Have You Seen the Saucers?

The sky captures the imagination of the world below the way that nothing else can.

It's a beautifully lonely place, looking up from here. All you can see are the cold, distant stars, billions of miles away; they flash and blink, as if sharing some arcane message with some unseen, unknown correspondent. A distress signal? A love letter? A secret? A wish? Nobody quite knows the ways of stars.

In truth, it's not nearly as lonely as one would think. Think of the cosmos, the ever-expanding, eternal universe. Isn't it arrogant to assume that, of all this vast, unknowably vast space, that the humans on the planet Earth are all that's there? That they're the pinnacle of all creation?

Of course it is.

If that were the case, I would have to say that the universe aimed very low and settled for very little.

The fact of the matter is that there are numerous creatures that live out among the night--floating in the darkness between the stars, backlit by the shifting light of strange suns, crawling across the surface of the living planets, burrowing under the craggy skin of dead places, dancing at the outer edge of time-space, or worming their way into the center of infinity.

Some of these amazing civilizations are so small that one could find certain difficulties in saying whether they exist at all; the most powerful of our microscopes here on Earth would not be able to magnify their cities enough so that we could see them clearly. But nonetheless, they live their lives. They sing their funny folk-songs; they form tight-knit societies; they build their families. They look up at the distant stars and wonder "what if?" They dream.

Some of them are enormous, the size of entire planets. They have horrific visages; they have the wrong angles and curves; they fill more dimensions than space actually has. To call them "gods" would be incorrect; to call them "demons" equally so. Such titles imply that they have some real role or purpose, or that they have some specific designs upon the worlds they encounter. This is untrue.

These beasts drift about space with no purpose other than existence; they seem to be mindless, though one could hardly tell. But perhaps on some rudimentary level, perhaps they dream, and perhaps that is what moves them from planet to planet on their eternal journeys.

A lot of these beings--vast or microscopic or human-sized--travel, floating aimlessly through the darkness between stars. Perhaps it is in search of a better home. Perhaps it is merely out of curiosity. Whatever the reason, periodically, they pay visits to the planets beneath strange suns.

Unfairly, most people who claim to have seen UFOs or atmospheric beasts in the skies over Earth are brushed off as lunatics or dismissed as hoaxers. But one must consider the caliber of people who have reported such things. Police officers. Soldiers, the world over. Pilots, both military and civilian. Astronauts. People who are selected for their positions of authority, largely due to their mental stability, tip-top physical condition, and above-average eyesight--people who would have quite a lot to lose if they were found to merely be participating in a silly hoax or a prank. Certainly, there are people who like to stir up trouble by claiming outlandish things. But when you consider the cases of the astronauts and pilots and policemen… you begin to wonder…

Some people know.

Most observe the skies and share the information between one another, and that is all they can do. They are powerless to defend their world against these strange things, should the atmospheric beasts mean harm. They merely gaze at the heavens and hope, lacking the ability to do anything else.

But there are a few people who do have the ability to protect their world. Most have gone forth to explore the distant skies, becoming the spirits of their own stars. Some, however…

"I have a secret place I'd like to show you." Fairchild smirked in his perfectly handsome way.

"A secret place," Sigma repeated, smiling behind one enormous, inhuman hand. "It sounds nice."

"You bet."

"Where is it?"

"Didn't you just hear me? It's a secret." He chuckled. "But I'll take you there, if you close your eyes." For just a moment, Sigma hesitated, but then closed her eyes and covered them with her scaly hands for good measure. "Now keep your eyes closed until I tell you otherwise. Understood?"

"Yes, master." She felt an arm, unnaturally long, snake around her, wrapping up her shoulders and her midsection tightly. Against the thin fabric of her sailor uniform, it was cold, heavy, and various, shifting and churning around with that awful force against her body. His skin was always cold as a corpse's, but there were periods when his touch was even worse, when it seemed to crawl and twitch in a thousand different places. The first time she had felt it, she had yelped in horrified surprise; while she had gotten a little more used to it in the intervening period, she still had to try very hard to suppress the shudders that she got when his skin was like that. Sometimes it was merely cold and placid; other times, it was pulsing and twitching with some awful dark life of its own. There seemed to be no pattern and no predicting it.

A whiff of sulfur, a feeling that her body was twisting at impossible angles, inside of a tiny, ice-cold tear in the world. The twisting and wrenching pain robbed her of her breath; she gasped and choked, grasping at her throat with her inhuman claws, trying in vain to wring another breath of fresh air out of her lungs. Involuntarily, her eyes opened, and immediately, she regretted it. A strangled gasp escaped her, and Fairchild looked at her, grinning in amusement. For a moment, it looked as though he flickered and shifted in this strange, cold space. His shape changed into some black, various, amorphous thing with too many grins with too many teeth; then he tightened back up into the shape with which Sigma was familiar. Space ruptured and tore around the two, and she landed roughly, skidding across the peculiarly spongy, soft ground on her hands and knees. She gagged for air and found that it was thin, but breathable, here. Her breath adjusted accordingly, though her breath was still short and terrified.

