Disclaimer: This is a work of Fanfiction. SailorMoon is copyrighted to Takeuchi Naoko, Koudansha, TV Asahi, Toei Douga and various other subsidaries. Although the Authors hold no claim to SailorMoon itself, all attempts to plagerise the following story will result in mysterious and painful consequences.

"Jadeite, when will we see the results of your latest efforts?"

The Queen stretched her fingers, idly stroking a smoky crystal ball with one languid claw. Jadeite followed her movements in rapt fascination, almost, it seems, hypnotised.

"You have also yet to discover the whereabouts of the Ginzuishou."

Her hair, the ominous red of a smothering flame, flowed enchantingly about her bare shoulders.

Jadeite bowed deeply. "Do not worry, my Queen," He replied, pointedly ignoring the soft snickers in the shadows behind him.

"But you've made your soldiers out of mud, Jadeite. They are weak and fall apart easily."

"I have a plan," Jadeite responded hotly, gritting his teeth, "And it will not fail." His fists clenched close, but remained by his side. He was not about to start a fight in front of his Queen.

Nephrite, lounging against a pillar, merely smiled.

"It is your sacred duty!"

Mizuno Ami wanted very much to sigh, but that would have been impolite. Developing a secret identity was throwing a serious monkey wench into her life.

She had no time for any of this. Her days were packed, kept in a neat order to maximize her time, every aspect of her days, study and life, planned immaculately by Ami herself. She had barely two years to study for the national exams that would put her in a distinguished High School and could not afford to spend time wandering about the city seeking her "companions", as Luna puts it.

Ami had plans. She was going to become a doctor and help save the world.

"Ami-chan...?"

She also wasn't sure if she liked that

"Kokoro de koe wo kiku kara me wo tojite hanarete mo anata dake wakaru."
"I hear your voice in my spirit and so when I close my eyes, even though we're far apart, you're the only one who understands"

-- Mizuno Ami, Mi Amor



SailorMoon RR: Spirit! Tsumetai Hana wo Sakaseru
Spirit! Make the Cold Flower Bloom


"What is the Shiroishi doing?" The petite woman sighed. She was smallish, at five foot two inches, made to appear even smaller in her heavy grey robes.

"I'm afraid we haven't heard from him at all, sensai."

"Sensei." She corrected absently, inspecting the activity log from said entity's tracking device. Each of the Messengers, Black and White, had one. They were implanted in their ears by the Path while they were still in their long hibernation.

At first there had been some concern as to whether or not the pair will find out about the bugs and thus the Organization. But as time wore on, it became apparent that the cats were not about to question anything regarding the great computer monitor they referred to as "Shirei", or Commander, and the issue was dropped.

This, in Oniyanagi's mind, was a sure sign that the Kuroishi and the Shiroishi were not as intelligent as most believed them to be.

"It doesn't seem like they intend to return to Japan any time soon, ma'am..." The young woman whose job was to track V and her familiar's whereabouts day to day raised timidly.

The Grey Lady nodded, sighed again, turning to address the officers. "As you know, Kino from House Jupiter, or the Knight Zeus, if you prefer, has been reassigned to watch V."

A collective groan rose quietly and was quickly stifled in deference to the speaker.

"I know." Oniyanagi continued, trying to sound comforting. "The good news is some of you will be reassigned to watch the new girl, Sailor Mercury." She paused, letting this information be absorbed before unveiling the finale, "Along with Mitsukai-san."

One of the girls blushed the bright red of strawberries. Oniyanagi hid a small smile, and proceeded to read off a new list.

There were strict rules in her apartment building regarding the presence of animals, talking or not. It came on a little metal plaque at the building entrance, printed in bold, black kanji, "NO PETS ALLOWED". This was fairly common in Tokyo city, especially when many apartment owners tend to fall in the category of those who only return home every other night. It did not, however, help that Mizuno's personal Super-Hero Trainer was a cat.

Sooner or later, someone was going to notice the black-furred creature popping in and out of their windows and inform the management. It was a good thing that Ami's parents, when they did come home, have not noticed. Mizuno Ami did not live alone, but it seemed often to her that she did. She had gotten up especially early today, for example, to catch her mother before Doctor Mizuno left for work; only to discover that she had not bothered to come home at all, again.

Sometimes, Ami wanted to be the selfish spoilt kid her parents often praised and thanked her for not being. The Mizunos were a happy, perfect family, rich and respectable, professionally reputable and graciously upper-class, with an ingenious child anyone would have killed to produce; something which Ami had decided was a new kind of dysfunction.

"Ne, Ami-chan, do you know where the Crown Game Centre is?"

Mizuno nodded. It was near the Crystal Seminar centre, where she took extra classes every day of the week: two in Advanced Mathematics, two in High School English and on Fridays, Computer Science.

"There's something there I'd like to show you."

