Author's Note

The normal disclaimers here of course and that I'm certainly not doing this for money.

There are a few elements that are exclusive to the manga, as you will read, but those only involve character differences than from the anime, such as the Shitennous' relationship. Also, Mamoru has the Golden Crystal.

If you need to contact me, my email is Guardian4@atlantic.net. Please put fanfiction or something in the subject line so I know what you're emailing me about. And if you're a really nice person (if this pertains to a certain fanfiction that I've done) you might want to put the name of the fanfiction you're referring to somewhere in the email.

All names are like the Japanese say them, last name first. So Kunzite's name would be Kail Rainer in America, but in Japanese it would be said Rainer Kail.

Army of Immortals

Chapter 24: Rays in the Dark

"Jupiter! Jupiter, can you hear me?" demanded Nephrite.

There was a groan.

Not five minutes ago, the Soldier had been thrown into an empty cell. From what he could tell, from his very limited view, she looked like hell. Was it possible that that was the girl he had fallen in love with? "Please, Jupiter! Answer me!" he nearly screamed.

This time there was no youma to tell him to be quiet. Some time ago, it had apparently been called away by Beryl.

"Nephrite?"

He sighed in relief. "Jupiter, are you all right?"

"…Fine," she grunted after a moment. "Sailor Moon? Sailor Moon, where are you?"

"A cell down two from yours. I'm with Kunzite."

"Good."

There was a long pause in which they could hear a trickle of water running over stone.

"So what do you all-powerful people plan to do, exactly?" drawled Tomi.

"Back to your old form, I see," snapped Mars. He felt sorry for the Senshi, as she was trapped with her in the cell. "For your information, we are not all-powerful. If we were, we would not be in this situation."

"Please Tomi," whispered Kunzite, finally speaking since the short sentence he had answered to Mamoru. "Please, Tomi, don't do this to us."

"Do what?" She sounded truly puzzled.

"This is ten times worse for us than it is for you," his friend continued quietly. "This is the stuff of our nightmares. We're barely holding onto our sanity right now. You have no idea the memories we have of the Silver Millennium, the kind of thing that Beryl and Metallia can do. Just being here is torture for us. We're so scared right now that it is a miracle we can even think in a coherent sentence. So, please, cut us a little slack. It's probably partly my fault. I was…terrified about what would to happen to you, so I rushed us in here."

"That's not true, Kunzite, and you know it!" denied Zoisite. "We didn't have much choice anyway."

To Nephrite, Tomi remained suspiciously silent after her brother's speech. He almost longed to be in the cell with her instead of Mars, just to know what she was doing, thinking.

It seemed to occur to the others that she was suddenly so silent. "Tomi?" faltered Kunzite.

"I'm so sorry," whispered a voice he couldn't associate with the brash, loud, and arrogant girl. "I should have been paying attention and not let myself get caught, I guess. You all shouldn't even be here."

"But you understood," whispered Venus. "You understood at the last second, and that means a lot to us, not to mention to Kunzite."

"I guess I did. I'll never understand the depths of the feeling my brother has for Mam—Endymion, but I could see what was happening. And while I probably never will understand, at least I've begun to reconcile myself to it."

Just at that moment, the intelligent youma stamped down the stairs angrily. He had only a minute to wonder why before it unlocked all the cell doors. Cautiously, and no little shocked, the Senshi and Knights stepped from the cramped rooms.

"My friend is upstairs, watching for any of Beryl's spies so don't worry." It was shaking so badly he almost thought it would fall apart. Rage filled its voice. "This was the last straw! Giving my duty to a lower creature with not even half my brains! I don't care how you do it, as long as I'm there when you kill her!"

"But…you do know that once we destroy Beryl and Metallia, you will fade away right?" questioned Mercury.

"I know, but I don't care. Hypocrite is what she is! She needs…she needs…"

It couldn't finish, but they knew what it meant.

"Senshi? Knights? It's time to finish this," Venus said grimly. "Let's get Tomi out of here first. Hopefully we can teleport her to her house."

