Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Sailor Moon not that anyone here thought I did. But hey, disclaimers are fashionable.
A longer chapter finally, and one involving both action and plot. What a concept! Next, to Kim Creole - who wrote a lengthy and passionate review of the last chapter but has no FFN account so I cannot reply to him/her/it/they directly, I wrote a response to your criticism and posted it on my profile page since putting it in the chapter would feel too much like padding the word count. Lastly, this is the last chapter I have 'in the can' as of this date. Chapter 8 may be finished by next week, but from here on out updates are likely going to be less regular. Sorry, but that's how it goes.
It was pleasantly cool out and the Juuban district was usually safe in the evening, so the three of them walked. For a long time, they were all quiet. Harry was quiet because he was still trying to get a handle on the whirlwind of emotions inside of him. Ami was quiet because she truly didn't know what to say. Sirius was quiet because his back was still killing him after crushing that table and Saeko Mizuno's 'tender' ministrations, and he didn't want to grouse about her in front of her daughter. And he didn't know what to say either.
Finally, Sirius broke the silence. "Your father…what is he like?"
Ami flushed with embarrassment, but was still grateful for the icebreaker. "He is an artist, he lives in Okayama now and teaches at a school there. He writes to me twice a month, and he sends me a painting for my birthday and New Year's every year. When I was little, Mother was always busy with her studies or with her work, so he was the one who took care of me. He and Mother divorced the year before I started junior high, and he made sure I understood that it was not at all my fault."
"He sounds like a very good man," Sirius said quietly.
She nodded. "I miss him very much."
"I….I'm glad you had a good father, Ami. I wasn't there for you, and I am sorry. I didn't know."
"It is …alright, Black-san. …Should I call you Father?"
He shook his head. "Call me what you want to call me … I even answer to Snuffles some times." Harry coughed hard and Ami giggled. "Ami, I don't know how to be a father. I'm not sure I even know how to be an adult. Even Harry is better at it than I am sometimes, and he's an ungrateful little punk." Sirius dodged Harry's elbow and continued. "As I was saying, there are a lot of important things I don't know how to do. But you are my daughter, and even if you don't need another father I want to be here for you in whatever way I can. Just tell me how to help."
Ami nodded. "Thank you, Black-san. Please understand, this is all very strange. This morning, it was just myself, Mother, and a father far away. Suddenly, I now have a mother, two fathers, and a little brother from a previous life," she said with a smile directed at Harry. Harry couldn't help smiling back.
Sirius grinned. "Actually, you also have a few cousins on my side. And Harry is your cousin too."
Both Ami and Harry blinked. "Really?"
"Really. My aunt, Dorea Black, married Harry's grandfather Charlus Potter. The Blacks disowned her for it, but blood is blood. Anyway, that means that my best friend James Potter and I were first cousins. Since Harry is James's son and you are my daughter, that makes you two second cousins as well as reincarnatey siblings –oof!"
Harry glared up at Sirius, who was rubbing his bruised ribs. "I told you, 'reincarnatey' is NOT a word."
Sirius would have argued with him, but he was interrupted by a flutter of wings as a large snowy owl perched on a nearby railing. "Hedwig?" Harry asked. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to bring you a warning. Sailor Moon, Sailor Mars, and Sailor Venus were on patrol tonight and found another of Jedite's monster lairs. There were able to destroy two of the three yoma, but the third escaped. They are trying to track it down, but it might have come this way. I apologize if I am interrupting anything, but you needed to know." The owl spread her wings and bobbed her head in an imitation of a formal bow to Ami.
Sirius nudged Harry, who cleared his throat. "Hedwig, allow me to introduce Ami Mizuno, also known as Sailor Mercury. Ami, this is Hedwig, the first and best birthday present I ever got and one of my truest friends."
Ami smiled and bowed to the owl. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Have you met the others yet, or are you just passing messages for Luna and Artemis?"
"I'm just passing a message; there hasn't been an opportunity yet for formal introductions." Hedwig gave Harry a significant look.
Sirius had his wand out and was looking around. "A loose yoma, huh? How would you go about finding it?"
"Well, normally we use my computer and visor, but… oh, of course! How silly of me." Ami glanced around. "I need to transform, is anyone looking our way?"
Harry and Sirius looked around and Hedwig did the same. "I think we're clear," Harry said. "No wait, there's someone heading our way…uh oh."
"What?" Ami asked, peering around Sirius.
