Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon. However, I do own all the new
characters featured in this story. See my other fics for more about them,
or contact me at: lady_polaris@hotmail.com Also, you can contact the
following for information: Cosmic Angel, aka Miss L.Lane, Miss H.Perrin
(who at this moment in time, has no internet access) or Miss V.Lane (who
has changed her ff.net pen name to Ice Sprite.)
Meeting of Thoughts.
The Scouts, Darien and the cats arrived at the Cherry Hill Temple before the Outer Senshi.
They went inside, and Raye ordered Chad to go out, and not to disturb her. Quivering, he said that he had to practice with his band, and left quickly.
"I pity the poor soul who catches them mid-practice," said Raye.
"C'mon, the others can let themselves in," she continued. Leading the way to the sitting room, as the others settled down, Raye made tea for everyone, including the Outer Senshi, who arrived several minutes later.
"We got here as quickly as we could," said Michelle to the others.
"Could someone help me carry the tea in?" asked Raye.
"I'll help," said Trista, who was wearing a purple suit.
Sitting down on a sofa, Amara asked, "So why are we here? Amy said you'd found something that could be connected to the fire reading?"
Nodding, Amy said, "Yes, you see, our school is running an exchange program with two schools in America."
Raye and Trista walked in carrying tea and cups for everyone.
"Carry on," said Trista.
"Well," Lita began. "There are these particular students, and they're either staying with one of us," she indicated to the other Inner Senshi, excluding Raye, "Or they're staying with our friends."
"Molly and Melvin, to be precise," added Amy.
"And you believe they're working for the Negaverse?" asked Trista.
"We don't know if they are, but we think so," said Raye.
"How many of them are there?" asked Amara.
"Well, there are five girls, and three guys," answered Amy. "Both Raye and I are getting vibes from all of them, except for two of the guys. One doesn't seem to have any power, whereas the other doesn't even seem to have any brainwaves at all," she concluded.
"No brainwaves?" asked Amara, incredulous.
"I know it sounds silly, but I'm telling you, he didn't have any emotions or feelings in him," protested Raye.
Luna spoke next.
"Well, I did tell Serena the other night not to trust them."
"Why not?" asked Darien. "Although," he continued, "You were right, it seems."
"Well, Molly phoned and introduced Serena to the person staying with her-"
"Jasmine," interrupted Serena.
"Yes, well whatever, it doesn't matter what her name is. And she said that she had a migraine, but then she said something I found very odd. Serena didn't hear her, as the girl muttered it to herself, but she said 'another vision, another victim, the time will come soon'," Luna finished.
"The time for what?" asked Lita.
"This is very suspicious," said Artemis, nodding his white head.
"But there's only one thing that suggests that perhaps they aren't working for the Negaverse," he continued. The others stared at him.
"What?" asked Mina. "Now that Amy and Raye have mentioned it, I did sense something about them. But I didn't sense anything out of the ordinary from Lee, and come to think of it, I didn't sense anything at all from Zabadws."
"Raye," said Artemis. "How many people were there in your vision? I mean the people you said were called Obsidian," he asked.
"Well, there were nine figures, but it was hard for me to tell, I mean, it was hard to see much of anything that was distant in the vision. It's possible that I could've counted them wrong. And I was tied up in my vision, so I couldn't strain to see them either."
The group looked at Luna, waiting for her to speak.
"Well, even though there aren't enough of them it appears, to be this 'Obsidian', it's quite possible that there is one more who we have yet to meet. Other than that, there seems to be little evidence to suggest that they aren't working for the Negaverse, after all, the Lee who you say has no powers could be under their control. Remember Artemis, in the Silver Millennium, how the majority of Earthlings were under Beryl's control?"
"Yeah, and everything else you've said does make sense," Artemis nodded, agreeing.
"And there is one other thing to suggest that they really are working for the Negaverse," added Amy. The group looked at her questioningly.
