68Chapter 20 – A Future Changed
She had caught a butterfly; carefully she folded her palm around him. All she wanted to do was look at him. Butterflies were always fluttering around so fast; you could never see how their wings looked. She was waiting for him to calm down, but he kept struggling in her hand. If he went on, he would rub off all of his color, and wouldn't be able to fly anymore.
Someone had told her once, that every butterfly was the spirit of a Sailor Senshi, since girls' hearts have wings. And making a girl's heart unable to fly was a crime.
So finally she let go. She watched him flutter away into the sunlight, until he was only a bright spot in the sky. She was wondering if he could fly all the way up to heaven. Probably yes! They seemed like beings from a different world anyway, so beautiful and so fragile.
She looked at her hand; some of the color had actually rubbed off. It looked strange on her hands, it did not belong there. Her hands seemed strange too, like they didn't belong to her either.
She looked up, and suddenly the sky seemed darker. Or maybe not darker, more like it had changed its color. But it was still blue. The sun was still shining.
Everything around her felt strange, like it was not real. She started to run, but she had the feeling she wasn't moving. It was like reality itself suddenly had gotten a crack? The places she had been to, the people she knew, did they really exist? Or were they just part of her imagination? She let out a scream! She had to get home at once; all she wanted to do was to crawl under her blanket to make this nightmare end. Nightmare?
Suddenly she realized what was wrong, it was the feeling you have when you're waking from a dream. As long as you dream, everything makes perfect sense to you. As soon as you start waking up, it all gets weird.
"Why don't you go back to sleep, my little one? Everything's all right, you only had a bad dream. Everything will be fine"
The voice was so comforting, so familiar. Although she felt far too drowsy to recognize it, she knew it belonged to a friend. At least she was sure it did! It had to be! All she wanted was to return to her dream, which hadn't been a nightmare at all. In her dream, she was a princess. She was a Sailor Senshi, fighting for love and justice. She was a schoolgirl, and had to get up early.
"Shshsh," said the voice again, who wasn't her mother. "You don't have to get up yet. Everything will be fine!"
Any moment in our life we make choices that alter the future. Any moment, something we wouldn't have expected might happen. Something we take for granted might shatter. A future we've already seen might never take place.
She slowly opened her eyes. No, it wasn't her mother, but the face of the young woman, who bent over her, was very familiar. There was no reason to worry.
She sat up. The room around her was familiar, too; it was the penthouse, where Puu lived, disguised as the college student Setsuna Meioh. She had been here before. She was back in the 20th century. Puu had brought her here while she slept, and all the weird stuff had been no more than a dream. But still something felt strange. If she only knew, what it was.
"Why did you bring me here, Puu?" she wanted to know. "What happened?"
"It is not easy to explain, Small Lady. But your help is needed here."
"Sure!" She jumped out of the bed. "Whatever demon attacks us, Sailor Chibimoon will punish it!"
"There is no demon attacking us now," Puu said. "But they might come, and Sailor Moon isn't here to lead us."
The sky was dark already, when Puu was finished talking. At first, Chibiusa didn't believe her. Everything sounded incredible. Her mother had been killed by Queen Metallia, and the future was changed? It couldn't be? All she understood was, that she couldn't go back home, there was no home anymore. Everything was different.
The next days she felt strange. The girl looking at her from the mirror was no more than a puppet, she ate, slept, walked around, but she wasn't a real person. One night she dreamed that she turned to dust. Would that happen, now that her mother was dead?
"You are real," Puu said, "you won't disappear, and you won't turn to dust! It was only a dream!"
"But if you hadn't come for me, I would've! I would have!"
"In a way, yes!" Puu picked the little girl up, and put her arms around her. "A moment before your mother died, I stopped time for an hour, and then I traveled to the future to get you. The future has changed now, in this life you can't return to it. Neither can I, the gates of time are locked to all of us, now."
Chibiusa started to cry. "I'll never see my parents again."
Puu held her close. "Of course you will," she said again, and again, until Chibiusa listened to her. "Someday, in a different lifetime, we'll all live in Crystal Tokyo, as it is our destiny. Perhaps it will be our next life already, who knows? It doesn't matter at all! What seems like a big change to us is nothing to the path of destiny. Time really means nothing."
"Then I want to die," Chibiusa cried, "and I don't want to be reborn, until I'm home!"
"Listen now," Puu said softly, but firmly. "I know how much this hurts, but you are a Sailor Senshi and you have a duty to fulfill, just like the rest of us. And you are our princess, and one day you will lead us. You understand that, don't you?"
"But I'm just a little girl!"
