The Sound of Wind Chimes

Wnd chimes played softly for the briefest of moments, then...

It was so cold. And dark. The only thing she could see was a figure walking towards her. The figure was silhouetted in black and seemed to me moving like a broken marionette puppet.

"Who are you?" she yelled. Somehow, even her loudest yell was reduced to a whisper in the icy, dead air.

"Who are we might be more appropriate," the figure wheezed as she came closer.

She stepped back from the apparition. "What?" She wasn't normally frightened this easily, but as the vampire Oame had warned her, her overconfidence lead to her downfall.

Suddenly - even though there was no light - she could see the figure. She screamed.

"Why so frightened, my love?" the figure asked, tracing a decaying finger over the other's face. "Why so frightened? I'm no one but yourself."

It was true, in the horrible way that the Underworld made things true. The being was a starkly-drawn caricature of herself, complete with blue-black mask and scarred hands.

"I'm you..." the figure said again, half her face drawn up in a grotesque mockery of a smile. "You do so many bad things... you get to come down here and be the consort of vampires..." The figure snickered and reached out to steady itself on a wall. It left an imprint of glistening black goo.

"Never!" she growled, finding a balance within her soul. "Not me... not the real me." She stood a little straighter and wished that she had a non-corporeal blaster that she could use on this figment of Oame's diseased kingdom. She brushed her dark blue skirt down, reassuring herself that she was as real as she could be in this war.

The figure snickered again. "Oh, you don't know yourself very well... I do... I know you..." With a motion more steady than any it had made so far, the figure's hand shot out and grabbed the other's bow.

She looked down where the bow had been and blanched. There was some kind of sore on her chest, growing as she watched. It covered her heart and paused for a minute. The sore itched so badly that she couldn't help but touch it. That was a mistake.

The sore burst open, splattering both beings with an oozing black goo. "Wha..." she gasped.

"The dragon has you..." the figure snickered again. "The dragon!"

"Dr... dragon?" she asked, unsure. The ooze was dripping down her black bodysuit and splatting on the floor.

"The dragon! The evil, evil dragon..." The figure snickered at her again.

She backed away, trailing ooze. "No. I'm not evil anymore. I'm a Sailor Senshi..."

The figure jerked to the side as if someone had pulled its strings. "Tell that to the hoarde you killed... and will kill... oh, the future is so bad for you..."

Suddenly, she was surrounded by moaning beings reaching for her. She tried to push them away, but they were less real than herself and she passed right through them. Each of the creatures she'd killed - even animals seemed to be included - seemed intent on touching the oozing hole in her chest, and she couldn't stop them.

The figure kept snickering, its demeaning laugh resounding through the cold, cold, dark halls.

She was almost getting used to the endless stream of decaying beings - each more horrible than the last - massing around her and getting her serafuku covered in the black ooze until she saw a speck of pink, decayed almost beyond recognition by the aura of the Underworld.

"Annika..." she moaned, sure the other senshi would help her.

The Bakuran senshi turned, jerkily, to face the other girl. She was almost in worse shape than any of the others... and she was leading a procession of decaying Sailor Jedi, some of which she didn't even recognize. "No... no..." she gasped, trying to get away.

The figure snickered louder. "Oh my... you killed them too..."

She screamed again.

Something sharp tapped against her neck. She turned, almost expecting to see a being latched on to her... but it was only Oame's long, cold nails. In the dark, her silver eyes gleamed like ice. "If you're finished playing with your personal demons, we do have a mission," the vampire princess said, her voice as cold as the darkness around the group. The sound of wind chimes seemed to play through her words.

"She's mine..." the figure complained, jerking around to face the Underworld guardian.

For its insolence, Oame backhanded the figure, sending black goo splattering on the walls. "We don't have time for your diversions, interesting as they may be."

Oame dug her long-nailed hands into Asteroid's arm and stepped backwards as the decaying figures reached for Asteroid again to a chorus of wind chimes...