"Remember what the fire reading told Raye? Y'know, the prophecy, or rhyme, call it what you like," she continued.
"'A new danger is coming. Secrets of friends and enemies, both past and future, will be revealed. Find Obsidian before the great suffering begins, or else, what you saw will come to pass,' said Hotaru, and Amara and Michelle stared at her, not realising how good her memory was.
"Correct. And I thought to myself, well the biggest secret our new friends could have would be that they are working for the Negaverse," said Amy.
There was an awkward silence, and Serena was the first to break it.
"So what do we do? There's no way we can find out if they are working for the Negaverse can we?"
"We could always ask," said Mina, and then feeding off the looks she was given by the others, she added, "Perhaps not."
"Perhaps we could trick them into revealing who they really are," said Michelle.
"Between myself, Amy, Luna, Darien and Trista, we should be able to figure out a plan in no time."
"And if they turn out to be who they claim to be?" asked Trista.
Hotaru walked over to the window, and looked outside. The street outside was in twilight, illuminated by the light of the Moon. Night had fallen quickly. The others sat in silence again, trying to think of something they could do.
"There's someone coming here Raye," she said, turning around to face the group.
"Who?" asked Raye. "Is it someone we know?"
"I don't know who he is," replied Hotaru, brushing a few stray strands of black hair away from her face.
"Could it be a Negaverse spy?" asked Serena, panicked.
"Or is it one of the Americans? Zabadws, Lee or Jacen?" asked Amy.
"I'll look out the window," said Lita, striding to the window and looking out.
"He's not one of them," she said. "But he is a cutie!" she exclaimed.
Raye sighed, then ran to answer the door when the man knocked on the door.
The group heard her welcome the man inside, and she showed him into the sitting room.
"Oh I'm sorry," said the guy, who looked about nineteen or possibly twenty. He was wearing black jeans, and a navy long sleeved shirt, and had undone the top three or four buttons on it. He had dark blue eyes, the same colour as a deep lake. He was fairly tall, and had short blonde/brown hair.
"I've obviously interrupted something, I'll go and leave you to it, I'll ask someone else to help me out."
"You aren't interrupting anything," smiled Lita.
"And if you go somewhere else, you'll only interrupt someone else," added Mina.
"I guess.," said the stranger, looking uncomfortable around so many people.
"Well, what did you want?" asked Raye.
"I was wondering if you know a place I can stay, I kinda didn't book a hotel or anything, and my flight arrived about an hour or two ago," said the stranger.
"There's a hotel just three blocks from here. I could direct you if you wanted," offered Darien.
"Thanks, you don't mind do you?" asked the guy.
"Not at all," said Darien. "My name's Darien by the way."
"I'm Jack," said the man.
"I don't mean to sound rude, but where are the rest of your things? Surely you didn't come from wherever and not pack anything," asked Amy.
"I did pack some stuff, it's currently by the taxi I caught from the airport, when I got off the flight from Fairview," answered Jack. "Could we leave now? I want to get there before the sun rises, after all, I need to sleep," said Jack.
"Of course," answered Darien, "Let's go."
"Thanks, and perhaps I'll see the rest of you lovely ladies around," he said smiling.
Amara snorted at this comment, whilst Lita and Mina blushed slightly as he left, following Darien.
"Did anyone notice where he said he was from?" asked Amy.
"He said Fairview, where's that?" asked Hotaru, who waited for a reply.
"America," said Amy.
"Wasn't Jack the name of.," said Raye, trailing off.
"Kalista's ex boyfriend," finished Mina.
"And now there are nine," said Luna quietly.
"So, there are nine. But it could still turn out that it's just a coincidence, him arriving here. After all, there are plenty of Jacks in the world, and we don't know how many live in Fairview," said Artemis.
"I've just thought of something," said Trista. "If we found out more about Fairview, we could perhaps find out if these students are working for the Negaverse."
"How?" asked Serena.
"If Amy hacked into the database where records of missing people, unsolved murders and the like are kept, we could find out if they're working for the Negaverse," said Trista again.
