Sorry about the wait, guys! Without further ado:

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SAILOR MOON: BANISHED
CHAPTER THREE

By Doctor-T

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Only a few seconds after the apprehensive Sailor Pluto had moved off along the tunnel in the direction that Hotaru had inexplicably vanished down, further trouble arrived. Back up on the surface of the miniscule moonlet, a trio of huge, ghostlike figures abruptly appeared, seemingly out of thin air, at the rim of the access shaft she had created to facilitate her descent. The three transparent apparitions were now staring down into the smooth-sided tube that the taller of the two Ooman interlopers they were tracking had somehow drilled into the solid rock, and then disappeared into.

Less than two minutes ago, only seconds after the unsuspecting Hotaru Tomoe had plummeted helplessly through the leaf litter into the concealed pit beneath her feet, the three cloaked yautja of the advance scouting party had arrived unnoticed on the scene. Even as the nearly totally invisible trio watched from the cover of the weird forest, the tallest of the pair of Oomans they had been seeking - now alone and noticeably agitated for some unknown reason - had raised and activated what was obviously a staff weapon of some kind. Next second, the thermal image of the long-haired Ooman – whom to his surprise, M-di-H'dlak abruptly realized was actually a female of that species - was dropping feet first down into a pre-existing vertical shaft in the moonlet's outer crust. The narrow hole that her activated weapon was in the process of enlarging, the energy ball at its tip easily dissolving away the solid rock to a width of several nok as she made her rapid descent into the ground and out of their astonished sight!

Even as he waved his two companions forward, deep in M-di-H'dlak's alien mind, a nagging, half-formed memory was surfacing to torment his thoughts. His sudden sense of uneasy deja-vu seemed to be related to the distinctive garb that the Ooman female was wearing – he was sure that he had seen its like before. But where…?

And when?

M-di-H'dlak didn't like mysteries – especially unexpected ones such as this particular example, which had the very real potential to adversely affect the successful completion of his hunting expedition. So, just whom the strangely attired and unquestionably out-of-place Ooman female was, or represented, definitely required an answer, and as soon as possible. However, the mystery of her identity was one that would be solved by him, just as soon as he could get back to his ship and upload the images from his helmet gkinmara into the onboard memory banks. Of that, he had no doubts whatsoever.

"The Oomans have rashly ventured down into the Kainde Amedha lair," one of his trainees declared, breaking into his leader's thoughts. "Are they both l'ulij-bpe? They will die – and not by our hands, curse the luck!" And M-di-H'dlak couldn't help but notice the disappointment in the tone of the younger Yautja as the youngster made his pronouncement.

"Maybe the puny Oomans are not mad, but are hunting the hard meat, also?" the second unblooded stripling pointed out, by his eager demeanor also obviously chafing at the bit to track down and dispatch the two alien interlopers forthwith, and then take their heads as the very rare and highly prized trophies that they were sure to be. "The bigger one could be an experienced hunter training the smaller?" he continued. "If that is so, we should pursue and hunt them both and the Kainde Amedha, right now!"

"We shall kill them all, Oomans and Kainde Amedha, and heap much honor upon the three of us," the disembodied voice of Trainee Number One boasted, brandishing his combi-stick, in full and enthusiastic agreement with what his fellow student had just said.

"I have heard that some Oomans do hunt other creatures for sport, even as we do," M-di-H'dlak told them, deciding to impart much needed wisdom to his two inexperienced and overeager charges. Besides that, he had noticed something about the two Oomans that his companions obviously had not. "But I suspect that is not the case with the two we have discovered here. The larger one was an Ooman female, and the smaller was probably her offspring. I think that what happened here was that the smaller one fell down that hole, and the larger one is trying to rescue it."

"A female?" the first underling gasped, his mandibles behind his breath mask wide with astonishment. "But…but the Earth creature has a weapon, we all saw her use it to bore into the ground! So that Ooman must be either a hunter or a warrior of some sort-!"

"And even if the Ooman we saw is female, if she is also an armed hunter or warrior, then she is fair game for us," the second trainee loudly pointed out to his leader and companion, hoping his statement as to the profession of their prospective prey really was true, as he knew all-too-well that it was against the Yautja Code to kill even an armed female if she was acting in defence of her offspring. "But for her to enter the Kainde Amedha hive alone? You are wrong, she is l'ulij-bpe!"

