Author's Note: Well, here's chapter one. The first half of the chapter was inspired by Evanescence's 'Haunted'. I love all of you that reviewed. To who asked about how the senshi died: I won't be giving specifics but don't worry, I make up for not telling you how they died this time. And to those who've gone and read the first version of this story: Please take the entire thing as a grain of salt, it was crap and I'm trying to rectify the situation. I wouldn't even call this a revision, more of a complete rewrite.

Chapter One: I'm Still Here

'Long lost words whisper slowly to me
Still can't find what keeps me here
When all this time I've been so hollow inside
I know you're still there'

"Haunted" Evanescence

In a dark apartment a lone figure slept restlessly. She tossed and turned, wrapping the sheets tightly around her and threatening to topple off the bed. A sheen of sweat covered her and she gripped a pillow to her like it was her last hope. Her white hair was a tangled mass matted to her head. Ill dreams plagued her endlessly, dreams of the past, of the present, and dreams of what was to come. The dark smudges under her eyes were a telltale sign that this wasn't the first sleep she'd spent like this. It wouldn't be the last either.

The apartment was a sparsely furnished with barely any furniture or personal effects. There were no pictures or souvenirs, no ornaments on the walls. All there was in the bedroom was a mattress with no frame, an alarm clock, and a gun next to the mattress. The living room had a couch whose color was indiscernible because of all the stains, a crate masquerading as a coffee table, and a TV so old that you had to get up to change the channel. Unsurprisingly, the kitchen was in the same sad state: a fold-up card table was set up in one corner with a metal folding chair next to it, a mini-fridge hummed on the counter and a rickety gas stove were the only things in sight. All in all, the apartment looked more like an abandoned homeless shelter than someone's home and that's how the residents liked it.

Yes, there was more than one resident. At the foot of the mattress there was someone else; beautiful full-grown female Siberian tiger slept just as restlessly as her master. Her tail twitched constantly and her face was twisted in a silent snarl. The tigress was spread out strategically in front of the bedroom door so if someone decided to intrude they'd meet five hundred pounds of pissed off feline before her mistress.

A beeping broke the tense silence of the room and woke the occupants instantly. The tiger sprang up with a growl, ready to attack/maul whatever had disturbed her. Just as quickly the woman sat up, wrapped only in her sheet, with a gun pointed at the beeping laptop. For a moment she was confused but then her features relaxed with comprehension and immediately seized up again. With a clenched jaw she lowered her gun and got up from the bed.

"It's alright, Sel," the woman calmed the tigress and approached the beeping object she's shoved in a corner so long ago.

Sky blue eyes scanned the message that'd appeared on the screen of the laptop. She'd received the laptop from an old friend six years before and had only used it once before abandoning it to collect dust. It had been meant as a communication device between her and her team if there was ever a need for them to get involved in the Eve Wars. Obviously they hadn't since the wars had ended five years ago and she'd only ever received one other message. Her team had assembled for two weeks then, before scattering to the four winds again. They'd spoken little since. Now, it seemed events had transpired to force them together again. The message read:

'Tokyo. Juuban. North Crystal Point. Noon. More details then.

- P.'

Only one person could or would contact her on the laptop. And she rarely ever (try never) brought good news.

The woman sighed and attempted to smooth back her hair, scrunching up her nose in disgust when she realized what a mess it was. With a deep breath the woman closed her eyes in concentration and ran her hands through her hair again, this time the hair fell smooth and clean down her back in soft waves and the cold sweat she'd been saturated in had disappeared. Mentally, the woman made a note to thank Minako for teaching her the simple beauty-magic tricks.

Once she'd dressed, she wandered into the small kitchen and opened the mini-fridge in hope of something to eat. Unfortunately, it was almost completely empty with the exception of a few boxes of take-out that had been there for gods know how long, a half eaten yogurt, and one shriveled orange; not particularly good prospects.

"I thought you were going to go shopping, Sel," the woman commented to the tiger, who'd followed her, and grabbed one of the boxes of take-out.

