What Lies Beneath
Leave It To Kero-chan Theme Music!
"KONONOCHIWAAAAAA!! G-g-g-GOOOOOOOOD EVENIIIIIING, everyone, and welcome to the segment of our game where we recap the big event that's been going on for, like, a year and a half out of character! I'm your host, Keroberos, Sun Guardian of the Clow, but you can call me Kero-chan! Let's be good friends!!"
Kero-chan is a plump yellow plushy with white angel wings and a puff at the end of his tail. He might -- might -- be a winged lion. He's definitely got a microphone, at any rate, and no fear of the fourth wall /whatsoever/.
He flies across Tokyo and lands on Library Island, the Infinity Institute facility in the middle of the skyscraper-adjacent lake.
"Things all started in early December 2014," he explains brightly, "When a rumor went around that Infinity Institute students -- you know, the ones in the cute blue uniforms!! -- started disappearing inside their very own giant, ancient, mystical library."
Soaring in through a window, Kero-chan comes to rest at the top of the stairs leading down into the uncharted, endless reaches of Library Island's basement/dungeon crawl complex. They are ancient stone, and cold not with the clammy memory of time, but rather cold with the intent to kill, cold with malice.
He peeeeeeers down them. The tips of his wings shiver a little.
"Eventually the rumors reached the ears of our heroines, and magical girls started venturing into the depths to see what was going on -- and to rescue whoever they could, which included some very dear people like Fuu Hououji's big sister Kuu, Yumi Ohzora's favorite school nurse Michiko Nakahara, and Saki and Mai's kind of mysterious new transfer friends Michiru and Kaoru Kiryuu!"
Nervously, Kero-chan floats through dark hallways shot through, here and there, with glowing red eyes and the occasional little green leafy vine.
"What people found down there was that the ever-changing labyrinth of knowledge had become a lot more malicious and nasty, and that there was some kind of /operation/ going on, with the kidnapped girls stored inside sarcophagi and, in some cases, transformed into terrifying monsters called... okay, plug the littler kids' ears... protodaimon. Blood, and darkness, and despair, and teeth. /Serious/ evil, wanting to consume all the pure hearts in the world."
Kero-chan settles reluctantly upon one such example of a sarcophagus. It has chains across it and mist shrouding the floor all around it.
"The magical girls were able to save their friends, but clearly there was something /really big/ going on underneath Library Island, since it was being used as a breeding ground for demons and all. And, also, they were often in some really tight jams, and the thing that helped them find their way through the maze or escape the protodaimons was always the same: tendrils of a mysterious plant, vines and roots."
The little plushy floats over to an example and strokes a tiny, vulnerable leaf reverently.
"Around the same time, there was an attack at Jindai Botanical Gardens by a scary Dark Fall general named Karehaan."
"He tried to blow up the plum tree grove before they could even bloom! Magical girls like the Splash Star Pretty Cure stopped him, but in the fight, the ground was all torn up and it was possible to see tunnels that were obviously part of some secret underground lair. A really nice grandma who also happens to be the director of the Botanical Gardens /and/ a very highly placed member of the Magic Association, Kaoruko Hanasaki, had everyone over for tea afterwards."
In her white lab coat and sensible shirt and slacks, all a little grass-stained, Hanasaki-sensei seems earthy and strong. She offers the magical girls some tea in her greenhouse, and it tastes like some of their favorite memories.
"Grandma," Kero-chan is apparently on close terms with her, "Taught everyone who didn't already know about the World Tree, the super ultra ancient massive tree in the middle of Tama that is secretly a super ultra ancient massive magic battery that releases its power once every few hundred years! Sometimes it's called 'eruption' and sometimes it's called 'blooming' but it's an even bigger deal than the release of the new edition of my favorite video game, like a /really/ big deal."
He should sound excited about this, but actually he sounds a little choked up and sad. It becomes quickly obvious why. "My last master, Clow Reed, lost his life harnessing the power of the World Tree to open Earth to magical travel to and from other magical worlds. He did it, but... yeah..."