"Now what did I tell you?" Fairchild chuckled. Sigma whimpered; it was the only sound she could make. He nudged her in the side using the toe of his boot. "Get up."

She choked out an affirmative response, though she couldn't quite manage words at the moment. The woman staggered to her feet, swaying slightly, and looked around at her new surroundings; her master's jump through space had brought them to a desolate place, and it reminded her of the moon, though it couldn't have been the moon, as she couldn't see the Earth on the horizon in any direction, nor could she see the sun in the distance. It was a dark place, lit only by the dull, pale glow of the strangely spongy, bouncy ground. The glow was occasionally broken up by thick, formless ink-black shapes; at first, she figured they were rocks, but after staring at them for several minutes, squinting, she could have sworn she saw the rocks twitching and pulsing. But perhaps it was only the weak light--perhaps her eyes were playing tricks on her.

"Where are we?" she squawked out hoarsely. She didn't really have to ask; somehow, she already knew what it was. Even if it didn't look like one… it was a graveyard--or something pretty similar, anyway. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and a shudder rocked her body. Sigma crossed her arms and lightly squeezed herself with her claws.

"The end of several worlds." He smiled, looking up at the emptiness of space. There weren't any stars in sight. There was only this little graveyard planet, floating alone in the darkness. "Buzz Aldrin once said that the moon held a magnificent desolation about it. If your planet's sorry little moon warranted magnificence, I think this place warrants something more like 'majestic.' I like the sound of that. Yeah, that's it." He laughed. "This place is majestic. It's one of my favorite places in all of the miserable cosmos. That's why I like sharing it with the people that I meet."

Sigma nodded idly, squeezing her arms again, then looked towards her master curiously. "If this is the end of worlds, where do they begin?"

"It depends," he said. That seemed to be his final answer on the subject. "Shall we explore a bit?" She loyally followed him as he strolled off. Again, she found that the ground was strangely bouncy, rather like walking across an enormous trampoline. As she walked, she slid and stumbled, partly from lingering dizziness and partly from the slick, slippery ground; she wished that she could walk with the same grace that Fairchild had. He walked in smooth, confident strides, hands in his pockets, humming some song she couldn't recognize.

"Um. Do all… worlds… come here when they die?" she asked. She didn't quite understand it when he started rambling about worlds and stars; it all seemed very philosophical in nature, and she didn't care very much about philosophy. It was a boring subject, no matter how much one prettied it up with flowery symbolic language.

He stopped next to an irregularly-shaped pit in the ground and leaned over it. A low gurgle came from inside; standing up straight, he kicked one twitchy 'stone' into the pit.

"Not all of them, no." There was another gurgle from the pit. "This is just the place where failed stars stumble off to die. They could never build up the strength to become, so they just give up and spend forever fading away. The stars that do become, though--they're given the curse of rebirth for eternity. Imagine how dull that must be. Enslaved in the same role for however long your star-stuff exists, never given the option to change or to die." Sigma pondered for a moment, then nodded. He was probably right. "Not that I envy them death. I couldn't imagine dying; I imagine being dead would be even more dreary and monotonous than an eternity of rebirth, and if there's one thing I cannot abide, my dear, it's monotony."

"Of course, master," she said, smiling. "It's boring."

"Precisely," he chuckled, patting her on the head. She hugged his arm, leaning her head on his shoulder. They walked together, following the curvature of the small, dark planet. She stumbled and slid across the slimy surface as they went along, but managed to pull herself back up using the man's arm.

"Do you think I'll become a star, master?" she asked after a long silence.

Fairchild chuckled again, but didn't give a proper answer.

He knew, of course. Knew that Sigma wouldn't ever become a star. She was far too weak; she had no will of her own. Everything came about because he ordered it of her, because she was simultaneously terrified of and obsessed with him. Terrified of his power and the cruelty he displayed (he knew, too, that she admitted this in some place in her shallow little mind), obsessed with the attention that he displayed towards her (and in that same place, she would think, 'negative attention's better than no attention at all'). It was a double-edged knife, one that she seemed content on repeatedly stabbing herself with.

But even though he knew all of this, he saw no reason to tell her about it. It would be loads funnier if she tried to force stardom on herself, if she were desperate to avoid a fate resigned to squirming in the half-living flesh of this dying planet. She'd whip herself into a frenzy and then shrivel up and blow away to the outer edge of the cosmos, burnt out and forgotten even by time, despite all her best efforts to be remembered, to matter to someone. And as soon as he was finished with her, he, too, would forget her and move on to his next toy.

