A/N: Last chapter was weird. That one, this one, and the next one were originally going to go together, but it was a weird time flow. It's still a weird time flow, actually. Probably because Sailor Pluto isn't very happy with me right now.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the proper nouns in this chapter.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Six: Arrivals

L

"Tell me you know more, Helios." Darien entered Elysion like a tornado: dark, swift, and moving with purpose. He held a hand open to the ground and wrenched up the sapling that sprouted there, holding it like a sword and striding forward.

"This one must admit failure, my prince." Helios looked windblown, like a dog that has been sticking its head out of the car window. His fair hair stuck astrew all around the unicorn horn that protrude from his head; the white feathers of his wings pointed in all different directions. "There has been – "

He stopped, and so did Darien, as a gale of wind whipped suddenly across the meadow. Flowers petals – and even some whole flowers – were torn from their stems and hurtled through the air. The flowers and blades of grass bent nearly in half backwards.

Then, as quickly as the wind had begun, it ceased, and the flower petals fell to the ground, the stems bounced back up.

Darien looked at Helios, nostrils aflare.

Helios's eyes were unfocused, his light irises barely visible against his sclera.

"So?" Darien barked.

Helios's eyes snapped shut. Then wide again. He sighed and shook his head, bowing it. "Another one, Your Highness. I apologize, but they are too garbled – this one was almost – I thought that I had understood, but the other said – "

"Make sense!" Darien snapped. The leaves of the sapling in his hand yellowed and curled, then fell to the ground, until he held only a long length of wood. "Are the Shittenou back or not?"
"The Shittenou should not be your greatest worry, Your Highness!" Darien's short-wicked temper seemed to have lit Helios's; the fair youth's eyes flashed like diamonds in sunlight. "There are High Senshi in our system!"

Darien's mind sped to what he knew of High Senshi – "the oldest and most powerful Senshi in the universe," Helios had called them. "Through their High Council they direct and command all other Senshi."

And they would have taught the princess if she hadn't died, came the extra, unwelcome detail. Had they come for her? Good luck to them, then – but of course it wouldn't be that easy. It never was.

"What do they want?" he demanded.

"I have only been able to discover that they are here, not their goals – "

"And you didn't think to tell me about this earlier?" Darien said icily.

"It was falling from the tip of my tongue as Your Noble Highness spun away and left Elysion hot on the trail of the Shittenou last time!" Helios's eyes had actually darkened now, to a pale blue, and red burned high in his fair cheeks. "If you expect omnipotence from me, perhaps you should at least wait to hear it! And while you are modifying your behavior, perhaps you should start acting more like a monarch and less like a youth denied his favorite toy!"

Rather than enraging Darien, this outburst from subservient Helios silenced Darien. Like a mirror, he saw his black behavior, and it sickened him. It was not a foreign emotion to the black-haired youth.

He snatched all of the anger that had spilled out of him and stuffed it back in, smoothing his face.

"Do you have any idea as to why High Senshi would be here?"

Helios seemed prepared to allow them to ignore what had just transpired. He lowered his hands to his sides. "Myriad ones. They all lead back to the princess. You will find, in time, Darien-sama, that all paths lead back to her; all motives lead to her, and all destinies eventually intertwine with hers."

"Oh, I know," said Darien. The fangs of his voice dripped venom. "I know, Helios."

Helios regarded him. "I don't think you truly do," he said coldly. "But you will." He rubbed his left wrist. "The princess is somewhere on Terra right now, we must assume. The High Senshi need her to defeat Chaos. Chaos will have been weakened by your slaying of Kisenian Blossom, so we may hope – tenuously – that they will not mount a large-scale search to find her. But they are looking for her, and the fact that they are here but have not contacted you, the ruler of the planet, for permission to be on your planet, is worrying."

"I'm hardly the de facto ruler," said Darien, still stiffly. "I can't control who comes in or out."

"Can't you?" Helios looked at him. His gaze seemed to unlock in Darien's mind images of all the things he had done outside of Elysion when he was blind, actually allowing him to see them: moving trees, lifting gallons upon gallons of water, removing oxygen from the air. Moving a whole ocean up out of the sea to stop Kisenian's comet.

Darien realized he was rubbing at his temples. "Stop," he muttered. Then, more loudly, "Stop, Helios!"

Helios looked away. "I did nothing, Darien-sama."

The nervous note of fear in his voice convinced Darien that he spoke truth. Darien sighed and returned to the topic. "I couldn't keep the most powerful Senshi out if they wanted to be here." A voice in his head reminded him that he had kept out Kisenian, who had over a dozen High Senshi kills to her credit, out. From the look Helios gave him, the priest was also thinking this, too.

"But," said Darien. "They probably don't think I know I'm…" He paused. "The ruler of the planet. They do know that we've lost our memories, don't they?" he added musingly.

