Disclaimer: What, haven't you stopped asking by now? I don't own
them. I probably never will. I blame it on my bad karma.
Author's note: As promised, more on Mulder and Scully. Oh, and
just so everyone knows, this part takes place the same day as the last
part.
A BIG THANKS TO: Kitten. What would I do without her? Probably have
HUGE holes in my plot.
*****
After I cook the vegetables, what do I do with the wheelchairs?
*****
Silence.
Silence.
Rasp.
Silence
Gasp.
Gasp.
Gasp.
Thump.
Thump.
Th-thump.
Th-thump.
A heart reborn; restarted.
*****
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" The screech reached an inhuman intensity,
paining those close in the temple. "ARRGGGGGGGGGGHHH!!!"
"Lun@...?" Willow asked hesitantly, knocking on the bathroom door.
It flew open under the red-head's fist and a dark-haired demon flew
out, long hair whirling behind her. "I can't believe it!" she yelled,
sharing her anger with the entire temple. "This is utterly
impossible!! This is not happening!! This is a bad dream!!!"
"What's going on?" Xander yelped, running into the room and sliding on
his socks into the dresser. With a whimper, he clutched his elbow.
The banshee known as Lun@ ignored him. "They made me alive, Buffy!
They actually, physically..." She let out a string of cusses that
would make a sailor weep with envy.
"How do you... I thought it was fake. I thought the point was to make
you look real...?" Buffy tried to follow the frenzied movements of
her Guardian Angel, who was storming through her roommates luggage.
"Well, they--" a string of cusses in a few other languages, followed
by the cursing of a few dozen *very* high deities was inserted,
"--did it! How dare they!" Pulling a small, pink plastic wrapped
rectangle out of the current bag she was rooting through, she
stomped back into the bathroom and slammed the door.
Buffy and Willow exchanged a glance. "You okay, Lun@?"
"I'm menstruating!! What do you think!!"
"Too much information..." Xander mumbled, clutching his hurt elbow
and wandering out of the room.
"But you're dead." Willow twisted a lock of her short hair.
"Obviously not, though I happen to remember being exactly that
yesterday. Happily dead, in fact. I remember thinking just yesterday,
'Boy it's sure nice to be dead.'" The bathroom door swung open again,
revealing an extremely disgruntled Guardian Angel.
"No one ever said life was fair," Jenny remarked reasonably from the
corner of the room, a Wicca book laid out in front of her.
"Not true. I remember very clearly at least eight people telling me
in the last thousand years that life was fair." At Ms. Calendar's
skeptical look, she continued, missing Buffy and Willow's second
exchange of glances. "One of them put it this way: 'Life, you will
find, is fair'. Although..." she began speculatively, "strangely
enough, they all died before the age of 21..." She rubbed her
abdomen gently, face contorted into something scary.
Willow and Buffy backed up a few steps. "Lun@, you gonna be okay?"
"I've got a cramp the size of China. My God, I can't believe this is
happening. This is horrible!!" Accepting the Midol Willow handed her
with a nod of thanks, she swept out of the room and flopped down on the
temple steps to brood.
*****
Scully straightened her suit self-consciously. It was a little
wrinkled, but it would have to do. Exiting the room that Rei had so
kindly let her use to dress in that morning, she spotted a very
depressed-looking Lun@ moping on the steps. "You okay?" she inquired,
a bit distressed when she remembered the wailing that had been going
on moments before.
"Je ne c'est pas." I don't know. The girl shook her head, using
French as a ducking device from answering questions.
"Is something wrong?"
"I've just got some serious hormonal problems going on. Nothing too
big. I'll just be a bit mercurial for a while, until my meds kick
in. How 'bout you? You're a little subdued."
There was a pause between the two.
"I had a dream last night," Scully murmured finally. "A bad one."
Lun@ began to look interested, despite herself. "About what?"
Another pause filled the air. "I was running," Scully answered
finally in a quiet tone. "I was with someone. Someone I trusted.
Someone I... loved. I was... we were... trying to save these...
warrior people. The person next to me was... very familiar. I
think I know him."
"A dream?"
"It was like a memory." Scully shook her head, her short, red
hair swinging slightly. "It's not, though. It has to be a dream."
"Images stuck in your mind?"
"Yeah."
"Like gum on a desk."
