Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takeuchi, Koudansha, TV Asahi, Toei Douga and DIC.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is the property of Hideako Anno, GAINAX, Project EVA, TXV, and NAS.
This fanfic is based on some really crazy ideas. Please don't try to do anything unusual with it, such as redistribute it or charge money for it. Your mind might be irreparably damaged.

Beryl paced. The new Queen of Earth was, for the first time in years, unsure of her path. What, after all, would she do with the power, once she had taken it?

Her counselors must have sensed her uncertainty. Cain stepped forward, speaking softly. "Remember the plan, your majesty."

Nero flanked her, matching his partner's movements. He was about to speak when a courier entered the room. The woman took no notice of Cain or Nero. After catching her breath, she said, "Some vital information from the intelligence service, my lady." She ignored Nero's outstretched hand to give the packet directly to Beryl.

Beryl opened the package and briefly scanned the papers. "Why didn't you tell me that the planets would create a countermeasure against Adam?" She glared at Cain. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

The courier looked pained. "Your majesty, if you will permit me…." Upon seeing Beryl's nod, she continued. "I've often noticed that your 'advisors' seem constrained by what you yourself know."

The Queen considered this for a moment. It was true; her advisors were rather strange. They had shown up not long after she first opened the channel and stole an infinitesimal portion of the demon's power, and it was they who had invented Beryl's grand plan. But she trusted them like she trusted herself, and in the end, that was what mattered. Her only gripe was that her advisors weren't as useful as they could have been, since everyone else refused to acknowledge their presence.

She turned back to her courier. "Tell my generals to move Adam to the South Pole. His weapons will cover half the globe from there, and our fortifications here will make up the difference." She paused, using a tiny bit of the power she'd drained from Metallia to conjure up a slowly spinning globe.

Beryl examined the globe for a moment, then waved it to a stop and put her finger on one of the islands. "Here, where she will be protected by both Adam and our fortress. Place Lillith here. Have them place a garrison there to build the containment." The courier nodded and backed quickly out of the room.

"I still don't understand why we can't break the channel wide open and strip Metallia of all her power. Lillith is ready, isn't she?"

Cain smiled. "We must wait until we can control the creature. Don't you remember what we told you? We'll be putting the power of a demon-goddess into that construct. It has no control of its own. If you cannot control Lillith, you'd be better off releasing Metallia herself. And who knows what atrocities you'd be forced to commit then?" Consoled, Beryl let the papers drop to the floor. They'd be picked up by one of her staff and filed away in their proper place. The Queen walked off to play her flute, still clad in her delusions. The rot continued its subtle work, destroying the already-tenuous pathways of her thoughts. And far away, the thing known as Metallia continued working her delicate spell.

Mars finished inscribing the final triplets of the binding spell and collapsed in her chair with relief. "Done, Mercury. Will we be telling Her Majesty about this now?"

The smallish woman looked sharply at her colleague before adjusting her glasses. "I know you're upset about the secrecy, Mars, but you and I both know that Serenity would never have approved this solution. Nevertheless, it needed to be done."

"Of course, of course. Neutralize Adam and place the Prince back on his throne. That weapons platform has to be taken out if we're to strike at Beryl. Even once we've taken her out, the only way to eliminate the taint of Beryl is to rewrite reality. But I wish there were a better way. I wish we didn't have to construct these beasts you call Angels. I wish Serenity was right in believing that the negotiations would work out. I just wish… I wish we didn't have to worry about these things; that the kingdom would last forever without such problems. And then I pull myself back to reality." She stood. "Come on. We must tell the Queen at once. They'll be attacking soon."

As she followed Mars out of the chamber, Mercury looked back for a moment at the Angels, the future saviors of humanity. Already the spell was slowly weakening, though it would last for millennia yet until the Angels were released. Mercury turned her back upon the Angels and strode out, face firm, as the fourteenth of her creations began its thunderous attack upon the barrier.

Lightning crashed through the atmosphere of the Moon. Serenity knelt over the fallen bodies of Mars and Mercury. They had been hit by one of Beryl's attacks at precisely the instant they teleported in. Placing a hand on each forehead, she set about seeking the fading life within. She found it, holding it long enough for the women to deliver their final report to the Queen they'd misled. Saddened, Serenity watched their lives spiral downward. Suddenly, pulled out of their bodies, caught by her spell, saved to live again. She stood, crying slightly, and set about her final preparations. Beryl was coming. Serenity would lose, but not without a battle.

The battle raged across the barren, inhospitable land. The casual viewer would be forgiven for his initial assumptions. What chance would a lone girl in a white dress have against the slavering humanoid monster she faced? But the girl was Princess Serenity, reborn heir of the Moon Kingdom, and she had just come into her power. And with that power came memories; memories of a warning that came too late and a last desperate plan that was never put into action. She poured her mind into the crystal floating before her. Energies clawed and bit at the stuff of reality, separating the power out of the creature before her, refining it, and storing it away in the container prepared for it. A beam of focused light, somehow carrying something more than photons, emerged from the crystal and penetrated to the core of the beast, turning it to dust.

"Come, Serenity, let us go to the moon." She turned to see her reborn love, Endymion, holding out his hand.

She shook her head. "No. This isn't over, and will not be for many years. We must wait." And turning to the crystal, she whispered something. Slowly, ever so slowly, she and Endymion, and the bodies of her fallen friends, faded out and vanished from view.

