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FEBRUARY 2012


It was like hell down here. With the petrified fauna, treacherous pathways, the red smoldering pseudo-sky and the youma lurking around every corner, the Rift was like a page straight out of Dante's Inferno. It existed in a stark contrast to the underworld cathedral that served as the Negaverse's home base: the castle was stern. Reverent. Orderly. The ruined capital that lay beyond it, while seeming quiet and dead at first glance, had a bitter wildness about it that was beyond description. There was an ancient rage here that renewed itself with every rattling breath the resident youma took. The rage of Metallia, she mused. It was keeping the Rift from crumbling to pieces... but also ensured that it would never truly live again.

Not hell, so much as a purgatory. And over the next several months, General Uranophane would become all too familiar with it.

"Keep the pace, Captain," she barked over her shoulder. There was a lantern in one hand; the other had her pensword at the ready. "And if you so much as drop anything, I will throw you straight down this god damned ravine."

"Yes, ma-- yes, sir."

Her subordinate trailed obediently behind her, carrying a number of bags, provisions for the trip, and star seeds to offer to any youma who got too malicious. He was wiry and wild-haired, fanatical and eager to please. Snatched up and devoured the words of his superiors like they were gourmet table scraps. Reminded her of Franz. However, his value to the mission was not up for debate. He was a linguistics major, with a special focus on the history of the English language.

Following the Captain were a pair of Lieutenants with more lanterns in tow. They were too nervous about the whole situation they were in for Uranophane to get a good first impression of them. Normally it was just her and the one Captain, but this time the trip was because they had finally -- finally -- found a promising lead in their search, and needed the extra pairs of hands.

It was a good several miles past the barracks building visitors to the Rift often took advantage of. The scant number of mouldering books there had already been picked clean of any words they still contained. Those had all turned out to be a waste of time. Here, however, Uranophane was sure of the chances they might find something. It was a monastery. A mostly intact, honest-to-whatever-god-it-was-for monastery. And the scribes there had been busy. The shelves in the library the building housed would have been crammed to bursting with books in the past. In modern day, many of them had been lost to war and decay, but there was still a formidable number remaining.

She shoved the rotted doors open and waved her teammates in. "Find a table. Start at that corner," she pointed, "and start reading. Your captain has reference books on Old and Middle English ready." Said books were dropped on a nearby table with a dust-muffled thunk. "Keep anything that mentions Sailor Earth, Sailor Senshi, the Dark Kingdom or the Royal Family. Everything... else... is worthless." Grinding her teeth, she turned heel to probe into the dark corridors of the library. "I will join you after I've made a security check around the building. If you see any youma trying to make a mess in here, contact me immediately. Understood?"

The 'yes, sirs' met with a pair of impatient bootprints where Uranophane had been standing. If they honestly had any trouble following what she had been saying, she would have flipped their s**t at them. It was a terribly simple set of instructions to follow, even if the objectives behind them were a little beyond the norm.

Uranophane knew that she would be in the long haul for this mission the moment she proposed it, and initially had her doubts on whether it would be an acceptable use of her time when it could otherwise have been used seeking recruits and monitoring senshi in Destiny City. However, it turned out that any intel was good intel, and ancient intel was an avenue General-King Zinkenite was quite supportive of her exploring. She was allowed to pursue her project with no complaint.

That was over a month ago. Now, she could finally see the possibility of reporting that she had found something. There could be valuable information here about the past incarnation of the war, such as forgotten tactics they could employ against senshi today. Or, more could be revealed about the unusual history of the Earth -- which had not been ruled by its senshi at the time of the war. Uranophane had, on that fact, postulated that Sailor Earth had been successfully overthrown by her would-be subjects. If she could uncover how such a coup was managed, it would give the Negaverse a potent advantage.

Whether she currently cared about the Negaverse gaining ground in this supposed war was up for debate. But this excursion was not only a way to make herself useful. She also hoped to use it to try and uncover some evidence of her own. Evidence that the Negaverse was fighting the good fight. Evidence that the senshi really were the tyrants her superiors and peers made them out to be. Evidence that she should continue to give a damn.

Surely there would be something here.

It was going to be a difficult search.