Chapter 9: Cooperative Efforts

"He passed out," Kaito called out in the storm, catching and slowly lowering Mamoru to the floor before rolling him onto his back as South approached to guard over them and give him more light, his halberd on fire like a torch. "Any sign of Usagi-chan or Beryl?" he asked as he checked Mamoru over best he could, unable to help the furrowing of his brows as he took in what he was wearing. It was a little more… adventurous than what he was used to seeing Mamoru in. Just what had he been doing?

"They were here," South confirmed, "I know I heard them and I think I hit Beryl, but there's no sign of them."

"They couldn't just leave, could they?" North asked rhetorically - how would South know if there was another way out of the space-time dimension beyond the door Pluto guarded? Mamoru didn't look injured - no blood, no cuts, no bruises. "Check around a bit - he looks alright for now, just out."

South nodded and left, keeping close enough to have an eye on them as he moved; they had found out the hard way that a straight line in this dimension wasn't always a straight line. If it were, they might have been able to get here before it was too late like this. He forcefully breathed evenly, though he wanted to snap at someone for being responsible for this mess. He wanted to chew someone out for being too reckless, for not seeing this coming, for trusting something when it clearly shouldn't've been trusted, but… he knew they had all tried to be careful. And Mamoru had done his best, and he was back and Usagi-chan wasn't, and yelling at him about rushing in wouldn't fix anything; they had all thought Beryl was still able to be saved. … He looked too pale. "You see anything?" he called out, taking Mamoru's pulse, frowning at what he felt.

"Nothing," Yuu called out, "They're not here anymore."

"Are you sure?" Kaito insisted, looking up to pin Yuu with a look. If they left now, there was no hope of finding this specific place again; if Usagi-chan were still here, they'd be effectively abandoning her to the depths of the space-time dimension forever - Pluto had said as much right before Sailor Moon had taken off anyway after Rin when they found his key discarded on the floor. If Yuu felt with that weird supernatural surety that they were gone, they should held back, fast.

Yuu looked back at him with a frustrated frown and shot back, "No, but I'm not the one with super-hearing here." No preternatural surety then. And he felt stupid for having to be reminded. He closed his eyes and listened… but the rumbling of the thunder - both simultaneously far and close - was all he could hear.

He shook his head. "Nothing. They're gone. Maybe Pluto will know, but we have to get back as soon as we can - he's not hurt but he's not in good shape here." South hurried over and dropped down on one knee expectantly. "We should've brought Nero," North complained anxiously, hurriedly helping maneuver Mamoru's unconscious form onto South's back, "That giant ape'd probably be able to carry him bridal style. You good?" he asked, pressing to keep Mamoru in place as Yuu stood, the other staggering only for a moment until he got the balance figured out.

"We'll make it," South assured with quiet confidence, "but we need to get back now, and we've got a decision to make."

Kaito nodded and called out for their little guide - "Gaea?" - and, just like that, the kitten crashed into view out of the storm, green eyes huge against blue fur, the little golden key in his mouth glowing faintly. North picked him up delicately, taking over for South, and gently removed the key from the kitten's mouth and turned to get a heading. "That way," he said, pointing and started walking quickly, but South took off at a jog so he caught up and kept the pace he set, juggling between checking the heading with the key and attempting to make sure Mamoru wasn't jostled around too much while holding on to the kitten.

"Little Lord was here," Gaea squeaked quickly from his perch in North's hand, pressed halfway up against his chest for stability, and Kaito internally balked at having forgotten about the kid in the wake of what they had found; they had come here specifically for Rin, but his guilt was only temporary in the wake of immediately finding out what happened to him. If they had more of them with them he wouldn't've forgotten so quickly, but it wasn't like they could have expected Mamoru to show up out of the blue in the middle of a time storm, anyway. He couldn't have foreseen this. "I saw him but he didn't hear me calling him," Gaea continued, "He was running and he had another key - do you think he's heading back to Sailor Pluto, Kings?"

