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Chapter XIII
Jadeite hadn't been at the latest battle, he hadn't expected any of the senshi to show up, the party had been conducted in relative secrecy and elite class. He however had been wrong before about the senshi's depth of involvement into society. The one party years ago when he had first met Rei, that party had been only for politicians, how the senshi had heard of it, was beyond him.
So when Beryl had called him to the base, he'd been surprised when she'd attacked him without a word. He was still supporting a huge tear in his bicep from her attack.
He wrapped the gauze around his arm by himself, if Serenity had been there, he'd just ask her to heal him, but she wasn't and it gave him time to recognize that she'd start asking more questions he wasn't prepared to answer and it would worry her to know he was now starting to be physically hurt on a regular basis because of Beryl.
He'd never failed in an attack before, and today was the first time that a youma had been destroyed before it could gather all of what was needed. It had at least found the crystals it was looking for although those too were not the silver crystal.
Jadeite stretched his body out to relieve the tension building in his spine from the last few days. They had been more stressful than normal because things had started to go wrong for him.
He twisted to wring out any last remaining pain then changed his outfit to a long sleeved shirt and casual trousers. It was just in time as well as Serenity came bounding in through the front door and calling his name in greeting.
Jadeite looked at the time; it was already the afternoon of the following day. "Where have you been?"
"I took a nap at Rei's after hanging out for awhile. I called you last night, remember?"
He remembered now that she reminded him, he'd heard that voicemail this morning. "Oh. How is Rei anyways? She sounded rather smashed."
"She's good. She's slept off all that was ailing her." Serenity told him cheekily.
"Oh that's good." Jadeite drolly responded. "I suspect you did as well?"
"Yes, the nap helped, Chad woke us up rather early this morning."
Jadeite fought down the smile that twitched on his lips but he couldn't help it. "That musician playing music early in the morning and managing to wake up the grumpiest morning person I know?"
"Rei's worse." Serenity instantly defended herself.
"Heaven forbid that I ever wake either of you up again!" He covered his eyes with his hand but he peaked through them and smiled.
Serenity laughed and shook her head. "I'm heading out again soon, but I wanted to come back here to change."
"You can easily close your eyes and your clothes instantly change. Why would you come back to change?"
Serenity shrugged. "I like standing in front of my closet and trying to decide what to wear."
"What happens when you have something that you want to wear and can't find it in your closet?" Jadeite asked skeptically.
"I just think it up and it appears." Serenity responded happily.
Jadeite rolled his eyes. "How is that any different then just using your mind to change?"
Serenity looked at him with a shake of her head. "There are a lot of differences Jace. Including of which one is a normal human thing and the other is our abilities."
"All right, all right. Just go change. Where are you going anyways?"
"I have a study group meeting to go to."
"What's wrong with what you're wearing?" She was wearing a pair of jeans and a pink sweater.
"What? I wore this yesterday, I need a shower too." Serenity bowed and then left the room on a skip.
Jadeite slipped into his study and his shirt changed to a tee-shirt and he adjusted his bandage. She was home, but he couldn't damper her happy mood. His body would heal it on his own eventually but it was a slightly slower process. He could have entered the healing chamber at the Negakingdom's base but every time he stepped in it, he felt like his soul was being ripped away and shredded.
An hour later there was a knock on the door and Serenity's soft voice came through the door. "Jace, I'm going to leave now."
Jadeite changed back into his long sleeved shirt and opened the door. "All right, have fun." He told her as he watched her disappear on the spot to reappear wherever it was she was going, but she reappeared a second later.
"Oops." She laughed. "I forgot my books." She picked them up and disappeared again.
Jadeite laughed and shook his head. He opened up a book to check out the housing market in the area. He had to actually show up to at least pretend to sell somebody a house for cover. He also had to make sure his name was in at least one paper so it also laid claim to his story.
He found one that he wanted to sell and so he went and appeared there. He was dressed in a polo shirt with neat slacks. He greeted the people who wanted to buy a home and after a quick tour he had them wanting to know why they were selling it for so cheap.
He had them in the palm of his hand. That is when he noticed on the woman's hand a large crystal. He held himself back from attacking her now, his original plans still needed to be carried through. That's why when they took a picture as his agency did of all the new home owners and which house they owned was in the background, he had the woman place her left hand on top of her husbands so the crystal was in clear view as well.
This way, if a certain someone happened to look at the picture and notice the woman's large rock, than there was at least a scapegoat for Jadeite.
A week later, when the couple moved in and had their house warming party, he attacked. Interestingly enough there were quite a few prominent people at the house, the governor was there. He'd make it a mental note to inquire into how the couple knew someone so far up the political totem pole.
At Jadeite's attack the damned senshi managed to make their way in again, this time hoping to cut off whatever plans he held. After the last two attacks, he wasn't going to disappear and hope that everything would be all right; he had a suspicion that they held something up their sleeve and he wanted to make sure he was never in the path of Beryl's wrath again.
He watched the battle lazily, not all of the senshi had arrived, and he still hadn't gotten the crystal yet. He saw Mars move out of the corner of his eye and he dropped down behind her to spy on her without her knowledge. "Just ditch the rabbit, and come, quickly!"
"Roger that Mars. Mask over and out." Jadeite smirked as he realized how they communicated now. He'd have Zoicite look into the devices to see if he could find a way to penetrate the system and use it to their advantage.
In the meantime however he snagged Mars from behind before she could even turn around. How she didn't sense him with that weird mental power she had, didn't faze him in the least, just more power to his ploy.
