ACT 01 - "Love's Blossom"
Dr. Xadium (drxadium@DEATHTOSPAMgate.net)
December 12th, 2004
Naoko Takeuchi is hereby thanked for her involuntary contribution to this fanfic.
Thanks to Sailor Quinox for the inital naming of Sakura and Megume.
RATED PG-13
MAGELLAN CASTLE, IN ORBIT AROUND VENUS, JANUARY 18th, 2907
High above the darkened surface of a slowly turning world, within a tiny, golden double-inverted-pyramid shaped castle, two figures stood together-- a man and a woman-- arms around each other's waists, as they looked down upon the planet below.
"Night has fallen upon Venus at last," said the man, whose features were almost hidden by the black curtain of space that loomed in front of the couple, its vacuum kept from their bedchamber only by the thinnest of forcefields.
"So beautiful," the woman said, looking down at the surface of her planet-- the world that literally, by ancient birthright, belonged to her line. Under the darkened clouds of carbon dioxide, luminescent, shimmering lights danced to and fro, in an undulating miasma of silken energy. The man noted that the pattern was almost the same as the rippling of his wife's golden night-dress, barely moving under the pressure of the castle's forced air converters.
"The ashen light of Venus," he said to her slowly, looking down at the lights as he drew her closer to him. "Studied by Earth astronomers for years. Also known as 'Venusian nightglow', it comes from the presence and interaction of oxygen molecules high in the planetary atmosphere."
"Moh, X-chan" the woman said slowly, pressing herself closer to her husband. "When you say it like that, you take all the romance out of it."
Xadium smiled a bit as he teased his wife's hair. "I don't think so. There's a beauty in the workings of nature too. Just because you know how it works doesn't make it any less splendid. This planet, for example, spins backwards. Many suspect it's because the planet is a late intruder to the system, possibly even knocking Uranus on its side as it entered the system. The nights are 116 Earth-days long, and--"
Minako smiled as she pressed her fingers to her husband's lips. The Time Lord was intelligent, but sometimes let the details get in the way of the bigger picture. Like now. "Ne," she began softly, pulling him down to their bed, "you can tell me more about it... in the morning. And don't argue with me."
Xadium knew far better than to argue with his wife about such matters, and softly surrendered to her.
Thousands of miles beneath the lovers, the planet Venus' etheric power began to rise and fell in time to their most ancient of rhythms, building and cresting, ebbing and flowing, finally giving rise to a new energy, an ancient mitosis that had not occurred for over 900 years, and 10,000 years before that. For a moment the ashen lights flared brightly, as mystical energies exploded forth into space. Then, for many hours, the lights were dim, almost nonexistent. Terran astronomers were at a loss to explain the reason for it, but, to those, like Meioh Setsuna and hino rei.bot, who *knew* things, the answer was perfectly clear.
THE NEXT MORNING (EARTH TIME)
"Mmm...." Minako awoke slowly, and slid a bit between the golden silk sheets of her bed, feeling a bit odd. "Ohayo..." she murmured, looking to her husband. Xadium was fast asleep, his head resting on her chest. She smiled a bit and ruffled his hair. He always looked as peaceful as a baby while sleeping. She pondered waking him, but paused. Something still felt very odd to her. Slowly, she sat up, her golden locks-- unrestrained by her customary red silk hair bow-- spilling everywhere. She felt her head. It was burning hot.
"Fever?" She asked herself. She hadn't been sick in, oh, hundreds of years. Her long-lived constitution (thanks to her exposure to the Ginzuishou and advances in Medical Science over the years) had made illness a thing of the past. She pondered calling for a doctor, but even before she could reach for the communicator panel, the gilded door to the bedchamber slid open.
"Minako-chan!" Ryo Ami stood in the doorway, mouth agape. Behind her, rei.bot stood impassively, the cybernetic miko's blue-grey eyes blazing brightly.
Minako turned to face them, not even thinking about covering herself up (in point of fact, her long hair served the purpose quite nicely) wondering what could have been so serious that Ami-chan would make the trip all the way from Earth to see her, and more to the point, take the radical step (especially for her) of using her access codes to force open the Princess' bedchamber without even knocking first.
But no explanation was forthcoming. Ami was simply staring at Minako, jaw slightly agape, and rei.bot was as calm and serene as ever. Minako was about to crack a joke-- about to ask the doctor if she'd never seen a nude woman before-- but then she caught a glimpse of her head in the reflective, mirror-finished gold columns that ringed the room.
In the center of her forehead, the sigil of the planet Venus-- an ankh with the top shaped like a valentine's heart-- was blazing brightly and steadily.
Minako felt her head again. The sigil was blazing like fire. In all her years as a Senshi, it had only ever done that when she was either transferring power to Sailor Moon, or transforming, or in some kind of danger.