Another key? … Mamoru. He frowned, glaring over at the big oaf. Just how did he expect to get back if he gave the kid his key? … which suggested things were just as bad as they had feared. Beryl fighting Sailor Moon; he had seen her change size on the tape, and the pair of them - Usagi and Beryl - had never exactly gotten along, but to attack and then take her? Metallia must have won her over, then. Was it entirely too late? … he had probably sent Rin back with a warning to prepare for the next attack. He might not have expected to make it back at all. That wasn't grim.

"Probably," South supplied to the kitten's question, "With luck we'll find out soon."

...

It wasn't exactly "soon," but it wasn't before long that they left the storm behind them - his ears practically ringing with the sudden quiet - and saw the door in the distance, its guardian waiting for them anxiously.

"Little Lord returned to the palace with the news," she said as they slowed down and stopped before her and the gateway back to their dimension, "Sailor Moon?"

South paused, shrugging Mamoru back into place, hesitating, so North answered quickly and succinctly, "Gone, presumably with Beryl. Is there a separate way out of this place?"

"They must have been farther out than I imagined," Pluto stated with worry, looking back towards the storm on the horizon; "With a large enough power source they may have punched back through to Rin's time."

"Where?"

The Guardian of Time shook her head, "It could be anywhere Metallia would feel a connection, but if she's preparing to attack Crystal Tokyo…" her hands gripped her staff tighter, obviously unhappy with the situation.

"How does time passage work?" Yuu cut in unexpectedly, specifying when Pluto looked like she was going to say something along the lines of 'it's complicated': "Here and our time - Tokyo. If we went back to rest and come up with a better plan, could we come back to this exact moment and continue on as though we had never left?"

… Yuu's ideas were honestly not bad. Mamoru could recover, they could strategize, and here it'd be as though not even a second had passed - it'd be the best of a bad situation, not unlike pressing 'pause' or saving in a video game only to go back to it after figuring out your next move. Kaito figured this was the 'decision' Yuu had hinted at before - if it were viable, he'd be fully for it. There'd be no downside: get in there, grab the Kings and the Senshi, and get out to give them as much time as possible to put whatever they strategized into action upon their return to find and save Usagi and Rin's future.

Pluto eyed him warily, though, her lips a thin line as she shook her head with finality. "Under normal circumstances that may be true, but for the moment your timelines are too intertwined. Too many from your time are here, and if you went back you would be thinking of and planning within this future, the very act of which keeps you connected to it. The passage of time between the two are, for now, linked."

Well, there went that plan. "Then there's no time to waste," he said, motioning towards the doors; if Beryl had bonded with Metallia then it was only a matter of her finishing preparations before the next attack came; and they had been gone for who knew how long in here; something else might have happened - but when the doors swung open, he was alone in moving towards them. Gaea hopped down and was off in a little blue flash of fur, but South King hesitated beside Pluto. "What?" he asked back, pocketing the time key as he waited for him.

"This fight isn't ours," South said, and Kaito gave him a minute to explain himself beyond stating the obvious. "We walked into it naively, and now Mamoru is out and Usagi-chan is gone - if she wasn't wrapped up in this now, I'd vote to leave. I know that's not exactly the heroic thing to do, but this future doesn't belong to us, and if we lose here, that's it. It's done. Everything is gone - everything we just fought so hard to come back to - everything he just died to protect and come back to," he said, shrugging his shoulder and Mamoru along with it. "It's not fair."

