunger is everywhere, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of maintenance operations, and the superstructure itself seems to be falling to pieces. We need to understand the nature of this place before we can go about trying to solve its ills." "How," Minako asked quietly, calmed by his gaze as he slowly turned away from her, heading down the narrow corridor. With a swift kick, the Time Lord dislodged a maintenance hatch. Kneeling, he held out a hand. "We're going to get down and dirty, of course." He gave his wife a bright smile. ... "This is disgusting," Minako said, holding her nose shut as she followed Xadium, the two of them on their hands and knees, crawling through the grimy, humid, foul-smelling service ducts that seemed to line the cavernous ship. There was mold everywhere, and the ruddy red glow of service lighting did little to lighten the oppressive nature of the atmosphere. "Don't worry," Xadium replied confidently, looking over his shoulder at Minako. "We're almost to some kind of engineering or technical station." "How do you know that?" the irritated blonde replied, sounding comically nasal. "Wiring density," Xadium responded as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "In this direction the amount of cabling, fiber and meganet ODN nanocords keeps increasing. Obviously there is some kind of master computer up ahead regulating all that information." "Obviously," Minako replied, utterly unconvinced. It was not long, however, before the duo had made their way to a clearing, a harshly lit cylindrical chamber where they could finally stand upright. Above them, a ladder seemed to stretch into infinity. Below them, the same. In front, however, was a door, with a sign on it that read "CENTRAL SYSTEMS - AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY." At least that's what the heavily armed, extremely irate android in front of the door kept insisting. "YOU ARE UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL!" the android barked. "LEAVE THIS AREA AT ONCE!" "Ugh," Xadium groaned. "Look, can't we just talk this over like sensible..." The Time Lord's voice trailed off as he found himself staring at the long, lithe leg of Sailor Venus, whose foot had just smashed into the android's head, decapitating it. Admiring her lines and the force of the impact for a moment, Xadium coughed. "Erm," he began, "you know that those things don't think with their heads, yes?" "That makes them better than most men," Sailor Venus replied with a wink, lowering her leg and bring her left arm up in front of her. Glaring at the android, she slowly made a tight fist, and watched as the mechanical man simply began to dent, spark and implode. Gritting her teeth, she clenched her fist even harder, and it collapsed into a wrinkled mass of scrap metal. Panting, Sailor Venus dropped her arm, and leaned on her husband. "Whew!" she exclaimed, "I've never felt a metal like that before!" She smiled at Xadium. "That was neo-dynium alloy," Xadium replied in slight shock as he examined the remains. "Extraordinarily tough and durable. Not as strong as your tiara, but still--" "I can remember," Venus said softly as she pulled her Tiara off and looked at it. "The Weaponsmiths of Venus were envied because of what they could do to metal... they made all the tiara for the senshi..." Venus frowned as her transformed state also let her remember what her Goddess form had done to Xadium in even more vivid detail. She looked to her husband, who even now was standing with his back to her, leaned over, using his sonic screwdriver to force open an electronic lock. She imagined his back torn open by her sword, bleeding, as it had been mere hours ago. There he was, so vulnerable and open to attack. After all that had happened, he still trusted her enough to show his back to her. Biting her lower lip in grief, Venus dropped the transformation. "Something wrong?" Xadium asked absently as he worked, the whirr of the sonic screwdriver filling the chamber with brief bursts of high-pitched noise. "Nothing," Minako said a little too quickly. If the Time Lord had noted her almost panicky tone, he said nothing of it. Suddenly, there was a large "clank" sound, and the door to the central systems room slid open, a slight hiss of steam accompanying its movement. "After you, milady," Xadium said chivalrously, bowing and pointing the way inside. Minako put on her best idol smile and grinned, burying her hurt inside and moving forwards. Xadium admired Minako's curves appreciatively for a moment as watched her pass him. Then his eyes narrowed. He had sensed Venus observing him, sizing him up for an attack. He had been ready to roll aside at a moment's notice, to engage in a struggle for his life. Inwardly, he was terribly glad that the attack had