And so it became, that Mizuno Ami, who has never set foot in any sort of entertainment facility such as a Game Centre in her teenaged life, sat down at the Sailor V game in Crown and broke the high score in her first twenty minutes.

A crowd had gathered around her while she was not looking, pointing and murmuring in awe.
"Wow, look at her go!"
"Which school is she from?"
"Hey, Naru, isn't that that girl... Suino-san? The one who's on the Crystal Seminar flyers...?"
"That's read as 'Mizuno', Usagi."
"Wow! Is this your first time?"
The last came as an unexpected shock when the girl slapped a friendly hand on Mizuno's back. Mizuno shied from the familiarity and allowed it to be an excuse to drop V-chan into a ravine, ending the game.

Such cries of disappointment! You would have thought her audience was playing the game, not her.

"Now look what you've done, Usagi-baka! She was about to beat the level!"

Ami grabbed her bag and tried to slip away in the commotion. The attention was flattering, but made her uncomfortable, being, as she was, far more used to her peers being glad when she failed.

"Ano... Mizuno-san!" The girl was calling after her. "Your High Score..."

"Gomen nasai! I'm late for class!" She replied hastily, fumbling her way back out into the light of day.

"Ami-chan!"

She ignored Luna too, and stumbled on to the first bus she saw at the bus-stop.

The elegant girl in the olive and charcoal TA Private School uniform was Hino Rei, the prodigy of Hikawa Jinja, near the Sendai Hill district. She went everywhere alone because she thought tolerating company would make her seem approachable, which she wasn't. She held herself aloof, as though she thought she was better than anyone else, because she did.

She made no secret of these thoughts, and yet, nobody could ever call her names. She was too beautiful and too dignified; intimidating so. It just wouldn't be appropriate. Besides, she was a real witch.

Mizuno often saw Hino Rei on her way to class. The young Shinto priestess awed her. Mizuno has never spoken to her, but it was apparent to her that Hino was someone she could readily respect in all areas. An intellectual light crowned her noble brow and her eyes were old, too old for a fourteen year old. It was, in fact, one of Mizuno's aspirations to qualify for TA High School the spring after next and learn to call Hino by name.

She did not know if they could be friends, but she knew without a doubt that they would be able to share an understanding. This, Mizuno felt, was worth far more than "hours spent together in an arcade", as most people have decided to quantify their friendships by, lately.

It would be interesting to her that Hino held the same thoughts about a quiet bob-haired girl she has often seen on the bus to Sendai who seemed far too clever to belong in a public school and took classes at the Crystal Seminar Centre every evening of the school week.

But neither were particularly big on approaching the other just yet.

"We can't possibly rent to you, Mitsukai-san." The rental agent looked over the rather thick bundle of paper in front of him. "You have over seventy violations of the tenancy agreement act on record, many of them involving massive property damage."

"I see. I guess I will try somewhere else, then." Hiketsu sighed.

"Well, I certainly hope no one is foolish enough to rent to you, personally." The agent rolled his eyes. "I mean, keeping livestock in an urban apartment."

"Hai... well, that may have shown poor judgment. Thank you."

The first day back in Tokyo after his long absence Mitsukai Hiketsu checked out the errata of Mizuno Ami's life – performing a quick patrol of the upscale apartment building where she and her parents lived, confirming the apartment number, having a look at her route to school (the same route every day, and always at the same time like clockwork) and her social activities (of which there were very few).

On the second day, Hiketsu had begun to search for a place to live. He had found no one in the apartment rental business seemed to have any time for him, and he had myriad doors slammed in his face, with terse, barely polite assertions that they had no room and he should leave immediately.

On the third day, Hiketsu had finally managed to get an agent to talk to him, only to discover that he had apparently been living in Tokyo for the past year and committing all manner of crimes against nature, the gods, and most notably the tenancy authorities of Tokyo. This aroused in Hiketsu a sneaking suspicion, which he decided to confirm.

"By any chance can I have my photo back then from the tenant profile?"

"Certainly. I just have to find it in my predecessors' records... had a nervous breakdown, poor man." The agent rifled around in the many filing cabinets behind his desk, and eventually produced a thick folder, and pulled a small passport sized photo from it.

Snatching the photo from the agents' hand, Hiketsu looked at it. A huge grin and spiky red hair greeted him. "Ah, that's what I thought."

With that, Hiketsu left the office, still staring at the photo. Tenoroshi. Tenoroshi had been using his name. Had been using his name when he decided to start a goose farm in his den... when he had decided that the floor was for losers and started walking on the ceilings, using ice-climbing spikes long enough to penetrate to the floor above. When Tenoroshi had decided that only a peasant lived his life in silence, and had installed a ridiculously powered sound system in the apartment which he played twenty-fours a day, seven days a week, at full volume, the record on his tenancy registration had stated his name as 'Mitsukai Hiketsu'.

