Sin Of Actaeon, a sailor moon fanfic

Sin of Actaeon Sin of Actaeon
by Johinsa

Author's Note: This is the second Sailor Moon story I wrote while living in scenic Hakone, Japan. The first one is "Old Soldiers Never Die"; this one is better. Send me mail (johinsa@hotmail.com) and let me know what you think. As always, ask me beforehand if you want to archive or link to this story.

All Sailor Moon characters, as always, belong to Kodansha, Toei, DiC, and of course Takeuchi Naoko-sama, creator and patron goddess of this wonderful anime world. ("And the Disembodied Voice said: "Let there BE Tokyo." And there WAS Tokyo. And the Disembodied Voice spent the next several hours waiting on the Shinkansen platform to get OUT of Tokyo.") The story itself is of course mine. Yes, it is a copyright violation, no, "fair use" does not apply to fanfics (contrary to what people may tell you), and no, I don't care, and neither does anyone else.

Oddly enough, I can't think of anyone to dedicate this story to. That's unusual. Well, let's just pick someone at random, shall we? This story is dedicated to Tsujiuchi Rieko-san, Japan's first female Shinkansen conductor. You go, girl! And now, on with the story...

"I'm home!" Mike tossed his jacket and backpack onto the living room sofa and headed upstairs to his room. He flipped the power switch on his computer and waited for it to boot up; it was old and slow, but he couldn't afford to buy a better one himself and his parents wouldn't pay for it.

"Michael?" His mother appeared in the doorway as if summoned. She surveyed the untidy room with a frown. "I hope you aren't going to waste your time on that computer before your homework's done," she said.

"Don't have any homework," Mike lied. The computer chirped brightly and he slid into his chair. His mother looked suspicious, but turned and left without comment.

Mike grinned to himself and opened his Internet browser to check his mail; aside from the junk mail, there was one new message, from someone he didn't know at an AOL address. "Hey love your story's! Way to kill the loser Sailor's! Keep writing and kill em all!!!"

"Your wish is my command," Mike said cheerfully. Closing the browser window and disconnecting--he'd answer the message later--he started the word processor. He'd had an idea for a new story bouncing around in the back of his mind for awhile, and now seemed as good a time to start it as any.

He began to type.

Itwas a dark and stormy nihght. The sailour Scots and ray was in the temple doing a fir reading.

"Well ray have you found anything yet." Said Serena.

"Be quite. Said ray. Im tryin to consentrate.

"Okay sorry"said.

I wonder whats the Negaverse up too" amy Said.

"ray said I dont know." But were in danger Im senseing that. But ray is to stupid to know whats the danger.

So the loser sailours decided not to do anything about it. And, so that is there mistake.

"Michael!" his mother called from downstairs. "Dinner!"

"Coming!" Mike quickly read over what he'd written so far. It was a good start, he decided. Definitely a good start. He saved the story, switched off the screen and left the room.

* * *

The rain drummed softly on the roof of the temple and dripped from the green eaves onto the swept courtyard stones. Stray gusts of wind blew raindrops against the windows, tinkling like wind chimes. A few handfuls of withered leaves lay on the ground. The moon, a thin crescent a few days old, shone with a pale wan light through a break in the ragged clouds. The droning hum of downtown Tokyo was faint and barely noticeable, as though it were part of another world altogether.

It was after midnight, but a light still gleamed in one of the temple's windows: a fire, glowing redly in a sunken hearth. The flames cast strange shadows on the walls of the room, and the hiss and crackle of the fire mingled seamlessly with the patter of the rain. Within the room, a priestess knelt on the bamboo mats before the fire, dressed in simple red and white robes. Eyes closed, she sat in silence, head tilted slightly to one side as though listening to something far away.

"How long is this going to take?" Serena's slightly shrill voice broke the silence. Mina actually jumped, half-rising to her feet, before she caught herself. "It's been hours, Raye!"

"Be quiet," Raye said without opening her eyes. Her voice sounded detached; she was still deep in trance. "It'll take as long as it takes. You can leave if you want to."

Serena subsided, grumbling. "It never takes this long," she muttered.

"It's been less than an hour," Amy told her quietly. "Try to be patient. We need to know what the Negaverse is doing." There had been no attacks lately, not for a long while, and the Scouts were starting to wonder if perhaps their enemies had retreated for good. Asking such a broad question of the fire, though, required a good deal more time and concentration than the simpler, more specific requests that Raye usually made. Amy, too, was growing impatient, but she was careful to keep still.

Finally Raye sat back on her heels, opening her eyes. The flames shrank and died to embers. "I can't get it," she said with a shrug. "There's a sense of danger, of warning--but it's too general, I can't focus on anything specific." She stood, wincing as her stiffened muscles protested. "Maybe I could try again."

"Do you think you'll have any better luck if you do this a second time?" Lita asked. "You need sleep. We all do."

Raye nodded reluctantly. "And tomorrow's school, too. We might as well get to bed; I don't think we'll learn any more here." She took a half-filled pail of water from the corner of the room and carefully poured it over the coals, sending up a cloud of steam. "But we should be especially careful tomorrow. Whatever the danger was that I sensed, it's coming soon. A day or two at most."

"That's not too helpful," Serena grumbled. She was tired, and that made her irritable. "I don't suppose the spirits said where this danger was?"

"If you think you can do better, you're welcome to try," Raye retorted. "As for me, I'm going to bed. There's nothing we can do yet."

* * *

The light from the computer screen cast a weird glow over Mike's narrow face as he sat typing in the otherwise dark room. He was supposed to have been in bed long since, but the story he was writing seemed to compel him to continue. He'd never been so inspired to write anything before.

In they morning it is sunny day.The sailours wake up and suddenly ther is a monster attacing.

Mike frowned at the screen for a moment. What was the monster like? Something scary, definitely. Something the Scouts wouldn't be able to fight. He wanted to make the creature up, but he needed inspiration. Glancing around the room, he spotted a poster of Godzilla tacked on one wall. He grinned. That would do.

The monster is like lizzard and big. It looks like a dragoon. It's scales are armor that the sailour Scots cant break throgh with they're wimpy looser attacks. And it breaths fire. And also it's eyes, and teeth. And big pointy claws to.

He read over the description in satisfaction. Perfect, he thought. Exactly what I wanted.

But the scots try to fihgt anyway because their stupid. Mercury shoots her bubbles atit but it burn them away with fire. And Jutipers lighting also no good. The monster just lauhgs. And then it swiped its claws at Mars and she falls dow. Blood splaters everywhere The scots are panicing. Then the monster is turned and walked away. But they knew it willl come back.

Mike yawned, rubbing his eyes. "That's a good place to stop," he said aloud. "I'll work on it some more tomorrow." He switched off the screen, felt his way across the room in the dark and was asleep almost as soon as his head touched his pillow.

* * *

By morning the rain had stopped, and the sky was clear and blue. Raye opened her eyes and sat up to peer out the window. "Wake up, you sleepyheads!" she called over her shoulder. "It's a beautiful day!"

"We're awake," Mina said with a grin. "I am, at least." She nudged Serena with her foot. The other girl's snores continued unabated. "And Lita's making breakfast." The girls had all slept over at the temple after the fire reading, deciding they were too tired to walk home.

"Great." The smell of eggs and coffee floated from the small kitchen down the hall. Raye glanced down at Serena and Amy, still asleep. "Are they planning to lie there all day?"

Amy yawned. "Good morning," she said sleepily. "Did someone mention breakfast?"

Raye grinned at her. "You're as bad as Serena."

"Breakfast!" Lita called, appearing in the doorway with a loaded tray in each hand. "Hurry up and eat. We'd better not be late; there's no way I'm staying for detention on a Friday."

"Me neither," Mina agreed. "Somebody wake Serena up."

Lita winced theatrically at a particularly loud snore. "We could try pouring a bucket of water over her head, I guess."

"Not in my room you don't--" Raye's laughter stopped abruptly. "Did you hear something?"

"Like what?" Lita asked, setting the trays on the low table.

"Outside. I thought I heard--"

With a splintering crash, the window and part of the wall shattered inward. Serena leapt out of bed with a shriek, tripping over the tangled sheets and falling facedown on the floor; a giant curved claw slashed through the air where her head had been. She continued shrieking at high volume.

"Transform!" Raye shouted. "Then get outside! We can't fight in here, not closed in like this."

The five girls transformed and ran out into the temple yard, where they got their first good look at the thing that had attacked them. The monster, apparently not very intelligent, was still swiping at the wall. It was a dinosaur-like thing perhaps nine feet tall, with powerful hindquarters and a spiked tail. Its forelimbs were small, almost puny-looking in comparison to its body but clearly strong nonetheless. The creature's entire body was armoured with iridescent dark-green scales. It could have stepped out of any of a thousand cheap horror films, but it was unquestionably real and dangerous.

Sailor Mars noticed that Mercury had her visor on and was scanning the monster. Good. "Mercury, where can we hurt it?"

"I can't find a weak spot," Mercury answered. "Those scales--I can't get any reading on them. Aim for its eyes, maybe."

Those were small, and set back behind a protruding muzzle: a difficult target. "Spread out!" Sailor Moon ordered. "Mercury, give us some cover."

Mercury nodded. "Mercury Bubbles--Blast!" The fog rolled out from her outstretched hands, swiftly filling the courtyard and hiding them from the monster's view.

Carefully Mars circled around to the side. She couldn't see too clearly either, but the monster's near eye was glowing faintly orange through the mist. She concentrated, raising her fingertips to target the pinpoint of light. "Mars--"

A jet of flame seared the air in front of her. Mars leapt back, startled. Had the thing seen her? No--there went another flash just to the left. It was burning off the mist, Mars realized. The monster was more clever than it looked.

"Jupiter Thunderclap--Zap!" came a shout from the far side of the temple courtyard, and lightning sizzled out of the clear sky. Not fast enough, though; a scaled eyelid snapped shut, and the lightning bolts battered uselessly against the dark green armour.

"Some sort of super-dense material," Mars heard Mercury mutter. The blue-haired Scout became visible just to Mars' right, typing rapidly on her computer, as the last tatters of fog vanished. "No visible damage at all-- incredible--the refractive index of that stuff must be off the scale--"

Mars looked over at her. "So how do we fight it?"

Mercury shook her head. "I don't--Mars, look out!"

With a swipe of one claw, the monster knocked Mars to the ground. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs, and stars danced momentarily in front of her eyes. She struggled clumsily to her knees, aware only of the need to get away, and then the pain hit her and she collapsed. Her shoulder felt as though it had been torn open. The grass under her face was wet, and she couldn't seem to breathe.

"Do something!" Mercury shouted at the others, running to Mars' side. "Distract it!" She dropped to her knees beside Mars, alarmed at the spreading patches of red on the girl's torn white blouse. The creature's claws had caught Mars' arm and shoulder; the wounds didn't look deep, but there was so much blood. Mars stared up at Mercury, her face drawn with pain and terribly pale.

The monster lifted its snout and sniffed at the air. It took a lumbering step toward Mars and Mercury. "You heard her! We've got to distract it!" Venus said. She jumped in front of the creature, waving her arms wildly. "Hey! Over here, fungus face! Over here!" She leapt aside as the creature shot another burst of flame from its mouth. "That the best you can do, spore?"

Jupiter shouted from behind the monster, "Hey! Stupid dinosaur! This way!" The monster looked from one to the other, clearly puzzled. Jupiter grinned over at Venus. "Let's see if we can do more than distract it," she said. "Jupiter Thunder--"

"Venus Love Chain--"

"Crash!"

"Encircle!"

The attacks both struck at once. Automatically the monster closed its eyes against the lightning that were again aimed at its head. As soon as the attack ceased, it opened its eyes again and took a heavy step forward--

--and fell to its knees, a growl of surprise rumbling in its throat. With a flick of her wrist, Venus pulled back the chain of light that she had thrown in front of the monster like a tripwire. "Sailor Moon!"

"Right!" Sailor Moon raised her sceptre. "Moon Sceptre--"

The creature staggered to its feet, surprising agile for something so large. It crashed through the trees lining the yard and disappeared at a run. Sailor Jupiter took a few steps as if to follow, then caught herself and stopped. "It's gone for now, anyway," she said, sounding relieved.

"Yeah," Venus said, "but I'll bet it's not gone for good."

Mars, meanwhile, was trying to get up. "Stay where you are," Mercury was telling her. "I'm going to call an ambulance."

"It's not that serious!" Mars protested, in defiance of the obvious. "Really, it isn't."

"You're losing a lot of blood," Mercury said, "and besides, what if that thing's claws were poisoned or something? You should go to a hospital."

Mars snorted. "Oh, that's a good idea. You know perfectly well that if Sailor Mars shows up at a hospital, we'll never be able to keep it off the news. The Negaverse'll be there within the hour."

"You must've hit your head pretty hard," Sailor Moon said sarcastically. Her uniform flickered and turned back into her pajamas. "Go as Raye," Serena said.

Mars shook her head, grimacing as the slight movement jarred her arm. "And tell them what, that I was attacked by some sort of wild animal? In Tokyo? There'll be questions--"

"There'll be questions anyway," Mina said, pointing at the splintered temple wall.

"I can explain that. Tell Grandpa I knocked over a ladder or something; those walls are flimsy. I can explain wearing a sling or something the same way. But if he finds out I'm in the hospital--" She sighed. "Grandpa's old, but he can sense things even better than I can. It's not easy to keep secrets from him when he knows something's going on. If he starts asking questions--"

"You're afraid he'll find out you're Sailor Mars," Lita said, understanding.

Mars frowned. "Yeah. I've started thinking, lately, that he suspects. You know how dangerous that could be." They all nodded; their complete anonymity was one of their most important defences, for their families and friends as much as for themselves. The only normal person who knew who they really were was Greg, but in his own way he was one of them as well.

"All right," Amy said grudgingly. "I still think this is a bad idea, but it's your decision. Let's get you inside." She put an arm around Mars' waist and gently helped her to her feet. "The rest of you guys can probably manage not to be too much later than usual if you get changed and get going right now."

"Omigod, school! We're gonna get detention for sure!" Serena ran for the temple door in a blur of panic, Lita and Mina close behind.

* * *

When Mike got home the next afternoon, his mother was waiting for him in the kitchen, her arms folded and her whole body giving off angry vibes. "Your English teacher called this morning, Michael," she informed him. "She says you haven't been keeping up in class."

Mike shrugged. "I'm doing okay."

"You failed your last three tests, she said," his mother continued. "And you were supposed to have me sign them, and you didn't. Michael, if you're having trouble with English--"

"I'm not," Mike said sullenly. "I'm doing fine. Mrs. Woodford doesn't know what she's talking about."

"Michael--" His mother stopped, looking frustrated. They had had these conversations before, and somehow they always came out the same way. "Just promise me you'll try to do better from now on," she said.

"Yeah, yeah." Mike turned and headed upstairs to his room.

If Mrs. Woodford was resorting to calling his mother, Mike thought, he'd better try to make at least a token effort. English class was stupid and unnecessary, especially to him--he was a writer, after all, so he already knew how to write--but still, he did need to pass it if he wanted to graduate.

He turned on the computer and rummaged in his backpack for his English textbook. They were doing Hamlet, or something; he was supposed to write a report on it. He opened up a new document and started to type.

Hamlet

After a few minutes' thought, he added:

Report by Mike Hastings

Several more minutes of staring at the screen failed to evoke anything more. "This is pointless," Mike said in disgust. He closed the document and opened his story, which was much more worthwhile than some stupid report.

So that nihgt their at the temple. And the next day to. And that day the monster came back. Its big adn scary, like before.And their scared. So they treid to fight it like before there to stupid to know they cant kill it.

They are fihghting the monster and Mars whose hurt fell down. And Vinus tried to help her. But then she did'nt see the monster come from behind her and it breaths fire at her. She screaming, catch fire and burned like a torch. And venus was dead.

Mike was smiling as he reread the passage. "One down," he said to himself, "four to go."

* * *

This must not be.

The voice wasn't a voice, really, or at least not one that could be heard by human ears. The place it was speaking in, similarly, was not quite a place. Another plane, another dimension perhaps. The words to describe it didn't exist in any human language, nor words to describe those who existed there. Spirits, Raye might have called them; that was close enough.

This must not be, the voice repeated, and in it there were shades of fiery, brooding anger.

It must not, another agreed: a faintly musical voice, cool and soothing like running water.

But what can be done? a third demanded, jagged tones flickering fitfully as it spoke. It has been written. What is written, cannot be changed.

It was a mistake to choose that one, a warm voice pulsed lightly. The mistake must be corrected.

We do not have that power, said the jagged voice. We cannot change this. He was chosen, and his story will end with all of our avatars dead.

And that must not be! protested the angry voice.

True. So what do you suggest?

There was silence for a moment. They are not dead yet, the warm voice said slowly. The circumstances are there, and we cannot change those. We cannot take away what has been set in place. But perhaps we can add something. A new factor could change the balance.

A bold plan. This was a new voice, soft but with a suggestion of great power behind it. And if we fail?

We must not, the cool voice said. The price is too high.

True, the soft voice agreed. Very well, if we are agreed on this, then let us begin.

* * *

The End.

Mike sat back in his chair, glanced out the window. The sky was growing brighter; the sun had risen about two hours ago. He had been awake most of the night working on the story, had fallen asleep in his chair for a few hours and then woken up to write some more. And now it was done.

He saved the file, feeling an odd sense of lightness as he did so. The story was done. He had finished it. There was a strange mixture of regret and happiness in that thought. Mike stuck a disk in the drive and copied the file to it, then put the disk in his backpack. Better safe than sorry, he thought. Now that he'd finished this, he wasn't going to risk letting anything happen to it.

"Michael?" His mother knocked politely on the door, then opened it. "Are you getting ready for school yet or--" She saw him at the computer and frowned. "Don't tell me you've been there all night!"

"Of course not," Mike lied quickly. "I just woke up. What's for breakfast?"

"There's cereal, there's milk in the fridge, and I left a pot of coffee on the counter, you can reheat that," she answered, obviously in a hurry. "I'm going to work early today, I don't have time to make your lunch so here's five dollars, buy something at the cafeteria. I'll be home for supper. Bye." She kissed him on the top of the head and turned to go. "And change your shirt," she added. "You wore the same one yesterday and it's all wrinkled."

Mike rolled his eyes at her back as she left. Stiffly he got to his feet--the plastic chair wasn't made for sleeping in. He stuffed his school books back into his backpack and headed downstairs. His mother had already left when he got there. He poured a mug of coffee and stuck it in the microwave, then filled a bowl with dry cereal and started eating while he waited for the coffee to warm up.

Abruptly he remembered that his report on Hamlet, due that day, consisted at the moment of a title. "Who cares?" he said aloud with a grin. "I don't need to do that stuff anymore. What does Mrs. Woodford know about anything? I'll bet she's never written anything in her life."