"Yeah. And certain sounds keep playing over and over."
"Not like a broken record, though. Like someone has burned that
sound 500 times into a CD that you can't turn off."
"Yeah."
There was another pause.
"Me, too. I used to think that they were pieces of my life, but
they were so ridiculous. If I had lived like my dreams said I did,
I would have been some kind of Superhuman creature."
"But the quality of the dreams... it's different than other dreams."
"Yep. Like the others are all made of cotton, and these are made
of silk. Different textures."
"You like analogies, don't you?"
Lun@ blushed and smiled a little. "I guess I do. I like to be able
to put things into simply, tactile terms."
"That's a special skill. You'd be good at writing layman's books or
something when you grow up."
*When you grow up.* The words echoed in Lun@'s head. *Yeah, right.
Well... maybe, if I'm actually going to grow up, now.* "Maybe,"
she responded. "But, I don't want to grow up."
"Why not?" Scully pried her blue-green eyes from the lone figure
of Rei sweeping the temple steps and dragged it to the young teen
next to her. "You don't want responsibility?"
Lun@ rolled her eyes. "Does anyone? But, no, that's not it. I..."
Her voice lowered to a whisper, head bowed. "I don't want Buffy and
everyone else to grow up and forget about me. They treat me like you
would a... a cool teacher. You can joke with them, you can cry to
them, but there's always this invisible line that must never be
crossed. You don't really go with them to movies, or complain to
them, or anything like that. It's 'cause... 'cause..."
"Because..." Scully prompted, interested.
"Because that's the way it has to be." She grimaced at her own
lame answer, lifting her head to Scully's searching gaze.
Scully looked at those eyes, those large, green, _sightful_ eyes,
and the statement rang through her as truth. "Who _are_ you?"
"I am me," the other replied softly. The statement rang in the air.
"There's nothing else for me to be."
There was another pause. "Tell me, Scully... do your dreams...
ever... have a... prince in them?" Lun@ looked over at the other
woman out of the corner of her eye.
"Yes..." Scully whispered, remembering. "Tall... dark..."
"And handsome?" the other inserted wryly.
Scully found herself smiling, a rare occasion. "Well, to use
a cliche, yes."
Lun@ tightened her arms around her stomach in pain for a moment
before she spoke. "Scully, do me a favor. Next time you have
a dream... wake me up and tell me while it's still fresh in
your mind."
Mulder chose that moment to walk out of the door. "Scully, ready
to go?"
"Sure, Mulder. See you later, Lun@. Take care." She stood, with
a hand from Mulder, and they began to walk away.
"You didn't answer my question!" Lun@ called after her. Scully
ignored her. "Well... great." Leaning her head against a post,
and rubbing her aching belly, she sighed and watched the two leave.
"Thanks a lot."
The man stared at the two people in front of him. "Um... so..."
He shuffled through the random messes of papers on his desk,
searching for time he didn't have. It helped that he wasn't the
most organized of men, not having the ingenuity to be both neat
and have a case record percentage higher than his meager age of 36.
He was slightly awed and cowed by both the credentials and the
imposing figures of the agents in front of him.
The woman, especially. US officials had the reputation of being
humorless and hard, but this was ridiculous. He felt safer at his
family reunion with his sister-in-law's high, squeaky voice than
he did with that woman's expression. It was no-nonsense, utter
business.
Mr. Ino felt sorry for her partner.
The lanky fellow at her side was poised in a relaxed manner and
a curious expression, the yin to his partner's yang.
Mr. Ino cleared his throat. "You both know why you're here."
The man and the woman exchanged a glance. "Actually, Mr.--" he
studied the nameplate before him, "Ino, is it?--Actually, we don't
know why we're here. It was to our beliefs that the United States
government and Japan do not simply 'trade' agents for cases."
Oh, brother. The officer leaned forward against his desk.
"We've never come across such a... difficult occurrence before."
"Oh?" That was the man again. Mr. Ino began to wonder if the woman
was capable of speech.
"We've run into a difficult case. Actually, we keep running into it.
In Japan--especially in Tokyo--we have a lot of... strange occurrences."
The agents in front of him exchanged a glance, but said nothing.
Mr. Ino swallowed and moved on. "Monsters keep appearing and
terrorizing the city, making people sick and so forth. They keep
appearing in odd places and blowing things up. Mostly, though, they
have a strange appetite for... I guess it's human energy."
