“World Shaker!”

“Deep Submerge!”

“Deathly Scream!”

“Final Judgement!”

The four outer solar system guardians launched their attacks as one. Their violently rotating balls of energy—resembling the planets from which they drew power—soared toward the enemies, expanded on impact, and combined their devastating explosive yield. It was as if a bomb had been dropped on the park.

“Is it…over?” Sailor Moon asked hesitantly.

In answer to her question, scores of gelatinous enemies began to emerge from the cloud of smoke and dust created by the assault. The outer soldiers engaged them immediately with their Talismans, but as visibility improved, the severity of the situation began to sink in. Despite the large number of defeated enemies surrounding the blast site, the alien Queen was producing replacement fighters at an alarming rate. She was essentially a portable army.

The inner soldiers joined the fight, and the dark park was soon alive with all the color of a firework display.

“There’s too many, Uranus,” Sailor Saturn called out as she danced across the battlefield, proficiently dissecting one creature after another with swipes of her Silence Glaive. “You should all go. I’ll use the glaive’s power.”

“No! You’re not sacrificing yourself again!” Uranus spat as she tore through her opponents with her sword.

“It’s fine, I’ll be reborn!”

“I said no! There might be a lot of these things but they’re weak. We can handle them! Besides, it’s too late for that.”

Saturn silently agreed. She might be reborn after employing her powerful sacrificial attack, but the others wouldn’t, and with this many enemies, it wouldn’t be easy for them to escape.

“Space Sword Slash!” Uranus roared. She cut the air with her bejeweled, glowing weapon, releasing a spread of flying energy blades to stem the tide of yellow creatures. The attack rent through a large section of the horde, but more quickly took their place. “You and Pluto go support Venus, the aliens are trying to flank her.”

As Saturn changed location, Neptune communicated to her partner, “Sailor Jupiter appears to be doing okay on this side. Go for the queen. I’ll clear a path.”

“Do it!” said Uranus.

“Submarine Reflection!” Neptune cried, and a stream of turquoise light burst forth from her mirror. A far-reaching segment of the horde was vaporized instantly, creating a passage for her ally.

Uranus ran like the wind, sprinting through the opening and toward the queen. Before the enemies closed around her, she jumped into the air and gathered wind energy in her palm. “World Shak-argh!”

The yellow beings below had stretchered their malleable bodies upward, grabbed the woman by the ankles, and slammed her down onto the ground.”

“Uranus!” Neptune cried. Momentarily distracted with concern for her partner, she too was captured by the enemy, several of them binding her with stretching, rope-like limbs, causing her to drop her mirror. With two soldiers restrained, the invaders swept across the battlefield.

“Crescent Be—yahhhhhhh!” Sailor Venus screamed. A pair of enemies had merged, stretched to an impressive height, and lifted her off the floor by her hair, dangling her like a hangman’s cross.

“Sailor Venus!” Pluto called out, but she and Saturn were inundated with opponents of their own, even more now that another of their allies had been immobilized.

With her hands bound behind her back by one of her captor’s arms, Venus kicked and struggled but only caused herself more pain, her golden locks threatening to detach from her scalp. A tear of frustration escaped her as she looked out across the park, unable to assist her friends in their time of need. Saturn and Pluto were only holding out due to Saturn’s defensive Silence Wall, while the mass of Jell-O monsters closed in on the others.

Flashes of lightning in the distance indicated that Makoto was still fighting, while bursts of flame illuminated Mars’ location. On closer inspection, a second light was visible in the latter’s vicinity. Venus sighed with relief as she realized Sailor Moon was invoking the power of the Silver Crystal. They were saved.

Just then, movement in the corner of her left eye caught Venus’s attention. “No,” she uttered softly, watching as the alien queen hurled herself across the park, climbing over her own soldiers to get to Sailor Moon. “She’s after the crystal!”

Venus shouted to Pluto and Saturn, “Get to Sailor Moon! Get to Sailor Moon now!” But even if they heard her pleas, they were too busy to acknowledge them let alone get to the princess in time, and Venus knew it. She renewed her struggles, screaming in agony as she tried to free her hands.

Mars! Mars was still there! She wouldn’t let that alien scum get a hold of Usagi. Yes, there she was, lit by the glow of her flaming bow. The queen dived for them, and Mars loosed her fiery arrow. It was on target, a headshot. The queen was done for. At least, she should have been, but the arrow inexplicably passed through her alien body, and her sword-like arm impaled Mars! No, not Mars… Sailor Moon!

Minako’s jaw dropped. She shook her head in disbelief as her heart seemed to break into a million pieces. All of a sudden, something inside her awakened. Her tiara shattered, and her planetary symbol shined on her forehead in its place. Then, with a strength that wasn’t her own, she pulled her arm free of her captor’s grip, then severed the hair by which she was suspended with a narrow beam from her finger.

Upon dropping to the floor, she released an almighty scream, and with it, a shockwave. Her body was enveloped with a cloak of translucent orange energy. Before she knew it, Venus had released an immense beam in the distant alien queen’s direction, which swallowed the top half of her body whole.

Not satisfied with this, she turned her grief on the remaining foes, raining vengeance down upon them. It didn’t matter that the alien warriors had stopped short of killing the Sailor Soldiers, choosing to capture them, instead. It didn’t matter that they now fled from her indiscriminate blasts. The small part of Minako that was still aware of her actions didn’t care. Their queen had taken something precious from her, from the world. For that, they would suffer.

