Prolouge for Converging Powers

The following is a work of fanfiction.  Not only are all the inhabitants of this work fictional, and their resemblances to any real people, living or dead a coincidence.  Any people active looking for such need to get out more.  Also, I do not own any of the characters, concepts or settings used here.  Except for some of the Slayers.  They are OCs, and mine to do with as I please, and none of you can judge me!

Converging Powers
Prologue: The End

It was the end of the world.  Unless the men gathered here today had anything to say about it.  Spirit-walkers, elementalists, daemon callers, numerologists, empaths, seers, and one very old arc-magi.  It was he who had called this conclave, an assembly of as many magically inclined people as he could dig up.  His beard, worn and scraggily, was more a sign of the times than anything else.  He had seen the fall of civilization (it was terrible) and the wars that had resulted.  He had seen the fall of both craft and magic.  He had seen the ice march south and north from the poles, and it now was creeping forward a hundred feet a year or more.  And it would only get faster.  
The old man was well aware that this alone would not destroy humanity (history yes, writing yes, farming yes) but the coming ice age was not the only problem.  Civilization had fallen not because of war, environmental change, or a sudden loss of power sources for the technology that ran it.  It had been a magical end of the world, a demonic invasion.  Details were sparse, but the old man knew three things for certain.  1.  Somebody had torn holes into the earth, and demons had poured forth.  2.  These demons had destroyed anything they could lay hands on.  And 3.  The Senshi had been defeated.  The white face of the moon, stained and marred by the power that had almost unmade it was testament enough to that.  And he was here tonight to chain that power.  To bind it to a new host.
He was terrified.
He had not PLANNED this.  Not this ceremony that was being done tonight under the black sky of a new moon.  Not the girl chained to a rock.  Not the daemons likewise chained around the circle some 50 feet wide.  And most certainly not the sigil under his feet.  To his eyes, it was a sign of doom.  A power too great to control invoked from desperation.  And here he was, planning on tearing apart this multitude of demons for their strength, speed, healing, and host of other abilities, and then use the power of Saturn to glue them together into something that would take the girl as its host.  Never mind they were doing it to create something to protect humanity through the dark times ahead.  Never mind the fact that the girl should be able to seal most of the gapping wounds in the earth that still leaked forth creatures from the nether realms.  No, Saturn’s power was simply too much for the task.  He was certain that it was a case of hitting a fly with a mountain.  But there was no other recourse.  The other senshi’s powers were either too weak or oddly locked up.  And Saturn was versatile.  It was the only thing that could possibly unite all these powers together to create something new, something magnificent.  And as scared as he was that he would not live out the day. . . he was also excited.  He might not live to see the sun rise tomorrow, but he would certainly hold it together long enough to see what he would create here today.  That he promised himself.  He hadn’t survived the fall of the silver millennium just to wind up dying for nothing.  Even if no one remembered him, it would be his magnum opus.
And all too soon, it was time to begin.  There was posing, there was boasting, there was the constant promises of death from the Daemons.  Things about a ‘First Evil’ and ‘Glorificus’ and ‘Cthulhu’ other names and titles thrown around like they were going out of style.  Few mentioned ‘Metallia’ a change from the days of his youth.  Some of the younger spell casters were excited.  They obviously had no idea what they were about to do.  As they drifted into final positions around and inside the massive circular array, he spared a momentary glance to the girl at the center.  He almost wished he hadn’t.  Spread eagled like a sacrifice, her tattoos still bleeding from where they had been applied just that day, and needles of bone driven into her body was the vessel of this whole operation.  If the magic didn’t kill them all, she surely would the first chance she got.  What had been done was necessary yes, but it was also a crime.  Death would be a welcome sentence.  At least it would be over quickly.
Standing on top of the symbol of Saturn, a strange hybrid of a lowercase h and t, he began to chant, quickly joined by the others around him.  The drone of the spell drifted into the night sky, and soon everyone was feeling it.  Eerie purple-black light began to spread from point to point, line to line, and even crawling up onto some of the people and monsters.  It was also beginning to send bone rattling vibrations through some of the casters, and others were starting to not look so good.  Some of the Daemons were literally coming apart at the seams, the flesh and blood that clothed them falling off in large sections leaving behind raw energy.  The demonic essence was then broken down, and rapidly found itself inside the array, being digested by the massive spell.
And suddenly it wasn’t just demons being eaten up by the magic.
One of the casters suddenly exploded into dust, his soul going into the rapidly forming spellwork.  The tiny scream rapidly faded, but it was a signal that things were progressing too rapidly, that the array was taking on a life of its own.  Worse, he could feel awareness slipping into it, from the power of Saturn.  Somehow, the power gathered here was not quite sapient, but very much aware and not approving of them.  Two more casters went up, and the strain on the remaining ones to hold the array in check intensified.  The gathering storm of energy began to have other effects.  The innermost casters began to twist and change under the strain of the magic, the imbalanced flows of energy changing them into demonic forms.  One grew tentacles and shed his skin as he changed into a twisted parody of squid and man.  Another lost all his cohesion, and turned into a ball of jelly that somehow was still able to form the magics.  Although at this point, the magic had all taken on a life of its own.  The girl on the rock writhed and screamed as her tattoos began to glow in colors both stomach turning and beautiful.  The last of the outer ring collapsed with a sigh, his soul departing his body with less fanfare than most of his fellows.  And as the spell wound down, the Arc-magi felt something examining him.  Something judging him.  And the girl as well.  Suddenly, the sensations changed, as the magic turned on him, devouring his life force.  The girl on the other hand spasmed and gasped, breaking the chains and ropes that bound her down.  As he fell, the man smiled, safe in the knowledge that no matter what else happened there would be a new guardian of humanity.
A slayer of Daemons.  Of demons.  Of vampires.

