The Silver Age

Epilogue

Pluto watched the the shifting streams of time as they flowed through the Time Gate door. The little swirls gave her flashes of stories, but it was difficult to tell, if she wasn't using her powers, whether these glimpses were the future, the past, the present, or a time that would never be.

The Moon Kingdom had fallen. Pluto had seen the different futures that had awaited the end of Serenity's rule. What she had never told the queen was that they all ended the same way.

But there was something infinitely more important about the death of the Moon Kingdom and its last monarch. Something truly significant. Serenity, though she hadn't realized it, was the last of the avatars of the Moon Goddess, Selene. Her daughter, Princess Serenity, would become queen again someday, but not of the Moon - or not entirely - and she would never be the goddess' avatar.

The gods had a different design. Pluto, as one of them, was privy to the intricacies of this living tapestry they wove with strands of fate and eternity.

The secret she had harbored from the queen, one of her oldest friends, and the rest of the galaxy at large was that their daughters were not the chosen avatars of their respective guardian gods and goddesses, as had been the case for thousands upon thousands of years. There was a reason all the sailor soldiers had been born the princesses of their planets. Even Mercury, who wasn't supposed to have a soul.

Since the birth of Princess Serenity, and even before that time, events had been conspiring to bring about something entirely new, and yet very ancient. The gods and goddesses, those powerful beings who had retired eons earlier when they found they could no longer live with humans who worshipped or feared them, and always misunderstood them, had decided to reincarnate themselves. To place themselves into the fabric of time and space in finite bodies.

And so, as Pluto herself knew, being the first of them - Chronos' natural daughter, willingly dwelling among mortals - the newest sailor soldiers were much more than avatars. They were the deities themselves. Parvati, Menhit, Oya, Namaka, or Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury - whatever mortals called them or would call them again in the future Earth - their souls were those of the original beings who first chose to bestow their powers on mortal champions from their chosen planets and worlds. to defend love, justice, and the holy light of life against the corruption of the shadow of chaos.

But now...

Pluto tensed with worry as she watched the Time Stream ripple.

The senshi, including Sailor Moon, might never recall who they really were as goddesses - this was the price the Ancient Ones had paid in order to incarnate themselves. But she had hoped that Serenity's prayer that all of them would be reincarnated in the future, to save the future, would have been made just a little easier by leaving them with their memories of this life.

But the extent of Beryl's interference wasn't something even Pluto had foreseen. When the gods had first suggested that they might be able to save humanity from its inevitably bleak destiny, from the threat of the dangerous being that only called herself Metallia and many other names, by entering time themselves, Pluto had scanned the various futures and concocted a plan.

She had expected trouble, and that the destruction of this time line would be necessary, but she had not expected Beryl's twisted yet faithful love for Endymion (himself the reincarnation of an earth deity) to warp the silver crystal's power so that the senshi would not remember their Silver Millennium lives.

It would make everything so much more difficult, and she could do nothing to help.

She was drawn to the soft glow of the star crystals as they bobbed outside the Time Stream and the Galaxy Cauldron; she felt a small peace. Surely, when they had all sacrificed so much, especially those deities who had taken on the roles of the Shitennou in this life, they would finally be rewarded.

Pluto sighed, seeing the crystals glow and wink at each other.

Only time would tell.

A.N. Thanks so much to those who've stuck with this story. I'm glad it's finished. :)

Thanks again.