A/N: Oh, you (un)lucky readers. Yet again, the chapter count has changed. There will now be a total of either 39 or 40 chapters. It's like STC has been exposed to the Golden Crystal, it just keeps growing…

In other news, I have created a Yahoo group for STC to keep you guys updated. If you would like to be added, please send your e-mail address to eightsword(at)gmail(dot)com. I'll post more details on the STC site. Which, speaking of, has a new Sue sketch! Please check it out! It's my favorite one so far.

To make sure no one is confused by Diamond and Queen Selenity's lines in this chapter, monarchs often refer to themselves in the plural: "we," "our," "us."

Thank you to everyone for their reviews! I reread and treasure every single one. They act as my Patronus against the Dementor that is chemistry!

Last but not least, all bow to Jade for her awesomeness!

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Six: Senshi to the Bone

L

Darien gripped his cell phone with white-knuckled hands, nausea mounting inside him as he listened to Mikai's explanation of what Tomoe had done. He should have listened more closely to Asanuma the day before. He should have looked, he should have noticed, he should have known –

"So how long will it take you to get here?" That was Asanuma's voice, hard and brusque. Mikai must have the speaker-phone on.

Darien's eyes flicked across the packed bleachers and the knots of runners stretching with their coaches. His eyes met Serena's. They were underlined with deep bags just like his own; clearly, they had both stayed awake, waiting for the Black Moon man who hadn't come. But despite her obvious tiredness, Serena still looked feverishly alert, watching him from where she stood a little away from Coach and the others as though she knew that something was wrong.

"Give us an hour," Darien said into the phone before snapping it shut. He strode toward Serena, and she watched him approach. She did not step back even when he stepped close to her and lowered his head and his voice so that he could murmur the news to her without anyone overhearing. Despite his proximity, it was not hard to ignore the warmth of her and the sharp, too-strong scent of the sports deodorant she and Saori both used during practices and meets; the thought of what his blood–his blood–had done to Furuhata-san filled his mind, squeezing out every other thought.

Except the thought of what Rini had told him. That was inescapable.

He found himself gripping Serena's arm. "Tomoe's been using our blood to experiment. Principal Knight's his wife, she's been slipping him our blood so that he can make those human youma. Mikai thinks Furuhata-san might have been one of his first experiments with my blood from when he was subbing in for Dr. Takeuchi."

The skin around Serena's mouth tensed. "How?"

"When I heal with the crystal, it's really just forcing my cells to mitose at an accelerated rate." Darien scanned the track field behind her as he talked, mapping a route for them to slip away without being noticed. "In someone who doesn't have the power to stop them from mitosing when no more cells are needed, the cells would keep multiplying and build up into a mass of cells. A tumor."

He looked down at her. Her face was pale, her lips tightly together as though she was biting down on them. Her voice was tight. "Can we do anything?"

Darien looked back at her. "We're going to try."

Something changed in her eyes, and then both of them were moving, half running across the track field. The spectators in the bleachers began to go quiet, clearly wondering if the races had started without them realizing, and then Coach Etoukou was letting out a shout and barreling after them, hollering, "SHIELDS AND TSUKINO! WHERE THE HECK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?" And then he was shouting something else that they couldn't hear, and something that sounded like "Sei Le, catch them–Saori! Where's Sei Le?" and then Darien and Serena were pounding into the parking lot, disappearing from sight behind the huge vans and buses that had brought all the athletes to the athletic complex.

A single sweep of his senses assured Darien that the only people in the area were two bus drivers sleeping soundly in their vehicles. Still running, he reached down into himself to transform.

Serena was still keeping pace with him, her feet slapping the pavement. He handed her his cell phone. "Hold this." He closed his eyes and felt the muscles deep inside his back coil and burst. "And hold on."

Membranous wings erupted from between his shoulder blades. Wind summoned by the part of his mind that was not focused on the transformation whooshed under the wings' fragile flesh, thrusting him up into the air, pushing his body parallel to the ground. Darien reached down with hands that were now more claws than fingers and caught Serena by the fabric of her hoodie. His muscles trembled with her weight for a moment before the wind pushed him up again, and then they were climbing sharply into the air.

Serena stayed very still in his tenuous grip as she dangled ten, then twenty meters above the ground, as though she could sense that he wasn't in control quite yet. In the part of his mind that was not registering the wind strength and calculating how high they would need to go – how hard he would need to flap these wings, to keep them unseen, whether it would take less energy simply to summon clouds and fog to conceal them – he was thinking what if this is it? What if this is when it happens? He clenched the fabric of her hoodie tighter in his claw-hands, wishing he transform her into a flower like Rini and put her in his Subspace Pocket where nothing could ever touch her.

Within a few minutes, his flapping stabilized, balancing with a warm stream of air that he had summoned to push up against the underside of his wings. As the highway became a car-beaded ribbon below them, he transferred Serena with infinite care from her dangling position to a bridal hold in his arms. She stiffened but wrapped her arms around his neck to lessen the weight his arms would have to hold.

Darien flew gradually higher, trying to lessen the chances that they would be seen. Occasionally they went through wisps of cloud, and they would flinch and shiver as the chilly water vapor soaked through their clothing and coated their exposed skin.

Suddenly Serena let out a yelp. Darien's phone had begun to vibrate where she had put it in her hoodie's front pocket. Freeing one cold hand from his neck, she pulled it out and flipped it open. With the air rushing past them and snatching away all sounds, she had to shout, "Hello? Hello? Helios?"

Manipulating the wind around them and maintaining his transformation, plus keeping secure hold of Serena, took too much concentration from Darien for him to be able to transform his ears to be sensitive enough to hear what Helios was saying. But it wasn't hard for him to sense the blood draining from Serena's face and her heart beginning to pound hard.

"What?" he demanded, slowing his wings so quickly that his shoulder blades seemed almost to wrench out of their joints.

Now that the wind wasn't rushing past them so fast, he could hear Helios's voice through the phone. " – have searched everywhere for her, all over Elysion, and – "

Darien's blood went the same direction as Serena's had. Distantly, he felt his slowed wing motions falter, and the stomach-in-mouth sensation of them plummeting.

"Wings!" Serena's face was white, her voice sharp. Darien's wings automatically began to work again, the same way his body had listened to her when she had shouted that ridiculous string of animal names in Elysion the first time he had an animal transformation.

"How long ago?" Serena demanded.

"Half an hour?" Helios made a sound of despair. "Perhaps more? I am so sorry, Darien-sama–she wanted to be left alone, I did not think she would get into any mischief without Bujiro there to goad her–"

"Enough, Helios." Darien cut him off. Serena had gone very still, too still, against him. The last time she had felt so tense was–

Shit. The man from the Black Moon was after Rini. That was why Serena had been so adamant that she stay in Elysion. It was so obvious, but Darien had been too panicked about Serena to think about what, or who, else the Black Moon bastard might want.

"Helios!" he shouted so that the priest would hear him. "Get Buji and have him help you look for her!"

