The Dance of Shiva

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The year is 2034. The place is Mega-Tokyo. The Dance of Shiva is about to begin.

The Dance of Shiva is a Mega Crossover fan fiction by John Biles. Written throughout 1996 and 1997, it was the first epic-length story completed by Biles, who would later go on to be the acclaimed author of such works as Children of an Elder God and Sailor Moon Z, as well as the Old World of Darkness parody fan-game Senshi: The Merchandising. As one of his earliest works, it is a bit primitive and crude in its formatting, suffering from a surfeit of WORDS IN ALL-CAPS and many, many multiple exclamation points.

Despite this, it is a deftly-plotted and increasingly tense story of a world unknowingly on the brink of an apocalypse, placed there as the latest act of revenge upon the royal families of Jurai and the Silver Millennium by a being of near-godlike power for a "crime" committed against it ten thousand years earlier. Although Biles himself described it as "one of the more deranged stories ever written", it is actually a well-constructed tale that slowly evolves from a mix of comic and serious elements into a tense drama as events come to a head and the literal fate of the Earth is at stake.

It begins in MegaTokyo in 2034, when a coma patient awakens from her thirteen-year-long sleep and shortly thereafter discovers that she has both gained superhuman powers and been targeted for assassination. Escaping both the hospital and her would-be killers, she starts a personal campaign against those who would see her dead. This brings her to the attention of the Knight Sabers, who have an unexpected connection to her... as does the royal family of Jurai. Why does GENOM want her dead? How is it that she has been empowered such that she can fight off multiple combat boomers?

Answering these questions leads the Sabers into a secret conflict that puts the entire world at risk. At the same time, though, it also reveals new allies and a connection to a group of Urban Legends who disappeared over thirty years earlier. Secrets -- some tens of thousands of years old -- are revealed as the forces opposing SHIVA slowly come together, and in the process one member of the Knight Sabers discovers that not only does she have the potential to become far more than she is, she is critical to the coming battle.

But then, so are many others...

The Dance of Shiva can be found here. Unfortunately for modern readers, it's only available as plain text, divided into twenty separate chapter files in UNIX textfile format. It is part of a larger universe in which Biles' stories Sailor Moon Z and Black Moon Rising are also set.

As a Mega Crossover fanfic, The Dance of Shiva incorporates elements from the following works:

Core Series

• Bubblegum Crisis
• Patlabor
• Sailor Moon
• Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki

Secondary Crossovers and Cameos

• Ah! My Goddess
• Armitage III
• Arthurian Myth
• Cthulhu Mythos
• Die Hard
• Foundation
• Here Is Greenwood
• Hindu Mythology
• Jonny Quest
• Kimagure Orange Road
• Koko wa Greenwood
• Maison Ikkoku
• Marmalade Boy
• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Ultraman
• Urusei Yatsura
• Welcome Back, Kotter (!)