Yeah.

That would be more fun to watch.

He grinned.

Millions of light-years away, on the planet Earth, perhaps two dozen people were parking their cars on a hill outside of the Los Angeles city limits. There had been increased sightings of UFOs, cryptids, and other inexplicable things in the city over the past few months, and they were interested in finding an explanation for it. If no explanation could be find, they would have liked to make first contact with the creatures in the dark, smog-choked skies over southern California. They were members of the West Hollywood Paranormal Research Club; all of them were sensible, straight-faced people, curious, wanting to solve some of the more important mysteries. The field trip to the outskirts was simply a consideration of practicality; it was darker out here, and so they would be able to see their quarry more quickly and clearly, if there was anything to be seen at all.

Before they had even started setting out their equipment, they saw. Soon, they forgot all about recording the encounter; they were too dumbstruck by the sights and sounds they discovered.

A rust-colored beast crawling out of the dark side of the moon, flashing an ugly snarl at its adoring audience. Numerous glowing eyes flashed along its spine, and it drooled a sticky, nasty blue liquid all over the ground at their feet, gnashing a dozen rows of stained teeth. As soon as it had appeared, it vanished, diving around the back corner of a car; it might have only been a particularly vicious hallucination.

An ugly sound, with no visible cause or owner; it pained each man and woman to hear it. It was a cry of unimaginable pain and suffering, tempered with an edge of stupid, vicious glee. They were not so certain about the theory of mass hallucination now. The sound stuck in their brains like a knife, repeating itself endlessly.

A spinning star-shaped object, flailing wildly across the sky and blacking out the warm golden light of the City of Angels. It lowered itself to them, so that they could see, and it breathed and pulsed and twitched as it ran its tendrils over their faces. They saw hundreds of angry, horrified inhuman faces reflected in its glass-smooth skin. The club members blinked, and then stared back out at the world they had known. For a moment, they were frozen with terror… but soon began to struggle and panic as thick, syrupy acid bubbled up around them, pressing them against the curiously stretchy membrane that made up the beast's skin. On some level, each realized the situation--being eaten alive by this horrid creature, whatever it was--but refused to understand it, and so each struggled and thrashed wildly as they could, bringing the sticky acid up further around them.

The worst thing was the smell. It was the smell of the gurgling, shifting acid, which was an assault on every sense.

But they didn't have to worry about it very long.

They would be digesting for awhile, but they didn't feel it for much longer. Their minds snapped like dry twigs when confronted with the experience.

Outside, a set of red-brown eyes observed this event. The man smirked to himself quietly and watched as the star-creature floated around looking for more. It snuffled over towards his perch on top of an SUV, but squealed with fear and quickly darted away after touching his face with its tendrils.

His experiment had worked quite nicely.

Knowing their insufferable messiah complexes, Sailor Epsilon and her companion would be forced to come out and investigate. As soon as they caught wind of it, they would come running to try to correct the so-called problem and rescue the souls that had fallen into the clutches of the hungry dead.

"Pancakes? On a Monday morning? You'll fuckin' spoil me rotten, Morgan," Ian yawned, scratching his belly as he shuffled into the kitchen, looking around sleepily. There were two forks, two cups of tea, and a half-empty bottle of syrup set out on the kitchen island; the plates were on the counter next to the stove, waiting to be loaded up with fresh, fluffy pancakes. His housemate looked over her shoulder, smiled a little, and shifted from foot to foot nervously. "'S a nice change from the norm, anyway. Thanks." Mornings were just too busy for him to try to cook a decent-sized breakfast; he made it a habit to exercise at the gym before his shift, to make sure he was in top shape for the rest of the day, so his normal breakfast was something like cold poptarts and coffee. If he was really ahead of schedule, he'd buy a disgusting egg salad sandwich from the gas station. That way, the gagging from the foul taste would wake him up some more, and he'd get some protein and vitamins and shit like that.

"You're welcome, Mr--er, Ian." She hadn't quite broken her old habit yet.

"Don't be so nervous, huh?" he said.

"I can't help it," she said, setting down two plates of pancakes. He picked up his fork and started to eat. "What if they just laugh us out of the office? Or worse--what if they fire you?" He responded through a mouthful of half-chewed pancake. After a moment, he swallowed it and repeated himself.

"They can't. I'm a damn good policeman. My record would speak for itself." Morgan didn't look consoled. He shrugged and sipped some of the tea, then got up to retrieve a packet of sugar from one of the kitchen drawers; Ian liked his tea sweetened a little bit. "Well, whatever. Don't worry about it too much."

"I can't help it," she repeated idly, nervously nibbling at a forkful of pancake.

