Subject to Change: Season 2

by JadeEye

How do you foresee a separate stream of time? It branches off at one event, one thought, among trillions. Moon and Mask confront their pasts, their futures, and the sins that brought them together in this sequel to Subject to Change.

35. Chapter 35

A/N: As always, a billion thank yous for all the reviews! All I laughed a lot at all the Darien-bashing. I feel I must confess that this chapter is…rough. As in, I think it needs more time on the burner, but I have selfishly decided to release it anyways because I am tired of rewriting it. Darien has frustrated me as much as he has you dear readers. If it helps, I think he has even frustrated himself. I hesitate to say it, because I feel that if authors can't adequately convey a message through their story, then they shouldn't presume to force it on their readers outside of the story, but what I am trying to show here is how the harder Darien fights against something, the more like it he becomes.

june flower, your review made my jaw drop. I was floored because I hadn't intended for any of the events last chapter to be interpreted this way – I promise that Serena is not pregnant – but if I had been the one reading this story, I would have made the same predictions you did. It was both a tickling and enlightening realization, so thank you.

Huge thank you to Sue, who has yet another marvelous sketch up on the STC site. Ginormous thank you to Jade, who is, as always, my rock. A very valuable rock, since she's jade.

Last, Lethe and Mnemosyne are actual Senshi from manga volume 17. To see what they look like, check out the STC site. There's also a link to their Wiki-moon site that summarizes their manga appearances.

Language and Content Warnings for this chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

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Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Five: Hypnotic

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Sapphire had noticed the day before that one of the glow-crystals in Diamond's quarters needed replacing. Such a replacement was a maintenance droid's task, but Sapphire was the only one, aside from Diamond, with the authorization to unlock Diamond's quarters.

He didn't bother knocking on the door before putting his hand to the touchpad to unlock it. Diamond hadn't been in his quarters for the past week due to other pursuits, so chances were ninety to one that he wouldn't be in them today, either. The thought made Sapphire's lips purse and his hands tighten impotently around the glow-crystal he held.

Then the door hissed open, and the stomach-turning scent of burnt hair and charred flesh invaded his nostrils. Sapphire snapped immediately to attention, lifting his arms in a guard stance.

Just as quickly, they fell back to his side, for his eyes landed on the source of the smell, sitting in the corner. It was not an intruder but Diamond himself. The white-haired man was slumped on his bunk, panting, with his feet braced against the floor as he tried to look at a gaping, black-charred wound in his side.

Without speaking, Sapphire teleported out of Diamond's quarters and to the med-bay. He returned just as silently, stepping into the room and sealing the door behind him. He came to the side of Diamond's bunk, the med-pac in his hand, and pushed his brother carefully down onto his pillow. "Lie down."

Diamond let out a deep, ragged breath and closed his eyes. From behind his mind shield wisped a thought that Sapphire tried to ignore – he had sworn to Diamond time and time again that he would never use his powers to read Diamond's mind – but he heard it anyway. It was something like a sigh, a strange gratefulness to have someone telling him what to do. It was streaked with dizziness, probably from blood loss, Sapphire thought grimly as he peeled Diamond's incinerated tunic from the charred, blood-slippery edges of the wound.

After disinfecting it with iodine and saline, he took the suturing needle and thread from the med-pac. There were no scissors in the pac to cut the thread. He would sooner chance that his saliva would not infect Diamond's wound than chance touching one of Diamond's razor-sharp Black Poison Crystal earrings, so he severed the thread with his teeth and sensed another of Diamond's bleary thoughts slipping from beneath his shield: a frustration that his brother would not even touch the Black Crystals the Wiseman had given them. But the frustration, to Sapphire's confusion, was also edged with a faint relief.

Then Diamond mumbled something. Sapphire, needle in hand, glanced at his face. More clearly, Diamond rasped, "Numb it."

Sapphire was torn between relief that Diamond seemed to be regaining some level of alertness and fierce irritation that he even had this injury at all. "No," he said shortly. "Nothing I'm going to do will make it any more painful than it already is."

With that, he pinched the bottom of Diamond's wound and hooked the curved, threaded needled through the lowest bits of skin. Diamond made a low hiss of pain, and Sapphire, trying to be as unsympathetic as possible because this was Diamond's fault, and he deserved it, and he needed to learn his lesson from this, said flatly, "So, you've finally found your princess."

Diamond's mental shield was almost completely impenetrable again, but one thought did leak out, one of fierce, furious possession, immediately followed by a stinging despair.

"Yes," he hissed. Then he seemed to shake himself and looked at Sapphire more alertly. "How did you know?"

"You've been out of sight for a week. Emerald has been sulking. It wasn't hard to put the pieces together, even before I followed your energy signature a few nights ago and found you with the princess's reincarnation."

Diamond sucked in a hiss of breath. "You didn't tell me."

"You haven't been here to tell," Sapphire said. "And I doubt you would have welcomed interruptions, just then."

A dull flush burned beneath Diamond's face. Sapphire continued to stitch methodically, tugging the needle through skin, as though he did not notice, but internally he felt relieved. At least his brother still had enough of a perspective on his behavior to be embarrassed by it. Their father would have shown no shame whatsoever at treating a woman the way Diamond had been treating the princess when Sapphire had seen them.

Of course, their father also would have taken it much further than just kisses and caressing.

"Do you ever think," Sapphire said, not looking up from his suturing, "about when we were children?"

Diamond's shield was completely in place; he did not sense any surprise from him save through his physical reaction of looking up. Then he looked away again. "Sometimes. There are not many happy memories from that time." He paused, his breathing harsh. "Except of the days we spent together."

Sapphire's throat closed up. Always, always Diamond managed to do this to him – made him feel surges of affection that washed away everything else.

But not today, he told himself. He tied off another stitch. "You liked to tease me then. I remember that sometimes you would bully me into sneaking into Father's private study with you or stealing Commander Rhyol's stallion to ride, and I would get so angry with you for dragging us into those situations. We kept getting caught and in trouble, but you never stopped, and I wanted so badly to kick you or punch you – to just hurt you some way so you would stop."

He stopped for a moment. This speech was the one of the longest string of words he had made in years, since his mother's death.

"I never did," he finished, feeling somewhat awkward. He found that he could not look at Diamond, for all that he had felt so self-righteous before that he had been able to spout all this out. "Mother always read my mind and stopped me."

Behind its shield, Diamond's mind was dark and introspective. "And that is how you feel now? Like you want to hurt me?"

"Yes."

Diamond tilted his head back. "Mother's not here to stop you anymore. Why haven't you hurt me yet?" His mouth curved in a quirk of a smile. "Because I'm your brother?"

"Because you're my king."

Diamond's smile faded. He looked, suddenly, very tired. His voice was very hoarse. "Do you know why I must find the princess, Sapphire?"

His words had made no impact at all. Feeling just as weary as his brother looked, Sapphire knotted the last stitch and pulled back. "I believe that was the point of my analogy just now. To tell you that I do not."

"Yes," Diamond said simply. "I understood that."

"And I understand that our father married powerful women and you have an obsession with surpassing him," Sapphire said shortly. "So you have fixed your attentions on the most powerful woman of all time – "

"I listened to your analogy, Sapphire," Diamond interrupted, and beneath his weariness and pain, there was a spark of threat. "Now I am presenting you with one of my own, if you will be quiet and listen. Do you remember the circumstances in which we found Rubeus?"

Stung, Sapphire only nodded instead of speaking. He did not trust himself not to say something that would dig him deeper into Diamond's ill graces. Rubeus had been sealed into a phoenix-ruby hundreds of years ago by a High Senshi, and Diamond had found the ruby and used his own blood to free the demon.

Diamond's eyes were distant. "Do you know why he was sealed away?"

"He was a tremendously powerful demon," said Sapphire bluntly. Even he had second-guessed Diamond's decision to free Rubeus, not that Diamond had asked him his opinion. Even the Wiseman had seemed reluctant to free the blood-demon – although, in hindsight, Sapphire realized that was probably because the Chaos minion had known that Rubeus would swear allegiance to Diamond, the one who had freed him, not to the Wiseman. "They feared his power."

Diamond was silent for a moment. "I haven't told you much of what I have learned about the Moon Princess, Sapphire. I didn't think it would interest you. But I will impose upon your attention now. When Serenity was born in the Silver Millennium a thousand years ago, it was almost immediately known that she would have the power to overthrow Chaos. At first, the High Senshi rejoiced that she had come to be, but their joy gave way to fear. A being with enough power to defeat Chaos also had enough power to threaten their systems' sovereignty. Fearing that with her power, she would be able to take over their minds and their kingdoms, planetary rulers cut off contact with the Moon Kingdom. The High Senshi decided that the princess could not be allowed to live past her defeat of Chaos, and that she must, consequently, be kept away from Endymion."

