Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon, or else Reinako would be established canon, for sure.
Trials
"Gods above, you mean to tell me that you're going down there?" Venus choked.
Lafayette, Spymaster of the Lunarian Intelligence Agency, or LIA, for short, nodded, his features grim. "I don't expect it will be an easy mission. I haven't been out in the field since the Martian Incident fifteen years ago. But there's something I need to see for myself."
Venus stared into his old eyes; Lafayette had been the Spymaster for nearly a century, now. He had been on countless missions, and he hadn't been chosen for his position because of his connections; a simple but lonely Venusian farmer in his youth, his curiosity and natural talent had led him to one day stumble upon a Lunarian scouting legion. A carefully hidden Lunarian scouting legion. He had slipped through their clutches and raced home, and a month later he was approached by a Lunarian spy with an offer to join the LIA. His relations having died years before, and his friends few and far between, Lafayette had agreed and went on to become one of the most accomplished spies the galaxy had ever seen.
Venus knew all this. She knew that, in his older age, he only went into the field for missions that were extremely dangerous, or that were giving his agents trouble—ones he wanted to oversee personally. The last time he had done this, fifteen years previously, had been on a mission to Mars, where a small group of Martian radicals had gathered attention. The group had stirred up a rebellion on Mars, and it had been all the King could do to barricade himself and his family inside the palace gates. The group had intended to use the rebellion as a camouflage for their true intentions—to not only overthrow the current Martian government, but to also directly challenge monarchies as an acceptable form of government. This was an idirect threat to Queen Serenity's rule—her kind, benevolent rule, to be sure (it wasn't called the Silver Millennium for nothing, after all), but her rule nonetheless, as it was a monarchy. Furthermore, the Moon and Mars were on friendly terms, and with the newly formed Treaty between all the planets in the Silver Alliance, the Moon simply couldn't stand back and idly watch as one of its allies fell into a civil war. The balance of peace was in jeopardy. But, Lafayette and his team had intercepted the radicals, and with a single tidbit of misinformation, the group had split, and the rupture was irreparable. The group had become scattered and disorganized, and it was a simple matter to round up the leaders after that.
Whatever it was down there on Earth, Lafayette would find it. He would find it, learn all its secrets, and destroy it if need be. Venus trusted no other man more to get the job done. But that didn't mean she wasn't worried. He hadn't been out in the field in fifteen years, after all. And whatever had wiped out the previous teams, it would surely oppose Lafayette, as well. Yet Lafayette had a reason for going down, it would seem. Venus couldn't help but wonder what that reason was.
"What do you mean?" Venus asked.
"The sun activity," Lafayette said, and Venus instantly knew what he meant. Almost a year prior, the overly active sun had spewed forth an unidentified object. The object had made its way through space, and had ended up crashing into the Earth; if she remembered correctly, it had landed right smack-dab in the middle of the Be-Alsio region.
"Oh," Venus said, wondering if Lafayette was suspicious of that. "But… what does that have to do with anything? The Earth reported that it cleaned up the impact site. Unless they're trying to say the Moon caused it—which is obviously untrue, since the Queen has no power over the Sun—I don't see what you're getting at."
"No. No, there's more to it than that," Lafayette said, his eyes narrowing. "Venus, you're my best student. You can see beyond that."
"It doesn't really make sense…" Venus's mind worked frantically for the next few moments before it clicked. "Unless they're covering something up there. They used the clean-up as a smokescreen, and they started… doing something… there."
"Exactly," Lafayette said. "Granted, there's no concrete evidence for it. But I checked the scrambled coordinates from the last transmission. From what we can make out, it was in that general area. Not just anywhere in the Be-Alsio region. They were near the site of the impact when they lost contact."
"So they're hiding something there."
"You've got it." Lafayette sighed and ran a calloused hand through his gray hair. "If it's really some sort of plot against the Moon, I'll need to take the best of the best." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "You will remain here. And if anything goes wrong, you will be in charge."
A/N: Sorry for the short chapter. I'm uploading two or three(the next one will be uploaded either later today or on Saturday) chapters, since I'll be moving back into the dorms this weekend and I might not have time to update otherwise, and I'm feeling like it's about time to start wrapping this story up. Y'all will probably kill me for the ending of the 40th chapter. Brace yourselves, haha.
Also, I made 2 edits to chapter 35. Nothing major. I only added one line in at the very beginning since it somehow got lost when I uploaded it. Makes the scene less confusing, though, so if it confused you, you might want to go back and read it with that little edit. I also added in a divider for the scene change, since I'd forgotten it.
Toodle-oo! Feel free to leave a review, if you're so inclined.