Morgan had hesitantly agreed to Ian's kind offer of attempting to pull some strings in order to get her some kind of a position within the police department. The extent of his string-pulling was an argumentative phone call to human resources. He was only a regular policeman; he didn't have any real pull with his superiors or a special in with the chief of police. Certainly, she thought he was a good policeman, and a fairly nice guy personally (if a bit rude and bossy), too, but he probably wasn't anything special, as far as cops went. He was just bossy and stubborn. She sipped from her cup of tea. Suppose they just laughed him out of the office? Or fired him? Or sent him on an involuntary vacation out of fear for his mental health? She was deeply, self-consciously aware of how utterly insane everything they fought was--and of how crazy it sounded when spoken of aloud. And that was when just the two of them were talking about it together. Imagine how much crazier it would've sounded to somebody who was out of the loop entirely!

"Um. So…" She fidgeted on her barstool. "How's the car?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, it's a piece of shit, but hey, it's a car. It'll get us where we're going. Until it's destroyed in the next… attack somehow. I'm taking bets as to how it'll go this time," he grumbled behind his teacup. The car he'd bought off of Craigslist on Sunday afternoon was an old Corvette, and he hated it, for a multitude of reasons. But it would do. It ran. That was what was most important right now.

"I did say I was sorry for melting it that time." Morgan smiled apologetically.

"And I said I accepted your apology, and you're sort of working it off, aren't you?" She nodded. "But that was just that one time. There were a bunch of other times, too. Insurance nightmare, I tell you, girly." He shook his head.

"I'm sorry," she said again. He shrugged and looked at the clock over on the wall.

"We better get going soon," Ian said, stifling a yawn as he stood up and shuffled to the sink to wash his plate. "Thanks for the pancakes."

"You're welcome."

After she washed her plate, she scurried to the bathroom with some of her new clothing. It wasn't the nicest-looking stuff--it had just been nice-ish stuff from the discount racks at Target, that being all she could really afford with the money she had left--but it would do for now, she supposed, as she dressed. Hair combed, hair ribbon put neatly into its place, face washed, glasses polished up as neatly as possible… once all this was done, she stepped back out and followed her host out of the front door, which he locked behind him. The Corvette sat in the driveway, waiting. Morgan had never thought too much about cars, but she could honestly say, without hesitation, that this one was uglier than sin. Normal Corvettes looked sort of cool, she supposed--that seemed to be the general consensus, anyway--but this one was largely held together with duct tape, primer paint, and vain hopes, which rather ruined any beauty it might have otherwise had.

She tugged the door open with a grunt of effort and hesitantly surveyed the inside. The passenger's seat had a couple of springs sticking out near the edges of the cushions at uncomfortable-looking angles. For a moment, she wished that they could have just biked to work together. It probably would have been more comfortable.

"It ain't the best, I know. Just get in," Moffat said. He squashed a spring down with one hand and slid into the driver's seat. His housemate climbed in on the other side, trying to get into a comfortable position.

"So, um… how do you think it'll go?"

"I don't know. However it turns out, hey, at least we tried, huh?"

"I suppose there's something to be said for trying," she agreed. "Still, it would be nice if we met with something like success."

"Stay optimistic, Morgan," he joked, shutting the door and starting the car. Morgan almost told him how much she had to worry about, but thought the better of it; even if she was Sailor Epsilon, she only had about half as much to worry about as Moffat did. The poor fellow had house payments and cars and food and money and job performance to worry about. Not to mention that he heaped a world of extra responsibility upon himself by running around with her fighting Mr Fairchild and Miss Sigma and all of the disaster they brought along with them. After awhile, she finally spoke again.

"Mr Moffat?"

"Yeah?"

"Why do you… I mean… why bother with all this extra stuff? Like running around fighting monsters. You don't have to. I mean, you shouldn't, really. I think it's too much extra stress for you, on top of everything else you already have to do." Her face turned pink, and she smiled a little. "I, er… I worry… a little, sir. That's all."

"I'm a policeman. It's my job."

"If you don't mind my asking, Mr Moffat--"

"Ian," he corrected.

"Yes, I'm sorry. Ian." Another nervous smile. "If you don't mind my asking, Ian, does it really say that you have to fight--I dunno--aliens and Things--in the policeman's handbook?"

"Nope." He frowned and jiggled the turn-signal a bit, trying to get it to work correctly so he could indicate a left turn. "I do it because it's the right thing to do. Call it an implied extension of my day job. 'Protect and serve' covers a wide range; it doesn't just stop at pulling people over for busted taillights and arresting bank robbers and shit. I gotta protect the populace, and if monsters and demons and aliens and what-the-fuck-ever start attacking my city, then dammit, I'm not gonna just sit back and wait for death." He tilted his head in thought. "I'd do it even if you weren't around. Come to think, I wonder if this happens a lot, and I just never noticed until those… things." Those ugly fuckin' things from his nightmares. If they had a proper name, he didn't know what it was, and he didn't care to know. "You hear it on the news sometimes, how people see UFOs and weird flying critters and shit like that. I saw some news reports about it last week, actually. If this were sooner, I would've said these folks were nuts. But now, I don't know anymore. What do you think?" Morgan shrugged.