"I think that's the yoma."
Ahead of them, a tall figure had turned the corner from a side street. On first glance it was feminine, but definitely not normal. On second glance, it was definitely not human and probably hostile. Tiger-striped blue fur covered it from feline head to clawed feet, and blood dripped from its fanged mouth. Here and there were discolored patches of fur where it had been injured but since had healed, apparently. It turned and spotted the group and grinned. "More humans, good! I'll need your strength to get home safely, and the bird will make a tasty dessert."
Hedwig launched herself into the air indignantly. "Try and catch me, kitty! Sirius, hold it off while Sailor Mercury transforms!"
Sirius grinned. "My pleasure." Stepping forward, he rolled his hands around to loosen up his wrists. "Let's start with the basics, shall we? Petrificus totalus!" The yoma squirmed for a split second, but its limbs didn't snap tightly against its body the way Neville's had two years ago. "Pity, but not surprising. Ferrum durum!" Harry didn't recognize this spell, but when the yoma merely stumbled back a step and hissed angrily he guessed that it wasn't the effect Sirius had intended. "Oh hell… Fontem vini!" A stream of something purple-red and liquid shot out of the tip of Sirius's wand and splashed in the yoma's eyes. Yowling in pain, it rubbed at them with both furry hands.
"What was THAT?" Harry asked, confused. He drew his own wand and fired off an Expelliarmus at the yoma, to no effect.
"Fountain of Wine. Sadly, what it produces is more like vinegar, but that just makes a face-full of it sting even worse."
"Less chatting, more spells!" Hedwig commanded. "Sailor Mercury, stop watching and transform!"
Ami blushed in embarrassment. "Oh, sorry…" Reaching into her pocket, she produced what looked like a wand of her own, a brightly-colored enameled rod topped with a golden star. "MERCURY STAR POWER!" she cried, and swirls of blue energy shot forth from its tip. Harry looked back and eeped as his cousin/sister's clothing disappeared for a second before the blue swirls wrapped around her and became her battle uniform. It was exactly as Crookshanks and Hedwig had described back in England, a white leotard with a sailor top and large blue bows in front and back, a blue miniskirt, elbow-length white gloves, blue go-go boots, and a golden tiara set with a sapphire. It was girly as hell, seemed very impractical, and yet was bizarrely stylish. Harry just hoped that the uniform for Princes was …something, anything else.
Meanwhile, Sirius and the yoma were squaring off. Sirius had gotten, well, serious and was now throwing off Bombardas and Diffindos at the blue-furred beast. The spells were knocking it around and opening cuts on the monster, but the wounds closed almost as fast as they opened and the yoma kept finding its balance again. The monster surged toward him and swiped with its claws, but Sirius back-pedaled quickly to avoid getting gutted. "Stupefy!" he shouted as a red ray shot from his wand, but it seemed to have no effect.
"Can you help him?" Harry asked urgently.
Sailor Mercury quickly touched her earring and a clear visor appeared before her eyes. Data about the yoma began to appear. "I can try, but it's very fast. My attacks take longer to charge up than his spells."
"Then let me buy you some time," Harry said, grinning. This evening had been confusing as hell, but here and now was exactly what he had come to Japan to do – fight beside his sister. Even better, he knew exactly how to help. Raising his wand high, he filled his mind with the memory of a pair of arms embracing him and the sudden feeling of connection. "EXPECTO PATRONUM!"
Silver-white light exploded from the tip of the wand, forming into an enormous stag. "Get it, Prongs!" Harry yelled and snapped the wand forward. The stag charged, its hooves sending brilliant sparks flying from the pavement. Sirius had only a moment to glance behind himself before throwing himself out of the way with an expletive no one heard. The yoma's eyes widened in shock and then it was too late.
Prong slammed into the yoma with the force of an oncoming truck, impaling the monster with his silver antlers. The monster screamed in agony, and the great stag disdainfully tossed it into the air to land hard on the sidewalk. "Good job, Prongs, don't let it get away." As the brilliant creature stood guard over the monster, Harry turned to Sailor Mercury with a grin. "All yours…"
Taking a deep breath, she nodded. A drop of water coalesced in the air in front of her, immediately falling to splash in a puddle at her feet. Sailor Mercury raised her hands into the air and whirled around slowly. Streams of water, born of her magic and charged with the power of life and the planets, gathered around her hands. When she spoke, her voice resounded with power. "SHINE…AQUA…ILLUSION!" Her hands came down and water thundered forth with the force of a cannon blast. The yoma, already hurting from the Patronus's antlers, only had a moment to scream before being annihilated. The water evaporated as quickly as it appeared, leaving behind only glittering motes on the sidewalk. Sailor Mercury smiled. "As Sailor Moon likes to say, moon-dusted. …Harry-kun? Are you alright?"
