Double Exposure

by Huitzil

An accident causes the Pharaoh 90 to be driven off before Sailor Saturn can sacrifice herself. But he's not gone for long, and now the Senshi are flying blind, the Hoffmann Institute in over their heads, and Hotaru faces a hard choice about herself.

7. Double Jeopardy

Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and the DARK∙MATTER setting was written by Wolfgang Baur and Monte Cook. I own neither of these things, and expect that if either of those last two people Google their own names they are going to be incredibly confused.

∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

The man in black smiled, narrow, malicious. There were police officers nearby so he couldn't let them see ALL of his teeth, but he got the message across all the same. "Well, if it isn't Itohiro Nakami! We didn't expect to find you here, judging by your history. The Director of the Hoffmann Institute... I wonder if should buy a lottery ticket!"

Nakami sneered, and the man in black knew that the expression he saw wasn't his real face, that it was an illusion. "So who sent you, G-Man? Is it the CXS? Bildebergs? Are you working for the Ahotti?"

The man in black nodded toward the officers emerging from the guest room, and Nakami, Nadine, and Philip turned around to see what he was indicating. The three agents were bound at the wrists, two with handcuffs and one with a plastic tie. Nakami, of course, was wearing the same clothing he always wore, a rumpled and creased white shirt and slacks and a red tie with a coffee ring on it. Philip and Nadine were in over-large blue jeans, Phil wore a large button-up flannel shirt that had seen better days and Nadine had an oversize T-shirt that had a bald eagle holding an M16 and the words "DON'T MESS WITH THE U.S."

Three of Tokyo's finest -- as the saying goes, though in a city where magic princesses fight monsters it may not be as applicable -- had emerged from the room the Hoffmann agents had hoped to use as lodgings, one of them holding an M16 assault rifle, one holding a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle, and one holding two Ziploc bags filled with mixed calibers of ammunition. The three agents turned back, faces reddening in embarrassment and rage, and the man in black threw back his head and laughed. "You know, Nakami-chan, for someone who purports to be from this country you could sure stand to learn a lot about its gun laws! With such a good reason for the Tokyo police to come after you, I don't know why you would think I'd need to be motivated by any third party..."

He leaned in close to what he saw as Nakami's face, then after a couple seconds lowered his gaze a few more inches to stare into where the Fraal's eyes would actually be located, and continued in a voice only Nakami could hear, "...especially when I have so very, very many reasons that are entirely my own." He lowered his sunglasses so only Nakami could see the milky white orbs beneath them, hissed, then pulled them back on and stood upright once more.

Philip looked like he wanted to punch the man in black in the face, but his hands were cuffed behind him and he doubted he could kick higher than his waist. "You can't arrest me," he said angrily, "I'm an American citizen, I demand to be taken to the embassy!" He knew it wouldn't matter, and he'd be no better off there than in Japanese prison, but he wanted to feel like he was doing something.

"Agent Statler-san," said the policeman holding the M16 once the outburst was over. "We've found some of the contraband you predicted, but there are two pistols still unaccounted for." He nodded back at the guest room. "We found some other materials as well -- what looks like laboratory equipment, a great deal of paper notes, and a large number of lamps. Should we call for a haz-mat team, do you think they're...?"

Statler looked off to the side and chuckled. "Oh yeah, the lamps were a great idea. Because, you know, nobody could just come out twenty feet away and open the unlocked, paper door that doesn't have any guards on it. My God, you people are stupid." The policeman started to open his mouth and Statler waved his hand. "No, no, no, it's okay. Nothing wrong with that stuff, and it's not our problem anyway. In fact..." He stroked his chin. "In fact I think we can leave it here. We don't want to make a scene, do we? I know where the rest of the cache is and I'll be arresting them momentarily. Putting up police tape and those little numbers by all the objects will just draw totally unnecessary attention."

The officer looked perplexed. "...Sir? We only use the little numbers at a murder, and it's highly irregular not to take all the evidence from a crime scene..."

Statler extended a gloved hand into the officer's face and snapped it as if he was trying to get a child's attention. "I am in command of this operation, aren't I?" Statler waited a couple seconds, staring at the officer until he realized he was supposed to nod. "And I am the one working for the FBI, right?" He nodded again. "And if it's my experienced FBI counterterrorism anti-smuggling opinion that we leave the stuff here just like we found it, what are you going to do, Minori-chan?"

The Hoffmann agents wondered what the hell kind of trap he was setting if he already knew where all of them were. Officer Minori looked uncertain for a few moments, then said "I'll... leave the stuff here just like we found it?"

"That's right, Minori-chan!" said Statler in the voice one usually reserves for telling children it's great that they used the potty. "Because if you didn't, that would mean you're making waves! And what do I hate, Minori-chan?"

Nadine put on an expression of mock befuddlement. "Could it be... people who make waves, sensei?"

Statler laughed like a seal barks. "Ha! You're a real funny one, Nadine-chan. Your life has always been useless and in a week when the police beat all of you to death with hoses not one single person on this Earth will remember anything you did. Wocka-wocka!" He threw out his hands like he was ending a tap routine and held a phony smile for a few moments, enough to let the mockery sink in, then returned to a normal standing position. "Now if all of you will excuse me, I've got to make sure your littlest felon comes along as quietly as you." He began to walk off, then spied the elderly shrinekeeper transfixed with shock at the fact the police were here arresting people. He was holding an orange he must have been planning to use to make lunch with, and Statler snatched it out of the old man's hand with a flourish and disappeared behind a corner.

"You can't do this to us!" Nadine screamed as the policemen started to lead them down to the squad car. "We know our rights!"

Phil would have palmed his face if his hands were free. "No we don't, Nadine. We're in Japan, as far as I can tell we don't have any rights!"

"The American Miranda law does not apply here," said Officer Minori in a voice as patient as he could make it sound. "but though you do not have a right to counsel you do have a right to silence. Please exercise it."

"This is all your fault, Nakami," said Phil heedless of the officer's request. "I thought you were supposed to have friends in high places! Allies! You could... CONVINCE people to DO things!"

"And I WOULD," growled Nakami, "if not for the fact that I've been awake for twenty-nine hours straight and if I don't get a shot of something soon I'm going to pass out and that'll cause a major LOSS of FACE!"

"Hey!" shouted the officer pushing Nakami. "No more talking in code! You don't have a right to talk in code!"

"Don't tell me what not to say!" yelled Nakami as they pushed him into the car, becoming more and more frenzied and panicked. "Do you have any idea who I am? I'll have your badge for this! I'll have all your badges! If your dogs have badges, I'll have -- OW!"

A half-eaten orange bounced off Nakami's head and rolled underneath the car.

∙ ∙ ∙ SAILOR∙MOON: DOUBLE EXPOSURE

CHAPTER 7: DOUBLE JEOPARDY ∙ ∙ ∙

JUUBAN DISTRICT, OUTSIDE CROWN GAME CENTER TOKYO, JAPAN MONDAY FEBRUARY 21, 1995 1:33 PM

"So you go to HELL, tux-boy! You don't know ME, you don't know what I DO, you don't know what I AM, you don't know shit about shit! Having nicer clothes and more money doesn't make you better than me! It doesn't make you SHIT! You just come on in here and think because you got goddamn roses and lasers that makes you some kind of rock star..."

Tuxedo Kamen took off his mask and rubbed his eyes. Sailor Moon's arm didn't hurt any more, because it was completely asleep. The daimon had only really been talking for two or three minutes, but that felt like an eternity when your arm's in a hammerlock being maintained by a screechy daimon who's trying to convince you you're no better than it. About seven or eight meters away, on opposite sides of the street, Mars and Mercury stood with their hands trained on the daimon's head, attacks at the ready for the instant Moon got out of the hold. Venus was maybe five more meters past them; she'd helped the dark-haired woman off the sidewalk and now appeared to be conferring with the two foreigners on the tactical situation, and how to incorporate them into the Senshi's battle plan.

"So, you people look like you do this often," said Donna as she worked her shoulders around, "is everything in Tokyo this stupid?"

Venus wanted to correct her about the seriousness of the situation, about the stakes they were dealing with, but in good conscience she couldn't say anything other than "...Yeah. Yeah, it is. So you're the ones who found Sailor Saturn, I assume?"

Donna arched an eyebrow. "That depends. Do you want to kill her?"

"Donna," said Bill with a roll of his eyes, "if she does you just told her anyway."

"You met Uranus and Neptune, I take it," said Venus. "We don't want to hurt Saturn. She's our friend, and we've been very worried about her. She hasn't been hurt, has she?"

"No!" said Donna, disproportionately insulted.

"Yes, she has," said Bill at almost the same time. He looked at Donna's expression and hastily added, "Not by us, though! She was in a fight with a few of those daimon-things. And then she got shot a couple times by a shadow guy."

"And you know you people have like bulletproof armor and magic healing powers! She's fine now!" Donna looked from side to side, then pensively added, "Uh, by 'you people' I mean, like planet-sailors, not 'Japanese people.'"

Venus sighed and scoffed at the same time, no easy feat. "Yes, I know that you don't think Japanese people all have magic powers. I'm just happy that she's okay and that you don't want to use her to end the world. We've had some of that lately."

