We do not own "Sailor Moon" nor any of the characters.
SAILOR MOON ETERNAL
"The 6th Season of the Sailor Moon Saga"
By Haruka Kou
Chapter 29: Multicolored Gemstones Glimmer in the Distance
"The child of death was once a useful ally of our forces, young one. There is a power beyond power that lies dormant within her. Perhaps with the services of your mind, you may be able to persuade her to rejoin our fight?" Queen Metallia poses her evil question to the green eyed man perched relaxed upon the edge of a throne not his.
"That path is hopeless. Her mind is stronger than her fragile body and yet stronger her will has become, erecting barriers that would serve to destroy her before she would permit herself to turn to our side again. No, I've decided against that particular path." Robin easily dismisses the Queen of Evil, as if she were no more than a doting aunt of his.
"Very well, my heir." Metallia smiles, deep down somewhere, in the pit of her wickedness at his ambitious arrogance.
"There is someone though, whose powerful energies may prove an asset to our cause." Robin says aloud to the dark orb Metallia's evil spirit occupied.
"And who is that?" Aquamarianna asks, as she and Pearlrellion enter the throne room.
"Of all these 'Sailors' I've been studying, there is one who interests me far more than the others - more than Jupiter's strength, more than Fighter's passion, more than Uranus' arrogance and unpredictability." At the mere mention of THAT despised Sailor's name, Robin's eyes shrink to slits, slowly plotting her destruction in particular, for some reason having a grudge against that blasted soldier of Uranus.
"This one has all the earmarks for greatness, and though I have tried, at the moment her mind is closed to my prodding." Robin looks almost confused by his powerful mind being repelled by another.
But then that overwhelming arrogance of his own spurs him on all the more to seek her out.
"The unfortunate partner of Uranus. She hails from the planet Neptune and I believe she may-"
Robin, unawares, strikes a chord within Metallia's wicked heart.
"NEVER MENTION THAT NAME IN MY PRESENCE AGAIN!"
Like a blast from the deep, dark nothingness, Metallia's most dreaded voice bellows out, deafening those in the throne room with the force alone. Aquamarianna glances to her husband in fear, but he too was taken aback by this outburst.
Robin, however, was undaunted.
"Why not?" He says calmly, with a determination in his eye Metallia knew she was not fully able to claim as her doing.
"Because I said so, my heir. You have far better things to do." Metallia calms herself against his steely, unfeeling gaze. She was still certain he was under her control, despite his recalcitrance, and she meant to keep him that way.
"Such as the training of my newest minions. Dracon, Swanette -step forth!"
From out of the shadows two figures appear. A man and woman, one with dark green hair and eyes, she with snow white hair and the blue eyes of a bird stood before them. Her hair was up in a long braid and both of them had the trance of evil in their eyes.
"At your command, Majesty." The lovers answer in unison.
"Excellent." Metallia's light gleams at their subservient bow.
"Queen Metallia, are we not pleasing you? Do we really need more-" King Pearlrellion starts to protest, but holds back at his wife's warning hand.
"SILENCE!" Metallia shrieks. "Silence." She says softer, toning her voice in a more wily way. "How are you to build a kingdom of my evil darkness without servants, my king? How are you to create an empire without a court?" The evil Queen asks metaphorically. "Lord Opalson, Lady Ruby, come forward."
Pearlrellion's anxieties are doubled upon seeing the last of Metallia's recruits. A tallish man with a firm jaw and purplish-black hair, while the lady at his side's hair was her most prominent feature. It flamed a short and brilliant red.
And Pearlellion knew them both far too well.
"Welcome, at long last, brother." He says uncordially as possible. For he and his sibling had had their share of troubles and rivalry in the past.
"Excellent." Metallia cackles, for it was within a house's structure that it could be made to fall at her whim.
Unnoticed amidst all the introductions, Robin had slipped away, long ago. Metallia's forbidding warnings fueled his curiosity all the more to find out just who this sailor of Neptune was.
Far, far above the evil catacombs, a mountain resort village lay dormant, closed down to the public on account of an early November blizzard. But despite the warnings to turn around, or stay at lower elevations of the peak, somewhere far above the five mile limit, a sports car peeks red beneath the piles of snow covering it as it weathers the beating of the storm, strangely abandoned and uncared for by its loving owner.
For inside a chimney smoking cabin nearby, there was something many times more important to her, requiring attentions tucked away in the loft where it was warmest and quiet.
"Do you think it's warm enough in here now, Ally?" Sayer's voice asks from down the loft in a loud whisper, as not to disturb the silent creature laying securely snuggly, propped up on a sea of pillows and blankets, plus a pure white silvery plush seal stuffed animal that Sayer had picked up for her at the stop for food and supplies at the store.
"It's more than warm enough. Have you used all our firewood up yet, firebug?" Alex teases slightly as Sayer's head peeps up over the ladder's top railing. Her voice was at a normal level. She knew there was no fear of awakening the soft, aqua beauty in the bed she was perched upon.
"No, Ally. Do I look like a fool?" Sayer says with a crooked grin, gazing at Alex's raised eyes. "Don't answer that!" He states quickly, then smiles, catching hers for a minute. Sayer watches sadly as his wife's dazzling smile fades away when her look turns back to Michelle.
She was sad now, and often-pensive and worried. Sayer could feel the change. He had always known how close Alex and Michelle's bond was. But now he could see it acutely.
I wish there was something I can do to make it all better. But I miss him, too...So I know it's hard to be happy sometimes.
Sayer's smile, too, drops as he looks out the loft's window over the white torrents threatening to swallow the little cabin up in its nothingness. Turning around at a touch on his shoulder, Sayer looks into Alex's deep green eyes.
"Hey, was it that long ago we were last here?" Alex, seeing his need for her as well, wraps her arms around Sayer's neck possessively.
"Was it?" Sayer feels her strong hands caress his chest, sliding off his button up shirt.
"Almost a year." Alex whispers, leading him down the narrow loft ladder steps with a final reassuring glance over Michelle's peacefully slumbering form.
"Don't rush it! It's only been ten months." Sayer protests, as Alex takes hold of him, carrying her lightweight husband in a pair of strong arms.
"You mean 'eleven.'" Alex's mouth smiles as she takes him into that oh-so-familiar room where many a passionate honeymoon night was spent.
"It seems like that long since we last..." Sayer's mumbled words are stopped short by Alex's kiss on his lips. She needed to feel the security of having her near as much as he did in this crazy, upside down world.
Everything was locked up tightly, and Michelle had been tenderly attended to, so Alex lets herself go. She desperately wanted to enjoy this first return to this cottage, though she knew their coming here was not the pleasure trip they once had planned.
Michelle's safety required the secrecy this hidden away, winter cabin had to offer, deep in the stormy forest. Thoughts of the upcoming war were pushed aside, just for tonight, as Alex and Sayer hold onto each other with all their might, defying the bitter winter storm beating down hard on the door outside...
Falling asleep in Alex's arms, Sayer contentedly drifts away into a world where dreams and nightmares blurred. Where a silver-haired companion still existed but was always far away, beyond reach, where a shining golden light was the only thing to hold onto-the only anchor he had in the dark seas...
Half asleep, half awake, Sayer feels Alex softly stirring at his side. He wraps his arms around her.
"Are you awake, Starr?" Sayer vaguely hears her low voice speaking to him.
"Mmmhhh..." Sayer mumbles, slurring under his still exhausted breath.
"I'm awake." Alex announces with a seductive tone blowing in his ear.
"Oh, yeah?" Sayer groggily hums, his eyes still closed. He turns on his back to in time to hear a surprising statement from his wife.
"You know I love you, Sayer." She softly says, kissing his sleepy eyes, his cheeks, his neck.
"Wait a minute. Since when do you tell me that you love me so easily?" Red flags shoot up in Sayer's mind as he holds Alex's shoulders firmly. Though he knew it deep inside, he could not recall once when his wife had told him those words aloud.
"Since..." Alex's green eyes flash wide open at her error. Looking into Sayer's dubious blue ones, she realizes that there is nothing else she could do. Quickly her hands fly over his heart, with a strength and ferocity more than the real Alex had.
"Oh-no-you-don't!" Sayer, who had more than learned how to deal with her quickness, grabs her two hands that were desperately trying to claw at his chest. He finds the struggle hard, as his beautiful attacker's strength seems to increase as she grabs closer for his heart, her hands aglow.
"The minute I leave you alone, you have another woman in your bed. Hmmm?" Battle worn and always ready, the real Alex's surprise at her evil double's appearance does not show as she stands in the doorway in her yellow robe, just returning from a check on Michelle.
"You could give me a hand, if it's not too much trouble for you, Mrs. Starr!" Sayer grunts out from beneath the strong woman atop him, with a similarly sarcastic air.
"Oh, you're just itching for a fight, aren't you?" Accustomed to battle, they rib at each other, despite the attacking danger. Alex reaches into her pocket with the ruby ringed hand she had just minutes ago been stroking over Michelle's unconscious head.
In this moment, Alex remembers the responsibilities love had laid down upon her, for the two people who needed her most.
"...No, Alex. I don't think that's a very good idea at all."
A calm voice pierces through the darkness of the cabin as the front door opens. The rising morning sun glimmers over the mountain peak, blinding Alex, as, in shock, she freezes. Her eyes focus in disbelief at who she was certain THAT voice belonged to...
"But you always were a difficult woman, weren't you?" Snidely, sarcastically, the voice moves closer. Alex's own voice catches in her throat as she makes out definitely just who it is.
"Shrimp..." She breathes her 'friendly' nickname for he who had become so important to her partner - her beloved Michelle. He whose disappearance was the sole reason that Michelle had given up on life and he who was the only one who could bring her back to the world of the living...
"That's right." Robin's black leather pantsuit shines as keenly as his green eyes. He smirks as he coolly walks up to her, his hands still in his pockets.
"It's me, 'Shrimp.'" His smirk, like the light blazing in his eyes, turns suddenly dark as Alex sees that the soul had gone from them. His goodness was obviously overtaken by a n ewevil.
Her hand quickly reaches for her transformation stick.
CRACK!
But it was a hesitated moment too late. Robin seemed to foresee her move and he had a speed he never had before, as dark energy surges within him, causing him to snap Alex's wrist as easily as he would have broken a flower's stem.
"I've always wanted to do that." Robin smiles evilly at Alex, though no scream of pain escapes her stabbing lips. She reels back, while her other functioning hand turns to a fist.
But Robin again was too quick. He dodges the swing and decks Alex with one of his own instead. Her shocked body skids across the hardwood floor.
"I'll take everything away from you-you vile creature. Everything you love, starting with this one." Robin steps into the bedroom where Sayer was just about duking it out with the Alex clone. He had just landed a punch in the gut of his assailant when he notices the figure standing in the doorway.
"Rob...?"
Sayer whispers, walking forward hesitantly, slowly, as if he was afraid the bubble would burst if he moved towards it too quickly.
"Sayer." Robin nods with a small smile to his brother.
The brother which evil ambitions had turned Robin to despise.
"DIE!"
Robin shouts suddenly, pointing a single finger at his sibling, while cold burning energy sizzles from it, directed right at a frozen in place, confused Sayer.
"Watch out!" Alex races past in a flash, knocking Sayer's body out of the way, just in the nick of time as the energy inferno explodes the back wall, the snow covered fields plain to see.
"Ally, is this a dream? A really bad dream?" Sayer asks his rescuer as his eyes fill with tears.
"No dream, lover." Alex says, her eyes darting up from the now snow-filled room. "More like a nightmare." She pulls Sayer out of the way just as the smoke clears and another blast destroys another wall.
"Transform now!"
Alex forces her broken wrist to do as she wills it to, thrusting her golden stick into the air.
"URANUS CRYSTAL POWER!"
She grits her teeth, fighting the pain of both body and mind.
"FIGHTER STAR POWER!"
Ally watches Sayer transform out of the side of her eye, damning the tears that were flowing from his eyes as he does so.
"MAKE-"
Halfway through Sayer's transformation into the Sailor known at Star Fighter, a wispy hand revitalized and energized into its true evil form by its master, thrusts through the star field, grasping at Sayer's neck and squeezing hard.
KICK!
Sayer, through tear stained eyes, kicks the attacking red wisps of wind in its all-too-soiled body. It falls back just in time for him to finish his transformation.
"-UP!"
Sayer finishes painfully as he prepares to engage the evil crimson monster, but suddenly finds everyone, including Alex, vanishes.
"Where?!" Star Fighter asks the wind and to his shock, it answers back.
"Here I am." The clear red wisps reappear as a breeze of wind scream towards him, right in the face.
Uranus watches as she sees Fighter decked by the whirling wisps of wind and Sailor Uranus was about to rush to his rescue again, but with an eye on the enemy she feared far more, she sees his gaze turn coldly up towards the entrance to the loft.
"URANUS WORLD SHAKING!"
She calls out, smashing the ladder to wood chips as Robin moved towards it.
"As always, a headstrong fighter with a brain full of rocks." Robin taunts, merely folding his arms and blinking into nothingness.
"DAMN!" Uranus lets out the cry as she bounds through the rubble to catch up to just where she knew he was going.