Venus continued to rampage, screaming hoarsely with tears streaming down her face as she swept her beams of death across the park. She barely registered Jupiter’s presence before casually swatting the girl out of her way.

Jupiter soon joined the other soldiers gathering around the fallen body of Sailor Moon as Mercury tried desperately to revive her. The damage was too severe, though. Pluto eventually had to intervene, physically separating Mercury from the body against her will.

While most of the soldiers sobbed and comforted each other, standing in a circle around the body, Uranus hacked relentlessly at the alien queen’s remains with her sword, while Mars remained on her knees, where she had been since Usagi fell, her body frozen, her eyes unfocused.

By the time police cars and ambulances arrived outside the park entrance, any surviving invaders had escaped in their ship and Sailor Venus had finally collapsed from exertion. Jupiter carried the unconscious girl over to the others. There was no precedent for what to do next, so Setsuna took charge, her calm but solemn demeanor unbroken by tears, and insisted they had to leave lest their identities be discovered.

While Uranus carefully lifted Sailor Moon’s body from the floor, her face streaked with tears, Mercury tried once more to rouse Mars from her unresponsive state.

“Wait,” Saturn said croakily, “has anyone seen the Silver Crystal? Was it dropped somewhere?”

“It disappeared,” Mercury answered.

“Disappeared? How?” asked Neptune.

“Earlier, when… When Usagi…” Mercury struggled with her words. “It was on the ground nearby when I was treating her. When she… I saw it glow, then, it just…faded away.”

A prolonged silence followed this statement as the group pondered the ramifications of losing the crystal as well as their princess. A few minutes later, the Sailor Soldiers fled the scene, leaping into the night sky, Mars hanging limply from Neptune and Pluto’s shoulders.

Bringing up the rear, the night air cool against her wet face, Mercury furrowed her brow and tightened her grip around the object in her hand. Did the others actually think this was over? That she would let Usagi die? No. They might have given up on Usagi, but she hadn’t. There was a way to fix this, and she was going to find it.

Upon returning to the Tsukino’s house, the soldiers powered down and came face-to-face with the stark reality of their new situation. Mamoru was standing on the doorstep, anxiously awaiting his fiancée’s return. He saw the truth on the girls’ faces before he spotted Usagi’s body in Haruka’s arms.

“Usako?” he mouthed inaudibly before pushing the others aside, taking Usagi in his arms, and releasing a howl like a wounded animal.

The days that followed were excruciating for all the girls, not simply because they had lost Usagi, but because they had to face her family and friends, as well as their own guilt. As if failing to protect her wasn’t already hard enough, being forced to lie about it was almost unbearable.

Setsuna concocted a cover story; that the girls had left the party for some air, when a monster appeared and attacked them. Though initially dubious, the authorities accepted this given the presentation of fellow victims’—Minako and Rei’s—unique conditions, and the rehearsed witness statements the others provided.

However, for those who knew the girls’ secret—that they were Sailor Soldiers sworn to defend the planet and Moon Kingdom’s reincarnated princess—no explanation would ever be good enough. Their grief was compounded by the knowledge that Usagi’s destiny to usher in a new age of peace on Earth would go unfulfilled. This was especially true for Mamoru, whose destiny was supposed to have been intertwined with hers.

He journeyed back and forth through denial, anger, and bargaining, then sank into a deep depression. Penitent, the girls did what they could for him, whether that meant being there as a sounding board, a shoulder to cry on, or an outlet for his rage. Before he could reach acceptance, however, he was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown.

So soon after Usagi’s engagement party, the guests gathered once more for her funeral. Still undergoing treatment, Mamoru and Rei were unable to attend the service. Haruka was also noticeably absent.

Following the burial, the remaining six soldiers gathered, unaware that it would be their last gathering for quite some time. Minako shared her intention to, as she put it, “go solo” using her newfound powers. Nobody objected. From there, they went their separate ways, each too painful a reminder to the other of what they had lost.

Later that night, under cover of darkness, Sailor Mercury returned to the cemetery, landing with a soft thud, a shovel in hand. Putting the enhanced strength granted by her sailor suit to work in a fashion she could never have imagined, she began to dig out her best friend’s supposed final resting place.

Ami may not have devised a plan to revive the girl just yet, but she certainly wasn’t going to let Usagi's body rot in the ground. Until she figured things out, she would encase Usagi in ice with her powers, and store her temporarily in the refrigeration unit she had recently acquired.

"Don't worry Usagi, I'm not giving up on you," Ami muttered as she heaved fresh dirt over her shoulder. Only when she finally reached Usagi’s coffin, did she stop to catch her breath and wipe the sweat from her brow. She retrieved Usagi’s cold, stiff body from the mahogany box and placed it gently on the grass above.

Ami then closed the coffin and filled in the grave, careful to wash away all signs of digging with her powers. Skywalking into the night, she felt sure that the lifeless girl cradled in her arms was smiling. And why wouldn’t she be smiling? Even now, Usagi surely knew that she could count on Ami and that Ami would never abandon her.

Ami supposed that Usagi also knew what she had done; knew that while tending to Rei before they left the park on that fateful evening, she had found solace and resolve between the unresponsive girl’s blood-soaked fingers. Unbeknownst to the others, Ami had discovered the Silver Crystal in Rei’s hand and surreptitiously palmed it.

They would only argue inanely over what to do with it, so she lied. Ami let them believe the crystal had died with Usagi, but somehow, with its power, she was going to save her friend. No matter how long it took.