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*******

While Gohan and Usagi were snoozing away in the room of Spirit and Time....or doing other things....Mistress 9 had decided to show up at the banquet. In short, she had ruined it. Eighty-seven deaths, one hundred and eleven injured.

Minako didn't have her ancient transformation broach with her , so her only option was to get away before she was killed. In her rush though, she had accidentally left Goten behind; she didn't know where the other two were, but truthfully she didn't care. The only thing she could think about was getting away.

So now she was home, and quite out of breath. She looked around the one-story, it was pitch black.

What? I could have sworn I left the lights on...

She walked over to a purple pastel lamp and tried to turn it on, but no such luck. She attempted the same with the other lights, but had the same results.

"Must have blown a damn fuse," she muttered to herself.

She hated black outs, probably because of that stupid slumber party she had when she was still a kid. Usagi and all the others had hidden from her with all the lights switched off, and started making all kinds of noises-that-went-bump-in-the-night. She had screamed bloody murder when they had dropped a fake tarantula on her head, and she went yelling through the house, (actually it was Rei's temple), that arachnids were going to kill them all.

She laughed back on that moment, but Usagi, Rei, Ami, Makoto...they would never laugh again... SHE had killed them. The thoughts of Mistress 9 gave her shivers down her spine, so she tried to block her out of her mind.

She started down the stairs to the basement to try and see if she could fix the fuse. She thought she could still hear those noises-that-go-bump-in-the-night, which once again reminded her of the diabolical Mistress 9, which made her ask herself something.

Where did she go after I drove away from the banquet?

She was about to get the answer to that question very soon...

Sure enough, she was able to fix the fuse once she got down into the basement, but as soon as the lights flickered on, she wished she hadn't. There, sitting across from her, perched across the basement freezer, was Mistress 9.

"Oh, very nice of you to turn on the lights for me dearie, I sometimes get scared of those noises-that-go-bump-in-night."

She licked her lips as Minako froze in sheer horror of having to look into those eyes. She had seen almost the exact same thing that Goten had when he had fought her. People stretched on racks, getting whipped by metal chains. But she wasn't Goten, and her mind couldn't take it like his could, so it just stopped right there in it's tracks, and shut down.

In a way, that was better for her, because since her mind was gone, she wouldn't feel the pain of Mistress 9 wrenching her nails into her throat, and pulling her inside the abyss within her and Pharaoh 90....

*****

Eventually Gohan and Chibiusa had woken up and gotten out of Kami's Lookout to find Goten. Once they had, the three went back home, expecting to find Minako. Usagi had taken around five steps into the house before she let out a shrill, high-pitched scream. In clear print, on the wooden living room floor, a message read:

1 DOWN 3 TO GO

Blood. It had been written sloppily in blood. Minako's blood. They knew it because right beside it lay a big, red bow. Goten jst stared at it, like a kid burning ants with his magnifying glass. Usagi couldn't stand to look at it, and turned away to sob in Gohan's chest.

He placed his hand on her back. "Hey, it's alright, it'll be alright," even though he didn't believe it himself. But she had comforted him, and now it was his turn. He released from his grasp for a minute to go into the kitchen to get some rags and things to clean this mess up. He found the cleanser, and the washcloths, and now he just needed the water.

Suddenly, he felt a firm jerk of his shoulders from behind him, and the hoarse whisper of "Hello Lover."

And that was all he knew before something hit him, and he passed out into darkness....

*******

To Be Continued.....

(A/N: Confused? Scared? All of the above? *heh* Another cliffhanger...aren't I evil? R&R ~Flirtatious Flamingo, Queen Of The Cliffhangers~)