Sel sneezed, shook her head, and went to lie on the couch in the living room as if to say 'You try finding a grocery that stays open past midnight'.

The woman rolled her eyes and for the thousandth time wished she had learned to cook sometime in the last millennia. She picked through her sweet and sour chicken a bit before deciding that it was inedible and dropping it into the trash. Really, Sel was supposed to be the responsible one. If you can't trust your tiger to buy groceries then whom can you trust? She settled on water and filled up a glass, opening the blinds to the mid-morning sun while she was at it.

The window's view wasn't a great one but Serenity loved it for its honesty. It displayed the lower-class Chicago neighborhood with brutal accuracy. In the building adjacent to hers there was a married couple with several domestic disturbance reports. The husband had a violent temper that no amount of fines and threats from the police could control and the wife had enough men on the side to make up for any love her marriage was lacking. To top it off the son had been peddling drugs for the local organized crime-ring since he was eleven and was thoroughly addicted to his product. That was reality to her now. It'd been a long time since it'd been anything else.

This is where she belonged: in the slums. She was no better than any of them, no matter what blood dictated. She had more blood on her hands than the worst of murderers. Though, considering her profession, she was a murderer: a murderer for hire. She was Artemis, the most notorious assassin since after the Eve Wars. She was the one to kill Relena Peacecraft and outsmart Hiiro Yui. And now here she was working on contract for the Chicago Mafia and living off old take-out. Whoever said the assassin's life was glamorous? Surely not her.

Finished with her water, she set her glass in the sink and closed the blinds with a snap. This chapter of her life was about to close, she could feel it. Her redemption was close at hand. Setsuna didn't call on her without reason, they'd long ago agreed that unless a threat to the planet presented itself the Time Guardian would not disturb Serenity. Something big was coming. She'd been feeling it for months, maybe even years, it became hard to tell as the centuries passed.

She returned to her bedroom and began to pack in a very unconventional way. She picked up the alarm clock and threw it over her shoulder carelessly. For any ordinary person the clock would have succumbed to gravity and crashed to the floor but for Serenity the clock simply vanished into thin air. The same was true for the dagger under her pillow, the few clothes in her closet, and multiple weapons that were illegal for a civilian to possess. It was one of the wonders of having your own personal inter-dimensional space pocket, it cut down on luggage significantly. Within a few minutes Serenity was ready to leave the apartment she'd slept in for the last year.

She always called it 'the apartment'. It wasn't home. Home would always be Juuban, even if it no longer looked anything like she remembered it. That last battle had ensured that all her ties to her old life were severed. She and Pluto had been the only ones to survive that battle and even then that was more magic than skill. She relived that day so often in her dreams that some days she felt like she'd only fought the battle yesterday, that her muscles ached from the pain of being slammed on to the rubble and the scars on her back throbbed like fresh wounds where her wings had appeared.

Serenity pushed away the memories and strutted out into the living room where Selenity was waiting for her.

"C'mon, girl, off we go," commanded gently and they both disappeared in a flash of silver light.

Everyday Hiiro Yui sat at his desk and typed. Today was no different. In the prerequisite green tank-top he'd worn most his life and ripped jeans that were strictly against the Preventer dress code he typed in his dingy little office that lacked any obvious organization. Files spilled out of filing cabinets and were stacked on every flat surface he could find. On the front of his desk was a sign that Duo had put up as a joke that said 'Don't fix my mess, you'll screw up my system' but Hiiro had thought it a fair warning to people and left it up. Duo, in his delusions, had thought Hiiro had gained a sense of humor and somehow signed Hiiro up to several Joke of the Day mailing lists that now flooded his inbox every morning.

Many people wondered exactly what Hiiro typed all day. Some thought he didn't do anything at all but the sea of files debunked that theory. Actually, he kept track of every potential threat to the peace of ESUN. He studied, researched, summarized and rated all the known terrorists in the world. It was a job that a whole department should have been doing, not just one man, but Hiiro seemed to be doing well for himself and no one argued that his profiles were the best so they left him alone.