"I don't know, honestly, sir. I always thought the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs were a load of nonsense, made up by too-imaginative people--you know, the sort of thing you would only find in Stephen King novels and David Bowie albums."

"Me, too."

She giggled a little. "Or that it was only wishful thinking. It's rather silly, but… I always figured it'd be really cool if those things were really real. If there were angels and aliens and UFOs, I thought that perhaps they would be mostly benevolent and that perhaps if I ever came into contact with them--more wishful thinking--I'd go off and have really great adventures."

"Bet you're disappointed now."

"Slightly." She gazed out of the window thoughtfully. Would it be too silly to elaborate on why she was only slightly disappointed with the way it had turned out in reality? Perhaps. "Although…"

On the one hand, she had gotten exactly what she wished for--she was running around having adventures, and with a lovely fellow that… that… she had grown quite fond of, all told. Morgan liked that she had gained a friend out of all this, although she truly hated that she was inconveniencing him so very much with all of this Sailor duty. If only they could have been normal friends. Then again, she thought with a frown, she was quite certain that if they had met under any other circumstances, and that if she were not Sailor Epsilon, Moffat would not want anything to do with her. People usually didn't; Morgan wasn't a very interesting person on her own. Only as long as she was Epsilon… only as long as she was a Sailor could she make any impact on the world and its people.

On the other hand, though, she was afraid. Any halfway-sane person would be. Except maybe Ian. He didn't seem to be afraid of anything, despite having listed his own fears to her earlier. Perhaps he had just listed a bunch of random phobias in order to seem normal, to comfort her. She wondered about him sometimes--about whether he was indeed just a normal guy with unparalleled bravery and Lawful Good qualities, or whether he was secretly some kind of superman who just happened to like wearing a policeman's outfit while working his magic. The point was, she wasn't brave like Ian; she was genuinely terrified of the things that they faced. A lot of the time, she wanted to run away screaming, hide under the covers, and not bother with it at all--to be away from it, quiet and safe.

There was no choice in the matter. Not anymore. Maybe there had been, at the beginning; maybe she could have simply looked away. But she had made her mind up since then. Even though she was absolutely terrified of everything being thrown at her, she couldn't have run away, not now, not ever. If she had, Mr Fairchild--and whatever other critters might have been lurking around in the dark at the edge of the world--would be given free reign over the planet and its people, those people being too weak to fight back against such things, as they didn't have the kind of power she had. Morgan had been given those powers, and they had to be used responsibly, to protect. There were people living out their short lives there, and they all deserved to have the opportunity to live them without fear of being eaten alive by the spiders or dosed up on a nerve agent whenever Mr Fairchild or Miss Sigma felt like it. Even if she wasn't a very good supergirl, she could, at least, do her part to protect the precious fragile lives scurrying across this unimportant little planet. Perhaps this world didn't matter in the universe at large, but it mattered to her, and mattered deeply.

Precious little was still precious, after all.

Briefly, she was reminded of the conversation she'd had with Mr Fairchild. He had said that sometimes Sailors, if strong enough, became the spirits of stars and planets. She doubted that she was strong enough--she was too afraid, too nervous--but if, on the off chance, she was… she would have liked to become the spirit of Earth. Did they get new titles? she wondered, or would she always be Sailor Epsilon? She would have liked that.

Her heart beat, and the pulsing beat filled her body with the warm, soft feeling that she got while dreaming. She smiled to herself.

"'Although…' what?" Moffat asked as he parked in the police station's lot.

"Eh?"

"You said 'although…' and then kind of went on one of your thoughtful vacations. What were you thinkin' about, huh?"

"Thoughtful vacations?"

"Yeah. You still look like you're hard at work, but there's something distant about you, and you get quiet, like you've just zoned out thinking." She blushed.

"Am I that strange? I'll try not to do it anymore," she apologized.

"It's kind of cute." Her face got redder. "But whatever. What were you talking about before you went out?"

"You'd said that you saw a news report about people seeing UFOs and stuff just recently. May I please ask where it was?" He chuckled and opened the car door. "I'd quite like to go there once our appointment's finished."

"Out of personal curiosity, or are we investigating something suspicious?" She smiled.

"You've got me figured out quickly."

"You are slightly transparent with your worrying." The smile faded a little, and she gave an indignant huff.

"Sir!"

