"I'm sorry, you mean the Moon? Our Moon, the actual Moon!? Artemis, I know that you said at the start of my class that you're technically an alien, but… where are you from? Where are the Senshi from?"
Artemis sighed. "…I suppose that's a fair question. If you'll be working with us, then it's best if you're 'read in,' as it were. I should warn you, some of this may be difficult to swallow at first. I'd appreciate it if you at least let me explain without interruption for a while, before I answer questions."
"…I'll do my best," Shinju said, sitting back in her seat and mentally bracing herself, suppressing a shiver of sheer confused tension. If this turned out to line up with the story Homari heard, she... wasn't sure what she'd do.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"My people, the Mau, originated on the planet Mau, which you could say is close to this solar system, but only from the perspective of the Dimensional Sea as a whole. But I, personally, was born in a space station orbiting Jupiter. The reason this sounds impossible is that the more relevant question isn't
where the Senshi and I are from, but
when. Thousands of years ago, humanity spanned the stars and had colonized all the planets of the Solar System. They were all bound together as part of what was formally called the Celestial Dominion. The Dominon was sometimes- and more helpfully to us today- thought of as the Lunar Empire. 'Lunar,' because though humanity did originate from the planet Earth, the center of human civilization had long, long since moved to Earth's moon. And that civilization had expanded to include and integrate other species, such as my own. They…
we lived in a society that exemplified the pinnacle of science and magic… and what
wonders we had."
Artemis fell silent for a time. Then one of the desk's drawers opened by telekinesis. A sheaf of pictures floated out from the drawer, fanning out to spread out across the walls and ceiling. Shinju looked around as the pictures drifted slowly around the room. There were intricate schematics covered with High Lunar notation. There were diagrams showing human anatomy overlayed with a network of blue lines- some of those lines hauntingly familiar to Shinju from her own studies, but many of them not. There were vehicles that seemed to adhere more to art than any sort of engineering Shinju could think of. There were vessels floating against the starry background of space with arrays of what she could only call masts and sails jutting out at every angle, even if they looked nothing like the wood and canvas of Earthly sailing ships.
And then the pictures of people appeared. A ballroom full of dancing people in strange flowing outfits. A parade of women, dressed in styles that reminded Shinju strikingly of Pretty Cures, with what looked like tiny spirits floating overhead. And at last, Shinju found herself feeling compelled to stare a picture of seven cats with crescent moons on their foreheads. One small white kitten waved at the camera, and Shinju's eyes widened in recognition as her gaze returned to Artemis.
"This… this is incredible," Shinju said. "And the Sailor Senshi were…?"
Artemis needed a long moment to shake himself out of reverie, so long that Shinju began to realize that this, too, was evidence that this wasn't all some elaborate trick at her expense. Finally, the cat- the Mau- found words.
"They were members of planetary royal families. Descendants of soul lineages bound to the mana reserves of their homeworlds. The Lunar Empire's greatest defenders." Artemis answered. "Through their work, under their protection, the Empire knew a long peace and a deep prosperity that stretched across a span of time longer than anything I've found in the surviving recorded history of this era. So long that we called it the Silver MIllennium, and that was an understatement. With all that time and space to grow and develop in, the Lunar Empire made advancements that, so far as I know, were never matched before or since. With such security, it became a center of diplomacy and culture, forming treaties and exchanging envoys with fairy realms and other solar systems across a huge stretch of the Dimensional Sea. "
Shinju gulped. "Wow. So, are you saying that the Senshi are actually thousands of years old?"
"…Not exactly. True, I was alive thousands of years ago. But I only
lived for a very few of those years, before I was sealed into the cryogenic pod that froze me and kept me safe during… during the Fall."
And at that, Artemis' ears drooped. His entire posture drooped. "For all of the Lunar Empire's strength, there were some forces that even it could not safely destroy. A combination of disastrous accidents led to the creation of a monstrous god-like being inside the sun, one that was later named Metalia. While there seemed to be no safe path to destroy this demon god, the Sun itself formed an effective prison… until Beryl, Royal Shaman of the Earth Kingdom, chose to betray all of humanity. In secret, she raised up an army of youma, a Dark Kingdom that launched a simultaneous attack on all planets of the Solar System. In the chaos, the seals on the Sun were released, Metalia was freed, and…"
Quite abruptly, the pictures floating around the room stopped in mid-air, then flew together to a point on the ceiling and dropped neatly into a pile at Artemis' side. "And it was all gone. The space station colonies like the one I was born on were smashed into debris, crashing into the planets or hurled away into the void of deep space. The planets themselves turned from living worlds of magic into dead balls of gas and rock. And though it seems that life on the Earth itself was spared, civilization was reduced to… well, you know what things were like at the beginning of your own recorded history. The phrase 'bombed into the Stone Age' comes to mind." Artemis shakes his head.