Helios looked worried. "I do not know, Endymion-sama. I know only that in our time, during the Silver Millennium, it was a grave breach of protocol for a being of Senshi-level power to set foot on a planet without the permission of its ruler. No small amount of wars began because of such a breach."

"I'm not about to start any wars," said Darien sharply. "They should have the princess, anyway. She'll be safer with them than she is here."

He hesitated, not noticing the glitter of Helios's eyes at his words. His mind was battling itself over whether to ask or not – the decision to ask won out, for Helios already more than suspected his feelings toward Serena. "They won't do anything to the Sailor Senshi, will they?" he asked casually. "Like Jupiter and Moon."
"It was not because I like to talk that I said the High Senshi are a far more pressing danger than the Shittenou, Darien-sama." Helios spoke coldly. "If you will not concern yourself about the High Senshi for the princess's sake, then by all means, at least concern yourself about them for Serena's sake."

L

"So," Asanuma said in PE as he held down her feet for sit-ups. "How are you liking Miss Lanai?"

"She's…" Serena levered herself up, arms crossed in front of her in an "X," and tried to remember how the fake Miss Lanai, the one Asanuma was used to, would have behaved to her.

"Ah." Asanuma gave her a knowing look without her answering. "You've seen through her, have you? I should have expected it from you, the Great People-Penetrater."

"I'm not a People-Penetrater," protested Serena, a little breathlessly from all the sit-ups. She realized that a normal teenage girl shouldn't be doing so many sit-ups so quickly and slowed down.

Asanuma gave her a little grin. "Da Nile ain't just a river in Africa, Serena-chan."

This was making Serena remember what Miss Lanai had said about her having an aura that drew people in. She changed the subject. "What do you mean about Miss Lanai?"

"Well, she's not the paint-fume-high hippy she seems like, is she?" Asanuma sat back on his heels as a shrill whistle pierced the air. "A hundred and nine! Those are some abs you've got there, Serena-chan! Anyway – " He situated himself on the mat, and Serena dug her knees into his toes. Another whistle phweeted and he began his sit-ups. "She's pretty deep. Kind of a reactionary, though, you wouldn't expect that from an artist."

"Reactionary?" Serena tried to count and pay attention at the same time. It was hard enough keeping Asanuma's feet against the floor as he sat up and down. She'd never realized how big he was before, she realized. He wasn't as tall as Motoki, and he was skinnier than Darien, but he still dwarfed her.

"Far right," said Asanuma. "Practically militantly conservative. Like this one time we were talking because I'd drawn this political cartoon for the school newspaper, you know?" He paused, lying on the floor to catch his breath, his chest heaving. "Man, how'd you do all those so fast, Serena?" He sat up and began again. "Someone was talking about Russia turning all communist and getting powerful again, and how there's going to be a war between them and the Americans again. She started saying that the United States was too powerful and it needed to be crushed." He grinned at the surprised expression on Serena's face. "I know, right? Who'd expect she even has a clue what's going on on this planet, much less an opinion about it?"

Serena started a little when Asanuma said "planet," for it seemed impossible for him to have used such an expression coincidentally. But he continued on, oblivious, and her heart rate calmed down again.

"So she's not really just a matchmaker fiend. I still don't know why she had so much fun with you and Darien. Does she still tease you about it?"

Here, she noticed that he watched her closely but nonchalantly, from beneath his long eyelashes. She mirrored him. "Oh, not really," she said.

She did wonder, though. Why had Miss Lanai pushed her toward Darien so hard when she had known all along that in the Silver Millennium she had betrayed the princess with him…

It was a question that she nervously but determinedly brought up that afternoon. It caught Miss Lanai mid-painting of a sword in the air. The sword solidified and clattered to the ground, just a silver blade, hiltless.

"Well." The art teacher paused, then sighed and swept her braid over her shoulder, bending to pick up the half-finished sword. She rose again with it in her hand. "I am sorry to have done it to you but not sorry to have done it; it was necessary for me to check, Serena, that you could resist Darien. Had you been unable, I would not have sought you out and revealed the truth of your past."

"But – I didn't know he was the prince then," said Serena, feeling that she sounded as though she was whiny and trying to modulate her voice. "I didn't know that he was – " She broke off, for there was no graceful way to say "taken" or even "unavailable."

"Yet you did resist him," said Miss Lanai. She was not looking at Serena anymore; she was painting a hilt along the bottom of the sword blade. Serena winced guiltily at having forced Miss Lanai into such an awkward conversation. "And that showed that not only did you have strength but also that, somewhere, you also knew that to be with him was – would be – inherently wrong."