What could he do with his story, Mike wondered. Probably he should post it on the Internet, the way he'd done with his others; there were a lot of anti-Sailor Moon websites around, and his story was at least as good as the ones that they had. They'd be glad to put it up, he was sure. He'd take his disk to school--he could get Internet access during lunch and he'd send the story to some webpages then--

There was an odd noise coming from the microwave. Mike glanced up and saw with alarm that his coffee was boiling, bubbling over the sides of the mug. He yanked the door open and groaned at the mess. "Great. Just great."

About half the coffee was still in the mug; Mike drank it, nearly scalding his tongue, and shut the door of the microwave. The spilled coffee would probably evaporate or something, or if not, his mother would clean it up. He didn't have time to do anything about it. Mike picked up his jacket and backpack, and the house key from the hook on the wall. He opened the front door and stepped outside.

He was standing in a parking lot.

Mike looked around puzzled. There was no parking lot in front of his house. He looked over his shoulder and gasped. The house was gone.

"Where am I?" he said aloud. His voice sounded strange in his ears. This isn't possible! his mind was insisting. Things like this just don't happen in real life! But the ground was solid under his feet, the sun was shining, the air smelled like gasoline and roasting meat and flowers and smoke. Am I going crazy?

He looked around more carefully now, hoping for some clue to what had happened, and noticed something strange--something else strange, rather. He couldn't read the signs around him. There was a billboard nearby, and writing on the wall of a tall building beside the parking lot, and a lot of writing on a notice-board at the entrance, but Mike couldn't read any of it. The only thing he could read was a large blue P and the word "parking" on a sign at the parking lot gate, but there were more of the strange letters there too: one that looked a little like a claw, then an arrow pointing upward with a squiggle on top, then a square. Most of the other writing he could see was more complicated-looking, resembling little pictures rather than words. It hardly even looked like an alphabet, he thought.

"Could it be Chinese?" he wondered. Chinese looked like little pictures, he knew. It was a silly thought, but then again, it wasn't any more impossible to be in China than to be--well, anywhere else really. If he'd been magically whisked here somehow--

"That's ridiculous," he said to himself. But then what had happened?

Well, he wasn't going to find out just standing here, that was obvious. Shouldering his backpack, he headed for the entrance to the parking lot. The bored-looking man in the booth by the gate barely glanced up as he passed.

Mike emerged on a busy downtown street. Within sight were several very tall buildings and innumerable crowded-together stores: he saw a flower shop, a bookstore, a pharmacy, a number of restaurants and souvenir shops, all with signs in that strange scrawly writing. Cars honked and grumbled at each other, moving at a crawl through the mass. The sidewalks swarmed with people. Most had Oriental faces, and hair that was either black or obviously dyed. Mike noticed, too, that he was taller than almost all of them. Could be China, he thought.

A sign in English on one of the tall buildings caught his eye: Bank of Tokyo. "Tokyo," he muttered. "Japan, not China. I'm in Japan." That wasn't possible. It just wasn't.

Mike started walking. He wasn't sure where he was going, or what he expected to find, but there was no point in just standing around. A small voice in the back of his mind said it might in fact be a very good idea to stay where he was, so that whatever had brought him here could find him and take him home, but he ignored it. No matter how irrational it was, he had to do something.

He walked for what seemed like hours, not really paying attention to where he going. The cityscape never really changed: buildings, people, cars, the ever-present hum of voices and engines, the pervasive smells of car exhaust and cigarette smoke and strangely spiced food. Finally he sank down on a bench beside a bus stop--at least, the sign had a picture of a bus on it. His feet hurt, and he was tired.

A digital clock on the side of a nearby building read 12:38. Mike watched it dully for several seconds, thinking there was something odd about it but not quite sure what was wrong. He glanced at his watch, but it seemed to have stopped. He frowned and smacked it a few times. It was still stopped, reading 7:50.

Seven-fifty--that was about when he'd left for school, wasn't it? If the watch had stopped because of--because of whatever had happened--

He realized what was bothering him about the clock. "If I'm on the other side of the world," he said aloud, "shouldn't it be night or something?" And it should be warmer too; since it was late autumn at home it ought to be late spring here--no, that was Australia, wasn't it? He couldn't remember. It was hard to think. His mind was still spinning with the sheer dizzy impossibility of it all: he was in a foreign country, halfway across the world, he didn't know how he'd gotten here, he didn't know how to get home--

Mike sat up straight suddenly. "Hang on," he said to himself, "you're not thinking. It's not like you're on another planet or something. Airplanes go back and forth between Japan and America every day, right?"

A search of his wallet and pants pockets turned up fourteen dollars and thirty cents. Mike didn't know how much an airplane ticket cost, but it was probably a lot more than fourteen dollars.

And besides, I probably couldn't find the airport anyway, he thought gloomily. Incomprehensible street signs and advertisements loomed on every side. This part of the city looked exactly the same as any other he'd seen. I'm lost in Japan, I don't even know how to ask where I am--

A pair of Japanese men in ash-grey suits sat down on the bench beside him. "--asked Takahashi what he thought of it yet?" one of them was asking.

The other shook his head. "Takahashi won't commit to anything until we've got a guarantee of funding."

"But that's no good," the first protested. "We can't get the funding until we have Takahashi's approval to go ahead."

"Excuse me," Mike broke in eagerly. "You speak English, can you help me?"

The two men glanced at each other. "I don't speak any English," the first one said. The other nodded.

Mike stared at them. "I don't understand. I--listen, I need help. I'm lost. Can you tell me where I am?"

"Oh," the other man said sympathetically. "You can't read Japanese, can you?"

"Uh--no," Mike said. "I can't speak it either."

"No, no, you speak it very well," the first man assured him.

Mike frowned. He suspected there was something strange going on, but his tired mind couldn't grasp hold of it. He let it go. "Okay, this is Tokyo, right?"

"This is Harajuku," said the second, then, seeing that this told Mike nothing, "That's in Tokyo."

"Oh."

Further conversation was forestalled by the arrival of a bus. "Well, good luck," the two men said cheerfully. The doors opened and they stepped aboard. Mike sat dumbly on the bench and watched the bus depart.

They thought I was speaking Japanese, he thought, and it sounded like they were speaking English. Either he or they had to be mistaken, and Mike wasn't sure which answer would be the more reassuring.

He stood and kept walking. Now that he was paying attention, he realized that he could indeed understand the conversations of the people around him. It was distinctly strange, it was impossible in fact, but it seemed to be true.

Well, why not? he thought giddily. Magic translation's no stranger than the rest of this mess.

Some time later he noticed he was hungry. He bought an egg salad sandwich at a convenience store; the cashier reluctantly accepted his American money. This was going to be a problem, Mike realized. He was down to ten dollars now. He would run out of money soon, and then what would he eat?

For that matter, where was he going to sleep tonight? With this thought Mike glanced up, and was surprised at how dark it had gotten. Most of the cars in view had their headlights on, and the streetlights and windows shone in sharp contrast to the deepening blue sky. Automatically Mike glanced at his watch: 7:50. "Oh. Right."

The press of people around him had thinned to almost nothing, he realized. He had left the more crowded commercial part of the city and wandered into a quiet residential district. The streetlights here were further apart, and the irregular pools of light on the narrow sidewalk seemed only to define the shadows rather than to dispel them. Mike shivered and pulled his jacket closer around his shoulders. It was quite cold.

Small houses and narrow twisting streets. Streetlights and signposts. Trees. Every block looked the same. Shadows moved behind drawn curtains in yellow soft light. A dog barked in someone's yard and was answered by another further off. The road led uphill, lined with fences and stunted cherry trees and pines. Mike followed it, no longer paying any attention at all to where he was going. In the dark sky, a few pale stars glittered.

A strange structure loomed out of the darkness: a pair of pillars supporting a crosspiece, like a section of Stonehenge somehow transplanted to this quiet Tokyo suburb. As he drew closer, Mike saw that it was the wooden gate of a temple. Beyond it, the temple itself stood dark and silent.

"Well, why not," Mike muttered. "Maybe they'll let me stay awhile. It's got to be better than spending the night out here."

He walked up the steps to the door and knocked, and then waited. He could hear voices inside, and a light glowed faintly in one of the windows.

"Hello?" The door was opened. A young woman stood there, looking at Mike in polite puzzlement. She wore slippers and a red-and-white robe, and her thick black hair hung loose to her waist. One of her arms was bandaged, but she seemed oddly graceful despite that. In the firelight spilling from the room, her eyes were a deep violet. "Hello," she repeated. "What do you want?" Her voice, low-pitched and slightly impatient, sounded familiar somehow.

"I--ah--my name's Mike Hastings," Mike managed. "I'm lost. I don't have anywhere to stay, and--"

"Close the door, Raye!" someone called from inside. "You're letting all the heat out!"

"Come in," the girl said to Mike. "You don't look so good," she commented as she pulled the door shut behind him. "Are you okay?"

Mike didn't answer. He was looking past her, at two other girls sitting on cushions on the floor. One had short blue hair and blue eyes, and was quietly reading under a standing lamp. The other had blonde hair tied in two impractically long pigtails. Blue hair--pigtails--and she called that priestess Raye--

Another time, he might not have made the connection, but he had only just finished his story that morning and the characters were still fresh in his thoughts. He recoiled from the thought. It can't be true! his mind gibbered. Everything that had happened to him so far today was impossible, but this couldn't be true even if the rest was.

"Who's the foreigner, Raye?" the blonde girl asked.

"How should I know, meatball head?" the priestess said irritably. She turned back to Mike. "Don't mind Serena. She's a ditz. Welcome to Cherry Hill Temple. What was your name again?" Serena. Raye. It was true.

The shock was too much. All the events of the long day crashed in on Mike at once. His tired mind decided it couldn't cope right now, and elected to shut down. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he fainted.

* * *

Mike awoke with sunlight streaming from a window onto his face. For a moment he lay there, watching the dust motes floating in the air, still too sleep-fogged to think of getting up. Slowly, yesterday reassembled itself in his thoughts. Japan. The temple. Mike groaned and sat up, rubbing his eyes, willing it to have been a dream.

"Good morning!" a girl's voice said brightly. Mike jumped, looking around. "Sorry--did I startle you?" She wasn't one of the three he'd seen last night; her hair was blonde but shorter than Serena's, and her slim heart-shaped face looked permanently cheerful. Mina, Mike's brain supplied. He ignored it.

"I'm Mina," the girl continued with a smile. "I was starting to wonder if you were going to sleep all day. You must've been awfully tired."

"Yeah." Mike glanced around the room. It was small and unfurnished, aside from the bed he lay on, which he now saw was a sort of thin mattress on the floor. It was surprisingly comfortable, actually. His clothes and backpack lay in a neat pile by the wall. Mike realized then that he was wearing a set of blue and green striped pajamas. "Uh-- "

"They're Chad's," Mina supplied. "He's a guy who lives here, you'll meet him if you stay long enough."

"I hope he doesn't mind me borrowing his stuff," Mike said.

Mina shrugged. "Nah, he's not here today. He and Raye's grandpa--the guy who runs the temple--they're out of town till tonight. Which is probably just as well, because I'm not sure what Grandpa would think of Raye letting strange guys stay over."

"Oh," Mike said. "I don't want to cause any trouble--"

"Trust me, if you were, you'd hear about it," Mina assured him, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "Raye doesn't exactly keep her opinions to herself. But it's really not any trouble." She grinned. "Heck, Chad showed up the same way you did--just appeared on the steps one night--and he's been here for months now. I don't suppose you're a famous musician?"

Mike was confused by the non sequitur. "No--"

"Oh. I was just wondering, because Chad is. That's kind of why he came here. It's a long story. So why are you here, then?"

"I don't really know," Mike admitted. "I'm not even really sure where I am. I guess probably still Tokyo?"

"Yep, Tokyo," Mina agreed. "You really are lost, aren't you. Where are you from?"

"Kennebunk, Maine," Mike said. "That's in the United States," he added, thinking she might not know that."

"Oh, an American?" Mina asked, sounding interested. "You speak Japanese really well. Are you studying at the university here?"

Mike shook his head, unsure how--or whether--to explain. Oh, hell, just tell her. She's Sailor Venus for God's sake; this can't be any stranger than that.

"You're probably going to find this hard to believe," he began, and took a deep breath and spilled out all the events of the previous day. Mina listened intently, a tiny frown creasing her forehead. She didn't interrupt or ask questions, just waited without giving any hint of what she was thinking. "And then I got to the temple," he said, "and Raye answered the door, and--" He stopped. "That's all I remember," he finished lamely. He wasn't sure why he didn't say he'd recognized them; it just seemed somehow--ridiculous, maybe.

"That's a very strange story," Mina said slowly, and Mike's heart sank. "But I do believe you," she added.

He stared at her. "You do?"

"You're wandering around Tokyo with ten dollars in your pocket and no ID," Mina said with a smile. "You're not a normal tourist, that's for sure. You speak Japanese like a native, no accent even." She paused as if a thought had struck her. "Do you understand me now?" she asked, with a slight accent that hadn't been present before.

"Of course," Mike said, confused.

She nodded in satisfaction. "That was English," she said. "You really couldn't tell?" He shook his head. "This is very strange," Mina repeated. "I think we should get the rest of the--the rest of my friends together and tell them about this. Raye's a priestess, so she might have some idea what--"

There was a sudden shout from outside the room: "Mina! It's back! Get out here!"

"Fungus!" Mina muttered. It sounded like a swear word the way she said it. "Mike, stay here. Understand? This is very important. Do not leave this room until one of us comes to get you. All right?"

Mike nodded. "Yeah, all right, but what's--"

"I'll explain later. Just stay here." She jumped to her feet and left the room, closing the door behind her.

When she was gone, Mike crossed the room to where his clothes were piled. Everything seemed to be there and he dressed quickly, leaving the striped pajamas on the bed. He glanced at the closed door, but decided he had better obey Mina's instructions. The room had no chairs, so he sat back down on the bed to think.

It was a little easier to think rationally about his predicament today, now that he had reached a comparatively friendly place and knew a little more about what was going on--even if it was impossible. "I'm in a place where Sailor Moon is real." Saying it out loud made it a little easier to swallow. "I'm at the Cherry Hill Temple in Tokyo, and the Sailor Scouts are here, and--"

Someone shouted outside, and almost immediately there was a hollow boom like thunder, or like an explosion. They're fighting, he realized. He moved quickly to the window and looked outside.

They were there: the Sailor Scouts. He could see three of them from where he stood--no, four, as another emerged from around the side of the temple, running. And behind her--

He recognized it immediately, and a shiver of awe and fear ran through him at the sight. I made that, he thought. The creature was exactly as he had imagined it, fierce and terrifying, deadly and invincible. His creation. "This is--I'm in my story," he whispered. "It's real. I'm in my story."

And then he remembered what happened next.

"Mina," he said slowly. "Sailor Venus--if we're where I think we are, then she--"

Mike wasn't usually good at making quick decisions, but almost before the words were out of his mouth he was on his feet and throwing the door open. He ran down the hallway, came to a dead end, skidded to a half, ran back and found the door out into the temple yard. His pulse pounding in his ears, he turned the corner and saw exactly what he'd expected to see: Mars stumbling, falling to her knees; Venus moving to help her; his creature turning, orange eyes glowing balefully, mouth slowly opening--

"Mina! Behind you!" Mike shouted. The blonde Scout glanced over her shoulder, saw the creature about to attack, grabbed Mars' arm and leapt aside. Fire jetted into the grass behind them.

The monster stopped. Its face wasn't made for human expressions, but it managed to look confused nonetheless. With a low growl, it turned and lurched away from the temple, its footfalls rapidly fading once it passed out of sight down the hill.

Still breathing quickly from running, Mike looked around. The Scouts were all looking at him, most with surprise, Venus with relief, and Mars--Mike was surprised to see an expression of shock and suspicion on the black-haired girl's face. He opened his mouth to speak, and then wasn't sure what to say; what was it that she was silently accusing him of?

"You called her Mina," Mars said softly, and he understood.

Venus was frowning; she hadn't noticed his slip before, in the stress of the moment. "How did you--?" she began.

"I--I wasn't totally honest with you before," Mike admitted in a rush. "I recognized you last night--well, not you specifically, I mean, but Raye and Amy and Serena," he added, glancing at each in turn. Only Mercury kept her face composed when he named her. "It's kind of a long story."

"You mean you knew--" Venus began, then shook her head. "No, let's go inside," she said. "We can talk in there. But I think you'd better have an explanation." She turned and headed into the temple. The others followed, saying nothing.

* * *

"So you think we're in a story?" Lita said when Mike had finished. It was afternoon now; telling all of what he had previously told Mina and adding what he suspected about his story had taken Mike a long time, interrupted often by the other girls' questions. "I don't believe it," Lita told him bluntly. "I'm not a figment of your imagination. That's--it--it's ridiculous!"

Amy was frowning thoughtfully. "But it would explain how he knows us," she said. "And it would explain this monster, too--which we haven't been able to do as yet," she added with a glance at Raye.

"If he were from the Negaverse, that would explain it as well," Lita said darkly.

"Lita, you're being silly," Mina said in exasperation. "Sure, that dinosaur thing might be from the Negaverse, but why would they send a teenage American? Or someone disguised as one? And if they did, for whatever reason, why would he save my life?" Mike reddened at that, and hoped she didn't notice him blushing. "No, I don't think so, Lita."

Serena nodded. "There's another thing," she said quietly. "If he is from the Negaverse, that means they know who all of us are in our normal forms. I'd rather believe him than think that." There was a silence as the others digested the implications of this.

"Well, Raye?" Mina said at last. "You haven't said what you think yet."

The priestess stared down at her hands, clasped tightly together in her lap. "I don't know what to think," she said. "It doesn't seem possible. But I don't sense anything evil about him, and I don't think he's lying, and he doesn't seem crazy, so--" She shrugged. "I guess I believe him."

"Thanks," Mike said dryly.

"Don't mention it."

"Well, if we assume he's telling the truth, then what do we do?" Serena wanted to know. She looked around, and her gaze settled reluctantly on Raye. "You know more about this sort of thing than the rest of us. What do you think?"

Raye shook her head. "Sorry, meatball head, I'm as much in the dark as you are. This sounds more like science fiction than like the spirits I know."

"She's right," Amy agreed. "Parallel universes--it's a favourite concept of science-fiction writers. We're real, we know we're real, but where Mike is from we're a--a TV show, you said?"

He nodded. "It's a Japanese show that's been dubbed into English. I had to watch it all the time when I was babysitting my cousins." Six-year-old Kellie and nine-year-old Amanda had insisted on watching the show every day. Mike could reel off all the story arcs by heart and had grown to loathe the whole repetitive, predictable series. "I guess I'm in the English version. Because of your names, I mean; they're something else in the Japanese. That's probably why I can understand you, too."