"What? It's true. You worry about every goddamn thing. It's pretty predictable." She huffed again, crossing her arms, and he rolled his eyes. "Look, fuck it. Let's worry about our appointment right now. Shouldn't you transform?"

"Perhaps," she agreed, bringing the crystal out of her cardigan pocket and holding it up so that the winter sunshine sparkled through it, "but what about my gun? Won't people be slightly suspicious of a young lady bringing a Gatling gun into a police station, even if she is escorted in by one of their own?"

"…I hadn't thought of that." He scratched his chin thoughtfully as they walked towards the entrance.

He tried again.

His numerous wet, rheumy eyes scanned all over the city, peering into nightmares and dreams, looking through the angles of time-space, trying to locate them.

Almost every day of his infinitely-prolonged, awful life, his numerous eyes fell upon all things, and saw them in microscopic detail--things that were, or were not; things that may be, or may not be; things that had happened; the past, built upon its fragile foundation of whisper-thin time; the present, and everything that existed in Now, here and across the frayed edges of the universe; the future, in all of its infinite divergent branches, sprawling languidly across time. He should have been able to see them. He should have been able to catch their smoky shadows falling across time, or hear the edges of space fraying around them to accommodate their moving shapes.

But he found that he couldn't.

This was not a common occurrence, and it both distressed and enraged him.

He let out an ugly, inhuman sound when he found himself unsuccessful yet again. When he tried to look in on Sailor Epsilon, he saw nothing--nothing of value. All he saw was a black, star-flecked space. She was not there among the stars. And that might have meant…

"Master?"

Sigma had shuffled out to visit him, a worried look on her face; the man had been outside for hours at this point, after saying that he was only going on a short shuffle through the weed-choked, overgrown gardens. The girl saw him sitting there, but he did not answer, save with a low, gurgling snarl. His upper lip was curled in disgust and anger; subconsciously, she took a few steps back, then forced herself to go forward again instead.

"Master? You look worried. What's happened?"

Again, the same answer.

"It's that… that yellow-ribbon one, isn't it?" She huffed. "She's standing in the way of progress. I'd like to make an example out of her in my new world!" There was a splinter of ice within her heart, and it throbbed painfully as she spoke, nearly choking her words out; she clutched at her chest, clawing madly at her chest, as if trying to get that splinter out of herself, screaming. Soft, pale shreds of her flesh fell to the pavement as she tore at herself with her ugly, scaly claws. Underneath the skin on her chest were similar rough, foul-smelling scales. She looked down and whined softly, looking terrified at what she found growing beneath her flesh. She didn't know what was happening; she didn't know why this icy, awful pain tormented her, where it came from, why she had grown this second skin. She fell to her knees on the pavement, huffing and panting, while Fairchild looked at her, disapproving and dispassionate. Sigma heaved for several minutes, then finally threw up in the weeds, still feeling the ice burning in her throat. She could no longer speak, and she looked at her master for solace and healing and help. After a moment, he smirked, showing his teeth.

"Precisely right. I think you should show her how you handle those who stand in your way. It's far past time that you stand up and collect what you feel is due to you; avenge all of those who have not been so fortunate as to live to see your new world. Destroy what is, and build what you think should be. And that all starts with killing those who stand in your way. Aren't I right?" Sigma hesitated for a moment. For just that instant, she felt that perhaps she should turn back. Maybe she could be redeemed if she just tried hard enough, perhaps try volunteer work with orphaned children or the mentally ill; maybe she could build her own world quietly and peacefully; maybe she could defrost the painful cold feeling inside of her. Maybe it wasn't worth it to keep obeying this man, if it meant committing cold-blooded murder. If she asked Sailor Epsilon or her companion for help… maybe…

No.

Sigma shook her head.

This was more important. If she had to suffer a little bit of pain to build her new world, so be it. A new, safe, peaceful world--their heaven for the forgotten--would only be built when she ripped out the guts of the old world--the world of hate and suffering and cruelty perpetrated by the callous, harsh people that ruled it. The people who forgot. Changes were built on sacrifices, on the altar of the old and the broken, the things that had not worked. She would be the priestess at the altar that Mr Fairchild had guided her to build. When all was said and done, she would be the heroine of all the world--what she would leave of it, what was good and right.

If she turned back, she would return to being insignificant and useless as she had ever been. Again, she would be forgotten by everyone… assuming, of course, that Mr Fairchild would not sooner kill her than let her go. He had never said as much, but somehow, Sigma knew; it was like knowing that the sun would rise in the morning and that the grass would continue to be green. Prosaic, inborn knowledge of some sort.

She smiled momentarily before the screaming, frigid pain took over her again, tearing through every one of her nerve endings. She began to tear at her skin once more, shredding it, and Mr Fairchild watched, a grin spreading across his handsome false face. His little pawn had grown by leaps and bounds. Soon, he would move her into play.