'Inherently wrong.' What a strange phrase to describe her relationship with Darien. The secret, warm fountain of delight that bubbled up when he got protective, the way he permitted her ruffle his hair but no one else, his fiery but gentle frustration, how he could read her thoughts before she'd even found what page she was on. Yet Serena did not contest it, for if she could not even get long division problems right, then it was certainly possible and even probable that she was wrong in this, too.

Miss Lanai lifted the sword and lifted her eyebrows. "So."

Serena transformed. She was hard-pressed to yank the tiara from her brow and stretch it into a sword before Miss Lanai's slammed down on her. But she did it, and the sweat that popped out on her brow was, she thought, a good disguise for the trickle of tears that seeped out of her eyes.

L

Darien left Elysion without apologizing to Helios for his outburst. The priest had nettled him immensely, and Darien stomped back into his apartment feeling as though he didn't have an ally in the world. Passing through the kitchen, he realized that he hadn't checked his phone messages in days. He punched the message button at the same time his mind presented him with the small number of people who might actually call him, from which it subtracted the number of people to whom he'd actually speak. There was only one person right now, and she wouldn't be calling him for a very long time. Fresh anger surged through him, and a message began.

"This is Nakao Clinic, calling to remind," the automated voice paused and filled the break with a carefully enunciated 'Darien Shields' before continuing "of his appointment at – " Another break. 'Two-thirty, on Wednesday the fourth.' "Thank you."

A new layer of irritation spread over the still wet layers of anger and resentment. He'd forgotten about damned doctors' visits. And Wednesday was tomorrow; he'd planned to skip school and patrol for High Senshi…

L

"So." Haruka slid the plate with the slice of pizza onto the table in front of her and then sat down across from her. Beside Haruka, Michiru sat gracefully with a plate of perfectly-garnished salad. "It's time for us to talk about what you know, Miss Rei."

Soft jazz music spilled from the state-of-the-art stereo in the corner of the dining room. The enormous picture windows opened onto the sight of the sprawling, perfectly manicured front lawn and the iron-wrought gate that separated it from the deserted street. The new digs were quite opulent, though perhaps the fact that a girl had committed suicide here had driven the price of the house down a bit. The mansion still must have cost a pretty penny, Rei had surmised grimly, and she took a bite of pizza, frowning at Haruka's face yet again to figure out how she and Michiru had afforded this place.

"Hello? Uranus to Mars?" Haruka passed a hand in front of Rei's face.

Rei speared her with a glare. She had really gotten sick of that same joke being used over and over again. It had been stale the first time she used it.

"Rei, dear." Michiru cut a cherry tomato perfectly in half. "I think you might understand our anxiety when I tell you we are concerned about the Senshi Sailor Moon."

The pizza in Rei's mouth turned to cardboard. She swallowed. "How long had you been watching me?"

"Not just you, munchkin." Haruka reached to ruffle her hair; Rei, very accustomed to the gesture, had her fork up like lightning. It clanged against the knife that had appeared in Haruka's hand. "Don't be conceited."

This was a question Rei had been pondering for some time now, but only now had she found the opportunity to ask it without courting suspicion. "Why didn't you find Ami, then?"

Haruka and Michiru exchanged glanced with each other over their glasses of wine, like parents deciding how to tell a child that she wasn't going to get the little sister she was hoping for.

"We did not think that Ami would have responded very well to our…personalities," Michiru said at last, delicately, and placed another cherry tomato half in her mouth.

"Your bitchiness, you mean," said Rei.

"Exactly." Haruka grinned at her. "But you fit with us perfectly, fellow bitch!"

Rei glowered at her again. "Do you know where Ami is?" she demanded outright, sick of the careful, blindfolded dance she played with these two.

They exchanged glances again. "We know someone who knows, how about that?" said Haruka, in her effectively-closing-that-topic voice. "Now, back to Serena Tsukino. How big of a threat is she?"
"Barely five feet." Rei took a bite and chewed, smirking nastily.

Haruka rolled her eyes. "Ha ha. Luna's dead, you know."

This time, Rei did not forget to keep chewing. But shock radiated through her like seismic waves. She kept it from reaching her eyes. "Few living things could have deserved it more."

"Some would say the same about you." Haruka's nasty smirk mirrored Rei's.

Rei didn't bother to dignify this with a response; it was true, and she knew it. Had come to terms with it. "What killed her?"

This time, Haruka and Michiru did not exchange glances. "We're not sure," Michiru said. "It occurred at about the same time as our first meeting, we think. A bit before."

A thought struck Rei that she could not believe had not occurred to her before. "How do you know all this?" she demanded.

It was as though this first admission by the two older Senshi that they were not totally omnipotent, this first ever note of uncertainty in their voices, had opened a window through which a fresh gust of air now rushed, blowing apart the rest of the curtains and flooding a room with moonlight by which to see. How did they know Luna was dead? How had they known where to find her? How had they known of Serena, and where Ami was – or rather, who knew where she was?