"That's… that's awful," Shinju said. Having heard the version of the story that Homari had relayed had diminished the raw impact of it, but it was still a lot to take in. "So, what, you, the Senshi, and the remnants of the Dark Kingdom all ended up waking up at around the same time?"
"…Something like that, yes," Artemis answered. "Ideally, we could focus everything we have on restoring the Earth and the rest of the solar system back to its former glory. But we're starting from scraps, and the Dark Kingdom is actively trying to finish its work in destroying humanity, so stopping them has to be our top priority for now."
"And what about the foes of the Pretty Cures? The Dark Fall and Labyrinth and all the others? Why are they suddenly popping up?"
"During the Silver Millennium, Earth was the nexus of many interdimensional portals leading to different fairy realms. But in recent times, the Dimensional Sea around the Earth has become calmer. Whereas once only a few of those portals were navigable, now more and more of them can reconnect to Earth, and in some cases to each other. This has given otherworldly tyrants better access to Earth than they've had in ages, and sparked conflicts among the fairy realms. The Pretty Cures are more specialized in handling those crises. We've been doing our best to help by helping them get set up and providing emergency assistance when they call for it. Much like what happened last Sunday, with the incidents in Uminari and Yotsuba City."
Shinju fought down the urge to flinch, at the reminder of her own thoughts on Onogoro's inaction in those crises. She found herself scrambling for something to say, and finally a thought struck her.
"It's... inconvenient that all this is happening at the same time, I suppose."
Artemis gave that strange near-human laugh once again, sounding a little bit wild-edged. "You're telling me..."
"It's good that you're all available to help each other... but one thing still puzzles me. In one of Sailor Moon's speeches, she mentioned something about 'potential candidates' coming forward for the remaining Senshi, and later you said that there was a vanishingly slim chance of anyone in our class being a Senshi. Are you saying that some of the Sailor Senshi... didn't make it to the cryogenic pods in time?"
"That... is... classified, you might say." Artemis stood back up on the desk. "But if a Senshi failed to survive the Fall, then we know enough to predict that their planet-aligned soul would be reincarnated into the remnant of humanity that still lives here on Earth. They wouldn't necessarily remember their past lives, but their mana reserves and magical affinities would clearly mark them as successors to the Senshi's legacy."
"I see," Shinju said, trying to mentally digest all this new information. "Thank you for sharing all this with me; I imagine it must be… painful to revisit."
Artemis smiled slightly, though his voice was sad. "I find that it helps to think of it as having more people who know that my people, my civilization, ever existed in the first place. And to think that we're doing our best to make a world that they'd be proud of. But I hope this has better impressed upon you the importance of what we're doing here. And why I'm so certain about the feasibility of wide-spread magic."
Shinju took a deep breath, trying to clear her head of racing thoughts. "I do... From what you say, you've lived it, after all." Then she stopped to look at the pile of pictures. By happenstance, the anatomical diagram was at the top of the stack, and it seemed to have Japanese kanji written down the left-hand side of the page. A name. She peered more closely at the picture, then turned to Artemis. "Sorry if I'm prying, but who's Kasai Kawagawa? Is he a doctor or something?"
Artemis turned to look at the stack of pictures. "What? Oh, I see. No, he's not a doctor. He's a young policeman who was Awakened with an affinity for, of all things,
Explosion a few weeks ago. He's had troubles working with that, because he was very invested in making sure he'd never risk building up explosion mana without a safe way to release it. So we sent him a copy of this diagram and a series of exercises to practice releasing sparks from different parts of his body. Hands, elbows, knees, bottoms of his feet, even exhaling it like dragon's breath from his mouth."
