MoonGate

MoonGate. Chapter One​

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon created by Naoko Takeuchi and owned by Naoko Takeuchi and Kodansha. Stargate is property of MGM

Spoilers: Sailor Moon, roughly to Sailor Moon S, and elements of Sailor Moon SuperS and the Dreams arc from the manga (I’m mixing and matching here).. Stargate mid-to-late 5th Season.

Author note: while I’ll mostly be drawing from the original Anime, and elements from the manga, that doesn't mean that I won't draw from other sources in the Sailor Moon franchise (live action series, musicals, videogames, etc.)

---

Somewhere in outer space​

Visions rarely came to her in dreams, but it was not unheard of, and this was one of those times. The image was blurry, as if seen through frosted glass, but it seemed to be a throne room of some kind.

"It's strange that you came here in person... so to speak, giving your kind's penchant for hiding behind their brainwashed soldiers." a cold and harsh female voice, coming from a tall figure dressed in gold, said in a condescending tone, with barely a hint of surprise in her voice. "Now, before I lose my patience, worm, why did you want this meeting?"​

​

"As you probably already know, I'm not usual for my kind…" an inhumanly deep male voice answered, coming from a hunched figure in black, in a patient tone, like the one that one would use with a slow child. "Now, as for why I wanted this meeting... We are both the most powerful of our kind, and a fight between us will at least weaken the winner enough for our enemies to take us down easily, and very probably would destroy us both."​

​

"And...?" said the woman, archly.​

​

"I'm proposing an alliance." Said the male voice​

​

"An interesting proposal..." started to say the female voice, her voice fading in the background​

​

And then she saw an upright ring of stone, with engraved signs, and a glowing, watery surface in its center.​

​

Rei Hino, Sailor Mars, awoke with a gasp. Quickly, she reassured herself, she was in her flat in Tokyo, but she couldn't repress a shiver. She hadn't had a premonition so strong since all the mess with the Messiah of Silence.

The part of her that was exclusively Sailor Mars, the Senshi of flame and passion, had recognized the ring, but the feeling had disappeared too quickly to find out its origin. This premonition puzzled her, as there was no clue of the identities of both enemies, and the lack of images, other than the ring of stone. Tomorrow she would try to get a vision on the fire, and warn the others, as apparently new enemies would show their face in a short time. She opened the window and looked at the lights of the city below, and then to the clouds hiding the few stars that could be seen in the middle of the city.

"A storm is coming." She said, as she felt a gust of wind, full of the scent of the sea.

The house shared by the Outer Senshi​

Two women, a tall blonde with short hair, and the other with shoulder-length wavy teal hair were sleeping together in the same bed. Another woman, a tall, dark-skinned woman with long green hair opened the door for a moment before closing it. The noise awakened the blonde, who spent several minutes just looking at her partner, who was moving and mumbling in her sleep, seemingly on her way to awakening. The teal-haired woman finally opened her eyes, saying something under her breath.

"What did you say, Michiru?" said Haruka Tenoh, Sailor Uranus, seeing the worried expression of her girlfriend.

"I said, Haruka, that a storm is coming." Said Michiru Kaioh, Sailor Neptune, looking at her lover and partner directly in her eyes. "And I'm not talking about the weather. Get dressed, we need to talk with the others."

Stargate Command​

Daniel rubbed his eyes after waking up, having fallen asleep over the pictures that he had examined, that had been taken by the SG-7 in PGS-345. Obviously, he hadn’t planned this, but even with all the all-nighters he had pulled lately to try to get this out the way, he hadn’t even finished with the murals. He took his notebook and started to take a few quick notes.

They depicted mural writings in Ancient, although judging by the architectural style of the ruins where it was found, it was probably one of the most modern Ancient settlements in the Galaxy, dated only a few thousand years ago. If that world weren’t now under Baal’s control, he would be happy to spend some time there.

Back to the pictures, it was a recount of one event that had been obliquely alluded in some other Ancient texts that they had recovered, the fall of an important system to an enemy. But it was told in a very mythologized form, which, together with some archaic turns of phrase, made him wonder if the Ancients in that planet had fallen into a Dark Age somehow...

The story, as told in the inscriptions, talked about how the enemy, which according to the text had been guided by “a spirit of chaos and darkness that had been hidden in the Sun” had been opposed by a group of female warriors, called the Anima Mundi, who had died defending their ruler. This ruler, also a woman, although the term used for her title was an Ancient word he wasn’t all that familiar with, Rexis, had used an artifact, Empyreon Argyrokrystalos, to “seal the darkness” and give the fallen defenders... something. Unfortunately the wall was damaged in that part, but seemed to be derived from the same root as the Ancient word for Ascension, although that was not clearly the case.

“Good enough for now.” He told himself before getting down to the mess hall for breakfast and a big cup of extra-strong coffee. Once he got this, he noticed Sam, eating breakfast alone.