"Why should we tell you anything when you haven't told us?" Haruka leaned forward.

"If you're going to use that argument, Ruka, it's far too circular," murmured Michiru. "We've barely told her anything either. Less even than we have been told."

Haruka shot Michiru an exasperated look that nevertheless held affection in the form of an upcurved lip. "Whose side are you on here?"

The honey-blonde woman placed a hand on Haruka's arm. "We may not tell you anything more yet," she told Rei, "because we ourselves are as clueless as you about some things, and the source we have would no longer give information to use should we reveal certain things. Rest assured, however, that our mission lies with the princess and the Senshi. We are no traitors."

"Sailor Moon however, is a different story," said Haruka, eyes like embers, as soon as Michiru finished. "Surely you noticed then that she doesn't fit?"

And surely if two separate parties – Luna and these two Senshi – had noticed that Serena was an anomaly, then she was. Rei could still see, could still feel, taste, even, the anxiety like a wad of cloth in her mouth, that night at the prom, Asanuma's laughter, Serena's loopy handwriting that she hadn't even bothered to disguise, that damned Naruto sticker –

"If you know so much about Luna, then you should know about Sailor Venus, too." Rei's voice was flat. The other two Senshi shook their heads. "She was a traitor, in the end. But she wasn't reincarnated, she had been kept alive by Beryl since the Silver Millennium. She said that Serena was a threat to the princess…"

L

"I won't be here tomorrow, Miss Lanai," Serena said one day at the end of their session. "I have to go to the doctor."

Miss Lanai looked up sharply. "Are you ill?"

"Uh-uh!" Serena looked a little sheepish. "It's just…ever since the…" She lifted a calloused hand to her face, the scars. "The attack, you know? They want to check up on us – I mean – "

Miss Lanai wore a tense expression "He will be there with you?"

"No!" Serena was flushed. "We have different appointments now."

Miss Lanai relaxed – but only slightly. "You must be careful not to let them notice anything suspicious."

"I won't," Serena promised.

L

Haruka sat back, eyes alight. "So that's what she's been hiding from us telling us to stay away from her," she breathed to Michiru.

"So it appears." Michiru bit her lip intently.

"What?" said Rei. She looked back and forth between them. "Who's hiding what?"

Haruka sat forward again. "Here's how it's gonna be, Rei. We have a mission that you're going to help us with." She glanced at Michiru, who nodded slowly. "It has been entrusted to us by Sailor Pluto."

Rei's mouth opened. "There's a Sailor Plu – "

Haruka cut her off. "Yes, there's a Sailor Pluto. But what's important is that she doesn't want us to track down the princess yet. We do. You agree, of course?" Without waiting for a reply, she continued. "So you're going to help us with both of those missions – " Haruka bared her teeth suddenly. " – and let us take care of Sailor Moon."

L

"Mr. Shields." Darien heard the door open, and he removed his hand from the spot near his elbow where a nurse had drawn his blood. Thank God the Golden Crystal waited for his command to heal now, instead of immediately healing, or he would have been revealed. They would probably put it down to another side-effect of the youma attack, but Darien was hardly a risk-taker.

Nor did he recognize this voice. "Yes?" he said.

"Dr. Takeuchi's out with mono right now, so I've been taking her patients. I'm Dr. Tomoe. I'm holding out my hand for you to shake."

Darien champed down on his tongue, biting down the "I know" that wanted to snap from him, and found the man's hand with his own. It was cold and calloused, curiosity and eagerness rolling through him like a tide. Darien removed his hand as quickly as he could, grimacing internally. Dr. Takeuchi had never expressed anything but concern that he and Serena's youma aftereffects would cause lasting effects. She had been one of few. Most of the other doctors they had been examined by in the hospital and afterwards, in multiple supplementary check-ups like these monthly ones, had poked and prodded, measured and hypothesized, keenly interested in the effects a youma had made on humans. This Tomoe seemed to be another of them, and with a hidden agenda. Hoping to make a discovery to publish in a medical journal, no doubt. He wondered suddenly if Serena had already had her check-up. She had Darien both had Dr. Takeuchi, and before she stopped talking to him, they had gone together, waiting for each other in the waiting room as they each got checked up. If Serena had been examined by this curious man –

"So." He heard the rustling of paper as Tomoe turned pages on his clipboard. "You don't have any memories of the youma – "

"This is a check-up, Dr. Tomoe," Darien said sharply. "That question was already answered at an initial visit."

"I am checking to see if any of your memory has returned, Mr. Shields," returned the doctor calmly. The calmness irked Darien, like a fire that sputters in outrage when cool water is sprinkled upon it. "Have you any flashes or chunks of it return?"

He forced his voice to remain cordial. "No."