"rei.bot told me to come," Ami said slowly, quickly regaining her composure. rei.bot merely inclined her head in the affirmative. "And it looks like it was a good thing that I did."
"What's happening to me?" Minako asked worriedly as Ami took hold of her hand, checked her pulse, and then waved a small medical scanner over her.
"Unh... what..." Xadium woke up slowly, barely focused on his environment. Blinking, he began to realize he and Minako were not alone in the room, and hastily covered up even more than decency demanded. Minako saw this and giggled a little, despite her fears.
"Ami? What's going on?" His mind became quicker and more alert as he noticed she was scanning his wife. There was no way the Galaxy-renowned Doctor Ryo Ami, founder of Mizunomics labs, would come 41.4 million kilometers on a house call unless something was seriously wrong.
Ami said nothing, studying the results of her scan intently. The golden wedding band on her finger glinted in the light, almost lost in contrast with the gold that covered just about everything in the Venusian orbital palace. Xadium looked at her ring, long-worn and tarnished with age, and panic began to rise in his stomach. Unlike himself, who as a Time Lord could live for thousands of years like the almost-eternal Sailor Senshi, Ami's husband Ryo Urawa had not had the benefit of a longer life span. Despite all of Ami's and Professor Tomoe's work, and even Serenity II and III's attempts with the Ginzuishou, Urawa had died at the relatively insignificant age of 250. Ami had been crushed, and had vowed never to marry again.
Xadium still saw the grief lines around her eyes from that day when she had walked into the waiting area at Earth's Medical Space Platform V, and quietly--almost too calmly-- intoned to her worried friends that "Ryo Urawa has passed away." The light in her eyes had never truly returned since then. Looking at her face, the Time Lord began to feel a dread, unreasoning panic. After 903 years of marriage, he could not envision losing Minako. After spending almost a millennia with someone, he reflected, they were truly a part of you. He felt helpless and sick.
"Hmm," Ami said slowly, still reading the results. "Interesting."
"What is it?" Minako asked quietly, worried not so much about herself, but about how her husband would take it if the news was bad. She didn't trust him to carry on should anything happen to her. She knew, somewhat sadly, that she was all he really lived for these days. She had had a full, exciting life, rich with friends and family, whereas he had generally been alone except for her and the others. That lingered on her mind as Ami pronounced her diagnosis.
"Congratulations. You're pregnant."
Minako sat there stunned--but happy--for a good number of seconds, and she barely noticed when Xadium fainted, bumping into her side as he passed out.
BABY SHOWER + 903rd WEDDING ANNIVERSARY PARTY, SEPTEMBER 11th, 2907 - TEN'OU HOUSE, LAKSHMI PLANUM, VENUS
"Ohh, help me sit down, thanks." Minako panted a bit as Xadium and Michiru helped her to a soft chair in the living room. She was, by this time, "very" pregnant, and movement was something of a hassle for her. Privately, while she was grateful for her friends' help, she loathed needing it. She was used to being fast, strong and self-reliant, confident in her own body and its skills. To have to have her husband and friends help her get up and sit down-- it was so annoying! Minako sometimes pondered if this was what old age would have been like for her, and thanked the kami she'd probably keep her youth till the day she died. It also irked her that Xadium was treating her like a delicate glass flower-- granted he'd *always* been that way, but ever since he'd recovered from the shock of her pregnancy, he'd been even *worse* about it. It was all she could do to avoid snapping at him sometimes. But worse than all that... Sakura-chan was a kicker. Not just a leaf-kicker or a sand-kicker, no... this girl, in true Aino tradition-- she kicked field goals each and every time.
"KUSO! ITTAI!" Minako yelped as she felt the insides of her belly pang again. The others laughed a little as she fumed and said, "Moh... that's *not* funny."
"Don't worry dear," Michiru said with a smile as she elegantly sat down across from Minako and Xadium, who was doting over his wife as if she were a helpless child, "It'll be over soon. Having children is a wonderful thing." She giggled elegantly and looked at the small blonde-haired infant playing at her feet. Her face and features were just as they had been a thousand years ago-- indeed, if such a thing were possible, it could be said that she had grown even more refined and beautiful with time.
"Hey," Minako said darkly, her featured obscured in a blue haze and her voice almost creepy, "Your kids were made, grown and born in the Mizunomics Electric Womb. You didn't have them in your belly beating you up on the inside."
"You have to go now," Hotaru said to Xadium, gently pushing him away from Minako. "This is a Baby shower, for women only." Hotaru smiled to put Xadium at ease, but firmly kept pressing him closer to the door, even as the Time Lord helplessly looked to his wife. Minako, for her part, tried not to crack a smile at his departure. When he was out, she exhaled deeply. "Thank god for that."
