Chapter One: A New Enemy

"Are you guys ready?"

"We're ready!" four other female voices responded confidently.

"Go!"

"Venus Love Chain Encircle!" the blonde Sailor Scout raised her hand as an intense golden light flared at her fingertip, just waiting for release.

"Sparkling Wide Pressure!" the brunette Scout's palm roared with gathering thunder.

"Mars Celestial Fire!" the dark haired Scout flipped out a piece of paper with the kanji printed on it.

"Shine Aqua Illusion!" the blue haired Scout spread out her hands as blue energy crackled between her spread fingers.

The night-sky was lit up as the combined might of pure energy, lightning, fire and ice were unleashed as one.

The foul demon that had arrived from the Negaverse to inflict devastation upon the planet Earth only to have met with the might of the planet's guardians, who were the group of female warriors the Sailor Scouts, shielded its tortured eyes as the energies of the elements screamed toward it.

It howled in torment as it was held in place by Sailor Venus's long chain of small golden hearts while the combined power of the Scouts of Jupiter, Mars and Mercury shocked, charred and froze its armoured body all at the same time.

"It's weakened!" a small voice cried from the other side of the street in which the battle was raging. "Now, Sailor Moon!"

"You've got it Luna!" another blonde Scout, whose hair was in long pigtails that were held in place by a pair of overly plump pom- poms that stuck out on the top of her head quite noticeably, told the talking cat who was watching the fight from an alley.

The leader of the team of Sailor Scouts, Sailor Moon, drew out a small sceptre about a few metres tall and aimed it at the beast.

"Moon Sceptre Activation!" she cried out as she was surrounded by an aura of white.

Wings seemed to materialise about her and then were gone again.

The sceptre issued a beam of holy power that burrowed into the monster, reducing it to crystal dust.

Sailor Moon, breathing heavily lowered the sceptre and leaned on it.

Sailors Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury eyed her teasingly.

"This really takes it out of ya," Sailor Moon moaned. "I thought you guys would never wear it down enough for me to hit it with the sceptre."

"That's rich, Serena! This would all have been over an hour ago if you hadn't let it knock the sceptre into the river." Mars retorted.

"She's right, y' know." Jupiter grouched as she wrung out her wet skirt - she had resented being elected to go after the sceptre.

Mercury just smiled softly as her fellow Scouts became embroiled in a debate about the finer points of tactical thinking in the field.

x x x x x

After transforming back from her Sailor Scout alter-ego, Sailor Mercury, Amy came out from behind the back of the shed and walked up to her back door.

Moving aside the loose brick near the door Amy retrieved the hidden key, which she went on to unlock the door with. After putting the key back she turned the handle.

The door held firm.

Amy furrowed her brow in puzzlement.

She'd locked the door just now?

It had been unlocked before she had arrived?

Slightly annoyed, Amy took out the key, unlocked the door and hid the key all over again.

She must have forgotten to lock it this morning.

Amy couldn't believe she'd been so careless.

That was the last time she walked to school with Serena...it really had to be.

In the kitchen at last Amy slipped out of her shoes and went on to the hallway and up the stairs.

The door was slightly ajar as she got there and she shoved it open and walked in.

As she was about to get changed Amy noticed that the red light on her phone indicated that she had a message.

Pressing the button she shut the door with her other hand.

And, now that escape was cut off, the trap was sprung.

The intruder moved quickly, dropping down from the doorframe upon which they had stood with uncanny balance since hearing Amy close the back door.

Amy's mind lurched as someone landed on her back and bore her to the floor.

Hands grabbed hers and held her down before she was able to do anything.

Amy thought frantically.

A demon? A being from the Negaverse?

Her wrists were held so tightly down that she could not go for her Transformation Pen that was in her pocket.

One of the hands released hers...that hand clamped over her face and in it her unknown assailant held a damp cloth.

The powerful aroma of chloroform stunned her and her eyes watered.

She should have transformed as soon as she was attacked...

Now her assailant had the upper hand and it was too late.

The intruder released Amy as her awareness of her situation, the room around her and HERSELF began to fade - the last thing Amy heard before darkness took her was a voice from the answering machine.

"Hey Amy, this is Serena. The girls and I were just wondering if you have time to drop by the..."

x x x x x

Sometime later Amy woke with a start.

She opened her eyes...and then regretted it.

The piercing white light flooding into the room was something her stinging eyes weren't ready for right now.

"Well, that was a mistake." she moaned, shutting her eyes again.

"I quite agree." a pleasant female voice said.

Amy's eyes shot open again before she could catch herself and they started to water again.

"Ooh, subjecting your eyes to bright light after waking up from being drugged," her host laughed quietly. "I wouldn't recommend it."