“Hello, Sam. What’s the matter?.”

“Oh, I came early to get the results from the Takahashi team on P7X-326.” Sam said, before hunting the last errant fragment of blue jello "But other than some preliminary data, they haven't transmitted much. And you?"

"I fell asleep on my desk." Daniel recognized with a chuckle. "Too many all-nighters. Not to mention how far behind I am in the translation of several Ancient texts, we really need some other specialists full time here. In fact..."

He was interrupted by the sudden sound of the alarm, alerting of an unexpected activation of the Stargate. Sam downed her coffee and ran toward the gate room, while he took his coffee pot and sandwich before following her at a more sedate pace.

P7X-326​

“Doc, can’t you do it more quickly? Those Jaffa are almost here!” Lieutenant Cally Mason, the last unhurt member of SG-19, said to the head of the science team, Doctor Karen Takahashi, who was keying the address in the DHD, while the remaining members of SG-17 and SG-19 tried to hold the fort.

"It's not easy to press the keys while dodging staff blasts, you know!" she shouted as she pressed the last symbol, and the wormhole opened. Just in time, as a Death Glider appeared on the horizon

“Come on people!” Colonel Dixon, commander of SG-17, said as he and Mason used suppression fire to give them time to scramble for the Gate.

Doctor Takahashi, started to run up the stairs, but trying to dodge a blast, she stumbled and almost fell, only for Mason to pick her up and jump into the wormhole, just as the Death Glider gun bolts impacted on the gate.

Somewhere​

"My head..." moaned Karen Takahasi, as she tried to get up, only to be kept in the ground by a gentle, but strong hand. She had her eyes open, but she didn't see anything.

"Don't move, Doc." said the voice of Cally Mason, over her. Karen then felt something moving near her face "How many fingers do I have here?"

Karen groaned as Mason's weird humor sense reared its ugly head again.

"How the hell can I know? I can't see anything!' said Karen, as the darkness didn't alleviate as her head cleared and the details of the mission came back to her.

"Okay, okay. And you're right, Karen, it's pitch black down here." said Mason, rummaging in her pockets. "Wherever it is."

"Wherever? I was dialing the SGC!" said Karen, a bit of panic seeping into her voice.

"Have you read how we discovered the Antarctica Gate, you know, the one that the SGC was using for some time." Said Mason, as she kept messing with her pockets.

"Something involving the SG-1 trying to cross the gate under heavy... oh." she said as she realized what Mason was trying to say. 'Damn it! I studied the physics involved when I joined the program. Why didn't I remember it?' she thought, and said aloud, analyzing the situation "The energy bolts from the Jaffa and that Death Glider must have overloaded the wormhole and deviated it to another gate."

"Pretty much. Ah, here it is!" she said as she produced something from her pockets, she twisted it, breaking something inside and shook it, revealing that it was a glow stick. "Better to conserve the flashlight batteries, besides, I have like two dozens of these things, good for like twelve hours or so. How many have you?"

"Uh... Standard load?" ventured Karen, she didn't remember how many she had, honestly.

"That makes another dozen, good." Said Mason. "At least we won't be sitting in the darkness." Using the light, Karen checked her own pockets. She had packed the standard load, indeed. And given how much a pack rat Mason was, they shouldn't have to worry for food for some time, so she looked around.

The dim light of the glow stick revealed a rather spacious room, with the gate at one end and only darkness in the other. The Stargate was different to any that they had seen, being darker and smaller with different looking chevrons. The symbols, though, looked like cruder versions of the ones in the normal Stargate. On one side of the gate a control panel could be seen, pretty intact, for what she could see.

She went to the control panel, but it looked like even if it was intact, it had no energy to operate. At least the signs on the different controls made identifying its origin quite easy.

"Cally, I might be wrong, after all I'm not an archeologist, but I think that this is Ancient." Said Karen with a frown

"The gates were built by the Ancients, so what..." started to say Mason

"I mean all of this." interrupted Karen, waving her hand around, "This installation was built by the Ancients, not the Goa'uld, and this..." she said, pointing to the Stargate "...could be a prototype Stargate."

"Jumping a bit ahead, aren't we?" said Mason

"Well, maybe." She conceded "But I want to see what is here, if there are other rooms and if we can somehow determine where the heck we are."

"Are you crazy?" Mason said, "We could get lost..."

"Not really. There are procedures for exploring labyrinthine structures, if that’s the case” Karen said, “And who knows, we may find something that could help us against the Goa’uld in the other rooms. Why don't you come with me?"

"Are you mad?" said Mason looking at her like she effectively was mad "To go wandering around when they could find us at any moment?"

"We have the radios to communicate and..." started to say Karen

"And we don't know if they work through the walls of this place, or if there is some kind of dampening field in this place that could make them useless." interrupted Mason.