Shinju couldn't help herself. That caught her curiosity. "That sounds… very forward-thinking of him. Responsible. I mean, I'd imagine that if someone somehow had an Explosion affinity, they'd start wanting to focus on making the biggest boom." Shinju nearly added a thought about how that sounded like it'd give him flexibility down the road, but stifled it; Akiza wouldn't feel confident enough predicting that. She peered at the diagram. Parts of it
did look familiar, like an extension of what she'd already seen in texts on magical medicine. Then her mind caught up with parts of what Professor Artemis had said. "Wait. Did you say he Awakened a few weeks ago? Tracing out your mana pathways to access those release points seems… a little advanced." Certainly, Akiza herself hadn't been taught anything like that- though Shinju had a notion of it.
Artemis scoffed. "Cadet Kawagawa didn't know how to release energy safely, but he happens to have…
unusually intimate knowledge about how explosive mana can travel and be stored within his body. The only silver lining of his encounter with the Ministry of Onogoro..." He sounded angry when he spoke that last sentence, angry enough that perhaps he was saying more than he planned to. But from Shinju's perspective...
jackpot.
Steady, Shinju. You knew this was coming eventually. Remember, Akiza has no preconceptions, and she's taking the Senshi at their word.
"Ministry of Onogoro? I remember that when Sailor Moon first saved me from the Zakenna, she said to stay away from anyone calling themselves "the Ministry." And after the Night Market news, I heard on the radio that MCAT was asking members of the 'Organization Onogoro' to come forward to, what was it... 'peacefully resolve the troubles facing the Japanese people.' Something like that. Were they talking about the same thing?"
Artemis sighed. "Dammit, we're not supposed to talk about… No. No, I'd better. After all, they're part of the 'risks' you'll be facing as an employee. You need to know about them. We may be forced to start mentioning them in our Introduction to Magic class as well. One of their mages tried to hypnotize two girls who were coming to visit Crystal Millennium just yesterday, after all. That was across town, so it doesn't mean they're besieging us somehow, but even if it was a chance encounter, it means we have to worry about that."
Shinju blinked. "Were the girls okay?"
"Yes, they were fine; the Onogoro man was chased off. But now to give you your warning. You learned your Awakening ritual- and some working spells- from that old book you found. A book written not in High Lunar or some other ancient extraterrestrial language, but in Japanese. Logically, this implies some form of magical community in Japan that was already here before we showed up, before MCAT was founded. The people who created the Night Market, and who wrote large parts of the 'Beginner's Primer on Magic' books we use here. Magic does not come all, or only, from the rebirth of ancient interstellar civilizations. Some of that knowledge survived the Fall, or was rediscovered afterwards, and so magic was already here all along. All of this, you have likely already guessed."
What would Akiza say? Shinju nodded slowly. "More or less, though not quite in so many words."
"What you would not have guessed so easily is that in Japan, all this pre-existing magic has been under the domination of an organization calling itself the Imperial Ministry of Onogoro. Since their founding roughly six hundred years ago as a hidden offshoot of the regular Japanese government, they have seen themselves as an independent nation-within-a-nation, with a mandate to police magic in Japan, to control the youkai, and to do their part in a worldwide effort to hide the truth of magic from the public at large, which they call 'the Masquerade.'"
Akiza would be wide-eyed, shocked, and would be forgiven for not interrupting, so Shinju could just listen. Somehow, she didn't think she'd like where this was going.
"There are two things it's important to keep in mind when talking about Onogoro. The first is that some of their goals may have seemed more understandable when they first adopted them than they do today. When Onogoro was founded, the youkai were far more numerous and powerful than they are today. And especially during the Sengoku period, there were... other factors... corrupting and empowering a certain fraction of the youkai. That, so far as we understand it, seems to have been resolved, and mostly not by Onogoro- but much damage was already. Likewise, their reasons for staying in hiding. Onogoro had very good reasons to stay hidden from the Shogunate for the first few generations of their existence, as the Shogunate would have wanted them dead for political reasons having nothing to do with magic. And after generations in hiding, the idea of limiting the rest of the Japanese public from accessing magic of their own would seem attractive, if only to make it easier for them to go on concealing themselves."
Professor Artemis let that sink in for a while, and at last Shinju nodded, wondering if she could find a way to corroborate that 'corruption' story. It would make a convenient excuse for a lot of known historical events.