The little guy lands on a branch of the Tree and swings his even littler feet into the air. He sighs, then pulls himself back together and continues. "Anyway, the World Tree is also called the Sky Tree and Shinjuu-sama and a lot of important things tend to happen there because it's so important. But using the World Tree's power is really bad news, especially if you're the kind of person who wants to destroy the world -- they could really do it!"
Jumping off the tree, Kero-chan soars on the thermals above Tokyo a bit. "So, Grandma explained to the magical girls that the one who gets to use this power, once it erupts, is whoever has control of a majority of the five CONTROL POINTS around it. Each of them is another big place of power, heavy duty magic. One is underneath Jindai Botanical Gardens, and she took everyone down there to see it."
The view shifts to the underground chamber beneath Jindai. It is a perfect circle, with ancient, incomprehensible runes engraved on the wall which seem to subtly shift every time one blinks. There are leaves and vines which pop out of footsteps, curl around wrists with a friendly clasp, lift blossom-heavy tops upwards like raising heads. It's the same mysterious plant that helped the girls repeatedly in the depths of Library Island. It /wants/ to be of help -- of use.
It was the World Tree, all along.
It gives each of the kids a shining golden seed, one a piece.
"Grandma explained that another one of the five Control Points was underneath Library Island, and that the bad things happening down there was probably an effort to try to pervert its magic to help dark powers seize control of the World Tree. She asked everyone to go down and find the same special room down there, the heart of the space -- and they did!"
Kero-chan pumps his tiny fist. "They went on a whooooooole big adventure! And it. Was. AWESOME! They had to retrieve a magic key to use a magic card catalog to find what they were looking for, and they made friends with fairies who lived under the island and snuck through the hoard of a dragon! Finally they were able to discover the location of the Library Island Control Point..."
His face falls.
"...and it turned out that the protodaimons had just been waiting to be shown the way. Everyone raced to be the first one to touch the magic at its heart. And barely, /just barely/, the magical girls won: Fuu Hououji grabbed the glowing orb, so they could flee with it! And they did! So now Library Island is full of darkness, but at least it isn't helping the bad guys control the World Tree. And the orb became like a massive version of the little golden seeds, which she's been wearing as a pendant ever since."
This is thirsty work, and Kero-chan calls a brief halt for snacks. He demolishes a tray of takoyaki in record time and gulps down a huge bottle of orange juice until he's rounder than he is tall. Patting his stomach, he sighs with contentment.
"Okay! Okay. So they took their victory back to show Grandma, only Jindai was attacked again! Rubeus of the Black Moon Clan almost killed his subordinates, the Four Ayakashi Sisters, by giving them a scary Black Crystal scepter that they couldn't really control, and eventually he started trying to kill them on purpose!"
"In the end it wound up tearing a black hole right into the garden which would have swallowed the WHOLE PLANET, holy smokes! They were able to stop it by drawing the Black Crystal Power into a handy receptacle -- Fuu's pendant -- but that meant she had to let the World Tree Magic out of it first, and it went back to Library Island... which the bad guys control. Still, things would have been even worse if they hadn't saved Jindai."
Kero-chan folds his arms and looks serious. "After that, the magical girls let Grandma send them into the Realm of Dreams to look for the Control Point that had gone missing last year after the whole crazy thing with the mirrors -- NO, I'm not gonna talk about it right now -- and after surviving a scary dream eating monster,"
"They basically figured out that it was in the old haunted mansion, the one where Setsuna Higashi used to live. The one occupied by the evil group known as Labyrinth. Apparently they stole it for themselves some time ago... so we decided to steal it back! But, Setsuna went first, all by herself, to try to protect everyone, and got cancelled, so it turned into a DOUBLE rescue mission!"
He floats through the haunted mansion, which is a typical one of its kind except for how, once you've gone upstairs and down a hallway, it becomes a huge, futuristic space with a gigantic -- like, towering, disappearing into darkness above and below -- test tube filled with awful-looking yellow despair energy that Labyrinth used Nakewameke to drain from the citizens of Tokyo for years.