"That's weird," Lita said. "So all these TV episodes and stories are all the stuff that's happened to us?" She still sounded disbelieving.

"Well, probably not all the stories," Mike said, thinking it over. "There's too many of them, and some probably contradict each other." He hadn't actually read any of them, except on the anti-Sailor Moon pages he frequented, but most of those were certainly mutually exclusive. "But all the TV shows, probably. It's easy enough to check that, anyway. Let's see. You know Beryl? You defeated her?"

"In the Negaverse," Mina agreed. "That's right."

"And the four--you know, junior evil guys? Jeddite, Malachite--the other two--"

"Nephlyte and Zoicite," Raye supplied.

"Okay. And Alan and Ann, and the Doom Tree? The Moonlight Knight?"

Serena nodded, a dreamy look on her face. "Yeah." Raye smacked her. "Oww! What was that for?" she demanded. Raye rolled her eyes.

"Uh--right," Mike said, having lost his train of thought for a moment. "Okay, Rubeus and the Wise Man? And Wicked Lady?"

This was met with blank stares. "Who?" Serena said.

Mike frowned. That wasn't right. "Reeny? Sailor Pluto? Crystal Tokyo? Any of this ring a bell?"

"Maybe it hasn't happened yet," Amy suggested.

"Oh, wonderful," Lita muttered.

"No," Mike said, "she's probably right. Okay, I know where in the series we are now." He hadn't set his story at any particular time, and so it had apparently ended up just after the Doom Tree arc. Which made sense, as he thought about it; all the Scouts were there, but the confusion of the whole time-travel plot hadn't been introduced yet.

"Leaving that aside for now," Amy said, clearing her throat nervously, "we're assuming that we're in your story. That's how you knew Mina would be in danger."

Mike nodded. "In my--in the--what I wrote," he said, fumbling for words. He didn't want to say it, he was ashamed to say it, but they did have to know. "In my story, in that scene today. Mina died. Venus did, I mean. That's what--that's what I wrote happened, that she was killed."

Complete silence. Mina stared at Mike. "I'm supposed to be dead?" she said incredulously. "That's your story?"

"Yeah," Mike said quietly. "I didn't--Mina, you have to understand, I thought you were just cartoon characters on some stupid kids' show! I didn't know any of this would really happen!"

"Right. I understand that." Mina's voice was stiff, and she wasn't looking at him. None of them were. "So what happens at the end of the story? Or is that the end? I think you'd better tell us the rest of the plot."

"I'd better," Mike agreed hollowly. "That thing, that dinosaur thing, it's invincible. You can't destroy it with your powers, you can't even hurt it. I know; I made it that way. Eventually it kills you, all of you. That's the end. All the Sailor Scouts die." He hated the way he sounded then, so blunt and matter-of-fact, but he couldn't think of a way to soften the words. They were going to die, and it was his fault.

* * *

The streetlights and neon signs along the road streaked and ran together in the darkness into blurred glowing lines. Fragments of light and colour flashed and faded outside the windows as Darien drove at high speed along the busy Tokyo street. It was late evening, dark and crowded, but his mind was on other things than his driving.

"Darien, slow down." Luna, lying on the front seat, was watching him in exasperation. "A few minutes won't make much difference."

"You heard Raye on the phone," Darien said, swerving around a badly parked truck without really seeming to notice it. "She said to come right away."

"Yes, but I didn't hear her tell you to get yourself killed in an accident on the way," Luna answered acidly.

"Not to mention us," Artemis added from the back seat.

Darien sighed. "Will you two stop it? There's nothing wrong with the way I drive." He braked sharply as another car pulled out in front of him. "Idiot! The road's full of morons."

"Yes," Luna agreed noncommittally. Darien glared at her, but she merely looked ahead with serene indifference.

"What do you think about all this, anyway?" Artemis asked. It wasn't clear which of them he was addressing. "Could what Raye said really be true?"

"It seems strange," Luna answered thoughtfully, "but I don't see why it couldn't be true. We know other universes exist; the Negaverse is one, after all. I suppose it's possible."

Darien frowned, thinking it over once again as he turned the corner onto the street where the temple stood. "If you say it's possible, I believe you," he told the black cat. "You know a lot more about this stuff than I do. But something here just doesn't feel right. If this guy Mike told the truth, he doesn't have any more idea why he's here than we do. So who sent him? Could this be some sort of Negaverse trick?"

"We thought of that," Raye said impatiently when Darien related his suspicions to her inside the temple. "We're not complete idiots." Serena opened her mouth, and Lita kicked her ankle. Luna frowned at them both. "But I don't sense anything evil from him," Raye continued. "You'd better check too, Luna, but I don't think you'll find anything." Mina had taken Mike downtown with her, ostensibly to go shopping but really to give the others a chance to discuss the situation privately.

"I'm not saying he's evil," Darien answered levelly. "But you admit you don't know who sent him here. It could have been the Negaverse."

Serena shook her head. "He saved Mina from that monster--"

"--which only proves that he isn't our enemy, Serena," Darien cut her off. "That doesn't mean our enemy couldn't have had some reason for bringing him here. We don't know what effect his presence could have."

Amy looked up from her computer at this. "I've been trying to calculate that," she said. "The sudden addition of mass to what in theory is a closed system should certainly have a measurable effect, but trying to figure out what the exact stresses are--"

"Can we leave that aside for now?" Darien snapped. His tone of voice was harsher than he'd intended. "I'm not talking about science. Nothing like that has happened yet, and we've got more urgent problems."

"I just thought it ought to be considered," Amy said, blinking.

"All right, maybe it should," Darien said grudgingly, "but since we can't do anything about it, let's concentrate on what we can do something about, okay?" Amy nodded. "Now, if we're in this story of his, that means he knows what's going to happen. We can use that. We'll find out everything we can about this monster: its strengths, its weaknesses, its plans for future attacks. The more we know, the more chance we'll have of defeating it."

Lita nodded approvingly. "Good plan."

"We'll talk to Mike when he and Mina come back," Luna decided.

They didn't have to wait long; within a few minutes, the two arrived. "We're back!" Mina shouted cheerfully from the front entrance. She bounded down the hallway and into the room where the others were gathered. "Don't forget to take off your shoes!" she called over her shoulder. Then, in an undertone to Raye, "Anything?"

"Not much. I'll fill you in later," and then Mike appeared.

He looked curiously around the room, seeing Darien and the two cats there. "You must be Darien," Mike said, a little hesitantly. "And Luna and--Artemis, right?"

"That's right," Artemis agreed.

Mike stared for a moment, then gave a self-conscious laugh. "I knew you talked," he said ruefully, "but it still seems a little weird."

"Everybody thinks that at first," Luna assured him. "You'll get used to it." Mike nodded. As he looked away, Luna caught Raye's eye and gave a tiny shake of her head: she didn't sense anything evil from him either.

The front door could be heard then, creaking open. Mina snapped her fingers. "Oh, yeah, your grandpa and Chad are back! I forgot. We ran into them outside. I told them you broke the window with a ladder, okay?"

Raye frowned. "If they're back, Mike, you can't stay here," she said. "Grandpa's awfully strict about that sort of thing sometimes."

"Well, where's he going to stay, then?" Mina asked.

"Oh! I know!" Serena exclaimed. "He can stay with Darien!"

Darien winced. "Serena, I don't think that's--"

"Why not?" Serena asked, pouting. "You've got that big apartment all to yourself, you've got space. Please, Darien, it'd make everything so much easier--"

"All right, all right," Darien said, raising his hands in surrender. "He can stay at my place if it's that important to you." Serena grinned and hugged him.

"When should we meet again?" Lita asked, getting to her feet. She looked at Mike. "In your story, when-- "

"The day after tomorrow," Mike told her, anticipating what she was going to ask. "The next attack is the day after tomorrow."

"Monday," Amy said automatically.

"Yeah, Monday. At your school." He looked at the floor, unable to meet her gaze. "It attacks your classroom, and you--uh--" Amy nodded, her blue eyes as still as pools of water, revealing nothing.

"It won't necessarily happen," Luna said quickly. "After all, he did save Mina. There have already been changes from the way the story went. We should be able to change this as well."

"All right, we'll meet at Darien's on Monday before school, then," Serena decided. "For now, there's not a lot more we can--"

Chad clumped loudly into the room in a pair of slippers. "We're back! You wouldn't believe what a great time we had. I'll tell you all about it." He suddenly noticed that there were others besides Raye in the room. "Whoa. Uh--hi. What's going on?"

"This is Mike," Raye answered hastily with a bright brittle smile. "He's Darien's friend from college."

"Oh. Nice to meet you." Chad bowed. Mike awkwardly mimicked him. "Does he speak Japanese?" Chad asked in a stage whisper.

"Yes," Mike answered for himself.

"Great! Hey, Raye, what've we got for dinner?"

"I don't know," she said irritably. "Look in the fridge. You can manage to defrost a pizza yourself, can't you? I'm busy."

"We'd better go, anyway," Mina said. She scooped Artemis up in her arms. "See you later, Mike."

"Yeah, see you later," Mike echoed, following Darien outside, and the two of them left the temple.

* * *

Mike was silent for most of the ride back. Since Artemis was returning with Mina and Luna with Serena, the two men were the only ones in the car. Darien was paying attention only to his driving, barely acknowledging Mike's presence let alone seeming open to conversation. Mike had the impression that Darien didn't like him much.

"Why'd you do it?"

Mike was startled at the sudden question. Darien's eyes were still fixed on the road ahead, his face expressionless. "Do what?" Mike asked, his mouth unaccountably dry.

"Why'd you write this story?" Without waiting for an answer, Darien continued: "The girls trust you, even if they don't quite know what to make of you. Raye and Luna can tell you're not from the Negaverse, and so they don't think you're evil."

"You don't agree with them?" Mike asked, surprised. "I told you, I--"

"I know what you said." The silence stretched. Just as Mike was about to break it, Darien spoke again. "What I want to know is why you wrote this story. Why you wanted to write them dead. Do you enjoy that sort of thing, Mike?"

"I didn't know they were real!" Mike protested. "I thought they were just TV characters! I just--"

"That's an excuse. It's not a reason." Darien braked at a red light and turned to look at his passenger. "The evil that comes from the Negaverse isn't the only kind there is. Even if Raye and Luna can't sense it, it could be there. For all I know, the Negaverse chose you and sent you here because you're exactly the sort of person to carry out their plans."

Mike stared at him, aghast. "That's not true!"

"Then why did you write it?" The light turned green and the car sped forward. Darien refocused his attention on the road, leaving Mike to grapple with the question hanging in the air.

Why had he written it? He couldn't remember, couldn't really explain it even to himself. It was just something he'd wanted to do. All those endless hours of babysitting Amanda and Kellie and being made to watch that ridiculous show with them--when he'd stumbled across an anti-Sailor Moon website by mistake, it had inspired him. It was a lot easier to deal with Amanda's off-key renditions of the theme song and Kellie's persistent attempts to get him to pretend to be Jeddite or Tuxedo Mask (or, occasionally, Queen Beryl, though he'd mostly managed to put a stop to that) when he could go home afterwards and write about the Scouts' grisly deaths. He'd written several anti-Sailor Moon fanfics, though none on the order of the last one, which he considered--justifiably, he thought--to be a masterpiece. It had been an inspiration, that was all. He was a writer; he wrote. How could he explain it to Darien when he couldn't even articulate it clearly to himself?

"We're here." Blinking, Mike looked up and saw that they were in an underground parking garage. Darien was already out of the car. "Come on. The elevator's this way."

Mike followed him through the dimly lighted concrete cave. Most of the parking spaces were empty, and aside from himself and Darien Mike could see no-one. He shivered involuntarily and quickened his pace toward the green glow of the exit sign. Darien waited by the elevator, his face hidden in the shadows. Mike watched him warily, his nervousness increasing. There was no reason to be afraid, he told himself. He and Darien were on the same side, after all. All the same, there was something very worrying about the man's silence. Darien--Tuxedo Mask--was the Sailor Scouts' protector, and if they were threatened--and it was Mike's fault--

The elevator doors pinged open and a pair of chattering middle-aged women emerged, paying little attention to the two men waiting there. Mike let out a slow breath and hurried into the yellow-lit elevator. "Eighth floor," Darien told him. Mike pressed the button and the elevator began its slow ascent.

Darien's apartment was small and spartan: a hastily-made bed, a low table, a slightly battered-looking sofa. A TV was set into one wall, and a wide window offered a view of the city. The table was cluttered with old magazines and papers, all in Japanese, of course. "You can sleep on the couch," Darien told his houseguest brusquely. "I guess you haven't got any other clothes; the closet's over here, you can borrow some stuff. The bathroom's through there, just off the kitchen. Take a shower. I'll go and get the spare key from the landlord for you." He disappeared back out through the door.

Mike shrugged, put his backpack down on the sofa and opened the closet. Darien's wardrobe was nothing particularly interesting; Mike had been vaguely expecting a tuxedo or two, but all he saw were slacks and sweaters and nicely ironed shirts. He took out a towel and a pair of pajamas and wandered into the bathroom to take a much- needed shower.

As Mike came out again, dressed for bed, Darien returned. "Here," he said, handing Mike the key. "You'll probably be staying here until all this is finished, I guess--Serena's right, we don't have anyplace else to put you." He didn't sound thrilled with this state of affairs. Mike started to reply, but Darien had already brushed past him and gone into the kitchen.

Left to himself, Mike set about getting ready to sleep. After several minutes of poking and pulling, he determined that the couch didn't fold out into a bed; it was just a couch. Darien had left some blankets piled at one end, and Mike tried to arrange these as comfortably as possible. He flipped off the light and crawled into the makeshift bed.

"Mike?"

Mike rolled over and opened his eyes. "Yeah?"

Darien stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light from the kitchen. To Mike's eyes, there was nothing threatening about his appearance now; Darien looked hesitant, uncertain. "Listen, I--" he started, fumbling for words. "How do I die?" he asked at last.

"Uh--" Mike frowned, thinking. "It's in the last scene, after Mars dies." He closed his eyes, trying to picture the scene in his head the way he had when he was writing it. "The monster kills her, and Sailor Moon and Jupiter are running. You jump up on the roof and start making a speech." A "wimpy faggot speech", he'd called it, or something like that. "The monster goes after Sailor Moon. She tries to run away, but the monster's too fast. She starts screaming. You jump down between them and shout at her to get away. You try to hold the monster off, and Jupiter's beside you, and it kills you both."

Darien's face was pale, but his voice was steady as he spoke. "And Serena--Sailor Moon? Does she get away?"

More than anything, at that moment, Mike wanted to lie and tell him she would be safe. But-- "No. She sees you die and starts crying, and doesn't notice the monster coming after her."

Darien nodded slowly. "Well, like Luna said, things have changed already," he said, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself. "So that doesn't have to happen. So it won't."

He turned off the light in the kitchen and moved quietly across the room to his bed. Mike shifted uneasily on the couch. "Listen, Darien--"

"Get some sleep," Darien told him. "We'll meet with the Scouts again tomorrow; it's going to be a long couple of days."

* * *

They had planned to meet the next day, but Raye's grandfather insisted that she stay home and rest, and Amy had to go to cram school in the afternoon, and then relatives of Mina's dropped by her house unexpectedly, and what with one thing and another the Scouts weren't able to get together until Monday morning.

"I hate getting up early," Serena moaned, her hands wrapped around a mug of cocoa. They were gathered in Darien's apartment before school. "What time is it?" She craned her neck to look over at Mike's watch.

"It's broken," he said apologetically.

"Seven-thirty-one," Raye said. "Any more stupid questions? Can we get started now?"

"Raye, be nice," Mina said reprovingly.

Luna sighed. "Girls, we don't have a lot of time. Now, Mike, you said the next attack will be directed against Amy?"

"Yeah," Mike said. "The monster attacks her classroom at school--at least, that's what I wrote. Things might've changed."

"Well, we'll have to assume they haven't," Luna said. "Now, Serena, you and Lita will have to be ready to help Amy as soon as she calls you, so stay alert. You too, Darien, if you can."

"I'll wait near the school," Darien assured her.

"Me too," Raye said. "I'll tell Grandpa I have to stay home from school--I've got an excuse, after all." She touched her bandaged arm with her other hand. "I'll wait with Darien."

"No, you won't," Darien said firmly. "You're hurt; you shouldn't be fighting."

"Don't be silly," Raye told him with a laugh. "I'm fine, really."

Luna shook her head. As always, the human gesture looked slightly odd on the black cat. "I think I have to agree with Darien, Raye. You should stay home. Don't argue," she added as Raye opened her mouth to protest. "You know I'm right."

Raye nodded reluctantly. "All right, but call me if you need any help, okay? Any at all. I can be at Crossroads in five minutes."

"Me too," Mina said. "Hey, you know, I could probably get out of--"

"No, you should go to school, Mina," Artemis said. "It's near enough; you'll be able to get there in time."

Lita glanced up at the clock on Darien's wall. "Speaking of time--"

"Yes, get going, girls," Luna said. "Remember, stay alert."

"Hey, wait," Mike said. "What about me?"

Darien looked over at him. "You might as well wait with me."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Mina asked worriedly. "He doesn't have any powers--"

"He might still be able to help," Darien said. "He created this thing; he should know how to fight it." There was the same harshness in his tone as Mike had noticed the other night, but again his face was blank.

They rode the elevator down to the ground floor. Serena, Amy and Lita headed outside in a group and started on their way to school. The sky was overcast, promising rain before long, and the temperature had dropped noticeably. The few trees in the neighbourhood were almost bare of leaves, and their muted shadows on the sidewalk seemed strangely foreboding. Amy shivered and stuck her hands in her pockets. Serena noticed and looked over at her with concern. "Hey, Amy, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Amy assured her with a cheerful smile that she hoped looked real. "Honest."

"You sure?" Lita didn't sound convinced. "Listen, maybe you shouldn't go to school today."

"I can't stay home," Amy answered, still trying to lighten the oppressive mood they all felt. "I've got a calculus test this afternoon."

Serena frowned at her. "Lita's right, Amy. The monster's coming after you, we know that. If you're not there--"

"If I'm not there, then what?" Amy asked. "We don't know what it'll do. It might decide to go after one of you, or head downtown looking for me, or go on a rampage in the school--we just don't know. What if it attacks my classroom and people are hurt or killed because I'm not there?" She shook her head. "I know what you're trying to do, guys, and I appreciate it, but you know I've got to be there."

"Yeah." Lita glanced up at the sky. It had darkened visibly even in the last few minutes. "Just be careful, okay? I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Hey," Amy said with a smile, "don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

* * *

But despite her words, as the day crawled onward Amy found herself growing more and more nervous. She couldn't seem to concentrate on her morning classes, and found herself startled by every sudden noise. The bell ringing to signal the start of lunch nearly made her jump out of her skin.