--22000 years later, give or take a few centuries —
Tokyo in the May of 2003 was frankly getting tired of the monster attacks.  Girls would be attacked on the street, and would prove remarkably resistant to most weapons, martial arts, and other conventional attacks.  Fortunately for the citizens of Tokyo, Anzu Juban’s  resident superheroines, the Sailor Senshi had decided that this was well within their authority to deal with.  And despite Sailor Moon’s insistence that she should be able to turn these monsters back into humans, she had had a startling lack of success with that.  Even lower than her normal success rate with vampires.  Or to put it bluntly, she hadn’t been able to convert one of the ‘bringers’ back to normal.  This had been welcome news to Ten’oh Haruka who had already put 10 of them down by this point.  As time had worn on, the attacks grew more frequent and seemingly desperate.  But at the same time, the Senshi were slowly figuring out what the mysterious demon-men were after.  Pluto had managed to capture and interrogate one, and had made several important revelations to the others about their new enemy.  They sought girls know as ‘potentials’ and armed with this knowledge, the Senshi had fought back.  They had at first merely placed potentials under guard, but after a time, when the numbers were obviously too great to guard all at the same time, Sailor Moon had approached each girl one at a time with an impassioned plea.  It always boiled down to ‘Your life is in danger.  You cannot stand aside.  Run or fight, we shall stand by you.’  And they had followed her, into a combination of exile and bootcamp.  When Hino Rei and Kaioh Michiru started searching for new potentials, the numbers began to overwhelm the Senshi.  Somehow, they managed to gather them all together without losing a single soul, and it had now come down to this.
Aino Minako looked out at the demonic horde facing her, and gave a low whistle.  ‘Damn, that’s a lot of them. Where do they all come from?  Well wherever it is, they’re going back.’ She pressed the button on her communicator (a new cell phone like model, with more features than the old ones) to open a channel to all the other Senshi.  “Guys, I’ve got Bringers on the southwest quarter.”  
“Venus, we’ve all got Bringers.”  That was Jupiter, and she could hear the others murmuring confirmations and Uranus shouting insults at the demons.
“Well then,” Venus did her best to sound cheery, but even to her ears it was hollow.  “lets give them a beating and let Moon and Saturn hold the inner defenses.”
“We know the plan, Venus.  How about you do your part and we’ll do ours?”  Saturn, curt as always.  She never wasted words when there was a fight on.
“Hmmph.”  Venus flipped her hair, and flipped off her communicator.  Something like a hundred of the demons where out there, and she was going to have to deal with them.  “Venus Love and Beauty Shock!” the golden heart collided with the enemy lines, and instantly destroyed two of the Bringers.  The others charged forwards.  Venus cursed inwardly and then summoned her next attack.  “Venus Love-Me Chain!”  The mid ranged attack flailed out from both her hands as she strafed her enemies.  Their numbers were too great and she was forced to fall back before the rush, until they were in melee range, and about a dozen formed a ring around her while the rust rushed on.  “Venus Wink Chain Sword!”  Instantly the chain in her right hand shortened, and solidified into a meter long blade of golden metal, shining and singing as she swung it through the air.  With feet and knees, with fist and elbow, with chain and sword, Venus fought on.