"True to your first point. But, as to whether she is as mad as you say she is, I think not. And I am not so sure that the larger Ooman is as she at first appears to be, either," M-di-H'dlak told the shimmering outlines of his students, once again feeling strangely uneasy at what he had observed. And with that, the yautja leader made a snap decision on what their plan of action would now be.

"I am going back to the ship to gather information from our database on what I now suspect about these strange, out-of-place Oomans," he declared. "I will return soon. You two stay here as Hult'ah (sentries). Remain cloaked and watch your backs. Kill any Kainde Amedha that come near you, but remain in the vicinity of this hole until I have returned."

"What if the Kainde Amedha spot you on your way back, and attack you in force?" Student Number One untactfully inquired, not overly pleased at being relegated to sentry duty when there was prospective prey to be hunted right now in the subterranean tunnels at no great distance underfoot.

"Then the Kainde Amedha who try will all die!" M-di-H'dlak snapped back to the impudent stripling, somewhat offended at the implication that he was incapable of defending himself without their help. "As will you, if you don't pay attention to what I have told you to do!"

"Yes, Leader," the pair hurriedly chorused, their tall, ghostlike forms snapping to respectful attention, before turning and fading back off into the nearby undergrowth. They both knew better than to argue with a veteran warrior like M-di-H'dlak – to do so could be downright bad for their heath, and in some cases, even fatal.

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Even as the trio of yautja dispersed on their respective tasks, one half of their hoped-for Ooman prey was carefully moving deeper and deeper into the stygian underworld beneath the surface of the unnatural planetoid. With all due caution, Sailor Pluto made her way along the shafts and tunnels hewn through the natural rock, her path clearly illuminated by the soft red light now being cast by the glowing-red gem on her garnet rod.

Less than five minutes after setting out on Hotaru's trail, the worried foster mother stepped out of the narrow and twisting tunnel she had been following into a second, much larger and obviously artificial corridor. However, instead of following a straight course as the first hallway had done, this one curved in a gentle and regular fashion away to both the left and right of her position. Even as she assumed an on-guard stance once again, Sailor Pluto noticed with interest that the walls and ceiling of this new tunnel were covered in the same weird carvings and raised outlines of symbols that she had seen in the previous one.

But there was one other immediately noticeable difference between this newly discovered tunnel and the one that she had first dropped into. The walls, floor and roof of this particular hallway were all made of an unknown, dark grey metal. This passageway hadn't just been hewn through the solid rock of the moonlet's outer crust, as the first one had been. It had been designed and built as a part of something else.

And the entrance she had just come through – upon closer inspection, Sailor Pluto realized that the jagged hole had been blasted through the thick metallic wall, from the outside-in, by a violent explosion sometime far back in the dim and distant past!

? What is this place? And why am I feeling a sudden chill in my bones? I…don't like this place at all…!

Inside the alien hallway, the air was frigid and dusty. But nothing was visibly stirring in here, either, and the only sound that the tense sailor senshi could hear was the steady plop-plop-plop of water droplets falling from some hidden crevice amongst the inky-black shadows in the connecting tunnel behind her.

'Phew!' So far, so good. I'd best find Hotaru-chan as fast as I can, and then we can get the heck out of here!

Warily, Sailor Pluto followed the hallway in the direction that she sensed that Hotaru had gone, until it opened up into a much larger open space. And then she froze in mid-step, her heart in her throat.

Lying totally motionless near the centre of the open space was the dead body of something.

Something huge.

Whatever the bizarre-looking giant was, it certainly hadn't been even remotely human. But it had definitely been an intelligent life form of some sort – the withered remains of the garment that still covered a good percentage of its eight-meter long, mummified-looking body bore mute testament to that. And judging by the thick layer of dust blanketing the huge, trunked thing, it had been dead for eons – possibly thousands, maybe even as long as a million years.

And what could possibly have caused the chest of such a massive creature to burst open like that? Sailor Pluto wondered. Even after all of this elapsed time since the demise of the alien, she could still see that the creature seemed to have exploded from the inside out.

