The Dark Siders Chronicles

She was a brave explorer sailing the skies and looking for adventure! Space pirates and smugglers trembled before her! Mercenaries feared her! Even the evil Hawkbat dared not defy her!

Nami giggled to herself. This sure was fun! Her parents were taking her to a vacation on Coruscant. She’d always wanted to see the big city-planet. One of her friends had described it as sunlight glinting off water and a starry sky all wrapped into one. It sounded beautiful!

Of course, she wasn’t supposed to be on the observation deck pretending to be the captain of the vessel. She was supposed to be doing her homework. One thing Kisaki Nami, future famous skier... or swimmer... or something water-related... hated was homework! Pointless stuff; she did enough work in school.

The girl looked out the window and reached out. She really wanted to gather the stars in her hands to see what they’d look like. Before she could touch the window, the entire ship shivered like a fish on a fishing line. Completing the allegory, the ship leapt up and sent Nami flying out of her chair. She screamed and ran towards the door to the lounge. “Mom! Dad!” she yelled when she ran out into the maliciously red corridor. “Mommy!”

“Please!” she begged a passing crewman. “Where’s my Dad? And my mom?”

The man didn’t stop to reassure her; he just shook his head and kept running. There were more important things going on than one lost little girl. There was a ship to defend.

Terror flushed through the young girl’s veins as she ran towards the dinning hall. Her parents had said they were going to have an early dinner; maybe that’s where they were!

Another shudder worked its way through the ship as Nami dashed through the door. She couldn’t help but scream again when she saw the jagged hole in the wall. Forcefields made it safe for her to enter the compromised room, so she ran over to her mother and father. “Daddy? Mommy?” she sobbed kneeling by their sides.

“Hush, little princess,” her father whispered hoarsely. “We’ll be okay.”

Her mother didn’t respond to her daughter’s nearness; the older woman’s beautiful eyes were shut. A gash crossed her chest that split her body open. Nami’s eyes went wide and she went to wipe a tear from her eye with the back of her hand. When she did, her hand left a trail of her parent’s mingled blood on her cheek. “Don’t die, please don’t die!” the child begged. “Please!”

The big man laughed quietly, valiantly fighting the cough the rose in his throat. “No, Nami. We won’t die right now. Not when you still need us.”

“We’ll all die later...” a voice wailed. “I know that ship. It’s the Sailor Sith. They won’t let us be. They’ll kill us all.”

Nami’s father glared at the man with stormy blue eyes. “That’s...” he started. Another shudder ran through the ship, and a table slid across the room. “Nami, look out!”

Before she could react, the table slammed into her body. A cut opened on her forehead, and more tears sprang to her eyes. I don’t ever want to go into space again, she thought. Her last thought before passing out was one of sheer fear.

“It’s not that hard,” Nami grinned. She was showing some of the newer senshi her room. It was right next to a huge waterfall. Nami had Priire help her cut out a small window so that she could reach out and touch the waterfall if she wanted to. And besides, it made her room delightfully moist. There was a forcefield that Nami could activate that would keep out the moisture and the noise if she had company. Like she did right now.

Ciel fingered the picture that Nami had pulled off a shelf. It was of the blue-green haired girl skiing on crystal waters. She was waving. “It looks beautiful,” Ciel smiled.

“Thanks.” Nami remembered when that picture had been taken. Her first competition off-world... she had been terrified. Spaceflight did that to her. She sighed and set the picture back on the shelf. “I’ve got to get ready to go.”

“Yeah. Talk to you later, maybe?”

Nami nodded. Silently, she added to herself, If I make it. She really didn’t like spaceflight.

Lys looked at Xarae, then at Nami. “Anything wrong?”

Xarae shook her head. “No, not really. Priire just changed the layout of the Black Fire Clone’s computer again.”

Nami didn’t answer. She kept her eyes glued to her hands. When Lys asked again, Nami looked up at her and tried to smile. “N-nothing.”

Both the girls raised an eyebrow. “Aw, come on. You can tell us!” Lys prompted.

The Calamarian girl sighed. “I’m not much for spaceflight. It scares me something awful.”

“Let me guess. Bad experience when you were younger?”

She nodded at Lys. “My parents were killed when the Sailor Sith attacked our ship. We were going to Coruscant for a vacation.” The skier wrinkled her nose. “You can imagine what I felt like when I was told we were going to Coruscant from Calamari.”

Lys nodded. “You’ll be safe with us!”

Nami nodded, glad for the reassurement, even though she was still scared.

“Ugh. Where is this?” Nami complained. “Wait, don’t tell me. I want to forget I was ever here!”

The other two senshi nodded in agreement. “It is pretty foul,” Lys commented looking out over the greasy swamps. Apparently the native population had no desire for clean lands. The swamps were coated in an oily substance that gave off a putrid odor that seemed to permeate every part of their bodies.

“After this,” Xarae commented, “I’m going to soak in the bath for a week.”

“You know what’d make this place ever sooooo much better?”

Xarae looked at her two companions. Neither of them had spoken. Belatedly, she reached out with the Force. “Geri.”

“No, not me.” The Sith twirled in place. “Headstones!”

As soon as the insane Sith spoke, tombstones popped up on the landscape like ugly flowers. Geri sighed almost happily and crossed her eyes. “Much better!”