Silently, Robin stands, perfectly still, over the sleeping form of a woman wrapped up tightly on a bed. She was in a lace nightgown, with aqua hair well groomed and cascading down her bare white shoulders. Her lips were a pale, yet rosy pink and her perfect skin looked so soft that Robin felt the need to touch the white cheek...
His hand slowly, tentatively moves closer as he wishes he could look into her eyes and scan the mind of this Sailor Soldier who had intrigued him so ,and draw her back with him into the evilness enveloping his soul...
"GET AWAY FROM HER!"
Like a lioness, Sailor Uranus leaps from the ground floor to the loft. In one motion, she grabs the arm that was reaching towards Michelle's innocent form, snapping it back so hard, so viciously, his arm would've broken if Robin had still been 'normal'. But as Uranus could see looking into his eyes, Robin was no longer normal.
"Do you love her?" Robin asks as he shoves Sailor Uranus by her weakened painful wrists against the chalet wall.
"You know I do! What's happened to you! Stop this!" Uranus growls. Her hard won trust in him once was betrayed, for she sees there was no recognition. Something had been added and something equally taken away. She searches his eyes.
"Nothing has happened to me." Robin calmly states. "But something IS about to happen to you." He smirks, grabbing her neck and holding her over the loft's empty opening where the ladder once was.
Kicking and thrashing her fingers at the unbelievably powerful hand around her throat, Uranus' eyes catch a glimpse of the fiery light show of lasers and red wind cyclones doing battle below.
The light of a star was no longer in the eyes of the man holding her tauntingly over the railing's edge.
"You know, it joys me to kill you. I don't know why, but I truly despise you. Do you know that?" Robin chuckles at the power of life and death he was holding over this rebellious soldier.
"The feeling-ugh-is-unfg-MUTUAL!"
Sailor Uranus does a swinging kick, propelling herself upwards and her assailant downwards as they both fall to the ground below.
Just in time to both be walloped by a forceful gale of red wind blasting in their direction with a power so strong that it blows out the other old cabin's wall.
"FOOL!" Robin shrieks at the wind creature that Sailor Star Fighter was keeping at bay with his tauntingly quick moves.
"Well, get out of the way next time, Master!" The rebellious wind creature was not one for asking forgiveness, even from her authorities.
"Stupid wind creature...Just get their energy, then destroy the Sailor Soldiers before I destroy you." Robin's temper flares as he dusts himself off.
"I tried to take away something you possessed, foolish mortal. But he was unwilling to oblige." The red wind wisps from spot to spot of the now well-ventilated cottage, mocking Uranus as it wistfully laughs. "But look at him now! Such a waste!" The seductive wind whines as gusts fly everywhere at Star Fighter, who takes a defensive stance. There was an angry look on his face at the monster, intermixed with the still sad look in his eyes at his brother's betrayal.
"Do you think so?" Uranus feigns talking to the monster as her wind sensitive soul calls for its help, and then suddenly a knowing smile etches across her face. "I don't!" She says in a shout.
"URANUS SPACE SWORD BLASTER!"
The wind stopped at last as the invisible creature's form splatters back into vision, screaming in pain.
"YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!" The wind monster's voice rumbles the entire cabin. The mountain peak shakes as the vengeful voice turns markedly lower and angrier. "I too can change. For even the gentlest breeze can always turn into a blasting gale." The red, feminine voice and wispy shaped creature transforms into a dark crimson male wolf-like shadow monster. The wind whistled through its nostrils as it stalks forward.
"WIND TUNNEL RAGE!"
With a howl to the wind, the wind wolf sends out a blast of tornado like winds, exploding walls and floors, while logs and furniture fly everywhere, as Uranus firmly grabs onto Fighter who was being thrashed about the disintegrating cabin, thrusting him to the mainframe beam.
"Get it away from the house!" Uranus shouts in his ear to be heard above the din of the tormenting winds. Star Fighter nods and dashes out the open door into the foot high snowbank, leaving Uranus to search for the missing 'master.'
Catching Fighter's movements, the wolfish monster chases after him. It was a maroonish, translucent thing until it got near and then it's claws seemed very real.
SLASH SLASH!
Fighter's red blood spills out onto the white snow as he falls. The creature breathed down his neck, prepared for the kill...
"STAR SERIOUS-gakt, gakt-"
Fighter starts to use his power, but he was already losing consciousness as the wind wolf reaches for his exposed heart, with the dark crystal in between its claws.
"FIGHTER!" Uranus could feel his energy being drained from somewhere inside of her. She races out into the snow to help, aiming her powers as she summons the wind that she called her own.
She doesn't see the raging lime green inferno racing towards her back. Sizzling with evil energy, Uranus falls to her knees. Her electrified body melts the snow, as she goes down, just a few feet away from where her Star Fighter was being drained dry of his energy.
Reaching out, summoning the last of her strength, Uranus starts her attack on the creature, despite the pain shooting through her.
"URANUS SPACE SWORD-"
CRUNCH!
Robin's black leather boot comes squashing down forcefully on her raised arm, cracking it yet again. Maliciously cackling as he stands towering over her prone, defenseless form, Robin's evil green eyes flash as he actually smiles down at her.
A wicked evil smile.
"Yes, I will enjoy killing you. I don't think I'm even going to wait for your worthless energy, Uranus. I'll tear your mind apart and make you beg to die first." He smiles at the thought of strong Uranus begging at his feet. He aims his hand at her with a devilish look in his eye. His deadliest powers gleamed in his vengeful fingertips.
Starr...Michelle...I'm sorry...
Alex knew her fight was futile with her last strength expended.
WHOOSH!
Like a gentle ocean tide, the wind picks up the scent of the salt sea air a second before a crashing blue-green wave of warm water washes over, crashing a beaming energy sphere at Fighter's attacker. The wind wolf disintegrates, its gusts disperse to the ends of the earth as it's shadow sinks into the ground with a howl.
Shocked at his minion's demise, Robin spins on his heel.
There, standing tall, her arms crossed, her aqua skirt fluttering on the now gentle, breezy wind, high heels sparkling as she poses high upon the rooftop, was Super Sailor Neptune.
Her hair glows with a pale aqua aura as the sun rises behind her. Michelle looks down to where she instinctively, without thought, sensed Alex was in danger. Her duty, her loyalty, her love-had all awakened her from the self-imposed slumber of unconsciousness when she shielded her soul, through her bond with another, from being torn asunder.
She knew from the depths of that soul, deep down in every part of her being, Michelle knew that HE was here too.
You're alive...you're alive...I knew it...You're alive...
Tears spring to her biting eyes.
"Robin!"
Her mind screams, her heart aches, her soul longs for him, as she wants to run to him, take him in her arms, kiss him and love him again-just like before.
But no. Something was wrong. He was not the same.
Robin...
Michelle's silent heart cries as the man she loves stares at her through the eyes of a stranger. Their eyes lock across the still air and then a long silence passes.
How familiar your eyes are...
Robin feels a strange...something...slowly setting ablaze inside of him.
Your eyes are cold...why are your eyes cold?
Michelle's own soul sinks, breaking, as she stands frozen in place. Her heart freezes along with it.
ZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT
Robin feels the urge to go to her, to be with her, to take her away with him, as he teleports to the top of the roof, right beside Sailor Neptune.
"Robin? Why can't I find your soul? You're hiding it from me, aren't you?" Michelle desperately tries to reach out to him, but finds their link severed, their bond dissolved.
"Sailor Neptune?" Robin almost whispers, unable to unlock himself from the sea of her blue eyes. "Join me. You can rule the world at my side." He says with a serious, soft smile, extending his hand out to her invitingly.
Just like before, but...no...you're different now...everything's wrong now...
Michelle's soul shrieks as she grabs his shoulders, gripping them firmly.
"Robin! Robin dearest! Wake up! Please wake up!" The tears begin to bubble in her clear blue eyes when he doesn't respond to her psychic pleas.
"Let go of me."
Robin says indignantly.
How dare this woman touch me!
His still high-class sensibilities and now cutting coldness protest Michelle's demanding touch.
"Robin dearest! Come back to me! I love you! I love you..." Michelle begins to tremble, shaking his shoulders hard as she collapses her head to his chest beseechingly, her tears spilling on his neck.
"You love me?" Robin coldly detaches Michelle's sobbing head and hands from his chest as he looks down at her. "Then come with me." Robin says, engaging her eyes and grasping her trembling fingers in his.
How rough the seas are as you reach out to me...But it's you, Robin. It IS you. But then...it's not. I need you, but I'm so confused. Help me...I'd follow you anywhere-because I love you. Remember, you and I...You and I...
Michelle loses herself in past dreams as she closes her eyes. Robin senses her uncertainty, her weak will and touches her cheek lightly, ready to take her away with him to the darkness below and prove Metallia wrong-that there was nothing he could not do, nothing he could not have...
If his mind so willed it.
"MICHELLE! Move away from it!" A booming voice calls Michelle back to harsh reality-the voice of the only other who could pull her from her reverie-her dream to be with her love again.
The one other soul in the universe who Michelle loved with everything in her.
"Amara...?" Michelle feels tears spill down her cheek as Alex stands tall in the snow, her Space Sword gleaming as it points directly at Robin.
"Uranus, you swing that sword and I'll kill her." Robin threatens suddenly, grabbing Michelle and putting an arm around her neck in a forceful, hurting way in which he had never touched her before.
"You wouldn't." Uranus' eyes widen in horror at his betrayal as Robin yanks Neptune down, floating through the air with her.
"Why wouldn't I? What do I care about this girl!" His cold words cut through Michelle like a knife. His being, his physical form was here, yes, but his soul was no longer. And it was his soul that Michelle cried to love again. For without it, she knew she could no longer live.
"Robin..." She whispers, her overwhelming sadness overtakes her that she is ready to die. Her powerful mind had the ability to shut herself down, and she was ready to use that as she looks frightened and scared into her love's soulless eyes...
"You rotten son-" Sailor Uranus feels within her body her adored Michelle's pain. She silently swears at the man who had caused it. She saw Michelle's will to live fading, but there was nothing she could do.
One last long look in Robin's evil eyes proved to Neptune the loss of all love, of all heart, of all soul.
"-LASER!"
Suddenly, without warning, Sailor Star Fighter's fierce call finishes its blast as a beam of energy from where he lay in the snow catches Robin unexpected.
But at the last second, he teleports away, higher, to safety. Neptune falls into the cold icy snow, physically unscathed by the pinpointing laser just missing her.
But mentally, her mind and heart were torn apart. Immediately, Uranus is at her side with a sharp, gleaming sword guarding her from the attacker above who was nursing his own singed arm with an angry look on his face at Fighter, who joined Uranus, standing protectively over Neptune's shocked form.
"I can easily destroy you both, you know." Robin's voice was dripping with spite and anger as he decides to rid this world of the two insects who dared challenge him. Uranus and Fighter's battleworn bodies steeled themselves once more, despite the pain rushing through them. Their eyes were alight with determination and the tears Fighter was trying to blink away, as Robin raises his hand to exact a final, deadly blow against them.
"No."
A small voice could barely be heard above the din of whistling winds, when suddenly, an aqua figure stands from behind them.
Despite the pain, heartbreak and soul wrenching her Robin was causing her, Michelle had someone else to live for, too.
"You won't hurt them." Sailor Neptune pushes in front of a stunned Fighter and Uranus who knew, at the last second, from the detached unfeeling look in Neptune's blue eyes, what she was about to do.
"Why wouldn't I-AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Robin's head explodes in pain as he screams, falling from his hovering perch in the sky to the snow below as Michelle pummels him over and over with waves and torrents of pure psi energy, battering the shields he had erected against such attacks.
Anger, pain, and love all fueled Neptune as she continues until the shields bend and warp, just enough for her to sneak in and maybe discover what was wrong with him...
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Neptune's high-pitched shriek now pierces through the mountain's misty peaks as she too sinks to her knees. Her mind was afire with the pain of the overwhelming evilness now invading Robin's soul, possessing his entire being to a degree beyond her recognition.
"Michelle! MICHELLE!" Uranus shakes her, dropping to her own knees beside Neptune. But the aqua soldier's eyes were glazed over. The realization of what her love had become-irretrievable to even her powerful psychic abilities was too heartbreaking to bear.
ZZZZZZZZZSSSSSSSHHHHHHH
To Fighter's horror, a bubble of dark energy envelops Robin's motionless form as he kneels over his downed brother, praying desperately for Robin to wake up and be normal again.
But that was not meant to be as the dark mists swirl over him and Robin is swallowed up again - into the dark nothingness.
"Robin!" Star Fighter reaches his hand out, but his brother was gone yet again-vanished, by some evil hand.
He's gone. He's vanished.
These thoughts echo unrelentingly through Michelle's tortured soul. Her worst nightmares had come true. The one she had sworn forever to, shared everything with, was now alive, but his soul was no more...
As was her own.
Michelle feels her heart, her emotions, withering away into dust, leaving only the shell of her body feeling cold and disattached. The only thing in this world there was still to live for was the woman who was holding her in the safe embrace of her strong warm arms.
"Amara, it was horrible..." Michelle whispers as the tears run uncontrollably to the wind, and Uranus holds her tightly. Her own heart was breaking for the loss of the one who had become so dear to her beloved.
But more than that, there was a passionate anger at what he had done to her Michelle. The trust for men was slipping away all over again.