… this was a far cry from the "we'll just teleport to him", "let's make a barrier", "he'll make it back" certainty Yuu'd been showing since the spaceship, but that was… less than two days ago? Maybe Nero's blaming him hit deeper than he thought. Kaito was never really all that great with pep talks, so he stepped back beside him, put a hand on his - er, Mamoru's - back, and gently propelled him forward. "When has any of this been fair?" he said, looking forward as the scenery through the door changed to a crystalline hall, "He started it, we'll finish it. We'll make it fair. We'll find a place to let Mamoru sleep this off, kick Metallia's ass,-" they stepped through, booted feet landing on crystalline floors, and he turned him towards the direction Gaea had gone, thinking that would get them back to an elevator and more familiar territory, "- and go rescue Usagi-chan -"

"Rescue?!" a deep feminine voice repeated in surprise, and Kaito felt the air intensify around them even before he turned to see Jupiter's concern and Venus's look of absolute loathing:

"What do you mean by rescue?"

….

They met in the Control room with a stilled image of human-sized Beryl, taken moments before she disappeared the first time - tastefully edited to omit Mamoru's hanging form but keeping that creepy mask-wearing lackey on screen - blown up prominently in the middle of tens of other computer windows focused on various avenues in the city, keyed in for sudden movements that would alert them to the arrival of Metallia's forces as they - the Kings, the Senshi, Rin, and Future-Priest Helios - quickly pieced together what happened. If they had been given more time, Kaito would have wanted to tear more information out of the spectre of the "high priest" about what Mamoru had found out about Metallia's motives, but with Rin's confirmation of Beryl's transformation and their revelation of Usagi-chan missing, the 'why' had to give way for the 'what do we do now', everyone on edge about what "Queen Beryl" would do next.

Mamoru was resting in one of the rooms above them - a guest room two doors to the left from where you exit the elevator, to be more precise, and in situations like this, being more precise was somewhat comforting. It wasn't like they had a whole lot of control over the situation right now - more like they were along for a ride in a car that was midway through crashing - but knowing where his friends were was at least an attempt at balancing the great weight of not knowing where the enemy was. Knowing where he was, though, was about the long and short of it. Based on Priest Helios's assessment, Mamoru was down for the count: Metallia had been draining him dry, and as he had been separated from Earth, he had no means of replenishing his supply of energy. Now that he was back here he would recharge, but the process was strangled by all the Earth energy King Endymion had drawn in to protect those cities, the process apparently reducing free 'planetary energy' to near nothing, and if the future King were still under attack wherever he was, that energy would be drawn to his defenses there. Which meant, for the immediate future, Cardinal King was out of the fight. As was Princess Sailor Moon. And Metallia had fully consumed Beryl.

Things weren't in their favor.

To their credit, the Senshi did not once outwardly say that they never should have come. What had happened on their end was that when they - he and Yuu - had radioed after Rin, Usagi-chan and two of the other Senshi took a break from helping with the refugees to go look for him, with the understanding that no one would leave the castle; Usagi-chan had run into them when Gaea was leading them to the time door, so she got the full story from Pluto about how she had not seen Rin, and was there when the Guardian had negated their idea of using the key in Mamoru's possession to locate him. In their discussion, though, Pluto's activation of her "garnet rod" had pinged off of a discarded key just out of sight of the door, and when she identified it as Rin's, Gaea and Usagi-chan had taken off towards the storm brewing beyond the key, even after hearing that if she got lost in it she may never find her way back. They followed after her, scooping up Gaea as he paused to grab the discarded key, but in that moment and the way space works there, they lost Usagi-chan to the gathering clouds. They had called after her, eventually heard her speaking to someone - Beryl, her voice deeper and wider than they were used - but when they finally reached them, Usagi-chan was gone.

Rin was horrified from the moment he heard Usagi-chan had chased after him, his small hands holding Gaea close, but when it came to his turn he dutifully repeated for their sakes - his and South's - what he had told the others and his mother: that Beryl had been with Mamoru, but she wasn't a fairy, and thought he was someone else and got mad when he wasn't, and blamed Puu, and then she changed and became redder and had horns and called herself "Queen Beryl of Rose Tokyo", and Mamoru told him to go back and warn everyone. Since his return, they've been shoring up their defenses as best they could, but with Beryl as her vessel, their only real hope against Metallia was in the Silver Crystal. It had held her off once before, it could do so again, and with Usagi-chan missing, Neo-Queen Serenity held the entirety of that hope.