Tropes used in The Dance of Shiva include:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Actually averted with SHIVA. An AI built by a Mad Scientist with no sense of morality to help him do his work, it functions exactly as designed, mirroring its creator's depraved indifference to sapient life forms. Its ten-thousand-year Roaring Rampage of Revenge upon those responsible for its creator's trial and execution is really SHIVA just performing the last task it was given.
• Acid Reflux Nightmare: Daley's explanation for why he's watching a flying woman fighting four boomers at the start of the story.
  • Some bizarre pizza toppings seem to be at least partly responsible for the nightmare Priss has in chapter 13.
• The Ageless: The Senshi (and their partners) all have essentially frozen in age somewhere in their twenties. They have no idea why (nor do they remember being the Senshi).
• Anime Catholicism: For the most part averted; Biles' depiction of mid-21st century Catholicism assumes further liberalization of the Church (there is a female Bishop of Mega-Tokyo, and mention is made of a Third Vatican Council), and there is a small fantastic element (a demon-fighting branch of the modern incarnation of the Inquisition), but in general what little Catholicism we see is depicted with reasonable accuracy.
• Anvil on Head: Makes an appearance at the end of the "cast party", as the action degenerates into something akin to a Looney Tunes cartoon.
• Apocalypse How: Ten thousand years before the current date, a Mad Scientist named Walyn engineered two simultaneous Class 4/5 Planetary annihilations of inhabited worlds just so he could compare their results and relative effectiveness.
• As the Good Book Says...: As the story reaches its climax, the number of Biblical references and quotes which appear in dialogue increases dramatically.
• Astral Projection: How Linna initially visits subspace during her dreamwalking. Later she physically enters it with the help of Wasyuu.
• Attack of the 5000-Foot Wasyuu: Wasyuu reprograms a set of fusion boomers to turn GENOM tower into a nearly-mile-tall mecha in her image. (No, really.) SHIVA's servant X promptly hijacks it with his Technopath powers when it enters subspace.
• Aura Vision: One of the abilities Linna's sensei tried to train her in. She can use it, but it takes great concentration and focus.
• Author Avatar: Biles gives himself one in the form of an In-Universe anime, as the title character of Dread Space Pirate Bailesu. ("Bailesu" is the usual manner in which Biles transliterates his name from English through Japanese back into English again, and it's frequently seen in other things he's written.)
  • Biles also appears as himself in the "cast party" after the actual end of the story.
• Author Tract: Of all Biles' works over the years, The Dance of Shiva is probably the most obviously influenced by his faith, at least as it existed in the middle-late 1990s. It contains extensive Biblical references and obvious influences from C. S. Lewis (the latter fact acknowledged by Biles in an afterword to the story). Unusually for such a religiously-themed fan work, it is not ham-handedly preachy; also, no one particular flavor of Christianity is given any particular preference over others, with Anglican, Catholic and non-specific Protestant all shown equal respect. Non-Christian traditions are treated with respect as well.
• Becoming the Mask: At the end of chapter 9, X wonders why he and Z are so different now when once they were virtually identical, and concludes he has taken on some of his human host's thoughtfulness and caution, to his benefit.
• Big Bad: SHIVA.
• Bittersweet Ending: Most all of the foreground characters get happy endings of one stripe or another. SHIVA is defeated and destroyed along with its servitor creatures, but the destruction of the Earth is only delayed for thirty years, not prevented outright; SHIVA's "backup system", KALI, awakens in subspace and merges with the Eldritch Abomination known only as "IT" which had given SHIVA so much power to wreak havoc. After the Earth recovers a thousand years later, the Crystal Millennium starts, but it, too, is destined to fall as well when the cycle repeats anew.
• Blah Blah Blah: The narrative voice actually goes "Blah blah blah" before summarizing the rant Aeya spouts upon learning that her proper, ladylike daughter is the lead singer for a punk rock band. It then notes that most of the surrounding characters "turn off their ears", having heard this kind of rant too many times before.
• Bland-Name Product: "Colonel Chicken" is an obvious Expy for KFC.