Bitterness twisted his voice, and the strain of so much speaking was beginning to show. His face was sheened with sweat, pasting his hair to his face. Blood seeped from between the stitches of his slowly-healing wound. But he continued hoarsely, "Chaos told me that Serenity became a prisoner in her own palace, for no reason other than that she had been born with a power that she had not asked for." Beneath eyelashes spiked with sweat or maybe tears, his eyes bore into Sapphire's. "Do you understand the analogy yet?"

Sapphire could only stare at him.

"Chaos does not care whether Serenity lives or dies. Only under the High Senshi's influence is she a threat to It. It swore that if I brought It the princess's daughter, it would extend Its full protection to the princess and allow her to live safely with me. I am her only chance for a safe life. So ask me, Sapphire. Ask me, with those condemning eyes of yours, why I must chase the princess."

Sapphire's heart was pounding very hard. "Why?"

"For the same reason I freed Rubeus. Because I remember a young boy with a power that the entire Nemisian court feared and shunned." Diamond's eyes burned into Sapphire's. "I chase her because of you, brother."

Sapphire's throat was tight. He could not speak. He stared at Diamond, and Diamond stared back, and neither of them moved for several moments. Sapphire felt, for once, as though Diamond could read his mind. And he wished that he could, wished that Diamond could read all the admiration and respect and love and gratefulness there, and that he could understand why Sapphire was so scared and wanted him to stop chasing the princess and to keep himself safe. All these things built up, tightening his throat further and further and keeping him from talking until Diamond sighed and rose from his bunk.

"At any rate," he mumbled, his voice rough and cracking with emotion, "I have lost my chance to save her now. Her aura has repulsed mine times beyond count, and Endymion will not let her out of his sight now that he has seen me. The High Senshi will reach her. And then…"

"Diamond." Sapphire's voice was quiet, as though he half hoped that his brother would not hear him. But Diamond went still.

"There is…something." Misgiving swirled inside Sapphire, along with the desperate need to do something to help his brother, to eradicate the slump from his shoulders and the terrible desolation from his eyes. The Moon Princess was a fool not to understand what a champion she had in his brother. Endymion was a lump of coal compared to him. "You said that it is the princess's new aura that has resisted you."

He had not actually said it; it was something that Sapphire had gleaned from his thoughts. But Diamond did not seem to notice. He turned, and his eyes were already glinting. "Yes?"

"I have been thinking that…perhaps…" Sapphire took a deep breath. "The aura that has been giving you problems is the Terran one–Sailor Moon's aura. The one that only exists to disguise the princess in this time until she finds the Silver Crystal and becomes the Moon Princess that exists in our present."

Diamond was listening closely, his silver brows drawn. Above them, his Third Eye was open and glowing with agitation.

"Without the Terran aura–without Sailor Moon's aura interfering with the princess's, would you be able to use your powers on her?"

"Easily," Diamond said hoarsely. "But there is still the problem of Endymion."

"Suppose…" Sapphire's throat felt tight. "Suppose that you could go back in time to the Silver Millennium? To when the princess's aura was still untainted and whole and–" He watched Diamond's face, "before she had even met Endymion."

Diamond's Third Eye was blinking fast, its rhythm like an eager, pulsing heart. But his expression was pained as he raked a hand through his hair. "Don't be a fool, Sapphire, the power required to travel so far back in time–"

"Would be easily supplied by the child princess."

Diamond's hand stopped in his hair. He stared at Sapphire.

"Like you, there is something she craves more than anything else." Sapphire's voice was as dispassionate as he could make it, though he was trembling inside. If Diamond went through with this, Sapphire would never see him again. "I began to follow her after I saw you with the Moon Princess." He thought of the little girl standing in front of the patisserie on the cold street, staring at the decorated cakes without seeing them, her thoughts of only one thing. One person. "She wants Serena Tsukino to be her mother."

"Serena Tsu…" began Diamond in confusion, his forehead creasing, but then it smoothed again. "Ah. The princess's Terran disguise." He frowned once more. "But she is her mother."

"The child doesn't know it yet. None of them do. They all think that Sailor Moon was a Senshi in the Silver Millennium and that the Moon Princess's reincarnation is someone they have not met yet."

Diamond's eyes gleamed. He began to pace, absentmindedly holding a hand to the bandage over his wound. "So what I must do is go to the girl with some story about needing to get to the Silver Millennium and the princess. Suggest that this is her chance to change the past, to keep the princess and Endymion from marrying so that she can have the mother she wants…"

His words were a quiet murmur, meant for his own ears and not Sapphire's, but behind his mental shield, thoughts and emotions swirled like a howling hurricane. Sapphire felt battered by them, for all that he could not read them. Knowing that he was the one who had given Diamond the idea to tear a child irreparably from the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world only made him feel worse.

Abruptly, Diamond stopped pacing. He looked straight at Sapphire, and the fire in his three eyes was frightening to behold.

"I will not ask," he said in a cold voice, "why you have not seen fit to present all this information to me sooner."

Sapphire bowed his head, as much to escape the painful hear of his brother's eyes as to express deference.

Diamond's hands reached for Sapphire's throat…and then settled on his shoulders. "Ah, Sapphire," he said softly. Warmth, not fire, glowed in his eyes now. "How could I punish you when all you have ever done is try to protect me?"

As abruptly as he had seized him, he let go of Sapphire, spun, and disappeared from the room. Without hands to hold him up, Sapphire collapsed backward onto the bunk, fairly trembling from the fire of Diamond's eyes and the power surging behind his mental shield.

His last thought, before he passed out from the drain of dealing with Diamond, was that Diamond had never really needed the Wiseman's Third Eye.

He could be hypnotic all on his own.

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Rini hadn't slept a wink all night. Lita knew she hadn't because she hadn't either. There had been something sickening about the look on Serena's face as she had watched them leave, something that wriggled behind Lita's eyelids and kept her wide awake.

She was going to kill Shields for making Serena look like that, she really was. It pissed her off even more to think that at this moment, Serena might be forgiving him, letting him saunter back into her life just like he always did, after all that he had done to her. Not to mention what his treatment of Serena was doing to Rini. Lita's eyes slid from the four a.m. infomercial playing on the TV to where the little girl was curled up on the floor under a blanket, the light from the TV screen reflecting off her dull eyes. She hadn't spoken a word since they had left Serena, and it was starting to scare Lita. She had an illogical, terrifying feeling that when she brought Rini back to Serena, she would stay like this, a silent, blank-eyed creature like a broken doll, and Serena would look at Lita with accusation in her eyes for bringing Rini back broken…

"Lita."

Lita sat up straight, her eyes flying open. The six a.m. news was on, and Rini stood in front of her, folding the blanket she had huddled under. Lita must have fallen asleep and into a dream.

"I want to go back now."

Lita rolled out of the armchair, her joints popping. "Alright." She didn't see any reason not to. Serena and Darien would either have made up by now or not; even they couldn't stand there arguing with each other for five hours solid. She transformed and crouched so that Rini could climb onto her back. For a second, as Rini's thin arms wrapped around her, she felt a brief flash of jealousy for Serena for having this little girl who loved her so completely, so fiercely that the fight between her and Darien had made her so upset. Would she, Lita, ever have a little one who would love her this much? Her thoughts instantly flashed, of course, to Motoki, and she flinched away from them just as swiftly, shoving out of her apartment window.

She was too distracted by trying to avoid thoughts of Motoki to notice Rini's state as they made their way to the Tsukino house: how Rini's hands sweated and fisted, how her jaw clenched, how little shudders traveled up and down her body as though she was swallowing sobs before they could come out of her mouth. Only as they landed in the yard and spotted Tuxedo Mask's shadowy form dropping down from the tree branch near Serena's window did Jupiter feel the hot drop of wetness fall on the skin of her neck. She turned her head to ask Rini if she was crying, but then it was too late, Rini was scrambling down from her back and stalking toward Darien with her hands balled at her sides.

Jupiter hung back, thinking with dark satisfaction that Darien was finally going to get the earful he deserved. But there was none of the explosion of shouting, she had expected – there was only Rini slamming her tiny hands into Mask's stomach as though to tip him over, and her voice, shaking too badly for Jupiter to be able to make out what she said, growing and growing in volume and pitch until it burst into ragged, wrenching sobs.

"Hey. Hey!" Jupiter raced forward, seizing Rini into a loose embrace, throwing her head back to glare up at Mask for whatever he'd done to make her cry.

But her thoughts froze. Mask looked like he was going to throw up, just as Serena had the day before. He was staring at Rini with blank, the skin around his mouth as white as his mask.

"What?" Jupiter demanded, looking down at Rini. "What is it?"