There are also some plants around, but they aren't like the friendly World Tree roots and shootlets. These are naaaasty. They curl affectionately around Labyrinth's field commander, Northa, who is as scary a general as exists in this world or any other. Her smile is chilling.
"Northa was ready for them, and used all the despair she'd collected to send the magical girls into terrible visions of their own worst nightmares, and after THAT, she made them all fight each other thinking they were fighting monsters in an illusion! But the part of the World Tree that had been stolen to this place woke up and woke everyone else up, too, so finally Northa played her last card and turned the World Tree root, which was also holding the Fuko Gauge, into a giant Sorewatase monster, kinda like if you crossed Godzilla with your teacher's favorite potted plant. They had to somehow beat the monster without breaking the Fuko Gauge and letting all of that despair back out into the world, and they did!"
Kero-chan rubs his paws together eagerly. "Fuu let all the Black Crystal energy she'd absorbed into her pendant out to separate the monster from the Fuko Gauge. Then they could beat it safely, and the World Tree power went into the pendant. Northa and her buddies got away with the Fuko Gauge though...."
He flops over onto his favorite pillow.
"One last thing: there are these awesome magical knights called the Wolkenritter who are doing the less-than-awesome thing called DRAINING THE MAGIC FROM MAGICAL GIRLS! It comes back eventually, but sheesh! They're doing it to fill up their not-at-all-ominously-named magical tome called the Book of Darkness."
"And they got reaaaaaaaaaaaaaally close and decided that the perfect way to finish the job was to drain the HUUUUUUUGE amount of magic they sensed in the frail little body of Chibi-Usa Tsukino's best friend, Hotaru Tomoe. Now, some magical girls think that Hotaru-chan is going to cause the world to end, so she has to be gotten rid of before that happens, and other magical girls think that's not true and not okay, so a big fight broke out with some people helping the Wolkenritter and some people stopping them!"
The Chevaliers and Shepherds have a furiously fierce fight on the front lawn of the otherwise rather sunny and pleasant-looking Tomoe mansion. And in the end, little Hotaru gets strung up by the Wolkenritter -- and they start to try to drain her -- but a hand composed of brilliant red energy emerges from her mouth and rips into the Book of Darkness, flipping the flow!
"The Wolkenritter got a pretty bad deal -- they lost all the results of their hard work because the one whose magic they tried to eat, she ate all their magic instead. There was a big explosion, and Hotaru escaped in the confusion with the help of /another/ scary general lady named Grand Magus Kaolinite who seems to be one of the Ones Behind It All underneath Library Island, kidnapping people and making the protodaimon and all."
"And the Wolkenritter bugged out too, so now Hotaru's missing and the Wolkenritter are more desperate than ever to finish their Book."
Kero-chan mops his brow.
"That's pretty much it! A month or so has gone by since then, and the World Tree still hasn't erupted. In terms of who gets to use its huge magic power once it does, the Control Points are pretty much tied, two versus two -- Dark Fall has the one underneath Infinity Institute and the one underneath Library Island, while the magical girls control Jindai Botanical Gardens and the pendant Fuu is keeping safe -- which is probably why protodaimon were sent after her by Kaolinite, which sure put a lot of people in harm's way! Including Chibi-Usa, who inadvertantly discovered that the true identity of Sailor Moon was her sloppy lazy housemate Usagi (Usagi is really a very nice girl, I'm just sharing Ms. Chibi's feelings here, guys!!)
The last Control Point is known to be Tokyo Tower, but something about its nature means that it can't be 'occupied' for very long, so everyone expects to have to throw down over it whenever the World Tree finally blooms for real."
The plushy gives the camera a thumbs-up. "Okay, let's all get together and see what happens next! Thanks for joining me for this ultra-long marathon segment of Leave It To Kero-chan!!!"