"If there are a lot of disappearances and murders, we could then assume that these people are behind them, and have committed these crimes in order to help the Negaverse in its quest for more and more negative energy and workers," said Artemis.
Luna looked at him, shocked that Artemis had said something approaching intelligent.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said.
"So what should we do in the meantime?" asked Amy.
"Well," began Luna, as Darien walked back in. "I think you should try to avoid the Americans as much as you can,"
"But they're staying with us," pointed out Lita. "I did say try Lita, or if you can't manage that, then you should try to talk to them about trivial, everyday, non-Scout things. We should meet again tomorrow, perhaps after a night's rest we will be able to figure out a plan of some sort, in order to see if that's who they really are."
"Luna," said Amy, looking up from the screen of her mini-computer.
"Where DOES she keep that thing?" Mina asked Serena quietly. Serena shrugged.
"Yes?" asked Luna.
"I've brought up the local police HQ's crime database for Fairview Valley. There have been mysterious disappearances dating back as far as ten years ago, and they have a huge amount of unsolved murders, many without bodies, so the victims have been presumed dead. Over half of the murders are still open cases, and it's the same for the disappearances."
"Ten years? They don't look old enough to have been killing people in the last TEN years," said Serena.
"Well, it most certainly looks like they're working for the Negaverse, and who knows what powers they have. They're probably using their powers to disguise their selves now," said Luna.
"Well, are we gonna call it a night now?" asked Amara, who stretched.
"Yes, but make sure you're all here at four o'clock tomorrow, and Raye try to get rid of Chad before we arrive could you? I feel awful when you have to order him to leave because of us?" said Luna.
"Ok, Luna," said Raye. "Listen, I'll walk you guys part of the way home, ok?"
The Inner Senshi nodded, but the Outer Senshi shook their heads, no.
"We have to go a different way back home," said Michelle.
"After all, there's no way of telling if the Negaverse knows who we are, so perhaps they're watching us," added Amara.
"Okay, but be careful then?" asked Raye. The Outer Senshi nodded, then left, followed by the Inner Senshi, Darien and the two cats.
Meeting of Thoughts.
The Scouts, Darien and the cats arrived at the Cherry Hill Temple before the Outer Senshi.
They went inside, and Raye ordered Chad to go out, and not to disturb her. Quivering, he said that he had to practice with his band, and left quickly.
"I pity the poor soul who catches them mid-practice," said Raye.
"C'mon, the others can let themselves in," she continued. Leading the way to the sitting room, as the others settled down, Raye made tea for everyone, including the Outer Senshi, who arrived several minutes later.
"We got here as quickly as we could," said Michelle to the others.
"Could someone help me carry the tea in?" asked Raye.
"I'll help," said Trista, who was wearing a purple suit.
Sitting down on a sofa, Amara asked, "So why are we here? Amy said you'd found something that could be connected to the fire reading?"
Nodding, Amy said, "Yes, you see, our school is running an exchange program with two schools in America."
Raye and Trista walked in carrying tea and cups for everyone.
"Carry on," said Trista.
"Well," Lita began. "There are these particular students, and they're either staying with one of us," she indicated to the other Inner Senshi, excluding Raye, "Or they're staying with our friends."
"Molly and Melvin, to be precise," added Amy.
"And you believe they're working for the Negaverse?" asked Trista.
"We don't know if they are, but we think so," said Raye.
"How many of them are there?" asked Amara.
"Well, there are five girls, and three guys," answered Amy. "Both Raye and I are getting vibes from all of them, except for two of the guys. One doesn't seem to have any power, whereas the other doesn't even seem to have any brainwaves at all," she concluded.
"No brainwaves?" asked Amara, incredulous.
"I know it sounds silly, but I'm telling you, he didn't have any emotions or feelings in him," protested Raye.
Luna spoke next.
"Well, I did tell Serena the other night not to trust them."