"Why?" he asked. Then the exhaustion overwhelmed the adrenaline and he collapsed.
Sirius and Sailor Mercury both rushed to his side. Sailor Mercury crouched down and carefully applied two fingers to his pulse point. "Is he alright?" Sirius asked.
She nodded. "He'll be fine, he's just really tired. Could you please buy him some fruit juice, Black-san? There is a vending machine across the street."
As Sirius nodded and went, Hedwig landed and brushed a wingtip against Harry's face. "The frustrating thing is that this is generally how all of his battles end," she commented. "He always fights on no matter how steep the odds and he always finds a way to turn the battle around and win it. But in the process he invariably over-extends himself and winds up in the infirmary. The head nurse has threatened to put a sign over one of the beds, reserving it for his personal use."
Sailor Mercury smiled at the owl. "You love him very much, don't you…"
Hedwig bobbed her head. "Since the moment we set eyes on each other. I was less intelligent then and couldn't speak of course, but I was already a full adult of my kind and living in a shop waiting for someone to purchase me. One day there he was, a scrawny little eleven-year-old with hair like a worn-out feather duster and eyes full of fear and wonder. One look and I knew he needed someone to look after, someone to be his companion and his alone. It was a bit of a kerfuffle making sure I was the owl he left with, but we've been together ever since. I've done my best to help him feel less alone, but now that he has you and that mangy mutt as well, perhaps he'll finally be able to be happy. That is, I assume he has you now…"
Sailor Mercury nodded. "He has me. We used to be brother and sister, I can feel it. And now it seems we are cousins, but the important thing is that we have each other." Slowly, she held out a gloved hand. "Thank you for looking after him, Miss Owl."
Hedwig, lacking hands, spread her wings and bowed. "It has been my pleasure, Princess Mercury. Please call me Hedwig."
"And I am Ami."
Sirius returned with a few cans right about then. "Which one of these is juice? Honestly, I couldn't figure out which was which in that machine, so I got one of everything."
Sailor Mercury smiled and took the cans from him. "Thank you, Black-san. Could you move him to that bench over there? He should wake up soon."
As Sirius picked up Harry, none of them noticed the dark figure watching them from a nearby alley, nor did they see it leave.
When Harry awoke, he was bracketed between his godfather and his new sister. Her battle costume had vanished, leaving her in her normal clothing. "Here," she said, handing him a can. "Drink this, it will help."
Opening the can, he took a sip and found that it was lemonade. He took a longer drink, burping a little. "Excuse me. What happened?"
"You over-exerted yourself, Harry-kun," Ami said quietly. "Your silver deer attack was very powerful, but you put too much of your strength into it and held it for too long."
Sirius snickered and waved his hands around. "Silver…Deer…Attack!" he fake-shouted.
Harry elbowed him. "Laugh it up, dogfather, I didn't see you hurting that thing much."
"Hey, I tried. Seriously, kid – and hush you, I'm not trying to be funny this time – you've got to start pacing yourself better. Passing out after each fight leaves you vulnerable, if there had been another monster you might have been kibbles before we could stop it."
Harry sighed. "I know, it's just… The Patronus is hard; if you don't focus on it it doesn't work."
Sirius nodded. "Then we need to get you started training with Mamoru as soon as possible. It looks like I'm going to be less help than I hoped."
"You did very well, Black-san, you held it off for three minutes without getting hurt. Most normal people who try to fight yoma end up badly injured."
"Well, I guess that's something, then. Looks like I'll have to train as well."
Ami gave Harry a smile. "You did very well too."
"Thanks," he said shyly, and drank the rest of his lemonade.
"Pass me one of those drinks, Ami, if we're waiting for young Prongslet here to get his feet back under him then I've got something to talk about that I've been trying to bring up all night. How would you feel about being Harry's tutor over the summer break?"