"Who are you?" Amy muttered, holding her eyes shut. "Where am I?"

"I don't think I'll tell you know either of those things. But never mind. After all, you don't need to know."

"Then what do you want?"

"For now all I want is your company, Amy - or should I call you Sailor Mercury?"

Amy doubted the reality of her situation then.

"Wha...how do you...?" she couldn't find the words in her confusion. "Are you from the Negaverse?" she settled for in the end.

"Negaverse?" her hostess said the word like it was something new. "I can't say the name means anything to me so I'm afraid not. Look, Amy, I'm at a bit of a loose end here. There's nothing to be said until an associate of mine gets here. That'll be enough for now. We'll talk again soon."

Amy heard a door open and shut and then the turn of a key in a lock.

Her hostess was gone.

Amy finally opened her tender eyes.

Her head ached, sending spasms through her body, so she remained seated.

She was in an upstairs bedroom that was luxuriously arranged.

As she lay back weakly in the comfortable armchair, noticing almost casually that her wrists were held on the armrests by two pairs of steel handcuffs Amy thought about everything...and failed to make sense of ANY of it.

She knew that her captor was female and from her voice roundabout her own age.

But what reason did she have to do this if she wasn't from the Negaverse?

Amy realised she was going to have to bide her time before making any attempt to get out of here. She hadn't yet recovered from the effects of the chloroform so she'd never make the jump to Sailor Mercury without blacking out.

But when she was recovered...

x x x x x

Meanwhile, somewhere in the underbelly of Tokyo...

"Can you believe it?" the chisel-jawed, rough featured client of the open-all-day-nightclub (a contradiction in terms as the original AND current proprietors both acknowledged after having had the matter pointed out to them many, many times throughout their careers), The Tokyo Dead-Zone Vortex, commented.

He drew no great response from the rest of the clientele sitting at the smoky bar drowning their sorrows...and plotting those of others.

So instead he directed his raucous bellow over the heavy metal blaring on and on to the person in the seat next to him.

The other client didn't react any more than the other boozers had but the drinker who had spoken was not to be deterred.

"The crap they throw in these rags at the last minute. Have you seen this?"

"No."

The one sitting next to him spoke for the first time since he'd walked into the club.

"What is it?" he asked in tones, which made it crystal clear he couldn't have cared less.

"This crap." Chisel-jaw waved a battered newspaper in his face.

Now that he had turned around he saw who he had begun this unprovoked conversation with - he was a male who looked around fifteen years old. He wore a grey sleeveless shirt and faded blue jeans. He had red hair that seemed to pulse like blood in the garish light of the barroom and the most striking grey eyes as he gazed straight ahead, nursing his drink which was of a great deal more interest to him than this conversation.

The client wondered just how someone this young had been able to get past the bouncer.

Not that it was his business.

Rather than asking questions he handed the youth the gossip rag for his perusal.

The kid looked at the front page.

"Escaflowne not to be renewed for new series?" he asked, a touch of feeling finally entering his voice. "Wow...that IS bad."

"No, below that, buddy."

The youth looked at the article beneath...

'NORTHERN DISTRICT RAVAGED BY MYSTERY BEAST – Urban Legends the Sailor Scouts supposedly sighted once again.'

The brief report stated that several witnesses claimed to have seen a monster appear in a town square and begin a rampage of destruction - none had been around long enough to see what had become of the beast but the first person who had found the courage to return had said something about five teenage girls.

For the first time in a while a grin pricked up on his face – so, the Sailor Scouts were still around.

Good...

"Interesting," he stated, passing the rag back to the client and rising to leave. "Thank you for the loan of your paper, my good man."

As he got up from the bar the boy noticed a strikingly good-looking woman sitting at a table on her own. In the blink of an eye he had crossed over to her. "So, what's a good lookin' lady like you doing alone in a place like this?" he asked with a dashing grin. "What about you and me going out for a snack tonight?"

"What about you sliding across the floor?" growled a large, hulking, cue-ball of a man, who had come up behind him and heard what he had said.

The youth turned and looked him up and down carefully - from the build he'd say that the man was five times his size. From the attitude he'd say that he was the woman's boyfriend.

"I...don't think I'd like that very much." he said after careful thought.

"Then buzz off kid! You're irritating the lady!"

The youth took the hint and turned for the door - however as he went he swept the Barroom with a wide glance and grinned. The Tokyo Dead-Zone Vortex! He thought with pleasure, the bar where they don't ask for proof of age and neither do I!

At the last second the man who had shown him the newspaper called after him. "Just a sec, sonny. What's your name anyway?"

The youth called over his shoulder as he strode out of Tokyo Dead-Zone.

"Fargo."

x x x x x

"Still no sign of Amy?"