"It has an easy solution. We can test, and I can use the glow sticks as bread crumbs to guide me back." Said Karen, reasonably.

"But..." she started to say, but she stopped, as she didn't really have a counter to that.

"But what?" said Karen, recognizing the sign.

Mason sighed and raised her hand in surrender.

"Very well, you can go to explore this, but I'm going with you. After all..." she said, collecting her weapon"...we don't know what could be here. But remember, the moment that we find something remotely weird or dangerous, we come back."

"..."

"What?" said Mason as she got her notebook and scribbled a message to their would-be rescuers.

"...All right." Conceded Karen.

Mason didn't answer, as she was leaving a note under the glow stick, and the glow stick in the control panel, just in case that a rescue party came, and followed the scientist through the corridors. She thanked her stars that the younger woman was quite coordinated, remembering stories about Daniel Jackson's clumsiness back in the first days of the SGC.

Karen took her notebook and started to make a diagram of the part of the room where they were.

"Better safe than sorry, and it could help us to discover hidden rooms or passages later." she explained, "I knew that those Archeology courses would be useful someday, when I was studying Astrophysics."

"Really? I would never have thought that, given how you and Jenner..." Mason asked, referring to the archeologist that had been with them in the last mission.

"He is a narrow-minded idiot set in his ways. He is still using Budge works as a main reference work, for God's sake!" and then added, to Mason's confused expression, "Victorian archeologist, Archeology has moved on since then."

"Okay... Hey, look at this." Mason said, having discovered a plaque on the wall that they were following to find the true dimensions of the room, as well as trying to find an exit.

“Hey, Ancient characters. I think that I got Jackson’s guide for translating them on my pack." Karen said, taking a couple quick pictures of the plaque, "But that would be better for later."

"I'm not so sure about that." Mason said, having walked forward a bit, and getting the first glimpse of the door of the room, or rather, its broken and burnt remains. She then added as she started to rummage on her backpack, "I think this justifies using the flashlight a bit. I hope that I’m wrong about what we are going to find.”

She turned on the flashlight and started a slow survey of the room, and as she had feared, the more powerful light revealed things that had been hidden before under the dim illumination given by the glow sticks. Faint scorch marks on the walls, the floor and the ceiling, some broken pieces of what could have been once energy weapons, maybe, and other small details, like the broken crystals close to an open panel in the control console, that formed a clear and not too pleasant picture in Mason's mind.

"There was a battle here." Karen said, as Mason turned the flashlight and let their eyes get used back to the glow stick.

"Not a battle, a last stand." Mason corrected, "This place was evacuated through the Stargate, and a few people remained behind to ensure the others weren’t followed.” She then gestured where the control console was placed, “One of the things we learn is how to get the DHD inoperative by removing a crystal. I assume this control console works in similar principles and there was a broken crystal close to an open panel.”

“You are the soldier. But if there was a battle here, why are there no remains? We didn’t see anything, even bones. And if the survivors of either side carried the remains away, why didn't they repair that door?.” Karen said, “There are a lot of mysteries here.”

“Don’t know. Perhaps they were after somebody who was evacuated, or died. Who knows?” Mason said, “It happened a long time ago. At least, the air is still fresh, though pretty dry.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it…” Karn said, with a thoughtful expression and then started to talk softly, almost to herself, “Freefall or pendulum? Freefall, is simpler, and though the acceleration would be only an approximate number…”

“Karen, what are you talking about?”

“Ah, sorry, I was thinking of how to determine the acceleration of gravity here. Or haven’t you noticed that you feel lighter?”

“A bit, but I thought that it was because the last world was bigger than normal.”

“It was bigger but less dense, so the surface gravity was roughly the same as on Earth. Here it is 0.9, 0.85 Earth gravity, if I had to hazard a guess.” Karen explained, “That’s a common error in sci-fi.”

“You’re the Physicist, not me.” Mason said with a shrug. She appreciated the effort that Karen was making to distract her from the dire situation with her antics, really. “Let’s continue, then.”

Stargate Command Infirmary
​

Lieutenant Martin McAuliffe was sitting on one of the beds, with one of his arms in a cast, while Doctor Frasier was examining Major Dixon who was unconscious in a nearby bed. The Lieutenant was giving a report of what had happened to O’Neill and Hammond.

“...We ran into an ambush from Anubis' Jaffa, we thought that they were Anubis, at least. Then Major Dixon called for regrouping to the Gate, and keeping a security perimeter around it. And soon we were under heavy fire, we lost some people and as soon as Takahashi managed to get the Gate open, a Death Glider came ready for a strafing run. We ran to the Gate, and well, you know the rest.”

“Did you see Lieutenant Mason and Doctor Takahashi?” O’Neill asked.