"Where would she have taken her?" Venus asked coldly of Helios, "You said he had been kept on a meteoroid? Have you found it yet?"

The ghostly form of Helios turned towards her, "I understand your concern and sympathize with what you are going though, but no. If this palace falls, so does the world; we simply do not have the resources to spend in search of it; when Metallia falls, finding Usagi-chan will be our first priority -"

"Mercury," Venus called, and the blue-suited sailor soldier's visor spread from one earring as her computer materialized in her hand, and as she typed some of the video feeds on screen changed from surveillance to data streams.

Kaito looked to the others for their response; should they be stopping this? Khalid looked to Venus warily, but made no move.

"I've got orbital paths of known NEO's, asteroids, KBO's and inner-system orbital comets; observations from the last month have yet to be compiled. If there is an object out of place I believe I can find it, but it will take some time."

"Use a portion of the computing power in here," Venus directed -

"The faster we know an attack is coming the faster we can respond!" Helios protested heatedly, moving symbolically between Mercury and the command bank in front of her, "Taking any of these sensors offline could be the difference between life and death -"

"Waiting could be the difference between life and death!" Mars snapped. Jupiter put a hand on her shoulder and the black-haired girl crossed her arms but said no more.

And then, throwing fuel on the fire, Helios appeared - their Helios - cracking into existence in the middle of them with a warning - "Metallia is on Earth! She's at her base at the North Pole!"

Helios - the ghost - turned, "You found her base?!"

"I covertly followed remnants of her minions from that last fight back to it and was scoping it out when they all started talking about her suddenly arriving not long ago - they're preparing for another strike!" Helios turned towards the monitors, "It couldn't have been an hour ago - I ran into some trouble and had to teleport around to lose them and it took a few jumps to get this far; they could be on their way now -"

"An hour?" Venus confirmed, ice-blue eyes turning on him.

He knew what she wanted to know: whether it was feasible Beryl had gone immediately to this base of hers with Usagi-chan, and whether the timeline fit. He supposed she'd be familiar enough with that place for it to meet Pluto's criteria, but honestly he had no idea how the time worked out. "She probably could have gone there, but I couldn't tell you how time worked in that dimension. It fits with our experience."

"Which North Pole?" Mercury asked, display screens still flashing through data even as she turned towards them, the numbers racing across her visor suddenly gone.

Helios considered a moment, closing his eyes before reporting, "Magnetic."

Mercury started typing on her computer, watching it as she followed Mars out of the room -

Jupiter paused, catching Venus's elbow to keep her back. She spoke quietly but he could hear it clear as day - a benefit of Tamonten's blessing: "The Queen? I don't think she should be fighting in her condition. It could be any minute now - are we really leaving her?"

Venus looked up at the taller girl and Kaito felt the other Kings - save West - looking at him for some sort of clue - but Venus glanced back at them before she said even quieter, "We failed her once already. She's with the enemy and the enemy wants her dead. We can't teleport unless we are all together and we can't leave her there." she paused, "If she's not there we'll teleport back."

They were leaving them alone in the defense of Crystal Tokyo. He wasn't exactly surprised: their alliance hadn't been fully formed or solidified on anything other than their association with Usagi-chan and Usagi-chan was gone. But where does that leave this place? He didn't know anything about the Queen's condition - he assumed Helios had meant she was tired from her fight against the last version of Metallia; if she weren't up to her full power and Beryl was a stronger host, they would need as many people as they could muster to fight this thing. With half their powerset leaving for the pole, their chances were cut drastically.

… but maybe the pole was where they should go.

"Take us with you," North called, crossing his arms. The pair looked back at him with that look of distaste for eavesdroppers, but with their attention - and everyone else's - he continued. "Metallia isn't expecting to be attacked at her own base. If we bring the fight to her and we all go in together and in full force, we could surprise her into an easier defeat, no matter what size she gets to. The Queen wouldn't have to use so much of her energy that way, and the people in the Palace would be safe."