not come, that Venus seemed to have been sincere in her forgiveness. Now, he mused sadly, if only she could forgive herself. "X-chan," Minako gasped, her tone one of shock and horror as she stood within the control center. "What is it, dear?" Xadium asked, walking into the room and taking care to lock the door behind him. But even as he stepped into the room, his nose told him all the needed to know. The rotting stench of death assaulted his olfactory system. Looking down, he saw what Minako was looking at. The decaying body of a uniformed officer, who had apparently been shot in the chest. "An engineer, by the look of him," Xadium deduced, as he and Minako carried the body off into a side room and returned to the main chamber. "Murdered," Minako stated, her tone leaving no room for any doubt-- not that it was that obscure a fact to begin with. "Yes." Xadium shook his head. "It looks like the people on this ship are in more trouble than I had suspected." He walked over to a computer console and began tapping in some override codes. "This grid shows the entire layout of the ship," he explained, pointing to the screen. "The computer, in order to be able to route communications from one officer to another, has to know where all personnel are at all times." Minako nodded, listening carefully. It wasn't that she was too terribly interested in the mundane minutiae of starship operation, but the thought of the poor dead man was too much for her to bear. So she fixed her thoughts on her husband's words. "These blips in yellow," the Time Lord continued pedantically, "represent the communication badges worn by the crew, including our unfortunate friend over there. Notice that they are all stationary." Minako nodded. The screen flickered as Xadium pressed a button on one of the flat-panel controls. "This is a reverse time-lapse log," Xadium explained. "Scrolling back at the rate of ten minutes a second." "They're not moving," Minako noted, a queasy feeling growing in her stomach. "Except for the one person we moved." "Right," Xadium confirmed, shutting off the screen after a few minutes had gone by. "It would seem the whole crew is quite dead. All 400 of them, and I would wager they probably met the same unfortunate end as the man who was stationed here." Minako stood silently, saying a silent prayer for them, and taking in the sheer magnitude of the crime. "And that's not the only mystery here," Xadium continued. "This starship is at least a thousand years out of date." The Time Lord looked over the technical specifications in the central computer's database. "And judging by the low level fractures in just about every component of the hull, it has been at high warp for most of that time." "That's incredible..." Minako exhaled, having newfound respect for the dilapidated vessel that surrounded her. At first she had thought that its poor condition had been due to the neglect of staff, or whoever was in charge of things on a ship like this. But now that she knew it was over a millennium old, well-- she just hoped she could hold up that well in a thousand years' time. "No, that's incredibly foolish," Xadium muttered, running his finger across a flat display screen, watching as the information scrolled past. "A ship the size of a small city, barreling through the universe at Warp 9.2? The only thing holding it together at this point is probably the structural integrity forcefield system holding the hull together. Were that to fail, this ship would probably just float apart, like so much cosmic driftwood." "Is that likely to happen?" Minako asked, somewhat blue in the face at the thought of the ship simply dissolving around her, leaving her floating in space. "Only if the vessel suffered a complete systems failure," Xadium mumbled, now focused on something else entirely. He was staring at a circular viewscreen, which was pitch black. "X-chan, why are you staring at a blank screen?" Minako asked, leaning against his back and staring at it too, in hopes of seeing whatever it was that he was looking at. She sometimes wished she could get into his mind, to see the world as he saw it, to understand things as he did. She had even asked him once, how he saw the world. His reply had been that when he looked at an object, any object, all his knowledge about that object-- the probable construction of it, what it was used for, how it could affect and be affected by the environment around it-- all this information sprung to mind. It was like looking at a flower and having everything you'd ever read about flowers pouring into your head so that you basically knew everything about it. Xadium had said that genius was "the product of being able to make spontaneous connections between disparate bits of seemingly disconnected information" and so the Time Lords