Mask didn't make a sound. He just kept staring at Rini, and his face seemed to become more and more colorless the longer he stared at her. Jupiter found herself putting her hands over Rini's eyes as though to protect the child from the horrible deadness of his face. "Come on," she heard herself saying. "Come on, we're going to go, okay, we're going to go get some breakfast and find Serena, okay?"

Rini cried harder.

Jupiter didn't know what to do. She'd never felt so helpless in her life. In the end, she scooped Rini up into her arms and took her back to her apartment, leaving Mask standing there white-faced and silent on Serena's front lawn.

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The air around them was so chilly it bit through Michiru's skin. She tried hard not to shiver, not sure whether people who were supposed to be unconscious shivered when they were cold, but quite a few tremors shook through her anyway. She pretended still to be unconscious anyway, because even though she had been lolling from Haruka's back for what had to be hours now, she still didn't know what to say to her – to him.

A twig cracked beneath Haruka's foot, making them skid slightly on the forest's slippery carpet of leaves. The movement shifted Michiru's chest against Haruka's back, and Haruka's hands tightened, slipping higher above Michiru's knees to grip her thighs more tightly

Michiru clenched her eyelids more tightly shut against the warmth that rippled through her. It seemed like the only thing she did know was that even after everything that had been revealed, she still wanted Haruka. She still shivered inside when Haruka touched her, still ached when she thought of how softly Haruka had spoken to Serena, still felt like crying when she realized now why Haruka had never wanted to talk about why her mother had left her with her uncle when Haruka was only a child and never come back.

Oh, damn it, she was crying now. The tear slipped from her nose and onto Haruka's neck.

Haruka's muscles tightened beneath her. They stopped moving. "I know you're awake, Kaioh."

Kaioh? That was what they were back to now? Michiru bit her lip and slid down Haruka's back to the ground without looking meeting the dark blueberry eyes.

"I understand if you want to leave."

Michiru was listening to the timbre of Haruka's voice, the lowness of it that she had always thought was so pleasant, almost tenor instead of alto, and thinking how stupid she had been. If only she had noticed, had realized, earlier, if she could have spoken to Haruka about it and helped her. Him. Another tear rolled down her cheek.

Then the meaning of what Haruka had said caught up to her, and her wet eyes flashed up to Haruka's, wide and hurt. "You want me to leave?"

Haruka was watching her. "If you want to."

"You think – " Michiru broke off and swallowed. She wouldn't cry, she told herself. She wouldn't, "you think I'd that I would leave you just because – just because you –"

"Just because?" Haruka repeated. "There's no just about it, Michiru. I'm a freak."

"You're you," said Michiru, blinking back tears. "Why did you believe Serena when she told you it doesn't matter but when I say it you won't believe me?"

Haruka began to reach for her, then stopped, lowering her arm back to her side.

Michiru took the lowered arm and wrapped it around herself, putting her face to Haruka's shoulder. Haruka leaned away, not releasing her shoulder, but seeming unwilling to let their chests touch. Her clear discomfort, her shame, broke Michiru's heart. She reached up, put her hand to Haruka's face.

"I love you," she whispered. "That hasn't changed, Haruka."

Haruka's eyes slid almost unwillingly to hers. With a sigh, she lowered herself to sit atop a fallen tree. For the first time, Michiru saw her her muscles trembled beneath the Senshi fuku. How long had she been running?

"They didn't know anything was wrong when I was born." Haruka's hands hung between her knees, and she stared down at them as she talked. As she spoke, her transformation melted from her, covering the slender, muscled legs with Infinity's uniform trousers and the feminine chest with a uniform shirt and sweater. For the first time, Michiru saw Haruka the way she had on her first day at Infinity: as a man, a slender, delicately-featured man with eyes like a storm. She felt the pronouns in her head shifting from she and her and he and him.

"I was born a little early, so I was small, but I had all the normal boy parts. Nobody suspected anything. As I got older, I was pretty skinny, but most of the time, people still didn't think anything of it. The only one who did was my dad, and that was just because I was so small I never got chosen for any of the sports teams. He played baseball in the minor leagues when he was younger, and I guess having a son who didn't play sports and win trophies made him feel like a failure. Or maybe even back then he had some idea of what was happening. I don't know. I just remember that he didn't like it when people said stuff about how little and young I looked, or how I was almost too pretty to be a boy, and that my mom didn't like anything that made my dad angry, so when I got to middle school, I tried out for the track team so he'd be happy.

"Things were okay, then. I got along with the other guys on the team. And I was good at running. I loved it. The only weird part was being in the locker room. Most the guys were starting to…" Haruka let out a breath and shook his head. "Let's just say, when eighth grade hit and they started growing facial hair, I started growing these." He passed his hand through the air in front of his chest, as though his own body was something he didn't want to touch.

"I didn't know what was going on," he said. His voice had gone lower, almost to a whisper. He had his elbows braced on his knees, his fingers digging into his hair. "I tried to hide it, I was so embarassed. I wore an extra undershirt everywhere and sweatshirts every day, even to practices and meets. But then we went to beach for a family vacation, and one of my cousins pushed me into the water and wrestled my shirts off…and they all saw.

"My parents tried to pretend like it was normal at first. My mom said it was probably just fat tissue. You know –" His lips twisted in a terrible, humorless smile, "man boobs."

"But there was no way to ignore the other things that were happening. I was growing hair under my arms but not on my face, I didn't have an Adam's apple, my voice wasn't changing... They took me to a doctor my dad knew, but he didn't know what was going on. He wanted me to go to a specialist, but my dad flipped. Said they'd make me some sort of specimen and put me in the newspapers, and everyone'd say he had a hermaphrodite for a son. He bought an exercise machine instead and put it in the house and made me work out every day and lift weights like he could make me into a man. He just stood there in the corner watching me with his arms crossed…and when my mom got home, they would fight about it…"

Haruka trailed off. He was silent for a long time. At last he took a deep breath and started again. "One day my mom said she was taking me to see a doctor in Tokyo. We left when I got home from school and got here a little bit after sunset. We went to my grandfather's place, he owned in auto shop in Edogawa Ward. They didn't get along very well because he didn't like my dad, but I figured he must have said we could stay there so we could go to the doctor the next morning. I went to sleep while my mom stayed up talking with him, and when I woke up the next morning, she was gone. Gramps let me try to call her, but she didn't pick up. They never did."

He straightened up, his hand dropping out of his hair. "I went to high school in Tokyo after that, staying with my grandfather. He let me help in the shop, and that's how I got into F1 driving. He let me drive one of the cars I'd helped repair, and the manager saw me in it and signed me onto his team. During my third race, I got into a wreck that I shouldn't have survived. I woke up in the hospital, and Pluto was there. She told me what I was, why I'd survived the crash. She had me transform, and that's when I found out why I was born…like this." His eyes lifted to hers. "She sent me to Infinity…and that's where I met you."

Michiru sat up a little straighter at this. She had been so absorbed in this story of Haruka's past, all the pain that he had never been willing to tell her before, and it had seemed so much like a life that must have belonged to someone else, not to the bright, stubborn Haruka that she knew, that she had forgotten that she would eventually be part of the story.

Haruka met her gaze squarely. "I hated you," he said. "Here I had just found out the truth about myself, the truth that I would never be able to share with anyone…and I couldn't get you out of my head."

Michiru stared at him, wide-eyed. She hadn't known that Haruka had even noticed her for those first few weeks they went to school together. He had always been laughing at the center of the group, graceful in his scratchy burgundy Infinity sweater, and she had always been in the corner of the classroom, chewing the end of her pen and trying not to watch him.

"It was like some divine punishment," he said. "What were the odds that just when I found out I was going to have to live with being a woman, I saw a girl who made me want her, who made me feel like a real man for the first time in my life? I hated you for doing that to me. But I still wanted you. But I couldn't let anything come of it. That's why I lied and told you I was a girl, because I thought that if you knew that, you would reject me."

Michiru squeezed her hands tightly in her lap. She could remember how thrilled she had been the first time Haruka spoke to her, coming into one of the music rooms as she was practicing with her violin and listening for a moment before saying, "That one's putting me to sleep, can't you play something funner?" How Haruka had always come to her music room after that and listened, lying on the floor with eyes closed and foot bobbing in time to the piece, how they had begun to talk in classes, quiet, secret murmurs and smiles that no one else in the class had been privy to. How, on that stormy afternoon, Haruka had come to the music room and not lied down and instead stood in front of the door and said, eyes burning into her, "Thought I'd let you know I'm actually a girl." How Michiru had only stared, even as Haruka turned away, face blank as stone, and walked out the door again, and how Michiru had sat there in the silent, silent room for a full minute, the thoughts building up and compressing in her brain until it seemed that her eardrums must explode, and when she did, she burst from the room and ran down the hallway as she had never run before, throwing herself into Haruka's slender back and gripping handfuls of burgundy sweater desperately in her hands.