"I'm here, Michelle. I'll always be here for you. It's only you and me, remember? We don't need him." Alex whispers into those aqua curls, fiercely determined now not to ever let that creature near Michelle again.
But she could see the damage to Michelle's soul was irreparable.
Love is a wretched thing.
Alex's angry mind lashes out at what she knew she should've shielded Michelle from. There should have been no other allowed to glimpse her fragile, beautiful soul-
To be able to glimpse it and be able to destroy it.
Uranus silently damns the world's unjust cruelties and everyone else in it too, save for the aqua angel in her arms, as the wind howls through the ice covered mountain peaks.
Far, far away from the snowcapped region on the opposite side of the world, crossing distant oceans a continent or two away, four young girls, now just coming into their formative teenage years, bask in the unusual perspiringly hot weather. For even in the Amazon jungles of the sun drenched shores of South America, November was generally cool. But who was complaining?
"Strange weather, isn't it?" A maroon haired teen asks her companions as they lay out after a day of foraging. Long ago, in now forgotten wicked days spent with the Black Moon circus, these youthful children were once the Sailor Solders enemies, but now they had blossomed into the lovely, healthy young women that only the vigor of the rainforests they had instinctively migrated to, could offer.
"You can certainly say that, Ves Ves. Look how burnt my flawless skin has become." Evilness had been eroded, but true personality still remained. The hot pink headed girl examines with disdain her red, sunburnt arms.
"That's because you were dodo, Cere, and didn't put on the skin lotion I made!" A shocking green ponytail to suit her shocking behavior, Jun Jun waves the homemade jar of lotion into the air under Cere Cere's nose. Jun Jun was proud of her botanical achievements and her roughhouse ways of tromping into even the deepest parts of the forest had produced some rare, medicinal blends, though none of her compatriots ever seemed to appreciate it.
Smirking at Jun and Cere's continual battles-sophisticates and wild ones rarely combined civilly-Ves Ves, the self-appointed leader had taken over and managed to keep them all together. The pact they had made to always be so, no matter what, still held true.
After Sailor Moon and the others had rescued them from the nasty old meanies in the Black Moon Circus, Ves Ves, Jun Jun, Cere Cere and Palla Palla had gone on as normal girls. But traditional Japan they found to be too restricting and too busy for their playful souls. Longing for freedom and adventure, mischievous as ever, Ves Ves had decided to take her quartet out onto the high seas, stowing away to a continent much like that of their homeworld, where greenery flourished everywhere-where things were still simple and basic, with much wonder to discover in it. Especially where, hidden in their own forest, no 'mean' adults would try to separate or put them away.
Here, in this world's equivalent Amazon, the four girls had found what their hungry souls yearned for, even if Cere Cere would complain from time to time. Running around unfettered, collecting samples of this and that, finding all sorts of interesting plants and animal life - this was where Ves Ves was sure they all belonged.
"Looky, looky what I found today!" A blue tinged waif's baubles bounced as she, too vibrant with childlike energy still, skips across the leafy bamboo makeshift hut they had built as they moved from interesting spot to spot.
"What is it, Palla Palla?" Over time, Ves Ves had become more and more protective of the little girlish innocence Palla Palla still possessed. Though it had tapered off from the rest of them, living in this jungle the past few years, they were still just four young girls out in the wilderness alone, where the responsibility of growing up was being laid down upon them no matter how hard they tried to avoid it.
If we grow up, then we'll grow apart - just like all adults do. I won't let that happen.
Ves Ves thought sadly as she smiles to her babyish friend's important new discovery.
"Look! Isn't he cute?!" Palla Palla bubbles over a frightened looking little primate, squeezing his little tummy as she displays him like a toy.
"Ew! Get it away!" Despite all this time spent in the jungle, surrounded by all types of animals, wildlife and creatures, Cere Cere was still scared of the little 'creepy crawlies' and she backs away, her hand flying to her horrified mouth.
"It isn't a stuffed animal, Palla Palla." Ves Ves softly chides. She had a bond with creatures, having been once a circus animal trainer. She didn't want Palla Palla to be bitten either, if she squeeze the poor critter too hard.
"Palla Palla knows! But isn't Monkey just too cute!" Palla Palla eagerly kisses the creature's forehead to Cere's disgusted expression.
"Palla! Don't! That's gross!" Cere whines at the uncleanliness of the small beast.
"Pipe down, primadonna. It's only a monkey and I bet he's cleaner than you are, anyway! He smells better than that flower perfume junk you just brewed up!" Jun Jun was always ready to pick a fight with her arch-nemesis as she playfully pulls the monkey's arms and legs about like a puppet.
"WHAT?!" Cere explodes, her red face reddening more with anger to match her sun burnt arms at this clear insult. But Jun Jun just chuckles, pleased with herself.
"Where'd ya find him, Palla Palla?" Ves Ves asks, being the responsible 'mother' to her feuding children.
"Over there by the riverbank. Baby Bonk-Bonk was falling in and Palla Palla saved him!" Palla proudly states as Jun Jun offers the little squirt a half-eaten banana. Then she shrugs, eating the rest when the scared critter refuses her offer.
"We can't keep him, Palla. His momma's probably looking for him already." Ves Ves says softly in that tender, caring tone she always used when chiding her little friend.
"Palla Palla's his momma now!" She pouts, hugging her 'baby' primate to her chest.
"Of course we can't keep it! It will make horrid messes!" Cere's vanity showed in her section of the hut. Her bought mirrors, jewelry, outlandish clothes and even a CD player, were saved up and traded for, just for her, with her perfumes and potions, by this finicky little lady.
"Oh, put a cork in it already, Cere Cere!" Jun Jun says off handedly as she, too feeling a sort of responsibility over Palla Palla, challenges her pink haired friend.
"It's better for the munchkin to be out where he belongs, Palla. You just show us where he lives and we'll visit it all the time, I promise." Jun Jun then turns, saying it seriously with a determined look in her green eyes that Palla found reassuring.
"Okey dokey lokey. Come on, Bonk Bonk. Palla Palla will take you home." She sings sweetly, skipping out the door with Ves Ves and Jun Jun at her heels.
"What about you, Miss Priss? Aren't you coming?" Jun Jun glances over her shoulder to find Cere lazily lounging on her cot for a mid afternoon siesta.
"I for one am not going to be traipsing to Heaven knows where just to return a stupid little orangutan." Cere begins to complain but Jun Jun had a better idea.
"Fine. Just stay here by yourself when the crocodiles decide to swim up and eat you alive." She wickedly grins as she dashes out the hut's front grass door.
"Crocodiles?" Cere was a bright girl, but the thought of a large, oversized lizard, seemed outlandish but still...
"Jun Jun! Wait up!" Her shiny new pink high heels clicked on the boards but there was no where Cere felt safer than beside her capable sparring partner.
Tromping through the thickness of the dense vegetation, knowing this forest like the back of her hand, Jun Jun leads the way at Palla Palla's dizzying direction. The girl sighs, going around in circles until Palla Palla is sure she is right, at long last.
"Momma Monkey! Baby Bonk Bonk is here! Palla Palla took good care of him for you!" Palla Palla suddenly sings out in her baby voice, jumping up and down in her sky blue jumpsuit.
"You're not going to find any animal like that!" An annoyed Cere Cere says curtly. Her own pink circus outfit was dirtied from a mud puddle they had passed which Jun Jun had 'accidentally' slushed through right in front of her.
"Are you sure this is where baby comes from?" Ves Ves asks, when not a thing stirs in the bushes or trees at their close examination.
"Uh-huh." Palla nods, her strangely balled blue hair swaying to and fro.
"Well, I don't see any-" Cere starts to say but is stopped by Jun Jun's palm over her deeply rouged lips.
"There. There she is." Jun's keen for the outdoors senses registers the momma monkey's presence, even before it appears in the bushes.
"Momma!" Palla erupts, rushing to it, but her sudden outburst frightens the creature as it backs off, though looking fully prepared to stand its ground if it came to reclaiming its lost baby.
"Palla! Be careful!" Cere cries as she hides behind Jun Jun when Palla continues to move towards it.
"Here, momma. Bonk Bonk misses you." Maybe it was her sweetest or her childlike innocence. But something about this sky blue little girl made the mother primate come down to her unthreatened, as if she understood, reaching her hairy arms out to the baby.
"Bye bye, baby Bonk Bonk. Palla Palla will see you soon." She says, looking into her little friend's scared eyes. He had taken to her and only her, clinging to Palla's arms even as she offers him back to his mother. "Bye bye!" She bites her trembling lip, giving her new buddy a final squeeze as he cooing and cawing, passes from Palla's tiny hands into the monstrous ones of his Momma monkey.
BANG!
An explosion sends jolts through the still Amazon forest. Momma Monkey and her bewildered baby quickly took off into the brush as exotic birds and frightened animals of all sorts scatter above, where the Amazon Quartet knew their hut lay.
"HURRY!" Ves Ves shouts, as the agile four race to where all of their gathered belongings lay. The humble hut they had affectionately called 'home' for the past three years goes up in a billow of smoke. It was everything they feared. Their home had been destroyed to a ball of dust and weeds as their eyes set sight upon it when they erupt from a thicket.
"What happened?!" Cere cries, her cherished collection of classical CDs, especially her rare imports of violinist Michelle Moreau, had bitten the dust.
"Brush fire?" Ves Ves tries to sense it out logically.
"It's nothing natural." Jun Jun suspiciously scans the area, sensing something wrong with all of this.
"Palla Palla is scared." Palla begins to moan, she too sensing that something was amiss.
"There's no need to be scared, little girl." A woman's sugar coated voice comes down from the tree tops above as the four girls look up to see a lady with hair of snowy white standing above them on the highest bough. She was lovely in her pale blueness, though seeming like a bird to them, somehow. Her tight, formfitting periwinkle suit was similar in a way, to theirs.
"We'll take good care of you now." She says with a too-sweet smile as she poses above them.
"Who are 'we'?" Ves Ves demands, as she and her companions look wary, all the more.
"'We' represent the newly formed royal family of whom are extremely interested in your energy, young ones." A man's voice, deep as his green hair and dark foreboding eyes, steps out from behind the smoky shadows.
"Are they really, vomit-head?" Jun Jun takes a defensive stance, her offensive words biting. "You and albino there sure drop in with a nice 'How do you do' and blow up our house!?" She angrily glares at the obviously dangerous pair.
"We had to get your attention, sweethearts." The smiling bird lady swoops down to stand directly in front of the back to back girls. "I didn't feel like getting runs in my tights from these horrid weeds and twigs, so I had to bring you here." Her vanity was apparent to even fashion-conscious Cere Cere.
"Those stockings are sooo last season, old woman." Cere comments with a crooked smirk.
"How dare you! You impudent child!" Swanette's blue eyes flash angrily as she grabs hold of Cere's shoulders. Jun, Ves and Palla all try to stop her but the green hair man's strong, muscular arm holds them back.
"Don't bother reasoning with them, Dracon! They're only a bunch of spoiled brats." Her true colors show as she whips out a dark crystal from inside her costume and begins to press it to Cere's chest. "Your energy will make a tremendous addition to Metallia's plans." She chuckles evilly as Cere begins to feel her life-force draining from her body.
BITE!
Swanette's high pitched voice shrieks even higher as a small, little furry brown blur appears 'magically' on her hand with biting teeth.
"Get it off! Get it off! DRACON!" She shakes her arm up and down like a scarecrow, rushing to her lover to save her from the rotten vermin attacking her delicate hand.
"Routine 7, girls!" Ves Ves suddenly shouts at the opportunity presenting itself. She and the three of her quartet leap away in the split second their attackers were not paying attention.
"Routine 7? What does this mean?" Dracon asks the empty air, knowing as a warrior, that those blasted brats were hiding around somewhere. All he had to do was flush them out-an easy task for this highly trained, ex-soldier, against four inexperienced little-
"THIS!"
Suddenly out of nowhere, a maroon flash whips by, followed by that of an acrobatic pink and a monstrous bamboo branch slashes across his chest, knocking the tall man flat on the ground. But he was not safe, even down there.
Chik, chik!
In two little cuts, but deftly working little fingers, a flying ground dragnet goes up, bagging the man like some defenseless creature. Shocked and dizzied from the flurry, Dracon cannot imagine how a simple mission to collect four little energy blips out in the middle of the Amazon nowhere could turn into such chaos.
"Ha ha ha! Ha ha! Hah!"
Like a bunch of tourists laughing at a cage at a local zoo, the Quartet comes out of their hidey holes, defiantly chuckling at the adult's face at their tricks.
"I wouldn't be laughing, children!" Swanette comes up, still nursing her sore arm. Palla Palla looks around for her little monkey friend, and catches sight of his beat up fuzzy body, tossed aside on the ground.
"Bonk Bonk!" She screams, racing right past the nasty lady, to scoop up her downed friend. "Hey! Palla Palla doesn't like you! You're meaner than old Granny Zirconia! Now you'll pay!"
Holding the monkey in her arms, sweet as candy until her anger was released, Palla Palla's crystal blue eyes turn dark and scary.
"Now you've done it! Palla's mad!" Jun Jun says, having seen the devastation that could be caused if one of Palla's toys were damaged purposely.
"I could care less if that spoiled little brat is-" Swanette begins to say, her hand on her arrogant hips. She then holds her hands up to release Dracon and then to obliterate these horrid little monsters.
