Gundam Moon
Part Five: Silence Is Purple
By Raye Johnsen
'Kidou Senki Gundam Wing' is copyright Sunrise Entertainment, Fox Entertainment, Viz Communications, Mixx Enterprises, and others.
'Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon' is copyright Takeuchi Naoko, Kodansha, Mixx Enterprises, DiC Entertainment, and others.
In other words, NOT ME.
This story contains reference to a same-sex couple. If the Honoured Reader dislikes this, the Author recommends the use of the delete button. NOW.
In Chapter Four: Revelations In The Light...
"I take it," the woman they had known as Lucrezia Noin-Peacecraft asked mildly, "that we are not what you expected?"
Chapter Five: Silence Is Purple
There should be a law, Relena reflected, against this sort of thing. "No," she eventually replied. "I wasn't expecting this at all."
Lady Anne said nothing. Fortunately nobody was facing her to see the broad grin she was wearing. Endymion always did have excellent timing, she thought.
Zoicite suddenly blinked. "Where's Hilde?" he asked worriedly. "I don't see her..."
Pluto lost her grin abruptly. Hilde? Oh no. Oh, please no.
The dust and entirely gratituous smoke had dissipated from around them (much to Mars' displeasure; he really didn't like the idea of being seen in these... garments) and so they could all finally see around them. And they too could be seen.
I bet the price of leotards is gonna skyrocket, Pluto thought inconsequentially. A generation is going to rediscover the miniskirt.
Hilde was standing beyond the edge of the rubble. Her arms were folded and her head was bowed. She stood in profile to their group, one foot poking at a piece of broken wall.
"Hilde?" Zoicite started, stepping forward. "Are you all ri...."
His voice trailed off as Hilde lifted and tilted her head towards him. Her face was blank, and a symbol, like a curvy lowercase 'h' but with a short crossbar turning the upright stroke into a cross and the swollen curve ballooning up to the top of the upright stroke, glowing purple over her fine black eyebrows. But what was most disturbing of all, and what made him stop in his tracks, was the way her eyes were a solid lavender, with neither pupil nor white.
|KILL HER! KillherkillherKILLHER!!| Neptune suddenly screamed inside Quatre's head. |IT'S SATURN! Kill her before she kills us! KILL HER!|
Quatre felt himself moving, seemingly disassociated from the action, as he cast a Submarine Reflection at the new soldier. Beside him, following his lead, Trowa cast a World Shaking.
"What in the name of all that's holy are you two DOING?!" Relena shrieked. She began to run towards Hilde, but the two attacks outdistanced both her and Duo.
In the teal glow of the combined attacks, they watched Hilde smile, gently, and lift one hand... and then the two balls of force collided against her body, and they could see nothing.
Duo leapt over the broken table and decked Quatre. He bent over, grabbed his erstwhile friend by the collar and dragged him up until they were nose to nose. "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING!!" he demanded. "She was..."
"Oh... God... Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou..."
Now Milliard was most definitely not among the most religious of people, so when he started gabbling prayers, other people tended to stop and look. Quatre and Duo were no exception.
Hilde smiled that mild, terrifying smile and stepped forward.
"Hilde!" Duo cried joyfully, letting go of Quatre (who slumped to the floor with a muffled "erg" and was promptly picked up by Trowa) and ran over towards her. Which put him in a perfect position to catch her when she slumped forward in a dead faint.
Luna leapt up onto the ruins of the table from the depths of Relena's handbag, where she had been hiding. Sitting there, with her fur bearing smears of three-in-one makeup stick, more than a hint of Relena's rose perfume on her rear left paw, and a new resolve to get Relena to stop carrying all her life in her handbag, she usurped Marimeia's role of capping the moment.
"And I thought I had a headache this morning."
After detransforming (and pointedly not commenting on who turned away during that instant of nakedness, and who didn't) everyone repaired to the Winner villa - on the grounds that it was unlikely to be bugged and everyone could stay there.
Rashid's folded arms and unspoken 'you are going straight home' stance as he stood beside Quatre and Trowa's limousine probably had something to do with it as well.
"Why the HELL did you attack Hilde?" Duo demanded, cradling his lover (who was still out of it) as he sat in an easy chair in the living room of the villa.
Quatre cast him and incredulous look. "She's Saturn," he said, as if that explained everything.
"That explains nothing," Dorothy snapped.
"She's a Sailor Senshi too," Catherine said, "as well as being our friend. Triton, why?"
Trowa regarded his loafers studiously.
"Quatre?" Catherine appealed to her brother-in-law.
Anne came to their rescue. "Sailor Saturn has but one attack: the Death Reborn Revolution. It has but one effect: to destroy the planet at which it is directed. She is born but for one purpose: to annihilate civilization. She is the Goddess of Death, and if she lives, all will die."