"Why not?" asked Darien. "Although," he continued, "You were right, it seems."
"Well, Molly phoned and introduced Serena to the person staying with her-"
"Jasmine," interrupted Serena.
"Yes, well whatever, it doesn't matter what her name is. And she said that she had a migraine, but then she said something I found very odd. Serena didn't hear her, as the girl muttered it to herself, but she said 'another vision, another victim, the time will come soon'," Luna finished.
"The time for what?" asked Lita.
"This is very suspicious," said Artemis, nodding his white head.
"But there's only one thing that suggests that perhaps they aren't working for the Negaverse," he continued. The others stared at him.
"What?" asked Mina. "Now that Amy and Raye have mentioned it, I did sense something about them. But I didn't sense anything out of the ordinary from Lee, and come to think of it, I didn't sense anything at all from Zabadws."
"Raye," said Artemis. "How many people were there in your vision? I mean the people you said were called Obsidian," he asked.
"Well, there were nine figures, but it was hard for me to tell, I mean, it was hard to see much of anything that was distant in the vision. It's possible that I could've counted them wrong. And I was tied up in my vision, so I couldn't strain to see them either."
The group looked at Luna, waiting for her to speak.
"Well, even though there aren't enough of them it appears, to be this 'Obsidian', it's quite possible that there is one more who we have yet to meet. Other than that, there seems to be little evidence to suggest that they aren't working for the Negaverse, after all, the Lee who you say has no powers could be under their control. Remember Artemis, in the Silver Millennium, how the majority of Earthlings were under Beryl's control?"
"Yeah, and everything else you've said does make sense," Artemis nodded, agreeing.
"And there is one other thing to suggest that they really are working for the Negaverse," added Amy. The group looked at her questioningly.
"Remember what the fire reading told Raye? Y'know, the prophecy, or rhyme, call it what you like," she continued.
"'A new danger is coming. Secrets of friends and enemies, both past and future, will be revealed. Find Obsidian before the great suffering begins, or else, what you saw will come to pass,' said Hotaru, and Amara and Michelle stared at her, not realising how good her memory was.
"Correct. And I thought to myself, well the biggest secret our new friends could have would be that they are working for the Negaverse," said Amy.
There was an awkward silence, and Serena was the first to break it.
"So what do we do? There's no way we can find out if they are working for the Negaverse can we?"
"We could always ask," said Mina, and then feeding off the looks she was given by the others, she added, "Perhaps not."
"Perhaps we could trick them into revealing who they really are," said Michelle.
"Between myself, Amy, Luna, Darien and Trista, we should be able to figure out a plan in no time."
"And if they turn out to be who they claim to be?" asked Trista.
Hotaru walked over to the window, and looked outside. The street outside was in twilight, illuminated by the light of the Moon. Night had fallen quickly. The others sat in silence again, trying to think of something they could do.
"There's someone coming here Raye," she said, turning around to face the group.
"Who?" asked Raye. "Is it someone we know?"
"I don't know who he is," replied Hotaru, brushing a few stray strands of black hair away from her face.
"Could it be a Negaverse spy?" asked Serena, panicked.
"Or is it one of the Americans? Zabadws, Lee or Jacen?" asked Amy.
"I'll look out the window," said Lita, striding to the window and looking out.
"He's not one of them," she said. "But he is a cutie!" she exclaimed.
Raye sighed, then ran to answer the door when the man knocked on the door.
The group heard her welcome the man inside, and she showed him into the sitting room.
"Oh I'm sorry," said the guy, who looked about nineteen or possibly twenty. He was wearing black jeans, and a navy long sleeved shirt, and had undone the top three or four buttons on it. He had dark blue eyes, the same colour as a deep lake. He was fairly tall, and had short blonde/brown hair.
"I've obviously interrupted something, I'll go and leave you to it, I'll ask someone else to help me out."
"You aren't interrupting anything," smiled Lita.