Including their unconscious friend.

Jupiter looked to Venus, shaking her head minutely, so he pushed - "If her whole army's there you'd have to get through all of them to even begin to hope to find Usagi-chan - you need help. They're people, remember? You need me and East to cleanse them or you'll end up hurting innocents - Usagi-chan wouldn't want that. Maybe defeating Metallia would reverse the transformations made on them all at once. Going up against her together with the Queen is the smarter move here -"

"The Queen shouldn't be going anywhere," the ghostly High Priest cut in.

"Give his plan a chance," Nero said, "It's not chess - she can leave the castle and this plan sounds good: a surprise attack wouldn't be something she expected. She's just Usagi but older, right? She'd agree to this - just ask her."

"Whether she'd agree to it or not is beyond the point," Helios replied. "Teleporting, fighting, running -"

"She's pregnant," Venus cut in sharply, and suddenly 'her condition' took on a whole new meaning. She tapped Jupiter on the shoulder and preceded her out of the room.

Jupiter continued, turning back to them, avoiding the ghost-Helios, "She's too close due to risk anything like that. She's on bedrest from the stress and using too much of the Crystal's power. She's in no condition to go anywhere. If she tries to use the Crystal again, we don't know what will happen. Her mother ran, but she wasn't nearly as far along when she did." She paused, looking away from all of them as she shook her head, "We're going to save our Serenity - Usagi-chan - and get out through the time-stream. If she's gone, really gone," her voice wavered and she cleared her throat, "then we'll come back for the Queen and get her out. You may want to evacuate while you still can." She turned to follow Venus.

"So you're just giving up on this place?" East asked in quiet disbelief.

Jupiter stopped in the doorway, wiping at her face before she said back, barely turning her head, "What other option is there?"

What other option is there…?

To fight.

He paused, thinking quickly and not exactly liking the odds. They'd be putting all their eggs in one basket, and the basket had a lot of holes, but between that and running there weren't a whole lot of choices. "Let's go with them," he said, turning towards his friends even as he half-walked, half-ran, mostly-shuffled backwards towards the door, leaning them on. "If Usagi-chan is there, she could fight Metallia before Metallia gets here and she'd be fighting with all of our support - Heavenly Kings and Senshi alike. If she's not there, we could still give it a shot - our predecessors/future selves/whatever, didn't have the Shitennou's blessings on top of their original abilities - and we have a better chance of overpowering her if we work together, right? And it's us - maybe Mamoru was too touchy a person to trust for her, with that "Rose Tokyo Queen" nonsense in her head it was too uphill a battle to start with. We're more neutral but still originally on her side, we could get through to her, or confuse her enough to take advantage of a weakness."

They were following him, expressions various shades of commitment to this idea, but they were with him nevertheless. "If we're there, even if Usagi-chan isn't, if we can pin Metallia there maybe the Senshi will help us anyway. We could do this, and if we can't we can always just teleport back to Mamoru before it's too late, right?" he said, looking to Yuu for confirmation: he had no concrete understanding of how their teleportation works, but they had been able to teleport to help him before, so it would make sense if they could do it again; whether he need be conscious was the question.

South did not look as confident, but he nodded, and Kaito took that as mostly sure that's how it could work. Senshi could apparently teleport where they needed to go so long as they had a lock on it; they could teleport to Mamoru so long as they had a lock on him. That call the first time - was that necessary? "Can you contact him?" he asked of Priest Helios as they continued down marble hallways; West took the lead, his blue gem out and focused on something, and North let him, trusting he was leading them towards where the Senshi were setting up.

