Author's notes: The item I'm referring to as the Star Crystal is, indeed, the black crystal (Japanese starts with a k, I believe) that Nephrite and then Zoicite use to try to track down the Silver crystal.

Disclaimer goes here (Sailor Moon).

The Rebound Effect
Arc 2: Chapter 7 (formerly Part 18)
On the Laying of Plans II

The sun was already setting by the time Nephrite came across the black tome. He didn't remember seeing it the last time he had rummaged through the stack of eldritch references, but he was too tired to think much of it.

He flipped open the cover and began to methodically scan the pages for any reference to crystals, a thing that had, by this point, become almost automatic.

Not more than ten minutes later, he spotted something that jolted him to full alertness.

"Silver Crystal... linked to Star Crystal by ritual... hmm..." he mumbled as he reread the line that had so caught his attention. A Star Crystal? He'd seen mention of it in one of the other texts and if it was linked to the Silver Crystal...

Thoughts of rest were, once again, pushed away as he set to researching with a passion. Maybe this was the lead that would prove the key to finding the Silver Crystal for Queen Beryl.

Of course, that's what he thought the last three times he found "leads" in the old texts.

Usagi wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of one white gloved hand. "What's about to happen? Level with me."

She was talking to Serenity who was sitting off to the side of the area where the Senshi were training. She looked up at her younger self levelly and asked, "What do you mean? What makes you think something's happening?"

"Well, either something's happening or it's about to happen. We've been out here for three hours already. We usually only train for one."

"So? Maybe we think you're not working hard enough?"

"No, I think you believe we're not ready for whatever's coming next. So why don't you just tell us what's going to happen so we can prepare for it."

Serenity sighed. The problem with being around Usagi was that she knew roughly how she thought. Hiding things from her younger self was becoming more and more difficult. "Do you really believe that would help? Certainly, we know a lot about how the Dark Generals think and what they're likely to do next, but think about it for a moment."

She stood up and faced her younger self. "We're trying to teach you how to handle whatever may happen without knowing in advance. If we tell you everything and you go off and do it the easy way, where does that leave you when the next big crisis comes?" From the look Usagi was giving her, she clearly didn't get it.

"I just..." Serenity turned away from Usagi to hide the indecision that was written on her face. "I had to learn these lessons the hard way, okay? And besides, it's not like everything that happened to us is going to happen to you, right?"

Usagi was more than a little confused by all this. "But didn't you have Luna and Artemis to tell you what was going on most of the time?"

"Yeah... but they usually only knew enough to make matters worse. But you're right. You do deserve to know what's coming up next. Taika and I will work up some specific drills for you tomorrow. Other than that..." she sighed deeply. "I'm really starting to see how Pluto feels sometimes."

"That's fine," Usagi said, nodding. "But what's going on?"

"Ask Taika. She knows the story better than I do."

Usagi shrugged inwardly. "Tomorrow, then?"

"Yes, tomorrow."

Later that night, Serenity and Taika were in the shrine, practicing on their own. Of course, to anyone else, it would have seemed they were merely sitting across from each other, in meditative positions. In actuality, Serenity was holding Taika's power down as she fought to summon it up.

Serenity, being the most powerful of the Senshi to begin with, had already started the process of hardening her body to the stresses that summoning power placed upon it and was now helping Taika do the same.

Finally, after almost an hour of magical tug-of-war, Taika broke off.

"Whew, this is rough," she said, falling backward to lie on the wooden floor.

"Yes, but you have to get back into shape. You never know when you're going to need your full strength."

"Yeah, yeah, just let me rest for a while first. I'm still sore from the other day."

"And that's a good reason for you to be training, I would think. If you'd been ready, that wouldn't have happened."

"You could have warned me, you know."

"You should have thought of it on your own. And besides, I was busy..."

"Busy goofing off, I bet," Taika's voice was playful as she said it which kept it from being a true barb. "You're really enjoying this aren't you?"

Serenity bristled, but she couldn't hide the ghost of a grin. "Whatever do you mean?"

"This. All of this. Being on the front lines against an enemy and going to the arcade and just hanging out half the time. If I didn't know better, I'd swear you even enjoyed doing homework."

Serenity's grin brightened. "It's just nice to have simple worries for a change. I mean, things here aren't exactly calm or safe, but... when it comes down to it, I'm only really responsible for me. Back home, half of the decisions I made affected millions or even billions of lives."

"That's why I never hung around the palace much. If you give them a chance to hand you responsibility, your life becomes a lot tougher." She sighed and stretched out on the floor, her hands knitted behind her head. "Give me a nice mountain lake with a little shrine beside it and I'm happy."

"I never had much of a choice in the matter," Serenity paused a moment, a new thought occurring to her. "Well, maybe now I do, but not before."

"There's always a choice," Taika yawned widely. "And right now, I'm thinking about choosing bed."

"Yeah, we've got a long day ahead tomorrow... I promised Usagi that we'd begin preparing for the next series of attacks."

Taika pushed herself up onto her elbows. "Are we still assuming that Nephrite's going after the crystal soon?"

Serenity nodded. "If not, then after his next caper or two. It's inevitable. I've got Ami monitoring the carriers of the crystals so that we're alerted the second they begin."

"Shouldn't we just go ahead and grab the crystals before the Nephrite figures it out?"

"No," Serenity said, shaking her head gently. "Removing a crystal requires releasing the youma trapped inside it. We'd only be able to do one at a time, anyway, and someone would figure out what was going on before we could get them all."