But the 'spoiled brat' hands Bonk Bonk's unconscious but still breathing body, to Cere, who amazingly, accepts the filthy creature warmly, even tenderly, as Palla stoops down to the rubble that was once their home and picks up something familiar she sees in the pile.
"Is that a doll?! Are you threatening me with a cheap doll?!" Swanette begins to cackle in disbelief at the child's audacity, when suddenly her about-to-fire-feather-blast-shards stops in mid air. Her arms begin to contort strangely.
"What's happening to me?!" She shouts as painfully her arms move and her legs give way beneath, till paralyzed Swanette could no longer control her movements at all.
"All right, Palla Palla!" Ves Ves shouts with pride at her angered friend.
"Kick ass!" Jun Jun seemed to be enjoying the action of battle again as she swings her fist in the air.
"Such undignified language, Jun Jun!" Cere chides, but a smile was on her face and tiny Bonk Bonk was wide awake, happy to see them.
But in their fun at watching Swanette, the four youthful girls had forgotten their other adversary. His dark power energy had dissolved the net he had been captured in as he angrily wanted to take revenge on the bratty children tormenting his partner.
Aiming silently to shoot a wide storm spray of energy bubbles to demobilize them all, Dracon was about to fire when a dark, strong arm wraps around his legs, pulling him screaming down to the green Amazonian floor, his stormy spray going askew, high, just over skimming the four girls short heads. But it wasn't high enough to miss Swanette...
"DRACON! You FOOL!" She screeches as she is now totally stunned motionless, just as she was about to break out of Palla's voodoo like control.
"My love!" Dracon shouts in horror as one angry monkey momma comes to the girls' aid and her baby's rescue, pounding at the man with a strangle hold.
Seeing no other option than to retreat with his immobilized partner, Dracon takes one final glance at the despised little rebels.
"We'll get you next time, brats!" He shouts as he and stunned frozen Swanette fizzle away, leaving the Momma primate with no one left to pound.
"Thank you, Momma! Bonk Bonk!" Palla Palla switches back from scary, angry warrior to innocent child again as she reunites baby monkey with big one.
"So what are we going to do now?!" Cere Cere looks to Ves Ves for guidance after she and Jun Jun sift through the ruins of their once home.
"You heard what they said. They want our energy and they seem to know how to find us, no matter where we hide."
Jun Jun twists her lips, liking the danger herself, but not when it came to the safety of her other companions.
"So what does that mean? Palla Palla wants to know." Palla Palla joins them, though still cuddling Bonk Bonk.
"That means we're going back to Japan, gang. I think we have a few friends there who can help us out with this." Ves Ves exchanges nods with her little group.
They all knew exactly who she was referring to.
Amy Anderson finds herself strapped to the monitor more often as of late. The information her computer had to offer on the data of the past few battles turned up the same results over and over: Enemy Unknown.
But Amy is sure, for something was itching in the back of her intellectual mind, that indeed, this enemy was one known to them. The style and attitude of the attacks, the acquiring of energy for some dark purpose-just all seemed so...familiar.
Amy stretches her aching neck. Her hours upon endless hours of nothing but computer research was showing its signs at 2:00 AM. But Amy could not give up-she would not.
It could mean all the difference to the next target if we just knew what it's all about!
Her razor sharp mind was a caring one, too. Her compassion for her fellow man's well-being was overpowering, driving her to continue study, even into this late hour.
With all of the input Terry and Susan have explained to us and the battles we've already seen, you'd think the enemy would've shown us his or her hand, but yet...we have no solid evidence of who's masterminding these attacks. No, I'm wrong-
Amy picks up from her neat desk a dark crystalized jewel. It's beautiful gleam belied the deadly purpose behind it.
This gem, we've figured that it is through gemstones and jewelry that the victim is chosen, sought out and a double of them is created to drain their energy. So far, it's chosen Molly, Lizzie, and nearly every Scout, save for Alex and Susan. But they've been touched by the battle through Sayer and Terry's attacks...and Michelle, maybe with her being unconscious-poor girl-that has something to do with it.
And so, Amy switches off her VR vision glasses, lifting her tired eyes from the computer screen.
...That leaves me...
She recalls yesterday's Scout meeting. They seemed to be having those more and more often of late. She remembered how Serena had begged her to come and stay with herself and Darien, knowing that Amy was the last Inner Soldier not to be targeted.
'Serena...I couldn't! My mom just went out of town and if I'm not home to answer her call, she'll be worried sick! Don't worry, I'll be really careful.'
Amy remembers saying that, swearing to Serena that she'd lock up every piece of jewelry in the house, along with the doors and windows, too.
...Sigh...It's very sweet of her-of all of them! Even offering to come over here to stay. But I can't let this enemy get to us. I don't want them guarding over me. In all probability, it may never even attack. I just have to figure this all out and I work best alone.
Amy thinks, trying to justify her decision, but truly in her conscience, she didn't want to inconvenience anyone on her behalf alone.
Alone. A studious life is often spent that way. Amy allows herself to sit back and enjoy a late night sandwich break as she studies the printed out results of her latest row of tests and scans of the gemstone.
But I really don't like being alone.
Amy gazes out the window. The happiness of the past few peaceful years, especially this last one, were spent with someone special.
These years have spoiled me. My duties are clear, but still...I want to see you, Greg.
Amy sadly thinks of the hectic past few weeks of shutting him out again.
RRRinnnnngggg
As if reading her lonely mind, the phone suddenly rings, jolting Amy out of her reverie with a start.
"Hello? Anderson Residence." Amy answers as she always does-polite and exact. Her heart was soaring with anticipation that it could be Greg or if not, maybe her Mom again.
"Sailor Mercury?" A deep voice-a powerful voice of a well-spoken man came over the line. An accent so slight it was almost undetectable was heard asking for her from the other side of the receiver.
"Sailor Mercury? I don't know who you're talking about. You must have the wrong number. Who is this, please?" Danger signs shoot up in Amy's mind as she listens carefully, doing her best to seem unknowing.
"Are you alone?" The man asks, his voice frightening.
Amy's first instinct is to hang up the phone and call for help, but what the voice says next stops her in her tracks.
"Don't hang up. I know the address of your boyfriend." He says, threatening her.
"I don't have a boyfriend. Please leave me alone." Amy lies, her stomach sinking.
"Greg Mueller, Anniversary Mansions, Apartment 4A, Suginami-ku-" He rattles off the info of an address.
"Stop! What do you want?" Amy says, unable to bear it any longer.
"A simple information exchange. That's all, my dear."
Amy already didn't like the way this stranger talked down to her, as if he were royalty or something.
"I don't know anything! Please leave us alone!" Amy says desperately.
"Oh, but I think you do. At the docks in 15 minutes. It's only a few blocks from where you live. It is quiet tonight, isn't it. There's only a few lights on at such an ungodly hour, don't you think? And I can monitor your communication transmission, so don't even think about telling the other Scouts. You must come alone."
The chuckling voice proved that he was spying on Amy's window.
Click!
The connection is severed and Amy is thrown into complete consternation.
He knows where Greg lives! He might hurt him and it would be all because of me and the information he wants of what I supposedly know! What does he think I know?! And who is he?! Is this all a trap to just get me there? But the threat to Greg is real, so I must go...
With a few final rushed clicks on her keyboard, Amy is off and running, tugging on her coat as she flies out the door. The computer screen in her room was still aglow as an emailed message is sent out...
'DANGER. ENEMY AT DOCKS. INSTRUCTED BY PHONE TO COME ALONE. THREATENED GREG - KNOWS HIS ADDRESS. SEND HELP, I'LL BE CAREFUL. - AMY'
Silently unnoticed by her stalker, the message is broadcast to someone Amy knew she could rely on...
Two o'clock in the morning was a strange time for a studious young girl to be out by the docks, walking alone, but strange times called for strange measures. Amy, now readied in her Super Sailor Mercury form, tries to bolster herself as she treads carefully nearer the empty, eerie dockside into unknown dangers awaiting her there for certain.
Who is this new enemy that can know so much about us? Like my home phone number and Greg's address? And what could they possibly think I know? I don't like this-I don't like this at all! This rash of attacks are all so pinpointed to we Sailor Soldiers. It's like somehow the enemy knows us from somewhere before...sometime before...
Mercury can't help but keep having these same recurring thoughts as in her gloved fist she tightly clutches the dark crystal she had been studying.
Maybe this is how they tracked me down so easily.
She glances down at the dark object glimmering in her hand, when in its glint, a similarly dark shadow appears from behind a crate of boxes.
I sure hope someone got my message and back up will be here soon. I'm going to need it!
Amy cringes at the thought of fighting a new enemy all alone.
"Sailor Mercury! It is an honor to finally meet you. We've heard such great things about you." There was a definite something reminiscent in that voice that had been eating at her since the phone call.
Amy's mercurious mind suddenly realizes who it is before she even gets a full glimpse of him in the cloudy, half moonlit night.
"Sapphire!" Mercury asks in shock. He was wearing different clothes and his hair shined a bit blacker than blue, but the mysterious man standing before her was Sapphire of the Dark Moon Family, whom the Scouts had sparred with what seemed ages ago.
"And who exactly is 'Sapphire', luv? A nom de guerre you go out charming the ladies with, Opalson?"
From behind another stack of boxes, a tall woman appears. Her cockney English or possibly Australian accent from what Amy heard so far, was tinged with jealousy. Her striking red hair blazed even in this dark night. It's style was something undeniable for Amy not to recognize again.
It's just like Rubeus'! Her mind comments in confusion, not comprehending how the Dark Moon Family, when all but the Four Sisters had met with a tragic end, could still be here.
"Are you jealous, Red?" The man asked the woman in a playful, teasing way.
"Very." 'Red' answers wearing a no-nonsense looking army fatigue pants. But her vest was by no means regulation. It hung open, held together in just the places, designed to display most of her ample cleavage for all to see.
"No, Sailor Mercury." The dark haired man takes a step closer to Amy. "I am not-what ridiculous name did you say? 'Sapphire'? My name is Opalson. Lord Opalson and I have come to request of you a favor." He says haughtily, offering a false smile.
"What kind of 'favor'? Surely there must have been a better way than threatening a girl on the phone." Mercury says indignantly as she tries to bide her time.
"Perhaps." Opalson nods, cocking his head. "But my wife here didn't think you would take too kindly to this request if I had asked it in a more civil manner." Opalson's knowing smile rests on his red-haired companion.
What could they possibly want with me? Mercury's mind was screaming.
"So just in case you have a few thoughts on the matter, we've brought a little 'insurance.'" Lady Ruby flings her clenched fist open towards the dock area.
There a wooden crate hung dangerously high over the rough waters, and strapped to it was the figure of a dark haired young man. His arms and legs were pinned, his mouth bound and gagged-even from a distance, Amy could clearly see who it was.
"GREG!" She shouts, her heart catching in her throat as she races to the edge of the smashing waters. "Greg!" Mercury's agonizing cries come out, tears biting behind them.
"You said you wouldn't hurt him if I came! I'm here! I've held my end of the bargain! Let Greg go!" Amy angrily shouts at the couple who has zapped and then reappeared next to her.
"And we won't harm him, luv." Ruby smirks almost in a sneer. "As long as you give us what we want."
"Well, what do you want!? Let him go!" Amy feels her heart being wrenched within her at their smiling faces.
"All we want is information. Give it to us and we will release your beloved. If not..." Lord Opalson trails off, and with a nod at his wife, she suddenly, with a flick of her hand, makes the crate Greg is strapped to, rock back and forth violently over the unusually crashing waves coming into the port.
"STOP!" Mercury screams. "What do you want?!" She pleads, willing to do anything right now to gain Greg's release.
"Where is Queen Metallia's heir?" He asks, with a serious accusing look in his eye.
"Who?!" Mercury asks, though the name of Metallia sends chills up her spine.
"Metallia's heir! Whose former existence on this planet was that of one Robin Starr. Return him to us now." Opalson's words strike horror into Amy's heart.
The heir to legendary Queen Metallia was Robin?! Robin?! How can this be?! He didn't die? He was taken and corrupted by...
"Metallia is anxious for her heir's return. He was last seen with you Sailors. Where have you hidden him? Tell us now or this boy here goes to a watery grave." Lady Ruby says, threatening, holding a powerful hand out towards Greg.
"I-" Amy starts to say. If I tell them I know nothing of his whereabouts, they'll probably just kill Greg! But I don't know where Robin is. What do I do?! What?!
"I'll take you to him!" In a split moment, her path is decided. Mercury was, above all else, beyond her other skills, a sharp cookie. One whose razor sharp mind would not be outdone by any enemy.
"Smart girl." Opalson says, talking down to her with his royal airs.
"But you have to let Greg go first!" Mercury makes a stipulation, as she crosses her fingers behind her back that they don't realize this was all just one big bluff.
As soon as Greg is released, I'll blind them with my Ice Bubbles and we'll go get back up, once Greg is safe-
Her mind's calculations are suddenly cut off.
"Very well." Opalson's smirk looked strange and eerie as his dark black eyes glow.
RRRIPPP
The wires and ropes suspending the crate in the air suddenly tear apart at Lady Ruby's command. Her cruel laughter rung out in the darkness as Amy's heart froze when she watched Greg descend down into the ocean.