Hotaru chuckled and tossed her long, purple-black hair unconsciously. She had grown in height and grace over the years, looking like a benign version of Mistress 9. Her face was also far more relaxed and jovial than in years gone by, much of it having to do with the changes in her lifestyle. While still an avid reader and explorer of all manners of truth, she was also socially active, and even a little athletic.
"So how is he?" Minako asked with a wry chuckle. "We haven't heard from him in months."
"I know," Hotaru sighed, sitting down next to Michiru. "He's on Mars."
"Mars?!" Michiru asked in shock. "What's he doing there?!"
"Union Aerospace Corporation sent him there. They seem to think they've made an archaeological discovery. He thinks they've opened a portal to Hell. Heh."
Michiru chuckled, frowning as her little girl began punching a small rat she'd seen scampering across the floor. "Megume!" she snapped. "Stop beating up that rat! It's cruelty to animals!"
Ten'ou K. Megume turned and gave her mother the finger.
"Like mother like daughter," Hotaru laughed. Minako laughed and then winced as Sakura kicked in concurrence.
"Damn, she kicks hard," Minako said, feeling her belly.
Hotaru chuckled. "Sakura-chan..."
Minako looked at her askance. "What about her?"
Hotaru laughed. "We know her name because she visited us in the past one day and told it to us. Where did her name really come from? She gave it to us because you gave it to her, but you will give it to her because she gave it to us..."
Minako's eyes spun. "Don't confuse me, Hotaru..."
Mina frowned. "It's weird though... long ago she told X-chan her birthday was November 5th, but according to Ami-chan, her due date is October 11th... history changed..."
Hotaru shrugged. "She was a little child then. Perhaps she was confused."
Minako frowned. "And another thing... she said her name was 'Aino Sakura', but later when she showed up it was 'Sakura Xadium Aino', which is what we're using now..."
"Well your surname technically is Xadium-Aino, you just never use it."
Minako continued to frown. "It's like history hiccuped somewhere...."
"Ahh," Hotaru interjected, remembering something suddenly. "Ami told me something you need to know. She said this late into your third trimester you should NOT be transforming into Sailor Venus under any circumstances. The shifting stress on your body could injure Sakura-chan."
Minako nodded. "It doesn't matter... things have been so peaceful these past few centuries that I doubt I'll have to do any fighting in the next four weeks."
Three weeks later, Minako was smashed up against a wall, her husband pressed over her trying to shield her as a lumbering hulk of muscle and rage prepared to rip open her belly and take her life, and that of her unborn child.
OCTOBER 2nd, 2907 - MEDICAL SPACE PLATFORM V, IN ORBIT AROUND GANYMEDE
The corridors of Medical Space Platform V were bathed in blood-red light. Emergency bulkheads all over the southern portion of the outer habitation ring were slammed shut in order to prevent atmosphere from venting and explosively decompressing the station. One side of the Space Platform had been torn open, and *something* had entered, fixed upon its target with deadly purpose. It had come to kill the unborn Sakura Aino and her parents. The hallways were littered with the burnt-out corpses of massacred security staff and hapless hospital workers who had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also strewn across the halls were the battered, broken and bleeding bodies of the Sailor Senshi, who had met something so fierce that even their power was no match for it.
The enemy hovered over the prone body of Minako, who was covered by her husband, doing all he could to protect her. While Xadium had, over time, learned some fighting skills and even mastered some forms of weaponry, those rudimentary abilities would be no match for this thing.
Clad in the white bodysuit of a Sailor Senshi, the enemy wore a grey skirt, Dark kingdom gloves and Dark-Kingdom style boots, as well as a dark red front and back bow. Its skirt was triple pleated like Super Sailor Moon's, only trimmed with dark red, goldenrod, and dark blue. the warrior's face was that of Jedite's but with Haruka's hair (but spiked and glowing gold) and bright green eyes, albeit green. The jewel in its Tiara was a blood red. The sheer amount of energy radiating from the figure lit the corridor up as if it was on fire.
Leering, this creature--which looked like a Super Saiyajin Jeruka--but could not be, for Sailor Uranus was lying in the hallway, legs broken-- roared with a frighteningly feral ferocity and lumbered to the couple. The others had done their best to defend against it, but to no avail. Now there was nothing standing in its way.
"X-chan," Minako said with labored breath, "I have to transform." Her crystal-blue eyes were full of fear as she saw the thing with Jeruka's face approaching her.
"Don't," Xadium said, wincing as a piece of the ceiling fell on his back. "If you do... Sakura will die."
"She's going to die anyway," Minako said, her voice cracking. She wanted to cry, but this wasn't the time. For her husband, and herself, and the future, she had to do something... now. She flexed her palms and prepared to transform by force of will. "I'm so sorry, Sakura-chan," she whispered.