"Are you suggesting that one of these monsters blew up our hotel
last night?" The tone of the man suggested idle curiosity, but the
look in his eyes reflected a sharp intellect and a keen, driven
mind. There was nothing idle about this fellow.
"No, no." Mr. Ino waved it off. "Definitely not. That was a prank
put together by a disgruntled young man. Different stories."
"Mr. Ino, would you mind describing these 'monsters' for us, please?"
came the harshly skeptical and scientific voice of the lady.
"They are... mostly female, and... well, we have some video footage."
Picking up a remote from his desk drawer, the Head of Police turned
on the TV sitting in the corner and pushed 'Play' on the VCR.
A scene flickered into view on the brand new set. What looked like
a monster movie started to play. The 'Monster' was about the size
of a large person and obviously female. It was garbed brightly and
scantily, all the while capturing the screaming civilians fleeing
from its rampage and cocooning them in a green-blue thread, almost
the way a spider would.
"This is real footage taken by a police car camera a month ago."
Mr. Ino frowned in remembrance.
The two agents exchanged yet another glance, as if they could read
each other's minds. And perhaps, the pot-bellied police chief thought
with a start, perhaps they could.
Just as it seemed that there would be no Tokyo left, a girl in
a bathing suit appeared in front of it. Lightening struck the
monster. Another bathing suit model appeared, and suddenly the
monster was frozen in a block of ice. Three more bathing suit
girls appeared, and the one with long pigtails and wings completed a
complicated dance with a short stick. Whiteness filled the screen,
and when the light cleared, the monster was gone. The girls waved
at the crowd and disappeared from their cheering fans.
"They jumped."
"Excuse me?" inquired the man again.
"You looked confused. They jumped." Mr. Ino began to rewind the
tape.
"Who?"
"The girls in bathing suits, Mulder," said his partner, a hint of
dryness in her voice.
"From what I've heard, you guys live to investigate stuff like this.
We're at the end of our rope. If monsters keep attacking Tokyo,
we're not going to have much of Tokyo left for them to destroy."
"Why don't you just count on the bathing suit women?" Inquired
Agent Mulder. "They seem to have a handle on it."
The Japanese man scratched his head. "You know governments. They
like to have a handle on these things. They like to know what's
going on. What happens if the Senshi die? Then we're back to
square one. No, they want to know what can be done, if anything.
If you can think of anything to help us..."
"The Senshi?"
"The Sailor Senshi. They fight monsters like this. Their leader
is Sailor Moon. Don't tell me you haven't heard anything about them?"
Mr. Ino was almost aghast at the notion.
"A little," Mulder admitted. "But I thought they were just a myth."
"A myth? No," denied the smaller man, "I've met a couple face to
face. They're real, all right."
*****
"So, Scully, what did you think?"
"I think it was a load of hooey, and you know it!" She bit her lip
in anger.
"But the video tape--"
"Could have been doctored."
"But, why would the police chief lie to us? Why would an entire
room of police lie to us? Face it Scully, the Bathing Suit Brigade
is real." He wiggled his eyebrows.
They stepped off the bus at the temple stairs and began to climb.
"It's just not possible!" Scully finally exclaimed, stopping on the
27th step. "It's not possible to freeze a creature with a magic
toy, no matter how many movies or cartoons or crap TV you watch."
Mulder looked at her at eye level, paused a couple steps below her.
"We'll see." He then continued to climb.
Scully fell in step next to him. "Mulder, I can't believe you."
"What if they sprayed the creature with liquid Nitrogen?"
"It wouldn't have created a block of ice, it only would have frozen
the thing. The explosion at the end *could* have been a bomb, though."
"A bomb?"
"If they put it *inside* the creature--"
"Scully, you're reaching."
She sighed angrily. "So, what do you want me to say, Mulder? You
want me to just nod and say, 'Of course you're right, Mulder, how
silly of me to question you, lets go talk to the aliens'? Would
you like that? Because, right now, Mulder, I'm all out of ideas.
I'm fresh out. I also don't think that well on so much jet lag!!"
"Scully, I never said anything about aliens," he replied mildly.
"See you at dinner!" He waved, hopping up the remaining steps and
striding quickly to the Boys Room.