“Mason was before me, but she stopped to bring Doctor Takahashi who had slipped in the steps of the Gate. They were the last ones crossing, as far as I know.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Hammond said.

“And now, if you have stopped bothering my patients.” Doctor Frasier said, pointedly.

“Can we use your office for a moment, Doctor?.” Hammon asked, “And tell Major Carter to join us there.”

A few moments later, the three of them were in the Doctor’s office, discussing the events.

“It’s pretty obvious that we have a repeat of the events that led to the discovery of the Antarctica gate.” Carter said.

“So, we start looking for another Stargate hidden, who knows where?” O’Neill said, “I vote for Hawaii.”

“Not funny, Colonel.”· Hammond said, “Any workable idea to look for them?.”

“I have studied the ideas for the original case, and if memory serves, General, the worlds in range from P7X-326 to Earth are a lot less than in our case.” Jack said, a bit more seriously.

“I’ll order SG-3 and SG-5 to start the search immediately.” Hammond said, “Major, any idea from your part?.”

“Our knowledge of the internal workings of the Stargate is far greater than back then.” Carter mused, “I'll see if Monterosso and Summer have any idea about how to find the address they have been rerouted to.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

MoonGate. Chapter Two​

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon created by Naoko Takeuchi and owned by Naoko Takeuchi and Kodansha. Stargate is property of MGM

Spoilers: Sailor Moon, roughly to Sailor Moon S, and elements of Sailor Moon SuperS and the Dreams arc from the manga (I’m mixing and matching here).. Stargate mid-to-late 5th Season.

Author note: while I’ll mostly be drawing from the original Anime, and elements from the manga, that doesn't mean that I won't draw from other sources in the Sailor Moon franchise (live action series, musicals, videogames, etc.)

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Somewhere. Some time later​

The corridor had been relatively fun to explore, once they discovered that the doors had an emergency manual opening and closing mechanism in a panel close to every door in the corridor. They had taken care of documenting every inscription, every object, every painting that was in the corridor, as well as the night sky mosaic on both the floor and the ceiling.

“I think this should do it…” Karen said as she kept fiddling with the mechanism inside the panel besides one of the doors of the corridor.

For a long moment, nothing happened and then a blue light in the mechanism turned on. With barely a noise the heavy door slid aside revealing…

“Another lab.” Mason said with a slight tinge of disappointment.

“Yeah. As much as I want to look at all of that, better safe than sorry,” Karen said, “I’ll take a few pictures and close the door behind us.”

Karen enteereed, looking at the door, how thick it was and how well it fit into the mechanism. After that, she did as she had said, taking care of taking pictures of all the instruments in the lab and then closed the door behind them after they got out.

“It’s always good to work with you, Karen. Too many scientists in the SGC tend to behave like excited children when they find alien tech.” Mason commented, as they walked to the next, and last, door, the one that should communicate this corridor with another section of the complex, if things worked according to something remotely similar to human logic. “You believe in safety first, and not dismiss things like hunches out of hand.”

“Advantages of having engineers as parents,” Karen answered, though it was clear that part of her mind was elsewhere, “Well, that and my mother was a Shinto priestess for a time in her youth.”

“Oh, really? And how did you cope with…?” Mason asked, “Forget it, it’s not my…”

“Don’t worry, if you asked her, she’ll tell you something like that the Goa’ulds are just imposters that use the names of the Kami for their own ends, or something like that, and that they’ll get their punishment eventually, but she was raised in Japan, in a very traditional family. Me? I’m a bit agnostic about all of that, despite everything.” Karen said, as the panel opened with a ‘plop!’ and she examined the mechanism., “Same as the others. I think we can stop here, at least for a moment, don’t you think?.”

House shared by the Outer Senshi.
Setsuna Meiou's home office​

Setsuna was making some background checks, while Michiru was trying to get in contact with the others. None of them had money problems, Michiru and Haruka came from wealthy families and were accomplished musicians, and were invited frequently to give recitals and concerts.

Which brought her to her current conundrum, Haruka and Michiru had been invited to give a recital in Hawaii by a small technical firm, with a past link with the Mugen Academy through a past acquaintance of Doctor Tomoe, a Doctor Margaret Ericsson.

On the surface nothing was really wrong, the firm was legitimate, the place of the recital being a venue for such events, and so on. But her instincts were telling her it was a bad idea, a very bad idea. She had to talk later with Michiru if her clairvoyance could see something about them and… ah, speaking of the teal haired devil.

“Apparently Mars also had some visions, and we have agreed to meet at her grandfather’s shrine, this afternoon.” Michiru said, “Did you see anything about those people?”

“Other than some minor contacts with Doctor Tomoe years ago, everything seems to be above board, But I feel like it would be an error to accept the offer, but I don’t know why. You are the psychic, why…?”