• Briar Patching: Invoked/referenced by Quincy in chapter 17 when Z repeatedly claims he slew Linna in subspace.
• Brown Note: "BOB and his Chainshaw".
• Calling Card: While operating as a vigilante early in the story, Meylia calls herself "The Queen of Swords" and leaves behind the Tarot card of the same name at the scenes of her activities.
• Cannon Fodder: The "army" of half-trained psychics piloting labors, assembled as part of the forces deployed in the final chapters, are really this. They are intended only as a diversion and suffer at least 50% casualties against SHIVA's catspaw forces. Fortunately, they get better.
• The Chosen One: Linna Yamazaki becomes the Chosen One as a part of undergoing The Hero's Journey in chapter 17.
• The Comically Serious: SHIVA, shortly after it was created. It quickly stops being comical.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Goto Kiichi, former head of the AD Police, since the Muugen Gakuen incident decades before the start of the story. Unlike most such theorists, the conspiracy he's chasing is real.
• The Cracker: Thomas Fujitsu from the AD Police, who is also The Mole.
• Dance Battler: Linna Yamazaki dances to fight SHIVA in the story's climactic confrontation.
• Dance Party Ending: Combined (sort of) with Animated Actors. After the end of the story proper, there is a somewhat random pseudo-epilogue described as a massive cast party, in which the author and all the protagonists are apparently having the time of their lives, and giddily discuss the story and what they got out of it.
• Demonic Possession: SHIVA's servants X, Y, and Z have no true physical form of their own and must take over a corporeal host. Z has at least two bodies between which he can swap.
• Did You Die?: In chapter 3, as Mihoshi is telling what most of the audience believes is a tall tale, Linna asks her, "So, did the monster eat you?"
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: In the wake of Nene's World-Healing Wave, Ryu is convinced that God is a woman and She kissed him.
• Don't Call Me "Sir"!: Both Ryouko and Minami (Aeka's daughter) insist, "Don't call me 'princess'!"
• Dream Land: Subspace is this as well as Another Dimension; those with the talent and training can travel subspace and visit others' dreams.
• Dream Weaver: Linna Yamazaki gains the ability to view, enter, and potentially change (or be trapped in) others' dreams. Several characters explicitly refer to her as a "dreamwalker".
• Dream Within a Dream: At the end of chapter 10, Linna's first experience dreamwalking ends this way.
• Eldritch Abomination: Something born of dreams and nightmares, native to subspace -- identified only as "IT" -- responded to SHIVA's unending rage at the killers of its creator some centuries after the supercomputer permanently retreated to subspace. It merged with SHIVA, turning it from merely an AI to a genuinely supernatural being with nearly limitless power. And after SHIVA's destruction, it eventually found and merged with SHIVA's "backup", KALI.
  • The servitor creatures it made from pieces of itself, known only as X, Y and Z, definitely count as well.
• Electromagnetic pulse: Pluto and Hikaru set off an EMP weapon above Mega-Tokyo during chapter 18 in order to disable everything X might be able to control with his Technopath powers. Unfortunately, the toughest machines were EMP hardened. And it also plays merry havoc with Mega-Tokyo's municipal fusion reactor.
• Energy Beings: X, Y and Z are fundamentally this. When Z exhausts his energy trying to strike down Usagi with the Silver Crystal, he simply ceases to exist.
• Everything's Better with Bob: Unless he has his chainsaw with him.
• Everything's Better with Princesses:
  • Priss Asagiri of the Knight Sabers turns out to be Princess Courage, the time-shifted younger daughter of Queen Serenity of the Silver Millennium.
  • Her teammate Nene Romanova is the direct descendant of Anastasia Romanov, and thus the uncrowned Tsarevna (queen) of Russia in exile. Sasami addresses her as "Princess" when they first meet.
  • Celia is also a princess (and Macky is a prince), being descended from Katsuhito Masaki.
  • Among the original characters Manami Masaki, daughter of Tenchi and Aeka, is of course a princess.
  • Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo apparently got a promotion when she married Tenchi, but doesn't like to be called "Princess".
• Face Fault: During the more comedic portions of the story we see several facefaults, among them Nene, Leon, and a whole roomful of people at once.
• Fainting: There are several instances of Emotional Faints throughout the story, such as Nene's reaction when Ryoko reveals her (and consequently Ryo's) alien nature, and Leon when Priss first transforms in front of him.
