Disclaimer goes here. (Sailor Moon)

The Rebound Effect
Arc 2: Chapter 5 (formerly Part 16)
Iron Senshi

General Nephrite awoke slowly, not knowing where he was. He felt cool tile pressing against his cheek and decided that he was probably unconscious somewhere unfriendly. Of course, there were not many places friendly to the Generals of the Dark Kingdom, so it was only a reasonable assumption.

He forced his eyes open a bit so he could get a look at his surroundings. Black tile with swirling grey patterns. Low step in front of him. Big chair on it. Thoughts drifted towards each other in his mind with all the speed of drifting oil tankers, but eventually they collided and made a mess for the wildlife.

It appeared to be a good thing that Nephrite wasn't an otter, though he might have felt better if he were. Anyway, his muddled brain finally cleared enough for him to realize that the floor he lay upon was that of Queen Beryl's throne room.

That meant one of two things. She was either happy with him or she wasn't. There wasn't much more to worry about when it came to Beryl except how to move from the latter to the former or avoid slipping from the former to the latter. Either way, she didn't like to be kept waiting.

He got to his feet quickly and snapped to attention. Well, he tried to, anyway. At the top of his rising motion, the world seemed to come back up around him and it was all he could do to keep from returning to his position on the floor. Finally, things seemed to settle down a little and he could stand without too much trouble.

"General Nephrite." Queen Beryl's voice sounded old and weak, like he had never heard it before. "It is good to see that you are back among us." She trailed off wearily.

Now that his vision was refocusing again, he could see her. She looked far older than normal and utterly exhausted. "Queen Beryl."

She held up a hand to stop him. "Those miserable Sailor Senshi corrupted you with their foul magics and I had to work long and hard to remove them." She took a deep, shuddering breath and gestured weakly with one hand for him to go. "I am tired now, leave me."

Nephrite bowed deeply to his queen even though it almost sent him to the floor again. "Yes, my Queen. As you will."

"And Nephrite?" she called after him as he prepared to exit the throne room.

"Yes, my Queen?" he paused but didn't turn around, almost dreading what she might say.

"The Sailor Senshi. They must die. Soon."

"Yes, my Queen," he said and nodded. With that, he departed.

Makoto had been in a funk for several days. She hadn't really spoken to anyone or done anything since Nephrite was stolen away by Beryl and the others were beginning to worry.

Serenity was particularly concerned about her, but didn't know what to do. Taika had talked to her for a long time about what had happened and was ready to try to do something, anything, to cheer Makoto up.

Serenity had reluctantly informed her of the most likely consequences of Beryl recovering Nephrite, and Taika wasn't sure that Makoto could handle some of them. Most likely, it wouldn't be good for whatever relationship they might have had.

So it was that she decided that it was the perfect time to drag Makoto and Minako along with her and Umino to the Juuban district cooking exhibition and contest. Umino had gotten two pairs of tickets a few days before and decided that it would make a nice almost-date for him and Taika. Getting Makoto out of her apartment and into a cooking atmosphere, one of the things that she dearly loved, was just an added bonus.

He really liked Taika, which wasn't really that unusual for him. He did pine after girls on a regular basis, Usagi having been his longest running fixation. The unusual part, however, was the fact that she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she almost seemed to want him around. Returned affection was almost a totally novel experience for him.

He was even learning to read her moods. Learning which of her expressions meant that he was talking too much about something that she didn't care about was probably the single greatest stride in their relationship so far. Though, she did seem to be giving him that look far less often now.

Somewhere along the line, she had started finding Umino's little pieces of useless information almost fascinating. No one was more surprised by that than she was. A lot of it had to do with the other things that Umino did, though.

Like a few flowers at just the right moment, or a card tucked into one of her school books found while she was studying. Little things that spoke volumes about what kind of person he was.

Producing tickets to an event that he knew that Makoto would enjoy was just the latest in a long string of sweet things that he had done over the last couple of weeks.

So, there they were, three teenagers and one de facto teenager wandering a vast array of stalls and booths amidst a cloud of some of the most tempting aromas they had ever experienced. After a little while, the internal forces of the sea of pedestrians began to make it hard for such a large group to navigate and stay together.

