The Dark Siders Chronicles

Nom looked up at the stars. Night was her favorite part of the day. It felt cleaner than the day, when everyone else was around. She dipped her feet in the pool and nibbled on the snack she'd cooked for herself. The girl sat on a smooth rock and let herself be flooded with the power that surrounded her.

She gasped as she felt another presence invading her space. It was a powerful mind.. Nom frowned as the wondered who it could be. She knew the being was evil, yet there was an allure around her. Nom caught the tail end of a power filled thought... Darkness is power to those that hide in its shadows.

It made her tremble.

"It is a Nightsister scout for a larger army. I felt her last night, and when she attacked this morning, she was captured."

The Witch's Council looked at the woman speaking. It was Nom, which meant the girl was not joking. Nom never joked. All the women around the Council looked at the Nightsister who was tied on the floor in front of them. Her dark eyes glared at them from behind a mass of dark, stringy hair. With her broken nose, she looked perfect for the part of evil witch.

The Council leader nodded her head after a moment. "Yes, Nom Da'Gara. You are right. But perhaps this one can be saved. Let us put her under constant guard."

Nom couldn't believe what she'd just heard. Even under a powerful and constant guard, the Nightsister might be able to send a treacherous message to her leaders and the clan would be destroyed. For loyalty and the clan, then. "I will take the first guard shift."

The black-haired Nightsister glared at the black haired Force-witch. The captured woman hadn't said a word the whole time. Soon, the silence would be permanent.

Nom muttered under her breath, preparing her Force-spells. How to kill the other woman was her current concern. She thought of all the things the evil Nightsisters did to the clans they captured. It made her furious. The angrier Nom got, the more creative her ideas on killing became. She toyed with a few until deciding. Her decision was death by heat.

Nom spoke two sets of words. The first restrained the Nightsister so that movement was impossible. The woman snarled at Nom, revealing ugly teeth. There was no fear in the dark woman's eyes, only sheer hatred. Nom matched the snarl with one of her own.

The second set of words caused the Nightsister's body temperature to rise. It was slow, like boiling a lizard in water — only it was the woman's own blood that boiled.

As the Nightsister began to literally melt from the heat, Nom spoke. "For the justice you would have denied us, for the truth you would have hidden, and for the loyalty to the clan you would have destroyed... die."

Two things happened then. The Nightsister released her final breath, and a blood vessel burst on Nom's cheek. It was the sign of an inward darkness.

"Seijoutai Priire!" Nom Da'Gara moaned. "The Mind's Eye is my ship. Not yours."

"Yes?" the blonde sitting in the pilot's seat smiled innocently. She fiddled with the controls and changed the course a little.

"So do not go that close to the debris field!"

Priire sighed dramatically, waving a hand at the black haired Force-witch. "If you insist."

"She does!" Nagareboshi exclaimed. "I think I've been scared out of ten years of my life. And you've only had the controls a half-hour! Do you ever do anything without taking a risk?"

"Nothing legal!" Priire said, making everyone groan.

Priire, Nom, and Boshi were studiously investigating a Sailor Sith sighting on Borleias, a steamy blue world. If, of course, they got there, with Priire's daredevil flying.

To promote their arrival in one piece, Nom nudged Priire with a Force-spell and dropped her on the floor. With a smile, Nom took the controls.

"How many Sailor Sith does it take to change a glow panel?"

Nom looked confused at Priire's question. "Why would they want to change a glow panel?"

Boshi grinned. "It's a joke."

"Oh."

Laughing, Priire told them the punch line. "Four! Kendra to give the orders; Emi to do the work; Geri to mess it up; and Ariel to kill them both out of spite!"

Boshi doubled over. "I just got a mental picture!" The lavender-haired girl kept laughing, and shook her finger at Priire. "I'm the evil Sailor Sith! And for the credit for changing the glow panel... I will destroy you!"

Still confused, the black-haired Force-witch brushed her green tipped and braided hair over her shoulder. She sighed, "I still do not understand..." Her words were cut off sharply like a lightsaber had sliced through them. After muttering a quick seeking-spell, Nom looked at her two fellow Senshi. "Something... no someone is coming! It is the Sailor Sith!"

"All right!" Priire grinned, patting her blaster. "I'm ready for them!" Her voice lost its luster in her next phrase as if she was thinking of something horrible. "Sure. Let's go."

"The Senshi of Life, Truth and Justice, I am Sailor Dathomir!"

"I am the Senshi of Light and Sparkle, Sailor Shooting Star! It's not nice to dull the light with your darkness! Prepare to be blasted!"