"Any phantom pains?"

"No."

"Nausea, dizziness, headaches, difficulty sleeping…?"
Ha. If only he knew. "No. None at all."

"I see…" The pen scratched, scratched, scratched along the paper. Rather a lot for a simple no, in fact. But it had been several questions in one. Darien waited for more, keeping his hands flat on the crinkly paper of the check-up table.

"Well." The sound of standing. "I'm going to listen to your heartbeat now." Cold metal met Darien's skin on his chest. It was warmer than the doctor's hand, before, had been.

"Breathe," commanded the doctor. Darien inhaled carefully, and exhaled with just as much caution. This doctor would be looking for any irregularity, even as small as a couple lub-dups off. "Again."

"Good." The doctor moved back. Darien heard him taking his clipboard again. "Now, on your last check-up, Dr. Takeuchi had noted some small scars across your abdomen, but they seem to have healed very well. I can't even see them."

Darien remembered in a flash his last visit, right after Fiore had died, and he had forgotten to heal the circular marks left in his flesh by Fiore's attack. He had had to create a lie on the spot to tell Dr. Takeuchi. As soon as he got home he had healed them.

"Have they?" he said to Tomoe. "That's good."

"I'm going to take a look at your eyes, ears and nose now." More cold metal entered Darien's ear; the doctor continued to talk as he examined. "So you're in your last year of high school this year?"

Darien resisted the urge to flinch away from the coldness. "Yes."

"Where?"

"Azabu."

"Ah. Very good school, I've heard. I urged my daughter to take their entrance exam."

"That's nice."

"A good friend suggested private school instead. Look up and to the left for me, please."

Darien complied. He felt his eyes watering at the brightness of the light and wondered what that meant.

Apparently, it meant something, for Tomoe began to scribble furiously on his clipboard; Darien heard the rustle of paper. "Doctor?" he said.

"Say what you will about youma, Mr. Shields, but they have created something very extraordinary with your eyes," said Tomoe. Darien disliked the note of awe tinting his voice. You try walking around blind, then, you idiot, he thought.

"Dr. Takeuchi has told you that very, very faint outline of your pupil can be seen still?" Tomoe said.

"Yes."

"You see an ophthalmologist also?"

Darien shifted. "Yes." Those were the appointments he went to alone, without Serena. But after two initial visits, he had not scheduled a third as they had asked him to. If the Golden Crystal couldn't fix his eyes, nothing could. The doctors' visits were enough to keep eyes from looking at Serena and him suspiciously.

"I planned to be an ophthalmologist, originally," Tomoe informed him, and Darien relaxed at the shift in subject away from him. "I myself am blind in one eye, and I wished to help others in my shoes, to find a cure. Perhaps I still will, someday. Now, Mr. Shields, I am slightly concerned by your muscles mass."

Darien felt said muscles tense. Did he have muscular dystrophy? Perhaps from entering space – but it was only two days, at most three –

"It's very high," said Tomoe. "Muscles are heavier than other tissue, and your weight in nearly twice what males your height and age usually is."

Darien frowned. Well, yes, he leapt rooftops nightly. One tended to build up muscle that way. Best to steer Tomoe away from that, though. "I'm fat?" he said fatuously.

"No, no…" The doctor trailed off, scribbling on his clipboard and barely seemed to notice Darien. "Just irregular…"

Darien decided that this doctor's bedside manner left something to be desired. Telling a patient they were "irregular" was something even he, socially inept as he was, wouldn't do –

He jerked suddenly.

"Is something wrong?" asked Dr. Tomoe's voice. Darien barely heard him; something outside was…

There was a sudden scream, muffled by the closed door.

"What?" He heard Dr. Tomoe's murmur, then the sound of the door opening. "What is – !"

"I don't – I didn't – " A panicked voice, probably a nurse. "We told her that we'd found a tumor, and she did this – "

"Heart attack," came Tomoe's voice. "Call an ambulance and get me ice, 800 mg of aspirin, call Levitin in here – "

The crinkling of the paper below Darien as he shifted seemed very loud. He had the power…he could heal her... but if he was noticed, if they –

He clenched his fists. Then he slid off the bench and felt his way out of the room into the hallway.

"Get back, please, boy," a tense voice snapped at him. He ignored it –

Only to be shoved back into the room by an icy hand on his cold shoulder. "Back in," said Tomoe's voice. "They're taking care of her, don't worry."

Darien tensed, then allowed himself to be pushed back into the room. "Will she be alright?"

"Oh, yes. She was caught immediately; that greatly increases her chances." But Tomoe's words seemed shallow and absent, his grip on Darien's shoulder tightening. Darien frowned, tried to shrug it off subtly. Tomoe didn't take the hint, squeezing harder.

"Did you hear her?" he asked suddenly.

