Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takuechi. Chrono Crusade is the property of Daisuke Moriyama.

Child of Hope

By Bissek

Chapter 9

The Apostle of Charity

There were an unusually large number of police officers gathered outside the precinct. Every officer attached to the precinct that wasn’t on duty was there, even the ones who should have been in bed given their current duty shifts. A significant portion of the on-duty officers were there as well. Those that weren’t immediately needed for patrols, court appearances and manning key points such as the front desk and the dispatch office had managed to join the crowd. Sitting at a desk and writing out routine reports wasn’t as important at the task at hand. For these men had gathered to bury three of their own.

The group slowly marched through the streets, bearing the coffins containing the bodies of the men who had fallen in combat with the daimons. The procession made its way to a crematorium, where the officers all paid their final respects to the dead before returning to either their homes or their duties.

Captain Fujita was one of the last people to leave. As he turned away, he considered the implications of what had happened that night. Monster attacks had been a semi-frequent occurrence in the past two years, but this attack took things to a new level. This was the first time that anybody had been killed by the things. In addition, the monster in question had deliberately attacked two officers in uniform. The parties responsible for this incident had declared war on the Tokyo Police. Well, if they wanted war, they were welcome to it.

The first fight between the police and the daimons showed that the weapons that Chrono had provided them could harm them. One officer had weakened a daimon enough for a Senshi to finish of without any trouble. This second fight was different. This time, the police had gone in without the support of any magical girls, and managed to take the monster down. Three officers were dead and a fourth severely injured, but they had proven that the police could fight these things and win. Now, they just needed a way to ensure that they didn’t have to exchange casualties at a ratio of four to one.

As the bodies were slid into the cremation chambers, a man approached him from behind.

“It’s never easy to say goodbye to a colleague, is it?”

Fujita turned, and saw that Chrono had arrived at some point.

“Speaking from experience?” Fujita asked.

“Unfortunately, yes. It’s been a long time since I last had a friend die, but it’s happened far more often than I’d like.”

The two left the crematorium and started walking back towards the station.

“This is the first time any of these creatures have managed to kill someone.”

“Not for lack of trying. Something else is much more worrying.” At Fujita’s inquisitive glance, Chrono continued. “At the time your men were attacked, there was a second attack at Tokyo Tower. The enemy has realized that the Senshi can only be at one place at a time. If the first attack had happened someplace further away from a precinct, there would have been a massacre.”

Fujita winced. If it took at least four men to take down one of those things when actually equipped to fight them, the casualties that they’d inflict on the helpless would be atrocious.

“So that’s where you were that night?”

Chrono nodded. “I don’t think that the controller that the Senshi and I ran into will be able to cause any more trouble, but from some things she said, there are still three to seven others out there who can.”

Policemen tended to do whatever was possible to make sure that cop killers were brought to justice – the last thing they wanted to do was let other criminals get the impression that you could get away with doing that. Information on the group responsible as a whole would put them closer to dealing with the specific perpetrator. As the two reached the police station, Fujita turned to Chrono.

“Why don’t we discuss this inside?”

Eudial had not gotten much rest since Kaolinite’s disgrace. She’d been much too busy.

Because of the events of that night, Eudial now knew that there was a third threat to their plans in addition to the Senshi and the mysterious Chrono – the civil authorities. Somehow, the police were now able to take down daimons. Not easily – the daimon had defeated three before being beaten – but the fact that they could do it at all was an unwanted complication.

As a result, Eudial had spent her time going over maps of the city, locating precincts and figuring out what areas were more heavily patrolled. She didn’t know how many officers had anti-daimon weapons, but given that all four of the ones the daimon encountered were so armed, even though two of them weren’t even on duty, it was likely that most of them were. In order to continue her mission, she needed to come up with safe hunting grounds.

Hmm… Perhaps in addition to trying to find places where her enemies weren’t likely to be, she should also try to figure out how quickly they respond to incidents. Even in a high-risk area, a heart crystal grab might be worth the risks if it was pulled off quickly enough. Maybe if she had a few daimons attack in visible areas, then simply remained in the background and watched to see how long it took for someone to arrive to deal with it? Have enough of these attacks, and then she could work up an average response time…

It took some persuasion to convince the Professor to allow her to use some daimon eggs on missions which were guaranteed to be failures, but in the end, Eudial walked away with half a dozen eggs, which she secreted in various locations across the ward. She knew roughly when each would hatch, and would be waiting to see what happened when they did.