"...The hell?" Bill looked behind them at a manhole cover in the middle of the street that appeared to have come loose in the middle of their conversation and was now forming a crescent-moon shape over the dark shaft it was supposed to seal. He held out two fingers to Venus and held up his gun with his other hand as he walked away from them to investigate. "Hang on, I think there might be another MOTHERFU--"

The manhole cover twirled upward like a flipped coin and from the pit there came a shape, white and glistening and sharp, that hit Bill in the chest like a concrete block dropped from an overpass. He fell backwards to the ground, gun knocked out of his reach, and his hands were engaged in batting away the frenzied attacks of the saurian creature. It was something like a small dinosaur, with webbed feet planted on Bill's stomach, three-fingered hands wrapped around a short hand-axe it was trying to bury into his head, skin of ivory scales, and a head featuring a wide, bony crest, bright blue-green eyes, and a wide mouth filled with serrated teeth. They poured out of the open manhole with preternatural speed, clutching axes, spears and swords that looked to be made of scavenged car parts and garden tools, hissing menacingly.

"Daimons! AMBUSH!" shouted Venus, pointing her index and middle fingers outward and making a split-second decision to determine which was the priority target.

"Kinori! AMBUSH!" shouted Donna in English at the same moment, spreading her legs into a firing stance and aiming for the head of the lizard perched on Bill.

"No! No, you get back the hell in there!" screamed U-Kigumoko. "You wait for the signal and I did not give the signal yet! I don't need your help for any of this!" She let go of one of Moon's arms so she could point at the pack of lizards as they fanned out. "So you get your little gay-ass spears and you get back in that hole and don't come out until you're telling the Master how I -- OW!" Moon, one of her arms now freed, threw an elbow into the daimon's nose. The impact wasn't that hard but it was unexpected, and the daimon let go of her other arm to grab at her face. "You bitch, that HURT!"

Moon took a few steps and turned around, rubbing her numb wrist, then realized the daimon was still standing on the Moon Rod. There were six of the white lizards around the manhole now, and a seventh that looked like them save that his scales were ebony-black. The black scaled one shouted back to the daimon, and its speech was closer to a dog barking than a snake hissing. "Silence, egg! Surface-dwellers are to perish, not to talk to! You take too long! KILL THEM!"

And then everything was in motion. The lizard-things ran outward, their gate clumsy and waddling but their pace fast enough to compensate; two went for Venus, two went for Donna, one was already on top of Bill, and the last made for Mars. The blackscale walked toward Sailor Moon, his gait much smoother and more assured, and he appeared unarmed but Moon couldn't see what he had strapped to his back. Donna squeezed off one pot shot at the creature pinning her companion before the other two kinori closed in, but it ricocheted harmlessly off the crest on its head. She shifted her aim and started firing at the creatures closing in on her, alternating her shots between the two of them. Each hit caused them to flinch while broken scales flew off them, but they weren't slowed enough to create any kind of comfortable gap.

Venus held out both hands at the creatures advancing on her and braced her knees, even though she knew she didn't have recoil to deal with the motion was instinctual. "Double Crescent Beam!" she shouted, and the fingertips of both hands erupted with light. The yellow beam from her left hand went clear over its target's head, but the right beam caught its target square in the chest. Its bright aquamarine eyes went wide with shock and it reeled backwards as if it had been kicked... but not as if it had been shot, and as the left creature reached her with its spear, the right one shook off the impact and started running for Mercury.

Mars fired off a Burning Mandala and tried to spread it to hit more than one of them, to little success. She missed the ones on Donna and nearly scorched her in the process, the black one seemed to ignore the attack, and the white one running for her reeled, its skin crackled, but it did not fall. It started to advance once more and then shrieked in pain, clutching at an eye that now had a long-stemmed rose protruding from it.

Mercury attacked the daimon now that she no longer had her human shield, but of course the daimon sidestepped her Shine Aqua Illusion and snorted derisively at the effort. She wished she could do some kind of predictive tracking or analyze any weaknesses the daimon had, but her visor was giving her nothing but static. There was some kind of massive electromagnetic disturbance in the area, perhaps part of the ambush was a device to disable her visor. It hadn't been working since the daimon appeared, but nothing about U-Kigumoko seemed all that magnetic. But then again when she slapped Mercury aside like a wimpy American football linesman, the visor shorted out altogether, so maybe that was it. As Mercury fell backwards, she saw the daimon slap aside a kinori that appeared to have been charging her from behind, it reacted to the betrayal with an inarticulate yelp.

Moon grabbed at the Rod that had been knocked to the ground, her arm experiencing that tingly pins-and-needles sensation as feeling returned to it. The blackscale advanced on her, heedless of the bedlam going on around it, and performed something that must have been a smile for a species with no lips. "No more games for Surface-Queen! Now you get to play death!"

Venus ducked backwards to avoid a spear thrust that would have given her a new eye socket, then momentarily abandoned the possibility of attack to concentrate on avoiding the lightning-fast flurry of thrusts and swings it was sending at her. With no weapon of her own to parry, she ducked, jumped, sidestepped, spun, flipped, each time barely avoiding the weapon's deadly point. It was an inelegant, frenzied dance, but it was a dance that kept her alive. Over the crest of the kinori's head she saw Donna faring no better, she'd broken into a full run as one of the creatures chased her, she was screaming either in pain or terror. The one on top of Bill looked like it was trying to gnaw off his hand, at least until the back of its head exploded and Bill pulled a blood-soaked hand clutching a blood-soaked gun out of the creature's mouth. The corpse fell to the street like a bag of cement, showing no indication it would disappear in a puff and revert back to whatever it was made of.

U-Kigumoko reached the streetlight pole she was running toward, clapped and rubbed her palms together, then jumped. She kicked off of the wall behind the pole, kicked the pole as she reached the apogee of her arc, kicked the wall again to rise even further, and smacked the back of her head against the light pole with a reverberating 'WHONG'. She fell to the sidewalk, snapped her head around to see if anyone saw that, then muttered "Tell me I take too long, don't need your goddamn help, think I can't take care of these idiots by myself..." as she cupped her hands around the pole and 'walked' up the surface to get to the rooftop of the adjacent building.

Moon rose from the ground with the Rod clutched uneasily in her hand, took a deep breath, closed one eye, and nailed the blackscale right between the eyes with a Moon Spiral Heart Attack. He laughed, a horridly forced noise, and didn't seem to react to the attack in any other way. "Magics can't work on me, Surface-Queen! We bathe in your font of magic every day -- can't hurt us, now! Your weapons, though, your weapons very good at killing your kind!" His clawed hands reached for the object he had strapped to his back and returned with an old lever-action shotgun.

"Take heart, Sailor Senshi... and others!" shouted Tuxedo Kamen with a quick glance at the man with the bloody Magnum and the woman screaming a string of obscenities as a monster chased her around in narrow circles in the middle of the street. "Don't give up, and you can defeat this foe!" He reached into his jacket and threw another rose at the blackscale that pulled a gun on Sailor Moon; his hand darted from the barrel and snatched the rose out of the air like he knew it was coming. Tuxedo Kamen grimaced and reached for another rose, and that's when U-Kigumoko shoulder-tackled him to floor.

Bill's face was now a scowl that could curdle milk at ten paces, blood oozing from puncture marks on his right arm, seeping downward to mix with the slightly darker blood of the kinori, running in thin rivers over his knuckles, dripping off the tip of his gun. He stomped toward Donna and her lizard attacker; she remembered reading in a dentist's office that if an alligator was chasing you the trick was to run in a circle because they don't corner well and apparently that applied to kinori too. "That is IT!" Bill shouted, "I have HAD IT with your bullshit, Tokyo!" The kinori turned toward him just as he grabbed the crest on the back of it head and yanked it toward him, shoving the barrel of his gun into the creature's eye. He pulled the trigger once, then again, then again, becoming more and more frustrated each time when the only thing that came out was a clicking noise. More disgusted than afraid at the fact he was holding onto the head of a creature that meant to kill him with an axe, he shouted "Goddamned blood got the bullets wet!" to nobody in particular, right before the kinori's wild defensive swing embedded the axe-blade deep enough into his thigh to touch bone.

The one with the rose in its eye flailed about on the ground, limbs and tail twitching like a lizard epileptic as he swatted at the flower poking out of his skull, the thorns leaving it unable to pull the rose out without painfully shredding his eye tissue. Mars windmilled her arm around, tracing out another ring of fire with her fingertip, hissing "Burningmandaaa..." through her gritted teeth but not finishing the attack, leaving the hoop of flame to hang in the air for a few seconds as a spear-wielding kinori closed the distance between them. Just half a second before it leapt through and skewer her she bellowed the last syllable of the invocation and blasted the creature with all eight spheres of flame at the same time, each of them making a satisfying WHUD as they connected. It staggered backward with each impact and by the sixth the kinori completely lost his balance and fell to the ground, where Sailor Mars began to stomp on its prone form, flames licking at her calves.

The rooftop had been covered in gravel, and it crunched and crackled as Tuxedo Kamen fell against it. His jacket was scuffed and torn, his hat rolled away in the breeze like a lazy tumbleweed, his white mask cracked, bent, flew from his face and twirled to the ground like a maple seed. U-Kigumoko had one hand on his throat, sitting on his chest and pinning his arms with her knees, and with her other hand was punching him in the face repeatedly, he felt the tiny stones digging into the back of his head every time she did. "Do you have any idea what you SOUND LIKE?" she howled, punctuated by the noises of flesh colliding with flesh and stones rubbing against stones. "You show up dressed like you think you're Sean Goddamned Connery, throwing ROSES around, and you're like," she curled her lip to bare her teeth, seemingly heedless of Tuxedo Kamen's efforts to work his arm free from under her leg, "'Derr, look at me and my fancy suit! I think I'll babble on about love and purity for a while! Hurfa durfa durfa doo! Don't run away girls, I will throw a daff-oh-dill at the -- eyahme --'" The daimon looked down to see that Kamen had worked his arm free and grabbed the side of her face, two fingers hooked into her cheek and one right at the edge of her nostril. "Ah, oo heece oh hit," she said around his gloved hand, then he yanked downward and brought the side of her head into the gravel.

