Author's Notes: I do not own any of the characters of Sailor Moon, nor is this plot mine. It is based off of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels. This one of course being called the Mother Hunt. I'm ripping people off left and right. No originality here.

The Mother Hunt

I

Under normal circumstances today would have been a good day to play hooky. I would have been overjoyed to have gone and played around with the boys but I have ethics. I have a job and for the moment I was contemplating how to attack it. Bright days like this don't bring around many customers. You see I make my living off the misfortunes of others. It sounds rather rough but it is the honest to God truth. I'm not a bad person. It's my employer you have to look out for.

My profession, as I like to call it, is as a private eye, a detective, and a brain for hire. I live and work out of a sturdy old brownstone in the city, not a bad place for a street urchin to end up. I cannot take credit for my worldly possessions since I have none and a little extravagant for my tastes. No, they all belong to my boss who is a super genius, a real piece of work – Meiou Setsuna. She's a top grade detective, the sort that doesn't need to leave to comforts of home to solve a case. Why bother when you have me, Tenoh Haruka, to run errand and drive a hot yellow roadster.

Together my eccentric boss and I run our business/home along with our extended staff. They make living with Setsuna bearable. First and foremost is Kino Makoto, our delightful cook. She's a tall brunette with a punch that could lay a good man flat. I've seen it myself and have been very tender towards her since. Without her ministrations we would starve to death; I know very little about cooking and Setsuna would never stoop to prepare her own meals. She's a good one to have around in a pinch too. I'd marry the girl if it was legal and she'd have me. Now I'm just partial to flirting with her. Our other tenant is Mizuno Ami, another genius just not of the social kind. She and Setsuna get along like two peas in a pod, two strange and funny peas. Ami is small, smaller than the rest of us with blue hair and eyes to match. She's a little wet behind the ears but that's what makes her endearing. She has a lab on the top floor where she also sleeps. The two of them up there like Dr. Frankenstein and Igor have me a little worried but I know that Ami would never do anything that would bring us trouble. That's four women in one house, working and living side by side. Sure we get on each other's nerves now and again but that is what makes living here a kick. Without them I would have probably left Setsuna years ago. Then again it was a cushy job.

Except for now. As a part of my job description I pick up groceries, find the whosawhatits, and balance the books. I'm no dummy and know how to keep a good house running. I had been doing so for over five years. And now as I looked at my figures my eyebrows twitched (something I had picked up from Setsuna among others). By no means was it cheap to keep four people living comfortably even in a run down shack. Imagine my chagrin when I realized we didn't have much time before we were dry, with the expenses to three other detectives for their services, the ghastly electric bill Ami and Setsuna had run up, basic utilities, and of course our weekly allowances. Right now we were fine and when things are fine it leaves a lot of room for Murphy and his law to come in and bust things up. We needed a client; we needed one in a hurry.

I admit under no duress that Meiou Setsuna earns the exuberant fees she charges. Her only problem is that she dislikes people in general. Persons she can deal with - people on whole she would much rather do without. That's not to say that she doesn't have a heart, she has one. In fact she is the godmother of Chiba Mamoru's daughter ChibiUsa. Cute kid but too much like her mother. But one of the set backs of working as a detective is that you only scrape the bottom of the cultural pool. We deal with CEO's and their mistresses, the blue-collar man wanting to have his cheating wife caught in the act and mostly people in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's hard work doing one's job and still have faith in the human race. Only now a little tragedy wouldn't hurt. The hitch was getting Setsuna to take a job.

Setsuna was the sort that needed prodding, not the nudging of a concerned co-worker but the forked prong that saw fit to keep living in the luxuries it was accustomed to. She would stay up all day in that lab if she wanted but she had a strict schedule to adhere to.

At seven in the morning Makoto brought her breakfast in her immense maroon bed and she read the paper in her garnet nightie. At nine she would have bathed, gotten dressed, put on her lab coat and gone to work with Ami. What they talk about and do is anyone's guess. Makoto seems to think that they're trying to raise the dead which is all and good for her because the dead don't eat. She's up there until eleven when she takes the elevator down to the main floor. Why we had an elevator when we had perfectly good stairs I didn't know. It had been there since I arrived. The hypothesis, as Makoto kids, is that the three flights of stairs- the top being the lab, bedrooms in the middle, main floor and basement where Makoto stayed- simply took too much time.

By eleven she was down going over the list of needs sorted by Makoto. Setsuna merely looked them over for she could not tell one item for another. She had never been kitchen savvy. When Makoto went on vacation we ate out. When an appliance broke it could have fooled Setsuna because she had no need for it. She relied on us to get it done for her. We didn't mind. She paid us well and we got to say we worked for a genius. Still Setsuna checked it over gave Makoto a smile and curt nod, which meant 'bring the tea,' and by eleven fifteen she was in the office where I at my desk would wait.

Being the sort of girl that I am, I do not mind spending the better part of my day with a beautiful woman. Setsuna, tall with flowing green hair past her waist, smoldering garnet eyes and a tan that any Californian would risk skin cancer for was one of the better looking women I had the pleasure of knowing. And that was the problem. I knew her. I may not know the exact location in Japan where she was born but it was Japan. I may not know her parents but I knew she had them. I may not know why she was on the streets that cold November night when she took me in but here I am. She always knew the time down to the millisecond. She was always right, always. She reveled in mystery. She'd wait to the last minute to tell you something you've waited all day to hear. She would ignore and vex, lure and shove all at the same time. Some clients liked it but they didn't have to live with her. All this in one very nice package. However, when that nice package should be taking cases and earning money to supply my needs I get a little antsy.