In faraway Japan, eight families mourned. Their children were gone. It was Anno Domini 1990.

It was Anno Domini 2000. The bottom of the world was a peaceful place, Ikari Gendou thought. Lorenz stood beside him, watching the expedition, cursing the documents he held in his hand. "So many ambiguities! A translation of a translation of a translation, gone through how many people's hands!"

Ikari sighed. "What do you think; will we succeed in obtaining Adam?"

"Of course not!" Lorenz scoffed. "That much, at least, is obvious. Adam was never designed to be controlled. The scrolls themselves say that. 'You'd have a better chance of flying to the moon with your arms!' And these are the people who created Adam. No, it is almost time to leave here and prepare, Ikari."

Ikari Gendou pushed his glasses up his nose and gazed across the horizon, looking for the resting place of Adam. He would be the first Angel.

Angels. Messengers of God, if there were such a thing. God seemed singularly unhappy with humanity, Ikari Shinji thought, if He sent the mindless things to kill everyone and then allowed humans to defend themselves. But then, perhaps humanity deserved it.

The year was Anno Domini 2015. Fifteen years before, mortal man had tampered with something that he ought not to have known about. Adam had awoken and cataclysm had shaken the Earth. Old men in possession of documents older still had turned a nation on its side for one purpose: Evangelion.

Ikari Shinji was a pilot. That is to say, he voluntarily locked himself inside a soulless creature constructed from a being designed to destroy humanity and lent his meager willpower to the task of slaying Angels. This he did mainly because his father saw no other use for him.

He was also a human, though this was of considerably less importance to his father, and like most humans, he dreamt. On this night, his first night in a human body for over a month, he dreamed the same dream he had had thirteen times before.

He did not understand why she spoke in his dreams, nor why she only came on the nights after he had killed with Evangelion. He did not care. For the moment, at least, he was away from the merciless world and she, at least, seemed superhuman in her love, compassion, and hope. That last was what made him welcome these dreams. Hope was in short supply, out there in the waking world.

A woman, clothed only in a simple white gown, appeared before him. She told him stories of what once was and stories of what was to come, if humanity survived its current trial. She was a sad woman, or so she seemed to him, for she was always on the verge of tears when she told these stories. It puzzled him. Her stories were always full of joy and happiness and though he never remembered the dreams upon waking, even during the day he longed for that intangible faraway place.

But this time was different. Perhaps it was because of his long absence, or perhaps it was due to something else, but this time he discovered the reason for her tears. She told him what had happened so many thousands of years ago, and what had happened a quarter of a century ago. She told him of the living storehouse of energy, imprisoned beneath NERV. "Lillith", she called it, a being created to house energy, capable of being used by anyone with the proper knowledge, for good or for ill. She told him of how she had watched his mother enter the Evangelion and vanish, and how her DNA had been merged with something of Lillith, and used to create Rei.

Rei. He listened harder then. The lady told him about NERV and other cryptic names, SEELE and GEHERIN. She told him about the awakening of Adam and the plans to control humanity's future. She told him about the soul of an ancient madwoman and the genes of his obsessed mother, joined together in a blue-haired girl who was already learning to open the doors of her heart and who would someday soon be a part of ancient Archimedes' lever. She would help to move the world. And she would not forget. And she would — the lady's voice grew louder in obvious anticipation — be either the very last human or else the very first in such a long, long time.

Here the woman said many confusing things about what would come, a continuation of the stories she had previously told him. He didn't listen this time. He was busy in his thoughts, wondering about himself, and the two girls who were also pilots, and the future. The woman must have noticed his distraction. She stopped talking and simply watched him for a while. Finally, she spoke. "Do not be concerned, Shinji. Whether the future will be good or ill, all three of you will have a part to play." And he smiled, and thought of Rei, after the Angels.

And again, he remembered nothing. Nothing of importance, anyway. It didn't matter. It was not as if he could prevent the end of the world.

It was the end of the world. Shinji stood in the midst of nothingness, standing only by his own frame of reference. He had seen possibilities; he had seen himself. It was the end.

He closed his eyes. Nothing changed. His eyes didn't exist. He didn't exist. Words didn't exist. Concepts didn't exist. Existence didn't exist.

"No." The voice was impossible. Nothing existed. He remembered the voice, remembered it from memories that didn't exist, couldn't exist, shouldn't exist. Memories that existed.

"Do you trust me, Shinji?" The woman stood before him, clothed in white, clothed in light, clothed in existence.

"Do you trust me?" The voice was calm and simple. No accusation, no demand, no expectation existed in that voice. Merely a question. A very important question.

He remembered her stories of past and future, of a kingdom that once was and might someday be again. He remembered her.

He nodded. He had a head to nod with, and a neck to move the head with, and a body against which to nod. He had surroundings and light in which the nod could be seen. He opened his eyes. He was outside, in a field of green, with a blue sky overhead. Buildings of purest crystal stood in the distance, on the site of the first Tokyo, somehow freed from the ocean. Rei and Asuka were there. Misato, Ritsuko. Pen-pen. Kaji. His father. His mother. And the lady. The Princess. He knew that now. She stood before him, she and her consort, she and her company. He bowed himself before her.

"Thank you, Shinji."

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007