Chrono and Fujita were in Fujita’s office. Chrono was in front of a white board, writing up what he had learned from his battle.

“The organization responsible for these incidents refers to itself as the Death Busters.” Chrono started, writing the name across the top of the board. “Their immediate objective is to obtain the crystallized souls of anyone they can get their hands on. They seem to believe that doing this will somehow enable them to obtain some powerful artifact, which they intend to use for some unknown purpose.

“The controller I faced appeared to be mid-ranked in their group. She referred to herself as Kaolinite.”

“Isn’t that some kind of rock?” Commented Fujita.

Chrono nodded “I looked it up. Aluminum-bearing mineral found in clay deposits. Used in the manufacture of paints and stomach medicines.”

“An alias, then. Nobody would ever give their child a name like that.”

“Agreed. Below her in ranking, we have some group called the Witches 5. I don’t know anything about them but the name. I don’t even know how large a group it is, though the name implies that there are five of them. Above her in ranking are two individuals. One person known as Mistress 9, and another referred to as The Professor.”

“More aliases.”

“I’m not even sure if this Professor person has the right to call himself that or just uses the title as an affectation. I think I caught a reference that the Professor was male, but that’s the only distinguishing feature I can think of.”

Fujita sighed. “Do you have any idea how many people in the Tokyo area have the right to call themselves Professor? Hundreds, most of whom are male. There’s no way we can act on that little information. This is interesting background information, but we can’t do anything with it at the moment.

“There’s also no way to confirm this information at the moment. Without some form of corroboration, it’s possible that you’ve just been fed a red herring.”

Chrono didn’t try to point out that people don’t normally lie in their own thoughts – especially if they don’t know that someone else is listening to them. Inserting the concept of telepathy into the conversation would only derail things.

“The Senshi confirm that these people are trying to find something specific with these attacks, though they don’t know what the enemy’s ultimate goal is either.” He began. Fujita frowned, then nodded. “And judging by what happened a few days ago, there has to be at least three people involved in this.

“The two attacks happened simultaneously. That takes two people, Kaolinite and one other. Furthermore, Kaolinite’s fight ended with her getting knocked off of Tokyo Tower. If you examine the pavement beneath the tower, you’ll find a spot riddled with cracks from an impact. That’s where she landed. But by the time I made it back to down the stairs and examined the crater, she was gone.

“While there are recorded cases of people falling several miles without a parachute and surviving, those are the exception, not the rule. A person who falls off a great height and lands on pavement does not walk away under their own power. Someone else had to have removed her. It couldn’t have been the one who was at the other attack, the timing is too tight.”

“So this Kaolinite is dead?”

“I know she severely injured one hand in the fight, and had to have been injured in the fall, but without seeing a body, I can’t say if she survived or not. But unless she can heal at an inhuman rate, she won’t be causing trouble in person for a while.”

“Wait… how good a look did you get at this woman’s face?”

“I saw her pretty clearly, why?”

Fujita picked up a phone and called a sketch artist up. The next hour was spent creating an accurate portrait of the woman who called herself Kaolinite. If they could figure out who she was, they could examine her associates and see if any of them were involved in this case. They now had a lead.

Saeko Mizuno wasn’t sure what she was expecting Dr Grunberg to be like, but there was one thing about her that was definitely unexpected. Namely, the fact that she was about ninety years old. If the medical history she had brought was as old as her medical career, then the person who was described in it had to have died before the founding of Manchuko. Looking at the date listed in the file, Saeko found that her guess was only off by a month.

The discussion took the entire morning. Things were hindered by the fact that the American doctor knew little Japanese, while Saeko’s English wasn’t exactly perfect. There were frequent pauses while the two tried to find the best way to phrase something so the other would understand it, along with Saeko’s need to mentally translate the medical records into Japanese. The only interruption was when a nurse reported that the final officer injured in that incident was finally lucid, which caused Saeko to send a message to the police station to that effect.