Through the phone, Helios let out another moan. But whatever he was about to say was cut off, for directly ahead of Darien and Serena, power exploded. White and yellow-gray, it billowed out across the sky like a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb. The white aura was Rini's. The other–

"We have to go." Serena's voice was shrill, panicked and too loud, like a deaf person talking at an unnatural volume because they couldn't hear their own voice. Her heart was beating so fast in her chest that Darien could feel it pounding against his own, as it if was trying to leap into him and hide. She began to thrash in his arms, trying to free herself, and Darien had to snatch at her to keep her from falling. "We have to go!"

"Helios!" Darien shouted as he struggled to fly and hold onto Serena at the same time. "Where are Asanuma and the others? Did you contact them?"

"They do not know, Darien-sama! They are at the hospital with Bujiro – "

But anything else that Helios had to say was lost. For Serena had clawed free of Darien's grasp and was plummeting toward the grid work of suburban streets below them. Darien's heart, and the whole world around him, seemed to stop for a long moment. The only thought in his head was this can't be it–

Then he let out a bellow and lunged for her, his wings spreading and then flattening against his body as his muscles tried to figure out what to do. But they were too slow, he wasn't going to make it even though he was hurtling downward so rapidly his eyes were tearing–

Psychometrically, he felt the impact of Serena's feet slamming into a house roof. But it wasn't followed by the sound of her crashing through the tile or of her bones crunching or even a cry of pain. One minute, she was landing, and the next, she was transformed and running, sprinting down the rooftop's length, and leaping to the next roof.

He crashed onto the roof next to her, making a stumbling landing as his body reabsorbed the membranous wings with a too-slow, slurping sound, leaving behind ragged holes in his tuxedo through which he could feel the icy night air. "Serena!"

She didn't answer, or stop. They leapt the next rooftop in unison, their feet making muted thuds as they landed, and Darien lunged, transforming in mid-air.

He tackled her to the ground with a crash that must surely have made the family to whom the house belonged think that Santa's sled had made a crash landing on their roof. But even before Moon's back slammed into the tile, she was clawing at Mask, flailing to get free. It was an eerie repeat of that night when Asanuma had died and Rini's power had exploded, nearly swallowing them, except that this time, he could hear her fierce shrieks and see the wild look in her eyes.

"Let me go!" she shrieked. The stone in her tiara was glowing, a bright angry red like a warning siren. Was she going to attack him? "I have to get to her!"

"Serena! Damn it!" The power in her tiara was building, focused at him. Mask pinned her arms to her side, wanting to shake her and yet not daring to. Feeling her thin body twist against his hold was like holding a fragile baby for the first time; he was terrified that she was going to twist right out of his arms and dash her head open on the ground.

And yet, in all the panic squeezing his mind, a part of him was noting with relief that the Moon Princess wouldn't be fighting him like this, wouldn't have fought free of his grip in the air to escape him and get to Rini. The Moon Princess in his dreams clung to him and cried when she was frightened, begged him to get the crystal instead of trying to get to it herself.

Serena-sama is Senshi to the bone.

A wave of love, so strong it seemed to choke him, crashed through him. He tightened his grip on her with fresh determination, pinning her down with his knees on either side of hers and seizing her shoulders with his hands, pressing his face to hers until he could feel her tiara burning against his skin. Until her eyes, darting feverishly, couldn't see anything but his own. They focused on him, and her heart, pounding against his, began to slow down.

"Your Highness."

Mask jerked, losing his balance. He and Moon went rolling down the peaked roof, scrabbling for handholds. He jammed a rose into one of the tiles and seized Moon by her back bow with his other hand. His shoulder wrenched painfully, but he held on.

"Oops." A cloaked being floated down to be level with Moon's tear-streaked face. She inhaled sharply and jerked back. "I startled you."

Mask yanked around, a stream of profanity and fire hissing out of his mouth at the creature that had nearly snatched Rini away on New Year's Eve.

The Wiseman.

The same circular shield that the being had used that night flickered to life as Mask's fire hit it, making the flames steam off harmlessly. But the fire had done its job, covering Moon so that she could scramble up his back to the roof and draw her sword. Now, as steadily as if she had not just been having a panic attack thirty seconds ago, she trained the blade on the Wiseman, covering Mask as he heaved himself up onto the roof beside her. His cane-blade slid out of his sleeve. They both crouched there, their free hands gripping the roof tiles for balance.

"Enough of that," Wiseman said as the steam began to clear. Its two eyes glowed through the vapor. "I'm here to help you."

"Did you take Rini?" Moon's voice was hoarse. Her tiara stone glowed as brightly as the thing's eyes.

"Would that I was," he said. "But no, little Rini took herself, and our Prince Diamond with her."

Mask felt Moon stiffen. He could hear her heart beginning to race again, could practically taste the fear jumping into her mouth, and he knew without asking that this Prince Diamond was the white-haired man he had seen in Serena's bedroom.

"Where?" he demanded.

"Not where," said the Wiseman. "When. To the Silver Millennium a thousand years ago when your dear incarnations were still alive."

Mask went as rigid as Moon. "Why?"

"Prince Diamond is obsessed with possessing the Moon Princess for himself," the Wiseman said. "Since he has failed to win her here, I imagine he has gone to the past in the hopes that she will be more persuadable there. He is predictable that way. As for the child's motivation, I am quite mystified."

"Why are you telling us?" Mask said. His voice was cool and defiant, but his thoughts were in turmoil. If Prince Diamond was obsessed with the Moon Princess, why had he been in Serena's room? It didn't mean – it couldn't – Serena wasn't –

"My dear little reincarnations," said the Wiseman. "If Prince Diamond succeeds in wooing the Moon Princess, powerful little Rini will never be born, and I will never have the chance to possess her power. Surely you understand why I would want to interfere with Diamond's plans."

He must have planned to use her. That was the only explanation Darien would accept. Diamond had wanted the princess, and he'd been willing to use Serena to get to her. He forced himself to focus and replied to the Wiseman, "So you're expecting us to do something about it."

"Astute," said Wiseman. "Yes. You're the only two beings here who can travel to the past."

Moon's shoulder blade tensed against Mask's knee, breaking into his thoughts. "I can't."

"You will find that you can," he said impatiently. "Both of your powers are necessary because on their own, they are inferior to the child's. Go now, or I will be forced to take one of your little friends hostage to insure that you listen to me. Let's see, the blond one will be dying soon anyway–"

Both of their eyes flew wide. "Don't!"

"Then listen to me." Its globe began to cloud and shift, showing a foggy wasteland of gray sand. "You will go here, to the Time Plane. There, you will go through the Doors of Time, concentrating on this place." The wasteland was replaced by a white palace resembling the Taj Mahal. "The Moon Kingdom's Silver Millennium palace. It is where the princess will be and hence, so will Diamond and your daughter." Smirking malice dripped from his voice. "Would you like to ask how you know you can trust me?"

"No." Mask seized Moon's hand. "We know that we can't."

His eyes flashed gold, and Moon's–unnoticed by either of them–flashed silver. Then they disappeared.

The Wiseman laughed beneath the cowl of his hood. "That's unfortunate. I would very much have enjoyed your expressions when you realized how ironic it is that I am the only being in this universe who wants the two of you to be together."