None of this really surprised Hiketsu, who knew Kino Tenoroshi of old – still, it did raise a number of very difficult conundrums, the most prominent of which in Hiketsu's mind was; how shall Tenoroshi be punished?

The second most prominent, of course, was where in all of heaven and earth was he going to live?

It was something about the girl's aura that had first caught Rei's attention, about a year ago. She was a crystalline ice-water blue, a curious and subtle shade that came with its own inner glow.

That in itself did not pique Rei's interest. It was the way in which Rei seemed unable to be unaware of her when she was nearby that did it. And because she could never figure out why, and because the girl did not seem to be malevolent or a danger to anyone, this irked Rei, who in silent retaliation, took extra care to ignore her.

Which was why she was especially annoyed when she sensed the astral distortions only after the bus had started to move off.

"Ami-chan!" Luna shouted from Mizuno's bag as she got off the bus. Several people turned to look, but since they could not identify anyone who looked as though they might be this "Ami" girl, nothing came of it.

Mizuno ducked through the crowds, heading toward Crystal Seminar in a brisk walk. "I'm sorry, but I'm already late for class..." She whispered, feeling rather self-conscious and exposed about having to talk to a talking black cat currently hanging out of her school bag, in the middle of a crowded sidewalk.

Luna did not seem to have as much qualms about this as she. Or perhaps she'd just conveniently forgotten. As far as Mizuno could tell, Luna looked to be about a year old, which in human years would make her barely a teenager herself, around six- or seventeen.

"But Ami-chan, haven't you been listening to what I've said? You are a sailor senshi now. You have to find and awaken your fellow warriors..."

"And the princess, and defend the world against the enemy." Whoever that is, She almost added.

"Luna-san," Ami prepared the speech in her mind. "I am aware that there is a great, new responsibility that I have to take on. But I cannot allow it to disrupt my normal life. I am SailorMercury, but I am also Mizuno Ami, a fourteen year old Secondary School student from Juuban Secondary School, trying to get into a good High School."

She paused, suddenly appalled at her own rudeness.

"I'm sorry, Luna..." She said instead, ducking into a narrow alley. It was hard for her to think of Luna as a cat, which she was quite fond of, despite the physical evidence. It had much to do with the fact that she chose to follow Mizuno around, trying to disrupt her life, rather than being a typical short-furred domestic feline.

Luna made a small, worried sound. "Ami..."

"Mou, daijoubu ne..." She smiled apologetically. "I... I don't know what came over me... This... is difficult for me, Luna... things are changing, I am changing, but I don't understand any of it, even though I keep feeling that I should... I'm sorry... I will be less selfish from now on."

She looked so sad that Luna herself felt like crying. But she didn't. She had a mission to fulfil, herself, and could not afford to give in to personal weakness. She had to gather and lead the Sailor senshi until such time as they awaken, themselves, and find the Princess. Details, such as the imperfect memories she was working with, were unimportant. The cat leaped daintily onto Ami's shoulders and licked the troubled girl's temple delicately.

"I'm sorry too, Ami-chan... Don't worry, you will remember soon."

Rei dashed through the sidewalk traffic, hanging on fiercely to the fading sense of wrongness that tickled the back of her throat and made her just the slightest bit nauseous, but it was quickly losing definition in the static of the city. She made a frustrated sound, the beginnings of an expletive, as it left her stranded in the listless crowd on a road junction.

Lately, it seemed that her psychic senses were becoming erratic, failing often and becoming hard to focus. It was not uncommon, in all honestly, for a child to loose their special perceptions as they grow into adulthood and hit puberty. That Rei was fourteen and still a powerful clairvoyant was in itself a rare sign, although a sign of what, she did not know. Was she finally beginning to lose her powers? More importantly, how did she feel about that?

Single-minded rage kept her searching for a good hour after that, but the only thing out of place to her was seeing Mizuno Ami, that Juuban girl, head towards her tuition centre, then get on a bus across the street instead of going in. And really, what was so unusual about a Secondary School student skipping an extra class...?

Hiketsu had been wandering the streets of Tokyo, gloomily pondering his future, when he felt the first hints of an evil presence. It was subtle a first, like a cold wind across his skin, raising goose bumps even through his heavy coat. It was not a particularly cold day, and the feeling was familiar to Hiketsu – he had felt it all the time in London – negative energy.

Not paying the slightest attention to how much his action annoyed people on the sidewalk around him, Hiketsu stepped backwards to the spot where he had first felt the feeling. It came again. Stepping carefully in every direction, he singled out the one where the sensation of cold got stronger, and began to walk that way. To an observer, it would appear that Hiketsu had, for no apparent reason, decided to do a brief improvisational dance in the middle of the crowded pavement. Odd, but not suspicious – and the Silver Path agent dared not use any of more effective but much more obvious detection magic in public.