Reaching the top of the steps, Scully glowered and made her way to
the shrine. Lun@ was sitting on the edge of the steps, the same
position as she was this morning. On a whim, she turned to the
girl. "Do you know anything about the Sailor Senshi?"
Lun@ looked up from her pad of paper guiltily. Traces of tears
could be made out barely on her cheeks. "Huh?"
Scully repeated her question.
"Oh, I should hope so," the girl responded, opening up in both body
language and tone. "I seem to be drawing one."
A glance at her pad of paper revealed a slim girl with long legs and
short hair wearing one of those damn infuriating bathing suits.
"I'm researching the Sailor Senshi. I guess it's getting to me, too,"
she added ruefully. "I kinda dreamed about them last night."
"Researching?"
"Yeah. They're a very popular myth around these parts."
"Myth?"
"It's an old legend. They're guardians from the other planets,
warriors of the light come to protect the only planet left capable
of sustaining life. Well, the only planet _now_. Millions of years
ago, though, people lived there. They were wiped out by an evil
witch from Earth. She was contained, and the women warriors were sent
to the future to protect the population, should they ever escape
to wreak havoc on the people here."
"Oh."
"They're named after the planets and the Earth's Moon."
"So, that one is Sailor Earth?" Scully studied the crude sketch and
felt the itch at the back of her mind grow stronger. Talking to this
person, this... _child_ made things click in her subconscious. The
feeling of deja vu grew stronger.
"No, from what I can tell, there is no Sailor Earth. I believe
that this one is either Sailor Venus or Sailor Mercury, but I'm leaning
towards Mercury. Venus just doesn't... _feel_ right."
Scully touched the boot delicately, tracing it's outline with her
finger. "No, Mercury." It came out as a whisper. "The ice is in
her eyes, the water in her heart... even her expression imitates a
river. She is the warrior that I trust."
Lun@ looked at her quizzically. "Are you okay?"
Scully looked up at her startled companion. "Uh, yeah."
"Why do you ask?" At Scully's confusion, Lun@ added, "About the
Senshi?"
"... I had a dream last night about them." Surprisingly enough, it
wasn't a lie.
"So did I," Lun@ whispered, eyes drawing back to the pad of paper in
her hands. She clutched it to her chest.
Scully felt the words being pulled out of her by Lun@'s presence.
"They were fighting gracefully. Then, one of them just stopped and
started looking at me. I thought I heard her say my name. They
were so vibrant and full of life, though... I think that if I had
reached out, I would have felt flesh and blood."
A sudden noise behind them broke the spell. "Supper is being served
now, if you're eating with us," said Rei with a bossy air. "Come
and wash up." She swept away, her red and white temple robes swirling
behind her.
For a moment, Scully relived a piece of her dream. *A warrior...?*
She shook it off. "We better go," Scully awkwardly broke the silence.
Lun@ nodded in agreement and clutched the sketchbook closer to her
chest.
"Well, bye." The FBI agent strode away, heels clicking behind her.
Lun@'s voice was barely audible. "I dreamed they all died... and
so did we."
The shadows moved around her as she remained still.
*****
"Excuse me." The pleasant voice broke the dark haired damned angel's
thoughts. "Could you please tell me..." The question hung for a
moment. "... if we've met before?"
Lun@ looked up slowly, her eyes moving up the body before her.
He was tall and thin, light and dark.
He cocked his head at her started gaze, his own matching it.
She dropped to her knees. "I..."
He fell to his. "... know you."
They clutched each other in a big hug as Lun@ began to sob.
*****
She ran.
Ran.
She had to get there before he left.
Ran.
Like the wind.
She was the wind.
She was in the wind, a part of it, blowing to where she had to be.
The rose gardens...
The tall figure turned.
She stopped.
"Anderson..." Her breath came in heaves, caught in her throat.
"Duie..." He looked down at her. "You came."
"You didn't leave."
"I couldn't."
"Why?"
"Because..." He couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't say the
words. Couldn't put his soul on the line.
"I know."
The kiss was sweet and chaste, and they could both feel it ripple down
to their toes. The tingle from their lips spread to their faces,
and the pair looked at each other from heavy-lidded eyes.
She reached up, way up, to brush his cheek with her hand.
The moment paused. Time stopped.