"What?" said Darien. He felt the suspicion and a strange eagerness swirling through the doctor via his hand. He wanted it off. He reached up and manually removed the doctor's cold fingers. "I didn't hear anything."

"…I see." The doctor retreated. "Okay, then, Darien, we're done. You seem in premium shape. Remember to schedule your next checkup in a month with the reception desk…"

Darien pulled his shirt back on and left the doctor's office, very carefully using his cane. His mind was filled with the heart attack woman, apprehension and conflict over what to do in times like those, for certainly they would occur again. What should he do…

L

The ring of condensation around Asanuma's drink had dried. The delicate tablecloth was white again instead of clear. He felt as though it were his life, and he had seen it soaked, then watched it dry up, wrinkling and turning blank white again.

Not really. That was just a little indulgence of his emo side. His life wasn't THAT bad. Sure, none of his friends were currently talking to one another, and Rei was AWOL, but he had weird mystical powers. What more could a guy ask for?

He sighed and answered his own question. A lot.

Suddenly, a tap on the table interrupted his thoughts. He looked up.

"Could I sit?" It was a smiling, tall, sandy-haired man in a tux. Asanuma noticed immediately his use of the word "could" instead of "may," but even if this dude wasn't a stuffed shirt like everyone else, he didn't feel like company.

"Sorry, it's occupied," he lied.

The man's smile grew wider. He had very white teeth. "No, it's not." He sat down. "You've been sitting here alone all afternoon."

"My dinner companion is a model and consequently, so skinny you can't see here. Now you're smushing her. Please move." Asanuma took a gulp of his punch and waited for his weirdness to out-awkward the man's rudeness.

Instead, he laughed. "Funny." He deftly swiped a glass from the tray of a passing waiter and drank. "What's a sunny sense of humor like yours doing in a dark corner like this?"

"Trying to escape lame pick-up lines like that one." Asanuma clenched his socked toes inside his shiny black shoes. Why won't he leave? "What's a blunt beefbrain like you doing here instead of groping a girl on the dance floor?"

"Ouch." Another smile from the man, another laugh. "I like you. I really do."

Asanuma gave up on the idea of the man leaving. On the contrary, he seemed to be making himself comfortable, sinking back in the chair and fixing his gaze upon the dance floor.

That did not mean he had to be sociable, however. Asanuma pushed away from the table and rose.

"You wouldn't have happened to know where Rei Hino was, would you?"

Asanuma froze. Slowly, he turned back around to face the man. He reappraised him with new eyes: tall, with sharp, dangerous eyes; pale and lean, almost delicately featured.

He made his voice aggressive. "Why would I?" he demanded. Who is he? Is he from Rei's dad?

"Well, you'd know that better than me, wouldn't you." It wasn't a question. The man swirled his drink around, moving his gaze from the dance floor to the champagne glass.

Asanuma licked his dry lips. "I haven't see her since she disappeared from her grandpa's temple." He paused, looked down at the floor. "Do you know anything?"

Silence answered him. He looked up –

The man was gone.

L

"Toki!"

Motoki looked up, bleary-eyed, from the cash register. It was ten-thirty at night; his parents had asked him to close up for them that night. He'd been too distracted by his homework to ask why, and now he was wishing he'd put up a little more resistance. He still needed to write an essay for literature when he got home…

"What are you doing here, Asanuma?" he said tiredly. "It's nearly eleven."

Asanuma did not seem to hear him. "Some bastard came up and asked me about Rei!"

Motoki realized that Asanuma wore a tux and bow tie, though the latter hung untied around his throat. He had been at one of his dad's diplomatic functions, then. "On the street?"

"No! At the dinner!" Asanuma pounded his fist on the counter. "First he tried to sit by me, then he asked if I knew where Rei was, then he disappeared! You know what that means, Toki! She's here – somewhere, she's gotta be here!"

"Or he was a journalist who found out you'd known her and wanted to see if you had any clue about where she'd run to." Motoki wasn't usually a wet blanket, but it was late, and furthermore, Asanuma had just finally weaned himself off the illusion that Rei would come back; he couldn't sink back into it now. "Please don't get your hopes up, Numa."

Asanuma's face changed. His dark brows drew together; he pushed away from the counter. For a second, Motoki felt sure he was going to ignite a fireball in his palm. But he balled his fists instead.

"Well, fine," he said. "Be a jerk, you fathead!" Then he stomped out the door.

"Fathead?" murmured Lita to Motoki as she passed him with an empty tray. Motoki sighed.

L

A few booths away, a woman with blue-tinted glasses propped atop her midnight black hair stared into the window. Night had fallen, and superimposed over the sight of the car headlights cruising by on the street outside was the reflection of all that happened in the bright, cheery arcade. This booth was especially well-positioned to watch the counter.