'Oh, yes, those were the BAD kind of youkai, they're not around anymore!
After thinking it over for a moment, Shinju nodded. "And the other thing you'd like me to keep in mind?"
"That most modern-day citizens of Onogoro are just regular people. They just go about their business, treat their neighbors more or less kindly, and pay their taxes on time. The only real difference is that they've been raised to view the Ministry's rules and limitations as the right and natural way for them to act."
Shinju grimaced. "I sense a 'but' coming."
"There is."
"…And I think I remember someone telling me that nothing someone says before the word 'but' really counts."
Artemis wriggled in what Shinju could only imagine as the feline equivalent of a shrug, then answered her. "Decide for yourself.
But the Ministry's precepts and self-imposed isolation have put them out of touch with the values of modern Japan. The youkai under their 'care' are either enslaved and forced to perform degrading or dangerous work, or trapped in reservations, many of which seem designed to make them as miserable as possible. If anyone from public Japan happens to witness magic, their agents think nothing of breaking into people's homes and erasing their memories. Worst of all, in the face of multiple magical incursions, they seem to operate under the idea that the Senshi and MCAT trying to educate and protect mundane Japan regarding magical threats is somehow
worse than the factions that are actively trying to murder everyone. From what we've seen so far, they seem to focus more of their resources on opposing us than on fighting off the incursions."
What Akiza would likely say, Shinju now found herself forced to admit. "That… sounds really bad," But. But. "Are you sure that this isn't just some major misunderstanding?"
"I wish it were. Do you know why the Diet decided to create MCAT? It's because the Ministry had been so secretive and non-responsive that so far as we know, no one in the Diet even know that there
was any existing body in Japan with the training or inclination to handle magic. This was after the Tokyo police had found out about multiple Dark Kingdom front operations preying on non-magical citizens and sent their own- entirely non-magical, magic-unaware- special response teams to raid the sites."
Shinju felt the blood drain from her face. That sounded even more like the makings of a horror story than unrestrained youkai mingling with classrooms full of unprepared novices.
"What... what happened?"
Professor Artemis' voice is grim, very grim indeed. "To their everlasting credit, the police managed to capture two of the three youma involved. In one case, by sheer force of non-magical numbers and weapons. In the other two cases, the youma were able to use magic to kill many policemen. One escaped, and the other was stopped only because two of the policemen spontaneously awakened and manifested limited magic of their own."
"When was this?"
I didn't even know. Why wasn't I told?
"I believe the bloodless capture was around April 29
th, the other two encounters happened a week earlier. With twenty or so highly trained, heavily armed officers dead at the hands of unknown powers they'd thought were the stuff of fiction and myth, and with no knowledge that there was anyone out there for them to call, you can see why the Diet was very receptive to the idea of founding MCAT. And why they put it under the leadership of the first magical being to reach out to them. This was no misunderstanding. This was a direct consequence of Onogoro's own decisions and policies over a period of centuries. And it was not long after that time that the Senshi's first hostile encounter with Onogoro agents made it rather clear what their attitude toward mundane Japan was like. Again, beyond reasonable possibility of misunderstanding."
"First hostile encounter?" Shinju asked. "What happened?"
Artemis wriggle-shrugged again. "First, I should explain that this was before Crystal Millennium itself was founded, and I myself was working independently at the time. I wasn't personally involved, but I know the story from others. As context, back in April, the Dark Kingdom took over a company called the Cinderella Caravan as part of one of their life-energy harvesting schemes. This company was owned by Alice Yotsuba, who was naturally surprised to discover that her employees had been hypnotized into working in a mindless trance and her head manager had been replaced with a murderous youma."
This sounded like it was going to turn into another horror story. Shinju couldn't help but gulp again, as Artemis continued.
"She, like the Diet, was completely unaware of Onogoro's existence, let alone how to contact them for help. As I understand it, she found herself isolated and in hiding in the manager's office in a building otherwise entirely populated by the youma and their enslaved victims. Needless to say, she was greatly relieved when the Sailor Senshi showed up and drove away the youma. So young Ms. Yotsuba decided to pledge her support to the best (and at the time,
only) group she thought capable of confronting the monsters that were invading Japan. In early May, there was a… transaction between the newly formed MCAT and the Yotsuba Media Group, which ended up providing the 'seed money' for the Crystal Millennium."