Continuing in the direction the negative energy was apparently emanating from, the chill over Hiketsu's skin settled into his muscles a quite uncomfortable feeling. He was definitely going the right way. Not really looking where he was heading, concentrating on the phantom feeling of cold, Hiketsu nearly tripped over some stairs. Looking around, he found himself at the bottom a long flight of steps, beside which as sign announced as the entrance to the hikawa shrine.

Whatever was wrong, it was at the top of the steps. Hiketsu climbed them, looking around – there were quite a few people around; a lot of middle-school kids in particular. Most of them were admiring fairly cheaply made baubles and discussing them. The words 'good luck charm' were mentioned frequently. This raised a flag in Hiketsu's mind – he had dealt with a few plots in England meant apparently to harvest human 'energy' for some unknown purpose, many of which had involved small trinkets such as these.

Attempting to act as casual as he could, Hiketsu approached a pair of girls as they appeared at the top of the long staircase. "Ano..."

The girls stopped on the stairs, and giggled. "Hai?"

Hiketsu tried his most charming smile. It seemed to work, the girls giggled more. One of them blushed. Strangely, Hiketsu was completely unaware as to why this may be; he had, despite having fought very real and vicious monsters in his twenty years, lived a sheltered life in the Silver Path. "What do you have there? May I see it?" Hiketsu nodded towards the little charm one of the girls was holding.

"Sure... it's just something I bought up at the shrine." The girl held it up for Hiketsu's inspection.

Keeping his smile in place, Hiketsu gestured for the girl to hand the charm to him, and she complied. After a couple of seconds in his hand, the charm burst into spectacularly into blue flame and vanished in a cloud of vapor, emitting a small, rather pathetic 'pop'.

Hiketsu stared at his now empty hand, which was still smoking. The girls stared as well. Hiketsu chuckled nervously– it was his turn to blush. "Oops! Sorry, don't know my own... um... yeah.... Wow, um... these things are pretty dangerous! Who sold it to you?"

The two girls continued to stare for a moment, until one gathered herself enough to speak. "Some blonde guy, I think he works at the shrine. What just happened?"

"Oh. Nothing, don't worry yourself about it Just shoddy merchandise, spontaneously combusting and all. I'll go have a word with this blonde guy, he shouldn't be selling stuff like that to kids. Excuse me."

Hiketsu, still bowing and apologizing to the stunned girls, completed climbing the stairs and passed through the gate into the shrine proper. The charm's destruction confirmed all his suspicions – like most Silver Path agents of any level of power, he had been trained to resist negative energy attacks from an early age (from what he had seen, the senshi did the same thing, instinctively). Something dark was happening at the Hikawa shrine.

Making his way through the rather sizable crowd of visitors – a large proportion of whom where touting so called 'good luck charms', to Hiketsu's distress – Hiketsu finally spotted the blonde man, wearing a plain, work-quality white robe and leaning on a broom, chatting to a crowd of schoolgirls.

Hiketsu approached him cautiously, and just as he was getting close enough to hear what the man was saying, he was interrupted by a shout.

"Hey, you!"

A large proportion of the crowd turned to face the man who had shouted – he was quite old, and short, and also in traditional Shinto-wear. "Not you guys, the pretty one!"

Most of the people who had looked at the old man turned away, some grumbling. Hiketsu was amongst them. A few girls raised their hands cautiously, wondering if they were 'the pretty one'.

"Not you, kids, the tall pretty one, with the long hair. Come here, boy! Let me get a good look at you."

Hiketsu turned to face the old man as he ran up, coming to stand rather uncomfortably close. To Hiketsu's shock and confusion, the man reached up (he really did have to reach, he was quite short indeed) and began to run his hands along Hiketsu's arm. "Hmmm... a little scrawny, but you have potential. What brings you to Hikawa?"

"Ummm... just passing by." Hiketsu snatched his arm back from the man.

Undaunted, the old man turned his attention to Hiketsu's thigh, nearly knocking him over in the process. "How'd you like to work here?"

"No, I don't think so."

"You'd get free room and board."

"... honto?"

Fate works in unfathomable and complex ways. Not even a quarter of an hour later, Hiketsu found himself wearing robes like the blonde man, broom in hand, sweeping the steps of the shrine. One problem had been solved – Hiketsu had found a place to stay. Now if only he could figure out what was going on with his blonde co-worker, whom the old man had informed him, was called Jed.

Presently, a beautiful girl came to stand some six steps below him, wearing a stony, disdainful expression against a smothering red horizon, harsh, but beautiful, nonetheless. Hiketsu started to stare, then, remembering his new position, stood to attention.

"And who are you supposed to be?" She spoke flatly, a guess already forming in her tone. She held her chin high and shoulders back, in a stiff posture befitting of a Queen, with the air of one who did so naturally, and rightfully.

Hiketsu bowed deeply, daring to add a little flourish at the end. "Mitsukai Hiketsu desu... Yoroshiku onegaishimasu. The uhm... old man" – he hesitated to call him a Priest of the shrine – "... hired me this afternoon."