Even if she had wanted to reject Haruka, she would never have been able to.

"And then we found out you were a Senshi, too," Haruka said. "It made me hate you again. Even more than before. You were a Senshi, but you hadn't been born twisted like I had. I wanted to punish you for it. I wanted to make you love me so that when you found out the truth you would feel just as humiliated, just as…disgusting…as I did."

The memories from that time replayed themselves in Michiru's mind, now seen with new eyes. After Pluto had come and shown them she was a Senshi, too, Haruka had turned so passionate, so wild. Their first kiss had come after that, in Michiru's apartment: Haruka had shut the front door behind them and turned to Michiru slowly, and in the dark room, her eyes had seemed to glow like a predator's. The fingertip she slid from Michiru's collarbone to her chin to tilt her face upward had left a warm, tingling trail behind, like a knife, and her kiss had been just as sharp, just as penetrating. Then, Michiru had been too dazed, too confused, too enraptured to think further into it than that Haruka had just been so thrilled that Michiru was a Senshi like her, that now they could share even this part of their lives. Now, she could recognize the violence of Haruka's lips against hers, the too-tightness of Haruka's fingers squeezing her arms. And later, the dozens of kisses after that, the almost dangerous gleam in Haruka's eyes as she traced fingers down Michiru's face, her neck, her arms.

The only dangerous thing in Haruka's eyes now was the desolation in them as he looked at Michiru, the lack of hope that made her ribs tighten as though they would cut off the circulation of all the blood from her heart.

He spoke. "The person you think you love never existed, Michiru."

There was silence for a moment. Then:

"Then who was the person who never let us get further than simple kisses? Who was the one who was that careful with my feelings?" Michiru's voice was louder and stronger than she had expected. "If you'd been nothing but a bitter person who wanted to hurt me, then why did you keep us from doing anything that could have made me feel completely betrayed when I found out the truth? Why did you hold back?"

Haruka had no response to this. Michiru could see it in the way his mouth parted to protest and then fell shut again, his forehead creased.

"I can't tell you," Michiru began, and still there was that fierceness in her voice that she'd never known she had, "how not to hate yourself. But I can tell you to stop trying to make me hate the person I love. Because he, or she, or whoever he decides that he wants to be, does exist. He's standing in front of me this very minute."

Haruka's hands were in his hair again. He stared at her from beneath them. His eyes gleamed wetly, but he was shaking his head. "You're right about one thing," he said. "You can't tell me how not to hate myself." He stood. "I have to leave, Michiru."

She felt like crying out. What don't you understand? she wanted to cry. I love you, no matter what you are! Why isn't that enough? But the words wouldn't come to her mouth, all she could think was that if she had been Serena, then she would have known the magic words to make Haruka stay.

Haruka stood up. Michiru's heart clawed into her throat, and she blurted out, "Where are you going to go?"

Haruka didn't turn to face her. "Serena doesn't deserve to go to hell."

Michiru's heart fell back to her toes. Of course. Of course it was about Serena.

"If I can find Rei and Saturn, then…"

Michiru didn't want to hear anymore. "Yes," she said wretchedly. "I see. I – I hope you save her."

"So do I," Haruka said quietly. Another moment passed. Then, with a soft "Goodbye, Michiru," she was gone.

Michiru sank slowly down onto the ground. The damp, rotting leaves clung to her legs, and she couldn't stand to feel them touching her. Couldn't stand to feel anything. She concentrated, and her last thought as her body shimmered into a million molecules of water vapor was that maybe she would stay like this forever.

L

"Dare. Dare!" Asanuma called again, louder this time, as the black-haired senior standing in front of the Infinity elevators did not turn around. When still Darien showed no sign of having heard him and the elevator doors in front of him slid open, Asanuma picked up his speed to a jog, hurrying to catch him before he could get on. "Darien!"

Darien's head was tilted back, as though he had X-ray vision and was following the other elevator car as it went up the shaft. He didn't look at Asanuma until Asanuma got close enough to grab his arm, and then his eyes, burning a piercing gold that made Asanuma think, shit, what now? slid to his face.

Asanuma dropped Darien's arm. "Did you talk to Helios?"

Darien stepped into the elevator; no one followed him. Asanuma didn't blame them, Darien was giving off an even scarier aura than usual; he seemed slightly psychotic right now, his eyes drilling straight ahead as though he was staring through the walls. "Yes."

Asanuma darted into the elevator with him just as the doors slid shut. "And?"

"It's not important." Darien's head was still tilted, still following the path of that other elevator car. Asanuma knew suddenly who must be in it and felt stupid for not having realized it earlier. God, what was going on between them now?

He closed his bloodshot eyes and rubbed them. "Listen, Darien, I know you've got all this Serena drama going on and you guys are leaving for the track meet today and all, but Motoki's dad just got admitted back into the hospital."

Darien didn't say anything. Asanuma opened his eyes and saw that his head was tilted slightly to the side now, his eyes narrowed; Serena must have gotten off the elevator.

The elevator dinged to a stop, and the doors slid open. Darien walked out swiftly, leaving Asanuma staring after him.

L

"What do you mean, he's absent?" Their gym period had begun, and Coach was roaring into the phone at the attendance secretary. "WE LEAVE FOR NATIONALS TODAY!"

The secretary said something tinny and frightened-sounding into the phone, and Coach bellowed again and slammed the phone down.

"What happened? Is Haruka sick?" Kobayashi asked from where he was stretching in front of the bleachers.

"They don't know," Coach said gruffly. His jaw was clenched, and he was rubbing his temples. "No one's answering his home phone."

"He's probably sleeping," Saori said disdainfully. "It would be just like him to oversleep and miss a match. He's got no sense of responsibility."

Coach made an unintelligible noise and began pacing, tugging at his mustache and mumbling.

"One of us could go and check on him," Kobayashi offered. "Serena-chan knows where he lives, right?"

Serena, who was standing near Sei Le, as far as she could possibly be from Darien, said, "I don't, actually." Her voice was tense. Darien's face tightened.

"I'll send someone else." Coach had stopped pacing and was now looking at them all with glinting eyes. "I'm not letting any of you out of might sight." His eyes focused rather particularly on Darien and Serena as he said this.

And he was true to his word. They weren't scheduled to leave until the last class of the day, but Etoukou managed to come up with an excuse to come be in Serena's second-to-last class of the day, which Darien, by perhaps a little bit of hypnosis and a white lie that his teacher needed him to sit in the classroom to take a make-up quiz, had also managed to come sit in on.

But Serena was Senshi to the bone, just as Helios had said. She had managed to avoid Darien all morning, and now, when the class was dismissed, she managed to slip out with the crowd of students, evading both Etoukou and Darien. Etoukou let out a shout of frustration when he realized this, and Darien took advantage of his distraction to give Coach the slip himself.

He caught up to Serena on the first floor, in the school's glossy lobby. She was sitting in one of the expensive brocade chairs that were clumped in intervals along the lobby's length like little sitting-room islands.

She looked up as he approached her. "I need to ask you for something."

He didn't sit. "Tell me what happened last night."

She ignored this. "I need you to hypnotize my family so they'll go away this weekend. To the hot springs, Disneyland, wherever, it doesn't matter. I just need them to stay away from the house until I get back."

"Serena – "

But she was already gone. Blurring away like she had the night before.

Darien took off after her. He didn't catch up to her until the front steps of the Tsukino house, where she was opening the door. Kenji, Ikuko, Sammy and Rini all stood inside, with Lita leaning against the couch. When Darien entered, Lita and Rini both stiffened. Feeling himself go just as rigid, he stared at Rini, half expecting her to burst into tears again. He found himself thinking furiously toward her, don't cry, don't you dare cry, I'll kill you if she finds out what you told me.

"Why, Darien," Ikuko began, her voice surprised but polite, "how nice to see you – "

Darien turned glowing eyes on her without letting her finish. She went silent, her eyes glowing back, and Kenji's and Sammy's too. Sharply, he hissed, "You're going to the hot springs for the weekend."

There was a ripple of something, not-quite-shock and not-quite-fear, but something more like the sour taste of bile coming up a throat, from Serena. Darien turned his still-glowing eyes to her, searching. She went pale as his eyes touched hers, the skin around her lips practically green. Lita, her eyes hazy, but not quite glowing, from the effects of his hypnosis, stumbled forward to support her. Serena touched Lita's arm with shaky fingertips but stayed standing on her own.

"Keep going," she said as she stared at a point just past his shoulder.