"Besides, it's good training for the girls. They're not always going to be able to plan out their battles like this and the more random factors we introduce the better training it will be. It's not like we really have to get the crystals, just keep Beryl's hands off them."

Taika nodded at the logic. "It's still sad that those seven people have to become monsters. I guess it can't be helped, though, if that's the only way to free the crystals." She sighed deeply at this dose of reality. "We've probably got a few day left before it starts. Is a nice quiet week too much to ask?"

"You did grow up in the same place I did, didn't you? And you need to ask that?"

The entire cathedral was bathed in black light. Not the twisted kind of ultraviolet lamp that some people find pleasant against white cloth, but the opposite of white light. Everything appeared as though on a photographic negative.

Nephrite held himself calmly as he finished the last few words of the summoning he had, more or less, written for himself. For a second, the only effect was a white pulsing of the lines of the octagrams he had etched into the floor and the steady non-light that filled the room.

Then, slowly, real light began to push its way into the edges of the room, forcing the black light to coalesce in the center of his sigils. Finally, after several agonizing moments, the object of his search sprang into being and the sense of power that had, up until then, filled the room faded away.

Nephrite allowed himself a smile of triumph as he took the Star Crystal from the center of the octagrams.

His plans were well under way.

Serenity spent the most of the rest of the evening distracted. She was trying to figure out exactly how to proceed with things. Certainly, training the girls wouldn't be difficult. They were picking up tactics pretty quickly by this point. As for the other training, Rei and possibly Minako were almost ready to start accessing the second level powers built into their Senshi identities. The others weren't far behind, either.

No, what was worrying her was how this current scenario was going to start. The dates were a bit off in this world, which meant there would be no Princess Dia visit to get things started.

Of course, that might end up being for the best since it would, most likely, keep Naru out of this.

That brought up another point she needed to attend to. Usagi and Naru weren't spending as much time together as they used to. The younger Senshi had a tendency to adopt a kind of club mentality since they spent so much time together, working and training. That association was prone to leaving other people out. People like Naru, unfortunately.

It was unrealistic to expect them to be as close as they once were, but sometimes Usagi had trouble dividing her time amongst her friends equally. Since Naru got along well with almost everyone in the group, it'd probably be a good idea to plan something for all of them after the immediate danger was over.

A picnic would me nice. Youma only attacked picnics about half the time, which was, oddly, a rather low percentage for Senshi attended events.

And it'd be a good chance to spend some time with Endy-chan, as well. He was spending a lot of time working with himself, training and preparing for exams and the like, and Serenity was starting to miss him greatly.

That was the problem with being married to someone for a millennium, you ended up rewriting the definition of "dependant".

/Who else to invite... hmm... Mamoru, of course, and Taika will want Umino to go along./ She couldn't resist a slight grin at that last one. Somehow, the thought of Taika and Umino was becoming less humorous as time went on, but it was doing so slowly.

The only reason she didn't laugh out loud was the fact that he seemed to be having a big effect on Taika's emotional well-being. Before, she'd always been... well, she'd always been withdrawn and a bit antisocial.

Now, she was happy again. They'd all grown up too fast the first time around, and were only now getting a chance at a real childhood. Well, if real childhoods normally entailed fighting off wave upon wave of evil beings bent on ruling or destroying the earth.

/Hmm... I wonder if the Harukas and Michirus would like to come? And bring the Hotarus, too. This might be really fun./

That part of her mind that was so ecstatic to not have to be serious all the time latched on to planning a picnic and kept her occupied for most of the evening, thoughts of the upcoming battles weren't allowed.

He didn't remember how he got there. That's how it always was. He'd find himself at this same window every other night, and he still didn't know how he was getting there.

He knew he should go back to the cathedral, he had work to do the next day and he was still exhausted from the last summoning, but he couldn't resist.

After a few minutes of listening, he decided that the room's sole occupant was asleep. Eyes closed, he breathed deeply for a moment, steadying himself.

/I've got to stop this,/ he reprimanded himself even as phased past the glass of the window and into the room. /Why am I here?/

As every time before, he didn't know the answer. Something drew him here. To this girl. Something powerful.

The logical part of his mind thrashed about for a reason for these irrational visits and finally latched onto something. He raised the Star Crystal and let it hover in the air above her bed.

It twisted around so that the point on one end of its rod shaped body pointed toward her and began to silently pulse with that same black light he had seen earlier.

First, the blankets around her sleeping form seemed to fade away, and then the pajamas. Finally, skin tone and texture blended into a uniform grey and the inside of her body could be seen.

Organs and blood vessels didn't appear. This light was only interested in things of power, not matters of the flesh.

There was nothing there. He bent close to make absolutely certain she wasn't holding the silver crystal, but it wasn't there.

Silently, he cursed himself for a fool and seized the floating crystal. He wasn't coming back here again, he swore as he teleported back to the cathedral.

Of course, that's what he had said every other time he found himself in that room, in the middle of the night.

Through all of this, Makoto slept on.

END

Author's notes: Welcome to the current end of The Rebound Effect. As you probably have picked up by now, this fic is (mostly) an old work (circa '98 for the originals). However, I've recently edited it into the form you see here. Apparently, no one cares, though. Please leave a review if you liked (or didn't like) the fic to this point. A chapter 19 is in the writing (and has been for a very long time). It's about 33% done, judging by the outline I am filling out.

In any case, thanks for reading if you made it this far.