"Many subjects, huh, Surface-Queen?" said the blackscale kinori. He held his elbow over the shotgun, pointed it at Sailor Mercury right as she rose to her feet, and pulled the trigger. Stinging lead pellets struck her all over her torso, arm, and thigh, though her reflexive movement to cover her face left it mostly unharmed. With a strangled squeal that didn't have the energy to be a scream, she fell once more to the sidewalk. "Perhaps if you were a better queen, they'd be loyal to you too, yes?" He worked the lever-action, ejected the spent shell, and brought the barrel underneath his wide mouth and Moon heard air hiss out of it, though he didn't have any lips he was clearly blowing the smoke off the barrel. "Leave your gate-keeper all alone to watch us, in our hatchery? Gate-keeper saw enough to know she liked kinori more than surface-dwellers!"

There was only one person the 'Gate-keeper' could be. "That's a lie!" shouted Moon. "Sailor Pluto could never hurt any of us. She's being controlled by something evil -- and so are you!" She took a step backwards, hands shaking around the Moon Rod. "Whatever it is it told you you're doing, it wants you to end the world!"

"The Master wants to end YOUR world, Surface-Queen! And in that we are of total agreement!" Another burst of flame erupted from Mars, struck the blackscale in the back. The flames curled and licked around him but had no ill effect, and without turning around he put the shotgun on his shoulder and fired back at where the attack had come from. Moon saw he grazed Mars, but most of the pellets hit the creature running up behind her. "Stupid humans, stupid Greys in control too long! Kinori too afraid to change things -- Master 90 show us how!" With one hand pointing at Sailor Moon, he spun his firearm by the lever, trying to work the action by flipping the weapon around in a circle -- a bit before the halfway point of the loop, the weapon slipped out of his three-fingered hand and sailed forward, clattering to the ground. The blackscale barked out something that had to be kinori for 'shit!'

Bill's mouth opened so wide Donna momentarily thought his jaw unhinged, and emitted an unbelievable string of profanity that zigzagged between English and Russian and both simultaneously. The kinori pulled on the axe handle to take it out for another swing, but only managed to wiggle it a bit, the spray of blood from around the wound became a fountain as the axe head was loosened. Bill made a wild, drunken swipe that the kinori easily batted aside with one hand as it tried to yank out its weapon with the other, and right before Bill was certain it was going to come loose and let out a veritable torrent of his blood the kinori's head jerked forward, with Donna's knuckles grasping its crest, and it jerked twice in time with the two gunshots. Donna threw it to the side, showing the two smoking holes at the base of its skull; she was about to say something about Bill being a big crying baby, but once she saw how deep the axe was she shouted "MEDIC! We need the healy-hands over here NOW!" Bill fell forward, the puddle of blood beneath him rapidly becoming a lake.

Tuxedo Kamen rolled out from underneath U-Kigumoko, grabbed his cane from where it had fallen, and came to his feet a couple meters away from her. His hat and mask were gone, though still none could identify him as Chiba Mamoru if they didn't already know. His elegant clothing was scuffed, dirtied, torn, his hair was matted and dusty, his nose and mouth were bleeding and his cheek was starting to swell but somehow, the way he stood, the way he moved, the look of righteous determination in his eyes made him the living portrait of class and sophistication all the same. "You are a skilled fighter, but a skilled villain..." he flipped his cane upward and grabbed it by the handle, holding it like a champion's sword, "...shall never be a match for a virtuous soul!" He spread his feet, put up his arms, sized up her stance.

"Bring it, Boy Scout." The daimon charged him, face twisted in a snarl. Kamen swung the cane at her head, the polished surface leaving a brilliant crescent behind it as if it were a blade. She ducked beneath it, the wind from the attack stirring up her uneven-length hair, and thrust for his kidney. He stepped backwards, leaving her punch short, then swung the cane into her wrist to parry her first follow-up, her next punch he caught in his open hand. She spun around his hand to dodge an overhead swing, twisting her arm around in its socket, than chopped the inside of his elbow to release her other hand. She backed out of range of his cane, rubbed her wrist. "Oh, you're good. Almost good enough to justify all your talk. ALMOST."

"Venus... Love-me... Chain!" gasped out Sailor Venus in between frantic dodges, and like magic -- for it is -- a glowing yellow chain of heart-shaped links appeared in her hand. Twirling like a ballerina to avoid another thrust and build momentum, Venus smacked the kinori in the snout, throwing it off-balance, then while it was stunned wrapped the chain around its spear and yanked it out of its hands. She laughed triumphantly, spun the chain above her head, and lassoed the lizard. It braced its feet, digging its talons into the asphalt as best it could, and as Venus pulled on the chain the kinori pulled back, turning it into a tug-of-war contest. It strained, grunted, but this was Venus's weapon and it was clearly her game, and the kinori was being inexorably pulled toward her. Until one of the other kinori, staggering from a buckshot pellet to the eye, fell backwards onto the chain and it slipped out of Venus's hands.

Sailor Moon and the lizard-man commander made eye contact for a fleeting moment as the lever-action Remington clattered against the street, and the kinori's saurian face had an expression that Sailor Moon could not read, but guessed was either smoldering rage or mortified embarrassment. They dove for the gun simultaneously, arms stretched out in front of them, yelling a cry with no words. The kinori was a split-second faster, but Moon's arm was longer, and she wrapped her hand around the barrel at the same moment that he got his three clawed fingers around the weapon's stock. A third of a second later, their heads collided, the red ornament on Moon's right odango was scraped off against the right side of the kinori's face, the scales on his skin pulled at her hair. She yelped in pain when they pulled apart and his scales yanked her hair out of the ball it had been tied in, and reflexively her hand went up to grab her scalp instead of going down to grab the barrel of the shotgun.

It only delayed her by a second, but it was enough, and the kinori wrested the gun out of her grip. He took a half-step back and, with no other options, Sailor Moon fell toward him, swinging her arms to try and slap the weapon away. When the kinori pulled the trigger, the barrel was pointed right at her navel, about fifteen centimeters away. She stopped, her eyes widened, and she would have screamed in pain if she had any breath left. She reeled backward, almost fell, but caught herself at the last second. Her vision was blurred and her ears were ringing from the gunshot, but she could see through the holes in her uniform that she was barely even bleeding. She laughed in surprise, shook her head around, the hair on the right side of her head splayed about everywhere, and with the pain shaken off she met the kinori's eyes once more. He growled.

Sailor Mercury grimaced, brought her hand to her ear, and tapped her earring. The very edge of the Mercury Visor vanished back into the un-space it normally dwelt in, and the rest of the device fell off from where the piece had vanished and fractured on the sidewalk. It would come back to her in perfect condition the next time she transformed, but right now the damn thing had too many cracks to adequately see through, and the earring only pulled it back until it hit a crack. She was stinging all up her side and her hands; her whole left side felt like one big skinned knee. She rolled on to her back and before she even sat up saw a kinori two, maybe three meters from her, holding a spear, its skin blackened in places by recent application of flame; it must have meant to finish her off before it moved to the others. When it saw her move, it started to run faster, but it couldn't close the distance in the time Mercury could say "Shine Aqua Illusion".

She expected it to flinch, the creatures were clearly magic resistant, and give her time to get up and think of a better way to fight it off. It flinched, drunkenly listed to the side, twitched its head, and staggered toward her at maybe a quarter of the speed it was using. It pushed the spear in her general direction but provided almost no resistance when she grabbed it out of its hands and smacked it on the side of the head with the shaft; he fell over easily. Lizards may be magic resistant, but they were apparently still cold-blooded, and did not respond well to freezing. She pointed the spear straight up and used it to help herself to her feet, taking a quick glance around to survey the situation.

Sailor Mars was wrestling with one of the kinori, and though the creature was disarmed Mercury couldn't tell if it was losing or not. Nearby, another kinori had its webbed foot on the back of Sailor Venus's neck and was choking her with the Love-Me Chain, she had her hands underneath it but didn't have the leverage to pull it off her throat. The red-head was facedown in the street with an axe in his leg, and the woman had taken off her shirt -- she was wearing a bra that looked brand-new and a size too big for her -- to press it against the wound, taking an occasional shot at the kinori choking Venus but not hitting anything one-handed. Two kinori were dead, one more incapacitated with a rose in the eye, one more Mercury had just knocked down. Tuxedo Mask and U-Kigumoko were nowhere to be found, but there were sounds of a struggle from the rooftop. About a block away, and inside of the "youma aura", a black sedan was idling in the center of the street. And the blackscale kinori had just shot Sailor Moon right next to where Mercury was standing, so the course of action was obvious, still it was good to know the situation.

U-Kigumoko and Tuxedo Kamen punched, kicked, and dodged, hands and feet twirling like dead leaves caught in a dust devil. She sent two roundhouse kicks to his face in succession, he ducked under the left foot and caught the right heel in his hand, yanked it up in the air to throw her off her balance and send her to the floor with a yelp. "You are quick," he said, circling around her just outside her reach, "But one who refuses to acknowledge her own weaknesses is not truly aware of her own capabilities. Worse still, you believe your anger to be a strength you draw upon, not something that holds you back." He extended the cane to jab at her, but quickly retracted it when she started to grab on to it. "Humility and temperance are the hallmarks of the true champion, not pride and rage."