Another shiver ran up Pluto's back and she involuntarily clutched her garnet rod a little tighter as she turned away from the ancient, dusty corpse of the fallen titan. After subjecting the rest of the room to a careful scrutiny, she continued warily on her way across the dome shaped room.

Once she had entered the opposing hallway, Sailor Pluto paused momentarily and then reached out with her mind's eye for a second time, seeking to re-locate her missing daughter. And as contact was made with Hotaru's still puzzlingly unresponsive mind, she realized with some relief that the girl was no longer moving directly away from her. In fact, the wayward teen seemed to have come to a halt at long last, and at no great distance away from her present position, either.

The fly in the ointment, now, was that the new location of the hapless girl she was seeking was somewhere deep below the floor of the tunnel she was now standing in.

Damn! Pluto muttered under her breath as she began to look around for a means to access the lower level that must obviously exist below the one she was on. I'm going to have to go even further down into this bizarre moon to reach her. And there could be a whole series of other subterranean levels and corridors down there for us both to get lost in. So much for a quick in-and-out rescue!

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Deep underground, in their sprawling nest, the main body of the Kainde Amedha horde were at this very moment stirring themselves into action as they dimly sensed the presence of approaching intruders.

With the exception of a few lookouts stationed semi-permanently on the forested surface of the moonlet, the vast majority of the nightmarish creatures had been in hibernation for a long, long time. In fact, it had been almost exactly one hundred earth years since they had last awakened, en masse. However, their numbers weren't static. The headcount of Xenomorph drones in the hive was slowly increasing, and in a most unusual manner, at that.

Because the tidally-locked facing surfaces of the two planets that the tiny moon was trapped between were so frighteningly close to each other, at their closest point, the gravity field of each earth-sized world was almost completely canceled out by the almost-as-strong gravitational tug from its opposite. So, at or within a radius of almost one hundred kilometers of the epicenter of these two practically zero-gravity regions, if a creature could manage to achieve a velocity of as little as two meters per second whilst jumping straight upwards, it was actually possible to leap from world-to-world, in both directions, through the almost two thousand kilometer in diameter column of air that connected the twin planets.

And several species of creatures inhabiting this low gravity region that spanned the gap between the twin planets, did indeed, on occasion, manage to safely make the vertiginous, three hundred kilometer journey – in both directions - through the thin and chilly connecting atmosphere to the opposing world that hung in perpetuality directly overhead. Furthermore, even one or two species of comparatively large, non-flying life forms were perfectly capable of making the trip.

And, as to just how these almost unbelievable occurrences could come about…

In the almost zero gravity regions on both facing hemispheres, kilometer high alien trees soared into the air like skyscrapers, as if reaching out with twisting woody fingers to grasp the forever unreachable surface of their opposite. And from these natural towers, the occasional individual or group of one large species of long-legged treehopper, in particular, would occasionally launch itself skyward just a little too vigorously for its own good. If the hopper then managed to miss latching onto its leafy destination in the branches above it, the hapless creature would continue on into the air-filled void, to eventually splash down into the almost identical forest on the surface of the facing planet.

This hair-raising interplanetary journey, however, had three very real risks to the creature making the attempt. Firstly, the further away from the epicentre of the low gravity area one went, the greater the gravitational pull of the world it was on became, until, right on the boundary, gravity had increased back to its normal strength. So, if the set path of the traveller were to send it too far towards the edge of the low gravity region, the steadily increasing gravitational tug of the curved hemisphere below it would rapidly become far stronger than the also-decreasing, counteracting pull from the other planet. When this happened, the straight-as-an-arrow course of the unlucky hopper would turn into a parabolic arc, and it would then plummet back down at an ever-increasing speed towards the surface of the planet it happened to be the closest to at the time, before impacting in a fatality-inducing smear against whatever solid obstruction its hurtling body encountered first.