• Famous Ancestor: Nene Romanova is revealed to be a direct descendant of the lost Russian princess Anastasia Romanova. (The story was written well before Anastasia's remains were finally found and definitively identified, when there was still some doubt as to her fate.)
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: A variation involving children's games: at one point late in chapter 18, Sailor Pluto asks, "Did you not play at being kings and queens, cops and robbers, ryugla and shaldo, when you were a child?"
• Fanon: Written between 1996 and 1997, it demonstrates a few early fanons common to the period, such as spelling the first name of Sylia Stingray "Celia" and using "Wasyuu" (a transliteration of "Washuu" from early fansubs of Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki).
• Fictional Document: A few history and academic books are mentioned early in the story, including Patlabor: The rise and fall of SV2, by Goto Kiichi and In the Shadow of Babylon; the Millennial Crisis of Tokyo by Kanuka Clancy.
  • Averted by Louis XIV and 20 Million Frenchmen, being read by Hikaru (then a grad student) in a flashback at the start of chapter 12. This is a real history text, written by Pierre Goubert in 1966.
• Flashback: A signature device, used both at the start of most chapters and throughout the rest of the story, particularly as the plot kicks into gear. We get what seem at first to be "slice of life" moments in the form of fond memories, but as the plot progresses, we also get first-person views of key events that led to the current conflict.
  • Linna and Priss experience an In-Universe flashback to the founding and fall of the Silver Millennium courtesy of Tsunami's memories during a dream excursion in chapter 13.
  • SHIVA's "proof" of its power and inevitable victory during the final battle is presented in flashbacks to historical events it claims are its direct actions. One such flashback even has its own internal Flash Forwards.
• Food Chains: A being claiming to be Arawn, the Celtic god of the dead, nearly traps the expedition to find the Empyrean Silver Crystal by inviting them to dinner. They are only able to escape because one of his counterfeit spirits of the dead is too close to the real thing and warns Priss.
• For Science!: Walyn's defense at his trial for destroying two worlds and their population: he did it to advance knowledge, he did it for science.
• Foreshadowing: Priss has a dream early in the story in which she witnesses Wasyuu resurrecting Anri and Sylvie. That, and most everything else seen or mentioned in the dream, all come true at one point or another.
• Freaky Friday Flip: Apparently Wasyuu did this to Ryu and Manami when they were children, then pretended she didn't notice.
• Fusion Dance: At the climax of the story, Noa Izumi and her Ingram, Alphonse, merge to create a real-world version of Noa's fantasy hero alter ego Ingraman, who appears to be an Ultraman Expy.
• Genius Ditz: Serenity/Usagi gives this impression even as queen, when she flip-flops between quirky/goofy and scary-competent.
• A God Am I: SHIVA, an incredibly powerful AI supercomputer/Eldritch Abomination, which believes itself to be the Shiva of Hindu Mythology. To this end, it has convinced itself that the creator whose death it seeks to avenge was instead a "favored child" of its creation.
• God Guise: Linna casts herself as an avatar of Vishnu when responding to SHIVA in chapter 18. Possibly subverted, in that despite what she consciously thinks she's not entirely wrong.
  • The being presenting itself as Arawn, Celtic god of the dead, seemed to sincerely think it was a divinity before Sylvie killed it.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: A variation occurs when Priss is finally face-to-face with the Empyrean Silver Crystal: images of both Largo and Leon both appear -- Largo to tempt her into wanting to use the Crystal for revenge and destruction, Leon to remind her of what her true goals are.
• Good Cop, Bad Cop: In chapter 12, Setsuna (Sailor Pluto) likens her role (at least in regards to Priss) as the "bad cop", with the "good cop" being either Leon, Tsunami, or both.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck: Priss inexplicably finds herself moderating her language around Leon's neighbor Usagi.
• The Grim Reaper: The form SHIVA gives itself, within cultural norms, in its various Flashbacks during the final confrontation.