Given the considerable advancements in medical knowledge over the seventy years, there were several avenues of treatment that hadn’t been available in the late twenties and early thirties. But the records indicated that the treatment of this Rosette Christopher had lasted for seven years. None of the three men that Saeko had treated had made it through the night. How had Grunberg managed to keep her patient alive that long? And why, having achieved that, did she consider the treatment to be a failure?

When Saeko asked her colleague the first question, Dr Grunberg shook her head., saying “I think you’re missing a major difference between Rosette’s case and the cases you took on.”

“What difference is that?”

“The men you treated were exposed to a massive drain in an instant. Rosette was drained at an irregular rate over a three and a half year period. She had a much longer amount of time to live when I started treating her.”

Dr Mizuno was appalled. “Three years? Why did it take so long for anything to be done about that?”

“Because the draining was her idea in the first place.”

“WHAT?!”

“Rosette was an exorcist, hunting demons in her quest to track down the one who kidnapped her brother. She volunteered to become a living battery for the Church’s ultimate trump card in that fight, knowing full well that she wouldn’t live to see thirty if she did so.”

Saeko snorted. “Come on, now. Demons? Even with the strange creatures that have been turning up the past few years, you can’t seriously believe that there are actual demons on the loose.”

“It’s not funny. A demon nearly ate me back in ’21. If it wasn’t for Rosette and her partner, I wouldn’t have survived. Rosette sacrificed three quarters of her life span to stop them once and for all. They were very real.”

Saeko nodded, conceding the point. The fact that Dr Grunberg literally owed her life to a woman she later failed to save would explain why she would be especially guilty about that failure. “Can you think of anything that had a noticeable effect during the treatments?”

Grunberg sighed. “I think that the only thing that kept her going at the end was her partner.”

“So you’re saying that some form of emotional support can sustain the patients?”

“Not exactly. Rosette’s partner stayed behind on their last mission while she went back with her brother. She was absolutely certain that she would not die until he made it back to her. By rights she should have been killed by the seizures she was having towards the end six months before she actually died, but she held on somehow.”

“So she survived because she refused to die?”

“Rosette was the single most stubborn person I’ve ever met. If anyone could keep a dying body alive through sheer willpower, she could.”

Glancing out the window, Saeko noticed a police car pulling in to the hospital parking lot. That would be someone to speak with the injured officer, most likely. Saeko excused herself and went to speak with the arriving policeman.

Dr Elizabeth Grunberg looked out the window and recognized one of the two people exiting the police car. She pulled out her satellite phone, dialed a number, and said two words when the person on the other end of the line picked up.

“Chrono’s here.”

The first of the daimon eggs that Eudial had scattered throughout Juuban had hatched, and the Senshi were extremely angry at it. But for once, the anger wasn’t because of it targeting one of their own or a friend of theirs. What made them angry was the fact that the egg had been planted in an arcade, and the daimon had possessed the Sailor V machine – while they were playing it. As a result of this, Sailor Venus (along with Moon and Chibi-Moon) found herself facing a daimon copy of herself.

After breaking away from the daimon-senshi, the three managed to find an unoccupied back room and transform. After emerging, Venus immediately charged her double. The doppelganger was quickly forced out of the cramped space of the arcade and into the street. While the other two Senshi started clearing bystanders from the line of fire, the Senshi of Love and her electronic duplicate engaged in a duel of Crescent Beams.

One bystander wasn’t running away. An elderly gaijin woman was ignoring the calls to get away and was running around the outskirts of the battle, pausing to crouch down for some reason on occasion. After she had completed a half circle around the fight and was making her way to a point three quarters of the way around the circle her path formed, the daimon-V noticed her and opened fire. The woman dove for the ground, just barely avoiding the attack. She then continued crawling towards a destination only she knew. A few yards later, she reached out and brought her hand down, driving something she was holding into the asphalt.

The object started glowing, as did three similar objects that the woman had placed at the points she had crouched down at. A band of green energy starting at each of the four metal crosses planted into the ground formed, reaching out towards the cross on the opposite side of the circle the woman had traveled, creating a cross that covered a sizable portion of the street. The daimon, standing inside the cross, started screaming in pain. Venus took advantage of the opening to snare her opponent with her chain. Weakened and immobilized, Moon purified the daimon, returning it to its original state as a harmless arcade machine.

Chibi-Moon helped the old woman up.

“Are you alright?” She asked.