"Don't move, Mercury!" Ruby shouts, grabbing the stunned Sailor by her arm. "As you can see, that crate will remain buoyant only until I command it not to. Your little boyfriend is safe as long as I will him to be." She chuckles with an evil smirk as the crate bounces up and down on the waves instead of sinking. Greg seemed to be secure as he struggles on top of it. Amy saw him shake his head for her not to abide by their wishes for his sake.
But what can I do?
"So then, take us to the Heir now, before my wife's patience grows even shorter." Opalson commands.
"All right." Amy concedes as her worried eyes lock with poor Greg's. She bit her lip and led the pair off.
I just hope I'm doing the right thing...
Mercury knew that her new plan would only work if someone had picked up her message earlier.
On this sleepless night, Terry Starr cradles his pregnant wife in his arms, glad she, at least, was able to drift off though he himself was often haunted by the thoughts of an over taxed mind and aching heart. Ever since this morning he has felt something deep inside that made his soul cry out for what he has lost, especially, and it put him in quite a melancholy mood.
But you have comforted me, my Susan, through these hard times. You've been there for me...
Terry strokes his lady's slumbering form, gently caressing her stomach lovingly. I just wish our baby could've met her uncle. He was never much on children, but...
Terry feels a tear fall from his purple eyes. Robin's loss caused a depression that would often set upon his compassionate heart. Suddenly, a soft knock on the bedroom door breaks the silent night.
"Terry papa," He hears Tara's small yet urgent whisper through the door. She was often up late at night. Terry and Susan both knew, despite their packing her off to bed at a decent hour, that the child was still awake.
'Dreaming' she would always say but more likely, having those visions of hers that she would opt not to share with them.
Terry believed this fragile child that he has grown to have a fatherly pride in had her own mysteries. As softly as possible, Terry slides out from the bed, careful not to disturb Susan, and pulls on his robe as he opens the door.
"Tara dear?" He asks in his deep throated whisper.
"There's an urgent message from Mercury!" Tara says, with fear in her purple eyes. "I was on your computer, doing some research for my school paper. I'm sorry, I should've asked first." Tara looks up at him meekly as they hurry back to the library, but that smiling look in Terry papa's eyes told her it was all right and that he knew she was probably doing more than just school research. Tara blushes in guilt at her and Sammy's often after midnight chats online.
"It's all right, Tara. It's your computer, too, after all." Terry says as he sits at the desk, calling up the emailed message that Tara was speaking of. He reads it over, as she stands over his shoulder with a look of worry etched on her pretty face, as they both reread the short message of danger together.
Susan had heard their stirring and soon comes in to join them.
"Susan, you stay here. I'm going." Terry says in a flash, meeting her eyes as he jumps up from his seat, softly brushing his wife's cheek with the command.
"I'm coming, too!" Tara says with determination.
"Tara, darling, I think it would be best if you didn't accompany me to the docks-" Terry starts to say as he pulls out his transformation earset. Being the man he was, he didn't want to have Tara's safety to worry about in the face of this danger.
"And I think it would be best if you would listen more than tell us 'girls' what to do, Commander." A voice comes in the door in its indignant way. Terry, Susan and Tara turn to see a ripped up Sailor Uranus along with a beat up Star Fighter, leaning in the doorway.
"Alex, Sayer!" Susan says a hasty greeting but Terry, upon meeting his brother's eyes is taken aback by the pain and sadness he finds there instead of the usual jovial look.
"What's happened, Sayer?" Terry asks, worried, crossing the room and taking Fighter's shoulders firmly in both his hands.
"Ter...Rob's alive." Star Fighter's voice was devoid of the emotion would have expected to come with these longed for words.
"He is?! Where-?!" Terry starts to ask, overwhelmed. Susan rushes to his side, but Uranus' sharp words cut him off.
"There's no time for that. You saw what Mercury wrote. We'll explain on the way. Tara, suit up and attend to Fighter. You're coming." Uranus, as she always does, takes charge. She didn't show her own painful broken arms one bit.
"Susan-" She starts to order.
"She stays here." Terry says, exchanging a fierce look with Uranus, who looks to Pluto's subservient gaze at her overbearing husband.
I'll have to deal with that later. Alex's independent mind thinks as she turns to the door.
"Whatever." She says, offhandedly, throwing Terry an angry look, though. "And we're not going to the docks. We do exactly what Mercury says. She knows what she's doing." Sailor Uranus shoves again in Terry's face his order, as he and Tara complete their transformations.
"Michelle?" Uranus asks her silent cousin, who, unnoticed by the others, was behind her in the hallway.
"Amara, I can do this." Sailor Neptune's emotionless, monotone voice replys to the unasked question.
"Then, let's go." Uranus leads the way out of the house, into the tension filled night.
Sailor Mercury walks steadily back in towards town. Her two watchful 'companions' were on each side of her as they suspiciously scan the area. It was quiet in this part of town at this early hour of the morning, but Ruby suddenly feels as if they were being led into a trap.
"I don't like this, Opalson. Make the girl tell you where we're going, luv!" Ruby says, getting itchy, and her accent thick.
"You heard the lady. Where is it, Mercury?" Opalson demands, his dark eyes forboding.
"There. In that apartment building-the deserted one." Mercury points, revealing the location, for she knew Ruby's patience was near the limit.
"Directly across from that of your little Greg? How convenient." Ruby comments slyly, feeling in her bones that something was afoot.
"Yes, very." Opalson prys the dark crystal hiding in Mercury's hand and holds it up towards the building in question. "You won't be needing this, my dear." Opalson smiles as he studies the gemstone for a moment, smirking at its sudden bright flashing. "Thank you so terribly much, Sailor Mercury, my sweet. But your use has come to a tragic end." Obviously satisfied with the readings he believed were that of what he was searching for, Opalson grasps Mercury by the neck, on the verge of squeezing.
"Wait, luv! There may be more Sailor ants teeming inside! We can use this weakling for a hostage in trade." Ruby uncharacteristically stops her husband's strong arm.
"Yes, of course, Red. You are correct once again-" Opalson begins to say when a beam of laser light flashes from atop the building, directly hitting Opalson's arm.
Mercury, underestimated by her enemy, uses the moment's diversion to land a solid kick with her skinny leg into Opalson's shin and the other into the red haired woman's face as she spins and launches a 'Mercury Bubbles Blast!'
Mercury's spray of bubbles sends up a fog, blocking the view of her attackers as she quickly moves away.
"You'll pay for that, tiny!" Lady Ruby takes none too kindly to her face being both kicked, wet and cold. "I just let your boyfriend drop to the bottom of the ocean!" She huffs through the mist.
"Oh, no! Greg!" Mercury whispers but her intellect had been preparing for this. Her powers were all this while, charging, for she knew what she had to do to save the life of the young man she was destined to be in love with.
"Mercury! I call upon your guidance! MERCURY ICE RHAPSODY!"
She shouts as her musical strains sing across the miles, Greg's floating lifesaver sinking as he is just about to sink in, too. Suddenly, it all freezes over, stopping his descent into the cold, rushing waters. It snaps with its frozen fingers, the bonds holding Greg down, just enough for him to make a dash over the frozen icy surface before it totally collapses.
"Thanks, Amy!" Greg smiles at the dock, knowing just whose handiwork his rescue could be credited to. He just hoped that she would be okay, battling those Negaverse sleaze where she was. "Good luck, Sailor Mercury." Greg says as he looks out towards the section of the city in the distance, suddenly erupting in a light show.
Greg is safe. I know it.
Sailor Mercury's closed eyes and slight smile show her relief. She felt it deeply as she presses her precision hand over her heart.
"Ahhhh!" She suddenly screams as she feels a sharp object pressed to her neck.
"Call off your playmates now, Mercury. We're going in." Opalson commands as, out of nowhere, he had produced a dagger at Mercury's throat.
"Guys! We're going in!" Mercury obediently calls out as the knife tightens to her neck. The three of them enter the lobby of the empty apartment building.
"Tell them to bring the Heir down here, now. No tricks - or else." The dark man commands when they reach the first floor lobby.
"'Heir,' I can't tell you about. Tricks? There's no guarantee. The 'or else', now there's something you can bank on." A deep, low voice penetrates the shadowy darkness within the deserted lobby. It just registers in Ruby and Opalson's ears when a blast of hot wind slices an energy blade across Opalson's arm, clutching at Mercury, sending both him and his knife flying backwards, shrieking in pain as he lets Mercury fall to the ground.
"Invited by the New Age. I am the Soldier of Rebellion! Sailor Uranus! Ready to dazzle you." Crossing her arms, golden Sailor Uranus leaps down from the balcony overlooking the first floor to stand eye to eye with her new opponent.
"And again the same. I am the Soldier of Embrace. Sailor Neptune. Ready to charm you." The words were her usual entrance but there was something lost in Neptune's blue eyes that mere consciousness could not revitalize in her soul.
"Ahhh, Sailor Neptune. Allow us to introduce ourselves at long last. I am Lord Opalson, and this is my wife, Lady Ruby." Opalson says with a wry smirk and a forced bow. "You are the one that the Heir was last seen with that we were told to watch out for."
Quickly and unexpectedly, like lightning, the dark haired man rushes Neptune, pinning her to the wall.
"What have you done with him?!" He asks angrily in Neptune's face.
"Never mind him, it's yourself you should be worried about." There was no humor in Uranus' voice. The thunder in it instead was darkly threatening to any man who so much as dared touch her beloved Michelle, especially the state she was in now. May God have mercy on his soul. She thought.
Faster than the wind, the emissary of Metallia's evil soon finds himself shrieking in pain, caused by the fury of a single woman in the split second of torrential pounding. Fists and kicks and feet flying, Opalson is on the ground in a pile. His bones were bruised and broken but his eyes are filled with an insulted anger. But even brighter flaring than his anger was the anger of his wife.
Lady Ruby was more than a little distressed at how her husband was so brutally taken down before her eyes. She was livid so that her red fiery hair seemed to flame even hotter as her entire being burned crimson.
She was attacking Uranus with a mixture of erratic bursts of sizzling energy and physical punches and kicks, like a mad woman. Uranus' controlled hits match Ruby's blow for blow. Alex soon realized that this crimson cat was by no means a 'lady'.
But then again...neither am I.
Uranus pulls out all the stops. Her mind numbing speed sent her entire body flying forward towards the animalistic woman attacking her. She knocks Ruby out with a fist to her, instantly bloodying her nose, turning her face red to match the rest of her features.
Witnessing his wife's beating, Opalson manages to stand, holding up the dark crystal he took from Mercury earlier, up into the air.
"DARK CRYSTAL! Creatures of the night, come forth!" He commands, releasing the strangely shaped shadows from the walls. They eerily become animated, extricating themselves from the wall. Two or three of them grab at Sailor Uranus as she stands, pulling her back away from the wall and then into it forcefully as she screams from the crushing pain.
"STAR SERIOUS LASER!"
"STAR GENTLE UTERUS!"
As one, the two Starlight attacks make perfect aim, scattering the shadows attacking Uranus. She sinks to her knees, on the ground, gasping for the air that had been smashed out her body.
"U! Ally!" Uranus feels Fighter's skinny arms around her. Neptune's curls were at her shoulder as her dazed mind tries to snap back.
"I'm-huff, huff, huff-fine. Watch out!" She manages to push Fighter and Neptune out of the way of the incoming shadow. But the dark forces of blackness stretch themselves even further, grasping around Fighter, Neptune, as well as Maker, Mercury and Saturn, even as they begin to fire their respective attacks. It knocked the wind out of them as the shadows threatened to crush their bodies into the solid walls.
"Now, Uranus, since Neptune won't speak and you were with her. Where is he?" Opalson asks, lifting Uranus' chin in his gloved hand as more shadows wrap around Uranus' downed form threateningly.
"Let me at 'er! I wanna break her bloomin' nose, too!" Fiery Lady Ruby gets up angrily, shaking her fist at Uranus. But Opalson halts her so Ruby just turns and crosses her arms in frustration.
"The way he's treated my Michelle, I hope he's burning in hell." Uranus vents her angry soul fiercely at the man-the creature-who caused Michelle such pain and heartbreak, and even had the nerve to rub it in her face that he didn't care for her anymore.
"It's useless." Opalson, after a long look in Uranus' angry green eyes, decides. "They know nothing. It's all been a waste." He sighs in disappointment. "No...I will gain their energy for Queen Metallia. That should at least, please her somewhat."
Opalson puts his hand up and the shadows stop their crushing of the tortured soldiers, instead merely holding them, limp and weakened, as Lord Opalson takes the one dark crystal in his fist, opening the hand a moment later to reveal, in place of one, now six dark gemstones that he holds out towards each Sailor Soldier.
The dark gems begin to glow a beam of energy draining light towards each struggling heart. Lady Ruby suddenly sticks her hand out, grasping the crystal in front of Uranus in her bruised hands.
"This one's energy isn't worthy of Her Majesty." Ruby's voice drips with sarcasm. Her true loyalties lied with no one but herself. "I want her death to be rippin' painful." Ruby states, anger filling her demented eyes.
"Just as you wish, Red." Opalson smirks at his wife's often wild and deadly side. My brother always told me to be wary of this urge in her, but I find it invigorating.
Opalson smirks as he tightens his fist and the energy drain begins on the other five Sailors.