They agreed to spit up and find each other again later, before the big demonstration by the French star of the festival, Pierre Louise, followed by the contest judging. Makoto and Minako wandered away chatting happily about nothing and Taika and Umino wandered away together.

"She seems better," Taika said, "but I'm not sure that it'll last."

"You never did tell me what she was so upset about, anyway." Umino gave her a slightly hurt look.

Taika sighed inwardly, slightly annoyed by what was probably Umino's biggest flaw. He was always looking for flaws in their relationship. It was like he was constantly expecting to be told that she was just kidding about everything and he should just go away.

"Well... it's complicated." She tried to decide on the best way to phrase it. "Let's just say that it's over a guy that may or may not try to kill her the next time she sees him."

Umino nodded acceptingly. There was a lot that Taika either couldn't or wouldn't tell him about herself or the other Senshi, but he had come to live with it. Not that he had a whole lot of choice in the matter, getting her to change her mind on something was extremely tough.

They wandered through the stalls for quite a while, pausing occasionally to sample one of the culinary delights being prepared all around them. Eventually, they found the crowds around them moving toward the main gathering area where the contest judging and exhibition were to take place.

Makoto and Minako had already staked out seats near the front and were viciously defending them. Many an unwitting person received a bop with a rolled up program.

Taika and Umino slid into the extra spaces and Makoto and Minako were able to lower their guard and relax for a while. Seating at this event was rather poorly planned, it seemed, and there were a lot of people trying to squeeze into too few seats.

They chatted for a while about some of the dishes that they had found particularly memorable before Pierre stepped out into the area cleared for his demonstration and tapped the mike.

"Hello," he proclaimed in heavily accented Japanese. "Demonstration will be starting in moment. Please to relax." Some of the younger children in the audience got a giggle out of his grammar and phrasing.

The crowd murmured for a while before he began his show. He chopped vegetables in mid air, flipped food from container to container, kneaded dough into interesting shapes, and prepared flaming dishes. All in all, the show went on for the better part of an hour while the crowd stared on with watering mouths.

Here and there, he would request a volunteer who would get to taste one of his creations or brave death holding a vegetable to be cooped or any of half a dozen other quirks in his show. After a while, he started just using a large cleaver to hack into things. His chopping and cooking reached an almost frenzied pace and many of the crowd backed away from the stage to avoid the shards of wood flying from the gouged cutting board..

Taika realized that something was wrong and grasp the source of her mystical powers and enhanced her sight so that she could see energy patterns. Yes, there was an unusual strand of energy stretching between the chef and that cleaver that he seemed so attached to.

"Girls, we'd better go transform. This isn't part of the show." The energy levels were almost high enough to be seen by everyone at that point. "Definitely not part of the show."

"Umino, get out of here, we'll find you later." She gave him a peck on the cheek and shoved her way through the crowd, followed closely by Makoto and Minako.

Umino, for his part, just stood there in shock. His eyes glazed over and a blush threatening to make his face explode.

They managed to get free of the crowd which was milling about in confusion and work their way around to the rear of the stage where it was fairly deserted. Taika metamorphoisized her outfit while the other two used their wands.

"You have to teach us how to do that," Makoto told her.

"Yeah," Minako agreed. "I'm tired of showing the world my panties every time I need to transform."

Taika grinned. "Teaches you character. Besides, it takes a lot of control to do it without the wands. Remind me to explain it to you later."

Minako looked at her warily. Taika's explanations were often to be dreaded since even Ami had trouble following them. "Uh... maybe I'll pass on that one. Let's get out there and dust that youma!"

Makoto smiled happily at the prospect of combat. When things got too complicated, it was nice to have something straightforward to do.

Nephrite watched as the power levels rose and intensified. Too bad Beryl had sent him after the Senshi without giving him a chance to demonstrate his superior skills in energy gathering.

It didn't matter; the chef was very close to being perfectly filled with power. Even as he watched, the last bit filled him and the youma sprang to life. Nephrite tapped into the youma and used him to rapidly drain the human of most of his energy.