That is, everyone but Duo.

"Hey, Hiiro!" Duo greeted as he burst into Hiiro's cramped office, his long braid swinging behind him in its annoyingly jaunty way. Hiiro wondered briefly if Wufei would be upset if Hiiro chopped it off instead of letting the chase that had spanned five years continue.

"What do you want?" Hiiro asked evenly, only glancing up briefly before returning his gaze to the computer screen.

"I can't visit my favorite office legend without wanting something? I'm hurt, Hii-man," Duo pouted and attempted to flop into a chair but then realized there were files stacked on it so he pushed a pile off Hiiro's desk and sat there.

"Hn. Get off my desk. Why are you here?" he demanded again, this time stopping his typing completely to cross his arms over his chest and glare at his 'friend'.

Duo ignored Hiiro's request and swung his legs innocently. At twenty years old one would think Duo Maxwell would change from his womanizing, smart-mouthed, dimwitted, American ways into some sort of productive member of society, obviously the boy had other ideas. Hiiro was in awe that Deathscythe's pilot had even lived past the age of three, where his IQ had chosen to stop rising.

"I'm here for that profile on the Shepherd Organization," Duo admitted cheerily. "Quatre and Trowa came across some illegal mobile doll shipments that were heading towards the Shepherd's Chicago base. They want everything there is to know about them."

Hiiro nodded and went back to his typing, "Third file from the bottom in the stack you pushed onto the floor."

Duo looked at the files scattered all over the floor and blanched when he realized the stack he'd shoved off had mixed with the rest of the files. There was no way he'd be able to find that file now. Hiiro never marked his files so they all looked the same. 'To confuse the enemy' Hiiro once told him.

'Well, it damn well works,' Duo thought forlornly.

"But Hii-man," Duo whined and hopped off the desk. "I can't find it in that mess!"

"Hn, too bad," Hiiro grunted and continued to type.

Duo rolled his eyes at his friend's predictably anti-social behavior and began to dig through the files, chattering all the way. Fortunately, Hiiro had long ago perfected the art of not listening to Duo so whatever the man was talking about the perfect soldier was completely oblivious to it.

Until Duo hit him upside the head with the file he'd been looking for.

"Hey, Hiiro, can you hear me, buddy?" Duo asked with a concerned look.

"Get out, Duo," Hiiro glared at Duo and curbed the impulse to grab his braid and smack his head repeatedly into a wall.

Duo smiled cheekily as if he knew what Hiiro was thinking, "Sure, buddy! Got what I came for anyways. Remember the party on Friday!"

Hiiro grunted noncommittally as the door swung shut behind Duo. Of course he remembered the damn party! Duo had only reminded him every day for the past two weeks. The man had come up with some hair brained scheme for all the ex-gundam pilots to go hang out outside of work as a kind of anniversary thing. Hiiro was convinced that it was a plot to get him out of the office and drunk. Not that he didn't ever leave his office or drink...he just preferred to do it alone.

Hiiro ran a hand through his unruly brown hair and decided to check his mail. Usually, this time was a relaxing one that gave him an opportunity to work out his aggression by deleting everything with the word 'joke' in the subject line. But when Hiiro brought up his inbox today he got the shock of a lifetime: sitting at the top was an email from Dr. J with 'Mission' as the subject. He hadn't received a mission from Dr. J in almost five years. He hadn't even known the old man was alive.

Reluctantly, Hiiro opened the message and read:

'Tokyo. Wednesday. Bring the others. I'll find you.

-J'

Hiiro stared at the screen for a long time. He'd been raised for missions, for war. It was what he'd been programmed to do. But it had been five years of peace and his head hadn't exploded from it yet so it couldn't be all that bad. He wasn't the boy he had been.

It didn't matter. He had a mission. The years seemed to melt away and he was just fifteen again.

"Mission accepted."