L

There was a blur of gray, a cold wet gray like the middle of a rainstorm. Rini felt herself begin to panic, remembering how, when she had first traveled to the past almost half a year ago, she had seen that icy black place and the Senshi who had come toward her and said that she had to leave…

Then her body was yanked to a stop, her knees buckling and crashing into the ground.

Diamond's hand remained tight as a vice around hers, for all that it was slick with sweat. She found herself gripping it tightly in return, struggling back to her feet as she looked furtively around. She could barely see anything; they were completely surrounded by thick gray fog. It billowed and made dark shapes, shadows, and she shrunk closer to Diamond.

"Where are we?"

But he didn't get a chance to answer. The fog before them was lightening, thinning, and a dark, humped shadow lurked behind it.

"No," came a hiss. The fog cleared completely away, and revealed was a dark-skinned woman in a black and white Senshi fuku, leaning heavily to a tall silver staff as though it was the only thing keeping her upright. But there was nothing weak about her blood-red eyes; they burned with the same hatred as the blue Senshi's had.

The Senshi lifted a gloved hand. The fog around her began to swirl, taking on a red tinge. "I won't let you go," she hissed.

Her attack was too fast to see, much less dodge. One second, Diamond's hand was in Rini's; the next, it was gone, and he was on the ground, body rigid and trembling in a terrible angle, his eyes and mouth wide in silent agony. Blood trickled from his nose.

Rini's eyes were as wide as his. No. He was her chance to save Serena. This Senshi was killing her chance to save Serena –

If the Senshi's attack had been too fast to see, Rini's was too fast to avoid. One second the Senshi was lifting her staff and pointing it at Rini; the next, a beam of white energy was punching through her stomach.

The impact bulleted her backward, shooting through the fog until a loud thung echoed through the grayness, as though a tremendous gong had been struck.

Diamond was on his feet. Rini did not realize it until his hands were under her arms, lifting her up. She was panting, her skin coated with cold sweat. She stumbled along with him, through the path that the Senshi's body had carved through the fog, and they came to a towering set of ornately carved silver double doors set seemingly into the middle of empty space. The Senshi was slumped against one of them, a smear of blood down the silver marking where she had hit the door and slid down to the ground.

Rini stiffened as she saw that the Senshi was still clinging to consciousness, her eyes struggling to stay open as she glared malevolently at Rini. She opened her mouth, but all that came out was a mouthful of blood that splashed down her front.

Diamond was striding forward, pulling her with him. "The Gate of Time," he said, almost reverently, and then turned to look down at the Senshi against the door. His voice became a sneer. "And its feared guardian. Not so difficult to deal with, after all."

Rini was nearly slumping against his leg, shivering with her hot forehead to the fabric of his cape. She remembered how Serena would hold her and stroke her hair back from her sweaty forehead when she had used too much power, like when she transformed to help Buji fight. She forced herself to straighten up, clenching her muscles against the feverish shivers. There would be no more Serena at all if she couldn't keep it together and get to the Silver Millennium.

Diamond had the Time Key in his hand again. "Come," he said, and gripping each other's hands tightly, they pushed open the massive silver doors and stepped into the red void beyond.

L

When Asanuma and Mikai burst into the hospital waiting room, they found Buji there, sitting in one of the plastic chairs next to Motoki and his family. He was very pale, and he jumped up and ran to Asanuma as soon as he saw them.

Asanuma looked down at the boy clinging to his hand. "What are you doing here?"

"Kaa-chan's having the baby!"

Asanuma felt Mikai stiffen behind him. He turned to look at him. Mikai was almost as pale as Buji, leaning closer to Asanuma.

"That isn't good," the older man said lowly into his ear. "If the birth was going normally, they would have Buji up in the delivery waiting room, not here."

Asanuma swore, gripping Buji's hand. But before any of them could say anything more, a male nurse came out. He wore white scrubs and had long light hair pulled into a ponytail. "You should go home and get some rest now," he told the Furuhatas. "We'll call you when Furuhata-san's ready for visitors again."

Already opening his mouth to protest, Asanuma looked to Mikai. But the green-haired Shittenou was frowning at the orderly, his forehead creased as though he was someone familiar whose identity he was trying to remember.

Asanuma turned back to the orderly. "We're not visitors, we're family. And we want to see Furuhata-san now."

Motoki's mother and sister looked at Asanuma with tired, surprised faces.

"Asanuma, dear," his mother began in the same kind voice she always used, though it was now hoarse from tears. "The doctor knows what's best – "

Mikai lunged onto the male nurse.

"GO!" he shouted, wrestling as the man began to thrash wildly. "This isn't a nurse! This is the youma who killed the one I found in the subway! Go find Furuhata before they get away with him!"

Asanuma took off, tearing through the DO NOT ENTER-emblazoned double doors that led toward the OR. It let him into a hallway, at the end of which he could see a door swinging shut, sunlight streaming through it and the faint sense of a youma presence outside it. He shot toward it. Only as he burst through the door, emerging into a service drive surrounded by dumpsters and with an ambulance zooming away, did he realize that Motoki had run with him. The taller boy bounded down the concrete steps that Asanuma had stopped at and pounded past the dumpsters to where the ambulance was screeching out onto the road.

"COME BACK!" he yelled, running after it. "COME BACK HERE, YOU BASTARDS!"

"Toki! Toki!" Asanuma caught up to him, grabbing Motoki's shoulder before he could run straight into traffic after the ambulance that was already hurtling through a red light three intersections away.

Motoki yanked away. "They're getting away! We have to follow them!" He was nearly in tears again, the same way he had been when he called Asanuma on the phone. "We have to follow them!"

Just then, Mikai burst through the double doors at the top of the concrete steps, Buji on his heels. His green hair was smoking faintly, blood seeping from a cut above his eye. "The youma got away! Toki, I'm so sorry–"

Motoki turned, looking in worse shape than Mikai for all that he wasn't bleeding or nursing a burn. "What the hell does a youma want with my dad?" he said brokenly.

Asanuma looked at Mikai. "Tell him." He ran back up the steps, thinking that there had to be some sort of ambulance tracker inside the hospital, they were government vehicles, after all. But how would he get them to tell him? Darien's hypnosis would really come in handy right now–

Mikai caught his arm. "I know where they're going."

Asanuma looked back at him, and it only took him a minute to understand. "Tomoe's clinic. Of course!" He looked down. "Buji, stay with your mom.–"

Buji's face was white. "They took her."

Asanuma went still. He felt like the same way he did when he dived into the deep end of his parents' pool, the brief moment of total silence and weightlessness before crashing through the water's surface.

"Her room in the ward was empty," Mikai said. "It looked like there'd been a hurricane–that youma taunted us before he disappeared."

"But why?" whispered Buji.

"The baby." Motoki had come up to the stairs with them. "Darien mentioned it – the baby's aura felt strange to him."

Mikai looked at Asanuma. "Tomoe." Without needing another word, they broke into a run, Asanuma holding tight to Buji's arm and Mikai dragging Motoki along with them. In less than a minute, they were skidding to a stop in front of Mikai's car in the parking garage.

"Drive," Mikai commanded, shoving his keys into Asanuma's hand as they all scrambled into the car. "I'm gonna need to concentrate."