"He's in no condition to be awakened yet -" the Priest started to reply, but Kaito hadn't asked that and his expression must have said as much, "- but he is dreaming, and I can pull him out as soon as our sensors pick up any high energy source, but I'm hoping it won't come to that." Their Helios - the flying unisus - looked confused but he was keeping up with things without protest, which Kaito appreciated. They didn't have time to explain everything over again, not when the Senshi were intent on leaving immediately.

"Yeah, well, same." How nice would it be to get there and everything just falls into place perfectly? … or even imperfectly - they had made a barrier to keep those creatures out before, could they make it to keep Metallia in? Like some sort of giant evil baby-pen -

"Venus!" West called as he threw open the doors to a courtyard and they broke through, and while Venus stood resolute, her hands in Mars's and Mercury's, Jupiter glanced back and the power that had amassed around them faded. The Kings, led by West, didn't stop until they were right outside their little circle. "We're coming with you," West announced, "North's plan is the right of it - it's the best chance we have at saving this place. The Queen may not be able to make it, but if Usagi-chan is there she will want to fight, and you'll need us there as backup when she does."

"We can't carry four extra people," Venus denied, not looking at him, "We can manage one at most -"

"We can help power it," South stated, finally saying something with that calm and clear certainty. He stepped forward and, after a glance to Venus, Mercury released Jupiter's hand, and South inserted himself there. "Just like we did before, but let them direct it," he ordered, and before they could change their minds or think on it further, East took Jupiter's other hand and Mars's, taking up the East position to Yuu's South. He picked up the pattern, taking the hands of Mars and Venus, and Khalid took position between Venus and Mercury to complete the enlarged circle with the cardinal points locked in.

"Mercury's got the position," Venus stated, and as one the senshi took in a breath and closed their eyes in concentration; Kaito followed their lead, and as pressure grew on either side of him he focused on recalling that feeling they had built up before, a half-meditative state in calling up the powers of the North and giving them to be used in this effort. While it had happened only once before, he still somehow managed to miss the feeling of West's metallic elements on his left and East's earth on his right, but before long the pressure grew so that he could barely notice anything else.

"Good luck, everyone," Helios - their Helios - said as the power reached a crescendo.

The hands in his held tighter and then it felt like his whole body went up in static.

A/N: I *almost* didn't go through with the whole "NQS is super-pregnant and that's why she's not exactly effective right now and why she and KE didn't go out to take care of this together in the first place" but .-. I guess I went ahead and did it, hahahahah XD ((yes it's a girl)) ((...will she be more chibi-usa or kousagi? idk I just know it's a girl)) ((... ) and Metallia may be in search of a new host soon *i'm just sayin'*))

Ugh having the senshi not only be ok with noping out but were actively planning to was also one of those "what the hell am I doing right now?" moments but, like - they failed her *three times*. Once in their past lives in being unable to prevent her death, again in the present when they believed Diana and allied themselves against the citizens of Earth for *revenge*, and then, in their minds, /again/ when they only reawakened when it was too late in the Archons showdown. They just got her back - they just found her again, and in a moment of carelessness, Usagi (their precious *Serenity*) was taken from them again by an enemy who specifically has it in for her bloodline. Screw the world, they can't lose her. Not again. ... imagine if she's already dead though and they had to go back to Crystal Tokyo and effectively kidnap NQS and Rin as their new Serenity charge and just :D how angsty man. ANYWAY!

These poor dudes, I'm just saying. And maybe Nero'll bring it up when all this is over but, like, in the span of a week and a day they fought enemies from their past, their present, and their future, in potential apocalyptic battles. Maybe I should've spread the fights out farther but, like, *help it made sense* with Rin appearing right after they got back, which pushed up the Archon timeline to *right now* and with the senshi awakening it would only make sense for Rin to be all "being here almost killed my dad and mission accomplished so bye" and the doom and gloom girls appearing to go along with the ride back to the future and that?br /

Listen I owe the boys gift baskets, I /

I'll give them like a gap year or something before throwing arc four at them.

ANYWAY THANK YOU FOR READING!