were taught from a young age to bring all their knowledge and information to bear on any one subject at any one time, to allow for more inspired thought. Still, she wondered, what could he possibly be seeing in a blank screen? It was just like the other viewscreens all over the control room, flat and black, and a little glossy. Unlike the others, however, there was no information on it. "Minako," Xadium said quietly, "this is not a viewscreen." "Nani?" Minako asked quizzically, her speech slipping back into Japanese as it was wont to do when she was startled, surprised or overly excited. "This is a window," Xadium replied absently, still staring. "A window... to the outside?" Minako asked, something starting to bother her, her thoughts beginning to track her husband's. "Yes," The Time Lord confirmed, not at all surprised by her query, all things considered. "But... where are the stars?" Minako enquired, giving voice to the question that had been in the Time Lord's mind ever since he had spied the viewport. "Where indeed," he mused. "Even taking into account the effects of high warp velocity and interstellar obscuration due to the interposition of gas and dust, there should still be some stars visible." "Maybe it's a fake window, like the one we have in the TARDIS?" Minako asked, trying to get a handle on the situation. Their bedroom had a large viewscreen mounted in a frame which usually displayed the image of whatever was outside the Ten'Aino house. To the untrained eye it would have seemed exactly like a regular outside window. "Touch it," Xadium replied, inclining his head towards the portal. Gingerly, Minako reached forward, pressing against Xadium's back as she leaned towards the port, stretching her slender fingers out, brushing them lightly against the glass or whatever it was made out of. Suddenly, she jerked back as if her hand had been bitten. "Cold!" she exclaimed, following up quietly with "Like ice." "Yes," Xadium noted, nodding. "Space is very very cold, my dear. And that transparent duranium window is somewhat heated." "So where are we?" Minako mused, going back over to the computer console and staring at whatever information she could see-- not that she could read any of the strange script on the terminals or even understand what the terminals were for. Despite all her travels with her husband, and all that she had seen, she was still a relative novice at space travel. "Further out than the flight plans in the computer would indicate," her husband replied, gently putting his hands on her shoulders from behind and moving her aside. "See this picture of the Galaxy? According to it, this ship was simply making a milk run from one end of Mutter's Spiral to the next." "Mutter's Spiral?" "Our term for the spiral arm of the galaxy in which Earth resides," Xadium explained offhand as he began typing on the consoles furiously, his face lit up by the eerie glow of multiple datastreams flying by in front of him. "Hmm. According to the crew logs, some time about 1000 years ago, there was a rapid course change made." He continued to dig into the datafiles, his expression becoming darker and darker as the secrets of the ship were revealed to him. "What is it, itoshi?" Minako asked worriedly, not liking the look on her husband's face. "They set a course straight out of the Galaxy," Xadium uttered in shock. "They set course for Andromeda, 2.3 million light-years away..." He looked at the systems data again. "Pushing Warp 9.6 as they are, the journey would take 1,051 years..." "That's crazy!" Minako exclaimed. "Why would anyone do something like that?" "This is past the year 11,000, Minako," Xadium said slowly. "Given all the advances in medical technology, and human-alien interbreeding, lifespans have gotten longer and longer. The typical generation time is probably at or about 1,000 years for humanity now." "But still," Minako pressed, "that's someone's entire life!" "I think it was some kind of emergency," Xadium postulated. "This is not a colony ship, or a terraforming vessel. It's more of a cruise liner, much like the Queen Elizabeth II in your time." "But to take themselves all the way out of the Galaxy..." "Something severe must have happened," the Time Lord concluded. "Maybe a cataclysm?" Minako asked. "You saw the people up there, they look homeless and afraid." "This ship is mainly on autopilot due to the murder of the crew," Xadium noted. "Food replicators and clothing dispensaries need energy to work from, even if it's just interstellar gas to convert into other forms of matter. Out here, in the midst of the void, there is no such matter-- well not in any quantities that would be of use. And, in order to facilitate a trip to the next galaxy, most of the energy on board would have probably been diverted away