"Why–" began Buji before Asanuma wrenched the car into reverse so fast that he was thrown backward against the seat. The tires screamed as he wrenched back into drive and tore out of the parking garage. They barreled onto the main road, the hulu dancer on Mikai's dashboard swaying crazily.

Mikai squeezed his eyes shut. There was a tremendous rumbling sound, audible even over the roar of the engine as Asanuma floored the gas pedal. The ground shook, and the cars around them squealed to a stop.

"Keep driving!" Mikai shouted, his eyes still clenched shut. Asanuma accelerated past the cars that had all stopped for the Shittenou-generated earthquake. He glanced in the rearview mirror to see how Toki was, expecting his friend to be green-faced from the car's crazy motion. But Motoki's face was set, his jaw tight, eyes fixed straight ahead.

"I need someone's cell phone," he said suddenly.

Mikai had his eyes open again; there was sweat rolling down his forehead. "I think that should keep people stopped until we get there." He dug through his pocket and shoved his phone backward to Motoki. "Who are you calling?"

"Lita," said Motoki shortly.

L

For a minute, everything was red, just as before, everything had been gray. Rini tensed, squeezing her eyelids shut, remembering the Senshi's hateful blood-red eyes.

Then the red disappeared, and they slammed into ground. Rini's knees gave out again, and she dropped to the ground, sucking down thin cold air. Diamond kept a tight grip on her hand.

After a minute, she opened her eyes. An expanse of flowers stretched out around them. But it wasn't an endless field, like Elysion. Rini turned her head, looking around and taking in the small, tended patches of flowers. They were arranged in series of concentric circles, little stone paths weaving between them. The flowers' petals and stems looked like they were made of gold and silver and porcelain instead of organic matter. A faint tinkling came from all sides, the petals and leaves clinking together faintly instead of brushing and whispering like the green plants to which Rini was accustomed.

She looked up and saw a black, star-sprinkled sky. A cloud-swathed blue orb hung in it, as low and heavy as the Black Moon's mother ship had looked in the future that she lived in with Asanuma, hovering over the city. But this wasn't a mother ship, Rini realized. It was a planet. It was Earth.

And this wasn't the future, Rini thought, looking around. She took in the smooth, high walls that stretched up around the expanse of gardens, the faint sparkle of energy in the thin atmosphere. It was the past.

It was the Silver Millennium.

Prince Diamond made a sound of satisfaction beside her. He, too, was looking around.

"The palace gardens," he said. Excitement glimmered in his silvery eyes and his voice, which sounded strange in the thin, cold atmosphere. "Well done, princess. You were able to slip us right through the palace wards."

Rini didn't reply. She stared at the faint aura that sparkled in the air around the garden walls like constellations of energy. Were those the wards he was talking about? She followed a step behind the prince as he padded down the pearlescent stones that paved the paths through the flowers.

It was very quiet. Not even the library, where Ikuko had taken her one day, had been this quiet. The only other time that she had encountered silence so still and absolute was when… Her memory returned again to that terrified Senshi and the freezing, empty darkness.

Pushing away these thoughts, Rini became aware of a faint hum. She looked up from the stones beneath her scuffed sneakers and saw that a rows of pillars lined the garden's perimeter, just in front of the marble wall. Water fountained from the tops of the pillars, cutting through the air and falling silently into a decorative moat of glittering water that ran along just inside the wall and sent tributaries of water out to thread along the paths and feed the plants.

It wasn't normal for water not to make a sound, not even a small splash, as it fell into the moat. Rini drew closer to Diamond, her sleeve brushing his billowing cloak.

He was paying no attention to the water, looking instead at the flowers. "Could you transform into one of those?"

Rini followed his gaze, biting her lip.

She had never transformed into a plant not of Earth before, but that was only part of her apprehension. The priest in her dreams–it was still hard to think that he was Buji's future self – had told her that she could only transform into organisms from a planet to which she claimed a birthright. To transform into one of these moon-flowers would be to tap into the birthright she had inherited from the Moon Princess, and to do this as she was trying to escape having the princess as her mother seems as though it would tempt fate, convince it that she did not want to lose the Moon Princess as her mother.

Rini shook her head. She was thinking too much. She needed to stop being ridiculous.

"Wait," said Diamond abruptly. "No. Turn into a Terran flower. The princess will be more drawn in by that than by flowers she already knows."

Rini looked up at him. "You're going to give me to her?" This seemed strange to her, but what else had she expected to do once she got to the past? She realized that she didn't know. She hadn't thought this far ahead. Maybe she had expected just to disappear and automatically wake up in some distant present where Serena was her mother.

Diamond looked back at her, his head cocked, but before either of them could say anything, a sound came from the other end of the garden. Someone was coming.

Rini transformed into a rose in a panicked rush. She felt Diamond pick her up and tried to squelch the panic that surged again in her, the fear that he would crush her in his hand or leave the Silver Millennium and take her with him back to the Black Moon ship where the Wiseman was. She had already made her choice to help Diamond; there was no use second-guessing their alliance now. If he was going to betray her, there wasn't much she could do about it.

In her plant transformations, Rini's senses were very vague, if they existed at all. She could sense auras about the same as she ever could, and her senses of touch and hearing remained mostly unaffected, but she couldn't taste, smell, or see. It was a strange sensation, especially now that she had learned how to transform into animals, forms which amplified all these senses instead of reducing them. As Diamond held her by the stem, cupping her petals in one hand, she thought it might almost have been more comfortable to have been in a total sensory deprivation, unable even to hear or feel. It was an unreasonable thought because then she would not be able to know if Diamond did something suspicious or dangerous. But she felt unspeakably nervous now, able to hear Diamond's footsteps and breathing and hear him moving.

Diamond spoke. His words were low and too fast for her to understand. She felt a small brush of his aura; he was using magic. It was so slightly that she probably would not have felt it had he not been holding her in his hand, nearly his whole palm closed around her.

Someone else, not Diamond, but the person who had made the sound that had startled her, said something quietly. Diamond's footsteps resumed. Rini's tension climbed a notch, thrumming.

The brush of power came again after a few minutes–or perhaps later, it was difficult to perceive time in this form. There was movement and sound all around her; it took Rini a minute to sort it out and realize that it was the sound of a very tremendous door opening.

Diamond's voice rang out. "I have come for an audience with Her Majesty."

There was the sound of rustling cloth and light, hurried footsteps.

"Sir, you are not–"

Again that brush of magic. The voice fell silent, and Rini felt Diamond moving forward, until clusters of new auras were gathered before them. They stopped, and the voice that had momentarily tried to stop Diamond spoke. "Lady Luna, Prince Diamond has come for his audience with Her Majesty."

A new voice, a woman's, tinged with suspicion and a little scorn. "Prince Diamond? There is no prin– "

Rini felt Diamond glide forward. "My lady." His voice was soft, snake-like, its underbelly scaled with magic. "We are sure that you recall us. Our ambassador arranged this audience through you some months ago."

"Yes. Oh, yes!" The woman's voice, now bare of its previous suspicion, was a courteous murmur. "Prince Diamond. Of course. My apologies–I have not told Her Majesty to expect you– I do not understand how it could have escaped my memory–"

"Your oversight is unfortunate indeed," murmured Diamond's voice, not belligerent but genuinely regretful, concerned. Again, Rini felt that brush of power. "We have anticipated this meeting for months…"

"Yes–yes, I know, as have I–I will speak to the queen immediately and inform her of my mistake." The woman's voice was conciliatory but also genuinely stricken.