They were going to have a lot of fun before too long.

Sylvia Ruiz, human resources manager for the City of West Hollywood police department, stared at the papers in her folder, raising a skeptical eyebrow at the two interviewees sat in front of her. Morgan smiled nervously and fidgeted in her chair, trying very hard to look Mrs Ruiz in the eye. It was difficult. Job interviews made Morgan nervous, and it was even worse when you were trying to tell the interviewer that you were a superhero and that their department required your assistance in destroying vicious drooling space monsters that had come to visit the city. One got the distinct feeling that Mrs Ruiz thought perhaps both of them were utterly mad, maybe on the brink of having the nice young men in the clean white coats carry them out.

"Officer Moffat says that you can 'transform' into a warrior with superhuman abilities," the woman said in a skeptical tone of voice, frowning at the man. "This makes me question Officer Moffat's mental fitness." He frowned just ever-so-slightly and looked as though he was considering a sharp remark, but managed to suppress it.

"I know it sounds mad, but… please, please just hear us out," Morgan pleaded. "He's perhaps the most stably-minded fellow I've ever had the pleasure of knowing." He flashed her a grateful look. "I could prove it to you, if you wouldn't mind, ma'am."

"Go ahead," Mrs Ruiz sighed, leaning her head on her hand and looking bored. She wondered why they had been let in at all, and why the paperwork to dismiss Moffat from his duties altogether had not been filled out, after having seen in his records that he was no longer allowed to drive an official police car due to the way the last had gone missing--how he could not remember how it had gone missing or when, just that it had gone and he had to walk back to the station to fill out the report of the incident. According to the record, he had been an absolutely fantastic officer--level-headed, intelligent, patient--up until that day. He had been coming back with increasingly stranger stories recently, and now this pudgy, plain-looking girl with the little New Age bauble in her hand, insisting that she was a superhero.

"Thank you very much, ma'am," the younger woman said, smiling brightly and offering a slight curtsy as she stood up. Once she was up, she held up the little crystal. "Epsilon Power, Make Up!" she said. There was a brief delay as the crystal seemed to spark and sputter under the fluorescent neon office lights; momentarily, she was terrified that she didn't have the powers anymore. After a few seconds, it flashed sunny-yellow, and the familiar feeling of becoming Sailor Epsilon replaced her fleeting lapse into terror. The warmth washed over her, and the heavy, reassuring weight of the enormous gun appeared in her arms. She hugged it to her as a child would hug a favorite toy.

As the yellow light faded, across the human resources desk, the manager stared, jaw dropped. Moffat was unable to suppress a smug smirk, but fortunately did not say anything aloud, though it looked as though he really wanted to.

"Wh… what… the hell…?" Mrs Ruiz stuttered, baffled completely by what she'd just seen. Her immediate thought, as most rational people, was that it was some kind of smoke-and-mirrors magic trick, but it was a feeble, whimpering thought that was drowned out beneath a million bewildered questions… and by the sudden frightening certainty that what she'd seen was not just smoke-and-mirrors magic, but real magic. That gun couldn't have been hidden anywhere; Officer Moffat was six and a half feet tall, and it was bigger than HE was. How was that girl holding it? She seemed to be all pudge and no muscle. Sylvia was a hardened skeptic in all respects, but seeing this in front of her managed to really shake her. On the one hand, it seemed silly to suddenly accept, without some serious questioning, this new surreality standing before her leaning against an enormous military-grade gun. On the other, she was having a difficult time trying to figure out a solid, rational explanation for it. There were only questions. So many questions.

"Sailor Epsilon, sailor-suited servant of the people," Morgan said, though she really didn't know why, or what prompted it. "I'm here to help, if you please."

"Um. Well." Mrs Ruiz didn't seem to be able to come up with much else. She looked down at the paperwork on the desk, then at Sailor Epsilon--who wore a hopeful smile and shifted about nervously.

"Look. I've got an idea. Call it a trial run. I saw on the news that there've been some weird-as-fuck murders going on outside the edge of town. I know it's not our jurisdiction, not being anywhere near West Hollywood and all, but it seems like the case could use Morgan's expertise. Give us a week, and we'll have it sorted," the man said. "We'll solve the murders and we'll bring whatever's been doing 'em to you. The bits we can find and shovel into a Ziploc bag, anyway--at any rate, we will bring 'em back to show you. And if we can't do that in the time limit, then you can fire me."

"Ian!" Morgan whipped her head around, looking worried.

"Shh." He waved at her, trying to get her to remain quiet. She leaned over to whisper her worries in his ear, but he merely put a hand over her mouth; she frowned and licked his palm, which caused him to move it away again and wipe it on his trousers, making a face. It was disgusting and rather rude to have licked his hand that way, for which she later apologized, but it was rude, too, to have clapped a hand over her mouth that way in the first place.