“It doesn't work that way, as much as I would love it to, but thanks for the trust." Michiru answered, "I would have hoped we would have left all that crap behind after Twintails defeated Pharaoh-90, but it seems that it was a vain hope.”

“I know, I know. What can you tell me about your visions anyway?” Setsuna asked, “Maybe there is some clue in there that we can use.”

“It was a kaleidoscope of images, a woman in a gold armor, somebody hunched and covered with a hood, a white haired woman in a lab coat injecting something in a man thrashing in a bed and an early daimon, you know those who were all teeth and claws, sprouting from his chest, before being contained by men in uniform, and a upright ring of stone with some kind of watery surface inside it.” Michiru enumerated.

“Somebody is experimenting with daimons.” Setsuna groaned, and checked the details of the firm, “That firm has a lot of defense contracts, and look at this…”

The screen of her laptop showed the image of a stern looking middle-aged woman with silver hair.

“That’s the woman in my dream!”

“That’s Margaret, or Maggie, Ericsson. Head of Research of that firm, and if they are involved in some kind of ‘black project’ with daimons…”

Michiru let out several curses that would be better in the mouth of a veteran sailor than in such a prim and proper looking girl.

“Yeah, exactly. And then, there is the ring of stone. If I remember correctly, it was called an Astria Porta…”

“Gate to the Stars?”

“Or Stargate. There was a network of them throughout the galaxy, allowing them to travel from planet to planet without a ship. The one on Earth was in the Free City of Atlantis, though there was a functional prototype in the underground levels of the Moon Palace.” Setsuna explained, “But I wonder what it must mean. The Atlantis Gate must be under hundreds of meters of ice on Antarctica, and the other is on the Moon… Maybe I should check on it, and anyway, I needed to go to the Moon to meditate on the flow of time. It is becoming quite muddled lately.”

Somewhere. After a while.​

“What’s in your mind, Karen?” Mason asked, “I mean, you usually are more chatty than that.”

“,,,It’s just that there are a lot of little details that don’t add up.” Karen said, “All the doors are pretty much hermetic, even the panels are hermetically sealed, and there is something in the manual mechanism that I bet is an atmospheric sensor that must have its own power supply and block the opening if there is an important difference in the atmosphere between both sides.” Karen said, “So, with the local gravity, maybe the local conditions are too inimical to life, or we are over some gravity generators, and all of this is in a small moon or asteroid.”

“A lot of maybes and perhaps there.” Mason answered, “For all that we know, it could be standard security measures.”

“I know, but I think we should go more carefully from now on.” Karen said. “While I think that the next room is probably secure, we should plan the exploration afterwards better.”

“No problems on my part, Karen. Are you going to open the door now?”

“Yes.” Karen said, taking a deep breath and kneeling before the open panel.

The door opened without any issue, letting them see a wider space behind.

“After all that doom and gloom, it feels slightly anticlimactic." Mason commented, as she turned on her flashlight.

“Reality doesn’t conform to narrative conventions.” Karen answered with a shrug, doing the same.

The room beyond the door was a roughly hexagonal space roughly thirty-five feet in diameter with other five doors like the one they had opened, making six doors placed in the angles of the hexagon and a seventh smaller door in the middle of one of the sides, and over each one of them an inscription in Ancient script. Also, they could see that the same motifs that decorated the walls of the corridor were repeated here, and the floor and the ceiling also had the night sky motif that looked somewhat familiar to Karen, now that she could look at it more closely.

“I bet that door is a elevator.” Mason said, pointing to the smaller door.

“I wouldn’t bet against you in that.” Karen said, “And now, what do we do?”

SGC. Monterosso and Summer lab.​

Carter found Doctor Monterosso welding some electronics in a circuit board in the lab she shared with Doctor Summer, while her partner was reassembling one of the devices that analyzed the output signals of the Stargate.

“Hi, Sam, we are working on that, right now. As soon as I finish with this, we should have enough delta and sigma bandwidth to process the signal more efficiently, not like before.” the perky goth computer scientist and electronic engineer said as soon as she saw her, and then continued quickly and slightly breathlessly, “Of course, it could be hidden into the epsilon, lambda or theta bands, but I hope not, because in that case, we would have to start building whole detectors from scratch entirely, instead of just refining existing designs, although we could…, oh, I’m babbling? Sorry, when I’m nervous, people say that I start babbling and…”

“I think she got the idea, Sally.” Doctor Summer interrupted, he was a tanned young man with brown hair and eyes, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans under his lab coat, “Now, if you hand me what you were welding we can make the final tests and see…”

“...If it works, we can hook it to the Gate.” Sally said, handing the circuit board to his partner.

“And I assume that you have already worked on how to separate the signal we need.” Carter asked, seeing how Monterosso and Summer seemed to have the hardware part well managed.