*****
"What the heck...?" mumbled a sleepy, redheaded FBI agent.
them. I probably never will. I blame it on my bad karma.
Author's note: As promised, more on Mulder and Scully. Oh, and
just so everyone knows, this part takes place the same day as the last
part.
A BIG THANKS TO: Kitten. What would I do without her? Probably have
HUGE holes in my plot.
*****
After I cook the vegetables, what do I do with the wheelchairs?
*****
Silence.
Silence.
Rasp.
Silence
Gasp.
Gasp.
Gasp.
Thump.
Thump.
Th-thump.
Th-thump.
A heart reborn; restarted.
*****
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" The screech reached an inhuman intensity,
paining those close in the temple. "ARRGGGGGGGGGGHHH!!!"
"Lun@...?" Willow asked hesitantly, knocking on the bathroom door.
It flew open under the red-head's fist and a dark-haired demon flew
out, long hair whirling behind her. "I can't believe it!" she yelled,
sharing her anger with the entire temple. "This is utterly
impossible!! This is not happening!! This is a bad dream!!!"
"What's going on?" Xander yelped, running into the room and sliding on
his socks into the dresser. With a whimper, he clutched his elbow.
The banshee known as Lun@ ignored him. "They made me alive, Buffy!
They actually, physically..." She let out a string of cusses that
would make a sailor weep with envy.
"How do you... I thought it was fake. I thought the point was to make
you look real...?" Buffy tried to follow the frenzied movements of
her Guardian Angel, who was storming through her roommates luggage.
"Well, they--" a string of cusses in a few other languages, followed
by the cursing of a few dozen *very* high deities was inserted,
"--did it! How dare they!" Pulling a small, pink plastic wrapped
rectangle out of the current bag she was rooting through, she
stomped back into the bathroom and slammed the door.
Buffy and Willow exchanged a glance. "You okay, Lun@?"
"I'm menstruating!! What do you think!!"
"Too much information..." Xander mumbled, clutching his hurt elbow
and wandering out of the room.
"But you're dead." Willow twisted a lock of her short hair.
"Obviously not, though I happen to remember being exactly that
yesterday. Happily dead, in fact. I remember thinking just yesterday,
'Boy it's sure nice to be dead.'" The bathroom door swung open again,
revealing an extremely disgruntled Guardian Angel.
"No one ever said life was fair," Jenny remarked reasonably from the
corner of the room, a Wicca book laid out in front of her.
"Not true. I remember very clearly at least eight people telling me
in the last thousand years that life was fair." At Ms. Calendar's
skeptical look, she continued, missing Buffy and Willow's second
exchange of glances. "One of them put it this way: 'Life, you will
find, is fair'. Although..." she began speculatively, "strangely
enough, they all died before the age of 21..." She rubbed her
abdomen gently, face contorted into something scary.
Willow and Buffy backed up a few steps. "Lun@, you gonna be okay?"
"I've got a cramp the size of China. My God, I can't believe this is
happening. This is horrible!!" Accepting the Midol Willow handed her
with a nod of thanks, she swept out of the room and flopped down on the
temple steps to brood.
*****
Scully straightened her suit self-consciously. It was a little
wrinkled, but it would have to do. Exiting the room that Rei had so
kindly let her use to dress in that morning, she spotted a very
depressed-looking Lun@ moping on the steps. "You okay?" she inquired,
a bit distressed when she remembered the wailing that had been going
on moments before.
"Je ne c'est pas." I don't know. The girl shook her head, using
French as a ducking device from answering questions.
"Is something wrong?"
"I've just got some serious hormonal problems going on. Nothing too
big. I'll just be a bit mercurial for a while, until my meds kick
in. How 'bout you? You're a little subdued."
There was a pause between the two.
"I had a dream last night," Scully murmured finally. "A bad one."
Lun@ began to look interested, despite herself. "About what?"
Another pause filled the air. "I was running," Scully answered
finally in a quiet tone. "I was with someone. Someone I trusted.
Someone I... loved. I was... we were... trying to save these...
warrior people. The person next to me was... very familiar. I
think I know him."
"A dream?"
"It was like a memory." Scully shook her head, her short, red
hair swinging slightly. "It's not, though. It has to be a dream."
"Images stuck in your mind?"
"Yeah."
"Like gum on a desk."
"Yeah. And certain sounds keep playing over and over."