This is ridiculous, Amy told herself firmly as she opened her lunchbox. You've been in plenty of battles before. This is no different.

It was, though. Always before, there had been very little warning; the Negaverse would attack, and she would feel the familiar surge of adrenaline and transform, and concentrating on the immediate moment she would fight. This time, though, she had time to wait and work herself up to being afraid. Amy had a natural tendency to worry--and, after all, a perfectly valid reason to.

It isn't every day you get told you're going to die, she thought, while her hands mechanically manipulated her chopsticks and her mouth chewed and swallowed without conscious instruction. Small raindrops spattered against the classroom windows. I'm supposed to be killed today.

Amy wasn't a particularly religious person. Her mother was Buddhist, and Amy was as well, at least nominally; she went to the temple or to the shrine on holidays, and most of the rest of the time she didn't think about religion. She preferred questions that she could answer scientifically to ones that seemed inherently insoluble. Now, though, she couldn't help but feel that a firm belief in an afterlife of whatever sort would be a great comfort.

Stop it! she admonished herself silently. This isn't doing any good. Stop thinking about it. Amy looked down and saw with mild surprise that her lunchbox was empty. She took her calculus notes out of her backpack and spread them over her desk, forcing herself to focus on them. Equations marched across the paper in ordered rows, and the fear fled to a corner of her mind, temporarily banished.

* * *

Darien was sitting in his car in the Crossroads Junior High parking lot, eating a seaweed roll and listening to the radio, when his communicator beeped shrilly. He pulled it out and Mercury's face appeared on the screen. "It's here," she said. "Hurry." The image blinked out.

Darien dropped the seaweed roll and jumped out of the car to transform--his transformation was only involuntary when Sailor Moon was in danger, which she evidently wasn't right now. "Come on, Mike," Tuxedo Mask said. "Let's move." They took off at a run.

Amy's classroom was on the second floor. Several broken windows on that level could be seen from outside. Tuxedo Mask looked up at the windows, took a few steps' running start and launched himself into the air. He landed neatly on a window sill and stepped over the shards of broken glass into the classroom.

Sailor Mercury and what had to be most of the class were crouched behind a hasty barricade of overturned desks; the monster stood between them and the door, slightly hunched over to keep from striking its head against the ceiling. Tuxedo Mask wondered momentarily how it had gotten itself into the classroom in the first place, then dismissed the thought as irrelevant.

"Tuxedo Mask!" Mercury called, seeing him. "You're just in time. We have to get everybody out of here. My powers aren't any good against this thing." The monster let loose a blast of fire and she ducked back down. The flames were stopped by the metal desks, but the students flinched back from the heat. Someone started to cry and was quickly hushed. "Can you do something?"

He nodded. Drawing a rose from his jacket, he threw it forward. It stuck in the floor between the monster's feet. "How dare you attack this school? Leave at once!" he ordered. The monster roared and shot another jet of flame, this one aimed at Tuxedo Mask. He leapt lightly out of the way and pulled out a second rose. His flowers could pierce solid concrete or steel. "I gave you one warning," he said. "You don't get another." He flung the rose at his adversary's throat--

--and it bounced off the dark green scaled hide to land, harmless and mocking, on the floor.

Tuxedo Mask stared in disbelief. That wasn't possible, or at least it shouldn't be. But there was no time to wonder about it right now. "Mercury! Any ideas?"

"I don't--" A roar of flame drowned out her words. The fire was white-hot now, stronger than ever; the metal of the desks glowed dully and began to sag. The students pressed further back against the wall, terrified.

"Come on, Sailor Mercury!" Tuxedo Mask shouted encouragingly. "We can defeat it if we work together!"

"Right!" Mercury agreed, but a slight tremor in her voice betrayed her fear.

Tuxedo Mask jumped forward, and the monster's head swivelled on its thick neck to follow his movement. "I'll hold its attention," he called. "You get everyone out!"

Mercury began herding the students toward the door while the monster was concentrating on Tuxedo Mask. He leapt and dodged, never presenting a stationary target. Trying to distract the creature further, he began throwing roses, aiming for the monster's small orange eyes. The monster roared angrily, and with a flash of inspiration Tuxedo Mask flung a rose at its open mouth, but the rose was burned to ash before it hit.

"Do that again!" Mercury called suddenly, evidently having some plan in mind. He nodded and threw another rose. "Mercury Ice Bubbles--Freeze!" she shouted at the same instant. If she could quench the fireball so that the rose reached its target--

But swift as a striking snake the monster's head whipped around to face her. The fire met the stream of ice and, incredibly, swept through it with barely a flicker. Tuxedo Mask shouted a warning, but Mercury didn't move, and before she could so much as cry out, she was engulfed in flame.

"Sailor Mercury!" Tuxedo Mask shouted, horrified. Rushing forward, he snatched off his cape and bore her to the floor underneath it, trying to smother the flames. The monster roared in triumph.

Tuxedo Mask lifted Mercury up in his arms, cape and all. She was surprisingly light. He ran to the window and leapt out. He was leaving the students unguarded, he knew, and he regretted that, but Sailor Mercury was his first concern. Besides, he didn't think the students were in danger. He wasn't sure why not; it was just a hunch. He thought he knew why, but the reason slipped away from him as he concentrated on getting away.

Mike was waiting below. "What happened?" he demanded, seeing the wrapped figure in Tuxedo Mask's arms. "Is she okay?"

"I don't know." Tuxedo Mask pulled aside the folds of the cape. It didn't look to him, at first, as though her injuries were very bad; she had only been on fire for a few seconds, after all, Tuxedo Mask reminded himself, and her uniform seemed to have protected her somewhat. He reached down to brush away the layer of ash on her face, and stifled a gasp as the flesh beneath it crackled, flakes of blackened skin sticking to his hand. Her face and neck and upper arms had taken the brunt of the intense heat; a few seconds' exposure had been enough to reduce the outer layers of skin to char.

"We've got to get her to a hospital," Mike said numbly. "We--" His head jerked up suddenly. "Look out!"

With an earth-shaking roar, the monster jumped from the broken window, shards of glass showering around it. Tuxedo Mask wouldn't have guessed that something so large could be so agile. "Run!" he told Mike. "Not that way!" he added as Mike began to make for the car. "Too slow. Follow me." He took off down the street, and Mike followed. They could circle back to the car once they'd eluded the monster, Tuxedo Mask decided; right now they would lose too much time trying to get Mercury inside. The best thing to do would be to try to lose the monster in the streets.

This proved easier said than done. Alone, even burdened as he was, Tuxedo Mask could have done it, but Mike was no athlete and soon fell behind. The monster pursued them, keeping them in sight. They were gaining ground, but not fast enough.

"How do we get this thing off our trail?" Tuxedo Mask shouted over his shoulder.

"I don't know," Mike answered, breathing hard.

"I thought you knew what it was supposed to do!"

"It isn't supposed to do this at all!" Mike panted. "It was supposed to just leave after it killed Mercury--either it knows she's alive or it's fixated itself on you now--"

They had left the immediate neighbourhood of the school now and had reached a block of office buildings. The streets here were broad and straight, offering no concealment. No pedestrians were in sight--probably everyone who worked in this area was inside in an office at this time of day.

"Now where?" Mike asked.

Tuxedo Mask looked around quickly. "This way." He turned a corner and immediately ducked through the automatic door of the nearest building.

"Hey!" protested a young woman behind a desk as they ran through the wide entrance hallway. "You can't just barge in here like--"

"Which way to the elevators?" Tuxedo Mask demanded, cutting her off.

"Dow the hall, first left," the receptionist answered automatically. "But you can't--"

"Thank you!" Mike called as the two of them ran down the tastefully carpeted hallway. They stopped at the elevators and Mike leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath. "What are we doing, exactly?" he asked.

"There's a hospital near here," Tuxedo Mask explained, "but we can't risk the monster following us there. This should throw him off the scent."

The doors pinged open. An elevator girl in a pink uniform and a very small hat bowed deeply as they stepped inside. "The roof," Tuxedo Mask told her. She smiled and pressed the button, and the doors closed.

"Why the roof?" Mike wanted to know.

"Have you got a better idea?" Tuxedo Mask demanded.

"Sorry," Mike muttered.

"No, I'm sorry." Tuxedo Mask sighed. He looked down at Mercury; she hadn't moved since they had left the school. He didn't know much of anything about first aid; she was alive and breathing, and he was getting her to a hospital, and that was all he could do. "The monster won't see us if we go up on the roof, I think. It doesn't seem very smart."

"It doesn't have to be," Mike agreed. "It's strong enough that it doesn't need brains."

"Right--so we can trick it." The doors opened onto the roof. "We want to go this way. Be careful."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Mike asked. "I can carry her for a bit if you want."

"I'm fine," Tuxedo Mask assured him, though in truth Mercury was getting very heavy and he'd be glad to reach their destination soon. "Now follow me."

Rather than leaping from rooftop to rooftop as Tuxedo Mask usually did, they made their way from one building to the next by climbing up and down fire escapes. The buildings abutted each other, so it wasn't as difficult as it might have been. They continued in this way until they reached the end of the block. Cautiously, Tuxedo Mask stepped to the edge of the roof and looked over. There was no sign of the monster.

"I think we've managed to lose it," he said with relief. "The hospital's just across here. We'd better go down."

There was a green-painted door a few steps away, leading to an elevator, and an elevator girl nearly identical to the other one conducted them silently to the lobby. They ran across the street on a yellow light and burst through the heavy doors of the hospital.

"We need a doctor here!" Tuxedo Mask called, and the woman at the front desk pressed a button on the wall. A few seconds later Mercury was taken from him by calm-eyed men in coats and masks, and he watched as she was wheeled down the hall and out of sight.

He hadn't realized how tired he was until that moment, but now he sank into one of the hard-backed plastic chairs by the wide front window and leaned his head back against the cool glass. "She'll be okay," he heard Mike say reassuringly. Tuxedo Mask closed his eyes and nodded, thinking no thanks to you.

* * *

The phone was ringing when they got back to the eighth-floor apartment. Darien picked it up. "Hello?"

"Darien!" It was Serena, sounding relieved and annoyed and worried all at the same time. "Are you okay? When we got to Amy's classroom everybody was gone and the place looked like ground zero. Some people said that you'd been there--that Tuxedo Mask had, I mean."

"Yeah, I'm fine." The phone in one hand, he wandered over to check the fridge. It was mostly empty. "But--listen, Serena, Mercury--"

There was a muffled gasp from the other end of the line. "Oh, no, Darien, she's not--"

"No," he said hastily. "No, she's in the hospital. They said she'll be all right. I just got back home." Nearly an hour of questions, explanations, evasions, more questions--he was tired as much from that as from the battle. "They saw she was Sailor Mercury, of course, and they saw I was Tuxedo Mask, so they called the police to figure out what was going on. I told them about the attack on the school and said we were doing our best to handle the situation. They were annoyed but they didn't argue much." The Tokyo police were, by this time, mostly resigned to the fact that things happened in the city that they weren't equipped to deal with, and that Sailor Moon and the others knew how to handle those things. "I convinced them not to say anything to the press about Mercury being in the hospital; the Negaverse won't find out about it that way."

"So can we go and see her?" Serena wanted to know.

"Tomorrow afternoon, probably, the doctor said. I gave the police my phone number so they could reach me if there's any--you know, any news."

He could hear the note of concern in her voice. "Are you sure that was a good idea? I mean--"

"It's not like they're going to give it out to anybody," he said sharply. "They're the police, after all. I think we can trust them." His voice softened. "Sorry. It's been a long day."

"I know," she said sympathetically. "It's okay. I'm sure it'll be fine. I'll call Raye and everybody and tell them you guys are all right."

"You do that," Darien agreed. "I'll talk to you later."

"Right." A pause. "Bye."

"Bye." He hung up.

"Who was that?" Mike asked. "Mina?"

Darien looked at him oddly. "No, Serena." He looked out the window. It was getting dark. "I'm going to go take a shower. Can you order us some fast food or something? We haven't got anything to eat."

"Yeah, sure," Mike said automatically. Darien disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door.

Mike picked up the phone book from the table and sighed. He kept forgetting that everything was in Japanese here; with the spoken language taken care of, however that was being done, it was easy to forget that this was a completely foreign country.

He thumbed through the book and found what had to be the commercial section; at least, most of it was obviously ads. The Japanese was so many meaningless bird tracks, and the occasional English word or phrase seemed to jump off the page at him. For Hair. FamilyMart. Let's master English ConverSation! House's Your Life. Pizza Castle. Cleaning The Best. Get!!

Pizza Castle. Mike flipped back to that page. The rest of the ad was unreadable, but there was a ten-digit number. He picked up the phone and dialled it.

"Hello, Pizza Castle," said a bored male voice.

"Hi, I'd like to order a pizza," Mike said. "Do you deliver?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'd like a pizza with bacon and extra cheese and mushrooms."

"Address?"

Darien had given him the apartment's address earlier and Mike had written it out in English letters. He fished out the piece of paper and read the address out. There was silence on the other end of the line. "Hello?"

"Could you repeat that address, please?" the voice said. Mike did so. "And you want a pizza?"

"Yes," Mike snapped. "Is that a problem?"

"Well, it's a little bit far," the voice said dubiously. "It's going to cost a bit extra."

"How much?" Mike asked.

"About seven thousand yen."

Mike had no idea how much that was. "Fine, whatever. Just bring it over. Thank you." He slammed down the receiver.

Darien was still in the shower. Mike turned on the TV and flipped through a news program, a cooking program, three game shows and two cartoons, and decided there was nothing good on. He switched the TV off and sat down on the sofa, staring out the window. It was fully dark now, but the light from the city blotted out the stars. White lines snaking back and forth marked the crawling traffic on the crowded streets below. The Tokyo Tower stood defined by neon against the sky, high above the indistinct shapes of smaller skyscrapers and apartments. Far overhead, an airplane's running lights blinked slowly, red, white, red, white, impossibly remote. Mike wondered where it was going. He suddenly felt very lonely.

The bathroom door opened. "I ordered a pizza," Mike said without turning.

"Uh-huh." Darien moved as if to join Mike on the couch, changed his mind and sat down on the bed instead, picking up the remote. "Anything good on?"

"Doubt it," Mike said. Darien chose one of the game shows, and they watched that. The host was making jokes--Darien seemed to find it funny, but Mike couldn't understand most of what the man was saying. Maybe it was a cultural thing, he thought.

The game show ended and a weather report came on. Tokyo was due for more rain, apparently. "I wonder what's taking the pizza so long," Darien said. "Where'd you get it from? Junichi's?"

"Uh, no," Mike answered. "Someplace called Pizza Castle."

"Don't know that one. Maybe I should phone and see what's up."

He picked up the phone book--a different phone book, Mike realized. "You've got two phone books?" he asked. "What's that one?"

"Local, of course. Tokyo Prefecture." Darien looked at Mike, confused. "What did you--"

A knock on the door interrupted him, and Darien got up to answer it. "Pizza!" a red-haired teenager announced, handing him the box.

"Hey, it's cold!" Darien exclaimed.

The boy shrugged. "That's not my fault. I'm surprised I got here as fast as I did; do you know how crowded Tokyo Station is at this time of night?" He glanced at a piece of paper in his hand. "Anyway, that's seven thousand one hundred and nine yen."

"What?" Darien turned to look at Mike. "Where'd you order this from? Okinawa?"

"Yokohama," the pizza boy said cheerfully. "They told you on the phone it'd be a little extra, didn't they? Train tickets aren't cheap, and I had to take the express cause the local takes too long."

Darien sighed. "Sorry to put you to so much trouble." He fished some bills and coins out of his wallet. "Here, keep the change."

"Thanks. Enjoy your pizza." The boy bowed and left.

"You ordered a pizza from Yokohama?" Darien demanded as he shut the door. "What were you thinking?"

"Yokohama?" Mike said sarcastically. "Let's see, is that the word that looks like a lighthouse or the one that looks like a deformed rabbit? I can't read your stupid alphabet, or did you forget that?"

"You should've known!" Darien snapped. "Didn't it occur to you that seven thousand yen is a lot for a pizza?"

"No, it didn't!" Mike shouted back. "How should I know what a yen is? I'm in a totally foreign country!"

"You still should've asked. I'm letting you live here, I think the least you could do is be more considerate. I don't exactly have money to burn, you know--"

"Okay! Okay! I know you don't want me here, you've made that clear enough! Maybe it hasn't occurred to you, but I don't exactly want to be here either!" The stress of the last few days had worn Mike's temper down to a raw edge. "I was living a perfectly normal life last week! I don't want to be stuck in this stupid country forever! And you know what? Not one of you Sailor Scouts has even brought up the fact that we don't know how to get me back home!"

"Maybe that's because we have more important problems!" They were both standing, shouting, their faces inches apart. "I've got news for you, buddy. None of us here has a normal life. We risk our lives every day trying to protect this world, and let me tell you, you haven't exactly made it easier for us!"

Mike glared at him. "You're just going to keep throwing that in my face, aren't you? It's not my fault. How the hell was I supposed to know this would happen? It was a story, for God's sake! It was entertainment!"

"Yeah, and because of that, because you didn't have anything better to do, one of my best friends is in the hospital right now!" Darien's hands were clenched into fists. "Amy could've been killed today! Do you not understand that, or do you just not care?"

It was a verbal slap in the face. "Of course I care! What do you take me for? I'm not a murderer! I saved Mina, didn't I?"

"Oh, yeah," Darien agreed sardonically. "Yeah, that makes up for everything. Never mind that this monster of yours could still kill her, and all the rest of us as well."

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Something more than stand around like a useless block of wood like you did today, maybe?"

"That does it, you bastard." Mike shoved Darien backwards. Caught by surprise, Darien stumbled and fell onto the sofa, but was up again immediately, a dangerous glint in his eye. Mike realized dimly that he'd just done something very stupid. He backed away nervously. "Listen, Darien--"

The phone rang. For an instant the two of them froze, and then Darien shrugged and stepped aside to pick it up. "Hello?" he said calmly. "Speaking. Yes. No. No, I don't--no--no, I'm sorry, I don't think so. Thank you. No. Goodbye." He put the phone down.

"Vacuum cleaner salesman?" Mike guessed, trying desperately to lighten the mood. Darien shook his head.

"Reporter. The Japan Times must've gotten this number somehow."

"Oh." Mike thought about this. "Can they find out your address from that? I mean, are we going to have cameramen breaking in here for interviews with Tuxedo Mask?"

Darien grinned at that. "No, this number's unlisted. I like my privacy."

"Yeah." Mike sighed and sat down on the sofa. "Look, man, I'm sorry about the pizza and everything."

"That's okay," Darien said. He sounded tired and seemed willing to let the subject drop. "We might as well eat it, anyway. I'll put it in the microwave." He disappeared into the kitchen and came out a minute later with the steaming pizza, which he set on the low table. "Help yourself."