"Are you ready to die in agony, Sailor Uranus? Huh, luv? I can't hear you." Ruby chuckles in Alex's face, unsheathing her husband's bejeweled in opals, dagger. She displays it in front of Uranus with an evil look in her red eyes...
A single red rose zings across the room, stabbing Ruby's daggered hand that was just millimeters from Uranus' ear. Ruby screams, swearing, but looks up at the balcony.
"JUPITER THUNDER CRASH!"
Zaps of lightning explode, lighting up the dark first floor of the building with electrified energy, forcing the shadows to shrink back in pain.
"MARS FIRE IGNITE!"
Ruby's shocked hand sizzles as she flings the molten dagger, now glowing red with Mars' fire blast, away.
"VENUS LOVE AND BEAUTY SHOCK!"
Smack! Right in the head! An orange-gold energy heart aims right for Opalson's cackling head.
"Guys! Are you all right?!" Sailor Moon's concerned voice could be heard in the darknes as each Scout rushes to their downed comrades side.
"Well, you won't be!" From behind, Eternal Sailor Moon hears a familiar male voice. Her clumsiness and oversized wings were rarely able to get out of the way in time and this was no exception.
"Sapphire?!" Sailor Moon shouts in recognition as the man's dark blue hair and eyes come into focus. They lit up with a deadly energy burst directly at her amazed form.
SLAP!
Serena finds herself unsizzled and knocked down flat on the ground, beneath the long, skinny arms and legs of her rescuer.
"Watch what you're doing, Meatball." Star Fighter whispers in her ear as he rolls with her on the floor, avoiding the repeated blasts.
A dozen red roses spray out, thorny sides up, as Tuxedo Mask, angry at this confusingly familiar enemy who was obviously trying to catch the team off guard by resembling a converted ally of the past. Darien, not to mention, was a little miffed at Fighter's proximity to his wife, even during battle as he swoops in close to the pair.
"Now, Sailor Moon!" Tuxedo Mask calls out, giving Serena, who was scooting out from being pinning underneath Star Fighter the signal. She produces her tall Moon Tiel before the Sapphire lookalike's face.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, pigtails!" That red haired woman's nasty voice sings out as a red bubble begins building in her hands, expanding in a split second as it encircles the Soldiers, beginning to close in on them.
Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Maker, Venus, Mercury, Uranus and Neptune - even Fighter and Tuxedo Mask, are all captured in its wake. Each tried to break out of the energy field cage, but to no avail. Each Sailor was sizzled by the fiery wall keeping them in it.
"Who are you?!" Sailor Moon calls out desperately, trying to figure out how to release her captured friends.
"Submit to us your energy or they all die!" Lord Opalson states with a smirk.
"Hurry, blondie! My energy orb won't hold out forever and they just might all be toast..." Ruby threatens. She didn't even fully comprehend the immense power bestowed upon her by Metallia. It was a great power, indeed. The Soldiers within found each of their own powers useless, even combined as they attempt to get out themselves.
"Fight them, Sailor Moon! Never mind us!"
Serena has the choice placed before her once again. Once again, Uranus' commanding voice rings in her ears, loud and clear - but Serena does not have to make the heart-rending decision this time herself.
"Chronos Typhoon!" A soft, timeless voice enters through the darkness. The resulting mists of time swirl around the enclosed red sphere, battering against it until both it and the evil woman controlling it, collapse.
As it dissolves, the Soldiers seem to explode from the inside out onto the scene, releasing their pent up powers on their captors.
"VENUS CRESCENT BEAM!"
"JUPITER OAK EVOLUTON!"
"MARS FIREBIRD STRIKE!"
"MERCURY ICE ILLUSION!"
The fury of the combined Inner Scouts is more than enough to pulverize the two evil emissaries already thrashed by Pluto's typhoon.
Opalson decides, despite his wife's protests, that now might be a good time to make a hasty exit. He shields her fallen body as they both back into a corner.
"SPARKLING FULL MOON-"
Eternal Sailor Moon begins to shout her newest, most powerful attack but is cut off by the evil pair's dissipation into the air shadows.
"We will return, Sailor Scouts! And when we do, we won't be playing around like today! We let you off easy as a first greeting! You won't be so lucky next time!" Lord Opalson's words, along with his wife's cackling, set a melancholy mood over the triumphant team. Each of them did indeed feel that, as close as the battle was this time, that next time may be just what Opalson said...
The battle over, at least for this time, Maker turns to the Soldier who made their rescue possible.
"Susan darling, I told you to stay home." He chides his pregnant wife, rushes to her and encircles her body in his arms.
"I know, dearest, but I felt you were in pain and I couldn't! Please forgive me." Susan took her promises to her husband very seriously. But if it meant the difference between life and death-she just couldn't...
"Next time, you listen. Promise me." Terry takes her chin in his hand, not caring if it meant his death or the safety of a thousand worlds, as long as his Susan was safe. It wasn't selfishness-it was love.
But that kind of overbearing love was something that Sailor Uranus could never swallow.
"Get off me!" Harshly, her strength returning, Uranus sends a clinging Sailor Star Fighter flying. She was one who would never submit as Susan seemed to have, with a man's protective hand over her.
"Why should she promise? Who are you? You have no right to tell her what to do, just because you're her husband!" In an angry mood, the past few days had wreaked havoc on whatever patience there was in her soul. Alex would put up with Terry's ways no longer.
"Susan, promise me." Terry repeats firmly, his eyes flashing in defiance of Uranus' cold words against him, as he gazes only into his wife's eyes.
"Do not answer him, Sailor Pluto. You're a Soldier, still - no matter what he tries to tell you." Uranus orders Pluto, giving Maker a nasty glance. Alex was concerned for Susan's health herself, but it was a mess that HE had gotten her into after all. In Uranus' embittered mind, when it came down to it, a Soldier was still a Soldier, a duty was still a duty, that no man -no child- would ever be able to change. Ever.
"Terry..." Susan turns to him, her emotions on the verge at Alex's harsh words.
"Susan, promise me. Right now." Terry, the man that he was, takes charge of his wife's tormenting indescisiveness, for with child or without, Susan was the most precious thing to him in all the universe.
Uranus catches Pluto's eye with one long, hard stare. If it were Susan's choice, Uranus would say nothing, but the very thought of someone else controlling her-that was what set her on edge.
Pluto breaks the gaze, nodding to her husband meekly. "I promise." And she buries her face on his chest, sobbing with tears.
"Weakling. I knew this baby was a bad idea..." Uranus mumbles under her breath, but her independent mind was more angered at the overpowering man controlling, than the weak woman he controlled.
"Don't you ever say that. You have no right to speak to Susan that way. Look how you're hurting her." Terry says, he himself fuming at this contemptible woman that he once respected, but no more, after she had made Susan cry.
"You're the one hurting her with this 'shield of compassion' you raise over her! Let it be her choice! But you can't, can you? All you men are out for is power, isn't it? Power and control over a woman you'll one day just throw down carelessly!" It was anger stemming from much more than Susan's submission that framed the Uranus was spouting.
Far, far more.
Alex's hard won trust was fleeting from these outside of this solar system's Soldiers. One had shattered the trust, the second stretching it to its limits and the third...
"Ally!" Fighter knows her well enough to realize it was her impassioned anger speaking as he tries to calm her. But his ill placed timing has the opposite results.
"Shut up. Don't ever talk to me." Uranus shrugs off the comforting hand placed on her arm. "Do as you like, Susan. Be the good little girl he's turned you into. I want no part of that and I defy anyone who would dare try to make me." Uranus turns and kneels down, enveloping the sobbing Sailor Neptune in her arms.
Michelle would often cry now. She'd just be sitting there and the tears would overflow. Her broken heart was unable to contain the emotion overwhelming her extinguished soul, and that, more than anything, pained Alex. The fact that she could do nothing to make things right again for her most cherished. He had hurt her so terribly, so irrevocably.
What was I thinking? I should never have allowed this to happen. None of this. Alex reflects angrily at the state of things as they were. Susan's newfound weakness, Michelle's slow self-destructing soul, and her own allowance of another into her heart-where there should've only been one alone...
"I wish none of you ever came back here. I wish you would go back to where you came from." Angrily, Alex Sokova lets the words escape and the moment she does, she realizes just what she had said.
"Ally..." There was that pain in his eyes-the sadness she never wanted to bring to him.
But there. I've done it. You're far too sensitive to be a fighter. You're just too...
Meeting Sayer's eyes, Alex tries to justify her cold words in her mind. She wasn't directing it at him specifically, but the point was taken. As much as Sayer wanted to believe it was just his love's pain lashing out, the words cut too much. They burned a hole in his already fragile psyche that only had the strength of her love to hold him together.
"Ally." Sayer whispers, his puppy dog eyes filling with tears. "I thought we had something..." He says after a long moment. She could barely hear his whisper as he takes off in a run out of the building and into the night.
Her first instinct was to chase after him, bring him back and tell him what's really in her heart. But her mind overtakes where the heart was dying. Alex resists as she looks down at the fragile aqua beauty in his arms. Her mixed up emotions clouded her judgement as she fights back tears that never come. Duty now was the only thing her freezing heart could feel.
"Go on. I don't care." Alex whispers defiantly after him, though feeling that a piece of her was physically being torn out.
I don't need you. I have to take care of myself. I have to take care of Michelle.
Picking up Michelle and holding her close, Alex gets up and wordlessly strides off in the opposite direction of where Fighter had fled into the night.
Stunned and shocked by not only the fierce battle they had just survived, but also by the soap opera of the bitter scene that the Outers and Starlights seemed to be falling apart at the seams. The five Inner scouts and Tuxedo Mask had watched in shock and stunned silence.
"Prince, Princess." Terry nods simply as he leads Susan and Tara as well, leaving Serena and the other Scouts to wonder what was their fate if the two more experienced teams they had always looked up for guidance was no longer there to be relied upon.
And with this new/old enemy looming on the horizon, fate would have to be smiling in their direction for the courageous group to have a shadow of a chance to win as the rain begins to fall down hard upon the unknowing city.
Endless miles down deep within the Earth, somewhere where rain nor sunshine ever dared enter, a white haired man stands tall over the unconscious form of a younger man whom he had covertly whisked away. He carefully eyes the prone figure, who had so much importance placed upon him by another.
Why does Queen Metallia put you in such high esteem, youthful soldier? Is it merely because you are of her bloodline? I can attest that that means very little in this world...
King Pearlellion thinks sourly of his own ties to the brother who was more enemy than ally.
Is it because of your ability then, perhaps? Could powerful Metallia be so interested in those of a puny mortal? Or is it something more?
No matter.
Pearlellion brushes off his own stray thoughts, along with the pure white hair from his eyes.
You have infringed on my authority and that must be punished.
The king reflects on how this little man has challenged him time and time again.
You have had the audacity to attempt to seduce my wife and that is a crime that can never be forgiven.
Aquamarianna had a wiling way of pitting one man against the other to gain their favor and it has led her jealous husband to believe this untruth, if not in words but in her actions - the actions of a rejected, lonely woman who vainly feigned a lover.
And for changing my status in Queen Metallia's eyes, jeopardizing the vast kingdom I have been promised - for all this, I will destroy you.
Pearellion's mind glows with angry evil thoughts as he raises one energy charged eyebrow. His granted powers were so immense that he need not move a muscle for havoc to be released as he aims it upon an unconscious Robin Starr.
"If you do that, my King, she will know." A sultry voice enters the dark chamber.
"I have shielded this room. She will not know it was I who did away with him. I will be left sole ruler again. But is it I you truly tremble for, my Queen?" Pearellion's great jealousy was the true source of his anger at the man laying below. For deeply buried in his heart was a love for his wife that was profound.
"On the contrary, my King, it is only you and you alone I care for. This boy means nothing to me. You are the true ruler of my heart."
Was it womanly wiles? Or was it the truth speaking? Pearlellion could no longer tell. He once believed he knew his wife's heart back when they were living as normal beings-back when he was only known as Mr. Pearellion and not as 'King.' But the evilness that has invaded his soul since those simple times had corrupted him, making him long for power. Yet even that craved power was nothing to that which his wife still held over him.
"Let us take him from here - in secret. We will pretend we have not found him, instead that he has returned on his own and masked himself from Metallia, turning on her for his own purposes. We will gain favor for retrieving him in her eyes. In his arrogance, the Heir will deny nothing and then perhaps she will lose trust in him. If you continue on this course, my love, if you anger Her Majesty, I fear for you." Aquamarianna slinks over to him, caressing her husband's chest as she embraces him.
"I will do as you say, my love, though I still doubt your all too logical reasoning." Pearellion looks into her aqua eyes.
"Doubt me not, my King. Tonight I will prove my heart is only for you." She seductively kisses her husband's lips and his jealous plans are stopped while a deceitful one hatched by a more level, feminine head.
Unawares Pearlellion and Aquamarianna had been watched in the shadows by two pairs of curious, spying eyes.
"We must tell Her Majesty, Queen Metallia, immediately!" The orange haired young boy appears out of the shadows of the catacombs tunnel, speaking more to the blackness ahead than to the girl at his side.
"Topaz! King Pearlellion is your uncle! You'll get him in trouble!" Cattana's high scratchy voice couldn't believe her ears.