Rini's tension ratcheted higher, a tuning fork struck by a baseball bat. How did a woman in the Silver Millennium know Diamond? There were more than a thousand years between them. He was using magic, of that there was no doubt, some sort of hypnotic magic more subtle than Darien's…

She hadn't known he had that power.

"Thank you, Lady Luna." Diamond spoke in a murmur. "While you go to inform the queen that we have arrived, we shall wait here."

There was the sound of footsteps receding on the marble floor. Around them, there were the faint scufflings and murmurings of other people, guards perhaps. Rini sweated in Diamond's fingers, barely daring to breathe, much less to talk. Did he notice her new anxiety?

At last Lady Luna's voice returned, apologizing profusely. "The Queen will see you this very moment, Your Highness. I apologize again for the mistake–"

"No apology is necessary. We thank you for your aid, Lady Luna. Please lead the way."

They strode forward into a large space, the size of the room making their footsteps echo. Rini could sense the empty space stretching far up and around her; the room had to be as big as the huge indoor stadium where she and Asanuma had gone to see the circus. A low murmur filled it, the sound of many voices, their auras faint in Rini's senses.

"His Highness Crown Prince Diamond of the planet Nemesis," announced a voice from slightly behind Diamond.

Rini felt her petals brush the fabric of his tunic as the prince bowed. Then he began walking forward before he stopped and bowed once more.

"Prince Diamond," came a regal female voice. "We are told that you were promised an audience with us on this day."

"That is so, High Queen Selenity." No magic touched Diamond's voice now.

"Then we apologize for this court's mistake," said the voice. Rini listened more closely to it now, not daring to reach out with her aura to get any sense of the woman lest she be sensed. This was Queen Selenity: the Moon Princess's mother. Rini's grandmother–although hopefully not for much longer. "These are troubled and busy times."

"As I am all too aware," agreed Diamond, regret coloring his tone. He had shifted to the more deferential "I" instead of "we."

There was a pause. "And that is why you have sought an audience with us?"

"Not necessarily." Diamond did not hesitate before answering. "In truth, High Queen, I have come to propose an alliance of marriage with the Crown Princess Serenity."

Silence slammed down on the room like a great guillotine. Not one murmur came from the people that lined the room on either side of Diamond and the queen. No one even breathed – including Rini.

Diamond hadn't said he would try to marry the princess!

She tried to calm herself and explain it away. Perhaps this was how he meant to hold his end of the bargain to her: if he was with the princess, Prince Endymion could not be. But her reasoning felt empty. Diamond's hand was sweaty and trembling around hers, as though he had waited a long time for this very moment. She herself felt the same. What should she do?

The queen's voice, when she spoke again, was simultaneously steely and uncertain. "You seek alliance with the princess Serenity."

"I wish to marry her," Diamond said. "Your Highness."

The silence lasted for only a few seconds before murmurs and gasps swept out around them like one of Darien's summoned winds.

"Prince Diamond," said the queen over the conversation. Rini would have expected her voice to cut off the conversation, but it quieted only slightly, and not out of deference, but as though from a wish to hear her reply. "Would it please you to hold a private audience with us?"

"No pleasure but an honor, High Queen."

"Then our courtiers will leave." The queen's voice gained volume. "All save Lady Luna and our Senshi will exit the Hall."

Rini held her breath. The Senshi were here, in this room? Then–Serena was here? She stretched out, trying to find her familiar aura. But she could not find it, not among the auras moving reluctantly out of the hall or the few that stayed.

"From whence do you come, Prince Diamond?" asked the queen's voice when the room had emptied. It was no less ringing now than it had been when she had an audience. "Where is planet Nemesis?"

"In the Biejou galaxy, Your Highness, not far from Andromeda."

"Then your galaxy is not so far away that you could have failed to hear the prophecy concerning our daughter."

"No, it is not, Your Highness. I doubt any galaxy is that far away. But I have come in spite of the prophecy–or because of it, I could say."

Distaste clearly colored the queen's voice. "You view her as a challenge to be conquered."

"No. I view her, as few others do, as a person."

Although there was only a handful of people in the chamber now compared to the hundred-plus that had filled it before, the silence that fell now was much greater than the one that had fallen then. It also lasted for much longer, until Rini was afraid that something had gone amiss in her transformation and deprived her of her hearing.

But then the queen spoke. "Explain yourself, Prince Diamond."

Diamond inhaled. "I have confessed to you, Lady Queen, that I have heard stories of the princess's power. I have been warned by many, from my advisers to my own brother, not to seek her hand, for at best she would take over my kingdom with her power and at worst she would take over my mind."

There was a sound, as though the queen had sat abruptly forward. "You fail to answer our question. Why, when you are so obviously aware of the princess's unsuitedness to a marriage alliance, do you propose one?"

"Because I do not fear the princess's power, High Queen." Diamond's voice rang through the throne room. "Over my mind or my kingdom. Not over my mind. I have the rare gift of invulnerability to magical coercion. My own brother, who has the gyptian gift of reading minds, cannot sense more than faint emotions from me. I am perhaps the only royal in all the galaxies who could marry the princess without fear of her controlling me. We are uniquely suited."

There was a long silence. Rini, wondering uneasily how much of what Diamond had said was actually true, also wondered if the queen was convinced already. Or if she was only debating the best way to have Diamond thrown from the palace.

At last there was a sigh. "You have forgotten the prophecy. Princess Serenity will die against Chaos. Once bound in marriage to a royal of the Moon, invulnerable to magical coercion or not, one may never marry again. And Serenity will bear only one child, and it will be our own heir to the Moon's throne. It is true, all that you say about kings and princes avoiding Serenity because of her powers, but they also avoid marriage to her for this reason. The planet of any prince who marries Princess Serenity will find itself without an heir."

"I have told you that I have a brother, High Queen. And the Moon must have an heir. Nemesis is not part of the Silver Alliance, but when I can help the kingdom of the princess who will save our universe, how can I not? Allow me to wed the Princess Serenity, High Queen. Do not deprive your kingdom of a future or your daughter of the only man who might truly love her."

Diamond's voice was passionate, as passionate as it had been when he convinced Rini to bring him to the past. It was impossible not to feel his love for the princess, his sincerity in wanting to give her what no other man could. He was breathing hard; beneath his silvery hair, his brow gleamed with the very perspiration from his exertion to prove to them how strongly he felt. Again, Rini felt conflicted. Did he actually love the princess? Was he hypnotizing them all?

What should I do?

"You have given us much to think about, Prince Diamond," Queen Selenity said at last. "We will now retire. We shall call for your presence in the morning."

Diamond bowed. "A thousand gratitudes, Your Majesty. Until that time, may I ask that this rose be given to the princess with my regards?"

There was a breath of air: the queen had motioned one of the Senshi forward. "Mars."

A new set of fingers, gloved, took Rini. She stayed very still, and Diamond's footsteps retreated. When the sound came of the doors shutting behind him, Lady Luna's voice spoke breathlessly.