Behind the steel door of the warehouse where they had decided to make their stand, Eternal Sailor Moon and Super Sailor Saturn stood guarding almost a hundred girls who had all decided to come here.  Some had declared they were ready to fight, but given the Bringers resistance to things like guns and normal blades, they had little to fall back on.  A few of the girls clutched bows, and a few other rusted swords that supposedly had once been powerful demon slaying weapons.  One girl kept insisting that the mammoth boomerang she had dragged out of storage from her family’s home was the real thing.  Maybe it was but right now Sailor Saturn was much more willing to put her trust in her own Glaive and the power of her princess.  Behind her, and on the other side of the girls, Sailor Moon paced back and forth, her hands clutching the latest in the series of rods and wands she had used.  Actually, this one was more a staff, almost five feet long, and had remarkable balance for one of Sailor Moon’s weapons.  Not to mention the absolutely terrifying power that she wielded through it.  It was Sailor Moon’s penultimate weapon, and a lot safer than the reality re-writing power of the Silver Crystal.  It still wasn’t a weapon of war; that was what she held, why she was here.  She was Saturn.  There was only duty.  Only destruction.
*Boom*
They jerked to attention, everyone except her.  Sailor Moon’s face hardened and she formed an orb of white light, shedding tendrils of brilliance.  Hands gripped weapons.  And Saturn readied herself for the task at hand.
When the door caved in, it seemed like an army was coming at them.  In reality, the Senshi outside had laid waste to almost 3/4ths of the onrushing horde, and the only reason they hadn’t smashed all of them yet was that simple mathematics that kept seven women from killing a thousand demons in three minutes.  Both Senshi held their fire as the Bringers charged across the open space of the empty warehouse toward the stairs to the second level occupied by the various girls.  A second door slammed open, and moon twirled to focus her attention there.  “Moon Helix Elysian!”  The spiral blast from the staff scourged ten Bringers from existence as they burst through the back door.  Quickly, not pausing for one moment, Sailor Moon gathered her energies for another blast as tears ran down her face.  Even now she pitied her enemies, felt shame for destroying them rather than redeeming them.  Saturn had no such reservations as the warehouse filled with bringers.  73 demons by her count.  These potentials had better be worth the energy.  As the first one drew close, she dropped the head of the silence glaive into line.  Black energy crackled around her, and gathered at the tip of her weapon.  “Silence Glaive Surprise!”  The words hadn’t ever finished leaving her mouth when the attack unleashed itself, eager to lay waste to all it touched, stretching out across the floor, across the bringers.  It was never clear what happened to creatures caught in her attacks.  Even Pluto was very plain about her basic connection to death and time.  But whatever was struck by Saturn was simply . . . not there.  Large objects deconstructed themselves, disappearing a piece at a time.  A person or other living thing like the Bringers or any one of the other demons the Senshi had faced over the years however vanished in less time than it took to blink.  So as Saturn spun to cover her princess, she had no cause to fear the demons because they were already dead.  She could feel it in every fraction of her being.  They were gone, destroyed along with cement and earth, for easily a hundred meters along the line of her attack.  Only the severe downward angle had prevented it from consuming the two Senshi within her cone of fire.
That was Saturn.  The Bringer of the Silence, Princess of Titan, daimon destroyer, and unbeknownst to her, one of the sources of the Slayer.  And as she dropped into position to fire again, on the other side of the world something was happening that would affect her life for years to come.

The Beginning.