Warning: Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon universe, also known as based on the live action drama series. If you don't get something, you'll probably need to google for some PGSM information at the least. (Go watch it. You know you want to. It Rocks!)
Disclaimer: No, I am not sadistic enough to make some young pop idols fight on screen in mini skirts, nor did I create the concept of a talking cat that came from a destroyed moon kingdom. Ask Naoko Takeuchi.

Rainbow Grail.

-

Part 1 -Black Hair. Blue confession.

-

The night was dark, black, but not as black as her hair.
Long elegant coal-black hair, that reached down to her thighs. It was a wonder how she managed to leave it loose without it hindering her.
And the stars shone, sparkling at us from the depths of space, but the sparkle of flame in her eyes was many times stronger and fiercer.

She was angry, I could see it.

I expected her to take it out on me, give me my just punishment for my crimes.
I'd seen her give time and time again the baptism of fire to various monsters who had crossed the line, who had hurt those she held dear. A brief foretaste of the hell that awaited beyond.
This time should be no different. I knew I was beyond redemption.

But she stopped.

Her white-gloved hand, which had been lost in a ball of red-hot flame only seconds prior, released the power it had been holding to fall to her side, brushing against her red mini-skirt and coal-black ribbons.

I couldn't understand.

Why wasn't she reciting her mantras?
Why wasn't she telling me that she was going to punish me in the name of Mars?

Why was she giving me a chance to escape?

I was afraid to look her in the eyes now.

If she'd put out the flames of Justice, I dared not think of what I would find upon looking on her face.
I coughed, miserably, while trying to sit up and make sense of the situation.
I had only one wish, and that was to lie down and let myself be killed... But I could see she wasn't going to humour me that right now.

"Wha... Why?" I choked out.

My throat felt full of smoke and bile. The fight had been tough, the others had weakened me and she had outdone herself to stop me, to weaken me more, to put me at the mercy she had me in now.

A flash of red before my eyes told me she'd moved her feet, the ones in those impossible high-heeled shoes. I'd never needed glasses before, despite wearing them at work, but now seemed like the first time in my life I felt I couldn't see properly...

Yes, indeed, my sight was blurring. I couldn't see what she was doing, where she was going.
She wasn't going to leave me here like this, was she? She couldn't be that indifferent to me!

"Rei...!" I cried.
I winced as I felt my sides twinge in pain, as I realized that it was tears I had raining down from my own eyes.

"Hush," she whispered, her voice tender if sad.
I felt a softness brush away at my eyelids, clearing away the moistness that clouded my vision. I could see her now, crouched in front of me, her hand held up to my face.

I couldn't turn away from her face now, not even if I had wanted to.

I could make it out, despite the dark shadows that bathed us now her fire was dimmed. I could make out the pale outline of her face, her cream coloured skin slashed and bruised by my own assaults upon her. The telltale twinkling of frost showed me where she'd been badly frostbitten by my dark mercury blast.
But as much as all these marks pained me, what hurt me the most, what kept me staring, was the look in her eyes.

She looked as if she were about to cry.
Sailor Mars, the proudest of the sailor warriors, was on the brink of tears.

She didn't cry often, Rei. Had we not all been so closely linked, I doubt she would have ever let us see her tears.

I had seen her cry, twice, maybe thrice. I'd seen her cry out of anger and frustration, a natural reaction to the ball of fury that would build up inside her. I'd seen her cry a loss so painful her flames of passion could only burn erratically...

But she was older now. No longer the teenage girl who held a grudge against her introvert father, but a woman who's patience and sharp mind put her in the respect of many.

She shouldn't be crying over such a situation as this.

Usagi had cried like a baby, as expected, but she'd done it with grace. Makoto had bit back her tears, biting through her lips, as the brave woman that she was, before I'd knocked her out of her pain. Minako's eyes had merely glazed over before she fell, unconscious. I hadn't given her the time to cry, but given the chance, I don't think she would have. A leader always hides their weakness from their subordinates.

But Rei...

"How could you, Ami...?" She said softly, her sad eyes boring through my own.

How could I what?
How could I have attacked them once more as Sailor Dark Mercury?

I could always have claimed I had no choice, but I knew that wasn't true.
There had been a choice, a difficult, and terribly unfair, choice.