“I’ll be fine.” The woman replied in excellent Japanese. “Though this is the first time I’ve had to do that in seventy years. It’s a good thing I held onto my equipment.”

As the old woman collected the small crosses she had planted, the Senshi tried to grasp the concept that she had been fighting monsters back when their grandparents were toddlers. When she had finished, she looked at Chibi-Moon and asked a question that threw all the Senshi for a loop.

“Are you sure you’re old enough for this kind of thing? Back in my day they didn’t let trainees into the field until they were at least twelve.”

Before any replies could be made, a phone started ringing. The old woman pulled the phone from her pocket, listened briefly, then said “On my way.” Apologizing for being called away, the woman left in search of a taxi.

After the woman left, Moon turned to Venus. “Did you know this job had an age requirement?” She asked.

“Its news to me.” Was the reply.

When Captain Fuijita learned that the sole survivor of the battle outside the restaurant was awake and able to speak, he immediately went to check on him. Since Chrono had just finished with the sketch artist, he elected to come along. Recognizing their mutual interest in trying to learn more about the parties responsible, Fujita allowed it.

Officer Satoshi Fujiwara was lying in a hospital bed, heavily bandaged over the numerous burns that he had suffered in the fight. He tried to straighten up when he saw Fujita enter the room.

“Captain…” He started.

“Don’t try to rise, Satoshi. I know how badly you were hurt.” The captain replied.

Satoshi slumped backed into the bed.

“Sir, I failed. I couldn’t stop the thing in time to help the others…”

Chrono lightly laid his hand on the man’s injured shoulder.

“Officer Fujiwara, out of my first five battles, two ended in total defeat that I barely survived, two were very costly victories in which many friends of mine were killed or maimed for life, and in the fifth I spent all my time running away. Nobody is perfect. You managed to defeat the creature that killed your comrades and survive. That’s enough for now.”

“But I couldn’t even stop the woman who was with the monster…”

Chrono and Fujita exchanged a look at that comment.

“There was a woman with the daimon?” Fujita asked.

Satoshi nodded. “Red-headed woman with red eyes. Attacked me with a flamethrower after the monster went down, then ran.”

Fujita mentally noted the description of the person who had killed three of his men, and wrote down on a notepad to make sure he got a sketch artist to work on this. The rest of the time there was spent discussing exactly what had happened in the fight. From the description of the battle, Fujita noted that he should make sure that none of his officers ever fought the daimons alone, or at close distances. As the two left the room, Fujita made one last comment.

“Don’t worry, Satoshi. We will get the person responsible for this. Count on it.”

After leaving the room, Fujita went to spoke with Dr Mizuno, who had been waiting outside.

“Will he recover?”

“Given the extent of his burns, he may never fully recover.” She replied. “As it is, he’s going to be in the hospital for months.

“However, there’s been a development regarding the affliction that killed the other three men in that incident. Apparently, a foreign physician that was in the area has had some experience with this before. A Dr Grunberg.”

Chrono looked thoughtful. “Grunberg… The name seems familiar for some reason, but I can’t quite place it.

“Grunberg… Grunberg…”

“What’s the matter, Chrono?” Came a woman’s voice in English. “Have you nearly gotten yourself bitten in half to save people you didn’t have any reason to like so many times that you’ve lost track?”

Chrono turned and looked at the woman who had spoken. Time had changed her face considerably, but the comment was enough of a clue for him to figure out her identity.

“Beth?”

When Saeko heard what Dr Grunberg said to Chrono, she froze. She couldn’t possibly be referring to the incident she had mentioned earlier. This Chrono person appeared to be in his early to mid twenties. He couldn’t possibly be old enough to have saved her life in 1921. It just wasn’t possible.

“Hello, Chrono. It’s been a while.” Grunberg said.

“It has, hasn’t it. I haven’t seen you since you left the convent to go to medical school.” Chrono responded.

“In 1922. You sure know how to keep in touch with old friends.”

As Chrono tried to come up with a response for that, another old woman came out of the elevator and joined Grunberg.

“Don’t feel bad, Beth. He hasn’t called, written or visited any of his other friends from those days in seventy years, either.” The newcomer added.

As Saeko choked on the thought that Chrono was apparently much, much older than he looked, he looked at the newcomer and asked “Azmaria? Is that you?”