"What is it going to take," she growled from the floor, "for you to stop this Mr. Miyagi--" and here the gravel crunched under her palms as she launched upward feet-first, spring-boarding out of the prone position and shouting "--BULLSHIT!" right as the soles of her feet collided with Tuxedo Kamen's face. He fell backwards, kept enough control to roll when he hit the ground and be on his feet again at the same time U-kigumoko jumped at him. "Oh, the warrior has virtue in his heart!" she shouted, and threw a punch at his chest that he blocked, and another at his stomach that he didn't. "The slow blade penetrates the shield!" She grabbed his wrist with both hands, and before she could twist it he struck her in the solar plexus with the base of his palm; she staggered backward, gasping for air, and he swung his cane into the side of her head while she was reeling, then hit her again from the other side. He reached into his jacket for another rose to finish the fight but had it kicked from his hand. The daimon's voice was thin and gasping, she'd had the wind knocked out of her, but still she spoke, saying "Opportunities multiply as they are seized! Your lucky numbers are 3, 5 and 23! Do you have any idea what a laughingstock you are? People are laughing at you!" with such fevered intensity it was as if she thought she could make it all true if she just said it enough times.

The blackscale hissed in disbelief and worked the lever on the shotgun without taking his eyes off of Sailor Moon. "Impossible! Surface-weapons made to kill your kind -- you're dead! Should be dead!" His eyes went wide and he snapped his head in the direction of Sailor Mercury just in time to see the Shine Aqua Illusion strike him in the face. He twitched, ground his teeth, snarled, but didn't seem affected to the same extent as the other one. He saw the kinori next to Mercury listlessly trying to get up and put two and two together. He looked to Sailor Moon, then to Mercury, then back to Moon, howled in frustration and smashed her across the mouth with the butt of the shotgun. "Come BACK for you, Surface-Queen! Master 90 take you all!" Moon fell to the ground, hand over her mouth with blood dripping from between her fingers. As one, all of the still-living kinori's heads jerked in the direction of the manhole they'd climbed out of and they began to retreat; at the same moment there came the sound of tires squealing as the black sedan started to move.

With dizzying speed the blackscale sprinted back to the sewer, head low and tail high forming a line parallel to the ground. The whitescales on Mars and Venus broke away and ran to the manhole, though their speed-waddling gait was not so sleek and elegant as the blackscale. The one with the rose in its eye scrambled on all fours, head and limbs twitching and jerking like a yurei in a cheap horror film. The one that Mercury had hit, though, was trying to run but could manage nothing faster than an easy jog. The others leapt into the hole and vanished into the darkness, but Mercury's target lagged behind them; and right as it got close to the sewer entrance the black sedan had closed the distance, brakes smoking and hissing as it went into a totally needless handbrake turn, spinning ninety degrees and coming to a stop directly over the open manhole. The driver's side window was open, and sticking out from it there was a gloved hand at the end of a black-sleeved arm, holding an enormous black pistol with a barrel so wide it should have had guardrails so children wouldn't fall in. When the car came to a stop, the gun was maybe thirty degrees off from pointing right into the last kinori's face; the man in the car grumbled, shifted his aim, and blew a chunk out of the creature's head.

∙ ∙ ∙

Hotaru had only intended to catch her breath, then get up and find a way out before the police caught on to her, but she was still exhausted from the day before and soon caught herself nodding off. Her eyes snapped open as soon as she realized it and she saw she was no longer wearing Sailor Saturn's clothing, that she was back in her simple black shirt and pants. She thought she must have fallen asleep, or passed out, and that caused her to slip out of the transformation, she had to get out before the police came back and recognized her. She looked up and saw Sailor Saturn standing in the doorway of the shed, illuminated by a soft glowing light from behind her that still allowed Hotaru to see her face, holding the Silence Glaive perfectly straight beside her and looking Messianic. She realized she'd fallen asleep, and she still was.

"Hotaru," Saturn said in a voice that was almost like hers, but older and more confident. "I know you're worried. I know you're afraid. But I've come to tell you there's no reason to be. You have the strength to overcome any obstacle, if only you believe it."

Hotaru sighed. "No I don't. You do. Sailor Saturn has the strength, Tomoe Hotaru's just a liability. If you've come here as a glowing vision to tell me about my inner strength when you're doing all the work... then, then I think you've wasted your time."

Saturn took a step forward, carefully tilting the Glaive so it wouldn't slice into the doorframe, and closed the door behind her. There was no more light spilling in from the doorway, and no visible light source in the shed, but everything was still fully visible as if they were in especially bright candlelight. "But Hotaru, YOU are Sailor Saturn now! I may be the first Sailor Saturn, but the power is etched into my soul -- into your soul. You are noble, and virtuous, and there can be no strength I have that you do not share."

"It's a horrible power," she muttered while looking off to the side. "What kind of madmen would ask anyone, much less a child, to hold that hideous strength?" Her eyes welled. "What noble might is there in mass murder? How can I be such a good person when what's etched into my soul is the potential for six billion deaths waiting to be unleashed?"

Saturn carefully leaned the Glaive against the wall so it couldn't slice through it, then crouched down beside Hotaru. "Hotaru, Hotaru... you're not a murderer. The power of Saturn isn't murder --"

Hotaru's face turned red, her hands balled into fists. "I don't see how the power to kill every living thing on the planet Earth counts as anything but murder! That's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it? Kill off planets! That's my job! Is it, is it supposed to be okay to kill people if I think their society isn't good enough?"

Saturn laid a hand on Hotaru's shoulder, just to let her know someone was there for her. "No, Hotaru. It isn't okay. But that isn't what being Sailor Saturn is about. When Queen Serenity granted it to me, she didn't want someone to run around and kill planets... she was saying to me, 'Princess Hangaku, the Silver Millennium trusts your judgment and your virtue so totally that we'd even trust you with the power to wipe out entire worlds, because we know that you could never misuse it.' The mantle of Saturn is not a murderer's fate... it is a testament to your unimpeachable virtue."

Hotaru pushed Saturn's hand away. "No. It's a testament to YOUR unimpeachable virtue. You're the perfect princess who earned it, it fell onto me. I mean, I'm not a psychologist, but I've read enough to know -- someone like me, someone who had my history, I'm a serial killer waiting to happen." She looked down, slowly exhaled. "I've already killed. I bring nothing but suffering and misery to everyone around me. You were impeccable and pure, you could have been Mahatma Gandhi, but if you wanted virtue and goodness in your successor, I don't think you looked hard enough."

"But Hotaru, I know that's not what you're doing," said Saturn, and she stood up and walked back to the door. "Because you and I are far more alike than you're willing to give yourself credit for. You know that I was pure and good, you say that I could be trusted... but Hotaru, you and I are the same person."

Hotaru suddenly found herself standing by the door, in Sailor Saturn's outfit, looking down at a girl with dark purple hair and violet eyes in a black shirt and pants. She was disoriented for a moment by the unexpected movement, but she doubted it was as much as Sailor Saturn -- or Princess Hangaku, now that she was out of the uniform -- intended it to be, since it was quite clear the they were not the same person, that they had switched clothes and places. Hangaku was taller than Hotaru was, and Hotaru's clothes didn't cover her navel or ankles, the ankles had marks on them like cord had been wrapped around them, and tight. There was a red scar running across Hangaku's neck, thin but bright and angry, and her eyes widened she she realized Hotaru was staring at it; her hands darted to her neck to cover it up and Hotaru saw her left hand was missing three fingers. Hangaku flushed red with embarrassment.

"...So," said Hotaru after a long pause, and put her finger underneath Sailor Saturn's dark purple choker, "Is that what this is supposed to cover up?"

"No..." said Hangaku. She pulled her knees up to her chest and crossed her arms over them, thought about it for a few seconds. "No, it's just a coincidence. I didn't... didn't know it would show up, and I always had the choker on, so I couldn't see it."

"What happened?"

Hangaku sighed. "It was near the end of the Silver Millennium's reign, and there was a sage, Beryl, who was gathering an army on Earth, drumming up support for a war on the Moon. All of the nobles were worried about the threat she posed, about what little of a standing army we had, all the damage she could do if diplomacy failed and there was open hostility. Everyone was afraid, and they were working out all the possible options they had -- just, you know, just to see what was possible. And someone, some nobleman suggested that if worse came to worse, and it looked like Beryl was about to launch an attack, that they send me to Earth and cleanse it."

"That... that's horrible. No, it's horrific." Hotaru didn't look angry so much as queasy.

Hangaku nodded ruefully. "That's what I thought. And when Queen Serenity didn't reject it out of hand, I decided I would commit jigai -- the, uh, noblewoman's honorable suicide, like seppuku -- in protest. I went back to my quarters, tied my ankles together, and tried to cut my jugular with the Glaive but, only I pushed a bit too hard, and, you know, it's so sharp..." her voice dropped to a near-inaudible mumble, "...and it ended up slicing clean through the neck."

Hotaru nodded slowly, sorrowfully, and when she spoke there was nothing but melancholy. "So we really do have more in common than I thought -- no, that isn't... I'm so sorry."

"No, no, you're right!" Hangaku said, trying to salvage the conversation. "I ended my own life rather than see myself cause that kind of suffering. And, and I know you would too. You want to kill yourself now, because you think you can't be trusted and you don't deserve to be Sailor Saturn, but doesn't that prove you can be trusted, that you are living up to it?"

She bit her lip. "...What happened to your fingers?"