Tucking her hair behind her ear, Nami glared at Geri. “You are a very disturbed person with some major issues.”

“Tissues!”

Lys leapt out of the way of a giant box of tissues. “Don’t give her ideas!”

Geri paused, her hands in the air ready to summon some other inane object. She pouted. “I can’t make ideas.” Then she perked up. “I’ll make eye-deers! Yeehaw!”

Millions of knee high animals jumped out of the box of tissues. They had huge eyes on their tiny heads and looked like Earth game animals. Xarae shook her head. “Deer. That’s pathetic.”

“This has gone far enough! I am Sailor Calamari, senshi of waves and tsunamis! I’ve come to wash this place clean of your filth!”

“I’m Sailor Chibi Bakura, senshi of strength and friendship! When we combine our strength, we can beat you!”

“I’m Sailor Iridonia, senshi of death and children! Prepare to meet your doom.”

The three senshi stood in front of the Sith. Iridonia was in the middle with her great wings spread. Standing in front of her wings to either side were Calamari and Chibi Bakura. Where Calamari stood, the swamp water had cleared a bit because she was a senshi of water. Together, they made a fearsome picture. Anyone in their right mind would have been terrified to face their wrath.

Geri, of course, was not in her right mind.

“Well, I’m Sailor Sith Iyagaru! Evil Senshi of... of..." the evil being frown. “I can’t remember. That’s okay. I’ll kill you anyway!” She made the prospect seem cheerful.

Calamari smiled coolly. “You’ll have to excuse us if we don’t roll over and die for you.”

“Why not?”

Stepping up, Chibi Bakura answered her. “Because we have better things to do! Plant Wall!”

She walked into it. Iyagaru walked right into the wall of plants that Chibi Bakura had created. Immediately, they heard a muttered curse and a giggle escaped the three senshi.

“Sailor brats!” Iyagaru wailed. “Black Hole Engulf!”

A wide maw in the fabric of space yawned into existence in front of them. The center was darker than any shade of black ever created by mortal hands. As the blackness spiraled out to the fringes, it lightened only by virtue of the bright stars that dotted the revolving rim. Calamari backed up from the space phenomena a few steps, putting a little distance between her and the hovering dark attack. There was a bright flash from the stars and she suddenly saw a ship on the edge of the black hole. It took a moment for the girl to recognize it before she realized it was the ship that her parents had been killed on. “No...”

“Yeeeees..." Iyagaru drew the word out to ridiculous proportions. The ship faded into a shot of the Black Fire Clone and the screams that Calamari hadn’t realized she’d been hearing turned into those of her friends. “No!” On some level, the girl knew that it was all fake; all a dream that the evil Sith was somehow creating from her deepest fears.

“It’s not real!” Chibi Bakura shouted. “Don’t give in to her illusions! Passion-Bud Vine...!”

Iridonia grabbed her arm. “Don’t.”

Chibi Bakura turned on the dark haired woman. “Why? She’ll die!”

“I don’t think so...” Iridonia pointed with one of her dark wings towards the terrified Sailor. “Just wait. Just wait.”

Two sets of blue eyes watched as Calamari stared, terrified, at the black hole and the drama unfolding on its surface. A change came over the girl’s troubled gray eyes... they were still terrified, only now they glowed just a bit. Her body straightened, face skyward, hands crossed over her chest, she took on a now familiar posture. She held it a moment longer than the other two had; almost as if the darkness that created the attack was still gathering in her body. As the dark energy gathered, the water that had been turning clear around her feet darkened again. “Spaceflight... Fear...” the girl whispered, extending her crossed arms, palms up.

Helpless to stop the dark power, Iridonia mused that while the “Anger Release” attacks that Asteroid, Shooting Star, and Dathomir had displayed were quick and loud, the “Fear Bondage” attacks seemed to be slower, more... entrapping.

Calamari opened her stormy gray eyes and focused them on the Sith. Iyagaru had dropped the Black Hole at the first sign of the dark side attack. “Bondage!” she yelled. The word opened a floodgate of white energy that rivaled even the stars in its brightness. It formed into trailing streams that leapt from Calamari’s heart and spun down her arms. Where her arms were crossed the energy gathered, then made a rush for her fingers. Streams of white energy fled to the Sith, surrounding her in a death-tight embrace.

Despite the fact that she was insane, Iyagaru still had some of her wits about her. Creating a black hole, she let it rip the energy off of her, giving the Sith time to escape through a bolthole.

Nami sank to her knees in the slimy mud, getting it all over her tan pants and lavender shirt. She shook her head in response to the question Lys posed. “I’m not okay.”

Nodding, Xarae sympathized. “It was like re-living it...” the older woman suggested.

Nami nodded. “Every little detail. And when the rescue ship came, it took us to Coruscant. I woke up, all alone but believing that my parents were still alive because I needed them. Then some doctor told me my mother and father were dead.” She frowned. “I went back to Calamari and lived with a Calamarian foster family. It wasn’t that I didn’t have any other family anywhere else in the universe, I just wouldn’t get on a ship to go to them. I was too scared.”

“Now you’ve got family with us,” Lys offered.

Nami looked up at her. “At what cost?”

Even Xarae couldn’t answer that. But she did know a showdown was coming. It wouldn’t be the final brush with darkness, but it would be a definitive one.