• The Hecate Sisters: In chapter 16, Linna meets the Fates in subspace/dreamspace; in chapter 17, she invokes them to judge the final faceoff with SHIVA. Interestingly, they are separate individuals from the Norns, themselves the Fates of Norse myth, who also appear in the story by way of the Ah! My Goddess crossover element.
• Here We Go Again: The story ends with the reassurance that the cycle will begin anew, and that while history doesn't repeat itself it does cycle in familiar patterns; the details may change but the story replays itself over and over again.
• Hermetic Magic: The spiritual being who had been Linna's martial arts master performs a Hermetic ritual upon Linna in subspace near the start of chapter 17. Subverted: She admits to Linna that she saw it in an anime once, and she's just using it as a mantra to focus with.
• The Hero's Journey: Linna undergoes this in chapter 17 to make her The Chosen One and ready to confront SHIVA.
• Historical Domain Character: Anastasia Romanov, who gets several Flashback scenes, and is Nene's direct ancestor.
• Humanoid Abomination: X and Z, in their human guises. It's not clear if Y ever took a human form before he was killed in the Backstory.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: In one of the epilogues, when Serenity realizes a vast horde of space-going abominations are not aggressively attacking the solar system, but are being driven forward by an Eldritch Abomination from which they are fleeing, she immediately sympathizes with them and says, "We must look like horrible nightmares to them... Poor things. They probably think of us as things that must not be..."
• Humongous Mecha: In addition to those native to the series being crossed over (like the labors of Patlabor), there are things like the mile-tall mecha-Wasyuu that appears in the final chapters, and Ultraman Ingraman, which battles it.
• I Have Many Names: "IT", a creature born in subspace from the fears, dreams and nightmares of a thousand sentient species across the galaxy, is described as having "a million names".
• Imaginary Friend: As a child, Priss had one -- a blue-haired girl named "Maggie". Who wasn't actually imaginary, just invisible to everyone but Priss. She was in fact Sasami Masaki Jurai Tsunami.
• Immortality Begins At Twenty: When Dr. Ami Mizuno isolates the factor that makes her and her friends unaging, she realizes that it had to have started or been given to them after they reached adulthood, since it works in such a way that they would never have grown up physically otherwise.
• Knocking on Heathens' Door: The Jehovah's Witnesses allegedly telephone Thomas Fujitsu in chapter 8, resulting in a conversation that is clearly Spy Speak.
• Legacy Hero: Setsuna "Sailor Pluto" Meiou's successor, a blonde woman, appears toward the end of the story; she and Setsuna operate in parallel for a while.
• Loud of War: "BOB and his Chainsaw" -- especially when used as a prank/revenge.
• Mad Scientist: Walyn, SHIVA's creator, who operated on a scale similar to Wasyuu. In a key flashback we see him draining one planet of all its water to make a world-wide flood on another, just so he can compare the efficacy of the two disasters.
• Magic Feather: The visor Sailor Pluto gave to Noa Izumi in chapter 18 which allowed her to do a Fusion Dance with Alphonse, her Ingram power suit, and become "Ingraman". As soon as Noa is on her way to subspace, Pluto reveals to her companions that it was a souvenir she picked up at an anime convention in the 1990s for $30.
• Magical Girl: In addition to the Sailor Senshi and Pretty Sammy, Priss Asagiri learns that she's Princess Serenity's time-shifted little sister Courage and thus an heir to the Power of the Moon -- and Jurai.
  • In 1996, Hikaru Hiyama pretended to be one for a few minutes using her psionic powers in order to give Sailor Moon (whom she had just discovered was her roommate) and Sailor Jupiter a moment's helpful respite from a horde of demons.
  • We also learn of the existence of a number of In-Universe Magical Girl shows during the course of the story, including Angelfire, Queen of the Faeries, Magical Princess Evangelia and just possibly Hime-chan no Anvil.
• Marry Them All: Upon meeting Tenchi again after several decades, Hikaru Hiyama "deduces" (more likely determined telepathically) that he married both of the "crazy girls" who had been pursuing him in college, and comments that that solution would have solved a "problem relationship" she'd once had.
• Mathematician's Answer: At his trial Walyn disputes that he truly rendered extinct the population of the worlds he destroyed, as he deliberately left eight survivors from his double-apocalypse experiment.
  • And then there is this moment at the start of chapter 19:

