Umiki: This idea was given to me when I read “Will You Ever Forgive Me?” by Usagi Uchiha. If you’re reading this Uchiha-san than I hope we both do well in our stories.

I own nothing in this fic but the idea of the Harvest Moon Festival. I have no idea if Japan does have one, so don’t flame me if I’m off on anything.

Hitsuzen

Umiki

The night was filled with colored lanterns that gave off a dim glow. At every corner were sounds of laughter and cheer as the Harvest Moon Festival went into full swing. Children ran to different booths as their parents walked slowly, laughing that the energy of so small a creature could exist.

Many were clad in kimonos of elaborate designs and most of the girls had some form of jewelry on them. The boys carried small round lanterns with ‘prosperity’ and ‘plenty’ painted on them. Masks could be seen everywhere as the people took on the face of a spirit, monster, or animal in honor of the forces that helped bring a good harvest this year.

The air itself seemed to radiate an aura of celebration and joy as the glow of the lanterns lit up the night and the sound of geta and zori resonated with the cheers of the people.

However, past the farthest booths and the laughter was a temple, richly decorated to go along with the celebration. The sight there though, would have made any who saw it become afraid and depressed.

On the top of the temple was the figure of what looked like a woman. She wore a black kimono with a black obi and a white under kimono. Both of her feet were covered by white tabi (3), and her simple zori were settled next to her. She had a gray shawl covering her hair and a plain white mask on.

To anyone who was raised in the prosperous archipelago, she was a woman dressing in the appropriate cloths to symbolize mourning.

The woman lifted her head to stare at the star filled sky. She spoke in a faint whisper, so faint that anyone listening would have thought it was the wind.

“Why...why did you all have to die?”

Her voice soon grew in volume as she continued to speak, “Weren’t the sacrifices we gave enough to satisfy the cauldron’s thirst?!”

Lifting her hand in front of her face with her palm facing the sky, she watched as it was consumed in flames. She sighed heavily, willing the flames to cease. Taking her mask off it was revealed that the 

woman was in fact Tsukino Usagi, a person known to the public as her alter-ego Sailor Moon. And until recently, she had the title of future Neo-Queen Serenity.

There was one point in time when she looked to the title of Neo-Queen as a source of promise and a reason for her battles. She would and had fought with everything the creatures of Nega could throw at her for the simple reason of insuring that the future shown to her would come to pass. She had even gone as far as to fight the source of all Darkness in the universe to keep the vision of the future utopia possible.

But now that title and purpose caused her nothing but hatred and despair.

Usagi gritted her teeth, “Setsuna you thief, you lied to me! You told me that we would all live to build Crystal Tokyo. We fought WARS for the purpose of the future you gave us! And what did it give us!? Nothing but death and solitude!”

It turned out that once a star seed fused with another seed, it was impossible to separate. The same could be said of seeds that had been destroyed.

So when the star seeds of her senshi had fused with her Ginzenshiosu and transformed her into Cosmos, her senshi had truly died this time. Her destined Chiba Mamoru had died long before Galaxia had ever appeared before her in person.

The golden light Galaxia had sent had crushed every star seed on the plane and effectively killed every single person on the plane.

Then, after everything had settled within the cauldron, she had returned to Earth to find out that the entire Juban district had been consumed by the Darkness that Chaos had sent to the Earth in order to destroy it.

After she had defeated it and had it returned to the hearts of every living being in the universe, the Darkness had disappeared to leave the sight of hundreds of people dying from the overdose of pure darkness.

In a desperate attempt to save as many as she could, she forced her bruised, beaten, and bloody body to its limits using the crystal. She could remember feeling her body give out on her at the last moment, and falling into something wet.

When she woke up, she found that two days had passed by. Everyone she had eased dropped on had summed up what had happened since her time asleep.

Somehow the crystal had created a double of her body and switched her soul into the double at the last moment. So when some of the people she had healed had tried to ‘save’ her from drowning, all they would find was a body with her condition at that moment with all signs of exhaustion.

She had been pronounced dead at the scene and her body taken to a morgue.