WuFei stared at the woman, who stood against the wall, looking out the window, who had described Saturn so clinically. "What?" he whispered.
Anne stared out the window. "When Saturn is born, it can only mean one of two things; the Chalice will be reformed and she will take it up, with all that implies, or we will suffer a defeat so absolute that Saturn's Silence, in its speed, will be a blessing and a relief from slow death. And there have been no signs of the emergence of the Talismans...."
"Talismans? Chalice? What are you talking about, Lady Anne?" Relena demanded.
Anne frowned. "Everything has two sides, Relena. Saturn can be, with the right tool, either the greatest healer or the greatest destroyer in the universe - depending on whether she takes up the Holy Chalice or the Silence Glaive. Her hands were empty tonight...."
"It doesn't matter which she chooses," Heero spoke from his slouched position beside the door. "If she attacks, we'll survive her Silence."
Anne flashed him a glare from the other side of the room. "Before Metallia corrupted Beryl and made her attack the Moon, it was a beautiful, green planetoid - just like the Earth. When it became clear just how destructive and unstoppable Beryl's forces were, Queen Selenity called Saturn and commanded her to unleash the Silence on the Moon. Its effects remain there to this day. Why do you think they have to keep replenishing the hydroponics? Or why Luna only has industrial colonies and no permanent residents? Saturn's Silence stilled the Moon ten thousand years ago, and still and silent it will remain. Forever."
Heero glared back and said nothing.
Milliard looked at Hilde increduously. "The Moon was like Earth?"
"Yes," Lucrezia said softly. She smiled at Hilde, and reached up to touch her husband's hand.
Anne looked over at them. "I don't believe you're worried at all."
"I'm not."
Dorothy gave a snort. "You're not worried? How can you not be?" She fished a white kitten out from behind her own ankles. "Is this what you meant by 'Hilde. Oh dear,' when you gave me this brooch?"
"Oh, Artemis!" Luna sighed. "Can't you ever keep your mouth shut?"
The small white kitten glared across the room from Dorothy's knee. "Yes, I can!" he returned. "I didn't tell her why it wasn't a good thing, did I?"
"I suppose you've told her all about her marriage, too!"
Everyone turned and stared at Artemis. "Marriage?" Dorothy asked, too softly.
"It was ten thousand years ago. Well over. Well forgotten," Luna replied.
"Oh yeah, good riddance to bad-"
"Artemis."
"Thank you for that diversion," Quatre said tartly, "but the fact remains that we can't let Sailor Saturn awaken. And she has. So what do you say to that?"
"No."
"Duo?" Trowa asked.
Duo stood up. "You're going to say something like 'kill her,' right? Well, you're not gonna."
"Duo..." Trowa began.
"'Sides, you can't. She took your worst and she walked away." He brushed a lock away from her face. "That's why I believe you, y'know. She took those attacks... why didn't she do it with the Mobile Dolls two years ago...."
<Because I hadn't woken up then,> Hilde said, without opening her eyes.
"What did she just say?" WuFei demanded of Sally.
"I don't know, my English isn't that good, and they're speaking northeastern American dialect. Something about waking...."
<Hilde, what the Hell is going on?> Duo demanded, ignoring etiquette and the puzzled looks of the rest of the room.
Her eyes opened and Duo was staring into a stranger's eyes. Not the sky-blue eyes he was used to seeing in her face, nor his own deep dark blue, the colour of violets, but true purple irises.
<I don't think you should call Me 'Hilde' anymore, Enma.>
Heero choked.
Baratte frowned as she looked at the power reservoirs she was monitoring.
Stupid, stupid little male, she thought angrily. Not even bred yet, much less made the cut or cull.
All of them were now active - including eight that had only activated when her late, unlamented assistant had begun his attack. Fourteen pools of power, all accessible to two individuals. Except for three, which were only accessible to one.
Analysing the pattern, she saw that it was similar, in a way, to their own power-sharing network. One circle of seven, the stores linked to seven of the planets of this solar system, was connected to an eighth power source, that dominated by the moon of the planet they were interested in. So while each planet's reservoir could be called on by its Sailor, the one calling herself 'Sailor Moon' could bypass the planet's own Sailor and access that planet's reservoir herself. There were two planets, however, that she could not access - the second-largest planet in the system, called 'Saturn', and, ironically enough, the planet on which Sailor Moon lived, that they were interested in.
Earth itself had an interesting setup of its own. It had five reservoirs linked to itself, but accessible by two different people - the person each was linked to, and...
Baratte stared and caught her breath.
The central reservoir and all four of the lesser reservoirs were linked to one person. That person had full access to all the power resources of the planet Earth....
Baratte felt her limbs tremble with excitement. No longer thinking about what had been lost, she scrambled for the data on the target that had been attacked. One of those humans was the one they wanted.
After Heero finished coughing, and everyone had seen Hilde's eyes, Duo and Hilde were still arguing.