Elsewhere, the dark figure slipped down an alleyway, unseen by anything except maybe a stray cat or two. The cats knew better than to bother it, they recognized a more dangerous predator when they smelled one. The figure finally stopped in front of a blank section of wall. The paint on it was only a few weeks old, applied to cover up what the owner of the building thought had been simple graffiti. That was fine by the creator of the unwanted pattern: its work was still on the wall, merely hidden. The dark figure traced the hidden pattern with a fingertip, and purple energies began to shine through the white paint. A moment later, a swirl of darkness formed on the wall and the figure stepped into it. A few moments later the portal closed, leaving no trace that anything strange had ever been there.
Beyond the portal was a very different place, a large echoing corridor carved out of black rock. The atmosphere was dark and gloomy, with a vibration in the air that set the nerves on edge. It was an ever-present feeling of danger, tinged with anger, despair, and lust for power. The dark figure immediately felt at home, for this was the Negaverse and it was a native. The dark figure walked through the corridors, pointedly ignoring the few creatures it passed on its way. There was little kinship among yoma, after all, the Negaverse was a monster-eat-monster sort of world where only the strong survived and flourishing depended almost entirely on pleasing their masters.
And flourished, the dark figure had done. For yoma (which she was), form either followed function faithfully or belied it completely. This yoma was one of the former, her master had shaped her into an infiltrator and so her appearance was very human indeed. Her black hair was long and fell over half her face in front. She wore a long double-breasted coat and high heels, and on the whole looked like one of thousands of office girls out visiting a club after a long day at work. Her true nature was hidden, and if a human managed to penetrate her disguise it would probably be the last thing he ever did.
Clack, clack, clack, the yoma's heels echoed through the throne room as it entered. It was capable of being stealthy, but she had learned the hard way not to sneak up on her master. The castle had once belonged to Queen Beryl, but Beryl was gone now and so was her throne. Lord Jedite had replaced it with a table made of crystal, the very crystal he had once been imprisoned in. There were a few chairs around the table, but none of them were distinctive. Jedite preferred to rule from wherever he happened to be sitting rather than waste time impressing anyone with furniture. Jedite didn't seem to spend that much of his time sitting anyway, noted the yoma. She was young, too young to remember the days of Queen Beryl's reign, but the Lord Jedite she knew was a restless man, almost constantly moving from one place to the next. When he wasn't overseeing his plans, he was training in the bowels of the castle or wandering through the library with a book in hand. Perhaps his time spent in the Crystal of Eternal Sleep had cured him of any desire to sit still.
Today, Lord Jedite had maps spread out on the table. Most of them were maps of Tokyo, more specifically the Azabu Juuban district and the rest of the Minatoku ward, but some were of the other areas of the city or even of Japan as a whole. The yoma recognized them because she had acquired them herself. "Lord Jedite," she said, touching her fist to her shoulder in salute. "I have news you should probably hear."
Jedite looked up from his maps. "Ahh, Eyeko," he replied as if he hadn't been aware of her presence all along. "How goes it in the city?"
"Troubling, my Lord. Two more yoma lairs have been tracked down and destroyed."
"Which ones?" he asked.
"The bakery two nights ago, and the tiger-women tonight."
"I see…" With a wave of his hand, two markers on the map vanished. "I did warn them that a bakery was a bad cover. The Sailor Scouts can sniff out a tainted cupcake in almost no time flat. It's as if they were teenage girls or something," he said sarcastically. "And the tigers, no loss there. I only let them go to keep the Sailor Scouts busy."
"I had wondered about that, my Lord." Eyeko had been lucky enough to be present when the trio of tiger-yoma had swaggered into the throne room and demanded to be sent to Earth. When Jedite refused, telling them that they had the subtlety of a rocket-powered battering ram and exactly what happened to yoma who couldn't be subtle, they had insisted and made threats. Smirking, Jedite had yielded and allowed them to go. That should been a warning to them right there, but they had foolishly considered it a victory and a sign of weakness in the last of the Dark Generals. Their mistake had been sealed when Jedite offered to let them keep all of the energy they gathered. Now all of them were dead, and Jedite's point was once again driven home – only the cunning prospered in his domain.
"Now tell me, Eyeko, was that the troubling news, or is there something else?"
"The Sailor Scouts have new allies, my Lord."
"Show me."