Secondly, should the angle of the traversing creature's jump take it outside the aways-fluctuating outer edge of the tunnel of thin, though breathable air that linked the opposing planetary hemispheres, the result would be equally fatal to it. Right around the entire circumference of the life-sustaining tube, where the upwelling atmospheres of the twin planets touched the sub-zero void of open space, the remaining water vapor that hadn't already precipitated out as rain in the thin, cold, high altitude air, would instantly freeze. Then, because of the higher gravity this far away from the center of the world-connecting air bridge, all of these newly formed particles of ice would fall away in twin, glowing, twinkling, all-encompassing cylindrical curtains of hail and snow back down towards their worlds of origin. Like the endless conveyor belt of billions of swirling water molecules were continuously doing, the doomed treehopper would also freeze solid once it encountered open space, whilst simultaneously suffocating in the airless void. Then the unlucky creature would fall like a meteor through the snowflake-filled downdraft that ringed the upwelling tunnel of air, back down into the upper atmosphere of the planet it was nearest to at the time.

Thirdly, every once in a while, the usually fixed trajectory of one or two of the world-jumping hoppers would take them into the surprisingly strong gravitational field of the trapped moonlet. When this happened, the unlucky creature would be pulled off its interplanetary course, sending it on a one-way and usually survivable trip down onto the moon's forested surface.

Where the Kainde Amedha would be waiting.

And so the numbers of the xenomorphs slowly increased over the long decades, until the span of approximately one hundred earth years had gone by once again.

And then the yautja would return for the hunt once more, as they had done since time immemorial.

After the bloodletting was over, the usually – although not always - victorious yautja would make sure to leave one or two Kainde Amedha alive on the moonlet, to start the whole cycle all over again.

And if the Kainde Amedha won the bloody contest, as they had indeed done on several, very rare occasions-?

The next yautja hunting party to arrive would either salvage the marooned spaceship of the lost expedition, or implode it if it was too badly damaged to save, or otherwise incapable of flight for any other reason. Then they would descend into the maze of tunnels below the surface of the moon, to do battle with the waiting Kainde Amedha horde and avenge their fallen comrades.

All in all, it was great sport, and one that the yautja relished. So, the physical competition amongst the younger, inexperienced yautja students on their homeworlds to be picked for the once-per-century expedition to the Yaat hunting ground was, quite understandably, fierce – and for some of them, the tryouts were occasionally fatal.

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As she inched her way along the subterranean tunnel she was currently following, Sailor Pluto knew none of this, of course. But she did now know that there was something else down here with her and Hotaru. And the thing – or things – she could dimly sense flittering around in the blackness all around her were definitely malevolent. Of that, she had no doubt at all.

Oh, crap! Oh, crap! I have to get out of this tunnel, right now!

At the end of her garnet rod, the Chronos disintegrator pulsed back into life. Just as she began to lower it downwards, with the intention of boring her way down with all due haste to the next level below her, the sudden, shocking click of metal on stone sounded to her immediate rear!

Whirling about in fright, Pluto whipped her garnet rod back up to the on-guard position – just as she spotted a pair of jagged wrist blades appearing out of thin air, stabbing with blinding speed directly towards her curvaceous chest!

Deftly, Pluto intercepted the surprise attack with the transparent ball of the Chronos disintegrator field – and only just in the nick of time! As the lethal blades sweeping downwards entered the shimmering ball of accelerated time, they didn't dissolve away into nothingness, as they should have done. But the cumulative effect of thousands of years of erosion compressed into a single second served to blunt the cutting edges of the razor-sharp, ultra-hard blades enough to prevent them from slicing the top off her garnet rod as they thumped into its shaft, the force of the impact nearly knocking her weapon talisman from her adrenalin-stiffened hands.

As she staggered backwards from the sheer power of the unexpected blow, Sailor Pluto looked up with wide-eyed shock as, nearly a full meter above her head, two greenish eyes momentarily flashed – and it was only then that she became aware of the monstrous, transparent shadow standing right there next to her!

Fortunately for Sailor Pluto, her fighting instincts took over. And unfortunately for her overconfident ambusher, in her sailor senshi form, Sailor Pluto was several orders of magnitude stronger than a normal human female. So the backhanded swing of the key-shaped base of her garnet rod to the blurry outline of her towering attacker's helmeted head took the thing totally by surprise. Furthermore, the power behind her counterstrike knocked the cloaked yautja clean off his clawed feet, to send him skidding backwards down the tunnel for a full ten meters before his over three-hundred-pound weight finally bought him to a grating stop.