"Thanks." Mike took a slice of pizza. There was corn on it. Darien picked up the remote and flipped through the channels until he found a baseball game. "Who's playing?" Mike asked.

Darien studied the screen. "Yakult Swallows versus, uh--the Hiroshima Carp." He frowned. "What's so funny?"

Mike shook his head, grinning. "Never mind."

* * *

"Good morning, Sailor Mercury," the nurse said cheerfully. "Feeling better?"

Mercury nodded. "Much better, thank you. She set her empty breakfast tray to one side of the bed. "How soon can I leave?"

"I'll have to ask the doctor about that," the nurse answered. "We'd normally need to keep you here for quite a bit longer, but you seem to have extraordinary recuperative powers. We didn't expect you'd even be awake this morning."

"Well, it's good to hear I'm okay." Back in the school, when the monster had defeated her attack so effortlessly, Mercury had been utterly certain in that moment that she was about to die. Waking up the next morning, even waking up in pain with her arms and head swathed in bandages, had been the greatest relief she could remember ever feeling. "I hope it won't be too long before I can get out of here. You understand, I'm sure--I've got work to do."

"Of course, I understand," the nurse said with a sympathetic look. "I heard about what happened at the school. Nasty."

"We're going to try to keep it from happening again," Mercury said. "Listen, if my friends show up--"

"Tuxedo Mask left his phone number. I'll call him right away."

"Thank you." Mercury leaned back on the pillows and closed her eyes as the nurse left with the breakfast tray. The sound of footsteps and indistinct voices in the hall outside grew louder for a moment, and then the nurse closed the door behind her and Mercury was left alone.

She must have fallen asleep again; it was late afternoon when a loud knock on the door brought her back to full awareness. "Come in?" she called.

"Mercury!" It was Sailor Moon, of course, and the rest of the Scouts and Tuxedo Mask with her. "I'm so glad you're okay!"

"Aside from looking like the Bride of the Mummy or something," Mars added, but she was smiling. "Are you doing better?"

Mercury nodded. "I think so. They probably won't let me out of here for awhile, but I could get up now if I had to. I think being in my Scout form is helping me recover faster; I know we heal faster than ordinary people."

"You should stay as Mercury until you're completely better, then," Artemis volunteered from his perch on Venus' shoulder.

"I would anyway," Mercury said. "People keep walking in here without knocking. I mean, I don't think I'm likely to be recognized," she gingerly touched her bandaged face, "but it's better to be safe, I guess."

"Which is exactly what I've been telling them," Tuxedo Mask interrupted with a glance at the other Scouts. He seemed to focus on Venus and she met his gaze defiantly. "We shouldn't take unnecessary risks."

"We shouldn't take ridiculous precautions either," Venus answered. "I don't see the point in involving the police."

"They're already involved," Tuxedo Mask pointed out.

"They'd go away if you asked them to."

"Excuse me?" Mercury said. "What's going on?"

"The police put guards on you yesterday, and they're still there," Venus explained, "and he thinks it's a good idea."

"It is," Tuxedo Mask said. "If the Negaverse--"

"They're not involved!" Venus said sharply, cutting him off. "Mike told us that. He said he never even mentioned them."

Tuxedo Mask scowled. "Even if he's telling the truth--"

"That's not fair--"

"Even if he's telling the truth," Tuxedo Mask repeated, "that doesn't mean they won't show up. He said himself, things are happening differently from the way he wrote them, now."

Jupiter frowned thoughtfully. "Yeah, but if you think that's a danger, shouldn't we be the ones on guard? I mean, does anyone here honestly think the police can handle the Negaverse? I think we know they can't."

"Well, even so," Tuxedo Mask said, changing the subject, "they're keeping the reporters away from this floor, and that's useful. I've already gotten five or six calls from reporters--I left my number so the hospital could reach me, and the press must've gotten it somehow. I'll have to change it--anyway. The point is, we don't want reporters up here. The Negaverse would be here in a minute if this got into the news."

"I still think you're overreacting," Venus said again.

"Guys!" Mercury protested. "It's a moot point anyway, okay? I'll probably be out of here in a day or so. We've got more important things to worry about. Like, what's our next move going to be?"

Sailor Moon nodded. "You're right, Mercury. We've got to make plans. The next attack is the--the final one, Mike said. After that, if we don't destroy it that time, we won't have any idea what's going to happen, or where or when the monster will appear. So the next one's our last chance to set a trap for it."

"Good plan, meatball head," Mars said. "I don't suppose you've got any idea how we should go about setting a trap for something like this?"

Sailor Moon stuck out her tongue. "I don't see you coming up with anything useful."

"Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm agreeing with you," Mars said. "But you've got to admit, we haven't been able to scratch this thing's hide so far. We need a way to fight it effectively, or knowing where it'll be won't make any difference."

"Where will it be?" Mercury asked.

"The temple, again," Venus said. "Thursday evening, sometime after dark. That's the day after tomorrow; you'll be out of here by then, right?"

"I hope so," agreed Mercury with a smile.

"Good," Sailor Moon said. "In the story, you and Venus aren't in that scene, obviously, so maybe your being there will be enough to change how things turn out."

Mercury nodded. "We still need a plan, though. I don't suppose Mike--where is he anyway?"

"At my place," Tuxedo Mask answered. "I thought it'd be better to leave him behind. There'll be questions about who he is if he's seen with us; it might be best to avoid that."

"Okay," Mercury said, not wanting to argue. From the look on Venus' face, the topic had already been the subject of some discussion. "I don't suppose Mike's come up with anything useful?"

Tuxedo Mask shook his head. "Nothing new."

"Then here's what we know," Mercury continued, ticking off the points on her fingers. "Our attacks can't hurt this thing. It isn't a regular Negaverse monster; we haven't seen it trying to drain energy from anyone."

"That's a good point," Tuxedo Mask said, nodding. "It didn't attack any of the students in your classroom, not directly; it just went after us."

"So we can assume that maybe it isn't interested in ordinary people," Mars said. "That makes sense, if it was just made to go after us specifically, to go after the Sailor Scouts--" She stopped.

"The Sailor Scouts," Luna said, nodding, following Mars' thought. "But what about Serena and Amy and the rest of you in your normal forms? Mercury, did the monster seem to know who you were before you transformed?"

"Hard to say," Mercury answered. "It just came in through the window and started smashing things. It didn't seem to notice the students at all, but I got out as quickly as I could to transform, so--" She shrugged. "I'm not sure."

"And the first time it attacked the temple, it smashed the wall but it didn't try to come in to get at us, and we hadn't transformed yet at that point," Jupiter said slowly. "And the second time, it ignored Mike completely when he came out--Luna, I think you've hit on something here."

"So what are you suggesting?" Sailor Moon demanded. "We can't fight this thing without transforming!"

Mercury looked at her. "Why not?"

"Because--because--"

"It might be the only way," Venus said. "It isn't very smart, we know that; if we can confuse it, trick it, we might be able to defeat it."

"You've got a plan?" Artemis asked.

"Maybe," Venus said. "Remember how the monster left when Mike saved me? That confused it; it had some idea of how things were supposed to happen, and they didn't turn out how it expected. It knows what's been written, somehow." She smiled. "So we're going to give it exactly what it expects to see."

* * *

"I feel ridiculous," Mina complained. "I'm Sailor Venus, not James Bond."

"This was mostly your idea, remember," Amy pointed out.

"Yeah, I know." Mina sighed. "I just hope this works." The theory was sound: the monster most likely believed that Venus and Mercury were dead, so the two of them could be absent from the battle without arousing suspicion. The other Scouts would be the bait, and Amy and Mina would set the trap.

"It'll work," Amy said. "If Mike's told us everything about this scene correctly, it'll work."

"I'm sure he has," Mina said.

Amy looked at her. "Mina, I don't mean to pry, but is there--uh--something going on between you two?"

"What?" Mina sounded genuinely surprised. "No, I--what gave you that idea?"

"Well, I just--" Amy floundered. "I mean, you're always defending him, it seems like--"

"I feel sorry for him," Mina admitted. "I know what it's like to be stuck in a strange country. And I think it's even harder for him here than it was for me in England; at least I knew why I was there and that I could come back eventually. He's just been thrown into all of this, and for all he knows, he could be here forever. We haven't figured out how to get him home yet--I mean, I know our other problems are more important, but even so--"

"Maybe whatever sent him here will send him home when all this is over," Amy suggested. Mina nodded.

"Maybe, but what if it doesn't?"

"Then we'll think of something," Amy assured her. "Right now we'd better get in position, though. The sun's almost gone, and we don't know exactly when it'll show up."

They hurried through the trees that fenced in the temple grounds from the back. Mina glanced at her watch. "Six-oh-three."

"Okay." On the other side of the trees, the hill sloped down to the street. The streetlights were lit, and crowds of people surged along the sidewalks and in and out of the buildings. Above the street, level with the hill, a train rumbled by along the raised track in a great rush of speed. "That's the six o'clock local," Amy noted, looking up as it sped by. "They're running right on time tonight."

"Uh-huh. Let's get started." Mina grinned at Amy. "This is a change, isn't it? Amy Anderson and Mina Aino, warriors of love and justice!" "It's a bit weird," Amy agreed with a smile.

"Scared?"

Amy shrugged. "Ask me again tomorrow," she said. "Come on, let's get ready. It'll be here any minute now."

* * *

A now-familiar roaring sound alerted the Sailor Scouts before the monster came into sight. Jupiter whipped out her communicator. "It's coming," she said. "You're ready?"

Amy nodded on the tiny screen. "We're ready." She glanced at her watch. "It's six-thirteen. You've got eight minutes exactly."

"It only takes one or two minutes to get there from here," Jupiter said with a frown. "We'll have to delay the monster a bit, I guess."

"Do what you have to. Just be here in time and we'll take care of the rest." Or Mars or Venus would, rather; the plan was Amy's, but she was still too weak herself to do any sort of strenuous physical activity.

"Got it. Should I check with Mina?" Jupiter asked. Amy shook her head.

"Mike's got her communicator; I'll be calling him in a second. Don't worry. Mina's in position." Mina would probably not be needed; she would simply be waiting to take over, should Mars fail to lure the creature into the trap. Amy smiled. "Good luck."

"Same to you. Over and out." Jupiter slipped the communicator back into her pocket and joined Tuxedo Mask and the other two Scouts at the front of the temple. As Mike had described in his story, the monster was coming up the road toward the main gate.

It appeared around a bend in the road, a tower of scales and teeth and unreasoning hatred, if possible more fearsome-looking than ever. "It goes after Mars first," Mike had said. "It kills her before it attacks anyone else." They were counting on that.

"We have to delay it for a few minutes," Jupiter said. "But it'll be fixated on you, Mars. Be careful."

Then there was no more time for talk; the monster was upon them. It was immediately obvious that Mike had been right: Mars was the intended first target. Jupiter fired bolt after bolt of lightning at the monster's flanks and it forged on, barely noticing her, pursuing the red-suited Scout.

Dodging a burst of flame, Mars darted around the side of the temple. "Stay on the grounds!" Sailor Moon shouted after her. "We can't lead it out yet!"

"I know that, meatball head!" Mars snapped over her shoulder, and then stopped and looked around. Where was the monster? It had been behind her a moment ago, but now--

With a roar, the monster leapt over the low roof of the temple to land between it and her. Mars was against the edge of the trees, but she couldn't afford to lead the monster that way yet. She was trapped.

Tuxedo Mask chose that moment to come around the corner. Without pause, he jumped up to the temple's roof and began to talk rapidly in a loud voice, the words coming almost at random. "Leave this place of worship at once! Evil creatures should not trespass on holy ground! How dare you threaten an innocent priestess? You should be ashamed!" He doubted the monster could understand him, but he didn't think they usually could. For some reason, though, when he spoke, monsters stopped and listened, and this one was no exception. He kept it up, a loud desperate flow of words, giving Mars a chance to get away. She was moving slowly, holding her bandaged arm as though in pain. The monster was shaking off whatever spell Tuxedo Mask's speech had laid on it. It lunged after Mars again, gaining on her with long loping strides as she stumbled back towards the front of the temple.

"Moon Sceptre Elimination!" Suddenly Sailor Moon was standing in the monster's path, sceptre levelled defiantly. The vast energy pouring through the Silver Crystal was enough to make the monster notice. It stopped, drawing away slightly. Sailor Moon clenched her hands tighter around the sceptre's handle, concentrating fiercely. In the same way, she had fought Beryl a year ago, and her strength had prevailed then. Now, though, the seemingly invincible creature took a step forward, then another, slowly making headway against the barrage of energy being directed against it, until Sailor Moon was forced to jump aside.

It was enough, though. "Two minutes!" Jupiter shouted. "Mars, go!"

With a brief glance of gratitude at Sailor Moon, the black-haired Scout ran off into the trees. Growling, the monster followed, but its bulk hampered it here and Mars came out well ahead of it on the other side.

Amy was waiting for her there. "All set," she reported. "Go on. Mike says they're running right on time."

Mars nodded. She took a deep breath to steady herself, ran forward a few steps to gain momentum, and leapt out into the air. Her jump easily cleared the sloping gap, and she landed lightly on her feet on the raised train track, on the other side of the high steel guardrails.

The track was empty of trains at the moment, which meant the plan was working right so far. A train was speeding toward this spot right now, though, even though it wasn't in sight yet; Mike had boarded the local train at the previous station as soon as Jupiter had sighted the monster, so that he could track and report its progress, and as expected it was running on time and would pass this spot, according to Amy's calculations, at six-twenty-one exactly.

The monster emerged from the trees and, able to see over the guardrails, spotted Mars standing on the track. With a howl of fury, it launched itself toward her. The raised track trembled as it landed.

Surely it had been two minutes by now? A bell was ringing somewhere in the distance, warning pedestrians that the train was coming. The monster was closing the gap between the two of them; Mars broke into a staggering run, every breath sending spikes of pain shooting through her arm and shoulder. The injuries she had sustained in the first attack hurt far more than she had admitted to the others, and the brief battle had exhausted her already shallow reserves. Spots danced in front of her eyes, and there was a roaring in her ears--no, that was the monster, catching up at last.

No--it was the train.

The monster whirled to confront this new threat. Mars could see the driver's face through the windshield as he frantically applied the brakes, but Amy's calculations had taken that into account and there wasn't time for the driver to stop.

Beside the weight of the great metal train, the monster's own bulk was negligible. It was struck straight on and fell beneath the train, its head lying on the parallel track, its still-flailing tail taking out a section of the steel guardrail as it fell.

Mars watched disjointedly as the train bore down on her. She couldn't seem to make her legs move, couldn't make her body obey her. It was all she could do merely to stay upright; anything else required too much effort. She stood, swaying slightly, as the train closed to twenty metres, ten, five--

Someone yanked her sideways with surprising force and she tumbled onto the parallel track. Mina had one arm in a firm grip around Mars' waist and was staring into her face. "Fungus spores, Mars, don't scare me like that!"

"Sorry--sorry," Mars managed. "Just a little dizzy--"

"Okay. You sit down--no, if you can get up, come on. We'll sit you down on the train, they'll have the police up here in a minute." Supporting Mars, she made her way around the rear of the train, which had now stopped, just barely clear of the monster's body. The mangled corpse lay across both sets of tracks, still twitching as though unwilling to die completely, red blood oozing from great rents in its hide. Mina shuddered and looked away.

A door on the side of the train nearer the guardrails slid open--just one; someone must have hit the emergency button. Mike jumped out and ran towards them, grinning, his backpack flapping on his shoulder and one hand raised to wave. Mina waved back with an answering smile. "Are you guys okay?" Mike called.

Mina nodded. "It worked!" she answered jubilantly. Through the gap in the rails she could see the other Scouts and Tuxedo Mask gathered at the edge of the trees. "It worked!" she shouted to them.

Mike made his way quickly to where the two girls stood beside the monster. "Mars, are you okay?" he asked. "You look awfully pale."

"I'm fine," she said with a wan smile. "It's really dead?"

"Looks that way," Mike agreed. He looked around, seemingly at a loss for words. Mina noticed that he was wearing the clothes he'd had on when he'd arrived at the temple, and she realized suddenly what must be going through his mind.

"You're not disappearing," she said softly.

He nodded. "I guess not."

"Mike--" What could she say? "Let's not jump to conclusions, huh? Maybe you'll get sent back in a little while. Maybe it just takes some time."

"Maybe," Mike agreed without conviction. Then, in a sudden outburst of anger, "This isn't fair! We killed this damned thing, and I swear I'll never write another story--what more do they want from me?" He kicked the green-scaled body in frustration and turned away.

A shudder ran through the creature's body. Mike, facing the other direction, didn't see. The monster's tail twitched, once, twice, and then abruptly spasmed violently, striking Mike with terrific force.

Had the steel guardrail been there, he would have been crushed against it, but it had been broken away by the impossible strength of that same tail. Mike was flung over the edge of the track, out over the street, falling.

"No!" Mina shrieked, and leapt after him. In her human form, though, there was no way she could stop him; by the time she landed in a crouch on the street below, he had already struck the pavement.

"Mike!" She ran to him. A crowd was gathering, as crowds tended to do. "Someone call an ambulance! Someone do something!" He lay motionless on the edge of the street, blood pooling sluggishly under his head. His eyes were open, staring, but he seemed not to see her.

"The ambulance is on its way," a girl with a cell phone said. "God, what happened up there?"

Mina knelt beside Mike, clasping his hand tightly. She was afraid to touch him more than that, unwilling to move him for fear of hurting him. "Don't worry, Mike. You're going to be fine."

"Mina? That you?" His voice was faint, as though he had to force the words out one at a time.

"I'm here, Mike."

"So this is--why I didn't disappear." A rueful smile curved the corners of his mouth. "Hell of a thing--the universe has no justice."

"Shh. The doctors are on their way." His fingers were cold and unmoving in her hand. "Just hang on, okay?" She wondered if this had been preordained somehow, if the price for saving them from Mike's story had been Mike's life. It wasn't fair. He'd never intended to hurt them.

"--it's funny, you know? Last week things--seemed to be going so well. Now I'm here dying in an imaginary Tokyo--isn't that funny?" For a moment his eyes appeared to focus on her. "Mina? Don't cry, Mina, it's okay."

"You're not dying," she insisted. In the distance, she could hear sirens. "The ambulance'll be here in a minute. You'll be fine." There was no answer. Mike's eyes were staring at nothing again, his mouth slightly open as though he were about to say something, but his face was slack and motionless.

Sobbing, Mina took him in her arms--there was no reason to worry about hurting him now. "It's not fair," she cried. "This isn't fair!"

"Mina, are you--oh, no, no." Amy was standing behind her then, the others gathered around. The expressions on their faces were almost all the same as they realized that he was gone.

