Great Angel of Fire

Chapter 27

Kasadi stood on the top of the same building she stood on months earlier. The same building that she stood upon minutes before she was unmasked the first time. Sitting on the ledge, she looked into the sunset contemplating her next step. At this very moment, Hiro's alter-ego The Silver Shadow would be taking control and start wreaking havoc on the city. This night would be different than all the others though. This time when Shadow came within, Kasadi would have to take him down. The tricky part was sparing Hiro.

Kasadi had accepted the high probability that she would not walk away from this. At this point it really didn't matter whether she did or not. The only lives that mattered to her were Hiro and the rest of the Senshi. They had to survive. If Hiro made it out of this alive, she could live with no regrets…she could die with no regrets. If her friends were safe and made it home to their families after that night, she could walk through those pearly gates with a clear conscience.

A nice idea, to be sure. But where to start…?

"Come on, Tokyo," Kasadi whispered. "Gimme a clue… Point me in the…"

There was a flash of color in the distance, catching her eye and also by surprise.

"Huh –?" There it was again, and she recognized what it was.

Fireworks. From the other side of the city.

Well, she'd asked for this sign, and it would just be rude to ignore it.

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She sprinted across rooftops, but having been out of commission for so long, she soon tired and was forced to civilianize herself and take to the streets again.

It was getting late, and the streets were starting to come alive with less-than-desirable company. Kasadi did her best to ignore them, the smells and snippets of conversation she caught as she weaved through the crowd. She was beginning to lose track of where she was.

Her shoulder bashed into a man's passing her.

"Hey!" he said, turning and grabbing her arm. Instantly, he changed gears. "You should be careful, hun. Watch where you're going. Never know who you'll run into."

"S-sorry," she said, jolted out of her mission-mode. "Uh…let go, please?"

The man was about to say something when someone else joined in.

"Maya, there you are," said another guy, gently pulling her away from the other man. "It's okay, Yoko found some extra lavender in the storeroom. We don't need more." He looked at the man Kasadi had bumped into and nodded, smiling. "Good night."

The guy took the hint and stalked off. Kasadi looked at her rescuer; he was young, and reminded her a lot of Kyo, with his gangly limbs and messy hair, yet the sort of presence indicating he could handle himself in a fight. But his tousled hair was dark gold, not black, and his eyes were bright hazel.

"Now that went well," he commented, smiling. "That guy's a neighborhood thug. You handled yourself nicely."

"Thanks," she said automatically, then added, "f-for, uh, helping."

"No problem." He glanced her up and down. "You're a couple blocks from home, aren't you?"

"A few," she admitted. "Um…could you tell me where we are?"

He took her into a small shop a door up from where they'd been. A girl with a funky hairdo, shocks of hot pink and electric blue shooting through the natural raven, was behind the counter playing with what seemed to be a handful of dice. This, she assumed, was Yoko. The shelves and walls were laden with many strange, uncommon things, that could only be –

"Magic supplies?" she asked. "Is this a magic shop?"

"Yeah, my mom's," said the guy. "That's Yoko, my sister," A surprising fact – they looked nothing alike, "I'm David. David James."

"You find her?" Yoko asked, without looking up from what she was doing.

"No, Yo, I'm talking to the shrunken heads," said David.

"Wouldn't be the first time," muttered his sister. She suddenly scooped up the dice and flung them across the counter at them.

Kasadi flinched back instinctively. "Hey!"

"Well that's new," remarked David, looking down at the floor.

They weren't dice; they were small, smooth, ivory-colored stones, rectangular in shape, with strange symbols carved into some of them. Others were blank.

"Half up, half down," said Yoko, looking over at her handiwork. "It's a fifty-fifty. That's better than it should be."

"What –?"

"Two-to-one odds still aren't good, though," continued the strange shop girl, now searching the shelves behind the counter for something. "You need a damn good weapon. Dave, where's that blessed dagger Aunt Chrissa brought back from China?"

"With Aunt Chrissa, in New York," said David. "Hey, Yo, check this out." He bent down and picked up one of the chips. "What symbol is this?"

"Do I have to do all the psychic work around here?" she grumbled, walking around the counter and over to them.

"Seeing as you're the psychic one," replied her brother, "yes."

Yoko took the little domino-like thing from him and without looking at it for long said, "Love. This one means love." She looked at Kasadi. "Oh, I get it. He fell in love with you. That's what's making your odds better."

"What's going on?" Kasadi interjected. "Who are you, what are you talking about – and how do you know about it – and what's going on?"

David pointed to himself. "David." He pointed to his sister. "Yoko." He motioned to the store. "Aya's Corner Supplies Shop."

"I got all that – I'm not an idiot," she snapped. She was a student at Tokyo Academy, for crying out loud! "Tell me what's going on. Really."

"I'm a psychic," Yoko stated bluntly. "When I was two, I saw the world end and developed a taste for punk rock, zombie apocalypse movies and mushroom ravioli."

Kasadi looked at David. He shrugged. "Yeah, we don't get it either."