The girl looked away with a stifled sigh of exasperation and started walking towards the interior of the shrine. "Dinner is at eight. You'd better get a start on that."

Hiketsu watched the girl go. As arrogant as she was beautiful, with hair as black as night and eyes violet like a stormy sky. Two crows cawed noisily, following the girl – albeit in a round-about fashion, stopping frequently to peck at likely bits of litter and threaten passers-by with their unnerving call. There was something very familiar about all this, just beyond the edge of his conscious mind. Something really rather important, if only he could remember...

Or maybe it had just been her skirt. Private schools tended to be a bit risqué in hem lengths, he'd noticed.

In any case, there was no use thinking about it right now – evidently, he was to prepare dinner. He wondered how he would go about explaining to the girl that he had never cooked in his life.

Rei was having a bad day. She could not tell if the dull, sickly feeling that seems to have settled permanently in the back of her throat and led down to the pit of her stomach was her premonition or last night's dinner. The two boys, Jedo whatever-his-last-name-is and Mitsukai rotated their culinary chores by meal, but it did not make much of a difference to her. Baka oya... She needed to have a talk with him regarding his habit of picking up strays, especially strays who can't cook. They were going to have take-out for dinner, even if she was going to have to go get it herself.

The whispers came to her, parents and friends discussing the recent disappearances on the Sendai Hill District bus route that runs in front of the shrine. Ten children have disappeared from the Ichinohashi district, allegedly here, on Sendai Hill. Rei shut the voices out. No doubt they would come to her soon, once they have banded together and gotten their courage up, and either demand she do something or stop kidnapping their children. How very ignorant and typical. Unable to bully the police and other real-life authorities, these people have always turned to easier targets like little teenaged girls with powers they only half-believed in.

She did not see Mizuno Ami climb up the steps, but the moment the girl crossed the torii into the shrine grounds, she knew. She was surprised, however, when instead of joining the lines for lucky charms or prayers like the other school girls, she approached Rei directly instead.

"Ano... Hino-sama, I'm so sorry to disturb you."

She bowed deeply, as though Rei was a Goddess at an altar and not just someone sweeping up the yard with her sleeves tied crudely out of the way. "My name is Mizuno Ami. Please forgive my sudden brashness in introducing myself. I am in need of your help."

Rei regarded her curiously. Mizuno was like an annoying point of light, always flickering in the far corners of her eyes. Lately, it seems that the light had become steadier, harder to ignore. Lately, like her faltering powers... Rei paused.

Hikawa had always been the place where insight came to her the strongest, the place of least disturbance. But now, as she concentrated and looked with her soul, trying to read Mizuno, she realised that the shrine too, with its sanctified grounds, had become permeated with the same negativity that clouded the city around them. This, she was certain, happened "lately".

"Lately, I have discovered something extraordinary about myself, although this might not sound as unusual to you as it did to me..."

Lately, saikin, Rei had felt largely restless, a feeling that seethed in the depths of her chest, unidentified, almost, at times, suffocating. A certain frustration she could not name. It gnawed away at her.

"I am becoming..."

It stirred a fire within her.

"... myself..."

Harsh, broken caws echoed in her ears.

"From a past..."

Two soot-black birds plummeted from the sky, launching an interruptive assault on the blue-haired girl. Ami squeaked, shrinking away, and raised her arms protectively against her face. The Priestess had felt it too, a sudden pulse in the atmosphere that surged and died quickly, sending ripples to her centre, the aftermath sickening her.

"Phobus! Deimos!"

She called sharply. The large, menacing birds responded immediately by withdrawing and settling on their master, one on each shoulder.

"Mizuno-san," Rei regarded her levelly. Her knuckles clutched the broom tightly, paling, but steady. It was only for a moment, but she sensed it that time, the corresponding flare of Mizuno's aura, in time with the feeling of wrongness. "Mizuno-san, I'm sorry but I cannot help you with your troubles. Please leave."

The girl was a good actress, to look so convincingly confused. Or perhaps, had she expected Rei to be so easily hypnotised like just anyone on the street? Unless, she had truly believed that Hino Rei would not reject her dark offer... The last was a slap in the face. It was beyond a doubt that she was uncanny, this she would freely admit, even revel in from time to time; but she was not without honour. Hino Rei, though icy, made even more ominous by her strange connection with crows, was not, in her heart, Evil.

Mizuno bowed deeply. "Wakarimashitta." She recomposed herself to smile. "Please accept my deepest apologies for disturbing you."

The one thing that Rei did not understand as Mizuno left, was why Phobos and Deimos had only attacked her with their wings, and why she had not fought back.

Hiketsu stood over the fallen form of his senior colleague, still holding his broken broom. He blinked blankly at the circle of stunned teenaged faces surrounding them.