Eyeko brushed aside her hair to reveal the telephoto lens that replaced her left eye. It wasn't really an implant, merely a part of her that had developed under her master's guidance. The lens glowed, and a holographic image formed above the table. Three people were walking down a street together, an adult male, a teenage girl, and a younger boy. A large white bird swooped down to land nearby, and they seemed to talk to it for a few moments before a yoma entered the scene. Jedite watched as the adult male engaged the yoma with some kind of magic that didn't seem to affect the yoma much. "That doesn't seem to be much of an ally," he commented.
"Keep watching, my lord, the children particularly."
Soon, the girl exploded into light and was replaced by Sailor Mercury. Jedite remembered her from his under Queen Beryl, a weak fighter but a canny one. He had even seen her true face once, but that memory and many others had become a little muddled while in the Eternal Sleep. "Rewind and enlarge, can you show me her face before she transforms?"
Eyeko did her best to oblige, but her camera eye hadn't been able to capture much detail at that range. Short-haired girls were five yen a dozen in Tokyo. Sighing, Jedite bid Eyeko to continue. Once Sailor Mercury joined the battle, he expected her to make short work of the headstrong tiger-woman, but again he was surprised when instead the boy summoned a creature made of pure silver magic and unleashed it on the yoma. His eyebrows lifted as the yoma went flying from the creature's charge, and lifted even more when the horned creature stood over the weakened monster and waited. The Sailor Scouts did not begin a spell and hold it; their magical attacks were usually brief and destructive. As if proving his point, Sailor Mercury destroyed the yoma before it could get up. A few moments later, the boy collapsed and the silver creature disappeared. As Sailor Mercury and the ineffectual mage rushed to the boy's side, Eyeko's recording ended.
"Is that all you were able to collect?"
Eyeko nodded. "The bird was still in the area, and my instincts told me to avoid letting it spot me. I watched for a little while longer from deeper shadow, but I learned little. The Sailor Scout and the bird seemed to talk to each other for a while," she said with irritation. Jedite smiled. For some reason the yoma seemed to have a grudge against Earth animals in general and the Sailor Scouts' assistants in particular. Jedite didn't understand it and didn't particularly care, but he took his amusement where he could find it. He was building an empire from ashes and chaos through sheer force of will, and it was the little things that kept him going.
"Thank you, Eyeko. You may return to your duties, but first…" Jedite flexed his hand, and a mote of energy appeared above his palm. It grew into a marble-sized sphere as he concentrated, and once it was the right size he waved it over to the yoma. "A reward for good sense and good service." Showing her yoma nature, Eyeko all but pounced on the sphere, ingesting the energy and shuddering as it rushed through her. Life energy was both a nourishment and a drug to yoma, the purer the better. Jedite himself preferred to corrupt the energy he absorbed first, absorbing untainted energy brought out the weakness he had forsaken long ago. Yoma had no such problem, they were creatures of the Negaverse through and through and were both benefited and inhibited by their nature. Jedite, however, like his brother Generals, had been a human once.
In the beginning, the four of them had been warriors in the service of Prince Endymion of the Moon Kingdom's Earth colony. It had been a beautiful island kingdom in the Indian Ocean, isolated from the rest of the world by veils of magic. A thousand years later, Jedite could still remember the smell of blossoms on the wind. All that was left of the island now was blast-blackened rocks scattered between the waves, rocks and memories. Jedite was the only one with any living memory of the island now, and even he was beginning to forget. Before the Eternal Sleep he could still remember the island's name, but that was gone now. One by one, the details of his old life would pass from his mind, and it would be as if it had never existed.
They had been Endymion's bodyguards and truest servants, his right and left hands, his sword and shield. Jadeite, Nephrite, Zoisite, and Kunzite, brothers in arms and brothers in spirit if not in body. They had trained together, fought together, lived together, and together they had betrayed their Prince in order to save him from himself. If only the fool had listened… Jedite felt his bile rise.
The island colony that was Earth's participation in the Moon Kingdom had been always considered the least of the Houses. They were the smallest in number and in strength, as they had to remain unnoticed by the mundane civilizations of the world. The veils around the island had been designed to keep out the regular humans but draw in those who had the inherent talent for High Magic. Every so often, some storm-battered ship would wash up on the shore, filled with people from all over the world whose unrealized potential had lead them there. They would be welcomed, made aware of the mighty empire their birthright gave them admittance to, and given a place to stay while they learned to use what was theirs. Once they were ready, most of them would journey out into the other worlds of the Moon Kingdom, eventually settling and joining one House or another. A rare few would stay in the Earth colony and join the ranks of those who served by teaching and guiding.