"That apocalypse I saw in my premonition, though," said the girl, "it was you. Since then, I've dedicated myself to trying to stop you from ending the world. I can hone in on you more easily than I can anyone else in the world, because I do it so often. That's how David knew you were in trouble just now, and why he brought you here. That's why we're helping you. Now, the Shadow's in love with you? You'll need something special…" She turned and hurried through a beaded curtain to another part of the shop.

"It's probably a bit much to process, especially right now," said David. "We tried to figure out where you lived, went to school, that sort of thing, so we could help you sooner, but for some reason we couldn't. Mom thinks it's because we weren't meant to, but I don't buy that 'reason' crap."

"David," Yoko called from the back room. "Where's the box of amulets? The good ones?"

"The gold ones or the silver ones?" he shouted back.

There was a commotion back there then Yoko stepped out, rustling the bead curtain and holding a small wooden box in her hands. She was rummaging through it. "An Egyptian one or a Celtic one, do you think, Dave?"

"I don't know – do you have a preference?" he asked Kasadi.

"Uh – not really," said Kasadi. "I'm…a Christian, actually. Baptist. I don't know if I feel all that comfy wearing pagan relics around my neck."

"Here, how about this one?" Yoko held up a silver charm on a black string. It was a flower of some sort. "It's a lotus – Buddhist. The monk who blessed it said the wearer would be protected from the hell fires. Can you correlate that to Christianity?"

"I guess it couldn't hurt," Kasadi said, taking it and slipping it over her head.

"And take some water from the sacred springs in China," the girl continued, grabbing a crystal bottle off a shelf, "and a dragon-bone knife." She took down this obviously revered relic down off the wall and held it out to Kasadi, who didn't take it.

"This has all got to be pretty expensive," she said. "I can't take it. I'm not really expecting to come back."

"If you die, we all die," said David. "You Senshi think you're the only ones fending off Armageddon, but there's people like us all over the world taking care of the lesser threats every day. We know there's only so much we can do, because we're not like you guys. So we'll let you do your part, and you should let us do ours."

Kasadi looked at the two very different siblings. They looked so calm, so…used to it. She silently took the knife and the bottle and slipped them into her pockets.

"Thank you," she said to her new, strange friends. "I hope the Senshi can work with you guys in the future."

"You will," said Yoko, smiling. She handed her a folded up map. "You're heading for The Traveler's Shrine on the eastern edge of the city. The far-end of the Hino Shrine grounds. I've circled it on the map, in red." She unexpectedly hugged Kasadi tightly. "You better get going."

"Am I running out of time?" Kasadi asked, worried.

"No, David's starting to crush on you. Run."

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"We should have brought a compass," said Sailor Star, as she and Mini Moon rested atop a building, catching their breath.

"Less talking, more breathing," said Mini Moon. "Besides," she heaved, "I've got an internal compass. When you come into your powers more, you will too."

"I wonder where the others are," mused Star, looking out at the spread of the city.

"Serena and Darien are somewhere over there," said Mini Moon, motioning, "and Kyo and Meggie are over that way."

"I thought they were supposed to go west."

"Serena figured that she and Dar'd reach the park and could just swing west from there, Meg and Kyo are going east instead." She straightened up and stretched. "Ready?"

Star mimicked her and nodded. "Ready."

Mini Moon turned and leapt across an alley onto the neighboring roof, Star close behind.

And we're off, thought Star. Please be alive, Kasadi. I'll never forgive either of us if you aren't.

With great difficulty, she pushed the others and their whereabouts and even Kasadi's safety from her mind and focused entirely on finding her cousin.

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It didn't take much effort for Kasadi to find the Traveler's Shrine. It was right on the edge of the Hino's property and the only Traveler's Shrine on that side of the city. Not only that, but there was a small festival there that night, celebrating the shrine's dedication as a historical monument. The festivities that had taken place explained the fireworks.

When she entered the clearing, there was only a handful of people left, seeing as the festival was wrapping up. She looked at the small wooden temple and noticed that it was just big enough to house one or two adults on overnight journeys. It was obvious that it hadn't been used in centuries, probably during the feudal era. Long before hotels, trains or any other sort of travel luxuries that exist today.

Once the last of the attendees of the party departed, Kasadi transformed into Sailor Phoenix and waited. She didn't have to wait long before a dark figure stepped out from the shadows of the trees.

"Hiro…" Phoenix stepped forward a little, to get a better look at him. He was in his Silver Shadow garb; mask and all. "Hiro…I was so worried about you."

"That's very flattering Kasadi." He replied, his voice mangled by the electronic voice changer that hid his identity for so long. "I was wondering if you were going to find me tonight."

"I had some help….I didn't want to let you go…I want to help you." Kasadi stepped even closer as he turned his head away.

"I'm too far gone to be helped," he turned back again, "There is nothing you can do."

"Yes there is! We can go away to somewhere safe….somewhere you can't be found, and we can try to break the curse. We can keep trying to free you."

The Shadow chuckled. "Oh Kasadi… It's been a pleasure, but I'm afraid it's time for the charade to end."

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