He snapped one arm around Mars' neck and the other hand held her wrists up in a painful direction. She gasped as she felt his heat sink into her skin and she frightfully glanced back at him to the best of her capability. Her eyes turned hard with hatred and anger. Jadeite laughed, no senshi had ever made him out to be same man as he was on earth. Whatever power they had over their disguises also worked for his benefit.
"Venus!" Jadeite shouted and she cocked her head over in their direction for a split second before returning her gaze back to the youma she was fighting, narrowly missing a limb swiping at her head. She jumped out of the way and came closer to Jadeite.
"What do you want?" She demanded as her full attention remained on the youma. Mercury was off to the sidelines doing who knew what on her computer. Jadeite had the faint expectation that she already knew the answer and was just playing video games until the others demanded her to tell them how to destroy the youma. She always seemed to snap back to attention, say 'right' and tell them exactly how to defeat it without really looking at her monitor.
"Give up, if not complete surrender then give us your energy, head warrior of the senshi. Don't you know the man you follow is not the true leader, and as such, he should be killed?"
"Oh give it up general!" Mars breathed through her constraint. "We are warriors and we will never surrender to your taunts, never to your demands, we don't give into cowards like you."
"Coward?" Jadeite questioned lightly. "I have you know, I am holding my biggest fear in my arms at the moment, I have faced and conquered it, you on the other hand still hold on to silly sentimental values."
"Kill her, what do I care? She's after the power of leader anyways." Venus called out as she ducked another aim towards her head from the youma. Where were Jupiter and Tuxedo Mask anyways?
Jadeite seemed to be thinking the same thing. "Looks like your leader, the caped wimp, has given up on all of you."
That said, Jadeite groaned as a sharp metal tip imbedded itself in his shoulder, causing him to loose his grip on the girl in his arms. She ducked out from under his grasp and called forth instantly a wave of fire and shot it at him. He saw it coming and instinct took over and he disappeared before it reached him.
Jadeite reappeared next to his intended target and grabbed the crystallized rock from her finger before any of the senshi could attack him and then he disappeared for good. He sent the youma to drain Mercury's energy before being called back to the base.
Tuxedo Mask groaned in frustration at the loss of yet another fight. "Damn him!" He shouted to the sky.
Two cats jumped and perched on his shoulders. He looked at them individually. "Come to harass me and my lack of beating the general?" He grated out.
Artemis shook his head. "Actually, we have come to bring bad news; we fear someone has accessed our computer systems."
Luna's nasally voice came through on his other side. "We fear it is Serenity."
"What do you mean?" Mars asked with a growl, they were attacking her best friend, again.
"Someone beat the Sailor V game." Artemis supplied.
"What? I thought that was impossible!" Venus cried.
"Apparently not, only senshi and the two of us have the ability. We may have to consider the possibility that she is evil."
"Serenity?" Darien raised an eye brow as he de-transformed and walked with the senshi back to Rei's temple.
"Well think about it, she knows all of your identities, a second general came about after her appearance when she did find out about Darien, and you've never lost a battle nearly as bad as you have until afterwards as well." Luna rationed.
"Well yeah, but Serena?" Makoto asked unsure. "Couldn't there be another explanation other than the fact that she in turn may be a general?"
"Her name is Serenity "Serena" King "General"." Luna let out cautiously, she knew the girls and Darien didn't want to hear this about their friend, especially one who seemed so innocent.
"By that reasoning alone, I could be part of the dark kingdom." Darien added softly. "We don't know who I am, but I'm defiantly not a senshi."
"You haven't been able to access the computer system yet."
"I haven't tried."
"That settles it!" Minako said brightly. "We'll have Darien try to access it and if he can, then maybe it's a fluke that she passed the game. We don't even know if she accessed the computers or stopped once she typed in her initials. She doesn't even know that it's computer control down there, we haven't told her and nobody else knows. Right Darien?" Darien did tell Serenity a lot more than anybody else but she didn't think he'd jeopardize their control panel when he didn't even bother with it.
"That's right; Serenity hasn't been told by me that there's anything more than just Sailor V video game to it. She plays it all the time; maybe she just got good enough this time around."
"See! I knew Serena couldn't have had an ulterior motive!" Rei seconded.
Luna sighed. "I know you girls and Darien really want Serena to be good, but you have to keep in mind we really don't know much that's real about her."
"We know everything about her!" Rei cut in.
"Where does she live?" Luna asked back just as quickly and Rei was about to fire off an answer but couldn't find one, neither could anybody else. Rei nodded in understanding, all they knew was a p.o. box.
"That doesn't prove anything." Ami spoke up softly.
"What do we know about Jay?"
"You haven't even met him!" Rei glared, attacking both was just too much!
Luna sighed in defeat, Rei was right; she'd just seen the man at a distance with his niece. "Do you have any thoughts on the uncle, Darien?" Luna asked.
Darien hesitated as he looked at Rei. Serenity had been both Darien and Rei's friend before it became more, but Darien had never quite known what to think of Jay, for what kind of name was that anyways? But Rei had known Jay since she was younger, when she first met Serenity. Darien shrugged, jostling the two cats on his shoulders and Artemis jumped onto Minako's while Luna went to Ami. "He seems nice enough to me, a little mischievous and into his own world, I don't see him enough to really say one way or the other. Rei's the qualified person in this situation."
"Rei, have you tried a fire reading on either?"
"Yes." She answered bashfully, she'd seen a kiss between Jay and herself but that was all she saw and Serenity had been in danger in her other one when she was messing around trying to see into the fates of all of her friends. "I don't think we have anything really to fear."
"Well, we'll let this matter be for now, then." Luna decided and the group disbanded and went their separate ways.