"Starbred Senshi of Stone, Defense, and Redemption; I'm the Dark Sailor, Sailor Asteroid! For the stars..." Sailor Asteroid said in the formal tone the others were using. Then, breaking form, she continued, pointing right at the evil Sailor Sith, "I am going to kick your tail into tomorrow!"

Sailor Sith Iyagaru crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. "Nah nah nah nah!! I'm still better!" she chanted. When the evil Sailor unleashed her dark attack, the Sailor Jedi scattered. Asteroid flipped; Shooting Star dashed; and Dathomir levitated herself out of danger.

"Do you know how mad I'm about to be? Brown Water Spout... Rise!" Dathomir commanded. The watery attack rushed at the Sith. It split down the middle to surround and incapacitated the woman. The Force-witch smiled, thinking they had her this time. Iyagaru was an unstable Sith, given to random bursts of insanity.

Iyagaru scratched her head like she was thinking. "Ooooo, I know!" she giggled. "Paaaaaarrot, come-eth forth-eth!" She giggled again at the drawn out word.

"What's a parrot?" Shooting Star muttered to Asteroid. "Something big and dangerous?"

The blonde wrinkled her forehead. "Um, I think it's an Earth animal that repeats whatever you say. Like 'Pieces of Eight.' "

Dathomir turned to the other girls. "Why would anyone cut up an eight? And how?"

Asteroid shrugged, then realized the significance of the name. "Uh oh. This cannot be good."

The brown water fled away from the Sith and her beast right at the Sailors. "Asteroid Gravity Force!" she shouted, suppressing the water until it dissipated. "We are in major trouble!"

Sailor Shooting Star threw one of her starry attacks, and it slammed into Parrot. The huge bird-like animal blinked its eyes and spat the attack right back at her. The girl dove out of the way.

"Asteroid Gravity..."

"Stone River..."

"Force!"

"Obliterate!"

The two Sailors determinedly sent their combined attacks, hoping the crushing stone would destroy the dark being and its master. Sailor Shooting Star stood by ready with her attack in case she had to redirect anything the Parrot would throw back. It was no use.

"Don't!" Shooting Star yelled at the Dark Sailor. "Don't do it!" Through the Force, she could tell that Asteroid was about to use her dark sider attack. They'd promised to use them only as a last resort, and while this did seem bad, Shooting Star was sure they could get out of it. Well, pretty sure.

Sailor Dathomir glared at the evil being. "This has gone too far," she snarled. A change came over the girl, and she screamed words to an attack she'd never said before. "Nightsister Anger Release!" she screamed. A ball of green lightning burst from her chest and ricocheted off her two outstretched hands, just like the Anger Release attacks had with Shooting Star and Asteroid.

The other two Sailors looked at Dathomir and then at the fleeing Sith.

Iyagaru was battered and confused. Where had these deadly new attacks come from? She hoped that Ariel and Emi or maybe even Kendra knew. One of the things she hated most was being beaten so badly by those Sailor brats!

"What... what was that?" Nom asked, surprised. "Where did that weird attack come from?"

Priire shuddered. "Inside of you. Like my 'Hawkbat Anger Release' came from using the dark side — unintentionally — as that killer. Boshi's came from inside of her dark past."

The lavender-haired girl nodded. "It's something fiendish."

Nom looked away from them. "This is not happening. What could I have done... oh. Oh."

The curious looks on the other girl's faces made Nom quietly explain the darkness in her Dathomirian past. She told them all about the evil Nightsisters that had planned to destroy her peaceful clan. "Then I... I killed her. My clan was outraged and sentenced me to penance for thirty years. I guess they knew that I'd used the dark side from the bruise on my face."

Priire had explained to Boshi — because Nom felt too ashamed — that the burst blood vessels happened to Force-witches who used their equivalent of the dark side. It was their mark of darkness that would go away after a while, but would be on their hearts forever.

Nom was silent for a moment, debating if she should tell the rest of the story. Deciding that it would be best if they knew everything, she continued. "After they had banished me for thirty years, I got angry again. I felt they did not understand that I had done it to protect them. They could not see the danger that was looming over them. So I..." She paused, swallowed heavily and softly kept talking. "I killed them all. I was almost worse than the Nightsister army would have been. At any rate, I did their dirty work for them, leaving them free to attack some other clan and kill them too."

Putting a hand lightly on her shoulder, Priire spoke quietly to Nom. "It's in the past, and you're making up for it now. It's not easy for anyone of us to turn from the darkness, but it is necessary. More than anything, it's necessary."

"I cannot believe it. Something I did so long ago is still affecting me," Nom said softly, rubbing her cheek. There was no bruise there, but she kept waiting for the sign of darkness to appear.

Boshi looked down and shrugged slightly. "All of us did something dark in our pasts, and now we're all bearing the fiendish results."

"Would you quit already with that word??"