Jadeite and his brothers had been protectors, not teachers. Their duty was to accompany their Prince in his duties, both on the island and in the capital city on the Moon. They had walked the halls of the Palace, heard the whispers of disdain from the courtiers. Backwater rustics, they were called, mud-footed shepherds who were tasked with turning sheep into peasants, and given that task because they had more in common with the sheep than with the other Houses. They could have ignored the mockery, if not for the fact that it was obvious that Queen Serenity had little regard for the Earth either. Their Prince presented his reports to the Queen and was invited to social occasions, but more often than not both reports and Prince were forgotten as soon as they were out of sight.
For years they had been uncomfortable but resigned to their status at Court, but one spring things began to change. Endymion fell in love. And with whom? Someone safe and sensible, perhaps, such as a daughter of a minor House like Deimos or Callisto? Oh no, Endymion had shot his arrow into much more dangerous territory. Prince Endymion had fallen in love with the Moon Princess, Serenity's only daughter. The two had met at Princess Serenity's debut ball, and were instantly smitten with each other. Jadeite and his brothers had tried to warn Endymion, the Princess was much too young and the Queen would Not Be Amused by the least of the great Houses trying to poach the jewel of the Moon Kingdom. Their position at Court would be damaged beyond repair, and even the tenuous and indifferent support they got from the Moon Kingdom might dry up. Endymion had refused to listen, of course, for he was In Love and confident that Queen Serenity would find him a worthy suitor for her daughter.
In desperation, Kunzite had gone to the leader of the Princess's personal guard, the Sailor Senshi. Sailor Venus agreed with his assessment of the Queen's reaction, and together they tried to keep the two fools apart. It quickly turned into a full-time job for the both of them. Meanwhile, Jadeite had stumbled onto a project of his own, a mysterious note left for him in his quarters. It had simply read "The Moon is a small lifeless rock, yet the Moon Queen wields fantastic power. Where does that power come from?"
At first Jadeite had tried to discover who had left the note, but when he could find no leads he began to look for an answer to the question. The search lead him through children's storybooks, tomes of lore, the Palace archives, and into more than a few places that would have had him thrown in prison if he'd been caught. The most dangerous of those places was the Lunar Nexus, the focal chamber for the Moon Kingdom's magical infrastructure. All of the magical energy flows between the worlds were directed and maintained from there, feeding the ancient wards that made part of each planet and moon habitable. Jadeite spent hours in the Lunar Nexus, studying it, and learned two things: First, the entire network was focused through and controlled by the Imperium Silver Crystal, a powerful artifact that only responded to Queen Serenity and second, the Earth provided more than 70% of the energy used to maintain the Moon Kingdom.
The implications were staggering to Jadeite, and he had been so thunderstruck by it all that he nearly got himself caught sneaking back out. Later he explained what he'd learned to his brothers, that the Earth was the backbone of the Moon Kingdom and yet was treated like an unwanted country cousin. Even worse, the Queen knew and did nothing about it. That was the beginning of the end for them. Endymion refused to listen and kept sneaking away to meet with Serenity's daughter, and not long afterward the four of them met the sender of the mysterious note. She represented another empire, one that was poised to tear down the hypocritical reign of Queen Serenity. Their army was ready; they merely needed field commanders and the right time to strike. And so, the four of them had sworn loyalty to the Negaverse.
The attack had gone exactly as planned, at first. Each of the four Generals had led a lightning attack on one of the great Houses. Jadeite, by then called Jedite by whim of Queen Beryl (and one did not question Queen Beryl's whims), led the attack on House Mars. With their Princess away at the Moon Palace for yet another ball, the Martian Guard was easily tricked into reinforcing the wrong part of the defensive perimeter. By the time they realized their error it was too late, the defenses had been breached in several places and they were unable to stop Jedite from fulfilling his true mission – to desecrate and destroy the Sacred Flame, the spiritual heart of House Mars. The Martians were too used to receiving inspiration and insight from their temple fire, and so he had smothered it with their corpses.