“No, unfortunately, we are hopelessly behind.” Sally acknowledged, with a dejected expression, “ We focused so much on the machine that we didn’t look much at the software, Sam, sorry.”

“Yeah, now that I think about it, we should have split the job as we always do, but we have known Cally, I mean Lieutenant Mason, since High School…” Summer said, “We didn’t even think about it, sorry.”

“It’s good that I’m here, then. Let me see what you have changed in the machine, and then let’s start coding.”

Somewhere. Roughly at the same moment​

They finally decided to try the elevator. When they used the emergency opening the cabin was there, though it was clear that it had seen better days. A bit of looking around in the car located an emergency hatch that opened in the shaft.

“Look there.” Mason said, using her flashlight to illuminate the side of the shaft, revealing a service ladder.

“Interesting, it doesn’t use counterweights. I wonder if it uses some kind of magnetic rails or maybe a localized anti-gravitic…” Karen said looking at the apparent lack of mechanism for the lift, and then interrupted herself, “Later, sorry. Up?”

“Yes, let’s try to the top.” Mason answered, as she put gloves on before reaching towards the ladder.

They climbed slowly noting as they passed several levels until Mason reached the top level. There was a narrow service walkway that circled around the shaft at the same level of the door. It was simple to go around until she found the panel of the emergency opening mechanism. After what seemed an eternity the door opened, revealing a room quite different from the ones in the lower level, from what they could see, not only from their lights, but also a bit of light that filtered from the closed doors.

“This looks like a room in a palace, an empty palace, though, and surprisingly clean, given the destruction down there.” Karen said, “Not to mention the light that is filtering through that door, it’s clear that we are on the surface.”

“And there is air, so…” Mason pointed

“Yeah, much of what I talked down there now just looks silly. I mean, I didn’t expect to find myself in something straight from a fairytale or one of my mom’s old shoujo mangas when we climbed the ladder.” Karen said.

They walked warily toward the door, which looked like a regular door, not like the ones in the underground levels, though they noticed the oversized door frame hid the mechanism for hermetically sealing the room with a door not unlike the ones down in the underground levels.

The door opened to a corridor with windows that allowed them to see an arid, gray-white landscape that looked quite familiar for some reason against a black sky.. Looking around, they were about to walk toward one of the sides when Karen registered that there was something else, very familiar, in that black sky in front of them.

"No... way..." said Karen.

"What is the..." started to say Mason, stopping herself when she realized the same thing that Karen had seen. Because outside, hanging in the black starry sky over the landscape, they could see a blue and green globe, a planet, a very familiar planet.

Earth, as seen from the Moon.

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

MoonGate. Chapter Three​

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon created by Naoko Takeuchi and owned by Naoko Takeuchi and Kodansha. Stargate is property of MGM

Spoilers: Sailor Moon, roughly to Sailor Moon S, and elements of Sailor Moon SuperS and the Dreams arc from the manga (I’m mixing and matching here).. Stargate mid-to-late 5th Season.

Author note: while I’ll mostly be drawing from the original Anime, and elements from the manga, that doesn't mean that I won't draw from other sources in the Sailor Moon franchise (live action series, musicals, videogames, etc.)

---

The Palace on the Moon​

They were advancing carefully through the corridors of the palace, noting things were practically brand new without any signs of fight, like they were in the underground levels. As they advanced toward the next room, Karen opened the door carefully, by turning a silver handle, though the door frame had an embedded mechanism much like the ones downstairs. The door opened to a big entrance hall with a crystal door that opened to a set of steps that descended to ground level.

And opened was the operative word, as it was open and what was more strange, there were several sets of high-heeled footprints, pretty distinctive by differences in size, plant and heel shape in the light dust of the floor of the entrance hall.

“I think that I can count five, maybe six sets of different footprints.” Mason said.

“I agree, though I wonder who would bring high heels to the Moon.” Karen said, “And this style is… quite different from what we have come to expect from the Ancients, at least from what little stuff we have seen of them until now. I mean, the underground was different, but not that different, while this…”

“Yeah, it looks like what George Lucas made of a fairytale castle, right?” Mason answered.

“Something like that.” Karen replied as they neared the door and saw the same footprints, as clear as if they had just been made, on the moondust outside. ‘It fits too well, goddammit. The original five, at least.’

“You have an idea of who could have made the footprints.” Mason said, having noticed her expression.

“Possibly, but it’s too ridiculous.” Karen said, “Let me see some of the stuff of the lower levels, to see if it can show some light on all this nonsensical situation.”

The Moon Palace former back gardens.​

'The flow of the time stream is becoming muddled. I wonder what it presages.' Thought Sailor Pluto, as she got up from the place where she had been trying to meditate.

She looked around, remembering the Palace gardens and the artificial lake that had been there, before the fall of the Silver Millenium, and remembered the words of one American astronaut, 'Buzz Aldrin, I think', about the Moon.

