The Ghosts

Beryl leaned forward in shock as she regarded the sight in her crystal ball.

"They're inside the palace!" She shook her head violently, her russet waves flying in disarray. "How did they manage to get inside the palace..."

Endymion stepped up to the ball before Beryl's throne in Erebus. Elysian's palace was cozy and quaint compared to Beryl's Erebese fortress-palace. Everything was in smooth black obsidian or grainy black stone, and it was cold. Beryl's throne room glittered in black, dim lights the only way to see anything.

His eyes were still adjusting, so he rubbed them and peered closer to the sight in the view.

"There's only five of them. The guards tracking them said there were seven."

Beryl looked more closely and saw that what he said was true. "So they lost two on the way in," she said. "There are still five left...and they are inside my palace?"

"Should we go and stop them ourselves?" Endymion asked. "Our powers together should do away with them."

"No," Beryl snapped. "We have to protect the Metallia."

"The...what?"

Beryl shook her head, instead of answering him, looking closer at the crystal ball, her eyes almost now pressed into the glass. Her lips curved into a wicked smile. "I recognize these girls..."

"Other than Serenity, of course."

"Of course," Beryl said, her smile not leaving her lips. "Look closer. You must recognize at least one of them..."

Endymion peered closer, then cocked a small smile, his dark eyes confused. "The blue-haired one looks like Princess Ami. Her father was the king of Thessaly..." He shook his head. "But I thought she committed suicide after...after Zoisite 'died'."

Beryl nodded.

"The best weakness that humans have," she said, "is love." I have experienced that myself, and it worked oh so well, she thought. "You insert love into an equation, and suddenly a weakness emerges in even the strongest of souls."

Endymion's eyes flickered.

"I think our leadership should prove to be a little surprising to them."

Outside, the chaos had defeaned the soldiers.

Inside, it was silent as death.

The soldiers' shoes clicked across the smoothly polished floors as they moved more deeply into the palace, down a narrow corridor. They spoke in whispers, not quite sure why.

Their leader was still slightly shaken over the death of her sisters, especially in such a horrifying way. She imagined it must have paralleled the way the Moon fell. The dark forces overwhelming the forces of good...

"Sailor Moon? Are you okay?"

Sailor Moon shook her head of the images, then turned a weak smile on Sailor Mercury, who had placed a hand on her shoulder. She had spoken a bit above a whisper.

"I'm fine."

"This place is huge," Sailor Jupiter said, her voice also raising slightly above their previous level. "What are we even looking for? Why are we on the inside?"

"Beryl must have a portal to the Underworld here," Sailor Mars said.

"That's irrelevant," said Sailor Venus. "What does matter is Beryl's source of power from Hades. We have to find that and destroy it."

"How do we even know there is a source?" Sailor Mercury said. "She could receive the power directly into her from Hades."

"Are you kidding? A god's full power would vaporize a mortal if they even looked at it, much less received it," Sailor Venus said.

"Remember Semele?" Sailor Moon put in. "Her foolish request killed her."

"True..."

"Look at us, even," Sailor Venus said, turning to her friends. "We have the power of the gods, but their power is channeled through our crystals. Surely if Beryl had Hades' power, especially in the volumes she has it, she must have some vast power source that she channels it through. Whatever that is, we have to get to it and destroy it."

Sailor Mars narrowed her eyes. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Sailor Jupiter said, and the women fell silent and listened.

"It's a clatter, and screeching..."

"Oh, no." Sailor Moon moaned, and brandished her sceptre again.

Sure enough, a demon force blasted through the small tunnel, blowing over the girls and knocking them apart several yards. They recovered shortly though, and began slashing at the army with their powers again.

They targeted Sailor Jupiter first.

She felt a threat coming from above, and began the lightning rod atop her tiara crackling with power. But when she looked up to meet the strength that came against her, the lightning went out and the smug smile dropped from her face.

Descending from the sky, wavy mahogany hair blowing in a light wind, was Nephrite.

Sailor Jupiter fell to her knees, unknowingly exposing herself to the devices of the demons about her. Had they not been in fear of the general descending to the ground before them, they probably would have struck her down. But they merely knelt alongside her, bowing at the general in awe.

"Ne—neph...Nephrite?"