Darien turned his eyes back to her family, though something like shame raged through him. He struggled against it. She was the one who had asked him to hypnotize them. Why must she look at him like he was some sort of monster? Everything he did, all of this, was for her. He finished, "You will leave Rini to stay with Lita, and you will leave immediately."

The golden light faded in their eyes. Silently, the Tsukinos turned around and walked out the front door. The door swung shut behind them, and a moment later, there was the sound of the car's engine starting and then pulling down the driveway.

Darien focused on the wallpaper and not Serena. He didn't think he could look at the moment without doing something she wouldn't forgive him for, like pinning her against the wall and never letting her out of the cage of his arms. He said shortly, "Well?"

He heard her take a deep breath. "Thank you." Then she turned, handing something to Rini. "Rini, I need you to go to Elysion. You have to stay there the whole time we're gone."

"But you said – "

"Rini!" Serena's voice was sharp, and harder than any of them had ever heard it. "This isn't something to argue about. You're going to Elysion and you're staying there. Do you understand? Do not move from Elysion until one of us comes to get you." When there was no response, her voice hardened even further. "Promise me, Rini!"

"Fine!" Rini cried. There was a sound as though she'd angrily stomped her foot, and then her aura melted away.

"Darien."

Darien looked at Serena. Her eyes didn't flinch from his, but something in her aura did. It stung, and he felt angry. He was trying to save her –

"Please go to Elysion and make sure she's there." Her voice brooked no argument.

Feeling as defiant as Rini, Darien glared at her. "Fine. But you better not move while I'm gone."

It only took three seconds: one to teleport to Elysion; one to see that Rini was there, stone-faced next to Helios; and one to teleport back. But in that three seconds, Serena managed to vanish: when Darien opened his eyes on the Tsukinos' living room, it was empty except for a bemused-looking Lita.

He ran out the front door and down the street after her.

L

The national track meet was being held at a site closer to Tokyo than the regional meet had been, so the bus ride was actually much shorter than the one two weeks ago had been. But to Serena, who had just made it to the bus (and the relative safety of Coach Etoukou and their classmates, in front of whom Darien couldn't interrogate her) before Darien managed to catch up to her, the ride felt much longer.

The Twilight Flash that she had used on Diamond yesterday would have killed a youma. But the Black Moon prince was more powerful than a youma. As much as she wished to hope otherwise, she didn't think her attack would have stopped him for long. He might be following her at this moment, might have been following her all day – though she still did not understand why. Had he done all those things to her only to terrify her into giving Rini to him? Or did he really want her the way that her still-vague, blurry memories of him kissing and touching her made her think he did? It was so hard to remember anything he had said to her, to remember anything but the horrible, creeping terror and wrongness filling every inch of her insides as he touched her.

She shivered violently, pressing deeper into the bus's leather bench. Thinking of him, and the fact that he might even now be hovering nearby, watching her, was turning her blood to ice in her veins. With all their other enemies, she had been able to sense when they were nearby. Diamond was different. By the time she even knew he was there, he had already hypnotized her. It was a horrible, powerless feeling. But she didn't think that he would be able to hypnotize her again. The way she had ripped free of his control last night had felt very final. As though there was only one part of her that he had been able to stitch his threads through, and that flesh had been torn away, forever.

It still wasn't a risk that she wanted to take. Plus, it didn't matter if she could break his hold, if he had been watching her today and seen where her family went. If he followed them and used them as hostages, he wouldn't need to control her mind to make her to do whatever he wanted.

What if he makes me take him to Rini?

She felt as though she had suddenly looked down and found herself on the edge of a cliff, a chasm gaping beneath her. She could picture the scenario as though it had already happened: her parents, their eyes blank from being hypnotized; Diamond, holding fingertips crackling with power to Sammy's neck, telling Serena that he would kill him if she didn't bring Rini to him.

What would she do?

The answer came to her with frightening swiftness. She would do anything to keep Rini safe.

Even if it meant letting her family die?

Even if it means letting my family die.

Rain began to lash as the bus windows, and her head fell forward, her forehead pressed against the cold glass as it shivered with the vehicle's speed. This is wrong.

She remembered how Motoki had wondered aloud if she had a flash-form. Was this single-minded determination to protect Rini a sign of Sailor Moon's flash-form finally surfacing in her? Like Sailor Venus and her need to protect the princess at all costs, was it the flash-form inside her that made her cold-bloodedly decide that she would let her family die if it meant keeping the Moon Princess's daughter alive?

Her eyelids squeezed shut against the glass. No wonder Haruka had been so upset, so angry, so frightened. And Lita, before her. It was the most terrifying thing in the world to do things without knowing if it was really you doing them.

Yet she had asked Darien to hypnotize her family. To enter their minds without permission and twist them to what she wanted. Was that any different? Any different from what Diamond had done to her? The intention was different, yes, she had asked him to hypnotize her parents to keep them safe. But the flash-forms had been created to keep the princess safe, and that had been done to keep the universe safe, by ensuring it had a savior from Chaos. Did those ends justify the pain that they were all going through, that Lita and Haruka and Ami and Darien had undergone…

She fell asleep before she could decide.

L

"Serena."

She was dreaming. There was a hand in hers, and one at her waist, her own hand against cool metal armor, and they were dancing in slow circles as something hot welled up next to her eye and dripped, its trail made even hotter by the whisper against her cheek. "Wouldn't you miss me if I left?"

"Serena." There was another set of hands on her now, against her back and under her knees.

"SHIELDS! HURRY IT UP WITH TSUKINO!"

She jolted awake. The hands holding her, not part of the dream, tightened, bringing her closer against a warm, hard chest. Panic exploded inside her, sending her clawing for escape. She fell free and stumbled heavily onto cold leather: a bus seat. She looked up and saw, in the dim light from the hotel entrance that penetrated the bus's windows, Darien standing in the aisle. He had been carrying her and now he returned his arms to his sides. His eyes glowed faintly in the darkness, unreadable but for the pain hardening the skin around them.

"We're here," he said quietly.

Serena took her duffel bag from the seat where it had lay and swung it over her shoulder, heading for the bus door. As she brushed past him in the aisle, her eyes on her shoes, she said, "I told you not to touch me." Then she continued down the bus steps to where Coach was waiting expectantly, slapping his clipboard impatiently against his knee.

"Different room arrangements this time," he announced as he corralled them inside and got room keys from the front desk, which was surrounded by coaches and athletes from other schools, most of them in track suits. "Two to a room, so that means Saori with Tsukino, Sei Le with Kobayashi, and Shields with me."

Pushing her rumpled bangs out of her eyes, Serena glanced around at the others, her eyes coming to rest on Darien. He didn't seem to have heard Coach's words at all, or if he had, he wasn't reacting to them. He was still just watching her intently, his face tense.

Serena looked away. She was tired, and anxious, and past the point of thinking that she deserved the way Darien had treated her. The proud part of her said that her anger was because he had disillusioned her the same way that Haruka had, by not saving innocent an innocent civilian when he hadn't come to save the human youma she had found in the alley. But the honest part of her said that her anger was really because he hadn't protected her from Diamond. It was because the boy who had always been able to tell when she had so much as a hangnail hadn't bothered to notice that an alien man had been creeping into her room each night. It was because the boy who had told her that she wasn't a carefree angel people could take their feelings out on had ended up doing that very thing.

It was because he had promised to go to hell with her, and instead her life had turned into hell as he pretended she didn't exist.

Her fingers pressed against the locket at her neck. Then she dropped her hand back to her side and followed Saori into the elevator.

L

"I think that is enough for tonight, Hime-sama." Helios touched Rini's shoulder lightly. "It is nearing dawn in the world outside. You should sleep."

Rini shrugged off his fingers and continued to funnel power into the tree trunk under her hands. The tree stretched taller and taller, the shadows around her getting darker and darker as more and more leaves sprouted from its branches. It was energy-draining, all this tree-growing, and for hours now, she had been longing for the moment when the last of her energy would drip from her fingertips and she would be able to slump into unconsciousness and not have to think about anything.

"Rini-hime…" Helios murmured in concern. "Please, tell me what is wrong?"

"What's wrong? What did you tell him?" That was what Lita had said, over and over that morning once they reached her apartment. Rini had wanted to tell her, so badly, but already she had been regretting telling Darien. She had let it burst out of her because she had just been so angry, seeing him lurking outside Serena's empty room with his impatient, demanding aura, knowing he was probably the reason Serena wasn't in her room, that he had probably scared her away again, and thinking, couldn't he at least let her sleep in peace in her room, couldn't he give her something since he had already torn her apart by ignoring her; and she had just been so angry that she wanted him to hurt, she wanted him to feel pain and guilt like she had been feeling, and she wanted it to be his fault –

"Rini-hime," Helios said quietly again, and she realized she had begun to cry again. "Please, you need rest. Everything will be better when you have slept."