"Fine. It's a deal. You have one week to solve this case, and if you don't, you're not only fired, I'm calling in the Men in Black to take her away." Unnervingly, neither of them could quite tell if Mrs Ruiz was joking about that last bit.

"Right. Thanks, Mrs Ruiz," Moffat said, standing to shake her hand with the one that Morgan hadn't licked.

"Yes--thank you so much, ma'am, you're very fair," the girl said, curtsying politely to the older woman, before being rushed out of the room by Moffat.

Once they were outside again, sitting in the car together, Morgan frowned at him a little. She was still transformed, and the gun lay across the backseat, the barrel sticking out of one of the windows. There was a long silence between them, thick with nervous energy, while Moffat nonchalantly smoked his cigarette, occasionally ashing it out of the window. Finally, she spoke first.

"You shouldn't have bet your job on this, Mr Moffat. What do you have if you're fired from your job? You'll have bills and you'll lose your house and you'll have a hard time getting rehired at so much as McDonald's, let alone at another police station! It seems like police work's really important to you. Why would you do something so silly as to bet your future as a policeman on something like this? You don't even know if we'll be able to figure it out. You shouldn't have," she repeated fretfully. "I don't understand why you would… why you…" He put an arm behind his head and just grinned. After a moment's thought, she sighed. "Yes, I suppose that they are the obvious culprits, aren't they? But that doesn't mean we'll catch them, and if we fight, there's no guarantee we'll win this time."

"But I know you, Morgan," he said softly. "You won't back down, and determination's a good foundation for victory." She blushed, silent again for another moment. "Don't start thinkin' I'm going all chickenshit on you, but, as fuckin' corny as it sounds… I believe in you."

"Um." She blinked, dumbfounded. "Th… thank you, I guess," she mumbled, face red, unable to come up with anything clever to say. He hadn't even said anything very significant or grand, but it made her feel somehow… important, like. It sent the bubbling-warm feeling flowing through her again, and she smiled to herself a little. He was a good man, was Ian. A bit rude and bossy, but very good. Sometimes, she got jealous of how kind he could be, wishing that she could be half as giving and nice, and that she had the ability to say good things at exactly the correct moment, which seemed to be some sort of special talent that he had; right now, she wanted to say something perfect to him, something that would make him feel the same happy rush, but found herself unable to come up with anything at all. It bothered her.

"Movin' on." He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and started the car--it took a few tries to actually get it going. "What do you reckon we should do about all this, huh?"

"Er. Well… obviously, we should drive up there tonight and… wait, I guess. And be ready." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "I wish you wouldn't come tonight. But I know you're going to just wave your hand dismissively and insist upon coming anyway."

"Damn straight I am."

"I can't win," she chuckled a little sadly. She couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was going to happen; it was a vague feeling, but it was enough to make her uneasy, and whatever it was, it couldn't be good. She wanted him to stay at home, safe and sound, so that nothing bad would happen to him; that would be the best way of protecting her friend, even better than the usual forcefield that she generated over him at his insistence. But Ian was stubborn; he wouldn't accept her request that he stay at home safely. No, he would, of course, absolutely insist on going along with her; nothing she said would discourage him.

"Not in this case, no." He turned out of the parking lot and onto the street.

"My, but you're stubborn." She smiled. "Are you secretly some star-born mentor sent to guide me, or something?"

"Nah. I'm just hardcore like that," he replied with a grin.

"Awfully modest, too, aren't you, sir?" she chuckled.

"I'm not conceited, but god knows I've got every right to be." He pulled up at a red light. "So that's our basic plan, is it?" She nodded. "Wait and watch, on top of the hill. Sounds good to me. Knowing those bastards, they'll try to spring something nasty on us, so we've got to keep a careful eye out for traps. You know, vicious hellbeasts lurking behind trees, shit like that." Morgan pondered a moment.

"Have you got some large handcuffs lying around?" she inquired.

"I might. Why?"

"I think that perhaps we should try to catch Miss Sigma and help her. Somehow. I… it sounds a bit silly, I suppose, really, but… Miss Sigma is just a normal lady, it seems. Powers aside."

"And scales and claws and god-knows-what-else she's grown since the last time we've seen her."

"Well… yes. But… still… I think we should try to help her. She is only human. Mostly." She twiddled her index fingers together. "And the scales are sort of my fault, aren't they? I tried shooting that big black lance out of her hands and… and…" She shuddered, and Ian patted her hand gently; if he weren't driving the car, he would have given her a hug.

"We can try. I don't know if there's even any sense in trying at this point, but if you wanna, hey, go for it."

"Thank you," she said. She squeezed his hand a little and smiled weakly.

Tonight, then.