"Not like a broken record, though. Like someone has burned that
sound 500 times into a CD that you can't turn off."
"Yeah."
There was another pause.
"Me, too. I used to think that they were pieces of my life, but
they were so ridiculous. If I had lived like my dreams said I did,
I would have been some kind of Superhuman creature."
"But the quality of the dreams... it's different than other dreams."
"Yep. Like the others are all made of cotton, and these are made
of silk. Different textures."
"You like analogies, don't you?"
Lun@ blushed and smiled a little. "I guess I do. I like to be able
to put things into simply, tactile terms."
"That's a special skill. You'd be good at writing layman's books or
something when you grow up."
*When you grow up.* The words echoed in Lun@'s head. *Yeah, right.
Well... maybe, if I'm actually going to grow up, now.* "Maybe,"
she responded. "But, I don't want to grow up."
"Why not?" Scully pried her blue-green eyes from the lone figure
of Rei sweeping the temple steps and dragged it to the young teen
next to her. "You don't want responsibility?"
Lun@ rolled her eyes. "Does anyone? But, no, that's not it. I..."
Her voice lowered to a whisper, head bowed. "I don't want Buffy and
everyone else to grow up and forget about me. They treat me like you
would a... a cool teacher. You can joke with them, you can cry to
them, but there's always this invisible line that must never be
crossed. You don't really go with them to movies, or complain to
them, or anything like that. It's 'cause... 'cause..."
"Because..." Scully prompted, interested.
"Because that's the way it has to be." She grimaced at her own
lame answer, lifting her head to Scully's searching gaze.
Scully looked at those eyes, those large, green, _sightful_ eyes,
and the statement rang through her as truth. "Who _are_ you?"
"I am me," the other replied softly. The statement rang in the air.
"There's nothing else for me to be."
There was another pause. "Tell me, Scully... do your dreams...
ever... have a... prince in them?" Lun@ looked over at the other
woman out of the corner of her eye.
"Yes..." Scully whispered, remembering. "Tall... dark..."
"And handsome?" the other inserted wryly.
Scully found herself smiling, a rare occasion. "Well, to use
a cliche, yes."
Lun@ tightened her arms around her stomach in pain for a moment
before she spoke. "Scully, do me a favor. Next time you have
a dream... wake me up and tell me while it's still fresh in
your mind."
Mulder chose that moment to walk out of the door. "Scully, ready
to go?"
"Sure, Mulder. See you later, Lun@. Take care." She stood, with
a hand from Mulder, and they began to walk away.
"You didn't answer my question!" Lun@ called after her. Scully
ignored her. "Well... great." Leaning her head against a post,
and rubbing her aching belly, she sighed and watched the two leave.
"Thanks a lot."
The man stared at the two people in front of him. "Um... so..."
He shuffled through the random messes of papers on his desk,
searching for time he didn't have. It helped that he wasn't the
most organized of men, not having the ingenuity to be both neat
and have a case record percentage higher than his meager age of 36.
He was slightly awed and cowed by both the credentials and the
imposing figures of the agents in front of him.
The woman, especially. US officials had the reputation of being
humorless and hard, but this was ridiculous. He felt safer at his
family reunion with his sister-in-law's high, squeaky voice than
he did with that woman's expression. It was no-nonsense, utter
business.
Mr. Ino felt sorry for her partner.
The lanky fellow at her side was poised in a relaxed manner and
a curious expression, the yin to his partner's yang.
Mr. Ino cleared his throat. "You both know why you're here."
The man and the woman exchanged a glance. "Actually, Mr.--" he
studied the nameplate before him, "Ino, is it?--Actually, we don't
know why we're here. It was to our beliefs that the United States
government and Japan do not simply 'trade' agents for cases."
Oh, brother. The officer leaned forward against his desk.
"We've never come across such a... difficult occurrence before."
"Oh?" That was the man again. Mr. Ino began to wonder if the woman
was capable of speech.
"We've run into a difficult case. Actually, we keep running into it.
In Japan--especially in Tokyo--we have a lot of... strange occurrences."
The agents in front of him exchanged a glance, but said nothing.
Mr. Ino swallowed and moved on. "Monsters keep appearing and
terrorizing the city, making people sick and so forth. They keep
appearing in odd places and blowing things up. Mostly, though, they
have a strange appetite for... I guess it's human energy."