For a couple of seconds, the young predator just lay there, flat on his back in the swirling cloud of dust, his mandibled mouth agape with astonishment behind his breath mask at what had just so unexpectedly happened to him at the hands of a creature less than half his size. Nowhere in the records he had read had it stated that Oomans were this strong! The powerful blow he had been dealt hadn't hurt him physically; the only injury he had suffered was his bruised ego – which made the young predator feel ten times worse than any mere flesh wound inflicted on him would have done.

Pauk! A mere Ooman female has decked me! The ignominy!

"Raaaaaghh!"

Leaping back to his feet with a roar of outrage, the yautja trainee charged forward to the attack once again, his clawed feet thumping heavily on the dust coated floor of the tunnel. Such was his fury and eagerness to get to immediate grips with the miniscule prey that had humiliated him; the young predator recklessly disregarded everything he had learned in basic training about how to act in a situation such as this one. Nor did he even give so much as a thought to his shoulder mounted plasmacaster, or even the long, lethal combi-stick that was still strapped to his back.

And this was to be his undoing.

"Dead Scream."

Between the sheer size of her translucent target and the cramped confines of the narrow hallway, there was no way that the vastly more battle-experienced Sailor Pluto could miss at such a short range as this. Pirouetting, she launched her primary attack – a purplish, glowing ball of concentrated sonic energy – directly into the massive chest of her nearly invisible assailant, blowing the thing backwards once again.

After the reverberation of the thunderous explosion had faded away, Sailor Pluto hurriedly rolled back up from the floor onto her own feet again, her garnet rod once more at the ready.

However, her precautionary measure proved to be unnecessary. The nearly seven-foot-tall, brown-and-yellow-mottled body of her stupidly rash attacker lay totally motionless in the swirling cloud of ages old dust, luminous green blood from its destroyed chest splattered all over the walls and floor of the corridor like a galaxy of green stars. The creature itself was now fully visible to her fear-filled gaze, the blast having obviously destroyed whatever device it was that had rendered the alien invisible in the first place.

And from the now exposed face of the thing, the huge-eyed sailor senshi abruptly recognized to just what species the giant creature she had just successfully defeated, belonged. And as she did, all of the remaining color drained from her face at that instant, as well.

"Yautja!" Pluto whispered, her heart thumping in her chest as she instinctively dropped down upon one knee in a ready pose, her body once again protectively shielded behind the rippling ball of the Chronos disintegrator field. "This has to be one of them…! Oh – hell."

This is bad. I've heard of the Yautja before, and I've seen what they can do. If they are here, right now, then they must be on a hunt! And that means…those other things that I can faintly sense out there in these tunnels are almost certainly-?

Oh, crap! I've got to find Hotaru, and get her away from here, before it's too late! I just pray it isn't that, already-?

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M-di-H'dlak had made the short return trip back to his still cloaked starship without incident. Once inside the massive vessel, he had immediately dispatched the bulk of the hunting party, under the command of Guan-thei-de, to join up with the two sentries he had left to guard the access shaft that the mysterious female Ooman had dropped down. And now, accompanied by the pilot, Kujhade, at the computer inside the control room, the yautja leader had already found in the onboard data banks the information he had been seeking.

Finding out just who the taller of the two beings he now had to deal with was had been remarkably easy. After transferring the images and data his helmet scanners had automatically recorded of the green-haired human female into the main memory banks, the required data, written in yautja script, had come up on the screen after only a few seconds – flagged with a large, flashing, warning symbol!

Yellow eyes wide with surprise, the yautja leader quickly scanned the summary:

LIFE FORM GENERIC NAME: Sailor Soldier or variant thereof (aka Sailor: Warrior, Senshi, Planetary Guardian, Scout, Defender)

SPECIES CLASSIFICATION: Humanoid (NOTE: Sailor Soldier gender always female of humanoid species)

STAR SYSTEM OF ORIGIN: Numerous (see here for known list)

PLANET OF ORIGIN: Numerous (see here for known list)

KNOWN PHYSICAL ABILITIES: Enhanced physical strength and durability, various others (See here for comprehensive list)

KNOWN PARAPHYSICAL ABILITIES: Various (see here for comprehensive list)

…Further data pending…

Searching Sailor Soldier database for visual and biological data match…

…Searching…

Exact match found. Loading…

"A sailor senshi?" he muttered, "Here? But what's this-?"