A small part of Shinju's brain noted that this might be useful intelligence. A larger part was tracking the horrible sinking feeling in her stomach, the realization that the entire situation in Japan had gone horribly wrong. Wrong in a way that, now that she thought about it, was
completely predictable. In a situation like this, with unsubtle and uncontained enemies like the Dark Kingdom becoming active and opposed by vigilantes. She, herself, might have predicted this exact sequence of events, in theory at least, if someone had asked her the right questions six months ago.
The predictable consequences...
Professor Artemis seemed to sense that Shinju was troubled, even if hopefully he could not guess why. "So. The transaction. The Ministry of Onogoro somehow caught wind of it. And so two of their agents decided to sneak into the home of Alice's father, who I must remind you is one of the most famous and respected businessmen in Japan. They hypnotized him, interrogated him, and compelled him to write a 'letter of introduction' allowing them to attend Alice's next meeting with the Senshi posing as 'board members.' Seeing this as a case of unaffiliated 'demon hunters' independent of Onogoro getting corporate-level funding and publicity, the Onogoro agents had decided that this was not a problem of opposing the Dark Kingdom, but of preventing a threat to the Masquerade. Therefore, the Agents were planning on erasing everyone's memory of any encounters with magic. Of course, had they succeeded, you can see how this would have proved disastrous for the Sailor Senshi, and for Japan as a whole."
Wait. WAIT. Mistress Sato mentioned something about this, back when the team convinced her to allow the monster-hunting assignment. This pair of agents failed. They got captured by the Senshi during this meeting, and then tried and failed to erase the memories and evidence of magic at the police station they were taken to...
She made herself nod slowly, trying to look as though she was horrified at the thought of monsters and magical disasters, not at the realization that all this was predictable. This, of all times, was no moment to blow her cover. Finally, she found words.
"I... yes, yes it would. Though if they didn't know who or what the Sailor Senshi were, they would have thought they were dealing with a bunch of ordinary amateurs, wouldn't they? People working with magic they didn't understand. Like I... might have been, with just my book. Maybe they thought they were doing the right thing by keeping unprepared people from chasing after monsters..."
Wait, did that sound too sympathetic. Damn it, it probably did. Too much like...
Artemis sighed. "I wish that were the case. I really do. If that had been the heart of their reasoning, we- well, the Senshi who were there- could have come to terms with the agents on the spot. And, perhaps, with Onogoro as a whole. But from what they did, I cannot imagine that their motives were so... reasonable. To begin with, their Plan Number One was to use their cover specifically to try and secure the seed money for themselves, not only erasing the memories but also robbing Miss Yotsuba of a considerable sum of money. More importantly, after their first memory-erasing spell failed and they were discovered as infiltrators- again, this was before anyone at the meeting except the agents themselves knew Onogoro existed- their Plan Number Two was rather worse.
That plan was to throw an oni-grade binding charm at Miss Yotsuba, a twelve year old girl with no magic of her own. One of the agents remarked that they expected the charm to crush her to death in a matter of minutes."
"They did what!?" Shinju exclaimed. "But… why would… WHAT!?"
Artemis' voice had taken on a low, almost gentle, almost storytelling tone, as he revealed one horrible thing after another now. Shinju could not find the will to interrupt.
"Their intent, which they explained in so many words, was to force the Senshi to surrender and voluntarily submit to memory erasure. Luckily, Sailor Mars intercepted the charm, and was able to break out of it by sheer physical force. After this, the Onogoro agents were secured and handed over to the Tokyo police. But this led to its own crisis. Unbeknownst to the Sailor Senshi, the TMPD had already been infiltrated by a third Onogoran, seemingly more skilled than the other two. We now believe was one of the elite agents known as 'Empty Faces,' who seem to have the power to mask their presence from all observers. The Empty Face contacted the other agents after they were imprisoned in their cells, and together the three of them hatched a scheme to erase all evidence of the Dark Kingdom's crimes- and Onogoro's involvement- from the police station. This plan included stealing a frozen youma from storage- the one captured by the two freshly awakened police officers in the earlier raid in April. It also involved inciting the rank and file into a frenzy with some kind of enraging mind virus, and worst of all, attempting to assassinate the police superintendent who was personally leading the response against the Dark Kingdom. This, they intended to do by subjecting Cadet Kawagawa- you may remember him- to a spell that flooded all his dormant, untrained magic circuits with mana so far beyond his capacity to hold or release that he effectively became a human time bomb." Artemis glanced down at the anatomy diagram. "The poor soul had nightmares for weeks, and that was before he Awakened to an affinity that perfectly lined up with his traumatic experience. It's a wonder he's willing to touch his magic at all."