Hangaku looked at her hand and chuckled nervously. "I, uh, it was my first time using the Glaive." She put on a weak smile. "But that just shows that you don't have to be perfect to be Sailor Saturn, you just have to be good where it counts, right? And I know you're a good person, Hotaru. I know it and I feel it and..." she let out a long sigh, "and I know you don't believe it and that I made a fool of myself but all I want is for you to see it too, you've been given this wellspring of hope and light within you and it's so sad that you can't see it..."

Hotaru wanted to ask if there was any good part of her that she hadn't had passed on, or if it was that everything good was Hangaku's and everything bad was Hotaru's, but she knew she couldn't get a straight answer. Her past reincarnation wasn't very helpful, just giving out platitudes without working out what they meant... but she had helped a little, if only to show that Hotaru wasn't expected to be perfect. Hotaru knew she would fail to live up to any expectation, but knowing that Princess Saturn had a name and wasn't the perfect figure she'd built her up to be was for some reason very comforting.

After a prolonged silence, Hangaku said "You know I'll be watching over you. I'll help you any way I can, because I love you, and there are so many other people who love you too. But it's time for me to leave for now, you'll need to be awake." They switched places again, Hotaru more ready this time, and Sailor Saturn opened the door, picked up the Glaive and started to leave.

Something occurred to Hotaru and she called out before Saturn had made it out the door. "Wait!" Saturn stopped and turned back to her. "When you said that people were talking about that Beryl, and how they could deal with her... were there any aliens there you could go to for help?"

Saturn sighed, because she knew the question Hotaru was really asking. "I... I don't think I can answer that, Hotaru. Whether the Silver Millennium was before or after the aliens showed up, if they started it, if they were ever somewhere other than the Moon... I'm pretty sure that's something you're going to have to work out for yourself."

"But how am I supposed to find out the truth about events that happened thousands of years ago on another planet?"

Saturn sighed and she didn't simply look sad, she looked defeated. "I didn't say 'find out.'" And then she was gone and Hotaru was awake, in a pile of potting soil, wearing the uniform of Sailor Saturn.

∙ ∙ ∙

Donna pushed on the bloody, wadded-up shirt with both hands, holding back a river of red from flowing out of Bill's leg. "I still need some Goddamn help over here! I don't HAVE any magic healing powers!" she yelled, voice hoarse. "Did one of you call an ambu-- oh JESUS CHRIST!"

The driver of the black sedan leaned forward and peeked his head out of the window, and both Donna and Sailor Mercury could have described his pale fish-belly skin, inappropriate Ray-Bans, leechlike lips and smug, malicious smile with their eyes closed. "Hello there, ladies!" he said in Japanese both casual and insincere, "I trust these two hooligans haven't been interfering with Sailor Moon's duties? I would have come for them sooner, but I was cleaning something else up across town."

"I can't see anything," whispered Bill. "Tell me that's a Japanese paramedic talking?"

"It's that damn sharky man in black from before. I don't know what he's saying but I doubt he's going to get a first aid kit."

Bill's eyes shifted downward and he stared right into the surface of the street. "I hate you so much, Tokyo," he whispered.

"Actually," the man in black said, switching to English, "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you in person, Donna-chaaaan. My name is Agent Statler -- you've met my partner, Agent Waldorf." If Donna hadn't been pressing onto an axe wound, trying to keep her teammate from bleeding to death, she would have groaned. Sailor Mercury and Venus came to her side, trying to see if there was something they could do, but the three of them crowded around could do little more than one could.

"Of course I don't have to have met you to know where you're going" Agent Statler continued, "you people are so predictable. Anywhere there's a mess to be made worse, you'll find the Hoffmann Institute. Honestly, do you people have any individual thoughts or do you work off the same..." He peeked his head out further to look directly at the crowd around Bill. "...Wow. He is really, really bleeding over there, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is!" shouted Mercury. "He's going to die if he doesn't get medical attention right away!"

Statler seemed a bit flummoxed. "Well, geez, don't you have, you know, the magic healing powers?" He looked to each girl in turn, head tilting slightly with each one. "Okay, you don't have anything, you don't have anything, you don't have anything..."

On the rooftop, Tuxedo Kamen caught one of U-Kigumoko's punches with his right hand, then another with his left. They pushed against each other's grip for a few seconds, gazes locked on each other, then Tuxedo Kamen managed to take a step forward and get within range to sweep at the back of her knee with his heel. She yelped and fell forward, he spun around her as she fell, twisted her arm around, and ended with her face in the gravel, his knee between her shoulderblades, her arms pinned to her back. She grunted and struggled futilely. "Are you ready to surrender, demon?" he said, his tone as calm and even as ever.

"You know," she responded with a triumphant sneer, "if you weren't an idiot, you would have sat about twelve centimeters back from where you are now and pinned my legs." He felt her feet hook to the sides of his head and then he was yanked backwards to the ground. The daimon scrambled from underneath him and dropped both of her elbows into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. "I am DONE screwing around with you, tux-boy!" she shouted, and hooked her arms under his shoulders to lift him upward. "So now I'm going to pound you into a crater! How do you feel about that? You got some funny quote for that? 'Cause I'm all ears!"

She dragged him to the edge of the rooftop, stomping his ankles to stop him from finding his footing, and unceremoniously pitched him off; he fell two storied and hit the sidewalk with a thud and a groan. She climbed to the edge and glanced down to line herself up to jump on him, then as she glanced out on the street she noticed the kinori were gone and the Senshi were still there and she'd have to be a stationary target for too long to deal with the tux-guy. "...And I'll be back for the rest of you later!" she shouted, then turned and ran to the opposite edge of the roof. She leapt off to reach the next roof, one street away, but hit the side of the building about two meters from the top; she quickly picked herself up and sprinted into an alleyway.

"And you don't have anything... Oh! There we go!" said Agent Statler as Tuxedo Kamen impacted with the sidewalk. "That's what I was looking for. Hey, uh... Mamoru-chan, come over here, got a job for ya! Somebody want to go get him?"

"Whatever the hell he's talking about, whatever he's telling you to do, don't believe a word of it!" Donna shouted without looking towards him. "He's one of Them! He's the most Them that anyone's ever been!"

"He's telling us to bring Tuxedo Kamen over here to heal your friend's wound," Mercury translated.

"Then forget everything she just said!" said Bill as loudly as he could manage. Mercury and Venus had to lean over to hear him. "Do that! Do it! Get me a tuxedo man right now! I've got a Slayer video coming out of my leg here, I don't wanna die in this hellhole!"

But Sailor Moon didn't need permission, and was already halfway down the block to get Tuxedo Kamen. People were coming back towards them now that the daimon was gone, looking with curiosity, surprise and fear at the two kinori corpses, the bleeding man, and the man in black with the enormous gun. Sailor Mars stayed put, hands extended to aim at Agent Statler in case he tried anything.

"Your name is Hino Rei," he said with the tone of someone who can't believe he has to bother to say these things out loud, "although you don't look like her. You're a miko at the Hikawa shrine, you're wondering if I'm a Death Buster -- which is a stupid name -- you're wondering why the kinori didn't vanish when they died, and you're kind of pissed that you didn't kill any of them. And if you shoot your Flame Sniper or your Fire Soul or your Burning Mandala at me, not only am I going to dodge it, I am going to tell your friends here your deepest, darkest secret."

"...You could have read most of that from a file on me, guessed the rest, and tried to make me think you can read my mind." Mars arched an eyebrow. "You don't know any of my secrets."

"Not until I mentioned them and I got you to think about them! I wonder what Ami-chan and Mina-chan here would think if they knew you lusted after... put 'em down or I'm gonna say it... Mmmmmmaaa..." Mars's hands dropped to her sides, palms flat; it wasn't that she'd rather surrender than have her secret revealed, but if he really could read her mind there wasn't much of a point in attacking him.

Down the street, Sailor Moon leaned over to help Tuxedo Kamen up, but he held out his hand, laid his hand on a couple of places on his legs and torso, and stood on his own. A man of about thirty in a ratty suit and tie was standing right next to them, staring, making no attempt to help or engage in conversation. Statler whistled, tapped the edge of his gun against the side of his car, and generally acted as if he was waiting for a particularly slow elevator. "Soooo... Ami-chan, you been thinking about the question I asked you?"

"I haven't really had a chance!" she replied, astonished he was bringing it up, then leaned in to resume speaking to Bill. "Shh, shh. Don't panic. You're going to be just fine."

"There's an axe in my leg and the Men in Black are about to take me away!" he said in a hoarse whisper that was a close to a yell as he could get. "I don't see how that makes me just fine!"

"Shut up, Bill!" Donna looked around, seeing that there were several people staring at her chest and trying to get a sneak peek of breast, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "The tuxedo dude's going to patch you up and then they're going to magic the piss out of this guy, just keep cool!"

"She doesn't know what she's talking about, does she Ami-chan?" Statler smirked. "Of course good, obedient little girls like you would never do something so crass and rebellious, wouldn't you? Good little girls cooperate with the authorities, and the authorities cooperate with them in return. I left you a present back at the Hikawa shrine -- I'm sure you'll be able to find some use for it and get us out of this mess we're in." There was a sound of car doors closing, and a uniformed officer came into view from behind the sedan, then another. "I couldn't make heads or tails of it myself," Statler finished, then turned to the policeman. "Yes?"

The officer bowed to Statler, a gesture that was not returned, and tried not to stare at the dead lizard-man lying beside his car. "Agent Statler-san, we, uh, we're sorry for being late, but we fell behind you at that stoplight, and then..."

"...And then you drove around in circles because you couldn't find the intersection until just now, yeah, yeah, I know. There's our two perps, right over there." He nodded in the direction of Bill and Donna, which was also the direction of Sailor Venus, Mercury, Moon, and Tuxedo Kamen. After a moment, he added, "The two white people, over there."