"NO," said a quiet voice, full of deadly resolve. Minako stopped, her blood running cold as she recognized the voice.
Standing behind "Jeruka", clad in her traditional white kimono and red hakama, stood rei.bot. Her expression was as cold as ice.
"OH?" Jeruka turned to face her. It smiled demonically, walking up to her and tilting its head back, indicating that she should punch it in the face.
rei.bot complied, swinging with a devastating right hook. The thunderclap of energy released by her hit shook the entire station.
Jeruka stood there, completely unfazed. rei.bot, for her part, tilted her head sideways.
Jeruka snorted and spin kicked rei.bot, ripping her body in two with the force of the impact.
"Kami-sama," Minako exhaled. She couldn't remember anyone ever being able to do anything like that to rei.bot.
"What is it?" Xadium asked, unable to turn his head and see.
"We're finished," Minako said slowly, crying a bit. Xadium hugged her as best he could.
"Well if we go, we go together." He smiled at Minako as best he could. "Perhaps we'll finally get to meet Sakura..."
rei.bot, however, was not so easily convinced of her defeat. her metallic body liquefied and reformed, the torn bits reconstituting themselves. Wearing a slightly annoyed expression, she blasted forwards and tackled Jeruka hard, shoving him, and her, down a side corridor. A clearsteel bulkhead lowered into place as rei.bot continued pushing, ripping a hole in the side of the station and sending both her and Jeruka out into space.
As Minako and Xadium watched, the two traded blows in the empty vacuum of space, limbs moving at speeds impossible for the eye to see. Attack after attack flew between them, from the Kamehameha to the Omega Beam. Nothing either combatant did fazed the other, but rei.bot seemed to be on the losing end of the fight, being pushed back as she was towards the station, by a incomprehensibly powerful energy beam.
"Damn," Xadium said weakly. "He means to force her into the station... if the hull is breached one more time, the loss of structural integrity will cause the whole thing to break apart!"
"All this to kill us?!" Minako asked in anger and grief. "Why us!? Who's doing this?! WHY?!"
rei.bot, sensing the same thing Xadium was, frowned. Her pet-- as she called Sakura-- had long ago told her this day would come, but not the time nor the place. The laws of time would not permit that-- plus, Sakura had not known the identity of the attacker. So, at this last desperate hour, rei.bot was at peace with what she had to do. It was odd, however. rei.bot had fought Jeruka-- the REAL one-- to a standstill before. This being was stronger. Far stronger. It was clearly the most powerful fighter in the universe, capable of handling energies in excess of what she could, at least safely.
But therein lay the rub. She too, had infinite power, just not infinite energy handling capability as Jeruka did. She could let it all out... at a price. But ever since she had met the small child Sakura in the past, played with her and become her friend, she had sworn to protect her, even if it meant paying that price.
As Jeruka flew towards her, intending to smash her into the station, rei.bot flew forward, her validium-metal body beginning to superheat as she unlocked the seals on her infinite energy cells. Before Jeruka knew what was happening, she was using the Time-active metal of her body, long ago created by the Time Lords of Gallifrey as the ultimate weapon of destruction, to thrust herself and Jeruka back, away from the station not only in space but time. In her last conscious act before she felt her body and Jeruka's slip through time, she copied her consciousness to a portion of her arm and cast it loose. The next second, both she and her enemy smashed into the planet Kantek-- between Jupiter and Mars-- 80,000 years in the past. As the infinite energies in her body exploded, detonating the planet and Jeruka with her, her last conscious thought was "i love you".
As the crashing, grinding death-scream of rei.bot's body echoed across time and space, the unborn Sakura shuddered in the womb-- for the first time, she had felt something other than the warmth and love her parents had for each other and for her-- she felt the icy cold grip of mortal fear and helpless dread.
EARTH, CRYSTAL TOKYO, 2910
Small Lady Neo-Princess Serenity Tsukino Usagi ran into the throne room of the crystal palace, excitedly swinging her backpack around. "Hi Mama! Papa! I'm back!". Fresh off the second Nephelenia attack on the senshi, she had finally come back home after spending a year or two making friends and having fun in the past. She had even made a boyfriend! There was so much she wanted to share with her parents!
"Oh god, she's back," Endymion panted, from somehere behind the throne room.
"Small Lady," Neo-Queen Serenity moaned, half in pleasure and half in irritation. "Your timing is LOUSY."
Chibiusa froze. She was thirteen, physically, and finally understood *exactly* what those two were doing behind the throne. "Ugh," she groaned in disgust. "Can't you two get a ROOM!?"
"ALL ROOMS ARE MINE!" Serenity shot back, a bit too energetically.