Madoka, Ryu, and Manami stared out at the city. "What the hell was that?" Madoka muttered. Ryu lay on the ground, his eyes wide. "Incredible."

• Mechanical Abomination: SHIVA. And its successor, KALI.
• Mega Crossover
• The Millstone: Mihoshi to Leon, at least at first.
• The Mole: Thomas Fujitsu, an AD Police officer who is feeding information gathered from ADP computers that he hacked into to someone hostile.
• Mood Whiplash: Has a tendency to jump from deathly-serious scenes to comic moments and back again.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Invoked by Wasyuu in a near-breakdown in chapter 17 when she reveals to Priss how she feels about Tenchi -- and while she says she could do that in an instant, she won't, because it wouldn't win her his love.
• My Card: When Meylia and the Knight Sabers meet face-to-face for the first time in chapter 2, she tosses the Tarot card The Queen of Swords -- the name she's taken as a vigilante -- to them.
• Mythology Gag: Minami, Aeka's daughter, says at several points, "Don't call me princess!!!" This is likely a reference to Aeka's infamous "S&M Queen" Image Song "Oujosama to Oyoubi" -- AKA "Call Me Princess!" in English.
• Next Gen Fic: Several original characters central to the action are children of various couples formed from the cast of Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki.
  • And in the ending scenes, we see descendants of the casts of the four central works, stretching on down for another two thousand years.
• Noodle Incident: Tenchi, Aeka and Ryouko's college years seem to be loaded with them; one is even referred to as the "lime sherbert incident".
  • Then there was the time when Emperor Azusa of Jurai woke up with tribbles in his bed...
  • A less happy one, from what little context we get, is the Alpha Cygni incident in 2010; whatever it was, it killed all of Aeka, Sasami and Youshou's siblings, leaving them the only valid line of succession to the throne of Jurai.
• Not with the Safety On, You Won't: In chapter 1 an undercover Mihoshi thinks her AD Police-issue pistol is broken until Leon points out that the safety is on. (Mihoshi being Mihoshi, she also thought it was broken because it wasn't loaded and later because it had recoil.)
  • She also told a story of thinking her laser was broken, only to remember that she had used its batteries to power her CD player.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: The first time Linna successfully enters subspace/dreamspace, she arrives nude. This is rapidly corrected.
  • Also, she begins the process of ascension in chapter 17 naked after leaving the mother of waters.
• Philosopher's Stone: According to Z, it's another name for the Empyrean Silver Crystal.
• Physical God: Linna Yamazaki undergoes an apotheosis in the process of facing off against SHIVA, becoming effectively a sibling to Urd, Belldandy and Skuld.
  • Merged with the subspace creature only known as "IT", SHIVA all but qualifies. Its servants probably do, as well, since they are actually bits of itself pinched off and given independence.
• Pimp Duds: At the end of a short but subtly insult-filled meeting with Kate Madigan of GENOM, Asuma Shinohara (whose company manufactures Ingrams) asks her one final question: Why does GENOM CEO Quincy dress like a pimp? She declines to answer.
• Power Gives You Wings:
  • When Priss finally claims the Silver Crystal and awakens the Senshi, white wings briefly sprout from her back.
  • Similarly, when the wavefront of the power Priss unleashes reaches the others, Meylia manifests wings of blue light.
  • Linna gains wings when she passes through the third door during her ascension.
• Powered Armor: In addition to the Knight Sabers' hardsuits, the labors, and the Ingrams present from their respective sources, there is also the armor Wasyuu builds for Nene, which she can summon onto her body from subspace in a Transformation Sequence reminiscent of a Magical Girl.
• Projected Man: Youshou and Tenchi get out of Juraian space by using holographic projections to pretend to be attending Emperor Azusa while they're in fact sneaking away (their trail covered by Funaho and Misaki).
• Properly Paranoid: Kanuka Clancy McClaine's husband, John -- whose unhappy adventures were worse than his canon counterpart's, and far more numerous.
• The Reveal: Chapter 6 is positively loaded with them -- who's related to who, where some people actually come from, who some people actually are... And it keeps on going into the beginning of chapter 7.
• Red String of Fate: In a vision while plumbing the depths of Noa Izumi's mind and soul, Hikaru Hiyama sees two red strings running from her. One links her to her husband Asuma -- and the other connects her to her Ingram mech, Alphonse.
• Reincarnation: In a far-distant epilogue, 2000 years after the main action, the then-current Sailor Pluto tells a married couple that they are the reincarnations of old and dear friends. (But she won't tell them who.)