from such things to the engines. In the absence of a command staff hierarchy, anarchy must have taken over, with the strongest taking control of the new shipboard society." "Those criminals we saw before..." Minako mused. "But why don't people fight back??" "Who goes on trips like this, Minako?" The Time lord scrolled over the passenger manifest. "The rich, the elite, the effete. Most of them wouldn't know what to do in a fight, or how to handle themselves. The murder of the crew couldn't have helped morale any." "But if they're so rich, why would there be thugs preying on them?? Wouldn't everyone be rich?" "There is never enough money to be had," Xadium said, sighing. "We're probably dealing with spoiled children used to getting what they want, probably empowered by one or more adults with a god complex, used to keep the people afraid and off-balance so they can more easily maintain control of the environment." "What's the point of that," Minako asked bitterly. "Everyone's in this situation together." "Oh, not everyone," Xadium replied, tapping his finger on a display screen. "Energy use logs indicate that there's an entire deck of this ship using fully 20% more power than all the other decks combined. Moreover, the turbolift systems seem to have been instructed to skip this floor entirely." "Someone's getting high on life," Minako said darkly. "Living the high life," Xadium corrected. "Whoever lives on that floor has the fate of this entire society in the palm of their hand." "I think we should pay them a visit, X-chan," Minako said dangerously. "Agreed." ... The turbolift barely vibrated even as it rushed through the core of the massive spaceliner, hurtling past level after level at blinding speed. It would be another 15 seconds, Xadium noted, before they would make their destination-- the "secret" level of the ship, presumably the home base of whomever had brought death and misery to the people fleeing the Milky Way galaxy. It was only five seconds before the lift jerked to a sudden and complete halt. Were it not for the inertial compensator devices in the tiny cabin, both its occupants would have surely been dashed to pieces. As it was, however, both Minako and Xadium were simply slammed up against a wall and knocked back, slightly dazed. Then the lights went out. "X-chan," Minako began, quietly, feeling around in the dark for him. "What--" "Boo!" Xadium said playfully, his face lit up from underneath by a pocket flashlight he had pulled out of one of the many pockets in his photographer's vest. "Kyaaa!" Minako yelled in momentary fright, jumping and then scowling at her husband even as he laughed at the joke. "Very funny," she said mock-angrily, sticking out her tongue. "Ahem. Now that I have your undivided attention," a refined, elegant voice said, the sound of it emanating from a speaker mounted somewhere in the lift, "could you be so kind as to kindly hand over that case?" "What case!?" Minako asked reflexively. Xadium, for his part, simply looked up and listened. "This little game of ours has gone on long enough, don't you think?" the voice continued on. "How many more people have to die before you'll finally get the point? Young lady, there is nowhere you can run." "I sincerely doubt we are the intended audience of this transmission," Xadium noted, somewhat stating the obvious. "Whoever that is must be making a ship-wide transmission." "Never," a young, childish voice replied, cutting into the transmission. "they don't belong to you!" "Such bold naivete," the first voice replied. "Do you not understand? *Everything* on this ship belongs to me. From the maintenance droids to the warp engines-- the galley to the mini-mall city. Every object-- every nut, every bolt, every rivet, every joint-- and every LIFE on this vessel is mine to do with as I will." "X-chan was right about the god complex," Minako noted flatly. "Human villainy is so often cliche," Xadium exhaled tiredly. "There are only so many permutations to the basic formula." His expression became deadly serious. "And the problem with God-complexes is they like to do nothing more than play at their imagined divinity." "You won't find me," the young girl's voice exclaimed confidently. "This ship is too large! Bear-chan will make sure you can't track my transmissions either!" "Bear-chan..." Minako's brow furrowed as she began to think. She knew a Bear-chan. And that voice... sure it was a bit older, but the sweetness in it, the purity of innocence, it was still the same. That could only be the voice of-- "Tsukino Kousagi," the older, male voice replied. "This is a pointless game, and you know it. It was clever of you, stowing away on this ship, the last of the highliners to make it out of the spiral arm before the final purge, but believe me when I say, I have