"That you are, and maybe it isn't fair, that you have to learn these things at such a young age, but it can't be helped. You must be strong, and you must grow up a little faster than other children."
Chibiusa nodded. "Please, Puu, let's call Mamo-chan, " she said.
Setsuna couldn't get a hold of Mamoru, although she tried to call him several times during the next days. She also tied to contact the other Senshi, via communicator, but it didn't work. How strange. The Senshi were always prepared, in case a demon would attack Earth. But now, they seemed to have vanished.
In her mind, Setsuna recalled that dreadful moment, when she had entered the cave together with Uranus and Neptune. She had called upon a forbidden power, one she could only use once a lifetime. Actually she wasn't allowed to use it at all. But this was different.
She knew she couldn't save Usagi that way; it was already too late for that. But she could open the gates of time to get Chibiusa before the future changed. Mamoru had the star-shaped clock with him and it ran on, although every other clock on Earth had stopped. It was as timeless as love itself. It was powerful enough to open the gates one last time.
Crystal Tokyo was different from the way she remembered it. At first she thought, it was only because, it was silent and motionless. But she was wrong. In less than a second, the Crystal Tokyo she knew wouldn't exist anymore. It would be reborn some other lifetime, but that path had not yet opened.
She found Chibiusa outside of the city where she had been playing on a meadow. With her confused eyes the little looked up into the sky, her hands stretched out before her. They were dirty with some kind of colored powder. As Setsuna touched Chibiusa with the clock, she could move again, but she fainted at once. So Setsuna took her away and saved the explanations for later.
She put the clock back, before she let time run again, but she left the scene of the battle. Her sole duty was to take care of Chibiusa now; the others would be strong enough to defeat Queen Metallia.
Almost a week had passed when Setsuna heard from the other Senshi again. She had had long talks with Chibiusa, who still didn't understand much of what was going on. But it seemed that the girl was calming down a little, although she missed her mother badly. And she didn't understand why they hadn't been able to contact her father.
"Where are we going?" Chibiusa wanted to know, as they got into the car.
"To Rei and the others. I know were they are going now. I could hear part of a talk between Mars and Mercury over the communicator."
"It's working again? Could you talk to them?"
"No. Their communicators are changing frequency all the time. That is so strange. Something must be terribly wrong."
"But why? Maybe there is a new enemy, and they don't want her to hear them talk."
"No!" Setsuna said again. "If there was an enemy, I would have sensed it long ago. And besides, our talk-line is completely safe. None other than the Senshi can receive it. It seems ...it seems there is some kind of quarrel among the Senshi!"
"There is what?" Chibiusa shouted. "The Senshi are fighting? No way!"
Chibiusa gave a scream. At once she had recognized the yellow Ferrari right before them on the street. "It's Haruka! Puu, make her stop! Maybe she knows what's going on."
It was hard not to lose the Ferrari. It was going very fast and Setsuna wasn't extremely fond of reckless maneuvers. Luckily, it simply followed the highway they were on, so they were able to keep on its trail for a while. But then they lost sight of it.
"Go faster, Puu!" Chibiusa yelled. "Go faster!"
Just when they thought, they had lost Haruka's car for good, they heard a screeching sound from somewhere in the darkness. A few moments later they saw the car standing at the side of the road, next to Mamoru's Porsche.
"Mamo-chan," Chibiusa shouted.
Setsuna stepped on the brake as hard as she could. Luckily there was no other car behind her, or things would have been difficult.
They heard shouts and battle cries in the darkness. There was a fight going on.
"Stay right here!" Setsuna ordered. She grabbed her pen, and rushed out of the car. But Chibiusa didn't listen. As soon as Puu was out, she ran after her.
Chibiusa couldn't believe it what she was seeing down the hill. The Senshi were fighting each other. They were really fighting each other as if they were enemies. Why on earth would they do such a thing?
In the light of their attacks, she could see Mamo-chan was down there, too; he lay motionless on the ground. What if he was hurt? What was all that dark stuff around him in the grass? She couldn't see! Someone was standing next to him, a girl who looked like she was made of glass.
Hotaru-chan! It was Hotaru-chan! She had to stop her! She couldn't let her take Mamo-chan away.
She screamed his name, as she ran downhill. Something hit her shoulder, but she ran on. Something smashed against her chest; it felt like a hard push, almost knocking her down, but she ran on. Something fiery and hot was all around her and then it was gone again. She ran on.
As she reached him, she felt a terrible pain spreading out through her entire body. She clutched her chest with both hands and felt something warm and sticky running down between her fingers. Her legs gave way under her body; she collapsed on his chest wrapping her small arms around him. She could feel that he was there, but she couldn't see him anymore. All was dark around her.
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