"Are you suggesting that one of these monsters blew up our hotel
last night?" The tone of the man suggested idle curiosity, but the
look in his eyes reflected a sharp intellect and a keen, driven
mind. There was nothing idle about this fellow.
"No, no." Mr. Ino waved it off. "Definitely not. That was a prank
put together by a disgruntled young man. Different stories."
"Mr. Ino, would you mind describing these 'monsters' for us, please?"
came the harshly skeptical and scientific voice of the lady.
"They are... mostly female, and... well, we have some video footage."
Picking up a remote from his desk drawer, the Head of Police turned
on the TV sitting in the corner and pushed 'Play' on the VCR.
A scene flickered into view on the brand new set. What looked like
a monster movie started to play. The 'Monster' was about the size
of a large person and obviously female. It was garbed brightly and
scantily, all the while capturing the screaming civilians fleeing
from its rampage and cocooning them in a green-blue thread, almost
the way a spider would.
"This is real footage taken by a police car camera a month ago."
Mr. Ino frowned in remembrance.
The two agents exchanged yet another glance, as if they could read
each other's minds. And perhaps, the pot-bellied police chief thought
with a start, perhaps they could.
Just as it seemed that there would be no Tokyo left, a girl in
a bathing suit appeared in front of it. Lightening struck the
monster. Another bathing suit model appeared, and suddenly the
monster was frozen in a block of ice. Three more bathing suit
girls appeared, and the one with long pigtails and wings completed a
complicated dance with a short stick. Whiteness filled the screen,
and when the light cleared, the monster was gone. The girls waved
at the crowd and disappeared from their cheering fans.
"They jumped."
"Excuse me?" inquired the man again.
"You looked confused. They jumped." Mr. Ino began to rewind the
tape.
"Who?"
"The girls in bathing suits, Mulder," said his partner, a hint of
dryness in her voice.
"From what I've heard, you guys live to investigate stuff like this.
We're at the end of our rope. If monsters keep attacking Tokyo,
we're not going to have much of Tokyo left for them to destroy."
"Why don't you just count on the bathing suit women?" Inquired
Agent Mulder. "They seem to have a handle on it."
The Japanese man scratched his head. "You know governments. They
like to have a handle on these things. They like to know what's
going on. What happens if the Senshi die? Then we're back to
square one. No, they want to know what can be done, if anything.
If you can think of anything to help us..."
"The Senshi?"
"The Sailor Senshi. They fight monsters like this. Their leader
is Sailor Moon. Don't tell me you haven't heard anything about them?"
Mr. Ino was almost aghast at the notion.
"A little," Mulder admitted. "But I thought they were just a myth."
"A myth? No," denied the smaller man, "I've met a couple face to
face. They're real, all right."
*****
"So, Scully, what did you think?"
"I think it was a load of hooey, and you know it!" She bit her lip
in anger.
"But the video tape--"
"Could have been doctored."
"But, why would the police chief lie to us? Why would an entire
room of police lie to us? Face it Scully, the Bathing Suit Brigade
is real." He wiggled his eyebrows.
They stepped off the bus at the temple stairs and began to climb.
"It's just not possible!" Scully finally exclaimed, stopping on the
27th step. "It's not possible to freeze a creature with a magic
toy, no matter how many movies or cartoons or crap TV you watch."
Mulder looked at her at eye level, paused a couple steps below her.
"We'll see." He then continued to climb.
Scully fell in step next to him. "Mulder, I can't believe you."
"What if they sprayed the creature with liquid Nitrogen?"
"It wouldn't have created a block of ice, it only would have frozen
the thing. The explosion at the end *could* have been a bomb, though."
"A bomb?"
"If they put it *inside* the creature--"
"Scully, you're reaching."
She sighed angrily. "So, what do you want me to say, Mulder? You
want me to just nod and say, 'Of course you're right, Mulder, how
silly of me to question you, lets go talk to the aliens'? Would
you like that? Because, right now, Mulder, I'm all out of ideas.
I'm fresh out. I also don't think that well on so much jet lag!!"
"Scully, I never said anything about aliens," he replied mildly.
"See you at dinner!" He waved, hopping up the remaining steps and
striding quickly to the Boys Room.