"Go away."

Helios drew in a sharp, pained breath, but Rini didn't care. She wanted to be left alone in her pain, to wallow in it, and she certainly didn't want to be told by Darien's cowardly Elysian priest that everything was going to be alright when she knew that Serena and Asanuma were going to die. She heard him sucking in a breath to begin to say something more, and she jerked her head up to glare at him, already feeling her eyes beginning to glow.

"Go –" she began angrily, then realized what she was doing. Horror and guilt rushed through her, staining her like ink, "–away," she finished in a whisper, her eyes back to normal, no power behind her voice.

Helios left, and whether he knew what she had done, she did not know, for she could not look at him. Her insides were racing with shame and terror. Hand shaking, she reached out beside her, scrabbling for the knapsack she had brought with her to Elysion. But the object she had sought from it, the snow globe that Asanuma had made her for Christmas, wasn't there, and she remembered with an unpleasant ripple that it was still in Serena's bedroom, under her pillow on the floor.

Her insides churned harder, as though they were a snow globe that someone had seized and shaken. She wanted the snow globe. She needed it. She couldn't have said why, but she did. She needed to see the little finger-high version of herself, with its Serena-bright smile, its Senshi fuku like Serena's, and its odangoes like Serena, as though Asanuma as he made it had looked at her and seen in her the same goodness Serena had, as though he believed that she had the potential to be like Serena, and not like…

Rini's mind didn't finish the thought. Instead, it clenched tightly, and when she blinked, she was in Serena's room.

It was empty and filled with moonlight, the window curtains still wide open. It made Rini realize that the whole house was empty: Serena was at the track meet, and Ikuko, Kenji, and Sammy were long gone to the hot springs. It sent a shiver down her spine as she reached under her pillow for the snow globe and put it in her knapsack.

Maybe it was a shadow at the corner of her eye, or the shiver down her spine, or maybe even something entirely different, but something made Rini stiffen and look out the window.

There was a human youma on the street outside.

You've got to be kidding me, was her first shaky thought, and the second was, I can't. Serena would kill me.

But Serena would never just ignore a youma. Especially not when it could hurt someone – and Rini could see, now, a car's headlights coming down the road. The youma was drawing itself up straight, its arms lifting as though to gesture it forward. She could run downstairs to the phone to call Lita and hope she got here in time to rescue the people in the car – or she could run down into the street herself and use the trick Helios had begun to teach her just that afternoon of growing a tree around a youma in order to trap them in its trunk.

Rini chose the second option.

L

At last.

Lanai landed on the ground. All it took was the tips of the green Terran grass brushing the bottoms of her feet for her leg muscles to tremble and give way beneath her. She crouched on the ground, panting, and twisted around to face the High Senshi presence she felt approaching behind her.

The Senshi lit lightly on the ground, much more gracefully than Lanai had. But her legs trembled, and so did her hands, knotted in front of her pleated pink fuku.

"S-Sailor Lanai?" she stammered.

It should have made Lanai laugh. In fact, had she come across such a frilly-looking Senshi in any other situation, she would have fallen on her back and laughed until her stomach ached.

In this situation, her face paled in the dawn light, and she said quietly, "Sailor Mnemosyne."

The girl, lifting one hand to fiddle nervously with the curled pink pigtails hanging on either side of her head, smiled nervously. Lanai did not return the smile. Sailor Mnemosyne was one of the youngest and most unassuming of the High Senshi – hardly worthy, in fact, if one went solely by her combat skills, of being called a High Senshi. But her sister, the Senshi Lethe, was one of the most feared. She had been rescued from the ruins of her system with her sister by Sailor Phi, one of Galaxia's lieutenants, and trained by that Senshi herself. At Phi's side, she had learned how to be powerful, efficient, and ruthless.

And she had the power to remove memories.

"G-greetings, sister." Mnemosyne ducked her head as she spoke. Her butterfly wings twitched repeatedly behind her, as though she wanted to be back in the air.

"Greetings, sister," Lanai replied wearily. There was no warmth in her voice; Mnemosyne's presence could mean nothing good to her. At best, it meant that Galaxia didn't trust Lanai to capture Serena and Darien's child and bring her back. "You were sent to follow me?"

Mnemosyne's eyes were as restless as her wings. They darted away from Lanai's and then back again. "I – " She broke off as her eyes broke away from Lanai's once more, and widened. Her face lit up. "Lethe!"

Lanai caught her breath. Forcing her face to stay blank and her fists not to clench, she swallowed and turned around.

Had she not just seen Mnemosyne, Lanai might not have recognized the person walking toward them as Sailor Lethe. With her leanly muscled build and wearing male clothing – track pants and a white t-shirt with INFINITY ACADEMY emblazoned across it – she looked like a teenage boy, not a High Senshi. But her long, straight eyebrows were the same as her sister's, and the side part of her hair and the way that it curled at the end of her ponytail were the same as well.

And when Mnemosyne cried again, "Lethe!" and broke into a run toward her, she held up a hand with a cold authority that was all High Senshi.

"Remember your orders, Mnemosyne!" she said sharply.

The pink-clad Senshi froze and retreated guiltily back toward Lanai, her wings twitching.

Lanai's own wings were tense against her shoulder blades. "How long have you been here?"

"Since you were summoned," Lethe said. "Did you really think the Council would leave Serenity unsupervised?"

"Where is she?" Lanai demanded.

Lethe's lips curved upward. "Why the commanding tone, Senshi Lanai? If I told the High Council how lax you've been with your charge, you would be stripped of your rank in milliseconds."

"Senshi Lethe," Lanai said warningly.

"You weren't even following infiltration protocol." Lethe took a step closer. Her guise of a Terran male fell from her and revealed a fuku identical to Mnemosyne's, in green instead of pink. "The rule is to disguise ourselves as males when we go to other planets, Senshi Lanai. Did you really think a penciled-on mustache would suffice?"

Lanai's blood boiled. She had been a High Senshi before these two were even born. Curse Phi and Chi for finding them after their twin planets were destroyed. They should never have been allowed to become High Senshi. There was a reason that Senshi whose planets had died were not allowed to keep their rank, and it was not only because the Senshi usually died protecting their planet. It was because a Senshi without a home world to be loyal to, without a population to protect and belong to and answer to, was too great a power too easily influenced by outside influences. Sailor Phi and Sailor Chi were judgmental, hide-bound reactionaries on the High Council, and Lethe had clearly absorbed the sense of superiority and contempt that they had raised her to possess.

Lanai bit down on her tongue, though, and managed to say only, "How unfortunate for you that it is the Council's place to judge, not yours. When my mission is completed, I will go before them to be judged. Until that time, I am under direct orders from Galaxia-sama. Tell me where Serena is."

Lethe's eyes glinted when Lanai said Serena, and Lanai knew immediately that she had made a mistake. The rule of disguise was not the only one she had broken during this years-long mission. She also should not have become close to the Moon Princess's reincarnation. Not close enough to consider her as a person instead of a tool or a threat.

Lethe opened her mouth, undoubtedly to comment on Lanai's transgression. But before she could, something happened.

A wind whooshed off the ocean. It stank of power: a sharp, bright power, like white glitter scattered through the air. There was no question of who it could belong to.

A power this great could only belong to a child born of Serena and Darien.

Lanai was in the air again before she even knew it, her wings flapping as powerfully as if she hadn't just completed a months-long journey through deep space. Peripherally, she saw the two twin Senshi shooting into the air after her, but her attention was on the stretch of water separating this island from the one where the child was. Where – her senses stretched out and recoiled – a repulsive, Chaos-tainted presence also pulsed.

The flight took less than ten minutes, but it was enough time for Lanai to decipher what she was feeling. This wrong, stomach-turning presence that was youma but not was similar to something she had sensed only once before, on a planet in the Papillon System. The Chaos forces there had enslaved the natives, and after a great deal of insurgency in the slave camps, begun to poison their water sources with youma parasites. The parasites took on the Papillon natives' bodies as hosts, turning them into little more than youma themselves.

That biotechnology could not be here, on Earth, Lanai thought in near-panic as they sped down through the clouds toward the familiar streets of Tokyo. She had disposed of that biotechnician and his parasite queen herself.

But the sensation was unmistakable. And when they reached the street where the two auras – one unbearably powerful and the other unbearably human – Lanai could not deny what she saw.

It was the first thing she looked at. Standing in the middle of the street with unconscious bodies all around it, it was human-shaped, even wearing human clothes: jeans and some sort of sweatshirt. But blue energy streamed from the bodies to its head, which was a horrible sight to behold. Streaked beneath the skin with dark blue as though bruised or beginning to decay, the head had no face at all, only looked like some horrible cartoon parody of a person who had eaten a lemon so sour that his face had puckered into its center.