Sailor Moon and Venus put their hands on the axe handle and blade and prepared to yank it out, while Tuxedo Kamen maneuvered his hands into position above and below the head. Donna patted one of his shoulders, Mercury the other. "Okay, they're going to have to pull the blade out now," she said evenly into his ear, "on the count of three. Are you ready?"

He shook his head and whimpered, and Donna rolled her eyes. "Bill, either they pull it out now, or you have an axe in your leg for the rest of your life which will be like half an hour at most." He paused, then nodded slowly and ruefully.

"Yes, that's Donna Kimberly Truitt and William Scott Wheeler, two members of the illegal paramilitary group known as the Hoffmann Institute. FBI's been after them for years, and the cooperation of the Tokyo police won't be forgotten."

The officer looked to the girls, to the corpse, to Agent Statler. "Uh... and who are the rest of these people?"

Moon and Venus yanked the axe back and away, and a shower of blood followed it. Tuxedo Kamen quickly moved his hands in to mend the wound, his palms and fingertips glowed as his white gloves soaked red with blood. It took him two passes, but the wound was soon sealed. "They didn't count to three! You said they were going to count to three!" Bill croaked.

"They counted to three in Japanese!" Donna shot back, "We're in Japan, that's what they speak!"

"They're a troupe of Sailor Moon re-enactors," Statler said in a voice that was perfectly suited for explaining 'The Miracle of Corn' to slow-witted children named Billy. "They were rehearsing when these two criminals interrupted them." He gestured to the corpse with his gun. "That's fiberglass."

"That's the real Sailor Moon," Mars countered, "and I'm the real Sailor Mars, and that's a real monster, and he's not with the FBI. The FBI doesn't even have jurisdiction in Japan."

"They really get into their roles, don't they? That's what they call method acting." Statler chortled, saw the officer was about to say something, and cut him off. "Now who are you going to believe, Hiro-chan? One of us is wearing a miniskirt in February, and one of us can write glowing performance reviews, reviews that would be sought out by people who are gunning for that next promotion in the slim hopes that the increased income and status will make their wife Tamiko respect them again so she'll stop having sex with that college dropout in 4G and they'll be a happy couple again and he won't have to eat his service revolver the way he fantasizes about when he's been drinking at home alone. Which one of us would you believe?"

The officer was visibly unsettled. "Uh... uh, the second one?"

"You're damn right you would! Now why don't you and your partner go over there and cuff those two and let these girls get back to their play?" He paused, looked up for a second. "Oh, and the dead youma are evidence, we need to take those with us. Too many people have seen them already."

"I thought they were--"

"They're whatever the hell I say they are!" He pointed toward the group around Bill. "Now march your ass over there and make with the arrests!"

Meanwhile, Donna, Venus and Mercury spoke in hurried whispers. "All right, I've got another magazine on my ankle, but I'll need a second to reload." Donna glanced behind her. "If that cop goes for his gun can you take him out with that finger-laser?"

"No, I, I mean maybe, but--" Venus stammered, "but I can't just attack a policeman! He didn't do anything wrong, and..." and she was about to ask if she even knew that they were the good guys, but she did know that, because the bad guys are always above the law, and because the man in black was clearly a VERY bad guy and he was no friend of theirs. "...and how are we going to get away when everyone is watching us?"

"I don't know, don't you do this all the time? Wing it! I just know I can't take out all of them on my own!"

Mercury swallowed nervously. "Your friend's in too bad a condition to run, but if Statler wanted you dead, I think he'd have killed you by now. You'll just have to go along with them... and we'll see what we can do on our end."

Donna looked disappointed and a bit betrayed, but when the first cuff went over her wrist she didn't struggle. She turned to Statler as she was lead to the squad car and sneered, "Yeah, well, 'Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus,' that's all I have to say to you!"

Statler looked down at the dead kinori for a few confused moments. "Yes... it is?"

∙ ∙ ∙

Uranus glanced at Neptune, then back at the road. "Are we getting closer?"

Neptune shook her head while keeping her eyes on the mirror. "Hard to say. It's moving, fast, and I can't predict where it's going to go, so I keep losing the sighting..."

Uranus's knuckles tightened around the wheel. "I'm not comfortable taking this car out again."

"It was either this, take the bus, or wait for your father to get off work and use his Benz. And we took too long to get down here anyway. Besides," with the hand that wasn't holding the mirror, Neptune held up a red metal bar with two fat hooks on the side, the word 'CLUB' was on it in block print. "We remembered to bring this thing this time, right? Last time was a fluke anyway, the odds anything will happen again are astronomical."

Neptune then looked behind her to make sure no karmic whammy was incoming. The car radio started to warp and distort, and the Suzuki commercial became a stream of static. "It has to be nearby -- let's pull over now and go on foot." Uranus nodded and pulled the canary-yellow 1967 Toyota 2000GT open-top -- one of two in existence -- to the side of the road; it was a little-used side street so she didn't have to parallel park. Neptune got out and leaned over, staring into the mirror, trying to lock on the daimon's position; Uranus was trying to determine how 'The Club' opened up and attached to the wheel. Neptune's eyes widened and she whirled in place, started to scream a warning but it was too late because a karmic whammy named U-Kigumoko had already emerged from the opposite side of the street, vaulted over the passenger's side door, and as Neptune said the word "LOOK--" she kicked Sailor Uranus in the chest with both feet.

Uranus swore and fell backwards to the sidewalk, the Club clattering beside her. "This is a robbery!" shouted the pink-skinned daimon with nonfunctional night-vision goggles growing out of her forehead and a 'grappling hook' hanging from her shoulder like wide loops of hair. "Give me your keys and nobody gets hurt... any more than they already are!"

Neptune wouldn't have agreed even if they did have keys to give away. She took a step backwards,raised her arms, and got to "Deep--" before the daimon leaned forward, grabbed her by the bow on her chest, and yanked her into a gut-punch.

"Again with this!" the daimon shouted in disbelief. She glanced into the car to see if maybe the keys were still in the ignition and she could drive off without getting killed as soon as she left melee range; she saw that it didn't need keys at all. "Don't you people have school? Don't you have other things to do other than bother me? You're not even productive members of society!" She pressed the starter button with her free hand, then flipped the Club upward with her foot, snatched it in one hand, and smashed Uranus's knuckles with it, knocking the Space Sword out of her hands before she could unsheathe it. "And where did you get a car this nice anyway, huh? What, it's not enough you have magic powers, now you've gotta show off how much money you have? Like you're better than me because your daddy gives you more money; you're not even old enough to drive this!" She grabbed Neptune's hair and kneed her in the face, spiked her to the sidewalk like a football. "Well, it's my car now, so who do you think's more of a success!" She vaulted over the door and stomped on the accelerator, the tires squealed and she was off, tearing down the street at breakneck speed, drifting into and out of oncoming traffic that would have been screaming, honking, and swerving out of the way even if she wasn't a daimon.

Uranus fired off a World Shaking at the the fleeing vehicle, but missed the target by a good three meters. As it vanished into the Tokyo smog, she laid on her back on the sidewalk, eye twitching, slowly inhaling and exhaling, trying to contain her white-hot rage. Neptune looked back at her, sincerely worried that she might snap and start beating people with her bare hands. But, after a couple seconds, she exhaled, cracked her neck, recomposed herself, and rose to her feet. As she extended a hand to help Neptune up she said, very matter-of-factly, "I am going to have to see if I can switch places with Sailor Mars, because right now I am at the point where I need to set people on fire."

In the car, U-Kigumoko looked down from the road to fiddle with the radio knob, but could find nothing but static. She switched the radio off and started drumming her fingers on the wheel, bopping her head back and forth, humming to herself, "Here she comes, here comes Speed Racer, she's a daimon on wheels..."

∙ ∙ ∙

"No. No! You are not -- This is the time where I am talking and YOU are listening to the things I am saying!" Takashi Hino's face was red, his eye was twitching, and spittle was collecting in the mouthpiece of his cellular phone as he screamed into it. His other hand ran through his greying hair, ruining his expensive hairstyle. He was standing beneath the torii arch of the Hikawa shrine, pacing an angry path between its two supports, while his assistant Kaidou held a stack of papers and watched on, a smoldering cigarette butt hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

"Oh, oh, you can't tell why I'm angry? You don't think it has something to do with the fact that you had armed thugs storm my father's house, which happens to be one of Tokyo's most significant cultural sites? He's an old man, his constitution is frail, he could have had a heart attack!" His free hand was now waving wildly for emphasis, even though the other end of the conversation couldn't see him; the motion worked his white dress shirt out from his waistband and left it visibly hanging from his jacket. "Yes, I said they are, no, no, --shut up! They're armed thugs because clearly they're not police officers, because if ACTUAL police officers were thinking of raiding a relative of one of the highest ranking members of the LDP, they would have notified me beforehand!"

"No, I will NOT calm down! I'm outraged, because that's what this IS -- an OUTRAGE! Are you trying to humiliate me and my family? What if my daughter had been here, would you have led HER out in handcuffs into a police cruiser where everyone on the street can see her? Because that's about the only way I can think of to perform this operation more shamefully! No, no I don't care that they were harboring -- M16, AK-47, Double-A MCO I don't care if they're mooring a nuclear submarine in the koi pond, if a police officer wants to so much as politely ask my family what time it is, you run it through me first!"