Reaching the top of the steps, Scully glowered and made her way to
the shrine. Lun@ was sitting on the edge of the steps, the same
position as she was this morning. On a whim, she turned to the
girl. "Do you know anything about the Sailor Senshi?"
Lun@ looked up from her pad of paper guiltily. Traces of tears
could be made out barely on her cheeks. "Huh?"
Scully repeated her question.
"Oh, I should hope so," the girl responded, opening up in both body
language and tone. "I seem to be drawing one."
A glance at her pad of paper revealed a slim girl with long legs and
short hair wearing one of those damn infuriating bathing suits.
"I'm researching the Sailor Senshi. I guess it's getting to me, too,"
she added ruefully. "I kinda dreamed about them last night."
"Researching?"
"Yeah. They're a very popular myth around these parts."
"Myth?"
"It's an old legend. They're guardians from the other planets,
warriors of the light come to protect the only planet left capable
of sustaining life. Well, the only planet _now_. Millions of years
ago, though, people lived there. They were wiped out by an evil
witch from Earth. She was contained, and the women warriors were sent
to the future to protect the population, should they ever escape
to wreak havoc on the people here."
"Oh."
"They're named after the planets and the Earth's Moon."
"So, that one is Sailor Earth?" Scully studied the crude sketch and
felt the itch at the back of her mind grow stronger. Talking to this
person, this... _child_ made things click in her subconscious. The
feeling of deja vu grew stronger.
"No, from what I can tell, there is no Sailor Earth. I believe
that this one is either Sailor Venus or Sailor Mercury, but I'm leaning
towards Mercury. Venus just doesn't... _feel_ right."
Scully touched the boot delicately, tracing it's outline with her
finger. "No, Mercury." It came out as a whisper. "The ice is in
her eyes, the water in her heart... even her expression imitates a
river. She is the warrior that I trust."
Lun@ looked at her quizzically. "Are you okay?"
Scully looked up at her startled companion. "Uh, yeah."
"Why do you ask?" At Scully's confusion, Lun@ added, "About the
Senshi?"
"... I had a dream last night about them." Surprisingly enough, it
wasn't a lie.
"So did I," Lun@ whispered, eyes drawing back to the pad of paper in
her hands. She clutched it to her chest.
Scully felt the words being pulled out of her by Lun@'s presence.
"They were fighting gracefully. Then, one of them just stopped and
started looking at me. I thought I heard her say my name. They
were so vibrant and full of life, though... I think that if I had
reached out, I would have felt flesh and blood."
A sudden noise behind them broke the spell. "Supper is being served
now, if you're eating with us," said Rei with a bossy air. "Come
and wash up." She swept away, her red and white temple robes swirling
behind her.
For a moment, Scully relived a piece of her dream. *A warrior...?*
She shook it off. "We better go," Scully awkwardly broke the silence.
Lun@ nodded in agreement and clutched the sketchbook closer to her
chest.
"Well, bye." The FBI agent strode away, heels clicking behind her.
Lun@'s voice was barely audible. "I dreamed they all died... and
so did we."
The shadows moved around her as she remained still.
*****
"Excuse me." The pleasant voice broke the dark haired damned angel's
thoughts. "Could you please tell me..." The question hung for a
moment. "... if we've met before?"
Lun@ looked up slowly, her eyes moving up the body before her.
He was tall and thin, light and dark.
He cocked his head at her started gaze, his own matching it.
She dropped to her knees. "I..."
He fell to his. "... know you."
They clutched each other in a big hug as Lun@ began to sob.
*****
She ran.
Ran.
She had to get there before he left.
Ran.
Like the wind.
She was the wind.
She was in the wind, a part of it, blowing to where she had to be.
The rose gardens...
The tall figure turned.
She stopped.
"Anderson..." Her breath came in heaves, caught in her throat.
"Duie..." He looked down at her. "You came."
"You didn't leave."
"I couldn't."
"Why?"
"Because..." He couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't say the
words. Couldn't put his soul on the line.
"I know."
The kiss was sweet and chaste, and they could both feel it ripple down
to their toes. The tingle from their lips spread to their faces,
and the pair looked at each other from heavy-lidded eyes.
She reached up, way up, to brush his cheek with her hand.
The moment paused. Time stopped.
*****
"What the heck...?" mumbled a sleepy, redheaded FBI agent.