Then there was a beam of dark green energy burning through its head, and the entire creature burst into chunks of gore.

Lanai wheeled around in the air. Lethe's finger was still pointed at the youma. Mnemosyne, beside her, had her face hidden in Lethe's shoulder and was whimpering softly.

Lethe met Lanai's eyes unflinchingly. "What, do you not kill youma now?"

Lanai pressed her lips together. Then she looked past Lethe, down to the ground. Her eyes landed on the child there, and shock rippled through her like an earthquake.

The little girl resembled Darien far more than she did Serena: the bones of her face were sharp, and the arch of her eyebrows and shape of her lips were suspicious and combative. But Lanai caught a glimpse of Serena in the way the girl's eyes flicked around her in concern at the unconscious people on the ground, and the determination as she turned to face the three Senshi, her feet planted firmly. And in the trembling anger as she looked at Lethe.

"That was a human," she said. Her voice trembled and her aura buzzed like Darien's did when he was furious.

Lethe looked at her for a moment, then let her gaze fall away as though the child, and her words, were beneath her notice. She looked expectantly at Lanai. "We're waiting, Senshi Lanai."

Lanai's stomach was a cold pit. She looked back at the girl, who was watching them with cold fury. That cold fury, and the consequent absence of fear, should have made her feel more certain about what she had to do: immobilize the child, who was clearly too powerful to be allowed to exist, and take her to Galaxia to be disposed of. But she could see Serena in that gaze, the same determination that had burned in her as she tried all those long afternoons to learn how to protect her princess and her friends.

"We weren't sent here just to observe you, Senshi Lanai," Lethe said loudly. "We are here to make sure you follow Galaxia-sama's orders concerning the child. Will you act, or will we have to take care of both of you ourselves?"

Lanai snapped back to herself. What was she doing? This was her mission, entrusted to her by no less than the venerated Galaxia-sama herself. "I will act," she said quickly. She took a step forward.

The little girl's eyes were wide, and her power was humming even more loudly now, like Darien's on the day he had told Lanai to stay away from Serena. But there was pain etched across her face, as though she was swallowing her own scalding power, binding herself instead, and that reminded Lanai of Serena.

But no matter who it came from, or who it belonged to, power was power.

"…a child whose existence has already begun to cause destruction. Two entirely destroyed planets of which we know and perhaps dozens more…"

"…eventually she would become another Chaos and subjugate our systems to her. You understand this?"

Lanai lifted her hands. The child stared back at her, eyes still wide. The first pounds of fear entered her aura. Lanai didn't know how much, or if it all, Serena loved this child, but the sight of those wide blue eyes, so like Serena's, filled her with the need to do anything she could, say anything could, to ease that fear.

All she could do, as she lifted her hands higher and fed power into them, was say gently, "I promise it won't hurt."

L

Diamond had intended to kill the youma he had released in front of the child princess in order to win her favor. But events conspired much better for him, as though the gods themselves had decided to throw their power behind his cause. He drew further back into the shadows, carefully cloaking his aura as the three High Senshi lit upon the ground in front of him. He had immediately recognized their auras; he had fought their kind for months before coming to the past with the Wiseman. He watched and waited for the best possible moment to reveal himself.

And, suddenly, it arrived.

"I promise it won't hurt."

Diamond sprang out.

L

Rini squeezed her eyes shut. In her mind, she heard Serena saying how important it was for people with power to be able to control it. She ground her teeth together, fighting to control it as she felt the Senshi's power exploding and hurtling toward her –

Then arms grabbed her and seized her up. Rini cried out, her arms locking around her rescuer's neck as the power inside her jolted and made another bid for escape. Her eyes jarred open.

The hair against her face was silver, not black.

Her insides twisted. Prince Diamond. She wrenched herself backward, but the arms didn't release her.

Power slammed into them, a dark rusty red the same color as the brown-haired Senshi's eyes. Rini clenched Prince Diamond's tunic despite herself, and if she had not been so dazed by the impact of Lanai's attack slamming them into the side of a building, she would have felt shocked by how carefully Diamond held her, shoving her head under his chin and hunching around her to protect her from the impact.

Power blast after power blast slammed into them, until at last, Prince Diamond lifted his head and roared, "Enough!"

The brown-haired Senshi went abruptly still. Her eyes blank and glowing, she stopped in the middle of summoning another blast, the red power evaporating in her hands. Behind her, the two almost-identical Senshi inhaled sharply, the pink one cringing behind the green one.

The prince stood. "Do you dare?" he said to them. His voice was low but carrying.

"Your Eye has no power over us," said the green one.

"No, it does not." Diamond lowered Rini to the ground gently without looking away from the Senshi. "But do you think that this princess will stand back and let you kill her without a fight?"

The green Senshi looked at Rini. Her eyes were dark and cold and full of a hatred like nothing Rini had ever seen before, even in Darien's eyes. She took a step back, her knapsack brushing Diamond's pant leg.

There was a jolt. She felt him grab her shoulder, and then everything went black.

Then, abruptly, there was light again. Rini stumbled away from the hand at her shoulder, stumbling to the ground, squinting through the dim twilight as she concentrated to run to Elysion.

But familiar slides and monkey bars met her eyes, and she realized that Diamond had only brought her to the park, not to some Black Moon hideout.

"Princess," he said from behind her.

Rini scrambled to her feet and turned to look at him, her feet apart and muscles coiled and ready the way Lita had taught her. But the prince looked tired, even clammy, in the orange light from the street lamp, and Rini felt…not very afraid of him.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

Rini said nothing. Only watched him suspiciously, reminding herself that this was the prince who must have ordered Asanuma's death.

He let out a breath. "I must ask something of you."

This was not what Rini had expected at all. She had only glimpsed the Black Moon prince once before, when his subordinates attacked her and Asanuma's house, and she only knew of his name and appearance from Asanuma's brief mentions of what he had heard the Sisters say. Her image of him had been of someone cruel and cold, not someone who would save her from High Senshi and ask if she was alright and then ask her in a pleading voice to help him.

But she stayed tense, prepared to run. "Why would I help someone who wants to give me to Chaos?"

"Not me. The Wiseman." The prince looked tired and even a little scared. "He has us under his control. My people, my planet, my ship."

"Spare me," said Rini, all the more venomously because her animosity was weakening. A voice in her head that sounded like Serena was saying, what if he's telling the truth? Then she couldn't just ignore him. "Rubeus killed my Asanuma."

"No." The prince shook his head. "He tried to protect you."

Despite herself, Rini remembered how, when they had been in the cafeteria on New Year's, Rubeus had held onto her, keeping her from being sucked into the Wiseman's power.

"The Wiseman forced us to come here, to the past, to get you," Diamond said. His eyes were as earnest as his voice. "It was us or you. I had a whole planet to protect, princess." He paused and murmured, in a soft, wistful voice that reminded Rini of Serena, "I still do."

Then he lifted his eyes. "And I came here now, alone, to find you because you are the only one who can help me free my people from the Wiseman."

Rini wanted to cross her arms and shake her head. She wanted to say, "Why should I risk anything for you or your people?" But even as she opened her mouth, she found herself thinking that Serena would never say such a thing. Serena would try to help the prince and his people.

And Serena's going to die, she argued with herself. Maybe this was what would lead to Serena's death, her determination to help everybody even when it put her in danger!

Maybe it was true. Probably it was. But that wouldn't stop Serena from trying anyway. She always acted like she had some debt to the world that she needed to repay, and suddenly, remembering what she herself had done to Motoki, Rini understood the feeling. Her fingers curled into fists at her side, and she looked up at Diamond. He was sitting at the end of the slide, his face cradled in his hands, watching her pleadingly.

"What," she began, "could I do?"

"The only one with the power to break the Wiseman's control over us is the Moon Princess," the prince said in a low voice. "No one knows where the Moon Princess is in this time, and in the future, the High Senshi will not let her come to help us. You have seen what they are like." His eyes met hers, and she remembered the pure hatred in the green High Senshi's eyes. "But there is one place where the Moon Princess is known to be, and without the High Senshi's claws in her yet."

Rini waited silently.

"In the Silver Millennium. I need to go one thousand years in the past to find the Moon Princess, and you are the only one with enough power to take me there."

L

The instant that the silver-haired man vanished with the child, so did his control over Lanai's body. She whipped to her feet and pivoted just in time to hurl out a wall of sheer power.

It slammed into what looked like nothing but air – air that suddenly flickered black. Dirty yellow power crackled against Lanai's red energy, and then the illusion collapsed, revealing the creature whose Chaos stench had reached her nose as she stood frozen by the man's hypnosis. It was a Chaos minion, incredibly strong, he had to be at least as high in the hierarchy as Kisenian Blossom, she thought, gritting her teeth against the sheer weight of his aura.