"Ano... that was quite a slip, wasn't it?" He finally managed with an embarrassed laugh. He kicked the pretty blonde man's prone side surreptitiously several times for good measure. For a moment, it looked as though no-one was going to believe him, but then he put on his best "victim of circumstance" look and someone ran to fetch Rei.

How long had he slept awaiting the summons of his Master?

"Jadeite... Jadeite." The voice... he can no longer remember the voice of his Master, or anything about that voice, if it were male or female, high or low. Sometimes, he barely remembered his name.

"Jadeite... my lovely servant... awake for me, my adorable one." That voice... The guiding voice... He never doubted for a moment what he was intended for, what he was put upon this world to do. To serve that person, that most important someone who was, and will become again, his Master. To serve the voice that calls to him. That was his life's purpose.

"Jadeite, you will not fail me, will you?"

"Of course not, Queen Beryl-sama..."

Jed, or more accurately, Jadeite, woke.

He was lying in a small tatami-floored room with a damp towel over his brow, gazing blankly at the rafted ceiling, disorientated. What happened? He was dealing with some girls who wanted to know more about how the charms worked as an excuse to talk to him, that much he remembered. He also remembered making sure that the Priestess, Hino Rei, was preoccupied before beginning to drain the energy from the hopeful patrons. He had the corner of his eye on her the whole time, so it couldn't have been her. The old man, he had decided, was nothing more than an ancient, senile lecher. So, what happened?

The shouji doors slid open and shut.

"Ah, Jed-kun, you're awake." A tiny, withered face appeared in his view. "You recovered fairly quickly. It's good to be young!" He smiled.

Mitsukai Hiketsu. The new guy, of course.

Just outside the shrine, Hiketsu sneezed. Someone must have been talking about him somewhere. Tenoroshi, He assumed immediately, Goddamned Tenoroshi, and thought no more of it.

Other things needed to occupy his mind, such as what Mizuno Ami, Sailor Mercury, would want with Hino Rei, and why Hino-san had thrown the little warrior out. It could have been completely unrelated, a possibility that Hiketsu highly doubted.

He reconsidered Hino as he crossed the street. The Sailor Senshi's mission, as they understood it, was to seek out and protect their Princess, the reincarnation of the Heir to the sovereignty of the Silver Empire. It would not be entirely inconceivable to say that beautiful, regal Rei was her majesty - the air and carriage of royalty came naturally to her, and just as naturally, her supernatural powers.

On the other hand, the Kuroishi's mission to seek out and gather the four Guardians and learn of the nature of the rising threat against them could just as easily become the senshi's own mission by extension. Did they suspect her of being foe or friend? He was no longer surprised by the coincidences that always seem to place him right next to the action. The Leaders of the Path call it the Destiny Factor; narrative imperatives in the story told by Fate and Destiny, as his mentor explained to him once.

"But that does not explain the how and the why, sensei!" His youthful self protested.

"If you understood this you would become a liability, Mitsukai-kun." The Grey Lady smiled kindly at him. Those days, he had to look up to see her face.

The Path played an obscure game with Fate and Destiny that only Grand Master Hideto seemed to understand, the thought of which prickled him with guilt. He should have reported in before. They needed to know of Sailor Mercury's activities.

"Ne, have you heard? Mii-chan's gone missing... Look out! It's the evil six o'clock bus to hell!"

"She takes the bus from this stop too, doesn't she?"

"No way! That's so creepy! Do you think it might be a curse?"

"Are you sure? Maybe she's just eloped with that cute bus driver she keeps talking about..."

"Excuse me," Hiketsu came up beside a group of girls engaged in a highly animated conversation. On the other side of their little circle, the Kuroishi stiffened as he approached and darted behind Mizuno. The beloved child of Mercury regarded him suspiciously, something he rather wished she would not do. "Could you tell me which bus goes to Juubankai?"

The girl he was addressing giggled giddily, so excited to be approached that she appeared to have lost all higher brain functions. Her friends don't seem to be faring much better.

"You'll have to cross the street again." Mizuno interjected politely, sounding apologetic. "It's in the other direction."

"Sou da ne..." Hiketsu gave her an embarrassed smile. Ami blushed and groped for something to say to bridge the silence.

"Are you... going home?" A giddy school girl finally recovered enough to ask, before bursting into another series of breathless giggles.

"No, I get room and board at the shrine. Hino-san wanted take-out from a restaurant on Juubankai for dinner, that's all."

Ami nodded dumbly, although she wasn't sure why she felt he was addressing her as well. The young man looked harmless enough despite his unkempt, stubbly appearance and hip-length hair.

"Are you a friend of Hino-san?" He turned to Ami.

"N... no, sorry..." She stammered, caught off guard.

"No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trouble you. It's just that I saw you talking to her and you look about the same age, so I thought..." He floundered, wondering how to get out of this awkward situation.

"No, I just wanted to ask her something." Ami replied, settling on staring at her hands instead of him.

"I... suppose I'd better get going..."