I thought I'd become strong enough never to have to face this dark side of me again, and the memories of pain that came with it. I thought by using my brains and the opportunities at hand, I'd be able to avoid such a dilemma, but I was wrong. In between sacrificing the lives of innocents to spare me this pain and betraying the trust of my friends, my choice had been swift and firm.

I strained against the hand she had on my cheek, the hold she had on my arm in an effort to turn away.
My burns were singing out an anthem of pain, but I ignored them. Anything to get away from that disappointed, yet still trusting gaze. But my body wasn't being cooperative, and my legs had given out all together. I could vaguely recognise in my left knee the tell tale symptoms of a torn tendon that I would usually search for in patients.

And even if my body had been up to the task, the warrior before me would not have let me go.

Seeing me struggle, she muttered something, her own pain hissing through her teeth, as she pinned me to the ground. It's only then that I noticed the ugly gash in her left arm. The doctor in me immediately thought of a way to disinfect and bandage it, and maybe stitch it up before it got worse, but the shade in me snarled, and I let out a sob.

There must have been some way to get the fire back in her. To convince her to kill me, as I had trusted her, and them, to do. We had fought together to protect the ones we loved, to protect the town, it's inhabitants, and by extension the world... We trusted each other to do our best, knew each other well enough to cover the others' weaknesses, while dreading the day where our sense of duty would take over our sense of survival, where we'd have to make sacrifices to reach our ends.

How could I hurt her enough to make her forget our friendship, and get the deed done?

My eyes turned towards were my ice glaive had fallen. It glittered an eerie blue, barely noticeable.
It was too far to reach, and I didn't have enough strength to use my sailor powers to bring it any closer. Mars's daggers lay beside it, flashing red and gold as if still burning. I noticed her glancing towards them too, following my own eyes.

She sighed.
"You... You still don't get it do you..."

There. A tear was now trickling down her cheeks. I felt like cursing at the world.

"It's you who don't get it Mars. Get a grip on yourself!" It was a poor imitation of her scolding, but I put enough ice into it for her to look at me sharply.

"Mercury." She hissed, the tears pouring more freely now. A spark of anger seemed to have been revived in her glare, but it wasn't directed at me.

"I know what it is you are truly after..." She said, maintaining her grip on my shoulders. I closed my eyes, not wanting to acknowledge her tears any longer.

"Pray tell..." I replied sullenly.
If I stayed in this position long enough, I might just be able to choke and asphyxiate myself.

"You're not after that stupid Grail. You knew from the start none of us could know where it was."
And that was true. That was what the enemy was after.

"The only clues you had to this Grail were that child, and the existence of three talismans that would bring the Grail forth." She spat. "Three talismans each guarded by a Sailor Warrior."
Yes. Yet again information I'd leaked to them under the guise of treachery. Clues that I wished they'd been able to decipher before it had gotten this far.

"What you are after, is your own sacrifice..."
As sharp as ever.
After being friends for so long, I should have known Rei would have caught on to that one...

If only she'd been able to find the talismans before the enemy. If only her and the others could have already gotten to the mythical Grail.
But maybe it had been too much to hope for? After all, a paranoid child and three talismans supposedly guarded by sailors who had never heard of them before, let alone the Grail, wasn't exactly what one could call a promising start to a treasure hunt.

I remained silent, trying hard to ignore Rei's hot and boiling tears landing on my neck.
Her hold on me had weakened, but in my nauseous state, I couldn't bring myself to fight her shivering arms.
The aftershock of our battle wounds must have been hitting us both at last. I didn't think I could recall as harsh a battle before, excepting one, and that had been just before the end of the world.

"How could you Amy..." Rei started to accuse me, shaking my shoulders with weak hands, startling me enough to make me open my eyes.
"How could you even dare to think that after all we'd been through together, any one of us could possibly abandon you to such a fate?"
She was angry, yes, but it seemed the anger was directed at herself.