• Reverse Psychology: Sailor Pluto finds Priss very easy to manipulate.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Ultimately, SHIVA's motivation (and the final command from its creator, the scientist Walyn). Not just satisfied with destroying the people responsible for Walyn's arrest, conviction and execution (for a simultaneous pair of Class 4/5 Planetary annihilations), it punishes their descendants for ten thousand years.
• Sarcastic Confession: In an early chapter, Tenchi, Aeka and Ryoko answer all of Nene's questions about their origins and family organization absolutely honestly -- and while she accepts some of the answers, those that she doesn't misinterpret into a framework she is familiar with, she dismisses as family jokes.
• Script Fic: The "cast party" after the end of the story is presented in script format.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Very literally so -- one of SHIVA's servant creatures was trapped in a metal cylinder that apparently caused The Tunguska Event, until GENOM dug it up and opened it.
• Show Within a Show: We get the names of a lot of programs and films that are current or in the setting's recent past, like The New Adventures of Astroboy; Nick Hatchett, Heroic Robot Fighter; Angelfire, Queen of the Faeries; Magical Princess Evangelia; Mayonnaise Boy; Tales of the Past; Mystery Boomer Theater 2034; A Clockwork Boomer; Sleepless in Shikoku; The ADPolice Files; Dread Space Pirate Bailesu; Dragon Ball PDQ; Hime-chan no Anvil; Dirty Pair Ultrakawaii Flash; Sailor V Gundam; ADPolice Academy II, and an untitled Gundam movie. There's also mention of something that sounds like a Reality Show of some sort, called You Thought It Couldn't Happen to You.
• The Snark Knight: Wasyuu just about all the time, but most especially when dealing with SHIVA or its creations.
• Sobriquet: In addition to those native to the component works:
  • Meylia takes the name "Queen of Swords".
  • Later, Priss briefly calls herself the "Knight of Swords".
  • "Ingraman" probably qualifies.
• Spoof Aesop: The "cast party" after the end of the story is entirely full of these (and the occasional real Aesop). It even starts with a variant on one of the most infamous Aesop prompts: "Saber Prime Says..."
• Spirit Advisor: Linna's former martial arts instructor, "Hiromi-sensei", is this for her dreamwalking abilities, at least figuratively (she's not a spirit or ghost, but a living human astrally projecting into subspace until she's killed at the end and ascends into a higher form).
• Spy Speak: A telephone call that Andrea Kiyone listens in on in chapter 8, allegedly made by Jehovah's Witnesses to Thomas Fujitsu, is very obviously a coded exchange.
• Subspace: SHIVA was constructed in subspace, and retreats there after Walyn's execution. Much of the story's action takes place there, including the final confrontation with SHIVA. Subspace is also the realm of dreams, which Linna can enter at will as a dreamwalker.
• Take Our Word for It: We never do find out exactly what "BOB and his Chainsaw" sounds like, only that it's loud and some people find it profoundly unpleasant.
• Tarot Motifs: While operating as a vigilante early in the story, Meylia takes the nom de guerre "Queen of Swords" and leaves behind the Tarot card of the same name as her Calling Card. Later, Sailor Pluto does a Tarot reading that tells her it is time for action on her part.
  • Later, Sailor Pluto uses "Two of Coins" as a cryptic message for Hikaru Hiyama. (Which actually meant nothing -- all Pluto intended was to prevent her from running into an old friend at that moment.)
  • Priss takes the Sobriquet "Knight of Swords" when the two of them work together after she awakens her powers.
  • When Linna and the Goddesses begin their World-Healing Wave after SHIVA's defeat, each one carries the implement of a suit of the Tarot (with Belldandy's round mirror serving as a coin).
• Technopath: X's signature ability. With it he caused the Labor riots years earlier, and recreates them to distract SHIVA's enemies.
• Theme Naming: The people of the Silver Millennium all seem to have virtues or other positive concepts for names: Courage, Prudence, Serenity...
  • Noa Izumi appears to have given the name "Alphonse" to everything important to her in her life, starting with a toy given to her by Katsuhito Masaki when she was five.
• Threshold Guardians: A being explicitly identifying itself as such appears in chapter 16 during the quest in subspace to find the Empyrean Silver Crystal.
  • Several others appear throughout the story, most notably during the process of Linna's ascension in chapter 17.
• Time Travel: With two Sailors Pluto in the story, it's a foregone conclusion. Setsuna!Pluto takes the infant Princess Courage of the Moon Kingdom 25,000 years into the future to become Priss. After SHIVA's defeat, Blonde!Pluto takes Katherine Madigan to the end of the Crystal Millennium, where they need her skills. Meanwhile Setsuna!Pluto takes Chief Goto to the beginning of the Crystal Millennium, where they need a skilled police chief and administrator. And two thousand years later, Blonde!Pluto takes Sylia and Matthew Stingray, the children of Amy and Gregory Stingray, even further into the future in much the same way Setsuna brought Courage forward.