'Magnificent desolation, indeed.' she thought.

But it hadn't always been that way. When their people had come to this Galaxy, fleeing from their home, they had scattered all over the Galaxy, isolated from each other. While the first colonies in the System had been set in Luna and Terra, there had been plans to colonize all the planets in the Solar System. With the development of the Astria Porta, the first steps to form a galactic community had been given. She closed her eyes, remembering the marvels of what had truly been a Golden Age. But as the Bard wrote, all good things must come to an end.

And to an end they came.

The first sign of it was to come were the problems in the Golden Kingdom of Earth. There had always been people on Earth who resented that the Moon Kingdom was richer and more technologically advanced, having even fought some wars between Earth and the Moon in the dark years before Serenity’s crowning, but things had quieted since.

But when a minor noblewoman called Beryl became their spokeswoman, they became more than a nuisance. The fact that Prince Endymion had fallen in love with Princess Serenity, instead of some Earth woman, namely Beryl herself, who had been one of the favorites by some people in Avalon, also played into the fears of people who otherwise would not have given Beryl's faction a second thought.

The Atlantis Council tried to play as a mediator between the factions, but they failed. In the end, after Beryl physically attacked Endymion and Serenity, she and her followers were exiled to the North, where they founded a community, the so-called Dark Kingdom, with Beryl styling herself as their Queen. Other than some eye-rolling and mumbling in Avalon and Elysium for her presumption, it seemed that the peace had been restored on Earth, until the news of the plague spreading in the Galaxy came to the Solar System.

Nobody knew where the first case had been diagnosed, or rather there had been so many first cases near simultaneously on many worlds over the Galaxy. When the first cases were diagnosed on Earth and the Moon, the Atlantis Council panicked and fled the Galaxy. This news led to unrest and riots, fostered by the agents that Beryl had either left behind or recruited afterwards, sometimes against their will.

When that unrest reached its cusp, the Dark Kingdom struck and destroyed the Golden Kingdom. Some people managed to escape the attack and warn the Moon. It was then when the Queen heard for the first time the name of Queen Metalia, the infernal power that had been whispering to Beryl's ear for a long time, and was seen as a dark shadow over Beryl's army in the assault on Avalon.

Without real time for the Silver Millenium to prepare, the Dark Kingdom followed with an all-out assault into the Moon, helped by that infernal abomination, the same power that had aided Beryl in her plans. And it was the end of the Silver Millenium.

Uranus, Neptune and herself came too late to help in the fight, but the reunion of the three Talismans had accidentally invoked Sailor Saturn, the Senshi of Ruin and Birth, who had killed everything that remained alive in the Solar System. At least, for the scarce survivors it had been a blessing in disguise, giving them a gentle death, instead of a slow, painful death by asphyxia, starvation, or worse.

Afterwards, she had reappeared at the Space-Time Door, beginning her lonely vigil that would last for millions of years. Fortunately, she had always been a loner, which was the reason why the Queen chose her to be its guardian. Her loneliness over the eons had only been interrupted by the infrequent visit of those of her people that had Ascended, ever curious about their past, although they had become more and more stand-offish as time passed. And somehow, after her death stopping time, she found that she was still there, in the pocket dimension where the Door was placed, as well as outside, reincarnated as Setsuna Meioh, student in the Mugen Academy.

Her thoughts were interrupted by voices coming from a nearby place, the gate to the gardens on one of the wings of the Palace. She carefully approached, using the corner as a vantage point to observe and listen to whoever had come to the Palace.

Moon Palace Eastern Wing gate to the former front gardens.​

“This would need Daniel Jackson or one of the other language experts of the SGC to translate it correctly, but I think that the plaque in the Stargate room said that their ruler, Serenitas Rexis… Queen Serenity, I think, inaugurated the Astria Porta, the Stargate, on date whatever.” Karen said.

“There seem to be too many words for that.” Mason noted, “My high school librarian tried to get me interested in Classical Languages, and well, I still remember some bits of Latin.”

“That’s why I said this would need one of the language experts for a good translation, I used the context to see what it could be, but I’m an amateur archeologist at best.” Karen replied with a shrug, “The other inscriptions were most straightforward, I think they were directions to other parts of the complex and stuff like that.”

They kept talking about the stuff they had seen, oblivious to how Pluto was observing them, hidden by a corner.

'How have those two Americans come here?' Pluto thought, pursing her lips.

Objectively she knew that eventually the remains from the Silver Millenium would be discovered, but she thought that it would be quite far in the future, and she couldn't avoid feeling worried. Maybe she was doing modern humanity a disservice, but she doubted that as it was today, they had the maturity to discover their tech without blowing themselves up, and the underground levels under the Palace included research labs, armories, the old Command Bunker in the lowest level, and...