A small smile tilted the lips of the watching woman. She lifted a hand to raise her iced coffee to her lips.

"Do you see them?" she murmured.

"Excellently." The earpiece in her ear betrayed not a hint of static.

She lowered her drink but kept her hand propped negligently upon it.

After a brief silence, broken only by the nearly inaudible ticking of her wristwatch, she murmured without moving her lips, "Shall I move closer?"

A whoosh of breath. "No. No, this is sufficient for today. Proceed to the temple next, then contact me again. There is something else we need to ascertain."

"Yes." She lowered her hand and stood, leaving money on the table.

Lita, a few minutes later, wiping the table clean again, noticed that the half-empty iced coffee was nearly frozen. "No wonder she left so quick," she muttered to herself. "Who wants coffee that they have to thaw?" Motoki would have to talk to Lizzie again about the difference between 'iced' and 'frozen.'

L

Serena and Miss Lanai did not always train. Sometimes at lunch or during seventh period, Miss Lanai set a sketchbook before Serena and told her to draw. For when someone wanted to see what she was doing in Art class, Miss Lanai said. Which both Lita, Motoki in the rare occasions she saw him, Asanuma, and her parents had all done.

Serena had never considered herself an artist, but she had done her fair share of manga doodling/manga-ka-emulating in middle school. She dredged up those old skills and pasted them over the way of sketching first with circles and boxes that Miss Lanai had shown her.

The results pleased her. They certainly weren't anything notable aesthetic-wise, but looking at something that she'd created lit a candle of warmth inside her. It was soothing, too, to bend over the desk and float suspended in her little word of eraser smudges and too-big noses while Miss Lanai's pens scratched in the background. It was a little pocket of serenity in her life. She drew Lita in her arcade apron, Rei in her miko garbs, and Buji with his marshmallow hat. Sooner or later, all of Serena's acquaintances made appearances in her sketchbook. Only one person never appeared.

Sometimes Miss Lanai asked her to draw the other Senshi. She promised Serena that she would cast a spell over the sketchbook so that no one would be able to see the pictures of the girls in their fukus and reveal their identities. But she seemed dead set on Serena drawing the other Senshi, and when Serena finished her last, Sailor Venus, with her sad eyes and frowning lips, she told her to imagine what she thought the other Senshi, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would look like.

One certain day, she finished a sketch of Sailor Neptune that she was rather proud of. She had drawn her hair full of body, wavy like the ocean – Serena loved mythology, and even if Ami used water she didn't see why her version of Sailor Neptune couldn't se water like her Roman counterpart, too – and even colored it, giving her absolutely unrealistically colored aqua hair. And Miss Lanai had stared at it for a long time when she showed it to her, and then she had called it "wonderful!" and given Serena a smile. In a woman as severe as Miss Lanai, this was a big deal, and Serena felt the glow of pride even into the next morning.

L

"Hey, Numa!" Serena greeted the blonde in P.E. that morning.

Asanuma withdrew his hand from his hair. "Hey, Serena. Aren't you chipper as a chipmunk this morning?"

"It's a very nice day," said Serena as a reply. "What's not to be happy about?"

Asanuma didn't really hear her reply. His mind was occupied in something, his sleep-deprived brain that had been working feverishly since that diplomatic dinner last night… Why was she so cheerful anyway, though, he thought, nettled. She'd been quite genuinely depressed and artificially cheerful the whole school year, without Darien…and now he felt irritation afresh, because there were two idiots who actually liked each other back, and they weren't together, and as a person whose feelings weren't returned, this got under his skin like a needle…

"Serena," he said pleasantly. "Who is this girl you think Darien's meant to be with?"

Serena's face shuttered for a moment. Her pupils dilated, then she smiled widely. "My, aren't we nosy as Pinocchio this morning?" she said back to him, mimicking his earlier joke. He found himself annoyed again. "I wonder if we're playing tennis today – "

"Stop sidestepping my questions, Sailor Moon."

Asanuma almost felt proud of the effect he produced in Serena. The color drained from her face, and her pupils dilated until her irises were almost gone. Then she said with a smile that was really a grimace, lips moving as though frostbitten, "What are you talking about, Numa?"

She really was a horrible liar. "May Serena and I be partners, Coach?" Asanuma called out without moving his eyes from Serena.

Coach Etoukou's reply was lost in the shock of what Serena did next. She grabbed him suddenly and hauled him with her behind the gym, where she slammed him – albeit gently – against the brick wall.

"Sheesh, Serena," muttered Asanuma, angered again. Stars had exploded behind his eyes and traced little crackly patterns across his vision as he blinked, then glared, at her.

"How did you know?" Serena's voice was low, her eyes serious and face guarded in an expression he had never seen on her before. It was more reminiscent of Darien than anyone else, and that irritated Asanuma even more. Especially because now he was second-guessing his decision to reveal that he knew her identity.