"So you've encountered my kind before, Senshi," it said, the cowl of its cloak rippling in time with its voice. The crystal ball in its hands pulsed. "But it appears that your companions have not."

Lanai risked a quick glance over her shoulder. For all Lethe's bradavo, the younger Senshi had fallen to her knees under the weight of the creature's aura, her hands splayed on the ground to brace her from falling any lower. Mnemosyne huddled into her side, her head nearly brushed the ground, she felt the weight so strongly. But there was power emanating from both of them, green and pink, stretching out form with Lanai's energy wall a prison for the creature. Lethe's head shifted, and she could see how her jaw was clenched, perspiration trickling down her face as she struggled to keep her concentration.

"All the more impressive that they're managing to hold you, then," Lanai said. She felt a bead of sweat trickle down her own neck: though the creature was floating there serenely as though content to stay in their prison, his aura was pounding against the walls in time with the pulsing of his crystal ball. They wouldn't be able to hold the walls up for much longer than ten minutes, she guessed…

Her mind raced. What did he want? Was he trying to escape simply to be free, or for another reason? There was a haste, an urgency to his aura. Then it struck her: the child. Of course. He wanted Endymion and Serenity's daughter.

Lanai flung out her senses as far as she dared without letting her hold on her part of the wall falter. She could just sense the child's aura, by the other man's.

Run, she tried to tell it, as the creature struck the walls with his strongest blow yet. She had to run, this Chaos creature couldn't be allowed to have her, not with all her power –

The creature lashed out again, and their prison disintegrated. The backlash of her own severed energy rushed in on Lanai before she could yank away, and her world went black.

L

"You are the only one with enough power to take me there."

"I can't," Rini said instantly. That was one of the only things Asanuma had managed to tell her, before she escaped back in time, that she had to be careful not to do or say anything that could change the timeline. Going to the Silver Millennium and meeting her mother – that would change it beyond comprehension.

"You were told not to change time," the prince said. His eyes were intent, almost feverish, on hers. "But in our time, your Shittenou is dead…and so is Serena."

Rini felt as though he had slammed a bolt of Jupiter's lightning straight into her chest.

"How could we make this timeline any worse than it already his?" he whispered. Sorrow strained his voice. "Things have happened that should never have to pass. My planet is near destroyed, my people controlled, your loved ones dead, and you – your parents should never have had you."

Rini's eyes went painfully wide.

"Serena," he said, and the whisper was like a prayer. "Serena was the one meant to have you."

There was a moment of quiet, and then he said, "If we go to the past, we can make it so that she will."

The world around Rini seemed to have slowed down, from the whispering night breeze to the creaking playground swings to the warm blood in her veins. It was like being in a dream, everything slow and liquid and possible. They could change the past so that Serena could be her mother.

They could change the past so Serena could live.

"Well?"

She looked up. In Diamond's metallic eyes, she could see her own mirrored, burning with fierce desire. She reached out, and he caught her hand in one of his own. In the other, he held a long silver key so powerful it made the air around it waver and warp.

She said, "What do I need to do?"

He said, "Give me your power."

Her eyes began to glow, and, after a moment, so did the key.

And just as the Wiseman burst out of a void just behind them, they disappeared. His scream of rage tore through the city.

L

A few kilometers away, Asanuma jerked awake. His eyes blinking rapidly in the dimness and taking in the room around him that was most certainly not his bedroom, he wondered where the hell he was before remembering that he was at Mikai's. He'd fallen asleep on the other Shittenou's living room couch when he got back from his patrol only – he checked his watch – three hours ago.

Feeling much more awake and antsy than anyone who had only gotten three hours should be, Asanuma swung his legs off the couch and sat there for a minute, rubbing his eyes. One hand scrubbed distractedly at his chin, feeling the slightest prickle. He'd never been the kind of guy who got five o'clock shadow, but what with everything going on, he kept forgetting to shave. First there had been all the Darien and Serena drama, then Motoki's dad being re-admitted to the hospital yesterday, and on top of that, there was still the patrolling for him, Mikai, and Lita to worry about.

He stood up, stretching, and made his way into Mikai's dining room/living room/Batcave, clapping his hands together. "Okay, Kentaro, what've we got?"

Mikai snapped up straight in his desk chair, swiping the side of his mouth. From the pool of drool gleaming on top of his mouse pad and the red imprint his watch had left across his cheek, Asanuma could tell that he had fallen asleep, too.

"Let's see…uhhh…" Mikai rubbed his face much the way Asanuma had, his palm rasping against the dark stubble on his cheeks. "Nothing new. Still no youma attacks, just the one Serena told you guys about that had six arms…was it supposed to be insectoid or arachnoid, do you think?"

"Who cares? At least it was different." Asanuma leaned back against one of the desks, closing his eyes again. "It seems like the only human youma they have are all those electrical ones, or that glowing one…you'd think they'd mix it up a little, put in some ones with ice or fire or something, like us and the Senshi have."

Mikai didn't say anything in reply. Asanuma cracked open an eyelid to glare at him. He didn't appreciate being ignored.

But Mikai was staring at him. His eyes were wide, his hands splayed open at his sides as though to grab something. "Like us! Asanuma, what if the reason none of the human youma have had fire or ice powers is because the Senshi with those powers aren't here?"

Asanuma lurched forward. "Their blood." His eyes were as wide as Motoki's. "The Infinity people have blood from Toki and Lita and Serena and Darien. They took it during their physicals and when they got hurt during their extracurriculars! That would explain the lightning youma – and the one that glowed like Serena's Twilight Flash – and the six-armed one's like some sort of failed animal transformation – "

Mikai said a very bad word and swung back to his computer, beginning to type something furiously.

Asanuma's cell phone rang. He saw Motoki's name on the screen and snapped it open. "Toki, guess what –"

But Motoki was already saying something. "Asanuma, they just put my dad into critical care." He was crying, his voice just short of a sob. "I can't come tonight, I'm sorry, I'll talk to you guys later – "

"Toki, wait! Is there anything – can we – do you want us to get Dare? He'll come – "

"He already tried before." Motoki sucked in a wet breath. "Dr. Tomoe's here, and he's worked miracles before. Maybe – look, I'll just – I'll call you later, okay?" He hung up.

Leaving Asanuma staring at the wall. His eyes were blank, his mind racing. It was the first time he'd heard the name of Furuhata-san's doctor.

Tomoe. Tomoe. Where had he heard that name before?

The girl. The girl Rei took from Senator Hino's house. Sailor Saturn. Hino had said her name was Hotaru Tomoe.

A doctor who had been such a miracle worker for Motoki's dad had sold his daughter to a corrupt politician?

His hand found the back of Mikai's chair, gripped it. "Mikai, look up the name Hotaru Tomoe."

Mikai shot him a harried glance but typed it in, his fingers like lightning on the keyboard. Several results popped up, newspaper and journal articles. Mikai clicked on the newspaper ones.

Hotaru Tomoe, aged seven, had survived a house fire with multiple third-degree burns…. Her father, Dr. Soichi Tomoe had to pulled away from the wreckage by firefighters…

There was another link, more recent, from only that summer. It was a set of pictures from the social section of the newspaper that featured weddings. Newly married couple Dr. Soichi Tomoe and Kaori Knight posed with Tomoe's daughter, Hotaru.

"That's Infinity's principal!" Asanuma shouted. Disbelief pounded in him. "She's been giving him our blood!"

Mikai minimized the window, already going back to a spreadsheet and scrolling down, muttering rapidly under his breath. "Tomoe already had samples of Darien's blood from their doctor's appointments over the summer. And Motoki's dad found out about his tumor at the beginning of the school year." He turned and looked at Asanuma. "A tumor forms when cells replicate at an unnatural speed. Whose power does that sound like?"

"Darien's," said Asanuma, remembering how rapidly Darien's skin always sewed up when the Golden Crystal healed a wound. "But the Golden Crystal always healed –"

"It accelerates growth," said Mikai. "And Darien's probably not exactly human, I bet his body's adapted to be able to control the crystal's power. But a normal human body like Furuhata-san's wouldn't be able to shut off the mitosis on its own."

"God!" Asanuma kicked the couch. "I KNEW there was a reason we all got into Infinity! Fuck fuck fuck – "

Mikai was on his feet, yanking on his jacket. "We've gotta call Darien and get to the hospital."

Asanuma was already out the door.

L

L

A/N: Feedback on the characters? About Dare, Sere, and Rini goes without saying, but what about the others? Sapphire and the High Senshi? Sorry that this is a bit of a bridge chapter; after this the final action should begin full-tilt.