I, on the other hand, liked things in a come as you please fashion. A full-fledged tomboy I cut my sandy locks short like a man, wore tailored suits and looked pretty damn good. Yeah I have an ego but all the girls at the Sandpiper Club can't be wrong. Most of our clients mistook me as a man when the first walked it. That really never bothered me but it did get some blushing from the women clients who had made passes at me. I never said that I was a man and sometimes knowing that made the girls go for me even more. But that's enough about me, for now at least.

As I had said before it was a fine day for playing hooky but instead I chose to get mail and place it on Setsuna's broad cherry wood desk. Thankfully there were no bills in that pile but they were on their way. That complete I went to my desk off to side a good five feet from hers near the wall where Einstein stared down at me from his portrait. Because I am so humble my desk is considerately smaller than hers. There I sat in my dark blue suit, gold shirt adorned with my tie/handkerchief combo going over the books when at eleven fifteen Setsuna came to join me, on the dot.

She sat calm and dignified in her maroon two piece dress with a bow dead center of her chest. Makoto in her usual maid getup and apron set down the tea before disappearing into the front room with a conspiring wink at me. I decided that now was the time to make my move.

I pulled out my notebook from my pencil drawer, scribble on it neatly, tore it loose and folded it twice. I then got up, straightened my suit and strode purposely to the desk. Setsuna was about to lay into another book Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies when I placed the darling note in front of her. With a click of my heels I spun away back to my corner of the room. From there I did my best not to whistle happily.

"Haruka." Her voice was gentle, always even when she was upset. Mores the pity we just wouldn't work out. "What is the meaning of this?"

I had been staring into the books when she called me so I reared up. "What is the meaning of what?"

She held up my love note between two of her fingers. "This note. What is it? Not another resignation notice I hope."

I must remind myself not to threaten to quit so often. She might not take me seriously when I say it the next time. "I can't tell you. It might ruin your surprise."

Her eyes crinkled dangerously. "You know how I feel about surprises. What is in the note?"

"Nuh-uh. Open it first and then I'll explain the rules." Now you see all the work I have to do just to get her to open a letter. Try getting her on a case.

With a shake of her head I head the word 'juvenile' and she finally opened the note. The funny thing about the strange and intelligent was that sometimes they missed the whole picture noticing only the obvious.

"Haruka, it says September twenty-seventh. It is only September fourteenth. Have you no need for the calendar I bought you?"

Ah, sweet genius at its best. Leaning back in my chair I grinned. "I have the calendar and thank you. I especially like the choo-choo trains." She wrinkled her nose showing her displeasure at my banter. "And before you suggest that I relearn my numbers let me say that it was not a chronological error. No that, my intuitive employer, is the day that the ark will sink and two by two the animals evacuate."

She never cared for my euphemisms so she ignored them. "Evacuate? We have animals?" Setsuna paused in thought or to listen for clattering whichever of the two. "No, certainly not."

"When I mentioned animals I meant ourselves. As far as I know Makoto hasn't taken in any strays."

"Lower your voice! She might hear you and get it into her head. Then what would I do? I cannot work with animals scurrying around my feet." Her left hand wadded up my note into a ball and threw it into her wastebasket while her right delicately took her teacup- pinkie extended. "Now explain this idea of vacating and try to do so without your usual swill for wit."

It was almost poetic so I wasn't sore. "What I was getting at through subtlety and fun, is that is the day when we collectively will be broke. We haven't had a client for a week maybe two and we are spending it like no tomorrow. I figure that at this rate the twenty-seventh was when we'd all go like carolers and peddle."

Setsuna chuckled into her cup before setting it down. She would have hated to have spilt that tea on her nice dress. "I do not peddle. Never have. Never will. You honestly think we will fall so far as to be reduced to begging for alms? We would starve, you and I. Humility we possess for others but for ourselves we have none. I am too stubborn and you are far too arrogant."

I hated it when she made valid points like that, but I traveled the set path. She would not shake me so easily.

"Then you will take a client?" I asked hopefully. "The very next one who comes into the vestibule?"

She twitched. If there was anything Setsuna hated more than having to work it was being pressured to do so. She was going to try and weasel out of it.

"Haruka."

"No. No more Haruka. We need to eat. We need to live well. If I let you have you way you would do experiment after experiment letting everything you've worked for go to waste. You brought me here for the sole purpose of nagging you and that's what I'm doing. I am nagging you." During my speech I had gotten up and marched towards her desk. At my closing I had crossed my arms and dared her to say no.

Further attempts at procrastinating were put on hold as the doorbell rang. Our eyes locked. Makoto went to answer the door.

"Well?"

She squirmed. "Oh, all right. But on my terms."

I skipped and hopped to my corner a champion. It was then that I noticed Makoto standing in the doorway leading into the hall. She looked rather cheerful.

"A Mrs. Tomoe Soishi to see you, Setsuna-san."

And there stood the most breath-taking woman I had ever laid eyes on.