The day after she woke up some high ranking people in the government broadcasted that in commemoration of the protection and sacrifice her senshi and herself had given the people of Tokyo and all of Japan, a public funeral would be held for them.

It had taken a month for a gravesite worthy of Tokyo’s magical heroines and preparation for the funeral itself. A temple was even raised to be used as a tome for her body.

When the day of the funeral had come, Usagi would always remember how surprised she was to see so many people come to the procession. She had seen quite a few people she had saved during her days; like Urawa Ryo, Momoko, Motoki, Yuichiro and Grampa.

What had nearly sent her into shock was the appearance of the Makaiju siblings, the Ayakashi Sisters, Helios, and the Starlights (in disguise of course). She knew that they could not sense her even if she stood next to them because of her new body, so to them she really had died.

That was probably the reason they had come to her ‘funeral’ to begin with.

There had been a funeral parade lead by the Imperial Family, a grand procession with a Shinto priest and a Buddhist monk saying prayers for her safe departure into the afterlife. After all of the ceremonies had been performed and her body taken into her tome, hundreds of people prayed before her tome for three days straight before the area had no more visitors.

When she had been sure that no one had been near, she approached the tome and sent a prayer to her senshi. It was on that day that she ceased to be Sailor Moon and everything it entitled.

That had been three months ago.

Throughout the time, she had slowly looked through the knowledge that she had obtained when she became Cosmos. In days she learned about entire civilizations that had once existed long before the Silver Alliance and became a master of different fighting styles.

Her new body had also transformed slowly as to get used to her new power. Whereas before the Cauldron, she had to depend on the light of her guardian star, the moon, to refresh her energy reserves like any senshi worth their salt.

This often proved not enough for her body to recuperate due to the light of a full moon only coming once a month; her body would try to make up for the loss of a nightly energy source by telling her brain to eat things that would give her boosts of energy and in large quantities combined with sleeping for long hours.

This only made things worse.

But now she could draw power from any source she desired, be it the Earth or the, thankfully, still sealed Tao System. Her body also no longer needed to her to eat large quantities like before, because now she could digest every scrap of food she ate and transfer it to some form of energy.

By no means was this particular change liked; because now she was forced to give up eating many modern foods and eat things that would make many physically and morally ill. But if meeting the demands for better nutrients meant that she had to eat insects and sometimes even raw meat, than she was not going to complain.

That was just one of many changes brought upon her.

Usagi sighed as the night was filled with the light of brilliant fireworks.

“What is my purpose now? Without the others Crystal Tokyo will never come to be, and with Chaos gone I have no enemies to fight. And even if I started my life from scratch, what would I do? My skills in battle, even without magic, now literally outweigh any of my other skills, and they were considered pitiful from the start.”

Usagi brought her legs close and placed her head on her knees. If she didn’t find a purpose soon, she knew she would go mad.

“Perhaps I can assist you Rabbit.” A sultry, wine-laced voice spoke from behind her.

Immediately springing up in a defense stance, she stared intently at the willowy figure standing not but ten feet away. Usagi’s eyes narrowed, “How did you sneak up behind me?”

The woman smiled mysteriously, “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

Usagi’s eyes narrowed even more when she saw the magic flowing through and around the woman, only extremely powerful beings could contain such magic. The last person she had met with this sort of power had effectively destroyed her entire world, and she did not want to have to go through that again.

The woman either didn’t know about her suspicion or she was simply ignoring it because she calmly walked up to Usagi. “I came because I sensed your wish. A wish so strong that waiting for you to come to my shop would merely take too long for my services to be any good.”

Usagi was about to speak when the woman continued, “My name is Yuko and my business is to grant wishes, for the proper price of course.”

The smirk on Yuko’s face would be a constant reminder to Usagi for years to come about the saying “Making a deal with the Devil.”

(End)

Okay, I know that the funeral was a bit overdone, but come on! She was Sailor Moon, the protector of Tokyo! Any good hero would gain the appreciation of the people they were defending at the least! So I gave Sailor Moon a funeral worthy of all the sacrifices she and the others had done for their people.

Anyway, if you like it then thanks. Ja!