"Nope," Rei shook her head. "Serena told me that she never came to school today."

Luna frowned; this was unusual.

Not the frown itself although this would have been understandable coming from the face of a cat but the fact that this particular cat was the one doing the frowning.

"This isn't like Amy at all," Luna said at last. "First she wasn't at home when Serena called to walk her to school and now you tell me she never even showed up there."

"You bet your life it isn't like her!" Rei put in. "She crammed for today's algebra test for a month just to miss it."

Luna grunted.

"Well Serena went to her house to fetch her. Amy can explain herself when she's here."

As if on cue the café door opened and Serena sauntered in.

Rei and Luna's eyes were on her.

Amy wasn't with her.

"She couldn't come?" Luna asked Serena as she took a seat opposite them.

"I didn't even get to see her," Serena surreptitiously grabbed Rei's untouched jam doughnut. "There was no answer when I rang the doorbell." she stuffed it into her mouth before Rei could reclaim it.

"Oh this is just getting ridiculous!" Luna's temper was at an all-time shortage. "Where can she have been the whole day?"

Serena shrugged. "Dunno, I haven't seen her. Come to that none of us have seen Amy since we all went off after fighting that monster last night."

"You think she could have been affected by the monster somehow?" Rei was concerned.

"She'd have told us if she had been," Luna snapped. "Amy has some reason for not showing herself all day believe-you-me. Well I won't be too gentle with her when she concedes to turn up."

"Oh, DARIEN..." sighed Serena as she tilted her head backward to gaze wistfully up at the ceiling, her cheeks bulging like a hamster's, the beginning of tears of longing glinting in her eyes. "I wish that you were here right now..."

"Isn't he coming back from his job tonight?" Rei asked in exasperation – Serena's boyfriend Darien Shields had had to leave town for a couple of months in order to earn money so that he could continue to pay for his college education and Serena had been pining for him ever since.

"Yes...but every second is as agonizing as an eternity until my true love returns!"

A slight beep caught their attention.

Serena glanced stealthily around the café and then pressed the button on the side of her wrist communicator.

She listened for a minute to the voice on the other end and turned back to Luna and Rei.

"That was Mina, you guys. She says Artemis has found another dimensional rift. He wants us there in case something slips through. We'll just have to cope without Sailor Mercury's help."

x x x x x

It was somewhat warily and VERY unwillingly that Amy walked through the door she had opened - she had no choice.

When she had awoken from her dreamless sleep she had found that her wrists were mysteriously free from the arms of her chair and investigation had revealed that the door of the luxurious and strangely WINDOWLESS room she had been placed in was unlocked.

However she had found little solace in this since her attempt to leave this place, which she'd realised upon leaving the room was in fact a High-Class Hotel much like one from a spy-adventure set in a foreign land, apart from the fact that it seemed strangely deserted, had turned out to be futile. As she'd tried to walk down the massive stairway that connected the balcony outside the corridor that her room was located in to the empty lobby Amy had found her way blocked by some kind of magical barrier that had glared with a sickly green glow as it had prevented her from escaping her 'prison'.

Refusing to let herself be overwhelmed by the panic rising up within her Amy had doubled back, thinking of entering another room, one with a WINDOW, and calling for help from the people in the streets below...only to find each of the doors that she'd desperately tried firmly locked.

All but the room that now loomed up before her - a book-lined office greeted her eyes as her hostess looked around from where she had been looking out of a wide window that encompassed most of the far wall as she had come in.

"Ah, Amy," she greeted as she turned to face the blue-haired girl. "I was only just thinking of you."

For the first time since this had all began Amy was able to take a look at her captor - she was a girl with purple hair cascading over her shoulders to her waist and who was currently dressed in a modest way, not unlike how Amy herself was wont to dress.

There was a strange sparkle in her brown eyes as she regarded her 'guest'.

"Were you now?" Amy's attempt to sound defiant collapsed - there was something unnerving about those eyes... "Stop staring at me like that!"

Her hostess shook her head apologetically.

"I'm sorry. It is impolite and I do apologise. But you should realise, Amy, that you are the most beautiful girl I've ever had the privilege to meet. Not that I mean anything by it but I could lose the time looking into your face."

Amy was completely thrown by this compliment - the strangeness of her day was complete.

"Feast your eyes," she retorted. "Since you'll need to make do with your memories for quite a while." her voice was flat for her words were empty and she knew it.

Her hostess smiled enigmatically.

"Well that's a maybe. Oh, but here I am going on when we haven't even been introduced. My name is Merula...not that there's much in a NAME. But tell me Amy...do you believe in destiny?"

Amy did not reply, wishing to have no part in this bizarre conversation. "I'll take that as a no. Well...it certainly believes in you."