I recalled Venus's last words before Mars had come to fight me.
Merely a whisper, after a blast of Ice had just thrown her against the wall.
"I understand how Mars feels."
She hadn't stayed conscious long enough after that to elaborate, but now I understood what it was she was referring to.
Her own death.
I hadn't realised just how painful this must have been for Rei. I knew she'd been terribly marked by Minako's death, before the silver crystal had been destroyed.
She'd felt responsible for it, she'd blamed herself terribly, her elegant and fierce exterior had shattered completely once the news had sunk in. She'd let Minako down. She knew she shouldn't blame herself but she did. And she would never allow it to happen again if she could allow.
Now I knew why she couldn't kill me.

Curses.

I felt my own tears swell again in my eyes, born of frustration and blurring what little of the world I could make out in the obscurity of the night. Where was a full moon when one needed it?

"But you said so yourself..." I answered, my voice weak, my hopes dwindling. "You saw it in the flames and in your dreams. A message so clear that you had no doubt about it's meaning. I quote you. 'One of us is going to die.'"

I had hoped to be proved wrong, it was true, but I also knew that Rei's predictions were very rarely off the mark.
If one of us were to die to prevent all of us from being killed, then let it be me, and may the information I gathered for them in this treason of sorts help them defeat our enemy and survive.

"Idiot!" She cried, a touch of her usual spunk back in her voice, but the pain and sadness was still there.
"Idiot... You were right then..."

Startled by this, I made a disbelieving sound as I tried to sit upright once more. Somehow, I managed to do so, Mars barely keeping a hold on me, her head turned away in what I perceived to be shame.

"What..." I coughed, hating my body for trying to prevent me from asking my question.
"What do you mean by that, Rei?"

Her voice low and near toneless, she replied.
"You all knew I'd been sitting and brewing on that cursèd prediction, right?"
I nodded, but I think she merely took my silence for an ascent. She went on.
"I didn't want to tell you lot about it. Not until I could make more of it out." She shivered, whether it was because of the cool air, her wounds or the memory of the vision, I could not tell.
"Anyways, you all noticed I was twisting myself in a knot about it, worrying that there might not be more to the vision than what I'd understood. Worrying that by the time I did make anything else out, it might be too late to prevent anything. I tried my best to hide it, but Minako noticed, pointed it out to the rest of you, and soon you were all harping at me to let out what was bugging me. I could keep it to myself no more then."

Yes. I remembered that evening. It had been barely a week after I'd returned to Japan to begin my career.
We'd all been consternated at the news. The description of a sailor warrior, obviously one of us, being taken down by some unseen force.

'But we can't even transform any more!' had cried Usagi.

At that, our collective gaze had turned towards Luna, in her human form, sucking hard on a piece of candy, her brow creased in thought. She was the only one still able to transform into a sailor warrior, a fluke of chance.

'They do say cats have nine lives...' whispered Minako quixotically.

A quickly-muffled protestation came from Artemis, but Rei merely shook her head.

'I got a good look at the silhouette, and even blurred as it was, I would have recognised Luna's sailor form. She demonstrated, slightly embarrassed, by using her hands to indicate cat ears.

During this exchange, Luna had merely continued looking blankly at the floor, mumbling something about sailor warriors and her memory, oblivious to her being mentioned.
It had been a difficult conversation, but in the end, we had agreed to sit on it and keep our guard up.

"I don't know how, but you managed to cheer me up." Said Rei, obviously recollecting the same scenes as me.
"Anyways, I recently managed to interpret more of the dream, with Luna's help.
And I was mistaken. I'd presumed death was awaiting one of us five, but that was because of the sailor suit and powers."

My brain seemed to stall for a minute, before I could respond.
"Wait a minute.
Who do you know apart from us five and Luna who's ever turned into a sailor warrior?
You're not saying there's other Sailor Warriors... are you-... !"

Suddenly I lurched forward, shivering as I brought my hands to my head. The fog of recollection that I only had access to when in possession of evil was zooming in on my consciousness.

Painful images of the war that had laid the moon kingdom to ruins plagued my mind, followed by earlier, somewhat absurd memories of piano duets with Zoicite, training and fun with the girls, sessions with the Queen and parties at the Palace. Bits and bobs of conversation where coming into focus now, until I had confirmation of what I had just asked Mars.

Yes.
There had been other Sailor Warriors then, apart from Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and me, Mercury. Sailor Moon hadn't existed then, nor had Sailor Luna, but I could distinctly recall mentions and knowledge of others in the past life.

And if we had been revived to this life, why not them?
If only I could remember their names...