no interest in you, or your bloodline. I just want the Legacy." Xadium's mind was racing at a mile a minute. Tsukino Kousagi was the second child of Tsukino Usagi from a universe slightly parallel to this one. History had recorded that at some point in the year 2004, she had arrived on Earth trying to seek the Silver Crystal from her sister Chibiusa in order to balance out the insanity of Neo-Queen Serenity in her timeline. Years later, she had vanished, only to reappear during the Crystal Imperium, making a valiant attempt to hold back the forces of the Tairon Overfiend. Now here she was again, at the far waning end of the recorded history of mankind, when the great universal Dark Ages were at hand. This ship was the last product of a civilisation that no longer existed, Xadium mused. It was launched before the great wars that left mankind technologically bankrupt, its empire stranded across hundreds of worlds with no way to communicate. Only now, about two thousand years after the great burning, would the secret of folding space become known unto humanity again, the art of space folding via the mind, as made possible by a precious substance known as the Spice Melange. Warp drives and supercomputers were lost arts, relics that would be as alien to the humans of the present day, who lived by an almost feudal code, as 1920's phonographs would be to the people on this ship. This vessel, he realized, was a living time capsule, heading out towards a new galaxy to plant a seed that would eventually develop into a parallel branch of the human line, a continuation of all that had come before. Just as the Saurians, Atlanteans and ancient Egyptians had escaped into space, continuing their evolution beyond the stunted remains of their societies left on mother Earth, so too would these people advance, and evolve, the children one day coming home to meet their brothers no longer recognizable in anything but flesh. Of course, he noted bitterly, none of that would happen if this madman, whoever he was, got trigger happy and killed everyone in his quest to get at the Legacy, whatever that happened to be. Such weighty historical concerns meant nothing to Minako, however, who was more interested in helping her friend. She had watched Kousagi-chan play in the Ten'Aino house, and the idea of that pleasant, happy child being put in danger was more than she could stand to bear. "We need to help her," both Minako and Xadium said to each other in unison, smiling at each other as they realized their thoughts were in synch. "The Legacy is not for the likes of you," Kousagi's voice replied. "I--" "This chase bores me," the male voice replied tiredly. "You have two hours to show yourself in the Promenade, or I will simply vent the atmosphere in the ship and let you asphyxiate." The sounds of panicked screams could be heard from the adjoining levels. "Dear people of the H.M.S. Bountiful, the voice said soothingly, "Do not fear. I bear you no malice. It is the little girl Tsukino Kousagi, whom you must fear. Her insistence on keeping from me what is rightfully mine has led to this unfortunate turn of events." "He's trying to make the people into his eyes and ears," Xadium realized. "Trying to get them to flush her out for him." "But why would they do what he says?" Minako asked in frustration. "She's just a little girl!" The ship shuddered violently, and rocked a little. "Did you feel that?!" Xadium asked, anger rising in his voice. The change in vibration of the deckplates, the subtle change in the air-- it told him the ship had lost some mass, and probably some atmosphere as well. "That was deck fifteen," the male voice said again. "Oh my. I do so hope that wasn't where you were hiding." "There were over a thousand people on that deck," the robotic voice of Kousagi's companion, a toy bear, reported tonelessly. Minako slammed her fist on a side of the Turbolift. "Moh!" she exclaimed. "If only we could get up there and stop that bastard!" "Now, unless you want that to happen again, you will turn yourself over to me," the voice continued. "That sound is coming from somewhere," Xadium mused. "We can tap into the power grid that's driving that, but it probably isn't enough to power a lift." Xadium was blinded for a moment by a golden flash as Minako transformed into Sailor Venus. Firing a crescent beam at a service hatch on the top of the elevator, she blew the hatch off. "We're going up," she said sternly, leaping up and out of the hole, landing on top of the elevator. She stuck her arm back into the lift and pulled Xadium up easily. "The floor we want is over a hundred meters up," Xadium said worriedly as he looked up to the speck of light far above their heads, the sounds of banter between Kousagi and her tormentor continuing from the interior of the