“Nice to see you again, Chrono. Would you care to explain why I haven’t seen or heard from you since you went charging off into Pandaemonium’s core? Or why the first news I get about you in all that time was an article of you making fun of Rosette’s driving skills in front of the world press?”

“Come on, Azmaria, you remember how she drove. You’re lucky you weren’t on that bike when she crashed it into a subway tunnel wall at seventy miles an hour like I was. I’m still amazed that nobody was hurt.”

“And what of the fact that the last record of you anywhere was your death certificate?”

“Azmaria, that death certificate was filed several hours before the last time you saw me. That should have been all you needed to know that it was fake.”

“And I suppose Rosette would have thought of that?”

“Since she was there when Ewan staged my mock assassination, I should think so.”

“CHRONO! Do you know how long she waited for you to come back to her?”

Chrono bowed his head. “Seven years, two months, nineteen days.” His tone was laden with regret.

“Do have any idea how lo… What was that?”

“There were seven years, two months, and nineteen days between the day I left Rosette to deal with Aion once and for all… and the night she died in my arms.”

The two old women froze. Saeko could practically see them trying to work out the dates in their heads. Finally Azmaria asked “You… actually made it back in time?”

“Another thirty seconds and I would have been too late.”

Dr Grunberg spoke up “You’re the one who’s been leaving those flowers on the anniversary of her death for the past sixty-two years, aren’t you?”

Chrono nodded. The hostility in the confrontation died away after that. A few minutes later, Chrono left with the women, and Captain Fujita went on his way shortly afterwards, no doubt considering what he had just overheard. Saeko returned to her office, doing the same thing.

Apparently, Chrono was the partner of the long-dead Rosette Christopher. That meant he had to be in his mid eighties at least, which was six decades older than he looked. How was that possible? And what was that about him being legally dead for the better part of seventy years?

Her thoughts were interrupted by call from a nurse telling her to come to Fujiwara’s room immediately. When she reached the patient’s room, what she saw wasn’t the crisis she was expecting from the call.

The nurse had been changing the dressings on Fujiwara’s burns. But where there had been horrific third degree burns the previous day, there were now burns that were well on the mend. The degree of recovery increased the further up his torso she looked, and his shoulder had healed so well that she couldn’t tell that he had been hurt.

Saeko didn’t know how, but she knew that Chrono had somehow been responsible for this. Who in the world was he?

Eudial had been watching the fight outside the arcade. She suddenly understood why Kaolinite was having trouble before her disgrace, and felt a brief twinge of sympathy for her former commander.

It was bad enough that there was a group of magical girls interfering with their schemes at every turn. It got worse with this strange corporate exec who apparently hunted monsters for a hobby. Then the police became actual players in this game, rather than a mere nuisance that could be ignored. But this! A magical girl from the 1920s had come out of retirement to join in the fight. Was the entire universe scheming against the Death Busters?

The same factors that lead to Kaolinite’s downfall could apply to her just as easily. The fact that she had managed to gain one victory would protect her for a time, but if she couldn’t repeat that success, then she too would be replaced. Eudial would not let that happen.

A/N: I’ve been having more inspiration for my other story than this one lately, but I have no intention of abandoning this fic.

At the time that Sailor Moon was created, the mineral kaolinite was the active ingredient in the non-prescription stomach remedy Kaopectate. It’s a good thing the character’s powers aren’t based on the mineral, or the show would have quickly exceeded the bounds of good taste.

Manchuko was the puppet state that Japan formed in February 1932 from the conquered Chinese province of Manchuria.

The official date of Rosette’s death is March 1932, with no day given. The date I implied is March 14, 1932.

Why would Azmaria know excellent Japanese when Beth doesn’t? Well, Azmaria’s native tongue is Portuguese, a language I doubt that many other people in CC speak (seeing as it isn’t that common a second language in America), yet she has no trouble communicating with other people in the anime or manga. So she has apparently mastered a second language by the age of twelve. That implies excellent language skills.

If you’re wondering where the grandson of Azmaria who I mentioned two chapters ago is, I decided that he didn’t serve any purpose being in Japan and edited him out.

Thanks to Shadow Crystal Mage (Check out his HP crossover stories), Taeniaea, Blue Bragon, lil-saturn-goddess and HyperionTheWatcher for the reviews.