Mina felt the weight in her arms starting to lessen suddenly, and she looked down to see Mike's body beginning to glow. It was dissolving, becoming indistinct: a human silhouette, a soft blur of amber light, a cluster of sparkles that danced upward like fireflies, shimmering and fading into the air. "Like Nephlyte," Serena murmured. "Like what happened when--" She cut herself off.

In moments he was gone completely. His clothes had vanished with him; his backpack lay on the ground nearby where it had fallen when he fell. Mina picked it up and stared at it numbly, hugging it to her chest. The sirens were louder, and voices babbled in her ears. She ignored them. Someone put a hand on her shoulder and she shrugged it away.

More people were talking now, shouting, pointing upwards. People were running, their footsteps sharp on the pavement. Someone--Lita--reached over and swung Mina bodily around, forcing her to turn and look. For a moment Mina was angry at this intrusion on her grief, and then she saw what everyone was staring at.

The train track was shaking, shuddering as though buffeted by a hurricane. The tiny figures of the policemen and the passengers they were herding out were running, panicked, their terrified voices carrying down to street level. Behind the train, a misshapen form blotted out the stars. "That's not possible," Amy whispered in disbelief.

The monster was standing on the track, tail lashing the air, the thick trails of blood on its thighs and torso gleaming dark red in the reflected glow of the city lights. Of the wounds themselves, there was no sign. The monster flung back its head and roared. Mina stared, transfixed, unable to move or look away, while a voice in the back of her head shouted not fair, not fair, not fair--

* * *

Shapeless shapes moved slowly in the darkness. There was a sense of heaviness and resignation about them. We have failed, said the one with the cool, musical voice. It is over.

Not yet! the angry voice protested. They are still alive. There is still a chance--

We tried, and we failed. The quiet, powerful voice sounded as though it would be crying, if it were something that could cry. We cannot interfere again. The effort was futile.

The angry voice overrode the other's words. They are still alive! You may be willing to give up, but they won't!

Only because they don't yet realize that their doom has been written, the warm voice pulsed. We can do nothing more. Can you? A surge of unexpected hope made the voice momentarily brighten. Can you?

No, the angry voice admitted heavily, its tone darkening to the shade of a dying ember. No.

But you can speak with your avatar, and we can't, said the warm voice. So--

Only if she makes an effort to speak with me, and even then it is very limited. I don't have the power in those brief contacts to do anything to change this. You know that.

And the rest of us have less. The cool voice sounded frustrated. Our avatars don't try to contact us at all.

What could we do if they did? the jagged, flickering voice demanded. You said it yourself--it's over. We changed things, we changed the story, but it didn't do any good. They'll die as surely in the new story as they would have in the old.

So we're giving up? We shouldn't give up! They aren't giving up!

Only because they don't know-- the warm voice began again, but the fiery voice cut it off.

They knew what was written, and they tried to change it anyway. And they did, didn't they? They're alive right now, when by everything we know, they should be dead. The voice grew stronger. We have to do something, don't we? There has to be some chance!

Maybe there is, the quiet voice said. Maybe we're going about this the wrong way.

How so? the cool voice asked.

We've been trying to change things directly, to influence events, and we've failed at that--of course we failed. We can't change things that we can't interact directly with. It's our avatars who have to change this--they're the ones who have to defeat this enemy. All we can do is try to help them.

But that's exactly what we can't do! the angry voice protested. Or you can't, anyway-- It stopped abruptly.

Yes, said the quiet voice, sounding hopeful now. Yes. It's a chance.

If it doesn't work, the flickering voice said, what happens to us? We could be-- Not killed, precisely; not them. Destroyed, scattered, made not to exist. Death by any other name.

Our avatars are risking their lives, the quiet voice said. How can we do less? It sensed the agreement of the other four. Very well. Hurry; time is growing short.

* * *

It was raining again. Under a faded blue umbrella, Mina trudged up the hill to the temple. It was late Friday afternoon, the day after the failed attack. No-one knew where the monster had gone; it had run away almost as soon as they had seen it. It was somewhere in the city.

There was a rumbling noise in the distance and Mina whirled, her heart thudding faster for a moment before she realized it was only thunder. The lightning flashed again, faintly visible against the dark clouds. Unconsciously Mina counted the seconds: one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three--the thunder boomed again. The storm was very close. Rain dripped through the overhanging leaves and splashed in the puddles around Mina's feet.

Amy met her at the temple door. "Come on in," she said. "Everyone's here already." Mina nodded, stepping out of her shoes and following Amy down the hall.

Everyone was gathered in Raye's room, sitting on cushions on the floor or on the bed by the newly-repaired wall. The TV was on with the sound turned low, showing scenes of the events of last night--amateur video, most likely, judging from the unsteady motion of the camera. No-one was saying anything.

"Mina's here," Amy told them. Raye and Luna nodded a greeting; the others' eyes were riveted to the TV set. On the screen, the train slowed and halted; Mina and Mars were on the train's other side, invisible at that angle, and the monster was an indistinct black shape on the unlit track. The picture swung down for a moment to a view of the cameraman's shoes, and then back up again.

"What kept you?" Serena asked. She was sitting on the bed with her head against Darien's shoulder and Artemis curled up in her lap. One hand absently stroked the cat's white fur. "We've been here for ages."

"The teacher kept me late," Mina answered. "I had to retake a test."

"That's okay," Raye said. "Lita just got here too." Raye's arm was newly bandaged; she had gone to the hospital the previous night, at Amy's insistence. The doctor had given her a lecture on the importance of getting prompt medical attention, but had said that the injuries seemed to be healing well and would be fine if she avoided exerting herself; he had prescribed painkillers and bed rest and had sent Raye home.

"Well, now that we're all here, what are we going to do?" Serena wanted to know. She was looking at Luna, but it was Raye who answered.

"I want to try a fire reading," the priestess said. "We've been watching the news; people all over Tokyo are calling to say they've spotted the monster. Even if not all the sightings are true--and some probably aren't--we know it's out there."

"But we don't know what it's doing," Mina said, seeing Raye's point.

"Exactly," Luna said. "From what we've seen on the TV, it doesn't seem to be doing anything very purposeful. It's just running around the city smashing and destroying things. It tends to ignore people unless they get directly in its way; luckily most people are sensible enough to run away from it. There was a news report earlier that the MSDF is going to send the army after it, but I must admit, I don't expect them to have much success."

"So it's up to us," Raye finished, nodding. "But we don't know what the monster's going to do next, or whether it has any sort of plan in mind. That's what I'm going to ask the fire."

"Well, now's as good a time as any," Artemis said, jumping down from Serena's lap and padding across the floor. The others got up and followed. On the TV screen, the monster jumped down from the train track and disappeared into the darkness. Darien picked up the remote as he passed and switched the TV off.

* * *

Rain drummed monotonously on the windows and the roof, and muffled thunder boomed outside. The room was colder than usual since the fire had been allowed to burn low, and Raye added several pieces of wood to it before kneeling in front of the flames.

The exercises of calming and relaxation that she used were second nature to the priestess by now, and it took very little time for her to slip into communion with the fire. She gazed fixedly at it, her wide violet eyes reflecting the flickering light. The others in the room were silent, careful not to break her concentration, but she could hear their breathing and small shifts of position; all her senses were sharpened as she reached outward and inward.

With its usual suddenness, the sense of another presence was there with her: the spirit of the fire. Raye always framed her questions in words, though she was never sure whether the spirit perceived them that way or not. "Great Fire," she said aloud, "help us. Tell us how we can defeat our enemy. Tell us what it is doing. Tell us what it means to do."

An image appeared in the flames. It was like looking into a mirror: the image was of Raye herself, kneeling on the mats with the others behind her. Raye frowned. Usually the images she received were fairly straightforward, but she couldn't make sense of this.

The Mars symbol began to glow on the forehead of the Raye in the image, and abruptly she was on fire--no, she was drawing the fire into herself, but she wasn't burned. "I don't understand," Raye said aloud in frustration. "Please, tell us how we can fight our enemy, Great Fire. We need your help."

The sequence repeated itself. This time it was obvious that her attention was being directed between the three main components of the image: Raye, Mars, fire; Raye, Mars, fire--

With a flash of insight, Raye understood. "You're Mars," she said. "The spirit of the fire--" It made sense. The spirit that she spoke to in the fire was the same as the source from which she drew her power.

A sense of agreement and sardonic satisfaction emanated from the flames, as though a slow pupil had finally grasped an elementary lesson. Then she was shown another series of images, and another, and another. Raye concentrated fiercely, struggling to understand what she was being told.

Watching from the back of the room, the others could only see vague shapes and shifting shadows in the heart of the fire, could only hear Raye's nearly subvocal murmurs as she spoke with the mysterious spirit of the fire. No-one could have said how much time passed before Raye stood at last and turned away. Wordlessly she gathered the others up with her eyes and walked out. They followed her to her room, where she sat down on her bed, her expression blank.

"Well?" Serena burst out. "What did you see?"

"A lot," Raye said. "This is--well, it's a little hard to explain. Umm--okay, well. We draw our powers from the planets, right?"

"Of course," said Lita.

"But it's not the planets themselves--I mean, planets are just balls of rock and gas, right? It's the spirits of the planets, the spirits of Mars and Venus and the Moon and so on. They exist in--in some other space. I can't describe it; I don't understand it myself. We draw our power from them, though, without being aware of them. They're aware of us, but they can't communicate with us--except for the spirit of Mars, which is the spirit that speaks to me through the fire."

"This is all very interesting," Darien said, "but what does it have to do with the monster?" He didn't sound sarcastic, just impatient.

"I'm getting to that," Raye snapped. "The point is, they know what's going on, and they're trying to help. They're the ones who sent Mike, so that we could figure out what's going on, and change it."

"But it didn't work," Amy said.

"Right. It bought us time, that's all. Hopefully enough time to try something else. See, our normal powers aren't enough to defeat this monster, because the story goes that we can't. But the spirits are outside the framework of the story, so with power drawn directly from them, we ought to be able to defeat our enemy."

"But our power is drawn directly from them," Lita said, confused. "You just said--"

Raye shook her head. "It's not quite like that. Our normal powers are a sort of--I don't know, a sort of spilloff of their presence into this universe. There are barriers between the two realities, you see, so only a fraction of their power goes through. What their plan is now, is to break through the barriers so that we can draw from their--their essence, directly." She shook her head in frustration. "It's hard to describe it in words; the spirit showed me everything, and I'm not sure how to describe what I saw."

"I think we understand," Luna said with a glance at the others. "But how do they plan to break through the barriers?"

"They can't," Raye said. "The barriers are specifically to keep them from doing something like this, so the spirits can't do it. We have to reach out to them."

"Easy for you to say," Serena said, picking up the TV remote absently and turning it over and over in her hands. "The rest of us have never even seen a spirit. How're we supposed to go about finding one?"

"I don't know," Raye admitted. "I don't even know how I'm going to do it; it takes all my concentration just to communicate, let alone open a channel of power. But the spirit was certain we'd find a way."

"So should we hold hands or something?" asked Mina. "Like a seance or something?"

"No," Raye said. "We're each calling on a different spirit, remember. We should probably be separate. I suggest we all go home." She stood up. "If it doesn't work tonight, we'll try again tomorrow, but we've got to succeed pretty quickly. The spirits are going to put forth all their efforts, to try to weaken the barrier from their side, but they can't keep that up for long. If we're going to defeat this monster at all, we have to do it soon."

* * *

Serena sat on a chair in her room, disconsolately staring at the wall. What was she supposed to do? She didn't know anything about spirits. It was so like Raye to assume other people could do the impossible.

Of course, Raye probably could do this, so it wasn't entirely impossible, but still--

But still, Raye was a Shinto priestess and lived in a shrine; she understood mystical stuff. Aside from the fact of being Sailor Moon, Serena had no real experience with anything spiritual.

Aside from being Sailor Moon--well, but she was trying to reach the spirit of the Moon, wasn't she? "It's worth a try," she said aloud to the empty room. She picked up her school blouse from the floor and unhooked her brooch.

Carefully, she twisted the Silver Crystal free and held it in her hand. It was a polished, lustrous sphere that could equally be diamond or glass, and it seemed too heavy for its size. Light flickered faintly in its depths.

She concentrated on it, not trying to transform or use it, just concentrating. The patterns of light shimmered and sparkled, making her eyes water. Serena stared into it, trying to clear her mind of everything but the silent signal she was trying to send. Stray thoughts kept intruding, breaking the surface of her mind like bubbles rising from deep water: advertising jingles, the battle at the temple, half-remembered facts from school lessons, the smell of Darien's shirts, some lines from a poem whose name she had forgotten--

The thoughts became more random, surfacing in rhythm with the crystal's pulsations, as though she were slipping into it piece by piece. For a moment this frightened her, but she let the feeling drift away along with everything else as she drew further into the crystal's depths.

* * *

The noise outside was far too loud. Darien had closed the windows and the curtains, but the sounds of the city below his apartment continued to interfere with his concentration. Ignore it, he told himself impatiently. Pay attention to what you're doing. He shut his eyes again, turning his thoughts inward, searching for whatever the spirit was that he was supposed to find. The spirit of Earth, he assumed; he was supposedly the Sailor Scout of Earth, so that made sense. Darien concentrated, his breath and heartbeat slowing.

"--the hell you're talking about!" A door slammed somewhere down the hall. "And take your goddamn shoes with you, you bitch!" There were two loud thumps and then the door slammed again. A woman's voice cursed shrilly and unimaginatively and someone began pounding on the wall.

Darien sighed, rubbing his temple. He could feel a headache coming on. This wasn't exactly conducive to achieving inner tranquillity or whatever he had to do. "I need to find someplace better to do this," he decided, and got up to take a walk. The rain seemed to have stopped for the moment. There was a park near his apartment building, and his half-unconscious steps led him there. Maybe having trees and things around would help.

He entered the park through the gap in the chain-link fence rather than walking around the block to the gate. A short asphalt path led around low scrubby trees and bushes into the clear space at the centre of the park. Darien sat down on a peeling greyish-white bench; it was wet, but not terribly so.

There were two other benches visible in the glow of the sodium-orange streetlights, both of them occupied. A middle-aged man in a rumpled business suit lay snoring on the nearer one, probably drunk. On the other, a teenaged girl in a brown school uniform and a slightly older boy with badly dyed blond hair were kissing. She was sitting half on his lap and he had one hand in the front of her dress. Over on the rusting jungle gym, a man in sweat-stained workout clothes was vigorously doing chin-ups on the high bar. A fat raindrop fell from a twig and splatted on the back of Darien's neck. He got up and left the park.

Now what? he wondered, as his feet carried him past darkened houses and square grey office buildings and cheap ramen shops. What do I do? How am I supposed to find the spirit of Earth when I can't even find a place to get some peace and quiet?

Why is that what I'm looking for?

The thought stopped him short. No-one had told him to try to meditate or anything; he'd just assumed that was what he should do, because it was what Raye always did. But if it was the spirit of Earth he was looking for, then why should he look inside himself? Shouldn't he turn outward instead?

He drew in his power, the way he did to transform, and focused it outward instead of in on himself. The result was staggering--like coming out into glaring sunlight after months in a dark cave. All at once he could feel the uncounted number of presences around him: the impatience and purposefulness and boredom of passers-by; the tiredness of the clerk in the nearby noodle shop; the vague curiosity of a prowling cat; the sense of the rain starting up again; the fumbling eagerness of the teenagers in the park (who had run giggling into an equipment shed to escape the rain and were now proceeding to get to know each other better); the slow stretching of roots and leaves as the trees welcomed the rain; the movement of the subway below the sidewalk and the deep motion of the ground itself below that--the part of Darien that was still himself was awed at the enormity of the power he had managed to tap into. He climbed slowly to his feet, hardly realizing he had fallen, and moved off quickly down the street.

* * *

Amy stared at the sheet of paper in front of her. Equations arrayed in orderly rows stared back. She had solved the first three.

Raye had taught her a little about meditation, and Amy had read books on the subject; one thing that many of them agreed on was that focusing on one certain object or thought was a useful aid in reaching a trance state. Amy had decided after some thought that her math homework was as good a focus as anything. Certainly she was able to concentrate single-mindedly on mathematical equations. She had often thought that the way the world around her seemed to disappear when she became absorbed in an interesting problem was quite a bit like the way Raye described her meditations.

But it wasn't working. Oh, she was able to concentrate well enough. Focusing on the math problems was as easy as always despite her lingering worries, and she buried herself in the crystalline precision of the numbers until she could barely hear the storm that was now raging in full force outside. As for contacting any sort of spirit, though, she had so far failed completely. She was staring to think that maybe she couldn't do it.

"Maybe it doesn't work because it doesn't exist," she muttered, frustrated. Maybe the spirit of the fire was wrong. Maybe it had lied. They knew it could be capricious at times; maybe this was some sort of bizarre joke, and maybe this searching was futile. If something couldn't be found, the most obvious reason was that it wasn't there to find.

"Or maybe you're just not trying hard enough," Amy told herself. She looked down at the paper again. Focus. Focus.

It was no use. Nothing was happening. Amy finished the last of the equations and set down her pencil with a sigh. Nothing had happened. She hadn't really expected it to.

Maybe that was why.

"Is that it?" Amy wondered. "It isn't working because I don't believe it will?" That made sense. But how could she make herself believe? Amy prided herself on being logical, on thinking rationally, and it wasn't in her nature to take things on faith. This idea that their powers came from spirits from another universe was more than a little hard to swallow.

Well, where did you think they came from? she asked herself. She had done a lot of thinking on the subject, and had never come up with a satisfactory answer. They knew Mike had been from another universe--or at least, they were fairly sure he had--and this did make some sense. And if the fire spirit had said it, well--

But Amy couldn't just will herself to believe it without proof--proof that she couldn't get until she believed it. She sighed. "It's possible," she said finally. "I can't decide it's more than that. I just can't." So if she didn't really believe it, what did she believe? Amy picked up her pencil again and turned to a fresh sheet of paper. "Well," she said resignedly, "I believe we haven't got a whole lot of other options left if this plan doesn't work. And I believe I'll be able to make it work if there's anything I can possibly do." She bent to her equations with fresh determination. She would try her best; that had to be enough.

* * *

Raye relit the fire with competence born of long practice. She knelt on the bamboo mats in front of the hearth, feeling the heat of the flames on her closed eyelids and her forehead.

The others were succeeding, as she had been nearly certain they would. Attuned as she was, Raye had felt three flashes of power just a few minutes ago: Serena, Amy, and one other that she guessed was Darien though she didn't really know his powers enough to recognize them from a distance. However they had done it individually, they had managed to reach their guardian spirits. Raye's task was a little harder.

Composing herself, she opened her eyes and looked into the fire. She could feel the spirit there, reaching towards her, even before she began to concentrate. It was exerting itself to the utmost, trying to help as much as it could.