"You know,' Chibiusa shot back sarcastically, "I'm going to have to start studying for high school entrance exams soon. You two need to find me a good cram school."
"Oh [BLEEP]!" Serenity cried in pleasure and anger. "I don't have TIME to waste dealing with that. I sent you in the past so I could have more time with my MAN!"
"All you DO is have time with you man! This is my FUTURE we're talking about here! Now Papa has to take me--"
"OH!" Serenity yelled. "He's not taking YOU! EVER!"
"I meant to go find cram schools!"
"[BLEEP] YES! I mean NO!" Serenity shrieked. "I mean, YES, you Endymion, keep it up, and NO, Chibiusa! You don't need cram school!"
"It's the law," Chibiusa said flatly.
"Well I'M the QUEEN and I'm CHANGING the LAW! HOME SCHOOLING From now on, for everyone!"
"That just means I get to stay here and hear you do THAT all day!"
Serenity bounced for a bit as she pondered. "Then I make the law Home schooling! But not by parents! By special Tutors! OUTSIDE OF THE HOUSE! FAR OUTSIDE!"
"Ugh." Chibiusa sighed. A day later, however, when she went out to the stables (her designated "classroom") and saw her "tutor" (the now-strapping Elios) she was very happy to "learn" from him... over and over and over again.
SCORE: GPA 0 LIBIDO: 10
VENUS ORBIT, XADIUM'S TARDIS @ MAGELLAN CASTLE, 2910
"Sakura-chan, soon it will be time for you to go to school," Minako said happily, bouncing the three-year-old girl on her knee happily.
"School?" Sakura asked, her brown eyes shining brightly.
"Yes, baby," Minako cooed. "But that baka Usagi made a rule that it's all home schooling."
"Baka," Sakura echoed, sounding out the word and carefully committing it to memory. "Stay with mom and pop?"
"No," Xadium said gently. "We have to put you in the care of a teacher."
"Want to stay with mom and pop!" Sakura protested, hopping off her mom's lap and running over to her father with outstretched arms. Xadium picked her up and set her on his shoulder.
"NO! SCARYED!!" Sakura panicked, and Xadium had to set her down and cuddle her. He looked over to Minako with a pained expression. Minako met his gaze and bowed her head. Ever since her birth, there was a... fear about Sakura. She could never stand to be away from her parents, and she scared very easily. At first Minako had blamed her husband's natural shyness for this, but as time passed, she realized the child was reacting to some kind of psychological trauma. It was hard to believe, but Ami's working theory was that somehow, the fear surrounding the events of her near-death at the hands of the Jeruka clone must have transmitted to her in the womb.
"I don't know how she's going to take being away from us all day," Minako said worriedly.
"If she's anything like her mother, she'll manage," Xadium said with a smile.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, ISHTAR TERRA, ON THE SURFACE OF VENUS
"NO! NOT GOING! NOT GOING!" Sakura bit and kicked and struggled as her father did his best to carry her out of the familiar confines of the TARDIS, walking out under the orange / blue clouds of the somewhat terraformed Venusian highlands. Minako would normally be laughing at the father-daughter struggle, but she was seriously worried for the mental health of her child. She found herself wishing her mom--rude and rough as she would have been at times-- was still here to counsel her. She wasn't totally sure of what to do.
"Sakura, please!" Xadium was exasperated, doing his best to keep the squirming child, who was now slung over his shoulder backwards, from falling down. He turned to face Minako and ask for help, but then froze as he felt Sakura simply... stop. No more fighting, no more resistance. For a horrible moment, he thought the girl had passed out or worse. But then he heard something from her he head never heard before. A hearty, happy laugh.
Sakura's sweet laughter echoed across the plains, as there in the distance, standing tall and proud in her white kimono and temporary black hakama, stood rei.bot 2.0.
At that moment both parents knew their little girl would be all right.
The next few years were spent as a family of five-- Minako, Xadium. Artemis, Sakura and rei.bot. It had taken Xadium almost three full years of scouring the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, fighting off everyone from the Time Lord High Council to space Pirates bent on collecting rare treasures, but he had managed to collect all the inert valdium from rei.bot's shattered body. Using it, and the last bit of her consciousness and memories stored in her one intact arm, he and Professor Tomoe had been able to rebuild her, stronger and better than before.
rei.bot 2.0, in the beginning, was very disoriented and prone to spontaneous shutdown. But as she regained her mastery of her mental disciplines, she taught herself and her pupil Sakura how to live in a world that scared them. Within a decade, she was as indomitable as she had ever been, and Sakura strove to meet her example. The girl was still hindered by a lingering fear in the back of her soul-- one not for her own safety, but for that of her parents. It was something rei.bot, nor her parents could assuage. Over time, Sakura learned to hide her fear with a sunny smile and a cheery joke, and to everyone but her-- and perhaps rei.bot, though she never said anything-- the fear seemed to be gone.