Hiketsu excused himself and ran back across the street, glad that nobody he knew was around to witness his social ineptness and breach of protocol. Ami watched him get on a bus. She was a little worried about the giggling girls getting hyperventilated, but only a little. She was more concerned with Hiketsu. Something about him filled her with a sense of unease after his presence was gone. A hint of something secretive and slightly... feral.

"Ami-chan, this is the one..." Luna whispered, nuzzling up to her cheek. Ami reached up and stroked the furry little head gently. Her fist paled and tightened around the handle of her school bag. The mysterious disappearing six o'clock bus at Sendai Hill was approaching. Mizuno left her musings behind and braced herself. There were more important things at hand.

"What have you done to our family?"

"What kind of establishment are you running here? Children are missing on your doorstep!"

"You have powers, don't you? Use them! Find my kid!"

"Do you see? Her face, like ice... She has no reaction at all... What a sinister place!"

Rei sighed, emptying her mind into the oracle pyre once again. It was hard to focus, although she could not confidently say why.

Five hilltops met to form the Sendai Hills, and an illusionary "Sixth Hill". Those who remembered this old tale claimed that was where the six o'clock bus and all its missing passengers have gone. They were calling it kamikakushii, a divine disappearance. Rei was not so sure. Something nagged at her from the depths of memories, further beyond the back of her mind. There was a feeling that she did know what was going on, but having nothing more, she was hesitant to trust it.

The sunset spilled across the shougi screens, staining them a decadent, bloody colour. It was a disquieting shade that had always aroused in her a great sense of hatred and disgust which Rei could not understand. The fire flickered at her wandering attention.

Suddenly, a moment of clarity. She jumped to her feet and dashed out. Five fifty-seven, her watch read in digital numerals. There wasn't much time.

There were three things in her fire, one, the silhouette of a young man hoarding souls, his head crowned in short golden waves; two was a girl, Mizuno Ami, she was sure of it; and three, unsurprisingly, an absolutely unremarkable bus leaving the Hikawa bus-stop. She did not yet know how they were connected, and she did not particularly care. The only problem, as far as she was concerned, was that they were trespassing on her territory and she was not about to allow that.

The bus was just pulling into its stop as she finally reached the street. She could feel it, something heavily out of place with something at the front of the bus, in the driver's seat. The old, annoying glimmer that was Mizuno was just boarding, leading another string of victims, she presumed, racing across the street.

"Who are you?" She shouted, scrambling onto the bus behind Mizuno, cutting in front of an irate queue. "What do you...?" Ami whipped around, startled at the sound of her voice, but Rei's eyes were fixed on the driver as he turned his head, slowly, towards her, watching her, and smiled at her. There was something awful and inhuman about those eyes, about that smile.

"You shouldn't be cutting lines, even a pretty young lady like you. Now, why don't you come in?" He extended a hand to Rei.

It's as if she is hypnotised, Ami thought, watching the fire die in the proud priestess' eyes as she took the driver's hand and moved docilely onto the bus, shuffling towards the back.

"Ami-chan!" Luna whispered under Ami's feet, exclaiming alarm. "The driver!"

Mizuno shoved the cat back out of sight under a front row seat and hurried after Rei, sliding into the place beside her. Luna soon joined them again, leaping nimbly into Ami's lap. "Hino-san," Ami probed, but received no response.

An insistent dullness started to press into Ami's skull. She struggled against its heavy lull to see Luna curl up in her lap and fall asleep, just as everyone else drooped, held in thrall, like Rei.

"Next stop, eternity." The driver announced as Ami slipped away. No-one seemed to notice.

There was something familiar in the ancient stone passages, something someone was whispering to her from a distance in words she could barely hear and a language she did not understand.

"Ami-chan!" A sharp pain shot through her drifting fantasies and Mizuno bolted awake. "Gomen, Ami-chan..." Luna looked slightly ashamed, lapping at her smarting fingers.

Ami stood up. "Where are we?" She asked, taking stock of the dim expense of stone pillars and passages. A number of people laid scattered amongst them, dreaming in the grey mist curling around her ankles.

"I don't know." Luna nosed a fallen man as Ami felt for her pen and whispered the magic words. "I think we may be..."

"Underground." Ami finished, adjusting her Heads-Up-Display visor. When her demands for an operating manual proved fruitless, Ami did the next best thing, which was to spend hours behind closed doors as Sailor Mercury, experimenting. While she still could not get the readouts to go away, she had started to figure out some of the more common symbols, and the one she was about to identify now was the sign for "imminent danger". It was a relatively simple one since it was blinking madly over something vaguely reminiscent of a troll in a bus-driver's uniform and made parts of her display flash red.

Luna cried out. Sailor Mercury squeaked and threw her arms up over her face. A terrifying roar thundered through the chambers.