Family is family! I would do anything still for my sister, though sometimes I wish she never brought us here. I'm scared of the Queen...
Cattana's wide cat eyes glance around frightened of the dark cave, fearing that evil voice to boom out at any moment.
"I don't care if he is my uncle! Father will be ruler when he is gone! I'm sure of it." Even at the early age of fifteen, young Topaz was merciless. His father, Lord Opalson's, strictness, and his mother, Lady Ruby's, cruelty, ran rampant through his veins.
"Topaz, no! Don't please! We have to all stay a family! I like your uncle. He's never been unkind to me and Queen Aquamarianna is so pretty! Please don't tell on them." Cattana, beneath the gaudy clothes and dark catlike hair, really did have a good soul-very deep inside, though tortured and confused in this dark world of evil she has been unwittingly plunged into.
Topaz pauses his stride, squinting his eyes as he looks into hers.
"You just want yourself and your stupid sister and her good for nothing boyfriend to be moved up in Pearlellion's eyes, so that you and yours will be ranked higher than my parents and me! Isn't that it?!" Cold and calculating, Topaz was far too cynical for his years, far too distrustful. He was only able to think in the ways of a corrupted mind.
"No! That's not it-!" Cattana starts to explain but Topaz would hear nothing of it.
"I'm going." He says, determined to oust his uncle, marching straight into the throne room, just about to swallow his fear of her and call out Metallia's presence himself. But then Pearellion and Aquamarianna come rushing in behind him, joined by Dracon, Swanette, Opalson and Ruby.
"We have found him, my Queen!" As good an actress as she was a seductress, Aquamarianna feigns the most innocent of shows.
"WHERE, PEARELLION?!" Metallia's voice echoes as King Pearlellion's powers hove Robin's still form into the throne room.
"We sought him out and have returned your Heir rightfully to you, my Queen. We tracked him down despite his hiding of himself from you. The lad could not be trusted, just as I believed. He turned against you until I subdued him for return-and the punishment you will find fitting." Pearlellion embellishes the false tale that maybe years spent with his storytelling wife had polished these long unused skills.
"My Heir requires simple reconditioning. It is only I who will decide who is to be punished or not, O King." Metallia's voice had traces of suspicion in it. She wasn't the Queen of Darkness for nothing.
"My Queen-!" Young Topaz decides this is the opportunity to expose his uncle's treachery. He was certain his more deserving father, who appeared next to him before the throne, would be crowned in Pearlellion's place if he just spoke up.
But Topaz's words are cut off by Robin's sudden awakening outburst.
"MICHELLE!"
A tormented cry escapes his lips as he struggles from within the mind-altering casing that Metallia had just placed his unconscious form in.
"THAT NAME!" Metallia thunders, angered to the point of fury that she could not extricate entirely that part of her Heir's soul. "Seek out and destroy that creature! I require this 'Michelle", Sailor Neptune's lifeless form brought to me! No one can out manipulate the Queen of Evil! No one!"
The command was fierce. The mission known, as all of her emissaries scurry in fear from the shaking and cracking room. Metallia's anger shivered the cavern to its foundation, leaving only her aura and Robin alone in her presence again.
"I will rid you of her, if it is the last thing I do, my Heir. You will be mine alone. Those of this bright world's shining will not be able to resist me. They realize not their true potential and cannot begin to grasp it without you as part of it. But you are part of me. You will always be a part of me. So there is no hope for this world, save for the darkness I will release upon it. Ha ha ha ha ha!" Cackling at her wicked plans, Metallia strengthens Robin's mind with her evilness once again, wiping any memories of the wretched creature that might have seeped in, despite her efforts. She gained confidence with each passing moment of the mind altering transfer.
"And when my minions fail," Metallia had very little faith in her messengers of wickedness-they were merely pawns in the game she was playing, "then, perhaps, I will send you in, now with my full power at your command." Metallia is certain that this time, filled to the utmost brim with her worst evil energy, her Heir's role in her plans of destruction could never again be changed. His allegiance to her could not be reversed any longer by anyone.
"And then you will be the downfall of her, and this entire world, in my name." Metallia's cold words echo through the empty darkness pervading Robin's soul.
Late that night, when all of Tokyo was asleep, or at least should've been, Terry lies awake, deep in thought. There was one burning question in his mind of which he was sure he knew the answer...yet he wanted to know it without so much as one tiny doubt.
As he held Susan, already emotionally drained from what occurred that day, he looks down upon her with pure love in his eyes. She was so close to him that she could sense his uneasiness and gently stroked his hair. She herself was asking the same question in her mind.
"Darling, what is it? I know there's something bothering you. Is it Sayer?"
"I didn't mean to wake you." He tenderly kisses her forehead. "Go back to sleep now."
"Please tell me what's wrong. I want to help you if I can."
"It's only...I..." Terry stumbles, unsure of how or even if, he wanted to tell her. But then, complete openness wins out as Susan props herself up as best she could and gazes into his troubled eyes with worry.
"Do you...at all regret that we - that I - came back to Earth?" Terry prods the question, needing her to tell him that she still wanted him near. If she was happy, then he could go on. He could keep up the struggle, if only for her, for their love.
"Oh my darling! How could you think?! Why would you! I need you, and I couldn't - wouldn't - go on without you. For me, there is nothing else but you." She touches her stomach. "We need you, though I...too...wondered if you...regretted...returning to Earth...to me, now that you've lost so much..." She quietly turns her face away, ashamed.
Terry takes her chin in his fingers. "Susan, never think that! I am nothing without you - without your love. I will never regret finding the owner of my soul, my heart, my whole life. You are the missing part of me. Even if all else fades-if everything is taken away - as long as I have your love, then I am happy. Do you doubt it, my love."
"Of course not. When you speak to me, I believe and trust in your every word, without hesitation. I trust you, I love you-I belong to you." She finishes as she buries her face in his arms, satisfied with his answer.
"And I to you, my only love." He pulls her closer, kissing her tenderly. "And I won't let anyone take you away from me-no one." He vows, knowing that in the end, if Susan were threatened in any way, he would do anything and everything in his power and more, to destroy that which would pose such a threat-no matter who or what it may be.
Even if it means my own brother. He thought, as he folds her tighter in his embrace, swearing never to let go...
The red streak of a race car rushes past, flying like the wind, eating up the chilly early winter coastline.
Alex Sokova is running again.
To keep one step ahead of the enemy, to be able to protect the one she holds so dear. This golden woman goes back to what she does best - what she always did return to whenever she was lost, and though unadmittedly, frightened, she looks to the wind to carry her away.
For in the end, Alex could only rely on herself, trusting no one else.
Keep moving. I'm the only one who can do what I have to do. I am the only one who can keep Michelle safe.
Lonely thoughts pass through her wind blown head. The breeze whipsher tossed bangs about.
I don't need him for that. I don't need him for anything.
Alex's frustrations were now doubled by the week long disappearance from her life of that someone that she once supposed forever belonged to.
But duty to Michelle had gotten in the way. Alex let her torn soul become angered and embittered, enough to drive her away from him.
I don't.
Alex half expected Sayer to return and when he didn't after that first day, she strengthened herself in the belief that she started out with a long time ago - that she is the only one she can rely on. Michelle needed her and her alone.
But secretly, somewhere inside, Alex's soul cried for him.
Her own overwhelming pain made it hard for her to see anyone else's because Michelle's heart was linked spiritually to another. But for Amara, she could feel anything. Studying her silent cousin for mile upon mile, Michelle knew her well enough to see when her heart was crying.
All of a sudden, Alex notices Michelle's intent gaze upon her. She changes her frown and furrowed brow into a quick, pasted smile.
"It's good to be just out on the road again - and free. Just you and me. Feels right, eh, Michelle?" Trying to uplift her partner's spirits and not wanting her own sour ones to drag Michelle back down into the doldrums, Alex defies her own pain and leans over, wrapping a protective arm around Michelle's lately always trembling thin shoulders.
"Find him, Amara." Michelle's soft spoken reply whispers out as she leans her aqua curls to Alex's chest.
"Michelle, I've told you. It's only you and me now. We don't need -" Alex begins to try to impress upon her fragile cousin that her attachment to the detestable Robin Starr was a thing of the past - a sorry mistake that she should never have allowed Michelle to-
"No, Amara. It's not only you and me. Not anymore. I know it. You know it." Michelle's blue eyes fill with tears. "You love Sayer as I love my Robin. Don't let him slip away because of me - because of this. I will never let go...Never." Michelle says with an inner determination. Pain and sadness and hurt were all unable to extinguish the burning flame of her soul's love.
Alex doesn't know what to say for a moment. But the light in Michelle's eyes at the mention of his name was something that Alex had longed to see for the past few torrential months.
"Her Majesty thinks quite the contrary, Sailor Neptune." A voice comes from the dusky side of the sunset. Hovering alongside the 90 MPH Ferrari was a dark greenish haired man. He seemed to effortlessly float at a matching speed over Alex's driver's side.
"You've been a hard pair to track down. Do you know that, dears?" A delicate, birdlike white woman appears on the opposite side, near Michelle.
"How have you been keeping your energy signatures hidden from us, hmmm, ladies?" The familiar dark form of Lord Opalson demands, his arms crossed as he appears before them.
"Never mind all that! I've got a score to settle with this one!" Fire red flashes a moment for Alex to recognize the sneering face of Lady Ruby right behind her shoulder. Her longed clawed fingernailed hands slice Alex's strapped in seatbelt, grabbing the steering wheel and jerking it. Alex fights for control of the spinning out vehicle. Her years of expert driving and well cared for braking system were the only things stopping the car from diving straight over the cliff's edge.
SCREECH!
Ruined tires burn rubber on the pavement as Alex throws her arm out to halt Michelle's body from pitching forward. Her first instinct was always for Michelle. But Michelle was not there. Alex's own forehead hits the steering wheel hard, causing her world to spin as red blood runs down her eyes.
"Where do you suppose Alex and Michelle got off to? I'm starting to get really worried!" They were once again at an emergency Scout meeting, every day for a week. Lita puts out the perplexing question after the two mysterious Outers had vanished without a word or so much as a call as to their whereabouts.
"I don't know. Alex didn't call any of you, either? I mean, with these powerful new enemies and everything, shouldn't we all stick it out together?" Amy asked, as always looking up from her computer readouts as the five Inners, Darien and the two cats sit around the table at Rei's temple.
"Yeah, safety is in numbers! Right, guys?" Artemis agrees, nodding. He was glad at least his Inner Soldiers were holding it together.
"Right, Artemis." Mina nods in agreement with her cat.
"Yeah, like right! You know Alex never listens to anything anybody says!" Rei twists her lip. Sailor Uranus' rebellious attitude never mixed well with her organized one.
"You must admit, Uranus has always been a difficult Soldier to work with." Darien, busy helping Amy on the computer trying to track down any new enemy sightings, comments all-knowingly.
"Still, she's part of our team, Scouts, and from what we've gathered, she and Sailor Neptune seem to have an important role in this new enemy's attacks." Luna says, levelheaded, trying to piece together the facts.
"No wonder if they have Robin! I sure hope he's all right. I wonder what they've done to him with all that 'Heir' stuff you were telling us about, Amy." Mina sighs for her still favorite idol.
"I know what you mean, Mina." Luna, a soft spot for her beautiful eyed Robin still, sighs as well. "But if what the enemy says is true, we have to beware of even our closest allies. They may have turned his mind against us."
"Oh, Luna! Why do things always have to be this hard?!" Serena lifts her head up from one of her supposed Scout meeting naps. There were tears in her eyes for the loss of one of her dear friends. She had really been listening all the while.
"Because life is a trial, Princess." Tara's small, subtle voice always saying things too deep for her age, enters the conversation as she, Terry and Susan, slide open the door and join the meeting.
"Have you heard from them?" On her feet, anxiously, Serena turns to Susan. She was as close to Alex and Michelle as it came. But Serena, in her worry, had forgotten Alex's roughshod treatment of Susan and her relationship with Terry.
"No, Princess." Susan shakes her head sadly, for she had forgiven Alex, if not forgotten, the stinging words. She too wished for the peaceful togetherness they had all had, not so long ago.
"Nor from Sayer." Terry says with worry. He for one did not forgive Alex quite yet - for not only hurting Susan but Sayer as well. She had cut his passionate soul badly, for Terry knew his brother well. He was concerned why Sayer had not come to him as he always did in the past when the cold hearted woman turned on him.
"Sayer..." Serena whispers. She understood how Alex's cool attitude towards him could hurt him so terribly. Serena knew deep inside how perfect the two were together and how he loved her rebellious friend.
"I told you it would never last! Alex and Sayer! Hah!" Rei huffs, whispering in her snide way to a saddened Lita.
"Don't say that, Rei! You're horrible!" Serena suddenly bursts. Everyone turns to her with wide eyes. They all realized how dear to Serena's heart Sayer and Alex were both. She firmly believed that the happiness that had escaped both of them for so long, they had found in each other.
Serena's temper flares only for a second though. She's sorry immediately after any angry words and able to say it-truthfully, honestly. She was the opposite of Alex in every way.
"I'm sorry, Rei, guys. I'm just so worried about them. I'm worried about all of you, too. And I'm scared. New attacks. New enemies. New danger. But being with you guys makes me feel better already." Serena smiles, touching hands and squeezing them.