Sakura delighted in challenging her best friend to mental and physical challenges. When rei.bot was still mastering her motor control, the girl taught the android baseball as a way of mastering hand-eye co-ordination.
2921 AD
"That's cheating!" Sakura yelled, as rei.bot levitated up and caught what should have been a home run ball. She was taller now, a teenager at last. Her growth patterns seemed to follow the Gallifreyan pattern, not Chibiusa's stunted mode of development. She had the two hearts, respiratory bypass, and regenerative capabilities of a Time Lord, and the powers of a Senshi of Venus, which her mother also held. Thus, she was quite used to beating humans at baseball, which was a game of strength, speed and endurance. But rei.bot-- "r-chan" as she called her-- always played cheap.
rei.bot responded by playfully sticking out her tongue. She was once again wearing her red hakama, signifying her mastery of the disciplines that formed the core of not only her spiritual function, but her life philosophy. Before the android could land on the ground, she paused, sensing something. She had become as attuned to the rhythms of the planet Venus as she had those of long-distant Earth, and she was feeling the planet itself crying in pain.
"The central oxygenation plant for the southern continent just exploded!" Xadium yelled as he ran out from his TARDIS. "But that's pure oxygen!!" Sakura yelled back, rapidly processing what her father had told her. "If it ignites..!"
"A fireball ten miles wide that will engulf the entire biodome there!" Unlike Ishtar Plenum, the Southern continent was still oxygen poor due to sulfur storms, and people needed to live in domes there.
"The TARDIS!" Sakura yelled. "We have to get in there and contain the--"
"i will handle it" rei.bot said, her blue eyes glowing.
"Even you can't fly there fast enough!" Xadium protested. "You couldn't handle the energy output needed!"
rei.bot smirked and looked at her right arm, which still bore a trace of carbon scoring from the explosion that had cost her her "first life". It was a wound she could easily repair with a thought, but she kept it as a sacred reminder of her duty and the cost that might one day have to be paid again. She remembered severing the arm, and uploading her data to it... and also some other data she had collected from that abominable Jeruka fake ...
With an almost feral roar, rei.bot screamed, her body suddenly enveloped in an aura of crackling gold ki, her black hair now flowing and golden, and her blue eyes a bright green.
Xadium facefaulted as, with a tremendous thunderclap, rei.bot tore through the skies at beyond hypersonic speed, going suborbital and taking a ballistic trajectory to her target. "Super... Saiyajin... rei.bot..."
Sakura grinned even as she analyzed the phenomenon. "Obviously she's learned to compensate for energy outflow excesses by emulating the biocompesation factor enabled by the Super Saiyajin genome!! WOO HOO! GO R-CHAN!!" She giggled and paused for a second before cheering again. "I wonder where she got the DNA??"
Xadium smiled as he watched his daughter so accurately break down the situation, while hopping up and down with the same enthusiastic joy-de-vivre that had drawn him to her mother. He knew where rei.bot probably got the DNA from, but said nothing. They had decided long ago that if it had been the Saiyajin-like Jeruka that had put the fear in her soul, they would never speak to her of it again, lest she succumb to it once more.
THE PLANET BAJOR, ALPHA QUADRANT, 2395, SPRINGBALL MEGADOME
With a loud Wheezing and groaning noise, a TARDIS shaped like a brightly lit Mountain Dew Vending machine materialized, seemingly from thin air in a small, out-of-the-way corner of Bajor's largest entertainment zone, just several hours before the start of the 2395 Quadrant Playoffs between the "Andorian Avengers" and the "Moonbase Marauders". The front door opened, and Sakura Aino stepped out, decked out in a Marauders' uniform.
Xadium sighed. Ever since Sakura had taken up playing baseball with rei.bot, she had become a bigger and bigger fan of the sport. As a Time Lord, Xadium didn't see the practical value in her fannish obsession over what was nothing more than a game-- but as a father, he loved his daughter, and so, when she had asked to be brought back in time to see the infamous last game of the series, he could hardly say no.
"Do you know," Sakura was chattering, "The end of professional baseball came shortly after only 300 spectators attended the last game of the 2042 World Series, which the London Kings won. The sport enjoyed a small renaissance in 2371 when Federation colonists on Cestus III formed a league of their own, and due to their efforts and the promotional efforts of Admiral Benjamin Sisko, by 2390 baseball was a huge pastime on the outer worlds of the Gamma Quadrant. This led to interspecies tension as humans struggled to keep up with the stronger races, leading to intergenetic DNA 'doping' and performance-enhancing recombinant gene grafts..."