"It is unthinkable, my Queen! That we might have missed this opportunity because of my error! A thousand lashes would not have been enough to punish me."

"Unthinkable, indeed." The queen's voice was unreadable. "What have you sensed from him, Mars?"

"Obsession," answered the voice. Rini could not tell if it belonged to the Mars of Serena's time or not. Perhaps the queen had her own set of Senshi. "The idea of husbanding the princess has seized him in a tight grip."

There was a sigh. "It cannot be helped. There must be an heir, whether Chaos falls or not. Should Serenity succeed in destroying the creature, the systems have been under the High Senshi's martial law for so long that a Silver Crystal bearer will be needed to keep the peace. If she does not succeed, a child of hers will still be our kingdom's only hope for defense."

"The High Senshi will not be pleased to see us choose a consort for Serenity without their consent," said one of the Senshi's voices, one unfamiliar to Rini.

"The High Senshi will have my daughter soon enough," Queen Selenity said. "For now, she belongs to our people. Summon her to her chambers. I will speak with her there."

There was the sound of one set of footsteps leaving the chamber.

"Selenity," said a different voice now, another Senshi. "What if the princess rejects Diamond?"

"Serenity's life does not belong to her." Was that bitterness in the queen's voice? "She cannot choose her fate. Why should her husband be any different?"

L

For the first time in her life, Rini felt pity for the Moon Princess.

Without Diamond around, and with the queen and her Senshi dispassionately discussing the princess's life as though she was no more than a line of defense, Rini somehow began to think about the princess as a girl like Lita or Serena, instead of as the distant mother who had never come, never called, never even written to her. She tried to stop, to remember all the times she had cried herself to sleep after Asanuma tucked her in, to keep her heart hard against the princess's plight. But the pity still washed over her, soaking and softening the hard walls of hatred she had built up against her.

She reminded herself that the Moon Princess was the reason Serena and Darien were so miserable. And the reason that Lita and the other had flash-forms that they were so afraid of. And the reason that Asanuma had been left behind with her and died. These thoughts sturdied her. She clung to them tightly, like someone who couldn't swim might cling tightly to the side of the pool, and tried to refocus on her current predicament.

Mars had left her somewhere quiet and hard. Probably the top of a bureau. Rini waited, trying to figure out why Diamond had left her behind. Was he good or was he bad? Had she been completely taken in?

After a few minutes came the sound of rustling silk and slippers padding down the hall.

"Queen Mother," said a soft voice. It was a soft soprano, timid, making Rini mentally purse her lips. Why was she speaking so timidly to the woman who seemed to view her as little more than a chess piece to be sent to her death against Chaos? Why not defiant and railing against her?

"Princess Serenity," the queen's voice said formally. "Please be seated." There was a pause as Serenity seated herself with a great rustling of silk. "I trust your lessons are progressing smoothly?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

"Luna has expressed concern with your disinterest in studying matters of state."

The sound of fidgeting in the silk. "It is…difficult…to force one's mind to focus on the difference between addressing a single-ringed planet's ambassador and a double-ringed planet's ambassador when one knows that one will never have the chance to put such knowledge to use."

There was an exhalation, as though in anger. "Serenity, you will be queen of our people. You must not live your life ignoring your other duties as though you are preparing for your death. You must believe that you will live."

The princess's voice was quieter than before. "Then why are you marrying me off to a stranger when I am but sixteen?"

There was silence.

"You have been reading Mars' mind again." Not-quite-fear colored the queen's voice.

"No," said the princess. "Yours."

There was a sound as if the queen had shot to her feet. Her heels clicked on the floor.

"You say that I will not die," said the princess's voice. It was no longer quiet. It was high in both pitch and volume. "But you do not believe it! If you believed it, you would not be marrying me to this man to gain an heir as soon as possible! If you believed it, you would send me to Endymion!"

Rini had to struggle not to bounce out of her transformation from shock. The princess already knew Prince Endymion?

"You hurl this bit of the prophecy up to me," said the queen, voice tight. "If you believe it so strongly, am I to believe that you also believe in the last part of the prophecy? That any union between you and the Terran prince could destroy the universe? Do you believe that and still wish me to betroth you to him? Am I to believe that you care not if you endanger the universe, so long as you can live?"

There was a pause, and the sound of harsh breathing.

"There will be no more discussion. You will meet your betrothed tomorrow."

"I won't!" cried the princess, but the queen was already clicking from the room in a whoosh of sweeping skirts. "I won't!"

Rini heard, as a door shut, a sound as though the princess had thrown herself onto her bed.

"I won't have him!" she repeated again. Her voice cracked this time.

"You haven't even met him," came a new voice. One of the Senshi, undoubtedly; Rini sensed their presences filtering into the room. "He could be your–"

"Soulmate?" finished the princess bitterly.

"Well." The Senshi reconsidered. "Vice-soulmate. He cannot be so bad, Serenity. You will learn to love him."

"I shall learn to hate him," said the princess's voice caustically. "As I shall learn to hate you if you presume to tell me who I will and will not love."

Rini strained to listen past their two voices for those of the other Senshi she could sense. Was Serena here? Would her voice now sound different because it was her past incarnation, or would she sound the same? Was her hair the same color? Lita's had turned green, after all, when her past incarnation began to take over...

"Mars." The princess's voice was suddenly excited. "From whence did that rose come?"

"A present from an admirer, Your Highness," said Mars' flat voice from a few feet away. Gentle fingers were easing Rini up from the bureau. "His Highness, the Prince Diamond."

The princess's fingers tightened around Rini's stem. Then they flung her away, to the floor. Rini winced at the impact, then cringed as a tremendous weight suddenly crashed down upon her. She realized, as she heard angry tears, that the princess was stamping on her. She gritted her teeth together against the pain to keep from falling out of her transformation.

But it was like having the Black Moon mother ship dropped onto her again and again. She blacked out.

L

The scenery that greeted Sailor Moon's eyes, when she opened them, was exactly the expanse of fog-obscured gray that had been in the Wiseman's crystal ball. She turned to look around, feeling the powdery sand shift beneath her boots. Tuxedo Mask shifted closer to her, the warmth of his sleeved arm radiating to her bare one.

"It was that prince's aura, wasn't it," he said. Like her, he was staring into the gray fog, but she felt the weight of all his other senses pressing down on her, searching. "The one with Rini's."

"Yes," she said shortly. Her face felt stiff and her eyes itchy from all her crying, and the fact that he had witnessed it made it even worse. She didn't want him to know anything about Diamond, not what he had done or what he could do, even though she knew that it was his daughter that was now in danger from Diamond and that he deserved to know what the man was capable of. But she didn't want to see what would happen if he found out what Diamond had been coming into her bedroom and doing. She didn't want to see whether he would burst into some raging wolf-form that she would have to soothe back under control or whether he would turn cold and icy and contemptuous the way he had been the past few weeks.

She wanted to find Rini. That was all she wanted. To find Rini and go back to the future and have a girls' night with nail polish and chick flicks with Lita. It would be Rini's first girls' night, and they'd have to work very hard to find a romantic movie that she wouldn't think was stupid, Moon thought, smiling tremulously.

