The Dark Siders Chronicles

There was a scared look in the eyes of the little seven-year-old. “I don’t know if we should do this,” Lys whispered. Mark and Brin, the two older boys that had started everything, just grinned.

“Hah, you’re just a wimp!” Brin teased. “What? Are you afraid of the dark?” he said in the scariest voice he could manage.

Lys grabbed the hand of her best friend, Ereka, and stuck her tongue out at the two boys she hardly knew. “I’m not scared of anything!”

The only other girl in the group, Lily, looked back. It was hard to see in the near darkness. The five children knew very well that they were supposed to be home in bed asleep or finishing their homework. That didn’t stop them from venturing out after hours anyway. “None of us are!” Lily told them. “If we were scared, we wouldn’t be here!”

All of the children froze in their tracks when they heard a twig behind them snap. Pale, Lys turned around. She thought she saw something glimmer, but pretended as best she could that there wasn’t anything there. “Probably... a... a... feline!” she improvised. “Let’s go play.”

Mark’s eyes lit up. “Hey, let’s play Ghost in the Temple!”

“I don’t want to!” Lily complained. “That game scar... is for little kids!” She shook her head. “Besides, Lys cheats!”

“Do not!”

“Do too!”

Even the two arguing kids weren’t loud enough to cover the sound. “I really think I heard something this time,” Lily said, her voice shaking. “I…I want to go home now.”

Brin scoffed at them. He wasn’t as convincing as he thought he was, because Ereka snickered. Brin shot her a look. “Sissies. There’s probably someone’s pet in the bushes. Oooo, the big bad girls are afraid of a house animal!” He laughed at them, a little unsure himself.

“Well...” Ereka and Lys said at the same time. The two looked at each other, then Lys kept talking. “Well, why don’t you go look, oh brave one?”

“Me? No way! I’m not going in there!”

Lys sighed and walked over to the bushes. It’s a pet. It’s a pet, she kept telling herself. “See?” she said loudly, moving the bushes. When she looked to see what was there, she let out a scream. Two inhumanly golden diamond eyes glared back at her like a monster from a holovid. Even the boys started screaming.

“I am TY-4375,” an inhuman voice droned. “Security droid.”

Lys didn’t wait to hear the rest. She started running; knowing that Ereka wasn’t far behind. The other three had run off in different directions. After what seemed to be forever, the two girls stopped and sat down, panting. “What... what was it?”

“Just a droid, I think,” Ereka stammered. “But... but it was huge!”

“And it followed us all around and scared us and I bet it was going to kill us!” Lys knew that it probably wouldn’t have because her mom would have been very mad. But the idea still scared her. Lys tried to tell herself that maybe all droids weren’t sneaky and mean, but the youngster was still terrified. She never liked droids, anyway.

“Wow! Really?” Lys asked Kyoko. The blue-haired leader had just informed Lys that 16-year-old was going to be sent on a mission. Without Annika!

It wasn’t that Annika didn’t love her... Lys just thought that sometimes her future mother loved her too much. How could someone have empty nest syndrome when the nest wasn’t even full yet? Lys laughed to herself. Maybe she was just being a teenager and feeling smothered by everyone. Well, this trip was going to be different! She was going by herself to some far away and exotic place to right wrongs and triumph over whatever the Sith could throw her way!

“No! Xarae, trust me, I trust you, but I just got this shuttle fixed!”

The dark-haired woman smiled. “Priire, I won’t break the shuttle. I didn’t do too badly by it last time...”

Priire looked comically annoyed. “Yeah, I only forgave you because you got me that ryshcate.”

Xarae laughed. “You would have anyway. And now you really are going to let me use the ship.”

“Why not?” Priire sighed. “It needs a new engine anyway.”

Running over, Lys skidded to a stop. “Don’t jinx it!” she warned. “Where are you going, Xarae?”

“The same place you are,” the older woman smiled.

Lys looked around suspiciously. “I’ve been set up.”

“Blame it on your twin. That always works for me!” Priire suggested. “Or shoot someone. But whatever you do, don’t break my shuttle!”

“Xarae?”

The older woman looked up from her datapad. “Hmm?”

“Are you okay?” Lys questioned, concerned. The quiet woman had kept more to herself the past day than usual.

Xarae smiled. “I’m fine. Really.” She turned her captivating blue eyes back to the screen in front of her. In her hands, Xarae held a download with the details of the fight she’d witnessed what seemed to be forever ago. During the heat of the battle, Ayameru had insinuated that Sailors Asteroid, Shooting Star, and Dathomir were less than stellar — pardon the pun — examples of Sailor Jedi. Almost everyone knew of Priire’s stint as the Hawkbat and Nom’s transgressions against the witches of Dathomir, but Xarae had to look deeper for Nagareboshi’s wrong doing. Murder tied them all together. Hoping against the tide, Xarae pleaded for her “dark sider” attack to have been a fluke. It was possible. After all, the other three had angry attacks. Hers was only... fearful.