Once that cheerful little task was done, he had raised a pair of gates: One to the Negaverse, so that the Queen's forces could enter freely, and the second to the Moon for the second stage of the assault. The Palace Guard had put up a better fight, but in the end they were not prepared to fight a real battle in their own halls. At least they had gotten their fondest wish, Jedite had reflected, and died in the service of their Queen. The chambers of the Moon Princess were the toughest nut to crack. The Princess's personal guardians, the Sailor Senshi, had carved through the yoma like burning swords through paper at first. Unfortunately for them, though, Malachite (once Kunzite) had an idea. He quickly disguised the four of them with their old uniforms and they 'fought' their way through the yoma to the Senshi. Recognizing them, Sailor Venus urged her comrades to hold their fire. Malachite repaid her with a slashed throat, and the other three were each mortally wounded before they could recover from the shock. Jedite could still remember the look on Venus's face…
Facing Endymion as he tried to defend Princess Serenity was almost anti-climactic. He'd immediately recognized them as traitors (the fact that Malachite was wearing Sailor Venus's blood had probably been a clue) and attacked. He'd fought well, but four against one was a foregone conclusion. Jedite couldn't remember any more which of them had struck the killing blow, but as their Prince lay dying on the floor with his forbidden lover crying over him Jedite had regretted his choice…for about five seconds before the nerve-grating sound of her wails destroyed the moment. They killed her quickly, just to shut her up.
By that point Queen Beryl and Queen Serenity were locked in battle, and for a white it looked like the Queen of the Negaverse would win. But when Serenity saw the crumpled, lifeless form of her daughter, the metaphorical gloves came off. Jedite hadn't been close enough to see exactly what had happened, but in the centuries since he'd puzzled it out. Simply put, Serenity had used the Imperium Silver Crystal to call up every bit of power that was hers to command. The entire magical output of nine planets and their collective moons was suddenly focused in one human being. It was insane. It was suicidal. And in Jedite's opinion, it was dumb. The Crystal could take that kind of energy flow, that was what it was for. But a human, even one as powerful as the Queen, couldn't touch power of that magnitude safely. Serenity hadn't cared. In that one moment she was beyond reason and focused entirely on one purpose – to make the Negaverse pay.
In retrospect, Jedite was amazed he had survived. Queen Beryl's survival was understandable; she was an ancient sorceress as steeped in the power of death as Queen Serenity was in the power of life. But the four Generals had had no such protection. After a thousand years, the best theory Jedite had was that the Queen had must have been so blind in her rage that she had spent her fury on the forces of the Negaverse in general and not had enough specific hatred of them to finish the four of them off. Obviously, she hadn't realized who specifically had had her daughter's blood on their hands.
At the time, though, Jedite had only been aware of an all-encompassing wave of brilliant white energy lifting him from the pavement and scorching his whole body as he was thrown back toward the portals. When they had come to, they were all back in the Negaverse with the portals destroyed and a fully-restored barrier between the dimensions. And thus began what Jedite would never have dared describe aloud as the Thousand-Year Sulk…
Eyeko was nearly out of the room before Jedite pulled himself from his musings. "Wait. I have another task for you."
The yoma hesitated. "My lord?"
Jedite drew another map from the bottom of the pile and rolled it carefully. "I want you to carry a message for me. Go to this location and show them this token," he said as he produced a small metal object from his pocket.
Eyeko accepts the two items and looked over the token. It was a golden pin, a shield superimposed over a quartet of crossed swords. The shield bore an emblem the yoma didn't recognize, a quartered circle. Tucking it away, she unrolled the map and looked at it. "Is….is this a joke, my lord?"
"No, Eyeko, I am quite serious."
"But …how long has this been here?"
"A thousand years, give or take a few."
"And no one's noticed it in all that time?"
Jedite smiled. "My experiences have taught me that most people see what they expect to see, not what is there. Don't worry, once you get close they'll find you. Show them the token quickly, though, or you won't have a chance to deliver the message."
"And what is the message, my lord?"
"Tell them General Jedite wants four of their most cunning warriors to report to the castle, it's time for the Enclave to earn its keep."
Eyeko rolled up the map again and saluted. "Yes, my lord. I will depart at once."
Jedite returned her salute and watched the yoma as she quickly walked to the door. Eyeko was one of his favorites, a yoma with both cunning and self-control. Her camera-eye regularly brought back useful information, but he had to be careful not to reward her too much or too often. Even a smart yoma was still just a yoma, a soulless monster that thrived on destruction and pain. Even Eyeko would lose control and run rampant if allowed to glut herself. That was the risk of relying on yoma, but Jedite had a plan for dealing with that. "After all," he mused to himself. "If those blasted Sailor Scouts can recruit, so can I…"
