Queen Serenity tried to support herself on a piece of rubble.
Everything was gone. The palace...the kingdom, her daughter...and soon her own life would be forfeit as well. She’d not been able to seal away Beryl and the rest of her self-proclaimed Dark Kingdom quickly enough, and had suffered what she was certain would prove a mortal wound.
Her eyes went back to the body of her daughter, as well as the Earth Prince she’d slain herself for.
She only hoped her daughter’s new life would have a happier ending. Serenity focused her magic; the seal hadn’t been strong enough, a consequence of her wounds and her grief. She wanted to give her daughter a second chance, and knew that even with the threat of the Dark Kingdom this spell would be her best hope.
She continued trying to work the spell, using the power of the Ginzuishou to work the spell. A quick glance at her wound, and the blood pooling only served to hasten her attempt. She needed more time, a few more minutes and she’d save them. Her daughter, her guardians, they’d all be safe in the future.
She felt consciousness leaving her, and redoubled her efforts. The spell would have been done by now had she not been wounded, and now her time was running out.
Serenity felt her life bleeding out of her, too quickly she wasn’t sure if the spell would work. She needed more time, it wasn't finished, and yet she knew she would have to cast if she had any hope of sending the Senshi forward.
Setsuna stopped the scene playing on the gates. Already painfully aware of the outcome.
The queen had failed in her spell; the Senshi had not been allowed to resurrect in the modern day, it turned out most of the planets had been ravaged, to the point where it would be impossible to sustain life on most if not all of them. At least not until Terra could regain the technology to make them survivable.
Terra itself had been sent into a veritable dark age, with magic and technology being lost to the ruins of time and only in relatively recent years being regained to some extent.
Now the seal was breaking; she’d already had to discreetly slay some low power Youma that had slipped through the barrier.
She knew that a few had slipped by her, making it back to the Dark kingdom before she could take care of them. Setsuna knew she would need a plan.
Things would have been simpler had the Queen’s spell worked and allowed the Senshi to resurrect. She’d looked into alternate timelines, timelines in which she had a utopian dream to work towards that would bring about a new age of peace and prosperity.
Unfortunately, such a thing was impossible without the Serenity Line, the guardian of time knew it was best to focus on her timeline instead of wasting time longing for more advantageous circumstances.While she could handle much of the youma herself, her duty was primarily to guard the gates, a duty she couldn’t ignore lightly, and one that hunting after youma drastically interfere with. She’d had time- too much time probably-to think on the issue, and unfortunately, her mind kept going back to one possible solution.
There were others. However, she’d dismissed them all for one reason or another.
The thought of going back in time and helping to ensure the spell had been performed, or better yet to prevent the fall in the first place had been dismissed immediately, it would be a clear violation of the rules Serenity had set for her regarding the gates.
She’d considered allowing things to simply play out, as other demon hunters appeared to have come into being, though their methods hardly compared to the effectiveness of the Senshi or those of Serenity’s line.
The gates revealed the rather...catastrophic results of that course of action, with the world ultimately being taken over by the Dark Kingdom.
Having dismissed that option she went down a more personal line, giving direct guidance to a group of demon hunters, there had been SOME merit in that plan. However, the death toll would be far too high in the end, assuming the plan worked in the first place,
That left her current running course of action, of course, it wasn’t perfect in itself, Nobody had ever been able to test if the artifacts even worked, but it was likely the most feasible.
Even then not all the artifacts were operational. With only two being usable at the moment, though the others weren’t completely unsalvageable, and could probably be operational in months, if not weeks.
She recalled the artifacts had been meant as a failsafe, one of the queen’s pet projects in case the need for more magical warriors were needed since the Senshi would only be able to do so much. Unfortunately, the research facility had been shelled from orbit before any potential candidates could be found. They had been an attempt to tap into powers outside of the Senshi’s or the Serenity line’s own powers. However they ran into a few problems that made them difficult to find users for.
The first being that the user had to hold a substantial amount of life energy, the amount of training required to get one’s energy to those levels bordering on ludicrous, and had limited their list of candidates drastically, There was also the fact that the artifacts would permanently be linked to the individual, A necessary failsafe to ensure such power didn’t end up in the hands of an enemy should the user be killed in combat.
The other primary issue was that the magic itself seemed fickle, having rejected the few candidates they had been able to find. The research base on Saturn’s moon of Rhea had failed to find viable candidates in time because of this.
Setsuna already had a list of candidates already, the world had become filled with prospects as many strange and esoteric martial arts had began to spread throughout Asia. As well as with other circumstances causing individuals with the necessary energy to come forward for one reason or another.
She brought to focus the most prominent of her candidates list, a teenager who had already had more than enough adventures to convince her of his potential.
The only question was, how to convince Ranma Saotome to accept this responsibility.
Scene end.
Alright well, this is a little plot bunny I've sat on for awhile. I need to flesh it out more before I can really write a story around it. Playing a bit loose with the canon, as one can tell from how I've made the gates function. Since I've always liked the fanon behind that better than the canon idea of it just being a time tunnel essentially. Was kinda inspired by an Ozzallos fic, A Time Apart for the original idea. Im also not as familiar with the Sailor Moon lore as I would prefer, but dont wanna completely set the lore on fire.
Primarily my problem is that Im still trying to decide precisely WHAT this new magical source would be, as opposed to the planets. As well as precisely how i want to go about it, since I have multiple ideas. The first idea was originally with the male martial artists getting magical boyified...but I also like the idea of putting Ranma into a fuku...even if he wouldn't REALLY be a Senshi. Really Im not sure on how the outfits would look in general, though im assuming that the Moon Kingdom would follow a similar theme as with the Senshi.
Then theres also the fact I kinda wanna insert some OCs in here. My current idea im chewing over is a mixed team with a mix of OCs and Nerimans.