Mask's sleeve brushed against her arm, and her smile disappeared. She took a step forward into the swirling fog and had to blink her eyes rapidly against it. When she and Sammy had been very young, they had pretended to be astronauts and put plastic grocery bags over their heads to be their space helmets. When Serena had breathed, the thin polystyrene had plastered itself against every centimeter of her face, her inhalation sucking it into her mouth until she coughed and Ikuko came rushing in and nearly had a heart attack as she clawed the bags off her and Sammy. This fog felt a lot like the bag had, clinging to her, trying to suffocate her. She breathed heavily, and when Mask's hand closed around her elbow, she did not yank away, too desperate for something to hold onto. She was still studiously avoiding the rope between them, but even without it, it was easy to tell that they were thinking the same thing: had the Wiseman sent them into a trap?

It might have been an hour later, or maybe only a few minutes later, when Moon's boot hit something hard. She flinched to a stop, Mask stiffening immediately beside her.

The gray fog in front of them had begun to lighten. Like a special effect out of a movie, it began to swirl and boil silently away, revealing two things behind it.

First, a massive set of double doors, made of some dull gray metal or stone. Etchings curled up and down their length, and gray fog surrounded them on either side, so thick that it might have been a wall itself. One of the doors was ajar, swung partially inward. All Moon could see inside it were blood-red and ruby-dark lights pulsing inside it like the interior of some sort of dance club. They spun and flashed so ferociously that it seemed like they should be accompanied by the howling winds of a hurricane. But everything was completely silent.

Second, a woman was slumped against the door that was still closed.

Slowly, almost as though in a dream, Sailor Moon walked toward the woman. Her head lolled forward onto her chest, her face covered by long, dark green hair, and her skin was the color of a copper coin tarnished by time. But those were peripheral details, noticed unconsciously and filed away for later. What Moon noticed first was that the woman was wearing a Senshi fuku. It was black where Moon's was blue, and the white fabric over her abdomen was stained with blood.

The blood appeared to be from a wound on her side, almost exactly where Moon's Twilight Flash had gored Prince Diamond. As the Senshi breathed–which Moon saw, now, that she was doing, shallowly–little rivulets of blood appeared at the wound's edge and ran down to darken her fuku further.

"Wait, Moon..." Mask edged in front of her, between her and the Senshi, his cape brushing her legs. His cane-blade slid out of his sleeve.

The Senshi moved. It was just a loll of her head, enough to twitch her curtain of hair far enough to the side that one of her eyes was now visible. The eye was as dark a red as the blood staining the woman's fuku, and as it focused up on Mask, it seemed to boil with hatred.

Mask moved closer to Moon, his hand tightening around his cane-blade. The Senshi's eye traveled down, away from him, to meet Moon's gaze. The hatred shifted and became something else, something that made her pupil widen and turn so dark that it did not even reflect Moon's pale face.

The Senshi's mouth moved. Nothing but a wet rasping sound came out, but as she stared at Moon, her lips kept moving, as though she was trying to say something. More blood streamed from the wound in her abdomen, faster now.

Mask stepped in front of Moon, blocking her completely from the Senshi's sight. "Let's go." He reached behind him, pulling Moon forward with him, toward the open door. His muscles stayed tense and ready for the Senshi to lunge up and grab for Moon.

The Senshi tried. At least, she seemed to. As Moon and Mask moved away, she slumped forward, another wet sound of pain escaping her, and put trembling hands stiffly to the sand as though to push herself up.

"Come on!" Shoving the image of the Taj Mahal-like palace into his mind, Mask grabbed tight hold of Moon and jumped. She felt a tug in the vicinity of her Subspace Pocket, and then they were falling into the storm of red light.

L

The Silver Millennium's Sailor Pluto recognized the insignia across the front of the man's tunic. Stitched with golden thread as delicate as a filigree, it belonged to a planetary kingship in the Biejou galaxy, one of a similar size to her own planet. Her tutor back on Pluto, decades and decades ago, back when she had been known as Setsuna instead of Pluto, had used it as an example of a planet that could manage to be powerful despite its small size.

For some reason, the memory of her tutor, with his lacy frock and nasal voice, made Pluto laugh. There was an edge of hysteria to the sound. It seemed that she was becoming nostalgic as she began to take the actions that might shatter everything she knew. Reverting to childhood memories in order to protect her from the adult reality, Sailor Mercury would say.

Pluto's laughter died, the quill trembling in her hand. Mercury knew nothing. None of them did. And none of them would ever be able to help Queen Selenity the way Pluto would be able to. The way she was doing, right now, as she wrote the message telling the High Senshi who had come through the Time Plane to the Silver Millennium with the Time Key that she had given them.

She looked again at the time mirror before her. It showed the silver-haired prince–Diamond, he had called himself–being led to quarters inside the palace.

"Pluto." The sigh came from behind her.

Sailor Pluto spun, clenching the High Senshi's scrap of parchment into a ball in her hand to hide it. Her eyes met Queen Selenity's light ones. The Queen had made no sound as she approached, as usual. Usually, Pluto gloried in her queen's stealth, proud that she was not merely a figurehead on a throne but a capable warrior in her own right, but today, as she clenched the proof of her own treachery in her hand, she wished Selenity were not so stealthy.

But the queen did not seem to notice Pluto's discomfort. She stepped out of the gray fog that always swirled through the Time Plane and came to Pluto, sinking her forehead onto the Senshi's stiff shoulder.

Pluto immediately brought her free arm up around Selenity's thin shoulders. "What is amiss, my queen?"

Selenity shook her head. "I am a failure as a mother, Pluto."

Pluto felt, again, the bitterness that she always felt toward the princess who had put her queen through so much anguish and guilt. "You are not, my lady. You have done what is necessary to deal with the princess."

"What is necessary for myself, perhaps." Selenity took a deep breath and straightened, her hair and gown rustling around her. "And what is necessary for the kingdom, and for the High Senshi. But not what is necessary for her."

"You speak of the new prince," Pluto said. Behind her, she traced a circle in the fog with her finger, feeling the time mirror that linked her to the High Senshi materialize. She began to push the ball of parchment through it. "The silver one."

"Yes." Selenity's eyes were distant, as if she had opened her own time mirror and was gazing into it. She turned suddenly to Pluto, her expression desperate. "Pluto, if you could just tell me one thing–one thing about the future–"

Pluto tried to make her eyes hard as they met the queen's desperate silver ones. Behind her, the scrap of parchment was almost through the mirror.

"Will she be happy with him?" Selenity whispered. "Even for a while?"

The mirror's liquid-like surface rippled as the parchment fell completely through it.

"Yes," Pluto lied. "He will make her very happy. Much happier than Endymion."

A watery smile broke out across Selenity's face. She took a swift step toward Pluto, seizing her hands in hers. "Thank you, Pluto," she breathed, squeezing her fingers tightly. Then she let go and stepped away, vanishing back into the mortal plane.

Pluto looked down at her hands. "I am doing the right thing," she told herself.

Yet she felt guilt. And it ate at her so deeply that she did not sense the two presences materializing in one of the mirrors behind her until they had already disappeared.