lift. "So?" Venus asked casually, flinging her arm upwards and throwing out a golden "love-me chain" which flew up into the darkness, making a "ching" sound as it latched on to its target. She smiled warmly at Xadium. "Hold tight!" Wrapping his arms around Venus' neck, Xadium gasped a little as she roughly pulled him close and tugged on the chain, pulling them both up towards the light at incredible speed. "That's a new trick," Xadium said weakly as Venus threw him over her head and onto the lushly carpeted floor of the hidden deck, expertly leaping up and into the hallway after him. "A little scared there, X-chan?" Venus asked with a bright grin as she watched her husband stay on the ground for a moment, just getting his bearings. "I have full faith in your skills," Xadium replied dryly, the color coming back into his face slowly. "Halt!" The voice belonged to a pimply-faced guard standing not 20 feet away from the duo, hefting a phaser rifle almost half his size. "You're not auth--" The boy simply went silent as he saw Sailor Venus, his eyes widening as he took in her appearance. "Hii~" Venus said in a sultry manner, posing provocatively and tossing her hair as Xadium groaned and rolled his eyes. He knew she was doing that to fluster the boy, but she also did it just to tease him and keep him on edge. But it wasn't Venus' figure that the young lad was checking out; rather it was her uniform. In something akin to a panic, the guard dropped his weapon and ran screaming own the corridor. "What," Venus asked dourly as she pouted. "Don't they have sexy women in the 12,000th century or whatever the hell this is??" Xadium didn't reply to her, concerned as he was with the guard's reaction. Something about it seemed wrong somehow. Silently, he gestured to Venus to follow him, and he pressed himself against the corridor wall, edging towards the corner. "What do you mean a 'Sailor Soldier?!" The voice was loud, yet still somewhat refined, obviously the same one as before in the Turbolift. "Have you been eating those death sticks on duty again, boy?" "No, sir!" the lad croaked, even as the sound of a hurled object crashing into a wall could be heard. "Don't waste my time!" the older man yelled. "I--" he stopped speaking as a chime sounded. Venus started edging around the corner to see who was speaking, but jerked back as she saw a platoon of guards marching towards her from the opposite direction. They were carrying the broken bodies of an old man and woman, as well as a small girl in brown robes, toting a toy bear and a battered case. "It's Kousagi-chan," Venus whispered softly to her husband. "Get ready to move," Xadium replied, knowing that he didn't really need to tell her that. "We liquidated the informants as per instructions, sir," one of the guards said. "Our agents in the street made it look like a simple mugging. We brought these hostages to you in case leverage would be needed, sir." "What leverage do I need now that the Legacy is right in front of my eyes?" the older man asked darkly. "Kill them." Before Venus could even move, the guards had snapped the hostages' necks. "DAMN YOU!" Venus screamed, roaring into the hallway and unleashing dual Love and Beauty shocks at full power, literally melting the flesh off the guards' bones as their charred skeletons fell forward, being vapourized in the next instant. Xadium ran up behind her, seeing her pant in fury as she glared at the wizened face of an old man standing in front of an ornate mahogany desk, his expression one of raw and total fear. The Time Lord wanted to put his arms on Venus' shoulders, to whisper in hear ear and calm her down, to quiet the boiling blood in her veins, to still her rage at the man before her. But as he looked down at the dead bodies of the hostages, thought back to the cold-blooded decompression of an entire deck, he found himself fighting to hold back his own rage as well. "Minako-san?" Kousagi asked in shock as she looked at Sailor Venus, still clutching her case to her side. "KILL THEM! KILL THEM!" the old man yelled, as some guards charged up the hall. But then Venus turned to face them, the blood drained from their faces and they stopped dead. "Don't be fools!" the old man bellowed. "It's just some bimbo in a costume!" Without even looking back, Venus simply swung her arm around behind her and shot off a crescent beam, searing a chunk of hair off the yelling man's head. The guards simply dropped their weapons and ran for their lives. "It's not--" the old man began, quivering and blubbering as Venus turned and began to stalk towards him. "It's not true! It's not possible!" "What's not true," Venus asked darkly. "What's not possible." She slapped her closed left fist into the palm of her right hand, and tightened it, the bones cracking into