"Asanuma…" The grip she had on his shoulders tightened warningly. "How did you know?" she repeated.

Asanuma gave her a grin to loosen her grip; it didn't. "Alas, Serena-chan, it wasn't that hard to figure out. Especially after your hair grew a meter and Darien's eyes turned gold."

"And – "

"Rei is a Senshi, too, right?" Asanuma interrupted eagerly. He leaned forward, the better to read her expression, looming over her. "Rei, she's Sailor – "

"ITTO AND TSUKINO, SITTING IN A TREE, K-I-S-S – "

Serena spun around. The class had begun to troop down to the field, and now the majority of them were glancing toward her and Asanuma. The singer was Tonami.

"I-TTO!" Coach Etoukou nearly roared, face mottling purple. He stomped and yanked the two apart – for Serena had still been too frozen by shock to withdraw her hands from Asanuma's shoulders. "OFFICE! NOW!"

Asanuma shot Serena a grin. She stared back at him as he trotted off.

"I – I – I never," Coach spluttered. "You chose HIM over SHIELDS, Tsukino – "

Serena dug her fists into her temples. She'd need to talk to Lita. And then Lita would need to talk to you-know-who, who would then – she cringed just thinking about it. No, better not to say anything. At least not until she talked to Asanuma about it. And Motoki – did he know, too? She had to talk to Asanuma.

"There, there…"

Serena gradually became aware of a meaty hand patting her back.. She pulled herself back out of her thoughts and saw Coach, who was patting her on the back and had sent the rest of the kids down to the fields.

"It's okay, I'm sure Shields will still take you back…"

"Stop, Coach!" she was barely able to keep from snapping. What cosmic joke had been played on her, that she had ever had to meet Darien? Even if she could only have met him after he already knew the princess, then she never would have fallen for him in the first place –

That's not true, her mind reminded her. In the Silver Millennium he was already with the princess and you still seduced him.

Serena cringed again.

L

Motoki was waiting to pounce on Asanuma when he walked into the classroom. "What were you DOING?" he hissed.

"Is the whole effing school infatuated with Darien?" was Asanuma's acidic reply. "Waishatsu gave me weekend detention for indecent activities – 'especially at a time when one of our, ah, students is overcoming such, ah, odds,' he said!" Asanuma mimicked Principal Waishatsu's stutter with venom. "We weren't even doing anything!"

Motoki wilted in relief. He hadn't doubted Asanuma – not really – well, okay, maybe a little – but the rumors flying around school all during lunch… "You're going to have to face him, you know."

Asanuma snorted. "Like he listens to any of the gossip these kids spew." But he looked troubled. And halfway through class, he asked for a pass to the nurse's office.

L

As he walked out into the hallway after the bell ending the school day had rung, Darien was peripherally aware of the extra berth he received in the halls and of the hiss of whispers. The people who conversed in low voices could not have known that he heard them as clearly as if they had spoken into his ear.

"Do you think they're going out?"

"That's really mean if she did, after that stuff just happened – "

"It's been a whole summer, it's not like it was sudden – "

"I think they look cuter together anyway, they're both blonde – "

A gasp. "I think he heard you!"

L

Serena decided that she needed to talk to Asanuma immediately. "Miss Lanai, I can't stay after school today."

"Oh? Again? Another doctor's appointment?"

"No…" Serena hedged. Miss Lanai would not approve of a civilian knowing her identity, and she would tell her, she would, but she just had to get it sorted out first. Then she'd tell her. "There's something I have to do. I'll make up for it tomorrow. We can stay through dinner – "

"Is it something I should know about?" Miss Lanai propped her feet up on her desk.

"Oh, just civilian stuff," Serena said, wishing she didn't feel as though "LIAR" was stamped on her forehead. "Got to talk to someone about something."

"How informatively vague," said Miss Lanai, then dropped her feet to the floor and turned back to her desk. Serena took this as permission and walked quickly from the room.

She headed straight for the arcade, stomach ajumble. Walking this familiar path that had sewn every single day of her life, from the first day she entered high school to only a few months ago, together, filled her with a queer sensation. She felt as though the world had been split into two, the past and the present, and she walked with one foot in each. For a moment, she did not know which Serena she was, the Serena skipping to the arcade for an afternoon of milkshakes and gaming, or the Serena striding to the arcade to confront a friend about a life-threatening secret.

There was not the usual din of laughter, beeping video games, and gossip coming from the arcade, she noticed suddenly, arriving at the end of the block. Her pace sped into a run. She remembered vividly the day she had found Buji in a bloody heap outside, thrown by a youma…

The doors slid apart. A horrifying scene was revealed.

"Darien!" she screamed.