"My dear Lita," he said, alighting before her. Jupiter's subconscious screamed at her to stand, to take heed of the scorning tone in his voice, but her soul pushed it inside, indulging herself in his luxurious brown eyes, willing away the nagging feeling at the glint within them.

"Nephrite," she said, remaining on her knees before him. She reached up to grab his hands. He took one of hers, almost patronizingly.

"So wonderful to see you again, Lita, and at this moment. Come close to me..." He drew her up, and gathered her close. "Come close."

Sailor Mars, coincidentally, had a free moment and turned an eye towards Jupiter.

"Jupiter!"

The scream saved her life. For she turned her eyes toward Mars, thinking it had been a cry for distress, and saw the glinting silver blade that had been headed for her head.

Quick as lightning she jumped away from Nephrite, and he stumbled from the force of his swing, cursing. "Damnit, woman!"

"Nephrite..." she whispered plaintively.

Mars stared at Lita, heaving breaths, then cried out as her world went black.

"Surprise," said a cold voice into her ear, a hand roughly spinning her around.

The hand from her eyes was removed and she stared into the sky blue eyes of Jadeite, her former lover.

"Jade...wha—" Sailor Mars looked frightened. "A ghost? A spirit? What...what are you?"

"Shh," he said. "Just—"

Sailor Mars kicked him in the groin.

"Ouch, fuck you!" Jadeite yelled, reaching his hand out. Sailor Mars was still somewhat off-guard, having only kicked him to immobilize him as she found out his motives, but the blast from his hand knocked her on her posterior and rendered her motionless.

"Oh my god..."

Sailor Moon sliced the blunt end of her sceptre and sent out a torrent of ocean water towards her opponents. She had been utilizing mostly Uranus's and Neptune's elements, thinking it a fitting way of revenge for her sisters.

She turned around to see how her friends fared.

Two were not fighting the youma forces anymore. Jupiter was staring blankly at a red-haired man, seemingly immobilized, and Mars was cowering underneath the wake of a blond-haired man with menacing light blue eyes.

"Oh my god..." Serenity covered her mouth with her hand. "Beryl! Hades' powers...she has their souls in subjection..."

She began to step towards her friends, calling their names, but a curtain of demons formed before her, pushing her away from them.

Sailor Mercury closed her eyes and concentrated on building a torrent of water when she felt a hand rest on her shoulder. She whirled, fully intending to smack her water into its chest, when she gasped loudly and dropped her water ball on the floor, where it splashed and disappeared.

"Zoisite!"

"Ami," Zoisite said, his eyes smiling at Mercury. "It's been so long..."

Sailor Venus knew someone was behind her before he took a step, and she swung her leg around in a roundhouse kick.

The someone grabbed her ankle, twisted it, and sent her spinning to the floor.

Sailor Venus landed on the floor with a thud and squeezed her eyes shut to ride the wave of pain.

No sooner had she opened her eyes then she saw grey ones boring into hers...

...and then she felt her body covered with another.

"Girls, help me! We have to get through to Beryl!"

Sailor Moon breathed heavily, finally frowning and cursing loudly, then focused her energy into the sceptre. A long beam of silver power emitted from it, and she cut a swath through the curtain of demons separating her from her allies.

She peered through. Mars and Jupiter were still in their positions, but now Mercury was staring, lovestruck, at a thin blond-haired man, and Venus was pinnied underneath a silver-haired man.

What...why were they so uncertain? It was obvious their loves were villains, having descended with the demon army. Sailor Moon looked, confusedly, at her friends, then closed her eyes and reached within herself to touch the essences of her friends that lay within.

I can heal him!

Sailor Moon clapped a hand over her mouth, then removed it. "Sailors, no! They're under Beryl's control! You'll never get them back...not this way..."

Her voice was lost in the hallway, for the girls were paying her no heed. She felt it inside. Their souls were fighting her, shaking her words away, denying it. I can! I can! He loves me! she felt inside her, and tears burned her eyes.

She screamed at them frantically, trying to get their attention. But all was lost against the force of their love for the four men they faced now, and her screams fell on deaf ears. The demons drew the girls farther down the halls of the obsidian palace, far away from the support of each other.

"She's used love as a force for evil," Sailor Moon said, the tears now falling down her cheeks.

Her crystalline blue eyes hardened.

"I won't let her! I'm going to destroy her once and for all...and free love from her grasp!"