"I don't want anyone to be left alone anymore! I love you all - so, so much!" Serena's brightness, her shine, her friendship, envelops the entire room, as the group who have stuck it out through thick and thin all know that none of them were alone because of her and her power of love.
Through a crimson mist of throbbing pain, Alex could hear her screams. Summoning up, almost inhumanly possible, strength with a will that went beyond her deep cut wounds, Alex's bloody head rises, removing from her jacket pocket a transformation stick.
"URANUS CRYSTAL -"
She begins to call to her guardian planet for its power when, KICK! A tall army green lace up boot brazenly kicks Alex's gripping hand with unforgiving force, bruising the strong palm as her power stick skitters from the car window across the coastal road and over the edge of the cliff...
"Are you really the Heir's chosen mate? You'd think such a powerful man would have better taste than a girl with such color of hair!" Giggling, vainly proud of her own long snow white braided coiffure, the young villainous known as Swanette flips that braid over her shoulder with a look downward at Michelle. Her partner in evil, Dracon, holds their captive callously, bending back her two delicately artistic arms without care.
"And what is wrong with aqua hair?!" Booming in like thunder, a more womanly voice compared to Swanette's childish high pitched tone, joins the conversation.
Queen Aquamarianna in all of her slinky blue-green glory, materializes before the group with a look of insulted anger passing over her face, as she coldly shoves poor Swanette out of the way like she was nothing more than a bothersome ragdoll.
Suddenly, her irritation is replaced by a gaze of feminine curiosity and her eyes alight evilly as she grabs Michelle's chin, looking deep into her eyes.
"His mate, yes." An experienced, worldly woman, Aquamarianna knew full well the look. He was still reflecting in Michelle's blue eyes and from that mirror, Aquamarianna knew that this scared, wide-eyed young woman was indeed the one they've been seeking out.
There is something about your eyes, yes...Why does Metallia fear you so? It is fear, I know. She cannot fool me.
Aquamarianna vainly believed her intelligence was far superior than others.
What secrets do you hide, little one, that the Heir would find so alluring? So much so that would keep him from my temptations? It was as if once being with you, he no longer needs nor wants for anyone else.
These questions in Aquamarianna's mind turn her thoughts to her own old wound. She was still a relatively young woman, though she imagined herself past her prime, and although attempted many times, something was devoid in her life...
"Are you already with his child, perhaps?" Aquamarianna grasps at Michelle's shawled frock, parting it and placing her cold hands on Michelle's stomach.
"Stop! Please, stop!" Michelle sobs. The pain of the jealous queen's words were even stronger than the rough man's grip on her arms, twisting them further backwards.
"Or are you incapable of producing his heir?" Aquamarianna could not imagine a woman ever preventing such a longed for thing as a baby. Her energy sensing skills told her that the woman before her was barren. Evil cruelties and jealousies had twisted her own frustrations on another and Aquamarianna decides to strike the girl with everything she had available, nonetheless.
"Then maybe I will be able to provide-" She starts to boast, the only one knowing as she disguises her depravity when Michelle's silent mouth speaks, her hand fiercely ripping from its hold as she slaps Aquamarianna across the face.
"My Robin would never be with you." Michelle rumbles, even as Dracon, embarrassed to have lost control of such a frail arm, clutches it back, twisting it back again until she squeals in pain.
"How dare you slap me! How dare you! I was thinking of sparing you! Of pleading with Metallia to turn you to our side for the Heir's sake! But no longer! You will die the worthless creature you are!" Anger flaring, Queen Aquamarianna brings her fingers to her tinted lips. They explode with angry, jealous energy as she blows Michelle a deadly kiss.
Though she could do nothing as she fiercely battles, hand to hand, with her worthy red-headed opponent, Alex watches in desperation, fully aware she was unable to reach Michelle in time...
"Hey! First of all, you should never waste kisses like that!"
SLAM!
Dracon unknowingly, is yanked and floored out of the way. Michelle slumps to the ground as the deadly energy kiss sizzles over her head, just missing.
"Second of all, this girl is not a worthless creature." Aquamarianna and Swanette both look up and down for the source of that annoying voice that so rudely attacked poor dazed Dracon. The two of them had only caught a glimpse of a speeding black blur as it suddenly stops directly in front of them, revealing the gorgeous form of a leather-clad woman wearing five inch heeled boots up to her thighs.
"And third," Sailor Star Fighter smirks wickedly at the two surprised women. "There's nothing all that beautiful about your face, lady!" With those final insults, Star Fighter, far too ungentlemanly for a man, but hey! when you're a woman, might as well make the most of it, sends two flying fists out, decking both Aquamarianna and Swanette right in their faces.
"Hey, Sailor U!" His voice was still tentative but Alex welcomes that sorely missed voice nonetheless as she and Lady Ruby, scuffling in the dirt by the side of the road, glance up to see Fighter, holding Michelle in one arm, and chucking a golden wand with the other through the sunsetting air towards Alex.
So eager to steal the object from its rightful owner, Ruby looks away from Alex for a split second, trying to catch the zinging power stick.
But that split second is all quick Alex needs. She uses the opportunity to land a swift kick, tripping her enemy, swearing as she goes down, and then steps hard on Ruby's hand, getting even as she scoops the power stick from her, giving 'Lady' Ruby one last powerful kick in the head as she does.
"URANUS CRYSTAL POWER...MAKE UP!"
As Alex transforms, Michelle looks to Star Fighter with a small grateful smile, pulling out her own power stick as Fighter is suddenly blasted back by a dark energy bolt.
"NEPTUNE CRYSTAL POWER...MAKE UP!"
She calls out, transforming into the elegant Super Sailor Neptune.
"So you have transformed, I see. No matter. The result will be the same." Calmly, even though his own wife was down, her red hair even redder with her own dripping blood, Lord Opalson floats above them on the horizon with a smirk on his dark features. He raises one hand to the sky and a large dark opal appears in it, charged with deadly energy waves.
"Yes, it will, indeed. Put away your attack, Opalson. I will inflict the final damage here." A similar accent, though his poise and stance were disparately royal, Uranus, Neptune and the floored Fighter exchange looks at the seeming dissent within the enemy's troops as King Pearlellion and Lord Opalson look at each other with sheer contempt on both their faces.
"Don't overtax yourself, old man." Opalson snaps nastily, continuing to charge his opal orb.
"Do not overtax my patience, brother. I will be the one to bring Neptune's lifeless form to Queen Metallia." Pearlellion states authoritatively, energizing his own similarly sized pearl orb.
"Don't let 'em tell ya what to do, luv!" Ruby was still recovering from the blow to her head as she holds it, appearing next to her husband in the air.
"That guttersnipe deserves not an answer from you, my King!" Stuck up Queen Aquamarianna appears as well, beside her husband, turning her high class nose up at her low class sister-in-law. The two polar opposites had never gotten along very well and fought like two lionesses every time they came near one another, fueling their already feuding husbands' rivalry.
"I will destroy her." Pearlellion states again, lifting his monstrous pearl to the sky, ready to fire.
"No, I will!" Like two quarreling children, Opalson would not be outdone by his older, bothersome brother. He, too, was anxious to release his own evil energies upon the trio.
Two more minds had the same idea, but instead of competing, they worked together.
"SPACE SWORD BLASTER!"
"STAR SERIOUS LASER!"
As one, these two light beaming blasts, each take down an energy sphere. Fighter's laser explodes the opal, as Uranus' sword swipe detonates the pearl. The resulting explosion causes the entire landscape to burst into dark and white light, blinding the three Sailors for a moment as Uranus and Fighter, with one mind, use their own bodies to shield Neptune.
When the brightness clears, the two argumentative couples had vanished. The only traces left of the battle were Alex's spun out tire blown Ferrari, a few singed trees and...
Swanette and Dracon curled up on the ground in a pile together.
"So what are we gonna do with them?" Fighter asks, walking over to where the young woman and the dark man lay. He nudges them each with sharp pointed boot toe to make sure they were really out of it and not merely faking.
"The cliff's right over there." Detransforming, Alex's face becomes a wry smile as she strides over to her busted car with a frown.
"Amara." Michelle chides softly, still reeling from the attack on her but slowly being uplifted by her cousin's first heartfelt crack in days. Michelle knew why.
"We'll bring them back to the girls. They'll know how to handle it." Michelle explains thoughtfully to the now male again Sayer.
"And I don't think I thanked you properly for my rescue before, handsome prince." Michelle smiles sweetly, kissing Sayer's cheek with soft gratitude. This person, she knew, meant as much to Amara as her own dearest meant to her, despite it all.
"Thanks, 'chelle." Sayer blushes slightly, then slowly begins to back away. "I-uh-guess, I'll get outta here. Bye, 'chelle, ummm..."
Michelle watches Sayer's eyes meekly look over to where Alex was trying to start her broken Ferrari to no avail. She didn't even once glance up at him.
"'Bye..." Sayer whispers to the wind, turning, about to dash off again at his wife's unresponsiveness. He sadly thought it must be true what she she before - that she really did regret his coming here, his coming to her...
"Hey, Starr." Suddenly stopping in midstride, Sayer hears Alex's low voice call to him, just as usual, with her familiar nickname.
"Yeah...Alex?" Sayer says, unsure how to talk to her, looking over the distance between them, and knowing, despite it all, despite her coldness and anger, why he could never really leave her. Even if she really didn't love him, he would always love her - he'd always watch her back and protect her...
And Michelle, too.
For you, Ally, and Rob, too.
He vows silently. For no matter what heartbreak it meant for him, he would always adore her.
Their eyes meet and Sayer sees a small light in hers that he was sure wasn't only the sunlight reflecting...
"The least you could do is find a pair of stranded ladies in the middle of nowhere, a ride home. Or is that too 'gentlemanly' a task for you to do?" The teasing words, the sound of her voice, the look in her green eyes - all gave Sayer's depressed heart a skipped beat.
"Not too gentlemanly." Sayer says, dazed. Their eyes lock as he slowly becomes sure of her, and of himself, once again, in a single gust of the wind.
"Actually, I did come in a car - a rented one! And I, uh..." He says, with red tinges growing on his cheeks as Alex removes the keys from the Ferrari's ignition and leaps over the roof of her unusable car to stride up to him, putting a hand on his reddened cheek.
"Just point. Which tree did you crash into?" She softly teases his infamous driving skills as she caresses his face. She thought it was very sweet of him to have been trailing them all this time, as she suspected he would.
"I didn't, really! Just...almost." He smiles crookedly, brushing back the blood stained bangs from her eyes. Alex revels in his touch. She didn't realize just how much she missed it and that sweet puppy dog look in his eye, for Sayer could not abandon the woman he loved, especially when she was in such danger, even if she told him to.
"Want to go home?" Alex whispers, kissing his fingers as he continues to touch her, not able to get enough, it seemed.
"If you still want me." Sayer whispers back, biting his lower lip as Alex answers his question with a soft kiss.
"I'll always want you...and don't ever call me 'Alex' again." She whispers on his lips.
The 'I'm sorry' never had to pass between them, as long as both of them knew there was a forever to hold on to. A forever together, through war and peace, and they seal their bargain with a long, passionate kiss as Michelle watches from afar, with mixed emotions. She was happy for Alex, but at the same time, so...so very sad for herself.
Robin dearest...where are you right at this moment?
She closes her eyes, letting the romance of the setting sun take her back to happy times once again when he was in it with her.
"Woooh! Ahhh! Did you see that?!" Four little stowaways who had cunningly attached themselves to parental looking couples and then orphaning themselves whenever the ship's crew members passed by, now look over the railing at the target city they were on their way to, over the long voyage.
"What the hell was that?!" Jun Jun always threw in a swear word when she was shocked.
"Wha-?" Cere Cere asks, annoyed, as she removes her suntanning face mask. She was using this journey to lay out as the last of the sun sets on the deck of the cruise ship she herself had insisted on stowing passage back to Japan on.
'If we have to go, we might as well go in style.' That was her motto and with a little sneakiness, which they had ample amounts of, the four girls had easily stowed away.
"Looky! Looky! Pretty lights! Palla Palla wishes Bonk-Bonk was here to see it, too!" Teenager in body, but little in mind yet, Palla Palla leans over the railing a bit too much in her excitement, but luckily, responsible Ves Ves was there to tug her little friend back by her shorts.
"You think there's trouble there already, too?" Ves Ves asks seriously to her other two companions as Cere Cere finally deems to get herself up to look, just as blinding lights off the coastal shore outside of Tokyo fade away.
"There's always trouble wherever we go." Jun Jun says sourly, though a little anxious to get off this 'boring old rocker' herself and trouble sounded pretty good at the moment to this adventurous teen.
"Uh-oh, trouble again?! I'll probably chip my new nail polish that that cute porter over there gave me." Cere says with a youthful giggle and girlish wave at the poor young man.
"He gave it to you?! Where?! Which one?!" Jun Jun casts evil stares upon all good looking young men porters in the area. The poor, innocent lads received scathing glares just for one of them giving Cere a little attention. For as much as they argued, Cere Cere was Jun Jun's responsibility, her cherished rival and more than that, her best friend that she'd protect with her life.
And that thought just might be put to the test, as the four friends, fresh from the wilds of the Amazon, gaze out expectantly at the country of their rebirth looming ahead...