place slightly. The old man wobbled a bit, a large wet stain spreading across the front of his pants. Venus continued to move forward, and the man suddenly began to cough violently, clutching his heart. Staggering forward, he fell towards Venus and dropped past her to the ground, dead. "A heart attack?" Xadium asked incredulously. "In this day and age?" "Oh he had a pacemaker," Venus said coldly, cooly. "Had." Xadium nodded in understanding, leaning down to examine the body. "I wonder who he was". "No," Sailor Venus said flatly, gently touching her husband on the shoulder. "For one who spent his life lording his title over others, it's only proper he should die nameless." "As you wish," Xadium assented, standing and turning to face Kousagi, who was still looking at Venus wide-eyed. The senshi smiled at the young girl and dropped her transformation. "Kousagi," Xadium began slowly, kneeling. "What is this all about? What is this "Legacy" that man was so desperate to find?" Slowly, trepidations, Kousagi began opening the case she had been carrying, its battered and deformed frame resisting for a moment as she pulled the top away from the bottom. "So... beautiful," Minako exhaled as it finally opened, revealing a large collection of jewelry, sliver necklaces and bangles, all decorated with large, perfectly polished stones that seemed to glow with their own ethereal light. They were every color of the rainbow, from light blue all the way to deep golden-orange. "This is what it was all about?" Xadium spat angrily. "A bunch of rocks? All this death and carnage, for a paltry collection of polished STONES and some barely-useful metal?" Frustrated, He moved to bat the case aside in anger, but instead found himself striking the side of Kousagi's face, as she had spun around quickly to take the blow. Quickly, the Time Lord pulled back his hand, and in a mixture of anger and regret, he blurted, "Well what did you do that for?!" Minako shoved past her husband and attended to Kousagi's slightly bruised face. "The Legacy is the most precious treasure in the universe," Kousagi intoned quietly, looking over at the jewels with an expression of profound reverence. "Look, I don't know who told you that," Xadium replied testily, still upset that he had, even inadvertently, hit the child, "but in this universe, stones and jewels mean nothing. They are merely rocks that can be picked up anywhere in the cosmos. I have seen worlds made of diamond, mountains of rubinite. Granted, there is a craftsmanship in the cutting, but--" he snatched one of the necklaces, which had a golden-orange crystal hanging from it. "They are nothing spec---" He froze as his fingers brushed the stone. It wasn't that he couldn't identify the nature of the mineral that made up the gem. It wasn't that he had suddenly become aware the gem was more crystalline than rock, yet somehow metallic to the touch. It wasn't that he began to realize he was holding something whose exact molecular composition he could not even begin to guess. It was, as his skin warmed from the touch of the object, that he was holding something he instinctively knew he had no business holding. Something so delicate, yet enduring. Something so important, yet deceptively trivial in appearance. Something warm, something... yes, something alive. Something that felt just like-- Eyes widening, Xadium felt a flush of emotions and feelings from the stone. Love, grief, regret, yearning, joy, sadness and warmth. A mental presence. One that he knew... intimately. Turning, Xadium looked over to his wife, who was watching him keenly, an odd look on her face. "Everything's OK, X-chan." The words came not from her, but telepathically, from the stone. Everyone heard it. "You shouldn't be talking!" Kousagi blurted hysterically. "Masaka..." Minako whispered under her breath as the stones lifted themselves into the air, their inner lights pulsing and growing, filling the cavernous hold of the starship with a rainbow of lights. Shimmering in the air, ethereal bodies began to form around them. "It's all right," the translucent form of Sailor Pluto, her "body" surrounding a green gem said quietly. "These... aren't gems..." Xadium realized as comprehension dawned, the golden-orange stone he had been holding now hovering before him, surrounded by the silhouette of Sailor Venus. "They're--" "Sailor Crystals, yes," Sailor Mercury replied, her voice as soft and meek as ever. "The flesh is dead, but the spirit survives," Sailor Saturn intoned quietly. "We are eternal." "But... what..." Minako stood stunned, tears forming in her eyes. "Nothing dies, Minako-chan," Sailor Jupiter said comfortingly. "It just changes form." "The universe turned against us," Venus explained to Xadium. "Fearful of a Third Sailor War, the people began to kill