"No, not her house," interrupted Tuxedo Kamen and the Senshi, except for Sailor Moon, looked at him in surprise. "There's a place that she'll be unutterably safe until we come back."

Nephrite knew exactly what place that was and the Knights nodded. Slowly and with obvious reluctance, he told them about Elysian, the 'safe house' of the Knights and especially Mamoru's own.

"Good. Tomi are you ready?"

She shrugged. "Sure." As though it was awkward for her, she quickly hugged her brother before they surrounded her. With a flash of light, she was gone.

"Come on," Sailor Moon rallied quietly. "Let's finish this."

Tomi found herself in a field surrounded by roses. Her sudden appearance must have been more abrupt than she had thought, for a young boy with brown hair started, yelling in shock, and fell onto his behind. His voice brought two other people running toward them.

She ignored them for a moment. There was a walkway that the two adults came running on, surrounded on every side by thick rose bushes. A small building with what looked like only one room was behind her. Just inside she could see a small pedestal with a cushion waiting for something on the top.

"Tomi!"

Her head snapped back to the male adult. "Who are you?"

He rolled his eyes. "Artemis, remember? And Luna?"

"Who is this?" demanded the young boy.

"Tomi. She's Kail's…Kunzite's sister."

It's becoming quite popular down here. I haven't had this many visitors since the Triplets of Terran's great-grandchildren.

Tomi started violently at the voice in her head as a beautiful woman floated up to the four of them. "Who are you?"

You may call me Terra if you like. I'm the spirit of the Earth.

Suddenly things started to click. "They deliberately left them," she muttered in wonder. "Those two left their crystals behind because they had a plan!"

"Yes," answered the woman who she was having a hard time associating with the cat Luna.

"So what exactly was the plan then?!"

Luna sighed and Tomi watched as the spirit Terra watched the four of them, offering no comments whatsoever.

"Usagi-chan and Mamoru-san were afraid that the crystals would fall into Beryl's hands so they gave them to Shingo, Usagi-chan's younger brother, to take care of. When they go into battle, they will call on their power and defeat her."

"Exactly how can they do that if the crystals are here and they are there?" Shingo asked, perplexed.

"There was partly another reason for bringing you here. Here, it is magic. With the spirit Terra's help, it might be possible for them to call on the power without having the jewels present," answered Artemis cautiously.

The two of them were silent and exchanged a glance. Luna and Artemis were riding on a thin hope. "Can you?" prompted Tomi to the silent spirit.

I can. It will be difficult, but it can be done with the help of Serene.

"Serene?"

Serene is the spirit of the Moon. You see, since it is my power embedded in Endymion's stone, I can easily call it and channel it to him. Serene's power is the other stone and can channel it to her child. It is simple procedure, just difficult to get past the barriers to where they are.

"Child? She's the child of a spirit?" demanded Tomi, suddenly confused.

"Endymion and Serenity are descendents from the children of the spirits of the Earth and Moon respectively," Luna answered. "The Ginzuishou and the Golden Crystal were gifted to their children and it has been passed down through the generations. What happened to the Senshi?"

Tomi shook her head for a moment, to clear it. "We were imprisoned for a while, but a…youma thing let us out. It was really mad at this Beryl b—" She cut her language at the last second, with a guarded look at the spirit, who didn't seem to notice. "They were going to attack Beryl when they sent here."

"I hope they're going to be all right," murmured Artemis.

Shingo pointed. "Who's that?"

Everyone including Terra turned to see someone exiting the small building. The man was tall and gorgeous. When he looked at her, she felt a blush creeping on her cheeks. He had pale silver hair and sky blue eyes that smiled. His robes were white and edged in gold. Around his neck was another crystal.

Ah. This is Chavez, a priest of mine. He is, in a very round-a-bout way, a child of mine. He chose to live here with me. His name means 'dream maker'.

Tomi smiled at him as he greeted everyone impartially. "It is a pleasure to meet you all."

"Do…do you live here? I mean, in the temple here?" She fought the urge to stutter under his gaze. Her heart was beating so hard it felt like a drum.