"I'm Shinigami! Me!"
Saturn rolled her eyes. "No, You are Enma. I am Shinigami."
"Says?"
"Says your own Japanese mythology. She who is Death is a woman, as you and yours have ever known. I am called Hathor, Rhoua, Nemain, Hel; Terrans have given Me so many names."
"Score one for Women's Lib," muttered Dorothy into her scotch. "The ultimate force in all the universe is a girl."
"If this 'Sailor' thing has taught us anything," WuFei said archly, "it is that gender is irrelevant."
"Oh yeah, that's right," Duo said, "Mars used to be a girl."
"Still kicked your butt, Maxwell."
"But girls don't belong in battle," Duo sing-songed. "They're..." he trailed off as he became aware that Lucrezia, Relena, Sally, Anne, Dorothy and Hilde were all staring, and daggers were the least of the optical weaponry focused on him. "Hey, he said it!"
"But you repeated it," Heero smirked.
Duo subsided with a muttered imprecation against "bloody poker-faced generals".
The hunger was growing stronger.
The urgency of feeding had never come upon Him so quickly. It almost seemed as if there was no period of satiation anymore.
Once, it had not been thus. Once, His planet had been much like the one He watched on His viewscreen. Once, His planet had been torn and argued over, its beauty slowly eroded by possessive, quarrelsome children who were only interested in denying its bounty to others.
However, He had put a stop to that. He had linked Himself to the planet and its power, so that it fed Him, and only Him... the sudden flow of energy had almost destroyed Him. By the time He had recovered, almost all the food was gone. And those whom had fought were still denying the necessity of sharing....
He had been forced to rescue his people from their own leaders, and to prevent them ever being denied their due again, had linked them to Himself.
There had been no other way! They were tearing each other apart. There was simply no other way!
There had been peace. There had been prosperity, for a time. The planet had given them all that they had needed.
Until the day when it had begun to fail Him....
How could it fail Him?
The day had come when the planet they had called 'Earth' simply could not sustain them any longer. They had left, and had been no more than a day's travel away, when....
Agony.
Loss.
Hunger..... it blew up into so many fragments.
And from that day on, the hunger had been a constant gnawing in His soul.
He turned away from the image of the glittering prize below, and faced the door, awaiting Baratte.
And growing hungry.
Lucrezia Noin-Peacecraft excused herself from the debate for a moment, pleading hunger. Quatre, apparently unaware of the particular devastation a pregnant woman could wreak on a fully-stocked larder, offered her the full run of his kitchen. Milliard, fully aware, followed her after a few minutes.
He found her sitting at the kitchen table, guzzling pickles and icecream. In deference to her Italian childhood, she was eating pickled olives. In deference to the fact that she didn't have the patience to chase them around the jar with fingers or spoon, she was using a fork. The icecream, still in its carton with a spoon sticking out, was butterscotch with a butterscotch fudge and (if he wasn't mistaken) little butterscotch pieces rippled through it. Its smell was enough to cause cavities.
"Does the little one like pickles so much?" he asked warily, as he sat down.
"I think so. But she also likes icecream."
"That icecream?"
"What's wrong with it?"
Milliard recognised a losing battle when he saw one. "Absolutely nothing if you like that sort of thing," he rallied gallantly. "I wouldn't have thought you'd find this sort of icecream in their kitchen though."
Noin grinned. "I bribed Trowa to take my comm on Peacemillion during our... confrontation with a roll of butterscotch lollies. Offer that boy butterscotch and he'd follow you to Mars."
"Ah. Pass the jar, I want some pickles."
"Have you got clean fingers?"
"I'll use a fork. Come on, Lucrezia, I didn't get anything to eat either."
They ate in silence for a few minutes, until Milliard stood up and retrieved a loaf of bread and some sandwich spread from the refrigerator.
"Anchovies?"
"Sorry." He returned the offending fish spread to the fridge, pulling out a jar of peanut paste instead.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
They ate, companionably and in silence, for some moments.
"I have to ask, Lucrezia," Milliard began, "but... you aren't worried about Saturn at all."
Lucrezia smiled. "I know. And I know that I should be scared out of my wits, but I'm not, and neither are you, for the same reason."
Milliard blinked. "Okay... you've got me. Why am I not scared?"
"Because she isn't going to do it."
"But..."
"Think about it," Lucrezia said, after swallowing a mouthful of icecream. "This isn't just Saturn. It's Hilde Schriebecker, who fought for her colony, who outflew two Gundam pilots, who stole the blueprints of Libra and brought them to us so we had a chance in that battle-"
"That was her?"
"That was her. The point is, this woman is not into killing for the sake of watching everything go boom. Remember what Anne said - she had to be specifically summoned to wipe out the Moon, and she had to be ordered to do it and it was only after all hope was lost. If Saturn's here, it just means we have a self-destruct button if things go too badly."