Therein lay the danger. For the others, it was safe enough; even for Serena, the next most sensitive, there was no threat. They would be able to take in the spirits' powers, but only to a certain extent; their limitations of talent and practice assured that. Raye, though, was accustomed to reaching through the barrier (though she hadn't known before what it was) and was naturally attuned to the spirit world in any case. For her, there was a possibility that going deep enough to do what she had to might mean being unable to get back, being unable to keep hold of the core of herself. Her ability and sensitivity, usually such an asset, made her vulnerable in this.

Raye took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly. The flames seemed to pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat, filling the dark corners of the otherwise unlit room. Rain beat steadily against the windows like fingers on a drum and thunder crashed overhead in counterpoint, but she barely noticed them.

Her awareness narrowed to a single point in the heart of the fire. She could feel the spirit as though it were touching her skin. If she wanted to, now, she could speak and it would answer, but this time she had to go deeper yet. She opened herself, slowly but at the same time with a sense of exultation. The power flowing through and around her was like nothing she had ever felt before, and eagerly she pushed forward, breaking through the barrier as though it were nothing at all--

"Raye." Someone grabbed her shoulders, shook her. "Raye!" Violet afterimages trailed across her vision. "Come back, Raye." Someone slapped her, hard. "Come back." Again. "Come back."

"Grandpa?" Raye looked up at him as her sight cleared. "What are you doing here? I--"

"What are you doing?" he demanded without letting her finish. "Haven't I taught you better than that? What's gotten into you?"

Still disoriented, Raye stammered, "I can explain--"

"I don't want to hear it. Do you know how risky doing something like that is? If I hadn't seen the fire and come in, you could have killed yourself. As it was I barely managed to bring you back."

Raye blinked. "I don't remember--" She had broken through the barrier, she remembered that well enough, but nothing after that was clear. Obviously she hadn't succeeded.

"No, you wouldn't, I suppose." Her grandfather sighed. "Raye, what possessed you to try this? Even I wouldn't try to go that far in unless I absolutely had to. And even if I did, I'd never do it by myself. You should have asked for my help."

"I--" Raye stopped and shook her head. "I couldn't. I did have to do this, Grandpa, and I couldn't ask you to help me. I can't explain why. I'm sorry."

"Really." He frowned. "Well, maybe I can shed some light on things." He picked up the quenching bucket from the corner of the room and carried it back to her. "Would you like to say something about that?" She looked down at her rippling reflection: there on her forehead was the symbol of Mars, glowing like a beacon.

"I--" A thousand explanations and excuses sprang to her lips, but what actually came out was, "I guess you know, then."

"Raye." Her grandfather laid a comforting hand on her arm. "I've known for a long time."

She looked up at him. "You have?"

He nodded. "You should have told me sooner, Raye."

Raye remembered all the sneaking around she had had to do, the clumsy excuses, her refusal to go to the hospital for fear of being discovered-- "You must think I'm pretty stupid, huh."

"No, Raye!" he said, surprised. "I think you're very brave, you and your friends." She couldn't quite hide her reaction to that; he noticed and smiled. "No, I don't know who they really are--not as such, anyway, although I could probably guess. I take it what you were trying to do just now has something to do with the strange things that have been happening in the city the last few days?"

"That's right," she said without elaborating.

He looked at her seriously. "I don't know exactly what you're trying to accomplish, Raye, and you don't have to tell me. But you shouldn't do it alone. Let me help."

Raye nodded. "Thank you," she said. "I mean it. Thanks." Her grandfather smiled and knelt down on the mats beside her. He closed his eyes, and after a moment Raye did the same.

* * *

Lita waited impatiently with the phone receiver to her ear, Mina watching from across the room. The phone on the other end rang for an infuriatingly long time. Then, just as Lita was about to give up, "Hello?"

It was Chad. "Oh, hi Chad," Lita said. "Is Raye around?"

"Uh--no, I don't think so."

"Well, where is she?"

"I dunno."

Lita rolled her eyes. "Well, do you think you could find out? Please?"

"Uh--she left awhile ago. A couple minutes, I think. She was, like, glowing."

"Glowing?" Lita repeated.

"Glowing?" Mina asked Lita, confused. "What's he talking about?"

"Yeah. I guess maybe she and Grandpa were doing something in the fire room--she walked out awhile ago and she was, like, glowing and stuff."

"Oh," Lita said with a sigh. "Well, thanks anyway." She hung up the phone.

"Glowing?" Mina said again.

Lita nodded slowly. "It looks like Raye's already done whatever we have to do. Chad says she left."

"Wonderful," Mina said. She tilted her chair back on two legs to stare at the ceiling, as though the answers might be written there.

"This was a dumb idea, anyway," Lita muttered. "We should've known she'd have finished already."

"It was your idea," Mina pointed out. "You're the one that came over here in the first place."

"I know!" Lita said irritably. "Well, do you have any better ideas?"

Mina shrugged. "We could call Serena."

"If she's already done it, she won't be there," Lita pointed out, "and if she hasn't, then she doesn't know how to. That's no good."

"Well, maybe Luna--"

"If Serena isn't there, how can we talk to her? Hello, Mrs. Tsukino, can I please speak to your cat?" Lita shook her head. "This is all ridiculous."

"Yeah, but there's got to be some way. I mean, Raye did it."

"Well, Raye's smart," Lita said. "And she knows about the spirits. What do we know?"

Mina shrugged again. "Chad knows about the spirits, too, and he isn't exactly an intellectual heavyweight."

"So what, then? You think we should ask Chad?"

"No," Mina answered patiently, "I'm just saying it isn't a question of being smart. And it has to be possible for all of us, or she wouldn't have told us to do it." She frowned. "But I can't think of what we ought to do."

"I guess we'll just have to tell her we couldn't do it," Lita said heavily. She hated to admit defeat in anything, but it was obvious that they were both out of ideas.

"There has to be something else we can try," Mina protested.

"Like what? We've been through everything, Mina." Lita stood abruptly. "I'm going home. We can ask for Raye's help tomorrow. Nothing's going to happen tonight."

"I'll call you if I think of anything," Mina started to say, but Lita was already out of the room. The front door slammed behind her.

Mina sighed and leaned back in her chair again, closing her eyes. Lita was right--they had been through everything either one could think of--but still, she shouldn't have run off like that. How were they ever going to figure out what to do if they just gave up? Mina glanced around at the room, seeking inspiration, but didn't see anything useful. She wished Artemis were around, but he and Luna had gone to try and locate the monster.

And he'd probably make me figure it out myself even if he knew the answer, Mina thought moodily. Artemis had been sternly insistent on her self-reliance ever since their time in England. It annoyed her immensely even though she knew she was a better fighter because of it.

"I'm Sailor Venus, soldier of love and justice!" she muttered, slightly facetious. "I can do anything!"

The phrase seemed to echo oddly in her head. Love and justice. "Well, I am," she repeated.

Maybe that was it. She was the Sailor Scout of the planet of love; maybe that was how she could reach the spirit of Venus. Maybe feelings were the key.

She closed her eyes. Love, she thought. What did she know about love? Well, my parents, of course. And Artemis. As an only child, she had always been especially close to her parents. Artemis she had known since England, and she saw him as part of her family.

And my friends. The other Scouts were the only close friends she had had since becoming Sailor Venus--since becoming Sailor V, in fact; she'd had no really good friends in England.

And Mike? She did a double take; where had that thought come from? She hadn't been in love with Mike. Like she'd told Amy, she'd felt sorry for him, that was all; she'd understood what he had been going through, having been there herself. They had become friends in a very short time, admittedly, and maybe if they'd had more time together--

But Mike was gone, and now it was up to Mina and the others to keep the same from happening to anyone else. Fixing the faces of her friends and family in her mind, she sent out a silent plea, hoping the spirit would hear. Help me. I don't want anything to happen to them, I want to save them, but you've got to help me.

* * *

Lita slammed the door behind her and stalked outside. She realized within three steps that she had forgotten her jacket and that the rain was now pelting down harder than ever, but she would feel silly going back in after the way she'd left. She hunched her shoulders and walked faster.

She had reached the end of the street and was turning the corner when something made her look back over her shoulder. There was an odd golden glow coming from the direction of Mina's house, seeping through the low thick bushes. It could have been a lamp or a streetlight, but it wasn't.

"She did it," Lita realized. Mina must have figured it out. For a moment Lita thought of going back, of asking Mina what to do, but she knew there was no point. Mina had had to figure it out alone; Lita probably had to as well. "But what the hell could it be?"

Another crash of thunder was the only reply. Lita smacked one fist into the other palm in a gesture of frustration. It just figured she'd be the only one who couldn't do it. Chad's no intellectual heavyweight, Mina said--well, neither am I, and it's not my fault! But it would be her fault if the others failed because Jupiter and her powers weren't there, wouldn't it? And she wasn't going to be there.

"Giving up already?" Lita asked herself. She shook her head. "If I can't do this mysterious spirit thing, they'll have to settle for just me." She thrust her hand into the air. "Jupiter Star Power!"

There had been a vague thought in her mind that transforming would call the attention of the spirit she was supposed to find, but it didn't seem to. There might have been a different feeling than usual to the transformation, but that might only have been because she was paying more attention to it than usual. At any rate, there was no obvious change once it had finished.

Jupiter glared up at what she could see of the sky through the trees that lined the sidewalk. Rain soaked her uniform and plastered her hair to her scalp. "If you're not going to help me, I don't need you!" she shouted angrily. "I'll go anyway! I don't need you! I'll do this myself if you aren't going to help!" The windows along the street were dark; no-one heard her as she ranted at the sky.

Finally she stopped, breathing hard, waiting. Nothing happened. "All right," Jupiter muttered, "have it your way." She started walking.

A lightning bolt split the air and struck a telephone pole a few steps ahead. Jupiter shrieked involuntarily, the sound lost in the crash of thunder that seemed to come from every direction at once. The telephone pole leaned sideways, blue sparks dancing along the wires.

Jupiter broke into a run. She didn't know where she was going; she was frightened as she had almost never been before. I'm going to die--I've pissed off the spirits and now they're trying to kill me-- Another bolt struck a tree in someone's front yard as Jupiter sped by.

The road on either side was--there wasn't any road. She had run into a parking lot; she was standing in the middle of the asphalt. The nearby supermarket was closed and dark, and there were no cars around. A wide open space--exactly where I shouldn't be. Jupiter abruptly began to laugh. "Well?" she called, lifting her face to the sky. "I'm here. I'm here! What are you going to do? Help me or kill me--make up your mind!"

The next bolt struck her dead on. A rush of energy cascaded down through her tiara and into her body, and after the first moment of terror passed, she raised her arms and laughed with the power pouring into her. Then, as the flash and thunder faded, she began to run again, this time with purpose. She had somewhere she had to be.

* * *

"Down there," Artemis said in a whisper, gesturing with one forepaw. Luna nodded. The whisper wasn't strictly necessary; a shout probably wouldn't have been audible through the sound of sirens and the noise of the panicked crowd. The monster was smashing at the walls of a department store, seemingly bent on reducing it to rubble, and the police had cordoned off the surrounding block. Privately, Luna thought the sirens and flashing lights were more likely to infuriate the monster than frighten it, but she doubted the police would appreciate her advice.

"Now what?" she asked, shifting her position on the narrow windowsill.

"Now we wait, I guess," Artemis answered. He frowned disapprovingly at the crowds surging around the police barrier. "You'd think they'd be sensible enough to leave." A group of tanned teenage girls in heavy white makeup and high boots walked past the cats, laughing at some private joke. "What do they think this is, a tourist attraction?"

Luna opened her mouth to answer and stopped, seeing something bright moving on the busy street. She nudged Artemis. "There."

He looked. "What? Where? I don't--oh."

Mars and Jupiter stood there, side by side, ignoring the crowd that swirled around them. Neither wore her tiara, and the symbols on their foreheads were glowing. There was something different about them, the way they stood, their expressions; both seemed to radiate a confidence that bordered on arrogance. The power that surrounded them was almost palpable.

Mercury appeared on the other side of the street, a blue glow heralding her presence. She wore serenity like the folds of a cloak; the expression on her face could have been carved in marble. Luna and Artemis leapt down from the windowsill and scampered through the feet of the crowd to where Mars and Jupiter stood, just as Mercury came to join them. No-one said anything.

The noise level of the crowd had risen noticeably as people began to realize something was going on. Luna clambered up onto Mars' shoulder for a better view--despite the fierce red glow surrounding her, the girl's skin felt only slightly warmer than normal--and saw Venus and Tuxedo Mask further down the street by the police barricade. There was no really visible aura around Tuxedo Mask as there was around the others, only a slight shimmering like the air on a hot day. Venus glowed with golden light, warm and gentle, and she was smiling.

She stepped up to the barricade and gestured to one of the police officers. He came over nervously. "Please ask everyone to leave," Luna heard Venus tell him. "We don't want anyone to be hurt."

The policeman nodded jerkily. Luna couldn't hear what he answered, but a moment later another officer climbed onto the barrier. "Everyone clear the street," his amplified voice boomed. "Return to your homes. This area is now off-limits. Please clear the street." Slowly, reluctantly, the crowd began to disperse.

Tuxedo Mask looked up at the policemen still lining the barricade. "You too," he told them. They started to protest and he cut them off without pausing. "Don't argue. You aren't equipped to fight this thing. You've tried. Leave it to us."

"You can stay nearby," Venus said to them, with a glance at Tuxedo Mask. "Just don't come closer than you are right now, and be prepared to get away quickly if the monster comes this way." Tuxedo Mask frowned but didn't contradict her.

"Where's Sailor Moon?" Artemis asked, looking around.

"She'll be here," Mercury answered calmly. "Wait."

The three girls and the cats walked over to join Venus and Tuxedo Mask beside the barricade, which under Venus' instructions was being dismantled. Rain dripped from the brims of the policemen's hats, but oddly, no rain seemed to touch the Scouts. The monster paid them no attention, continuing to vent its mindless anger on the nearby buildings. Perhaps it didn't recognize the girls as the Sailor Scouts it was supposed to fight, Luna thought, and wondered if the spirit that had spoken to Raye had intended that.

"Tell me," Artemis said, "do you girls have any sort of a plan, or are you just going to make this up as you go along?" Jupiter grinned at him, and then glanced upward. The other Scouts followed her gaze.

An instant later, a brilliant streak of lightning illuminated the black sky. Sailor Moon stood poised atop one of the buildings, the crescent moon on her forehead glowing brilliantly. Thunder crashed, and she jumped down from the roof just as the lightning faded.

"Hi, guys!" she exclaimed, landing lightly on the pavement beside them. "Miss me?"

"Took you long enough, meatball head," Mars said with a grin. "Come on, let's go kick some reptile butt!"

"Hear, hear!" Jupiter agreed enthusiastically. Luna looked at them, a little surprised; it was odd to hear the Scouts sounding just like themselves when the power radiating from them was making her fur stand on end.

"The spirits can't change who they are," Tuxedo Mask explained. "They can add to their power, but they can't take away what's already there." Luna stared at him, and Tuxedo Mask gave a rueful shrug. "Sorry. That seems to be the power I've gotten: I can tell what's going on inside people's minds, or in places out of sight." He looked over at Artemis. "No, not really--more like a sort of double vision. Venus seems to have gotten the same kind of thing, except she can only hear the thoughts of people she knows. I get everybody's, except the Sailor Scouts; their powers are probably interfering with mine, or something like that."

"What about the rest of you?" Luna asked. Mars shrugged.

"We don't know. We'll find out, I guess." She looked up at the monster. "Let's go, guys."

As one, the Scouts ran forward. The monster saw them and stopped its destruction, turning to face them. It seemed confused; it didn't know what to make of them. Apparently encouraged by this, Tuxedo Mask stepped forward. He raised his arm, his cape billowing out behind him. "You're a creature of evil!" he shouted. "You have no place in this world! On behalf of the planet Earth, I'll destroy you to make this planet safe!"

"You've hurt and frightened innocent people!" Mercury added. "On behalf of Mercury, I'll stop you!"

"You were created to kill us," Jupiter shouted, "so for the planet Jupiter, you'll be killed!"

Mars pointed accusingly at the monster. "You're an offense against the spirits! They've given me the power to defeat you, and in the name of Mars, I will!"

"One of my friends is dead because of you!" Venus cried, the sigil on her forehead flaring. "By the spirit of Venus, I won't let you hurt anyone else!"

"In the name of the Moon," Sailor Moon concluded triumphantly, "I'll punish you!"

The monster threw back its head and howled at the sky. Fire shot from its mouth, sweeping across the street in a scything arc as the monster swung its head around. The Scouts leapt out of the way to either side.

"Now what?" Tuxedo Mask whispered as he crouched with Mercury and Jupiter in the shadow of a parked car. "I don't think it was impressed."

"I'll give this a try," Jupiter answered. "Let's see if these new powers are any good." She jumped up onto the roof of the car. "Guardian Jupiter! Help me fight this thing!"

A glowing spear appeared in her right hand. She held it poised over her shoulder for an instant, and then hurled it like a javelin with all her strength. The spear flew straight through the air, streaking toward the monster's heart.

The monster turned, seeing Jupiter, and the spear missed its heart and stuck in its shoulder. The monster howled with pain, clawing at the glowing weapon with its stunted forelimbs. Jupiter jumped down from the car and started down the street at a run, another spear appearing in her hand, and the monster turned and fled.

Jupiter stopped, looking at where it had been. "Great," she muttered. "Now how are we going to catch it?" They had seen how fast the monster could move, and in the wandering narrow streets of Tokyo it could almost certainly elude them if it was trying to.

"I think--" Tuxedo Mask said with a frown. His eyes were slightly unfocused, as though he was concentrating on something. "Follow me. This way." He sprinted down the street and around the corner. Jupiter shrugged and followed, Mercury close behind her.

"They must know where they're going," Luna said from where she and the others had hidden behind a low wall. "We'd better follow them."

Venus nodded. "The monster's two streets over. I think it's trying to head north."

"I thought you couldn't sense anyone you don't know," Sailor Moon said with a frown. "How can you know where the monster's going?"

"I can't," Venus answered. "But Tuxedo Mask can, so he knows where it is--"

"And you're reading his mind," Artemis finished. "Good enough. If you know where it's going, can we circle around and trap it?"

"Probably," Venus said. "Come on. We'll have to go quickly." She started off down the street in the other direction, the others running behind her."

* * *

"You're sure it's there?" Mercury whispered. "I don't hear anything."

"I'm sure," Tuxedo Mask answered as quietly. "It's just around the next corner. It's waiting for us."

"And the other Scouts?"

"Artemis is on the other side of it; the others are with."

Jupiter nodded. "All right, let's go." She started forward. Tuxedo Mask grabbed her arm.

"Hold it," he told her. "The others are moving. Artemis sees it." He frowned. "Come on. This way."