Shinju simply stared at Artemis, eyes wide with horror.
"Luckily, all their plans were thwarted by the sudden arrival of the Sailor Senshi, who were there by happenstance to check up on the first two agents. The Empty Face managed to escape after fighting Sailor Mars in hand-to-hand, but the other two were remanded into MCAT's custody." Shinju remained utterly silent, unsure what to say or even to think, as Artemis stopped and padded over to a saucer of water on his desk, taking a drink. And then Artemis continued, looking at Shinju very directly. "I tell you this story in such detail so that you understand what the Ministry's attitude toward public Japan is like. They may claim that the Masquerade is required to keep the people of Japan safe, but their actions show that they feel entitled to run roughshod over any man, woman, or child in public Japan that they see as being in their way. Now, if you happen to encounter regular Onogoro citizens, then they may be genuinely reasonable. They may even be supportive of what we're doing here, or at least tolerant and not immediately dangerous. But if you happen to encounter any agent of the Onogoro shadow government, then they are not to be trusted, and you should do your best to extract yourself from that situation as safely as possible. Because from our experience, the best you can hope for is to be left as a brainwashed wreck whose dreams of a career as a magician have been forgotten, and at worst you may be expended as a suicide bomb. Do you understand?"
"I… yes, I understand," Shinju said, nodding weakly.
"I know this is a lot to take in, but you're entering a wider world of magic now, and you need to be aware of both its benefits and its dangers," Artemis said, softly. "If you need to take some time to think things over…"
And for some reason, Shinju found that giving the answer Akiza would give felt very natural in the moment. "No, I… I'm still onboard to do this. This has been a lot, but… I think I can manage. All this stuff was true before I came here today. I just… need to adjust to the world as it is, not as I thought it was." She took a deep breath. "I can bring my paperwork and start on Monday, if that's alright with you. Thank you very much for this opportunity; I'll do my best to make sure you don't regret it."
"…I very much doubt that I'll regret hiring you, Akiza. I think we'll end up doing great things together," Artemis said. "Be sure to pick up an application form from the receptionist on your way out; Miss Yotsuba is very strict that we file everything properly. Oh, one last thing. The next batch of intermediate spells for you to 'review' may include some spells involving light. It's likely that you're already skilled enough to replicate their effects with your elementalism. But I encourage you to learn the High Lunar versions anyway. There are some very remarkable things you can do with a good grasp of the formalism and underlying theory."
Still shaken, Shinju stood up, trying to restrict herself to simple, safe things to say. "Duly noted, Professor, And... thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I'll see you tomorrow, then."
Gods, what a roller coaster! Getting the perfect cover for further observation, then learning that 'antediluvian alien' story was real, realizing that... that the Masquerade had backfired because of the Dark Kingdom. And then that wretched… what was WRONG with those Agents? Why would they pick the most monstrous option every single time? How had they not gotten fired before this? Did Mistress Sato know how bad-
Shinju's thoughts came to halt. Wait. She
did know. Mistress Sato might have argued against the evidence-destroying operation at the police station, or she might have been unaware of some details, but she
would have known the broad outlines of the plan and the mission parameters. Maybe the Agents went 'off-book' or… no, they wouldn't dare do that if an Empty Face was directly overseeing the operation. So, all that stuff was… within their mission parameters? Because either Artemis was lying, or…
Shinju slapped her cheeks. Later.
Later. Right now, she needed to concentrate on simple things. Practical things. Like writing down all her thoughts. Like relaying what she'd learned to the Team. Like figuring out what leads to follow up with from there. LIke anything
but this... this...
this, like the churning seas in her suddenly troubled heart. There was still so much to do, to maintain.
She stood up and started heading back toward the stairwell.
This will probably be a busy week for us. Oh well, at least Monday should be simple.