"And if you go somewhere else, you'll only interrupt someone else," added Mina.
"I guess.," said the stranger, looking uncomfortable around so many people.
"Well, what did you want?" asked Raye.
"I was wondering if you know a place I can stay, I kinda didn't book a hotel or anything, and my flight arrived about an hour or two ago," said the stranger.
"There's a hotel just three blocks from here. I could direct you if you wanted," offered Darien.
"Thanks, you don't mind do you?" asked the guy.
"Not at all," said Darien. "My name's Darien by the way."
"I'm Jack," said the man.
"I don't mean to sound rude, but where are the rest of your things? Surely you didn't come from wherever and not pack anything," asked Amy.
"I did pack some stuff, it's currently by the taxi I caught from the airport, when I got off the flight from Fairview," answered Jack. "Could we leave now? I want to get there before the sun rises, after all, I need to sleep," said Jack.
"Of course," answered Darien, "Let's go."
"Thanks, and perhaps I'll see the rest of you lovely ladies around," he said smiling.
Amara snorted at this comment, whilst Lita and Mina blushed slightly as he left, following Darien.
"Did anyone notice where he said he was from?" asked Amy.
"He said Fairview, where's that?" asked Hotaru, who waited for a reply.
"America," said Amy.
"Wasn't Jack the name of.," said Raye, trailing off.
"Kalista's ex boyfriend," finished Mina.
"And now there are nine," said Luna quietly.
"So, there are nine. But it could still turn out that it's just a coincidence, him arriving here. After all, there are plenty of Jacks in the world, and we don't know how many live in Fairview," said Artemis.
"I've just thought of something," said Trista. "If we found out more about Fairview, we could perhaps find out if these students are working for the Negaverse."
"How?" asked Serena.
"If Amy hacked into the database where records of missing people, unsolved murders and the like are kept, we could find out if they're working for the Negaverse," said Trista again.
"If there are a lot of disappearances and murders, we could then assume that these people are behind them, and have committed these crimes in order to help the Negaverse in its quest for more and more negative energy and workers," said Artemis.
Luna looked at him, shocked that Artemis had said something approaching intelligent.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said.
"So what should we do in the meantime?" asked Amy.
"Well," began Luna, as Darien walked back in. "I think you should try to avoid the Americans as much as you can,"
"But they're staying with us," pointed out Lita. "I did say try Lita, or if you can't manage that, then you should try to talk to them about trivial, everyday, non-Scout things. We should meet again tomorrow, perhaps after a night's rest we will be able to figure out a plan of some sort, in order to see if that's who they really are."
"Luna," said Amy, looking up from the screen of her mini-computer.
"Where DOES she keep that thing?" Mina asked Serena quietly. Serena shrugged.
"Yes?" asked Luna.
"I've brought up the local police HQ's crime database for Fairview Valley. There have been mysterious disappearances dating back as far as ten years ago, and they have a huge amount of unsolved murders, many without bodies, so the victims have been presumed dead. Over half of the murders are still open cases, and it's the same for the disappearances."
"Ten years? They don't look old enough to have been killing people in the last TEN years," said Serena.
"Well, it most certainly looks like they're working for the Negaverse, and who knows what powers they have. They're probably using their powers to disguise their selves now," said Luna.
"Well, are we gonna call it a night now?" asked Amara, who stretched.
"Yes, but make sure you're all here at four o'clock tomorrow, and Raye try to get rid of Chad before we arrive could you? I feel awful when you have to order him to leave because of us?" said Luna.
"Ok, Luna," said Raye. "Listen, I'll walk you guys part of the way home, ok?"
The Inner Senshi nodded, but the Outer Senshi shook their heads, no.
"We have to go a different way back home," said Michelle.
"After all, there's no way of telling if the Negaverse knows who we are, so perhaps they're watching us," added Amara.
"Okay, but be careful then?" asked Raye. The Outer Senshi nodded, then left, followed by the Inner Senshi, Darien and the two cats.