all the Sailor Soldiers they met, destroying them even down to their Sailor Crystals." "So many were lost," Sailor Io, someone Xadium recognized as a satellite senshi of Jupiter, said firmly. "their essences gone forever." "It will take 10 thousand more years for new senshi to be born," Sailor Neptune said quietly. "And almost no others yet survive." "Those that do are in hiding," Sailor Uranus continued, "or are under the protection of very formidable guardians." "That's enough," Kousagi said gently, as the forms faded and the crystals floated back to her hands. Xadium wanted to reach out and grab Venus', but somehow he knew it belonged her now, with the rest of them, in a future where he no longer was a part of her life. "They truly are our final legacy," Kousagi said with a smile as she watched the crystals glow in her hands. "The last of the Sailor Senshi, our gift to the future." ... "What will you do now, Kousagi?" Xadium asked, as he continued to effect repairs on her "Bear" and watched Minako help the girl gently place the Sailor Crystals back in their faux settings. "When we land, I will take them to a place far away," Kousagi replied quietly, "to a star system where they can be reborn, and live again." "So they-- and these people," Xadium mused, "they will be the seed of a new legend." "A new future," Kousagi said with a smile. "And a new hope for us all." "I wish you the best of luck," Xadium said, as he completed his work on Kousagi's Bear robot, which shifted shape, becoming an eight foot tall combat mech. "Luck is not necessary," Bear said confidently. "The Princess is more than ready for the task that lies ahead." With a bow and a smile, Kousagi bade farewell, Bear following in her tracks. "It's so strange, X-chan..." Minako mused, leaning on her husband and watching them go. "To think that I'll end up like that, a jewel in a box..." "Only for a little while, my love," Xadium replied softly. "According to the TARDIS astromaps, it's only about another fifty years before this ship will encounter a wormhole that will pull it straight into the heart of a cluster of inhabitable systems on the far side of Andromeda. After that, I'm sure you will be reborn, along with the others." "But not with you," Minako said quietly. "The peril, and the benefit, of having a long lifespan," Xadium said cheerily, trying to cover his own sense of mortal despondency, "is that there are always other fish in the sea." Minako looked at her husband crossly. "I'm happy with the one I have now." She stuck out her tongue playfully, then leaned on his shoulder. "I don't want to be without you." "Change is the only constant," Xadium replied, taking a deep breath as he opened the TARDIS door and bade her enter. "I will do my best to remain by your side as long as I'm able, but I want you to know that when my time does come... I want you promise me to be happy." Minako nodded slowly as she passed him by. "I will be," she said in small voice. "I promise." "Anyway!" Xadium exclaimed, clapping his hands and tapping some controls on the TARDIS, "the ship is still somewhat badly damaged, but I'm fairly confident it will take us home in one piece." "Fairly confident?" Minako asked dimly as the TARDIS shuddered and dematerialized. "Indeed, indeed," Xadium nodded, taking a small mallet and smashing the console to correct a stuck solenoid. "It will take a few hundred years for the TARDIS to regrow the components Venu--" he checked himself "--that were damaged. Until then, we'll be rather stuck on Earth, I'm afraid." "Don't worry," Minako said with a wink and a smile, pulling close to him. "I'll do my best to make it pleasant for you." Xadium smiled and drew her close for a kiss as the TARDIS shuddered, dematerializing. "Do you think we're home, koibito?" Minako asked as she broke the kiss. "Well," Xadium replied, pulling the door open lever with a flourish, "there's only one way to find out." As husband and wife stepped out of the TARDIS, they stood still in shock for a moment. "gid dimmit bich!" Chibiusa yelled as she threw a spike-studded Luna-P at a drunken Haruka, who was giving her the finger. Jedite was standing in the corner, arms crossed, laughing haughtily. Michiru was walking up the stairs, nose in the air, while Elios ogled every female present, and the various guests that were visiting the house at the moment chatted away amicably, enjoying each other's company to the full. "We're home," Minako said happily, tears flowing from her eyes, a lump in her throat. "We're finally home." "Welcome back to 2007," Haruka said, staggering over to the couple. They looked at her, stunned. "Just f[BLEEP]ing with you," Haruka said laughing, belching and staggering off. "We're home all right," Xadium replied dimly, as he shook his head and smiled. THE END