He laughed lightly. "Not in the temple itself. I live in the building at the end of the walkway."

Terra studied her 'child' and Tomi and she wished she wouldn't look at her that way. It made her think that the spirit was thinking of becoming matchmaker. I think you should all get some rest. The young woman has been through a lot.

"My name's Tomi," she said, as much to tell the spirit as to tell Chavez.

The five of them were quiet as they proceeded down the beautifully paved path. She tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to her lips. As soon as they had come upon the end of the walkway, Artemis and Luna excused themselves and went to a corner of the area and began to fight. For a minute she wondered why until she remembered the training that Kail had spoken of.

The boy, who looked to be eight, locked his fingers behind his head and studied Chavez. "Do you have a Golden Crystal too?"

The priest blinked and chuckled. "No, this stone is different. It prolongs my life. I've been a priest of Terra's for nearly eight hundred years. She wishes me to settle down and have a family." He shrugged.

"So what happens if you did find someone you wanted to have a family with?" she questioned.

"I would give this crystal back Terra. Then I would live out the rest of my life and eventually die."

Shingo looked around them and wandered to the nearest foliage, touching the flowers reverently.

"You must like roses," she commented in the silence.

"Yes, but it is mostly Terra's doing that makes them grow so thickly and wonderfully."

He smiled at her again and the blush heated her cheeks for the second time. She couldn't remember ever being this tongue-tied before in her life.

"We're splitting up in the best groups," Venus said without preamble as soon as the intelligent youma had left them in the dungeon alone. "Zoisite and Mercury. Mars and Jadeite. Nephrite and Jupiter. And Kunzite and I. Endymion, we trust you to take care of Serenity. We're heading for the throne room. We have to defeat Beryl as soon as possible."

"How are we going to do that if we don't have the Ginzuishou or the Golden Crystal?" demanded Mars.

"Just because we don't have them with us," Tuxedo Kamen interrupted, "doesn't mean we can't call on the power. Call it a trump card."

"I trust you both," Kunzite said after a moment. "Come on, let's get going."

Sailor Moon followed Tuxedo Kamen closely as they split up. There were so many corridors to take that she didn't think they'd ever find the throne room. She prayed that her friends would be okay, that nothing would happen to them.

"Nothing will, if we can defeat Beryl," her beloved murmured, reading her face.

She nodded. "We will defeat Beryl."

The silence around them was eerie as they ran down corridor after aimless corridor that led to others just like it. Crackling from her communicator nearly made her shriek in surprise.

"We've been waylaid!" cried Mars' voice. "Don't expect us to be in the throne room. We have a veritable army before us. We must have stumbled into the barracks or something."

"Mars, be careful!" she wailed in concern. "Remember we promised the people of Japan that we would all come back and tell them it was over!"

"Don't worry," Jadeite's voice said back. "Our training is very good. We'll be out of this easy."

Neither she nor Tuxedo Kamen was reassured by his boasting, but nothing they could say could change the situation.

They continued on and getting three more calls from the others saying they had also run into trouble. By the time Jupiter had finished saying they had encountered enemies, Sailor Moon wanted to cry. Her friends…they could be dying and she would be alone to fight Beryl.

"You won't be alone. I'm going to be there," Tuxedo Kamen whispered in her ear. "It's time to be strong. We can do this."

Taking a deep breath, she said, "Yes, it's time to be strong. We can do this together."

Sprinting to the end of the corridor, the door they recognized well loomed in the way. She took a moment to catch her breath. Once she thought it would have been beautiful, but now it was grotesque. What looked like human hands carved from the stone and reached out for something in front of it. Skulls were a motif that she didn't really want to see on a door.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

End Chapter 24.

Beryl has finally going to go head on with our noble heroes! And what's this? Is Tomi getting a boyfriend or just a crush? For the last chapter, 25 please watch for. After 25, you'll get an epilogue and it'll be done! So those of you that are waiting for this to finish so I'll work on The Last Journey, don't worry. It'll have its turn in a few short days.