• Title Drop: The last line of chapter 16, spoken by Sailor Pluto: "The dance of Shiva has begun."
• Took a Level in Badass: Nene, a couple of times over the course of the story, until in one of the epilogues she is able to take on one of best fighters on Jurai (with the help of a suit of power armor made for her by Wasyuu). And then there was the time she was very briefly God...
• Transformation Sequence:
  • Discovering that she has a transformation sequence is the culmination of Priss' discovery of her true origins as Princess Courage of the Silver Millennium.
  • Wasyuu programs one worthy of a Magical Girl into the summonable Power Armor she builds for Nene, complete with an invocation phrase which summons it. Nene and Wasyuu subsequently keep removing and adding back (respectively) the second of complete nudity Nene suffers in the middle of the sequence.
• Transgender: All but explicitly declared of Haruka "Sailor Uranus" Tenou, who apparently was male during the Silver Millennium, reborn as female in the modern era, and changed back into a male in the aftermath of the Senshi's last mission in the 1990s -- and once (s)he is re-awakened toward the end of the story, discovers (s)he can change back and forth at will.
• Triang Relations: Hikaru Hiyama, in plumbing the depths of Noa Izumi's mind and soul, discovers that she is person "A" in a type 7 relationship with her husband and her mech, with a Red String of Fate connecting her to each of them.
• The Tunguska Event: In 2021 GENOM found a huge metal cylinder with writing on it buried under the Event's "ground zero". It contained one of SHIVA's servant creatures.
• The Underworld: The realm of the being who claims to be Arawn is basically this, or pretends to be.
• The "Unicorn In The Garden" Rule; Biles uses his antagonist, its obsessions and plans, and its servants as a common thread to unite the main continuities blended to create this megacrossover in a way that few fan writers bother with.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Very clearly written in the 90s, starting with the selection of anime (and other crossover elements), and extending to pop-culture references like a passage comparing Pauly Shore to a "human fungus", Priss wanting to be a singer like Debbie Gibson as a child, and a mention of the now mostly-defunct Beatrice corporation, which Linna claims to own shares in. This is also visible in the technology on hand, as well: Nobody has a cell phone, the Knight Sabers all carry pagers, Nene records TV shows off the air with a VCR, Manami listens to a cassette tape while riding on her motorcycle, and CDs are the only other medium for music -- even for aliens like Mihoshi.
• Urban Legends: The Sailor Senshi, who disappeared thirty years previously, are generally considered this, although some -- including the Mega-Tokyo Police Department -- know better.
• Warp Whistle: Priss uses the Silver Crystal to teleport herself and Meylia to Sailor Moon. They end up landing on the roof of the moving car Sailor Moon's riding in at that moment, sliding down the windshield onto the hood.
• What Are You?:
  • Celia demands this of Wilson Kamisaka (Z) in chapter 11 when it becomes clear he's more than just a low-level GENOM employee.
  • Leon asks this of Linna early in chapter 19 after she confirms that he did perceive her ascended nature properly. Her answer? "I'm your friend, Linna Yamazaki. I'm not the same as I was, but I'm still as human as you."
• World-Healing Wave:
  • During a dream excursion in chapter 13, Linna and Priss witness Serenity and four companions trigger one which is solar-system-wide and essentially the beginning of the Silver Millennium.
  • After SHIVA has been defeated, Nene is divinely empowered to undo all the damage caused to Mega-Tokyo in the conflict. People actually perceive the Wave as immense phantom representations of her hands moving through the city, healing individual wounds, repairing entire destroyed buildings, and even stopping explosions in progress.

Madoka whispered, "The hand of God..." Macky muttered, "Looks like God and Nene wear the same nail polish."

• Write What You Know: Biles was a grad student working on an advanced degree in History when he wrote the story. It's probably no coincidence that one of his characters is a professor of History and is seen once reading a genuine academic work in the field.
• Yakuza: After listening to some of a drunken Ryoko's stories, her son Ryu's college friends think his family are all Yakuza. Later, Ryoko follows up on this by telling Nene the Masaki family are Yakuza. (The rest of the family disagree.)
• Yandere: In chapter 17, Hikaru Hiyama needs to convince remind her husband Jonny Quest that her concern for her old friend Kyosuke isn't rooted in this kind of behavior:

"I'm not psychotic enough to obsess over someone for my entire life!"

• You Will Know What to Do: In chapter 13, Queen Serenity (appearing in a dream) thanks Linna for returning her lost daughter to her and to reward her touches her on the forehead, saying, "You will know how to use this when the time comes" as a shock runs through her.