He would have gotten it all, but the Senshi chose that moment to show up.

Cursing silently, he severed his link with the creature and called out to the girls. "I'd love to stay and play, but I've got things to do. Play with my little pet for a while if you want, though."

The looked over to his place of concealment and the one in green shouted his name and ran toward him. Somehow, that caused a thrill of deja vu to go through him, but he wasn't foolish enough to stick around.

He teleported back to Beryl's throne room to offer her his nice little haul of energy as a kind of thank-you for saving him from the Senshi. The Senshi could kill or be killed by the youma for all he cared. Right now, the Dark Kingdom needed the energy if there was any hope of setting a trap for them.

Makoto shouted out Nephrite's name and rushed toward the place where he was standing but he seemed to ignore her. The blade youma, however, didn't. Resembling nothing so much as half a dozen articulated blades welded together, it stepped forward and kicked upward with one of its knife edged feet, slicing cleanly into Sailor Jupiter's abdomen.

Taika, who had been occupied with readying an attack for Nephrite, had to let it lose at the youma instead. The creature didn't even have time to scream before it was a pile of rapidly cooling ash.

However, by the time she could have launched another blast, Nephrite was gone.

Minako was already at Makoto's side, gingerly turning her over to assess the damage. Taika rushed over to see what she could do.

The damage was bad. No where near as bad as it would have been if the kick had hit an unprotected human, but still bad. Gently, she pulled the torn edges of the fuku away from the wound so she could get a better look.

The slash wasn't very deep, fortunately, most of the force of the blow being spent to cut through the extremely strong material of the fuku. There was a fair amount of blood, but nothing important looked damaged.

Taika concentrated and laid her hand over the wound, searching with her mind for each and every severed blood vessel and infecting agent and snuffing them out one by one with minuscule bits of flame. She knelt like that for several minutes, a faint red aura surrounding her body and spreading outward over the area of the wound.

The crowd, which had fled at the appearance of the youma, began to trickle back in to get a glimpse at one of the mysterious Sailor Senshi. No one approached too close, but Minako was starting to get nervous.

"Hurry up," she whispered loudly and urgently to Taika, but she just seemed to ignore her. Only the fact that she was worried about Makoto's health kept her from dragging both of them out of there bodily.

Police had arrived by the time Taika finished and were hurriedly surrounding the trio of girls. "Hold it right there!" one of the cops proclaimed.

Taika looked around at the assembled police and did a quick bit of planning. She was going to really regret this in the morning, but there didn't seem to be any other way out. Carefully, she slid her arms under Makoto's prone form and whispered to Minako. "Place your hands on my shoulders. When you feel something pulling at you, go with it." Minako nodded slightly and slowly set her hands onto Taika's shoulders.

Taika reached out with her spirit toward Minako's and nudged the right areas. The words formed in her mind, and, as one, they spoke them, "Sailor Teleport."

The police had a lot of trouble explaining how that one happened.

Queen Beryl was giving Nephrite a hard look, though it was growing more difficult to do so in the face of his successes.

"One of the Senshi was wounded, perhaps seriously by my youma."

"And why did you not stay and finish them, General Nephrite?"

"The one with the unusually high power levels was with them, my Queen, so I felt it wiser to return here with the energy instead of risking a confrontation. To face her will require a trap."

"Perhaps you do not understand the merit of following orders?"

"My Queen..."

"Never mind that. You have new orders now. Gather as much energy as you can. I will give unto Zoicite the task of killing the Senshi."

"But-"

"No buts. You have proven to be most effective at gathering energy. Perhaps Zoicite will finally manage to prove his worth to the Dark Kingdom since he has repeatedly failed in his quest for the Silver Crystal."

Nephrite grumbled to himself, but was careful to keep his outward face calm. "As you wish, my Queen."

/Giving my task to Zoicite? I'll show him. Failed to find the Silver Crystal did he? Wouldn't it just be priceless to see his pretty little face when I hand it to Queen Beryl.../

END