Xadium sighed. His daughter was always like this. She'd get profoundly interested in a subject, absorbing reams of pointless trivia about it, becoming a virtual master on it, then, when her fickle interests changed--as they invariably did-- she'd "unremember" all but the sketchiest details to make room for something new. And he had to go through the whole process with her, whether he liked it or not. But looking at her cheery smile, he decided it was a small price to pay.
"Well, Sakura," he chuckled, slapping her on the shoulder, "this game is historically one of the most important in the 'modern' era of the sport. So pay close attention." "Always!!" Sakura replied cheerily, as she turned her red "Marauders" cap backwards. She chuckled as her dad irately turned it forwards again. "Don't you and mom make that thing rock too hard while I'm gone," Sakura chided, nodding to the TARDIS. "I'm rather fond of being an only child." She stuck her tongue out as her father blanched.
Xadium recovered and switched her hat backwards for her, tapping her on the head playfully . "No matter how many siblings might arise," he said softly. "You'd always be special to us."
"I know," Sakura replied hugging her dad. "You two take care while I'm gone." She smiled a bit and almost hesitantly left to go watch the game.
"It's been 200 years," Xadium said to Minako, who had been watching silently from the doorway of the TARDIS, "and she's still wary about leaving us alone."
"That's because she knows what we'll be up to," Minako said mischievously, trying to cover her similar feelings of worry with a joke. Xadium chuckled, but they both knew that even after all this time, something still haunted Sakura's soul.
Sakura, for her part, forgot her fear as she took in the sights and sounds of the baseball stadium. There were sentient beings from all thousand worlds of the Federation here, so many different types. She knew them all... as the daughter of a Time Lord, she had been exposed to alien cultures from a tender age. She happily made her way down to the front row, where her dad had pulled strings with the Bajoran government to get her seats behind home plate.
"Dad may be useless as a fighter," Sakura mused, "but he's got pull." She settled into her seat, and then saw one of the distinctive blue-skinned and white haired players, a female named Tarah, walking by.
"Oh whoah!!" Sakura exclaimed. "Tarah the titan!!"
Tarah paused as she heard her name, the antenna on her head bristling. That was a pink-skin who had called out her name. The Moonbase Marauders, the opposite team, were Pink-skins, and she had gotten nothing but abuse from their kind. She stalked over to the stands, ready to get in a shouting match.
"Hey, can I have your autograph?!" Sakura exclaimed, waving her book.
"Why," Tarah asked bristling. "So you can throw it in my face or take pleasure in ripping it up and eating it as I watch?"
[I admire your skill. You're the best shortstop in the Quadrant, period.] Sakura said, in perfectly fluent Andorian.
The Andorian stopped short. The pink-skin wasn't using a Universal Translator. She could tell by the inflections in her voice.
[You know Andorian?]
[I can speak it like the back of my hand!!]
[Excuse me?]
[It's an ancient Terran Idiom. Sorry.]
[Ah.]
[Really, can I have your autograph? I'm a genuine fan.]
[You're wearing a Marauders' uniform.]
[Well I'm a fan of *yours*, the rest of your team sucks. They always start off strong and fade. Not like you.]
[Heh. Can't argue with you there. Come with me, I'll give you one.]
Sakura grinned and hopped over the rail. Tarah waved off security, and the two of them went back to the locker rooms.
"Your Andorian is very good," Tarah said in Federation standard.
"Thanks!!" Sakura said, giggling. "Your Federation Standard isn't bad either!!"
Tarah smiled, liking this pink-skin more and more. She sat down on a bench and cracked her neck, taking off her blue team cap and taking a swig of some sports drink.
"Now who should I make this out to--"
SMACK!
Tarah bristled as Sakura knocked the drink bottle out of her hand. There was a ferocity in the Pink-skin's brown eyes that had not been there before. Was she a psychotic fan? Tarah prepared to fight as the bottle clattered to the floor, its contents spilling out.
"Don't drink that!" Sakura exclaimed, sniffing the air. "There's something wrong with it!!"
Tarah looked over at the bottle. "I rarely drink it anyway, but I am rather thirsty today. The Bajoran climate is too hot for my tastes."
Sakura knelt down and put some of the split liquid on her fingers, tasting it and spitting it out. "It's Tryptonic Acid. Almost undetectable, except for the slight scent of lemon."
"Pink-skins don't have that good a sense of smell," Tarah protested.
"I'm not your average Pink-skin," Sakura said assertively. "Do you have a team doctor? Someone with a proper medical scanner?"
"Yes, but is this really that important?"
"Tryptonic Acid is to Andorians what Lactic acid is to Humans. When it builds up in your muscle tissue, it causes the rapid onset of fatigue. Only in Andorians, the effect is worse. It can make your muscles very prone to stress-related injury. In a strenuous game like baseball, even skidding to first base could snap your tendons."
