By the Light of the Stars: A Sailor Moon Crossover

[Comartemis]

Ten thousand years ago, Queen Serenity sent Metallia, Queen Beryl, and the dark forces serving them into an alternate dimension, and sealed it shut for as long as she possibly could. But the effort involved with this undertaking was too huge even for the mighty Queen and her invincible Silver Crystal to accomplish without cost, and the Queen died before she could force her subjects to reincarnate together. On that day, the Moon Kingdom died, the young Princess Serenity and Prince Endymion were forever lost to each other, and the Star Seeds of the Inner Senshi returned to their respective planets to await the births of their next avatars.

Ten thousand years later, the Dark Kingdom comes unsealed and begins running rampant. With no Sailor Moon to oppose them, Jadeite's energy-gathering operations run perfectly, as do those of Danburite and the Dark Agency on what should be Sailor V's stomping grounds in Britain. A steady stream of energy flows into the Dark Kingdom and the forces of darkness grow stronger by the day. At the same time, Zoicite's quest for the Rainbow Crystals has proven fruitful; six of the seven crystals and the Seven Great Youma are now in the hands of the Dark Kingdom. The one saving grace of this disastrous situation is that Beryl has grown arrogant with her so-far flawless success; believing that she can conquer Earth without Metallia's assistance, she has not directed a substantial amount of energy into Metallia's revival. And then the situation gets worse. Zoicite finally identifies the holder of the last Rainbow Crystal, a young girl who lives in a little town just outside of Tokyo.

When Zoicite moves in for the retrieval, however, he stumbles on an unexpected complication; the girl is friends with a mage, and the two of them are practically joined at the hip. Well that's no problem, after all nobody can stand up to a Dark General, especially not some little girl with a silly wand and a deck of magical tarot cards...

But those are no ordinary tarot cards and that mage is no ordinary mage. Her name is Kinomoto Sakura, Master of the Clow Cards and the strongest magic-user on the face of the Earth. Had Zoicite not attacked her best friend Tomoyo, Sakura wouldn't even have known about the battle for Earth's future until it was already over, but now that her loved ones are under fire she's stepping up to bat for the home team, and Beryl's forces will never know what hit them.

[Spokavriel]

So the only person with any chance at reincarnation before the planets are re-populated is Mamoron. And the only Senshi because of that would be Sailor Pluto.

Aren't you heaping too many problems to deal with onto the girl with only the power of the cards to deal with it?

Would any of the bad guy's projects like the summoning of Pharoh 90 and creation of Mistress 9 still be going on? Just how much of the villains cannon is still possible in this set up?

Will you have to bring in a few other crossovers to handle some of the problems the lack of so many goodguys causes?

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Would any of the bad guy's projects like the summoning of Pharoh 90 and creation of Mistress 9 still be going on? Just how much of the villains cannon is still possible in this set up?

I hope you won't mind a bit of Pixar here, but in Finding Nemo the seagulls were pitch-perfect. They could talk, but the only thing they said was "Mine! Mine!"

I can just envision Metallia and Pharaoh 90 strutting back and forth, squabbling over the Earth, saying "Mine, Mine!"

[Spokavriel]

What about the other badguys after them? I mean I could see the lack of Senshi making it so that there's no reason for the baddies from Stars to show up and the Dark Moon Family are time travelers from a future that can't exist in this setup but what about Dead Moon?

[Comartemis]

So the only person with any chance at reincarnation before the planets are re-populated is Mamoron. And the only Senshi because of that would be Sailor Pluto.

And Saturn/Uranus/Neptune. I think in canon they reincarnated separately from the others, probably under Saturn's power.

Aren't you heaping too many problems to deal with onto the girl with only the power of the cards to deal with it?

Only? Freeze, Firey, Thunder, Light, Time, Watery, Windy, and Nothing/Hope by themselves give Sakura the powers of all the planetary Senshi and then some (Time can freeze time at will, with no death penalty attached to it, though it takes a huge amount of energy to use the card), and there are 45 other cards with their own abilities of varying levels of usefulness. If anything this is a curbstomp waiting to happen, which is why I'm giving Sakura additional concerns, like the generals knowing who Tomoyo is and Sakura having to protect her and both their families from retaliation. There's also the matter of Sakura not having any experience in fighting to kill and almost certainly not liking the idea of killing people even if they're trying to kill her.

It isn't really a matter of power anyways. Sakura's a strong mage, but her real power has always been her intelligence and her ability to use her cards effectively in whatever situation she comes up against. If and when Sakura faces Beryl (either with or without the Silver Crystal), you won't see the match end with a Beam O' War, it'll end in a sorceress's duel, with both sides digging into the depths of their magical knowledge and combat skill.

Would any of the bad guy's projects like the summoning of Pharoh 90 and creation of Mistress 9 still be going on? Just how much of the villains cannon is still possible in this set up?

Sure. Crystal Tokyo is completely shot to hell of course so there's no Black Moon Family, but there's no reason the Death Busters wouldn't still be active. The Dead Moon Circus will show up if Pegasus takes refuge in the dreams of one of the characters (Tomoyo dreaming of Sakura's happiness comes to mind, but I don't plan on letting her love stay unrequited so that might change by that point) but otherwise I don't think they're overly interested in Earth. Could be wrong though, SuperS is the season I saw the least of besides R.

Will you have to bring in a few other crossovers to handle some of the problems the lack of so many goodguys causes?

Nope, Sakura and Syaoran should be able to handle this on their own, and if they can't there's still Yue, Kero, Meiling, Eriol, Ruby, Spinel, and Tomoyo (oh yes, I have plans for Tomoyo. Muahahahahahahaha!) waiting in the wings to back them up if they need it, though naturally they won't be nearly as powerful as Sakura on her own is.