"I hope you're right. Pass the icecream?"
Author's Notes:
1. Yes, I *know* that in canon Sailor Moon, Sailor Saturn is not the Messiah, Sailor Moon is. However... as a storyteller, I feel that this is wrong. Thematically and in narrative style, the matter of the Dark or White Messiah should and ordinarily *would* rest with Tomoe Hotaru, as and when she chose to be either Sailor Saturn *or* Mistress Nine. Saturn was the Sailor of Healing as well as the Sailor of Destruction, and that rep had to come from *somewhere*.
In fact, I think there's a LOT wrong with the Sailor Moon canon plotline, and most of it can be traced back to the fact that Tsukino Usagi's real name is Takeuchi Naoko.
I've changed the identity of the Messiah here to what I feel is correct, because this is an AU. The changes are not baseless, and so, because this fic makes no claim to canonhood, I see no reason not to change this detail.
2. In the Japanese pantheon, Shinigami is the embodiment of Death. Shinigami, in and of Herself, is completely nonjudgemental. When it's your time to die, She turns up. Enma is the king of the underworld. He judges the souls of the dead and determines their destination. (Yes, the original Shinigami is female.)
Ancient Egyptians worshipped Hathor, the lion-headed goddess of war, destruction and happy marriage. (One is left wondering exactly what constituted a happy marriage in Ancient Egypt.)
In Celtic mythology, Nemain was a war-goddess, one of the quartet that also included The Morrigan, Badb and Macha of Ulster - more than her sisters, though, Nemain appears to have had an affinity with death in battle. She was married to Nuada, who had a silver hand (reminiscent of the Greek Daedalus). Nemain and Nuada ruled over the Tuatha de Danaan (the last generation of the Irish Gods) until they were killed in battle against Balor.
Hel was the daughter of Loki and Angrboda in the Norse religion. Because of her parentage, she was imprisoned in the Underworld, although the other Gods *did* make her its Queen (as if that made it any better). Her realm was reserved for those who had died of sickness and old age, rather than battle, and it was a truly horrible place, reflecting the ancient Scandinavians' warrior culture. The early Christians 'borrowed' Hel's name and realm for their own dark underworld.
Rhoua is borrowed from Diane Duane's Wizard Sequence, specifically 'The Book of Night With Moon' and 'On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service' (published in America as 'To Visit The Queen').
4. Something that was glossed over in the GWing TV series is the fact that the majority of characters would have been speaking several different languages. I'm pretty sure that when the characters are together, they're all speaking French, or possibly English, because they're about the only languages that they'd *all* know well enough to converse in.
Heero would have spoken Japanese (native tongue) and would likely have also spoken English (as a programmer; most code uses English terms) and possibly also French (the international diplomatic tongue). He would likely also have picked up some Arabic and Chinese (probably profanities, probably from Quatre and WuFei. Everyone always swears in their native tongue).
Duo would have had a head start on the computer programming languages, because his native tongue is English. He would likely have spoken French also, and picked up some Chinese, Arabic and Japanese (for the same reasons as Heero).
Trowa is French, so of course he speaks it! He probably also speaks Programmer's English, and has a fair grasp of the major European languages (Spanish, Italian, Greek, etc.), from the circus folk if nobody else. It's unlikely that he speaks more than a smattering of the East Asian languages, although his friendship with Quatre would probably lead him to try to learn Arabic.
Quatre would speak Arabic, possibly a regional dialect, probably French (as most nations in the Middle East have it listed as a national language) and also English. I doubt he would speak Japanese or Chinese.
WuFei would *definitely* speak at least Hanyu!
[The spoken Chinese languages are incredibly varied. They speak a completely different language just 100km south of Beijing. Everybody is taught to speak Hanyu (Mandarin, or Beijing's dialect) in school, though, so Chinese people can communicate with each other. But to say that one speaks *Chinese* is incorrect.]
It's also likely he would speak either French or English, probably both, and also Japanese and Russian (he *was* a scholar, after all).
As middle European nobility, Milliard, Relena, Dorothy, Treize, Marimeia and (possibly) Anne would all speak their native tongues (what *was* the national language of Sanq?), French (if it's not their native tongue), and English.
Lucrezia is Italian and, being a commoner, got to the top the hard way - by studying and working bloody hard. She would have spoken Italian, and been taught French and English (likely in the military academy). Her speech patterns are always formal, no matter the situation, which is a characteristic of someone who is speaking a language they are fluent but not comfortable in.
Hilde would only have spoken English, and if she learnt any other languages, it would be to communicate with the other characters. She would probably only be comfortable in English.
Catherine would likely be a bit more cosmopolitan - she *is* part of a travelling circus. However, she would likely not be fluent in whichever European languages she knew and would definitely speak French best. She would not speak any Asian languages at all.