"Oh, oh, the FBI was in charge of this? That's what the last guy said, so I made an overseas call, and you know what the FBI said?" He extended his free hand toward Kaidou, snapped his fingers a couple times. Kaidou nodded, grabbed a sheet of paper and put it in Takashi's hand, he snapped the paper audibly to straighten it out and read from it. "'The Federal Bureau of Investigations has enjoyed a long history of cooperation with Japanese law enforcement, FBI agents serving as advisors and assistants to the already-capable Japanese LEOs in Japanese cases where both nations have an interest, with Japanese officers extending the same courtesy for such cases in the United States. However, no such operations are currently underway and no FBI agents are on official duty anywhere in Japanese territory. As the FBI's jurisdiction is only within the United States, it cannot conduct law enforcement operations within another nation without their consent and cooperation.' Then he paused for about five seconds and told me 'I think what you're thinking of is the CIA.'"

"Yes, I believe him more than you, I talked directly to Louis Freeh... He's the Director of the FBI, that's who! No, it wasn't a direct quote, he said it in English! ... No. no, you know what, I'm done explaining myself to you. I'm Hino Takashi, and when I want to talk to the Superintendent, I talk to the Superintendent, you you had better -- no, don't you put me on hold -- don't you dare put me on hold... He put me on hold. Kaidou?"

"Yes, sir." Kaidou wrote on the back of a manila envelope the name of the assistant who'd put Takashi on hold, then marked a black X next to it. So far, three people were going to never work in Tokyo again, and it would be a fair bit more before things were finished. "Sir, perhaps we would get more favorable results were we to visit in person?"

"No, no..." Takashi waved his hand. "He's undoubtedly fled his office by now to escape the fallout. No, we're going over his head on this one. I think we're going all the way up to the Commissioner-General... I know I have Kunimatsu-san's number here somewhere." He dug in his pockets for the scrap of paper he'd written Kunimatsu Takaji, head of the National Police Agency's phone number on, then hunched over his phone to punch in the digits. While his eyes were looking downwards, his daughter and five more of her friends walked behind him through the torii arch. Rei and Kaidou's eyes met for a moment, then they looked away; the rest made no attempt to greet Takashi or alert him of their presence; Rei had told them that interrupting his Important Business for any purpose was futile.

By the time he'd dialed Kunimatsu's number and looked back up at Kaidou, the girls were gone, inside the building. "There's no point in making connections with those in power if you're too afraid to use them, Kaidou-san," he said while the phone rang. "In this business sometimes you have to go straight to the top, in order to stay on top of things."

"It would appear so, sir."

∙

"Hello, Rei-san, Mamoru-san, Usagi-san, and... no, don't tell me... Ami, Minako... Oh, of course, Chibi-Usa!" Rei's grandfather greeted them from a cushion across the room, a simple teacup in his hands. "Your friend Mako-san said school got out early?"

"There was a gas leak," said Ami.

"Federal holiday," said Minako at the same time. "Uh, which we wouldn't get off normally, if the gas wasn't leaking."

Rei quickly cut off the avenue of discussion before it could dig itself any deeper. "What happened here, Grandfather? It must be something major for Father to be here, Makoto didn't say much over the phone."

He took a long sip of his tea and smacked his lips. "Ohh, that's good stuff." He then turned to her as if he'd just now noticed she was there. "Oh, nothing, really. Turns out those TV producers were wanted criminals, the police came by to take them away." He took another long sip. "Takashi-san's quite incensed that it happened without giving them a chance to peacefully surrender, but, hey, these things happen, right? I was surprised, of course, but mostly I'm just disappointed I won't get to be on TV again. But my son looks like he's about to have a coronary, and he wasn't even here."

He leaned back on his elbow and uncrossed his legs. "Oh, but you don't care about this old man's troubles. Your friends are back there," he gestured to the hallway behind him with his thumb. "Oh, and there's a bunch of TV and lighting equipment left in the guest room, don't mention it to Takashi-san or his head may explode, we'll clean it up later if the police don't want any of it."

∙

Makoto lay on the floor with her plaster-bound leg propped up on a pillow, staring up at the ceiling, wincing as if waiting to be struck. Hotaru was on her knees next to the pillow, one eye closed, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, occasionally blowing her hair out of her eyes. One hand was holding Makoto's cast steady and the other was holding the Silence Glaive, fingers grabbing the flat edge of the blade about halfway up, slowly and carefully using the tip to slice through the plaster.

Makoto inhaled sharply. "Ouch! Easy, easy, you just poked me in the leg there." She paused and rolled her eyes upward in thought. "Yeah, that's bleeding."

"Sorry! I'm sorry!" Hotaru blew the hair out of her face again. "I told you, I said I couldn't do this, I'm not -- I know what happens when I push too hard on this!"

"No, Hotaru, no, you're fine." Makoto sat up slightly so she could look Hotaru in the eyes. "It's just a poke, we can get a bandage for that if it won't heal. You're doing fine, just keep going. I am not going to find that special saw and I can't transform without standing on it, this is much better than either of those."

Hotaru didn't know why Makoto wanted the cast on her broken leg removed, but she wasn't going to try and convince her it would be a bad idea; it wouldn't work. She just sliced the cast away in silence, she made the first cut all the way down Makoto's leg and was about halfway down with the second, higher cut when she heard footsteps. She lifted her hands off the blade, letting it sit in the cast for a couple seconds before vanishing, and grabbed for the Sharpie that had rolled to Makoto's other ankle. Their cover story would be that Hotaru -- or, Makoto's good friend Minaguchi Yuko -- was just leaning over to sign her cast and most certainly was not using an enchanted, world-destroying scythe as a cast remover. Once the Glaive was gone and the marker was in her hand, Hotaru turned to see who was coming; her eyes went wide and she ran for the doorway.

Usagi, Rei, and Chibi-Usa all reacted at the same time and with the same sentiment. "Hotaru?"

"Chibi-Usa!" Hotaru shouted in joy, right before she collided with her at full speed. They spilled into the hallway but didn't fall over; their heads were on each other's shoulders, arms wrapped around each other in a joyous, relieved embrace. Tears fell from both their faces.

"Hotaru, you're okay! We were all so worried, there's been more daimons, there were strange people and we didn't know where you were, if you were safe... It's so good to see you're all right, Hotaru." Chibi-Usa tried to let go and pull away so she could look her friend in the eye, but she couldn't, Hotaru wouldn't let go. She was holding onto the little pink-haired girl as if she was the only life preserver in an infinite ink-dark sea, and to loose her grip would mean certain annihilation. The points of the ornament on Hotaru's chest dug into Chibi-Usa's skin, Hotaru's breath came in sobs and shudders. "Hotaru... Hotaru, you're hurting me!" she cried in panic.

"I know I do," Hotaru choked, winced her eyes shut. "I know I do."

---

∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ B O N U S C O N T E N T ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

XENOFORM: YOUMA (Part 1 of 2: Description & Theory)

So apparently, people all over town have been getting attacked by

some kind of monster roaming the streets at night, that's sucking

some kind of energy out of 'em and then sprints off into the night

to escape. And I'm thinking, some kind of vampire, right? Wrong. I

run into this thing and it's like a woman, only she's got pink

skin, freaky hair, and -- I shit you not -- an enormous shoe

sticking out of her chest. Like she's some walking Reebok ad. So

she comes at me, right, and I put a few bullets into her, but none

of them really break the skin. And she does this horrible B-movie

laugh and says "Your weapons are useless against me!" And only

thing I could think of was "And you're a giant shoe, so I guess

that makes us even!"

More accurately described as a method of creating demons than as an actual species of demons in and of themselves, youma are manufactured foot soldiers of a more powerful necromancer or diabolist. Once thought to be exclusive to Tokyo, recent sightings as well as a more careful examination of records has shown these creatures to have been found in London, New York, Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Damascus, New Delhi, and Pripyat. Though youma are demons, their closest relatives are not the Bering demons or Luciferans encountered by other Hoffmann teams -- the "standard" youma is closest to a homunculus, while a Series IX youma is more akin to a golem. But whereas a homunculus or golem is assembled of existing Earthly components to grant it a physical body that magic then grants the spark of life, a youma's body is magically assembled ex nihilo moments after being granted life, using the psychic impressions of an Earthly object as a rough guideline.

Though they come in multiple distinct subtypes, and within subtypes no two youma are identical, all youma share certain characteristics: all youma are created by fusing a specially-crafted magical essence, the "core", with an ordinary person or object, or the "template." Once fused, the youma creates a humanoid body for itself using magically-powered "virtual matter," and this body takes on exaggerated characteristics of the template it was created from, or of thoughts, emotions and perceptions associated with the template. A man known for his skill in one specific area will probably become a youma "themed" around that particular skill, regardless of his other qualities. Objects that have been much-loved or the focus of a great deal of thought and ideation are likely to become youma with more qualities based on how the item is seen rather than how it is used. Different youma visually express the concepts that comprise them in different ways, but a general poll of those who have contacted them has created this rough guideline: A youma looks as if it's wearing a gaudy costume to represent the thing or idea that most influences its existence in a high-concept off-off-Broadway play.

The relativistic magical-energy-to-matter conversion to create and sustain a youma requires large amounts of power to maintain, and as such youma have only been known to exist in areas with dark matter gateways of sufficient size to sustain the conversion, or in close proximity to a dark matter fusion reactor such as would be found on an advanced starship. Youma capable of teleportation, or who are transported by similar means, can jump from one sustainable dark-matter area to another. Normal youma may be created of magical material that seems to defy the laws of biology, but are indeed biological in nature: they breathe oxygen, eat (though most youma don't exist long enough to need to), bleed when cut, et cetera, though their brain-matter functions abnormally, as detailed below. Series IX youma, so far only seen in Tokyo in 1995 (sightings in Damascus in 1974 are unconfirmed), have the same composition as normal youma but almost all organic components are nonfunctional. Like a golem, the magics that give them life directly animate their bodies, rather than the magic creating muscle tissue that then contracts and relaxes to move their bodies. These youma have only one vital organ, the head, and are "killed" after losing a certain amount of structural integrity, regardless of its location.