L

Traveling back in time was like riding a roller coaster. Darien had never been on one, but Serena had been on many. The most intense one she had ever ridden had moved two hundred kilometers an hour, sped through three inverted loops, and had two completely vertical drops. Her head had banged back and forth between the head bars the whole time, rattling her teeth in her jaw, and the G-forces had been so strong that she had felt like her limbs were going to be torn from her body and her face from her skull.

This was ten times worse.

She gritted her teeth and squeezed her arms tighter around Tuxedo Mask's waist. Her watering eyes were screwed shut, but the flashing red lights seared through her eyelids anyways, an inescapable rage of bloody scarlets and fiery crimsons. She found herself wondering if this was what hell would be like.

As if he had heard her thought, Mask's arms tightened around her. There was only enough time for her mind to splinter away from thoughts of hell to he's crushing me before everything suddenly went gray.

There was no impact. Only the sudden impression of stillness and a quiet darkness behind her eyelids. Moon cracked an eyelid open experimentally. The storm of red light was gone. Instead, they were surrounded by a flat expanse of silvery gray sand not unlike that of the Time Plane and, above them, a starry black sky with a huge blue-and-white-swathed planet hanging in it. It looked so huge and so close that Moon cringed for a moment, feeling as though it could drop down and crush them at any moment.

That small movement made her aware, for the first time, of a weird sense of weightlessness, as though she was floating. It wasn't such an unusual feeling to have after getting off a roller coaster, so it didn't bother her until she tried to take a breath – and couldn't.

Her eyes went wide. Her eyes flew up to Mask's, but he looked just as dazed, and panicked, as she did. She also noticed that his top hat was floating away from his head and his cloak was rippling out slowly and silently behind him as though lifted by the same invisible wind. She twisted around in his arms, which, though they had loosened slightly, were still knotted around her, and saw that her fuku collar and skirt were doing the same thing, rippling slowly and silently–and eerily–upward.

Then she looked down, and the situation became even worse. Because their feet were also floating slowly upward, away from the sandy ground…and into the black sky above them.

Moon's eyes snapped back to Mask's, her mind firing as quickly as it could, which wasn't very quickly. Black was beginning to prickle at the edges of her vision. Oxygen deprivation, she thought. She could see Mask's face, the urgency of his expression and his mouth moving as though he was trying to say something, but no sound reached her ears at all. She felt only a tremendous pressure digging into her ears and pressing down on every inch of her body, a pressure that wasn't enough to keep them from floating away into space…

Something slammed into them. It was small and round, and reminded Serena of the numerous dodgeballs her klutziness had gotten her hit by in gym class. There was only enough time for Moon to have that thought before the shape hit them again, this time right in her shoulder – then again, this time against Mask's shoulder. Mask's grip tightened, and Moon understood at the same time as him: the impacts were pushing them back toward the ground. She tensed her muscles, trying to ignore the black more rapidly invading her sight, trying to be ready as soon as possible to throw herself at the ground and hold onto it, burrow into it if possible to keep from floating away and becoming space debris. But even if they could get to the ground, there was no oxygen…

The toes of her boots brushed the sand. Mask, with his longer legs, must have an even better grip; he was pulling her hastily down, and the shape, whatever it was, hurled itself at them one last time, slamming them against the sand so hard that Moon let out an oof–along with the rest of her remaining oxygen. Her eyes widened in horror.

Then there was a shower of sparkling dust and confetti, and Moon abruptly found herself able to breathe again.

She blinked, looking at Mask's face a few inches from hers. He blinked back, and looked around.

"Make haste, take a breath," said a sharp, echoing voice that wasn't his but, instead, seemed to come from all around them. Moon blinked again and realized that something like a sealed pink fishbowl seemed to be enclosing their heads. "You must head toward that tower. Do you see it?"

For the first time, she did. About twenty yards directly ahead of them, there was something that looked like a lighthouse. It was the same silvery gray as the landscape all around them and seemed to fade into it. More interestingly, though–although not as interestingly as whatever this strange fishbowl letting them breathe was, or the voice coming from it–was the fact that Moon could sense two walls of power radiating out from either side of the tower, extending as far as she could sense.

"Careful," warned the voice as Mask, still gripping Moon, began to slog forward through the sand. It was a female voice, and a sharp impatience was quickly overtaking the concern that had colored it before. "As long as I am helping you to breathe, I cannot save you if you begin to float away again."

"What happens when we get to this tower?" Mask's voice was strained.

"It is part of a protective ward that holds in atmosphere and magnifies gravity," the voice said shortly. "You will be able to breathe inside it and move without fear of floating away."

Moon's heart finally began to slow with relief, and she gripped Mask's hand. They had to move awkwardly, as though in a three-legged race, pushing their feet through the sand as though it was ankle-deep water, at times dropping to their hands and knees when one of them felt they were beginning to pull away from the ground. Their breathing was loud and labored in the awkward breathing-bowl, and the voice did not speak again. Moon knew, from the tension of Mask's body next to hers, that he was already furiously thinking of what the voice could be and whether they could trust it.

"Um," she said, doing some furious thinking of her own, "please, miss, we're here to find someone. Did you help another person like us, a little girl, about this tall–" She lifted her arm to show Rini's height, "with blue eyes and brown hair, but she might have been disguised–"

"That child teleported straight to the palace," the voice said, not even waiting for Moon to finish. "You will have to hurry if you are to catch her."

"Was a man with her?" Mask asked harshly.

"Yes," said the voice, a hint of a hiss at the end of it. "He will bring ruin to this time and yours if you do not find him and stop him. You are nearly here. Once you are through the ward, I will take another form. Do not be alarmed."

Moon looked ahead of them in surprise and some alarm, but before there was a chance for them to ask anything more, the oxygen-filled bowl around their heads vanished. That feeling of infinite pressure returned, and Moon ducked through the wall of silvery aura, grabbing Mask's arm and yanking him after her when he showed signs of being suspicious and hesitating outside.

The pressure was immediately relieved. Moon took a huge gulp of air. It was so cold that it seemed to burn her throat on the way down, and she turned her face immediately into Mask's shoulder, coughing and trying to inhale the warmer air held against his skin by the fabric of his sleeve. He put an arm around her as he looked around, chafing her bare arm with his gloved hand. She pulled away even as her teeth began to chatter. Now that the terror of dying from oxygen deprivation or from floating away into space was no longer an issue, there was nothing to distract her from how very cold it was.

But her attention was caught by something new: a black ball, bouncing toward them. Its swift, unimpeded motion seemed at odds with the weak gravity that Moon still felt with her skirt and hair drifting around her. She thought of what the voice had said, that it would take a different form.

Sure enough, the ball stopped in front of them: not on the ground but in mid-air, hovering before their faces. It wasn't just a ball, Moon saw, but more of a doll, with pointed triangular ears perched atop a whiskered face that looked like a fat cat out of a Miyazaki film. Most notably, it had a golden crescent moon between its eyes. She stiffened, and beside her, she felt Mask do the same.

"You made it," came the same no-nonsense voice they had heard before, and it definitely came from the cat doll. "Good. You may call me Luna Ball."

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A/N: Please review. You don't know how badly I want (need) feedback on this chapter.