They scuttled around the corner just in time to see Mars leap out at the other end of the block. The red sigil on her forehead was brilliantly visible even through the curtain of rain that was still slanting down. She was the only moving thing in view; the monster was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is it?" Mercury whispered.

Tuxedo Mask shook his head. "I can't--" His eyes widened behind his mask. "Mars, get down!" he shouted, and heard Venus echo him a moment later. Mars threw herself to the ground as a blast of fire shot over her head from above.

The monster, perched on a second-storey balcony overlooking the street, roared and let loose another blast. Mars rolled out of the way, jumping to her feet when she reached the sidewalk.

"Is that all you've got?" she taunted the monster. "Now it's my turn." She pressed her fingers together, concentrating. She wasn't wearing her sling anymore, Tuxedo Mask realized; her arm seemed fine. "I call upon the power of Mars! Spirits, be with me!"

She clapped her hands sharply, once, and a white-hot firebolt burst from between her palm. The monster jumped to avoid it, twisting in the air with inhuman agility, but the bolt still lopped off nearly a foot of tail. Unbalanced, the monster crashed to the ground. Jupiter's glowing spear broke off from its shoulder and vanished.

The Scouts ran forward to converge on the fallen creature. "Stay back," Luna warned them. "Be careful. I don't think it's dead."

Tuxedo Mask approached cautiously. He knew it wasn't dead; he could feel its confused thoughts. It was angry and in pain, but not dead yet. It was starting to wake up, though; the creature's incredible healing ability must already be coming into play. Tuxedo Mask glanced up at the others, who still stood a fair distance back. "Mars, Jupiter, you'd better finish it off before it--"

He felt it before he saw it, and his eyes jerked downward just as the monster's eyelids slid open. It took Tuxedo Mask only a fraction of a second to realize that he was too close, that he wasn't going to get far enough away in time. He ran anyway, shouting a warning to the others. Flame roared behind him and he dove to the ground, knowing the effort was futile even as he made it.

After a few seconds, he opened his eyes. He was lying on the pavement, his clothes muddy and soaking wet, and his hat had rolled away into the gutter. He was alive, he realized. What had just happened?

Mercury was standing in the street between Tuxedo Mask and the now upright monster, glaring defiantly at it. Her skin--glittered, as though she had been coated with powdered glass. "No," she said, her usually soft voice tinged with anger. "No, you won't hurt him. I won't let you."

The monster roared and let loose another blast of fire. Tuxedo Mask watched in horror as Mercury made no effort to dodge, horror that turned to astonishment as the fire ceased and Mercury still stood there unharmed. The refractive glitter of her skin was more pronounced, now, like chips of ice--

Ice. That was it, Tuxedo Mask realized; that was her power. She'd been given the ability to resist the monster's attacks.

Apparently the monster had realized this as well. Confronted with an enemy it couldn't destroy, it decided to ignore her instead. Its head swivelled back and forth and fixed on another target: Mars. It opened its mouth.

"No!" Mercury said again, and flung her arm out. There was a brief flash, and the monster's fire battered uselessly against an ice barricade that had suddenly sprung up a few feet in front of Mars face. It was difficult to tell whether she or the monster was more surprised. "Now, you guys!" Mercury shouted.

"Come on, Mars," Jupiter called, "let's do some damage!"

"Right!" Mars agreed. She jumped up onto the barrier as the monster's attack ceased. Mars and Jupiter attacked from opposite sides, and the monster fell to its knees, blood staining the green scales and the street.

"Now, Sailor Moon!" Luna exclaimed, out of habit, it seemed.

"You got it!" Sailor Moon raised her sceptre, frowned at it, then put it away and pulled out the Silver Crystal instead. "Okay, monster, you're dusted!" She raised the crystal over her head. The monster was struggling to get up again, but Sailor Moon gave it no chance to. Clasping the crystal in both hands, she closed her eyes. Her lips moved; no-one heard what she said. The crystal's light flared soundlessly, and then faded.

For a moment it seemed that nothing had happened, and then the monster began to glow. It gave an inhuman cry, throwing its muzzle back and lashing its truncated tail. The glow spread over its body in seconds and then suddenly contracted, leaving nothing but a few floating sparkles which vanished quickly into the air.

Sailor Moon slowly lowered her hands. No-one said anything for a long time, as though afraid that breaking the silence might shatter some spell and bring the monster back. It was Tuxedo Mask who spoke first.

"The powers are gone," he said. Venus nodded agreement, looking confused.

"The spirits helped us do what we needed to," Mars explained, "and now that they aren't needed anymore, they've gone back to--well, to wherever they were before, I guess." Her uniform switched back to her red-and-white priestess' robes, and the rain began almost immediately to soak them. "I really should've worn a raincoat," Raye said with a frown. "And shoes," she added. "I"m going to go call a taxi. I don't know about the rest of you, but I could use a bath and a couple days' sleep."

"Hear, hear," Serena agreed.

"Well, I'm going to take the subway home," Amy said. "Catch you guys later, okay?"

"I'll come with you," Darien decided. "Good night, everybody."

"Bye, Darien, bye, Amy," Serena said. She glanced around at the others. "Who has money for the taxi? I'm all out."

"Well, that's not my problem," Raye answered. "I've got enough to get myself to the temple."

"Oh, come on, Raye! I'll pay you back, I promise!"

"If you think I'm going to lend you money again--" Their voices faded from Darien's and Amy's hearing as the two left the group.

The subway was fairly crowded despite the late hour. Darien and Amy squeezed onto a seat beside a pair of high school girls, who ignored them completely, engrossed in their own conversation.

"--saw it on the news last night--there was a train--"

"Oh, yeah, that," the other girl confirmed. "I saw it too. Must've broken down or something. Trains are like that."

"But they said there was a thing," the first one said. "Some sort of animal or something. Bet it's Godzilla."

The other gave a contemptuous snort. "Godzilla's fiction, Aya."

"Well, it could've been," the first girl muttered defensively. "Fine, what do you think it was?"

"Easy," the other said with confidence. "Secret military aircraft."

The one called Aya frowned. "Are you sure? Cause I don't think--"

"I'm positive. You hear about it all the time. Secret military aircraft. See, what happens is, they always say it's, like, a mechanical failure or something, but what really happens is these planes--"

"It didn't look like any kind of plane, it looked like Godzilla. Only not as big."

"You're weird, Aya. No, look, what happens is--"

The subway rattled to a halt at a lighted station and the two girls got off, still arguing. Amy and Darien glanced at each other for a moment and then simultaneously burst out laughing.

"Secret military aircraft?" Amy managed. There was a slightly hysteric edge to the laughter, a release of tension that made things much funnier than they were.

"Well, at least we don't have to worry about too much publicity from this," Darien said, still chuckling.

Amy nodded. "You just wait," she said. "It'll all have been attributed to natural causes by next week."

"Yeah," Darien agreed. He shifted position uneasily on the seat. "Listen, Amy--thanks. For saving me, I mean. If you hadn't jumped in there I'd have been--well, thanks, anyway."

"Oh. No problem." She shrugged, a little embarrassed. "Well, we can't let you be the only one who ever gets to make heroic rescues, can we?" She touched the still-pale burn marks on her cheek.

"At that, you did a better job than I did," Darien admitted.

She looked at him, confused. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean--" He wasn't quite sure; all he knew was that looking at Amy's scars made him feel distinctly guilty. "That thing nearly managed to kill you, back at the school. If I'd been faster, if I'd warned you in time--"

"You did," Amy answered reluctantly. He didn't seem to follow. "I heard you shout, just before--just before. I had time to get away, but I froze. I was scared, and that's why I didn't move. It wasn't your fault."

Darien found that hard to believe. "You? Scared? You're one of the bravest people I know. Admit it; you're just saying that to make me feel better."

Amy shook her head. "I wish I was. The truth is, I panicked. I was sure I was going to die, and because of that, I almost did."

"And yet you still jumped in front of that thing to save me--" He realized something else, then. "And you hadn't even tested your powers at that point, had you? You didn't really have any way to be sure if you'd be safe or not. That's--Amy, I don't know what to say. I don't know if I could have done that."

Amy blushed. "I was pretty sure," she said. "I mean, something was telling me it'd be okay. I remembered what happened the last time I hesitated too long, and--well, I guess I figured it was time for a leap of faith." She glanced up at him. Something of what he was feeling must have shown on his face, because she continued, "You've got no reason to feel bad about this, you know. It's not like we're keeping score, and even if we were, you're still a few hundred heroic rescues ahead of the rest of us, okay? So don't worry about it."

Darien grinned at her. "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

"You do that, O Masked Protector." They sat in silence for a minute until the train rattled to a halt. "Well, here's my stop. See you later, okay?"

"Bye, Amy." She stood and went out through the clear sliding doors, and Darien watched her until the train started again and the station was lost from sight.

* * *

It is done. There was weary triumph in the fiery voice. They have succeeded.

We have succeeded, all of us, the liquidly musical voice agreed. It seems all is restored. We have done well, us and our avatars both.

We were fortunate, the flickering voice said fitfully. We must take care that nothing like this happens again. That was too close.

The warm voice signalled agreement. It was indeed. As it is, we cannot know what effect the loss of the introduced factor will have on the universe from which he came. There could be negative repercussions which we cannot see.

That will not be a concern. The soft voice sounded confident.

Why not? the jagged, flickering voice demanded.

It has been taken care of.

* * *

The sun was shining.

He felt almost sure it shouldn't be doing that. There was a reason why not, but it refused to come clear. Maybe it was the wrong time of day? He frowned. Hadn't it just been night? That sounded right. He glanced at his watch automatically. 7:50. As he looked at it, the numbers flickered over to 7:51.

But that couldn't be right, because it had been night when--

--when--

--what?

It was just on the edge of his memory. It had been night, he was sure of that. Dark, and--

Hadn't there been a train?

With that, it all came flooding back at once. Mike swayed dizzily and put a hand to the side of his head, and then jerked it away and examined his fingers. There was no blood, no pain.

When you fall in dreams, he remembered, you wake up.

But it hadn't been a dream, it couldn't have been. It was real. How could he possibly have dreamed all that? He certainly couldn't have done it standing here on the porch, that was for sure--besides, less than a minute had passed. He checked the date on his watch; it was the same day, the day he'd gone outside and found himself in Tokyo.

Mike looked around and suddenly noticed that his backpack was missing. This didn't worry him much; he didn't think he'd been carrying anything important. He ran over it in his mind: his English textbook, some pencils and things, ten dollars, his unread copy of Hamlet--

His computer disk.

His story.

The front door slammed shut behind him as he ran back inside, taking the stairs three at a time. The thirty seconds the computer took to warm up lasted hours. He dove for the keyboard the moment the screen showed it was finished loading, and opened up the word processor. The file was there in the menu: SLRMOON.DOC, just as he'd saved it--that morning, had it been?

"I'm never writing another of these," he said firmly, and knew it was the right thing. He ought to delete this one too, he thought, and was about to do so immediately, but something stopped him. "I just want to look at it one last time," he decided. "Then I'll get rid of it." He clicked on the file name to open it. The text appeared, scrolling down the screen.

"I'm home!" Mike tossed his jacket and backpack onto the living room sofa and headed upstairs to his room. He flipped the power switch on his computer and waited for it to boot up; it was old and slow, but he couldn't afford to buy a better one himself and his parents wouldn't pay for it.

"Michael?" His mother appeared in the doorway as if summoned. She surveyed the untidy room with a frown. "I hope you aren't going to waste your time on that computer before your homework's done," she said.

"Don't have any homework," Mike lied. The computer chirped brightly and he slid into his chair. His mother looked suspicious, but turned and left without comment.

Mike frowned at the screen. He hadn't written this. Someone must have been playing with his files, he thought, except that his mother was the only other person in the house and she didn't even know how to turn the computer on. Mike paged down a few scenes.

Still breathing quickly from running, Mike looked around. The Scouts were all looking at him, most with surprise, Venus with relief, and Mars--Mike was surprised to see an expression of shock and suspicion on the black- haired girl's face. He opened his mouth to speak, and then wasn't sure what to say; what was it that she was silently accusing him of?

"You called her Mina," Mars said softly, and he understood.

He remembered that, but it hadn't been in his story, it had happened to him--

"It happened when I was in the story," Mike realized. "Is that what's going on?" His story had changed, but not because someone had been going through his computer; the story had become what had happened.

A sudden thought crossed his mind. He hesitated before scrolling down, and then decided he might as well. If nothing else, he had to know what had happened. He skipped quickly through the intervening scenes until he found the place he was looking for.

"I'm here, Mike."

"So this is--why I didn't disappear." A rueful smile curved the corners of his mouth. "Hell of a thing--the universe has no justice."

"Shh. The doctors are on their way." His fingers were cold and unmoving in her hand. "Just hang on, okay?" She wondered if this had been preordained somehow, if the price for saving them from Mike's story had been Mike's life. It wasn't fair. He'd never intended to hurt them.

"--it's funny, you know? Last week things--seemed to be going so well. Now I'm here dying in an imaginary Tokyo--isn't that funny?" For a moment his eyes appeared to focus on her. "Mina? Don't cry, Mina, it's okay."

"You're not dying," she insisted. In the distance, she could hear sirens. "The ambulance'll be here in a minute. You'll be fine." There was no answer. Mike's eyes were staring at nothing again, his mouth slightly open as though he were about to say something, but his face was slack and motionless.

Sobbing, Mina took him in her arms--there was no reason to worry about hurting him now. "It's not fair," she cried. "This isn't fair!"

That doesn't explain anything, Mike thought. If I died in the story, why am I here?

"Well, it is a story," he reasoned, thinking aloud. "Maybe it's not possible for someone from--from this universe to really die there. Maybe that's why I got sent back here instead." He wished he could tell Mina he was alive.

Mike kept reading. The subsequent part of the story seemed to confirm his guess; the voices or spirits or whatever they were had brought him in order to change things, because the story couldn't be changed by those who had been written into it. He was outside the framework of the story, so probably he couldn't be permanently affected by things within it. This was all just guesswork, of course, but the fact was that he was here and that explanation seemed to fit.

He read on, compelled to find out what had happened to the Scouts after his disappearance. When he came to the final battle scene, he couldn't help cheering out loud. The monster was gone; the Scouts had succeeded. "I knew they would," Mike said to himself, though he hadn't. He came to the last scene.

Darien grinned at her. "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

"You do that, O Masked Protector." They sat in silence for a minute until the train rattled to a halt. "Well, here's my stop. See you later, okay?"

"Bye, Amy." She stood and went out through the clear sliding doors, and Darien watched her until the train started again and the station was lost from sight.

* * *

Mina dug a handful of bills from her wallet and counted out the fare. "Thanks," she told the driver, and she and Serena got out of the taxi. The door closed behind them and the car drove off, leaving the two girls standing on the sidewalk outside Mina's house.

The storm had lessened to a mild drizzle by this time, but nonetheless the girls hurried inside. "You'd probably better wait here till the rain stops," Mina told Serena; she hadn't had enough money to pay the taxi fare as far as Serena's house, and Serena as usual had no money at all. "I don't think it'll be too long."

"Okay," Serena said agreeably. She glanced around Mina's living room, trying to find a place where she could sit down without getting anything wet. Her eyes fell on a backpack by the door. "Hey, Mina, is that--"

"Mike's? Yeah," Mina said, following Serena's gaze. "I didn't know what to do with it."

"What's in it?" Serena asked.

"I don't know," Mina said. "I haven't--hey, come on, Serena, get away from there. You really ought to leave that alone."

"Why? It isn't like he's going to want it back?" Serena covered her mouth. "I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean--"

"It's okay," Mina assured her.

"I really didn't mean that. I just meant--well, you know."

Mina smiled. "I know. You don't need to worry about it, Serena, I'm not offended. Besides--" She sighed. "You're going to think I'm crazy if I tell you this, but I don't think he's really dead."

"You're right. I do think you're crazy. What are you talking about?"

"This evening, when--well, the powers we had, you know. Mine was that I could sense people's thoughts, people I knew, people I had feelings about. You guys, and my family, and some people I know at school, and--Serena, I sensed Mike. It was faint, but he was definitely there. Somehow. He's dead, I know he's dead, but I don't think he's gone."

"What, he's been reincarnated or something?" Serena asked. "I didn't know you believed in that stuff."

"I don't know if I do or not," Mina said. "All I know is what I felt. He's somewhere." She frowned at the backpack. "You're right, though; there's no point in leaving that sitting there forever. I should get rid of it."

"Let's see what's in it first. Hmm. Wallet, keys, notebook--what's this?"

"Hamlet," Mina answered, reading the title. "Shakespeare. Probably for school."

"Boring. Hey, look." Serena fished out a black floppy disk. "I wonder what this is."

"We can look on my dad's computer if you want." Mina led the way to her father's small office near the back of the house. "It's probably nothing anyway," she said as they waited for the computer to boot up.

"Yeah, probably. So how do we see what's in it?"

"Like this." Mina called up a file listing. There was only one file on the disk: SLRMOON.DOC. Mina stared at it for a moment. "Serena, you know what this has to be, don't you?"

"Huh?" Serena squinted at the letters."S--L--R--M--I don't know that word. Is it English?"

"Sailor Moon! It's short for Sailor Moon! This must be his story, the one he wrote. The one we were in."

"Oh!" Serena exclaimed. "Well, open it! Let's see!" Mina didn't move. "Mina? Come on, open it."

Mina reached over and slid the disk out of the drive. She looked down at it for a moment, then flexed her hands abruptly, cracking the plastic casing. She pulled out the disk inside and methodically tore it into small pieces. Serena was staring at her as though she really had gone crazy.

"I don't want to read it," Mina explained. "When he wrote this--this thing," she held up the shredded disk, "he didn't know it was real. I don't want to blame him for all the stuff that happened; it really wasn't his fault. I'd rather remember him as my friend, not as the guy who wrote this story and nearly got us all killed."

Serena nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense." Her face lit up suddenly with mischief. "You had a crush on him, didn't you!"

Mina glared at her. "No I didn't."

"I'll bet you did!"

"I did not."

"Did too." Serena stuck out her tongue. "Did too did too," she repeated indistinctly.

Mina rolled her eyes. "You're so childish sometimes, you know that? Go home, Serena. It's stopped raining, anyway."

"Yeah, okay." Serena headed back to the entry, lifted her jacket off the hook and stepped into her shoes. As she was leaving, she stuck her head back through the door, laughing. "Mike and Mina, sitting in a tree--"

"Go home!"

Mina watched through the front window as Serena, still grinning, made her way down the dark street. She was illuminated for a moment by a streetlight, and then turned the corner and was gone. Through a break in the clouds, the moon was shining. Mina stepped back from the window and drew the curtain across. She looked down at the pieces of the disk still in her hand, then dropped them in the garbage can by the door and went upstairs to go to sleep.

The End.