The magics creating and maintaining the youma's structure also attempt to keep its cohesion, resisting attempts to pierce or slash. Youma have Good toughness against Low Impact and High Impact damage, but Ordinary toughness against Energy damage. Low Impact or High Impact damage that is magical in nature -- magically-conjured needles of ice, for example -- bypasses this protection as well and treats the youma as Ordinary toughness. Magical attack is obviously the most effective means of dispatching a youma, but most Hoffmann agents are without access to magic. Explosives and incendiaries -- grenades, dynamite, dousing the youma in gasoline and throwing a lighter at it -- are most effective after magic; if none of those can be acquired, sources of LI or HI damage of Good or better intensity can be scrounged from everyday items. Power tools such as circular saws, power drills, riding lawnmowers, and wood chippers rend flesh with enough force to overcome the youma's defenses, as do speeding cars, subway trains, and jet turbines (all three of which were demonstrated in an incident at Los Angeles International Airport in 1998). Youma are incredibly dangerous and hard to kill when magic is unavailable -- as it usually is -- and often require Herculean effort to destroy; if magic is usable, they become trivially easy to dispatch.

The youma's most powerful defensive measure, however, is entirely accidental: an unconscious, passive protection against discovery and reprisal by humankind. The material that youma are composed of is otherworldly and thus obeys slightly different physical laws; while it is more resistant to damage, stronger, more flexible, etc., the organic conductivity and intricacy required to make a functioning brain is impossible over such a small area. A youma brain built to function like a human brain results in a youma experiencing a constant grand mal seizure as every area of brain activity interferes with every other. The organic brain matter of a youma is merely the receiver for a massive construct that serves as their actual mind; a gigantic invisible, intangible sphere, almost entirely out of phase with reality, made of the magical equivalent of vacuum tubes spaced wide enough to avoid cross-interference. The gigantic size of their "brain" does not make them more intelligent; most youma are far less intelligent than an average human. However, their massive "brain" means that others can walk into the physical area of their thought and perceive it subconsciously.

In a phenomenon termed the "Taioron Reaction" by a Tokyo-based research team (Arimura, Hanyuu, Teruno, Bidou et al, "Cognitive-Psionic Reactions to Extraplanar Stimuli: A Comprehensive Approach", New England Journal of Medicine [suppressed, May 1989), the human subconscious interprets the presence of the youma's thought processes in the same physical space as its own as an attempt at psionic domination and provokes a natural defense mechanism: the subconscious locks out all interference from the youma's mind by locking out all evidence of its existence from the conscious mind, provoking the person to flee outside the youma's cognitive range, and prevents the individual from returning by preventing him from recognizing he's capable of going back to that area. Unfortunately, like most deep-seated reactions in the human body or mind, this doesn't do anything productive; the youma's thoughts cannot control anyone else's and the Taioron Reaction never helps against actual mind control attempts. In fact it inhibits a person from doing what would actually be useful in the situation; that is, fight off the youma or find someone who can.

The Taioron Reaction, however, does not apply to everyone, and though its effects are drastic its power is weak. The reaction can be resisted without active effort or exertion; this does not require a feat check or a certain WIL score as it is more a question of mindset than mental ability. The conscious mind is told by the subconscious "That thing is bad, you should ignore it and it will go away." A person who would want to agree with such a proposal when spoken aloud is running away, affected by the Taioron Reaction. A person who would react with "What? No, that's stupid." is totally unaffected -- but often they run away anyway, youma can mess you up. This is unapologetically a mechanic allowing for bigger, more bombastic evil schemes while allowing secrecy to remain a plot point and for clearing out combat areas in urban environments. A rule of thumb for adjudicating the effect is thus: Player characters are never affected, and named NPCs would only be affected if, assuming they were player characters, they would not ask you if they got to make a WIL check to avoid the effect. Cultural and local factors affect the prevalence of the Taioron Reaction in ways that can't be precisely described mechanically: youma in Tokyo's Juuban ward, for example, are seldom remembered by anyone save the people who are specifically trying to destroy them; a low-level youma in New York City was actually beaten to death with iron pipes and sawed-off pool cues over the course of a half-hour by a gang of toughs who recognized that a big purple monster was something that had no business in the world; the cops didn't arrest anyone for the assault because they couldn't recall seeing it.

Normal youma suffer damage like any other living thing, save that they receive an additional +1 penalty to all actions rather than becoming unconscious once their Stun damage track is filled. But they accrue +1 step action penalties for losing half of their Stun or half of their Wound durability, lose consciousness when they lose all of their Wound durability, suffer Fatigue damage from extended activity and so on. Series IX youma don't need their organic components save as a structural base and are more durable; they do not lose consciousness when their Stun or Wound damage tracks are filled, do not receive action penalties for having Stun or Wound damage (though they receive penalties for Mortal damage as huge chunks of them are missing, interfering with their function), and do not have a Fatigue damage track. Both types are killed when they lose all Mortal durability, and upon death revert to the template object they were made from. Youma made from objects return to the form of that object, usually in the condition it was in when it was made into a youma; it's hard to translate damage from a humanoid form onto a pair of electric hedge clippers.

However, if the template was a living human, he returns to being in a condition that's suffered most or all of the things inflicted on the youma made from it. Youma do not age, but the human template suffers the ravages of having lived the entire time he was a youma; this is not an issue with most human-template youma as they are found and neutralized within weeks of creation, but human-template youma that have lived longer than a human lifespan often revert to a pile of grave dust when slain. More important than age, a human that served as a youma template inherits almost all damage inflicted on the youma. Roll d4 for the youma's Stun, Wound and Mortal durability and subtract that much damage, then apply all of the youma's remaining damage to the human template, including any damage in excess of maximum durability the final shot inflicted. This can result in instant death if a human-template youma is killed with more than the bare minimum of damage required, or if the youma has more Durability than the human and damage spills over. Human-form youma are generally not to be killed, simply restrained until an FX skill such as Monotheism -- Exorcism can be applied.

The ability to make a demonic minion out of anything is powerful, but it's important to note that a youma takes its form and powers from what people think about the item and not the item itself. Youma are sometimes made using custom-crafted objects specifically made for the purpose, but there are usually less powerful than youma made from everyday objects. A statue of a robot specifically made to make a mechanized youma killing machine will result in an anemic, powerless youma if the model wasn't important to anyone; a youma made out of a lucky rabbit's foot could be a cute (and weak) bunny, but if it belonged to a heavyweight boxer who kisses it before every bout, in order to have the strength to win, might or might not look like a cute bunny but it's damn certain to "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

Below is a list of the villains Sailor Moon has encountered, along with what their youma were crafted of as well as additional expository information where applicable:

Season 1's antagonists, the Dark Kingdom, just called their youma "youma". They were all made from humans, though some were made from humans in contemporary Tokyo and some were made from loyal servants of Queen Beryl during the time of the Silver Millennium. What was initially believed to be "moondust" left behind by their destruction was desiccated, powdered human remains.

Season 2, Part 1's antagonists, Ail and Ann, used a brand of youma called "cardians". Cardians were all made from objects, specifically a special set of tarot cards printed for the explicit purpose of being made into youma. Cardians are referred to as a "brand" because, since Ail himself did not have the power necessary to create youma, it is assumed that he purchased the deck of cardians from a third party merchant who had pre-treated them for easy youma creation.

Season 2, Part 2's antagonists, the Black Moon Clan, used "droids". Droids were made from objects manufactured specifically for the purpose of making youma. Instead of reverting to their template object when killed, they turned to dust, this was a special measure implemented by the Black Moon Clan to hinder efforts to trace the youma back to their point of origin that was entirely superfluous once they moved their war effort to the 20th century.

Season 3's antagonists, the Death Busters and Master Pharaoh 90, used "daimons". Daimons were made from inanimate objects, usually things close to the intended target of their current evil plan, but sometimes chose items for the specific qualities of the item rather than the owner. The daimon creation process was refined according to scientific processes multiple times, and though a solution to the Taioron Reaction was discovered, it was never implemented as the Reaction was productive to their ends.

The giant-size daimons released directly by the Pharaoh 90 were Series IX youma.

Season 4's antagonists, the Dead Moon Circus, used "lemures", singular and plural. Lemures were said to be made from "the dead", but there is some disagreement as to what that means. Either the lemures were made from the corpses of the recently deceased, taking on qualities of what the deceased was remembered for, or they were created directly from the souls of the dead and embody what kept them in this world. Supporters of the latter hypothesis point to the "beautiful nightmare netherworld" nature of the Dead Moon Circus and the fact that they leave no physical residue when killed; supporters of the former hypothesis say it's hard to stick a youma to something intangible and not that many ghosts are bound to this world by juggling.

Season 5's antagonist, Sailor Galaxia, was served by the "Verger Senshi". These are not youma and, aside from being FX Adepts, are completely normal members of their species.

The "Flower Youma" of the R movie were, obviously, made from flowers, though it's unknown if their leader/mastermind the Xenian Flower was itself a youma, or a mindwalking plant who could create youma. Princess Kaguya's "Snow Dancers" were made from ice and/or snow. Howard LeClanche did not use youma.