Tarah processed the information. "But our scanners would have picked up something so dangerous."
Sakura shook her head. "Not in these small quantities. Plus there is some to be found for beneficial purposes in the drink already. It would seem like a slight imbalance. But if you were to drink many bottles of this over hours-- like say, once an inning-- by the bottom of the 9th you'd be out half the team."
"LUDICROUS!" boomed a male Andorian. "Uninformed lay medical opinion!"
"Zorn, the team doctor," Tarah informed Sakura.
[Please. You must scan the drinks and run a simulation study before the game starts] Sakura began.
"Don't waste my time," the doctor said. "I checked all the drinks, and can certify everything is fine."
"So you knew to check the drinks?" Sakura asked curiously.
"The Orion Syndicate has been trying to rig the series any way they can," the doctor replied. "So we have taken all necessary precautions. Don't worry about it, Pink-skin! Now leave us alone, we have a game to prepare for!" He looked over her uniform. "Unless this is some Marauder plot to DISTRACT us because you know we'll beat you into PULP!"
Sakura nodded, taking no offense. Andorian males tended to be bellicose. If he had checked the drinks, there was nothing to worry about, he knew Andorian Physiology better than her. She collected her autograph and returned to her seat.
The game began. For the first few innings, the all-Andorian team massacred the mostly human Marauders, their superior strength and speed proving decisive. But as the game wore on, the injuries began to pile up. Small sprains, falls and pains. The Andorian players began making more and more errors, and finally the balance of play tipped. To any casual observer, it would just seem like they were having a bad day, typical of their recent performance before getting to the playoffs. But Sakura realized there was something more going on. She realized their pattern of failure had obviously been engineered by someone going back almost half the season.
"That blasted doctor," Sakura mused. "He ran the tests, did he? The perfect one to hide the results." She got out of her seat, but obviously couldn't jump the rail with the game going on. Slowly, cautiously, she made her way up to the back of the stadium and began to work her way to the locker room area.
By the 9th inning, the Andorians were only up one run, and the bases were loaded by the Marauders. Tarah, the Andorian shortstop, had left the game. The fate of the game hung in the balance. The Andorians were slowing noticeably. Sakura was in the locker room, but the doctor was nowhere to be found. Instead, she found Tarah, nursing her left foot.
"You drank it anyway, didn't you," Sakura said dimly.
"That patakh insisted I needed the boost to finish the game," Tarah scowled. "Now he's gone. I'll bet the Orion Syndicate paid him to betray us!"
"An Andorian who curses like a Klingon," Sakura chuckled. "I love it."
"We're done," Tarah scowled. "The pink-skins are putting up Duke Neukam. Everyone knows he's been pumped full of Genetic Steroids. Without me, there's no way we can stop him."
"As mom would say, 'one bad turn deserves another'". Sakura rummaged through the medical lockers. "water, Bajoran blueroot, NA Benzoate..." She tapped Tarah on the shoulder, beckoning to her uniform. "Mind if I borrow this?"
Back on the playing field, the Marauders were down to their last out, and Nukum took the plate for the Marauders. A thickly muscled fellow, it was plainly obvious he'd belt a ball out of the park so soon as look at it. A Marauder win seemed inevitable. But at that moment, cap slung over her head, Tarah of the Avengers rejoined the game without saying a word. When Nukum made his move, so did she, leaping up higher than anyone had ever seen her jump before, and catching the ball, causing the game to end with an Andorian win. A few hours later, the news was all over subspace-- the Andorian team doctor had been working for the Orion Syndicate in what came to be known as the infamous "Green Sox" scandal of 2395. Sakura, for her part, made sure to wash off all her blue make-up before she got in the TARDIS and went home.
ORION HOMEWORLD, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
"YOU COST US A HUNDRED MILLION STRIPS OF GOLD PRESSED LATINUM!" the head of the Orion Syndicate, an angry green fellow with entirely too many guns, said.
"It's not my fault someone found out the doctor! And I KNOW Tarah Tamelek was out of the game! I spiked her drink myself!" The human female wearing a white laboratory coat slammed her fist on the table, her red hair flying as she jerked her head around angrily. "That was someone else! Someone far faster than an Andorian! Only an augmented human could match the speed of Duke Nukam! The man I PUT TOGETHER CODON BY CODON!"
"We have footage of her," the syndicate leader said, zooming in on the picture of "Tarah" as she made her catch. "Find out who she is... and eliminate her. Or we'll eliminate YOU."
"Oh, I'll get her," the woman scowled, adjusting her glasses. "No one gets in the way of Yuuko Arimura and lives."
"An impressive boast, Dr. Eudial. See that you make it happen."
NEXT TIME
Sakura faces her greatest fear and loses her way.