[Knight of L-sama]

Question!

Will you be treating CCS as a separate, stand alone entity or will be be daring to brave the Gordian Plot that is CLAMPs multiverse? Because the thought suddenly occurs that despite their general misanthropy (apart from Kusanagi) the Dragons of Earth would be just as opposed to some of the Sailor Moon villains than the Dragons of Heaven, maybe even more so.

[Comartemis]

The only CLAMP works I'm remotely familiar with besides CCS are Rayearth, Chobits, and Tsubasa. I'm definitely not interested in bringing Tsubasa into this mess, Chobits is kind of out of place in battle against Dramatic Evil, and the Magic Knights would make this even more of a curbstomp than it already is the first time they summon the mashin.

[Spokavriel]

Ok here is where I see her needing her help. 1 The Dark Kingdom has collected more than enough energy to operate with impunity and could easily mobilize and make enough Youma to fight a war of attrition against the whole deck. Otherwise they would still see a need to resurrect Metallia. They also have 6 of the 7 shadows. All the Generals. All the criminal empires that the converted convicts of the Dark Syndicate came from and these other enemies with world destruction or domination plots coming along as well.

If they were still energy poor (Caused by Sailor V mostly) and were having to fight with limited resources sure it would be a curb stomp but this Dark Kingdom is 1 shadow and the awakening of Metallia short of having all the resources at its command that it did at the fall of the Silver Millennium. That is all ready to be made use of before this girl even knows she will be facing the fight.

That is a Big difference than anything levied against the Senshi. And the only way I can see this girl surviving long enough to fight back as hard as she needs to is if Pluto warns her through the fannon convention of meddling with use of fore knowledge.

As for the Outers reincarnation I could see you making that work but why would they reincarnate at all? Sure Saturn was being manufactured artificially but would that have even been possible without Queen Serenity's magic redirecting the reincarnations to happen on Earth? That is the catching point to me. Without the redirection all the Senshi are stuck waiting for their worlds to be populated to have a successor right?

[Comartemis]

Ok here is where I see her needing her help. 1 The Dark Kingdom has collected more than enough energy to operate with impunity and could easily mobilize and make enough Youma to fight a war of attrition against the whole deck. Otherwise they would still see a need to resurrect Metallia. They also have 6 of the 7 shadows. All the Generals. All the criminal empires that the converted convicts of the Dark Syndicate came from and these other enemies with world destruction or domination plots coming along as well.

Problem is they can't use all that energy all at once. The Kingdom's seal may have come undone but they're still trying to squeeze their forces through a dimensional bottleneck so they can't just spam youma at Earth in an endless tide. This is why Beryl wants the silver crystal, not to awaken Metallia but so she can blow open the bottleneck and flood the Earth with her armies again. Most of the Kingdom's Earth-side minions are tied up in energy-gathering operations so they can't be easily re-routed to dispatch Sakura and company; Beryl may have all the tactical brilliance of Adoph Hitler but she isn't stupid enough to ruin dozens of perfectly good operations to attack a girl who can fight a General on even ground. This means that the primary forces she can direct against Sakura and company are the Generals (who Sakura can fight off pretty handily in one-on-one combat and who aren't particularly inclined to cooperate with each other), small squads of youma dispatched through the bottleneck (which are no better than cannon fodder to Sakura but could give the others a fair deal of trouble if Sakura's busy fighting off a General), the Six Great Youma that she has at her disposal (judging by the anime, they aren't much more powerful than the regular youma unless they all fuse together), and the DD Girls, who are Beryl's bodyguards and won't be leaving the DK unless Beryl does.

If they were still energy poor (Caused by Sailor V mostly) and were having to fight with limited resources sure it would be a curb stomp but this Dark Kingdom is 1 shadow and the awakening of Metallia short of having all the resources at its command that it did at the fall of the Silver Millennium. That is all ready to be made use of before this girl even knows she will be facing the fight.

That is a Big difference than anything levied against the Senshi. And the only way I can see this girl surviving long enough to fight back as hard as she needs to is if Pluto warns her through the fannon convention of meddling with use of fore knowledge.

Sakura actually has a form of foreknowledge of her own in the form of her prophetic dreams. These dreams are actually a pretty major plot point in the second season, and she's pretty good at interpreting them by the end of the series. So she may not know exactly what she's up against but Sakura does have ways of getting that information, and she'll know ahead of time that something evil has its sights set on Tomoyo.

As for the Outers reincarnation I could see you making that work but why would they reincarnate at all? Sure Saturn was being manufactured artificially but would that have even been possible without Queen Serenity's magic redirecting the reincarnations to happen on Earth? That is the catching point to me. Without the redirection all the Senshi are stuck waiting for their worlds to be populated to have a successor right?

The interpretation I'm using is that Serenity used a form of direct reincarnation to send the souls of the Senshi directly to where in time they'd be needed to fight the Dark Kingdom, as opposed to the natural way which would have had them reincarnate dozens or hundreds of times over the next few millennia. Saturn, knowing what Serenity was trying to do, used this same method to send the Outers to the time and place they'd be needed, then reincarnated the natural way herself. This is why Saturn and Hotaru appear to be two separate identities in the anime, especially when Saturn reawakens Hotaru's powers in StarS; over many cycles, the "data" accumulated by previous incarnations is lost or overwritten until only the most basic traits from each reincarnation are retained. This is why I say Serenity and Endymion are lost to each other; their love might survive from one reincarnation to the next and it might maintain itself if they kept meeting over and over again in every lifetime, but the accumulated memories of each reincarnation where they didn't fall in love would eventually overwrite most of their memories of being Serenity and Endymion with being whoever they were in the other cycles.