A scream made Xarae bolt out of her chair. “Lys!” she yelled. “Lys!”

Lys didn’t respond to Xarae’s yells, but the brown-haired woman located her anyway. “What’s wrong?” she asked, kneeling by her side.

The girl looked at Xarae with abnormally huge blue eyes. “I’m... I’m sorry. Just something I remember from my past was in that closet. I…” her voice trailed off.

Xarae cautiously opened the door. Spare parts for all kinds of things hung in neat rows along the walls. Slumped in the corner was a golden droid. It had large, triangle eyes that gleamed even though there was no power in the machine. “Just a droid,” Xarae consoled her.

“Yeah. I... I know. It’s just... well, when I was a little kid I got scared to death by this security droid. I’m not over it...”

“Even though it hasn’t happened yet?”

Lys laughed. “Yeah!”

Emi was filing her nails. At least, she was until Lys bumped into her and knocked her stool over. “Idiot!” Emi growled. “You’ll pay for that!”

“Sorry, we don’t have any change on us,” Xarae smiled, trying to diffuse the situation.

Emi, however, had no intentions of letting Lys leave. “Then you’ll have to pay some other way!”

By the time Emi had turned into Sailor Sith Eimin, Lys and Xarae were nowhere to be found. Sailors Chibi Bakura and Iridonia were there, however.

“This may not be my planet, but I’m willing to defend it anyway! I’m the senshi of strength and friendship, Sailor Chibi Bakura!”

“I’m the sailor of children and death, Sailor Iridonia, I’m willing to stand by Chibi Bakura!”

The Sailor Sith wrinkled her nose at the two Sailors. “I’m really not impressed. See if you can counter this!”

Chibi Bakura braced for one of the Sith’s attacks. She was surprised when none came. “What’s she doing?”

Shrugging, Iridonia pointed to the fields. Eimin was standing in the middle of one gesturing. “Oh no.”

“‘Oh no’ is right!” Chibi Bakura yelled. “That’s horrible!”

With her dark side powers, Emi was turning all the farm droids into her personal slaves. Neither of the two Sailors wanted to imagine what the slashing reapers and drilling sowers would do to them if they were caught. “Is this one of those ‘strategic retreat’ times?” Chibi Bakura whispered. “Please?”

Sailor Iridonia shook her head. “No. We can defeat her and her minions together.”

“Remember that thing I told you about droids? Is this a good time to mention that I’m scared to death of them?”

The older woman considered for a moment. “No.”

Chibi Bakura gave her a half grin. “I didn’t think so.”

Standing a little behind the older Sailor, Chibi Bakura tried to stand tall and face the on coming threat. She glared at the Sith. “How dare you take advantage of these people’s machines!”

“I’m a Sailor Sith; we’re supposed to take advantage of people.”

The girl with the tri-colored hair paused to ponder that. “Oh.”

Eimin shook her head. “Fools. Droids! Attack them!”

Chibi Bakura answered with her Passion Bud Vine Whip, knocking several of the droids off course. Iridonia backed her up with a fiery attack that stopped a good many of the droids in their tracks. Even the combined might of the two Sailors wasn’t enough to dissuade the suicidal droids from their path. Eimin just laughed cruelly. She laughed harder whenever Sailor Chibi Bakura winced at the machines coming her way.

The situation reminded Sailor Iridonia of her recent encounter with Ayameru... only Chibi Bakura had no way of coming back to life if Eimin, through some act, killed her. The troubled Senshi could think of two things she could do. Flee... but that would contrast what she’d said about standing up for her friend. The second alternative was to use that attack. But if she remembered Priire’s description of it, the attacks were from the Dark Side of the Force. A slight shudder ran through her as she remembered what the attack felt like, tendrils of darkness on the edge of her conscious thought. To use it again would invite the darkness back. Could she risk it?

As it turned out, she didn’t have to. Chibi Bakura screamed as one of the droids grabbed her in a huge claw that wrapped around her waist. The fear in her eyes was purer than any her companion had seen in a very long time. There was a shiver that ran through the girl’s young body as she tilted her head towards the sky. Chibi Bakura’s hands crossed over her chest in a position that Iridonia remembered.

“Oh no.”

“Droid... Fear...” The whisper that Iridonia feared spilled out of the girl’s mouth. Her arms extended, still crossed and palms up just like her brown-haired companion's had been, the prelude to her next, final action. She jerked her head forward and focused her blue eyes on the Sith. “Bondage!” the girl cried. It sounded as if the noise had been torn out of her soul. Liquid metal with a golden sheen pour from her heart and swirled down her arms working its way to her fingers. When the gold reached them, it solidified into ribbon like streams and launched off her fingers. It sped towards the droids and encircled them, squeezing Eimin’s restraints off their metal bodies. Eimin herself had her feet trapped in the metal and was barely able to escape with nothing more than her battered body.

The droid dropped the Chibi Sailor and Iridonia caught her. “What happened?”

Iridonia shook her head. “Something dark.”