Jadeite looked up from Rei's unconscious face, his fingers still sliding absently through her long, silken tresses. He could not explain it. She was the reason he picked the Sendai bus-route and went to Hikawa. Something about her drove him to distraction even as he'd first laid eyes on her, an inexplicable mix of instant hostility and admiration. A part of him knew her, had always known, it seemed. The problem was it was not a part of himself that he recognised. He had to possess her. To find out what that response was, and why she stirred it. She would make a beautiful subordinate, if Beryl would allow him to have one.

His first thought was to lash out at Kigan for the disturbance. He knew, of course, dropping the young Priestess, that the howling was not unprovoked. Still, he disliked being interrupted.

The youma Kigan crashed into a pillar, swatting blindly at a pair of large, screeching crows. Jadeite frowned, wondering how they had arrived. He pointed at the crows, perturbed, having never thought anything more of them than as Hino Rei's exotic pets.

"Stop!" A little girl's voice cried with the slightly trembling tone of one who knew the request would have no effect but continued to hope anyway. "... Please?"

Something clicked in Jadeite's mind. Nobody except that annoying Sailor V has ever caught on to them yet. Suppose there were more where she came from? The mortified rage over his recent failure found a reason and target. "You... you're the one who took out Morga...?"

"Let these people go!"

"And who might you be, little girl?"

"I... I..." Ami paused. It was not a question she has had to answer before. She looked helplessly around for a clue. The electronically rendered voice of Sailor V came to her mind, For Love and Justice, I, Sailor V, shall punish you! Somehow, it worked in video games. In real life, however, it sounded like the most ridiculous thing she could do. Ami raised her arms and attacked, instead.

The white fog spread from her fingertips, blowing over the youma and Jadeite, then, recoiling against Jadeite began to sink and subside. The grey cloud about their feet thickened. He was condensing Mercury's mist into ice. Rei woke to the sharp sting of frost on her face.

Jadeite snickered, unable to help himself, at the sight of the inept teenager in white and blue aspiring to challenge him, Jadeite of the Four Kings. Behind him, Rei started to pull herself upright, her eyes slowly adjusting to the cavernous surroundings.

Her other senses came back before she was able to make out anything in the dim and haze. Someone stood in front of her, neither dead nor alive and the source, she knew instantly, of all that has been wrong lately. Across from him was a familiar pale blue aura, although the person it radiated from was a stranger obscured by distance and the grey and white miasma. "Mizuno... san?"

Jadeite whipped around. How did she break free of his hypnosis? "You..." Rei's eyes widened in realisation as she got a good look at his face. "Jado... I should have ..."

"It's Jed! Jed!" The man screamed, wrapping his fingers around Rei's neck. "Jed! For Jedeite!" He squeezed, throttling her on each word for emphasis, lost in a livid cloud of rage. "Always... you...! Never! Get! My! Name! Right! Why!"

Rei choked, tearing wildly at his stone-like grip. "Hino-san!" Ami cried, scrambling towards them. Kigan broke away from his own assaulters and scooped Sailor Mercury up in a bear hug, crushed and pinned against his own chest.

"Rei-chan!" From the corner of her eye, through the visor, Ami saw that girl again. She was just an obscured silhouette, dainty, in a full-skirted dress, her hair caught in buns on the sides of her head before being allowed to roll down her back in waves, the girl at the jewellery store on Juubankai who gave Ami the power to become Sailor Mercury. She tossed something in the air. "Use this!"

It glinted as it arced through the air and cluttered uselessly on the floor, lost in the miasmic fog. The crows screamed, diving at their Master's attacker. Jadeite dropped her finally to hurl the madly clawing, pecking birds out of his hair. Rei fell to the ground sputtering.

Her fingers came to rest on the fallen object and a light bloomed, setting her head on fire.

Glowing heat. "Ko no... hoteri..." It rose out of her, an all-consuming memory led by the sad cries of her spirit companions, Phobus and Deimos. "A're wa... watashi..." She fell away, in her mind, tumbling backwards calmly, gracefully, into the heart of Hell, into the searing flames of a memory long ago. The words came to her, a soft whisper on her lips.

"Mars Power... Make Up..."

It consumed her, and she became nothing. And from those ashes, she felt herself become reborn, blossom, like a new fire from dying embers, rising, like a phoenix. Hino Rei, She heard her own voice whisper to herself from far away. Hi no Rei... Who are you? It demanded. Who... who...

I... I am...

She woke, feeling different, but the same. Stronger, surer, and quite, quite annoyed.

"Hino-san..."

"Phobos! Deimos!" The crows circled and dove for Jadeite's eyes. She gathered herself. It felt familiar, as though she had trained all her life for this. I? Her spirit burned fiercely deep inside her, and she felt it, clearer, keener, than ever before. There has always been a certainty in herself that she had made up to carry her through, but this confidence, this new certainty, this was real.

I am Hino Rei, the Beautiful Flame... I am... "Fire... SOUL!"