But it was too late to remember from the past life now. The dark power inside me had stirred, realising that something was amiss, effectively shutting off the memories it was ironically the only thing I knew of to give me access to them, as I had to divert my mental strength to fighting for control over my body.

I could feel Rei's arms around me, her voice calling me by my name, sounding terrified that she'd lost me.

The darkness inside me seemed to be creating flames of black coldness around my body, I bit my lips at the thought that they would be biting away at my friend's arms, making her wounds worse. The dark side of me couldn't care less. It was in pain and misery, and it wanted to take it out on everybody, including me.

I focused on containing the monster, while still desperately searching my mind for clues regarding the other sailors.
For some strange reason, the image of that little girl, or little brat as the darkness called her, came to my mind.

The little girl with her red eyes and her hair done up in a similar fashion to Usagi's.

She'd crashed into Mamoru and Usagi's married life from the middle of nowhere, claiming Mamoru to be her father, and Usagi to be her name.
She wouldn't trust anyone with her secrets, and when scolded she would hug her cat-eared ball and run off to hide where no one could see her. If the enemy hadn't come after her, I might not have been faced with my horrible decision, but then again, maybe the others would never have realised it was possible to reawaken our powers naturally had it not been the case.

Where was that child now?
I recalled Jupiter saying something about Chibi-Usa being with Mamoru. Yes, small Usagi was an appropriate name for her.

And then it hit me.
The memory, in astonishing detail, of a glimpse I'd had of the child sulking, just before I'd been captured by our foe.

She'd been sniffling, hugging the ball against her chest with such an air of homesickness that I couldn't help but feel sympathy, remembering my own bouts when I'd first moved to study abroad. She was mumbling something, a name that struck me at the time as odd.

'Puu.' she'd said. 'Help me Puu...'

She couldn't be talking to her toy. She always referred to it as Luna-P (much to Luna's irritation.)
It was only now that I recalled hearing an answer coming through the ball, before all hell had broken loose.

'Small Lady... Be brave...'

A voice that was both rich and wise, caring and melancholic, and, most importantly of all, it seemed familiar enough to bring the memory of another woman to mind.

I jolted my head up, startling Mars by not only staring intently into her own confused gaze, but by grabbing the front of her suit.

I had to tell her fast.

The darkness holding me in it's grip would soon have enough of my resistance. It would either take me over entirely or steal away my life force and abandon ship.
Either way, I'd soon be out of commission, and however much I loathed the idea of being used to harm Mars without any control at all on my actions, I would regret a thousand times on the road to hell missing out on the one occasion to hand over vital information on the enemy's targets.

I rattled on at her, repeating the nickname, repeating her name and description, the identity of the only other sailor I had remembered from the past life, thanks to evidence from the present.
Mars was looking at me as if I was mad, but I knew she was memorizing every word of my prattle, conscious somewhere in her soul that whatever it was I was saying, it was important.

At long last, the evil presence in my body, that had been so content to die with me only minutes ago, heaved itself through me, ready to depart. It felt as if I were having my heart pulled out. I gasped in pain and passed out, barely able to wish that Mars be able to stop the shade...

-

tbc...

Author's note: Hello there!

I don't believe I've posted in the Sailormoon fandom before and I must admit I haven't actually been reading that many sailormoon fics of late. (Yes, I know, shame on me, but I love my other fandom too much. ) Hopefully this venture of mine into the mesmerising world of girls fighting demons in mini-skirts isn't too painful a read for you. I have played around with them before, in a small crossover fic I posted in the fandom I play around in most (Detective Conan-Magic Kaito) named "Masked Thief," but writing a multichapter fic is another set of roses.

... And to be honest, this piece of writing did start off as a simple one shot idea, using Mars and some random monster... But then Darkury decided to barge in and well... I know that the idea of the PGSM verse having to face the other menaces the manga and TV series had has most likely been done before. Alas when the plot bunny strikes, it is sometimes hard to say no. Especially when it is all pink and sugary.

I can only hope this will go down the interesting paths I wish it to, without getting too confusing on the way. And yes, I am mixing everything in the blender a bit. I'm terrible like that, but hopefully it will keep you on your toes. I know it keeps me on mine!

-Dagron.