'Of course, the prototype Astria Porta in the sixth level. That's how they arrived here.' She thought, mentally slapping herself for having forgotten about it. This also explained something that she had overheard as Setsuna Meioh, the college student, before her awakening. 'Yes, that would explain the American government's sudden interest in wormhole experts a few years ago, they probably found the Atlantis Porta back then.'

“You mentioned earlier that you had an idea who had made those footprints.” the blonde american said, “Even if it’s too ridiculous, can you tell me?”

“Okay,so I am fluent in Japanese and follow the news in the old Country, and apparently over the last years there have been incidents, true X-files stuff, solved by a group of teenage girl vigilantes in costumes.”

“Oookay.” Mason said, to the apparent non-sequitur.

“It’s related, trust me. You see, somebody has been trying to hush the whole affair, but at least the names they use have transcended. Their leader is called Sailor Moon, and they use the kind of footwear that could leave those footprints.”

“You are right, it sounds ridiculous.”

“Yes, I know. They use planet themed imagery, and they seem to be connected with a former jewel thief turned vigilante called Tuxedo Mask. But to go from there to have a private space program is a giant leap.”

“We don’t need a rocket to reach the Moon, you know.” a lightly accented voice said.

Both Mason and Karen turned and saw a dark skinned woman with green hair leaving a staff on the wall and putting her hands high, showing them she didn’t have anything else on her hands.

“Don’t tell me, she is one of them.”

“One of the less seen. Sailor…Uranus?”

“Sailor Pluto, actually.” Pluto answered in an amused tone, “Your partner could make a killer Sailor Uranus cosplay if she cut her hair. Anyway, I don't mean to harm you, I like to meditate a bit further from the Palace and when I was returning, I heard your voices.”

Now they could see her more clearly, a tall, dark-skinned woman, clad in a white leotard with a black sailor collar, a black miniskirt, a dark garnet ribbon in the chest with a heart shaped brooch, weird looking short sleeves, opera gloves with some weird black thing in the end, and black low-heeled knee-high boots with a white band in the upper side.The staff she had left in the wall resembled of all things a giant skeleton key, with a garnet colored sphere in the bow

Karen didn't answer, as she felt very out of her depth just now. 'I'm a physicist with archeology as a hobby, not a diplomat, for Pete's sake.' She thought, looking at Martha, who was eyeing Pluto with wariness

“How do we know that you aren’t a shapeshifter or some telepathic alien messing with our heads?” Martha finally said.

“You don’t have a motive to trust me, truly.” Pluto acknowledged, “After all, I sneaked-up on you, and the only word you have that I’m a good person is internet gossip.”

“Yeah, but what alternative do we have?.” Karen said “ We don’t know the extent of the habitable zone around the Palace…”

“A circle of roughly two kilometers.” Pluto supplied.

“...Or any way to communicate with St… our superiors.” Karen continued, “ And even if we had, there was no way that it wouldn’t alert the whole world.”


"Hmmmm... You are right. But a point in your favor is that you aren't trying to put the usual 'a god am I' or 'die, unbeliever' crap that we are used to finding in our enemies" She said, releasing her grip on her weapon. "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt... for now."

That merited an arched eyebrow as a reaction from Pluto. That sounded decidedly odd...

'Just on what did they run out there? Did the Ori start to invade? No, I don't think that Earth forces would be able to disrupt an Ori conquest of the Galaxy, so it has to be something else.' she thought. 'I need more information.'

"Now, If you don't mind, I'll make a few educated guesses about how you arrived here." She cleared her throat and started to speak "Some time ago, your people found a ring of what looked like stone, with strange glyphs. Probably on Antarctica, I'd say."

'Shit! How does she know?' thought Karen, as she was aware of the discovery of the Beta gate. Hell, before getting assigned to a SG team she was in the team that studied its DHD.

'It seems that I was right' Pluto thought, seeing her expression, before she continued speaking as if she hadn't noticed

"Upon further study you realized that it wasn't what it seemed and eventually you devised a way to activate it, opening wormholes back and forth. You started to explore using the Astria Porta, probably to get access to alien technology, but you stepped on some toes doing so. Something bad happened during one of those explorations and you accidentally ended here."

'Fuck!' thought Mason. While a very general outline, she had hit most of the important points of the Stargate program. 'Although, why does she think we are using the Beta Gate?.'

'Astria Porta? That sounds like Ancient... it could be simply Latin, though.' thought Karen 'I wonder...'

"Even if it was true, something that I'm not admitting, by the way, I couldn't discuss it with a foreign national... or anybody who didn't get enough clearance." said Mason

"It's not that, Major, " said Pluto, cocking her head. "What I'm saying to you is that I have a certain knowledge of how to operate the Porta..."

"It's no use, the console is dead..." said Karen, shaking her head

“Let me examine it at least.” Pluto said.

TO BE CONTINUED...