It was just then, to M-di-H'dlak's even greater surprise, the ship's supercomputer flashed up a data file on the very Ooman he had observed, discovered in an old record that had originally been input thousands of years ago!

The predator leader's yellow eyes widened even more as he skimmed through the glowing red script under the rotating, three-dimensional image of the female in question:

NAME OF ENTITY: Sailor Pluto

ALSO KNOWN AS: Princess Pluto, Guardian of the Underworld, and Guardian of Time.

GROUP AFFILIATION: Sailor Soldier

TEAM AFFILIATION: Outer Senshi of Sol system

ENTITY CLASS RANKING: 'I'

SPECIES: Humanoid female

SUBSPECIES: Lunarian (Presumed extinct) from the time period known as the 'Silver Millennium.'

STAR SYSTEM OF ORIGIN: Sol (For spatial co-ordinates, see here).

PLANET OF ORIGIN: Pluto

CLASSIFICATION OF PLANET OF ORIGIN: Kuiper Belt Icy Dwarf; see here for definition and further information

CURRENT PLANET OF RESIDENCE: Earth

CLASSIFICATION OF EARTH: Habitable Zone Rocky Inner Terrestrial; see here for further information

PHYSICAL AGE OF ENTITY: Variable (true age unknown)

KNOWN PHYSICAL ABILITIES: Enhanced physical strength and durability, resistance to extreme heat and cold, ability to survive without food or drink, ability to survive unprotected outside planetary atmospheres, unaffected by all normal levels of nuclear, solar and cosmic radiation, capable of unaided atmospheric and space flight up to near light-speed

KNOWN PARAPHYSICAL ABILITIES: space/time manipulation, time travel, teleportation, levitation, various others (see here for comprehensive list)

ESTIMATED COMBAT EXPERIENCE OF ENTITY: Expert ranking

KNOWN WEAPON OF CHOICE: Garnet Rod

PRIMARY OFFENSIVE ATTACK: Hypersonic 'Dead Scream'

PRIMARY DEFENSE: 'Garnet Ball' Force Field

PREY TROPHY RANKING: Grade B++ (Superior hunting and combat skills required by no less than three or more very experienced hunters for an estimated 50% chance of a successful kill)

WARNING: Oldest offspring of Chronos, God of Time

KNOWN THREAT LEVEL: ACUTE. Upon sighting of this entity, extreme caution is advised.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Because of the power level of Sailor Pluto, the Code of Conduct regarding obligatory one-on-one single combat can honorably be suspended in her case.

RECOMMENDED COURSE OF ACTION UPON SIGHTING: If possible, avoid all contact with this entity. Do not engage unless three or more blooded hunters of veteran ranking or higher are present and can achieve total tactical surprise.

DOWNLOAD DATA INTO HELMET DATABASE? Yes/No

"Pauk! Yes!"

…Download Completed.

After hurriedly unplugging his helmet from the control panel, M-di-H'dlak whirled about to face his subordinate. "Kujhade! Warn the others of the danger they are in, and order them to converge on the location of my transponder signal! Then prepare this ship for an immediate takeoff, should such become necessary."

"It will be done," came the reassuring reply from the most competent pilot.

Ten seconds later, the yautja leader was once more outside the vast, invisible bulk of his ship, and he had hit the ground running.

Only one thought was now on M-di-H'dlak's mind as he bounded through the undergrowth in the direction of the shaft where he had left his two trainees. Now that his hunting party had a very real possibility of engaging prey of this magnitude, he wanted to be right there on the spot, if-and-when the attempt was made! M-di-H'dlak just hoped that the two young idiots he had left on sentry duty had obeyed his command to stay put, and hadn't gone off hunting the overwhelmingly powerful demi-god Ooman female on their own initiative.

If they had, M-di-H'dlak knew, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that the inexperienced snot-noses – even as well armed as both were - wouldn't stand a chance!