A story set in "A Dance Set to the Music of Time" sequence

Disclaimer: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko, Koudansha, TV Asahi, and Toei Douga, and DIC. This is used without permission.

This disclaimer also applies to several intellectual properties referred to in the text. Please be guided accordingly.

There Is No Time Here:

I remember very few things, most of them only in dreams.

One of the things I remember is the fact that I do not belong here. I am not of this place of sweeping desert landscapes and alien vistas. But still there is a part of me that tells me that I do belong here… In a way.

I have been here a very long time. Time. That is a strange concept. It seemed as if it were only yesterday I found myself trudging the red sands and rescuing Kar Tharkas, my old green friend and companion.

Now, my banner flies over the city of Helium, and they call me Warmistress, inheritor of a title from the legendary John Carter, a hero that had ruled here once, long ago.

My red and white banner flies across the cities of Barsoom, even to the twin moons high above.

The red men honor me as their Queen. The green men respect my courage and prowess. The black and the white call me a Goddess. They all say that I brought with me a second Golden Age.

Yet, for all that, I am still unsatisfied.

For I have memories that trouble me.

I have dreams of learning the arts of war from a woman in white and her one-armed husband. They taught me how to fly with acrobatic leaps and gravity-defying gymnastics. My hands could shatter stone with a touch and I could rearrange the flows of vital energy with but a few choice strikes. They taught me the arts of the sword, death-dealing strikes that combine poetry and death.

I feel joy in those memories, of feeling the pleasure of achievement and of the happiness in the practice of it.

I have other dreams, of friends and enemies. Of a laughing madwoman in black facing off a hundred foemen with just a pair of what seem to be guns, though they are obviously not of Barsoomian make. Of stiff-looking men in black — invaders — withering under fire summoned by a woman. Of women dressed as I am, though in different colors, facing a horde of monsters. I dream of fire. I dream of wind and lightning. I dream of Earth shattered and a deluge of waters. I dream of ice.

But one dream comes back again and again.

I am on a field of ice, and a princess in white and a prince in black are before me. All the others have gone to their duties and I am the only one left. I had no duty to go to, so I would stay with those whom my love and loyalty rests the most.

The princess begs me to leave, for she and her love were to face the mother of all this pain and sadness.

I refuse. There is nowhere else to go. I have no ancestral duty, no holy charge to keep like all the others. I only have them, and I would stay by their side. The others have gone to the depths beneath the Ice or to the skies filled with stars. There is no place for me among them, but by the side of these two, my Princess and my Prince.

They are off to face the architect of despair, the queen of sorrows and the bringer of pain. The Mother of All Tears is waiting for them in some place across that frozen plain. I shout at her that I will not leave them, calling the Princess a fool and an idiot. There is a tinge of sadness and nostalgia in that voice, as if it were an oft-repeated ritual.

I am greeted with silence and the Prince shakes his head with a slight smile, looks at his wife and walks away, leaving the two of us in private.

The Princess bows her head and her face is in shadow, a crescent moon on the wane. For a moment, I could swear that in place of eyes, she had galaxies swirling in those blue orbs. But the moment is gone, and she looks at me again, and in a voice that held echoes of eternity within it.

"You are wrong. There are places where you are needed much more, where the Spirit of Defiance stands to shake its fist against the uncaring heavens. All they need is a champion. There are many to choose from, but since time is pressing, I will choose for you."

With that she opens her hand and I see a light that could blind the Sun and rival the stars.

That is when I usually wake up.

These dreams are all I have for memories, before I came to this land of dreaming red sands. I cherish them in my heart and take courage from them.

For I know that one day, a trumpet will sound and this dream will be ended, as all dreams end. And I will lead the tribes of red, green, black and white for a great battle of liberation, to wake my friend and her beloved from their sleep.

But as I wait for that day, I can be only what I have always been, always am and always will be. The title whispered to me in my sleep.

A Princess of Mars.

Author's notes: Oh, c'mon, don't tell me you don't hear the title 'Princess of Mars' and don't automatically think two things: Edgar Rice Burroughs's classic Mars series and Rei Hino?

Anyway, the idea has been around for a long time, I just haven't gotten a reasonable reason for an ERB/SM crossover… until now, of course.

I can suspend my disbelief at the Mars series better than in the Tarzan series, which is probably why I favor in keeping the Mars Mythos intact, while I cannibalized Tarzan's history (Well, I had to, since my outline had Michiru as a Greystoke ^_^). Anyway, as can be guessed, this is where Rei ended up during the Great Ice. All the other Senshi have stuff to do during the Great Ice, either in some pocket dimension, outer space, or roaming the Lands of Ice a la La Compagnie de Glacies. The only ones having a rest are Serenity and Endymion — mostly because of the cataclysmic final battle.

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Last revision: May 21, 2007