Love

by MisatoKitty

Oh dear, Ranma's dead. But wait, that's the end of the story. How does he get there? What the heck has been going on? Read on! Rating lowered because, really, this wouldn't get an R in cinemas even with the occasional violence :P

15. Love 15

DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.

WARNING: This chapter has bad language, adult themes, minor horror, shameless rip-offs and limeish content. If this was an Australian site, it would carry an MA/MA15+ rating, which is less than an R, but more than a PG. You have been warned.

LOVE

By

Raymond Cooper

Chapter 15

** Paradise Lost **

She woke, as if from a deep sleep. She was sore all over, felt like she'd been kicked by a horse or an elephant, but she could move. Nothing seemed to be broken. No cuts or scratches, not even any bruising. Maybe she just felt fried? She wasn't sure. She got to her feet, agony pushing through her muscles.

The world around her swum back and forth, reality seeming to warp before her eyes until she realised it was a dizzy spell. She'd obviously been lying down for some time. As the blood drained more from her head, she gained her balance, and stood straighter.

Her head felt heavy. She reached up, and touched something that wasn't her head. It was smooth, felt like plastic. She pulled it off, and looked at the object in her hands. It looked like a headset of some kind of arcade game, but she couldn't be sure. The lenses looked clear, and the plastic clean. There was a silhouetted image of a helmeted man with wings on his ankles, and from behind his head and feet ran two parallel lines with the words MERCURY printed between them. She didn't understand.

She shook her head. The fuzziness wasn't going around some things. There was something wrong. She couldn't remember who she was, or how she got here.

But where was here? She looked up, and saw ruined buildings. So... had there been a war? Had there been a downfall of the human race? Maybe something weird, like a giant monster attack or something. She didn't know. Around her were huge chunks of smashed and melted concrete, with iron supports melted across the tops and sides. So at least she knew it was something hot that had definitely happened here. What kind of hot, she didn't know exactly, and it wasn't forthcoming from her memory. She suspected it might come back in time, but didn't know for sure. Her memory was just too fuzzy on aspects of herself.

It was like she'd been picked up from somewhere and dropped down somewhere else, but the transfer had left bits behind. Whether that analogy was correct, she didn't know, but if it was, had the bits that apparently made her whatever she was been left behind on purpose? She shook her head. Only just woken up and she was already seeing menace all around her. She'd lost something. Courage, perhaps? New-found or long-fought-for? She didn't know. She just felt... afraid. Something was wrong. She just couldn't place her finger on it.

She stared upwards into the noon sun. It felt good on her skin; and she realised she had an awful lot of it showing. But she felt no modesty. Whatever she was afraid of, it wasn't being naked. But perhaps she was, and it was just the feel of the sun playing across her skin that conquered it. It felt like she'd been trapped somewhere dirty, a netherworld of pain and torment. Womb of a twisted newborn, as it were, and stepping into the sun was like casting that off and starting a new life.

She chuckled. Without her memories, it was an apt analogy.

But what to do now? A large chunk of the city here seemed to be in ruins, she had no memories, no idea of where she lived or what she did in life, and was naked. The naked problem was soon fixed; with all the ruined buildings, there were a number of fashion stores that had also been destroyed. And while whatever had scoured the area pretty decently - lots of ground-rubble, a few standing walls, but not much else - lots of light objects had survived the destruction. Sheets of paper floated about on thermals, and every so often, a piece of clothing would whip along the ground, caught in a violent atmospheric eddy. She snagged some of the clothes she saw, and quickly build up a wardrobe of odds and ends, including black tights, a red leather miniskirt, and a blue t-shirt that only came down to the top of her stomach. Not for cool weather, but as she wasn't planning on getting out of the sun anytime soon, that was fine.

In the distance, she heard a noise, and turned to face the direction it was coming from. In that direction, the city was whole, more or less, and what she'd heard were helicopters, of all shapes and sizes, heading in to carry out a search for survivors. She snagged a bright red towel that flapped past in a sudden gust of wind, and waved it for all she was worth.

******

No senshi remained. Figuratively speaking, anyway. When the helicopter fleet uncovered the group of people Ranma had saved, they had all let their transformations drop long before. None of the survivors had seen anything more than Akane and Hotaru about that final fight, and no one had seen Ranma. Mitsuki was almost in a catatonic state with a belated bout of claustrophobia, due to her time trapped under the building with Ranma, sitting and rocking with her knees drawn up around her chest. At one point, as Hotaru passed, she whipped a hand out and grabbed the younger girl, stopping her dead. But she hadn't raised her eyes. Hotaru wasn't sure if Mitsuki had been reaching out to give or to receive comfort, but she'd apparently gotten whatever she needed out of the gesture, because since then she'd been reasonably still.

Her silence still worried Hotaru, but she thought the older senshi would get over her ordeal soon enough. She had to have had a will of iron to hold her mind together under all the rubble for as long as she did without having her other personalities cause problems... it made Hotaru give the older woman more respect than she had previously. Even without having multiple personalities, some of them apparently quite destructive, Hotaru would have found it difficult to keep her head while trapped as Ranma and Mitsuki had been. She kept an eye on Mitsuki, though, until the helicopter rescue teams had her strapped in and sedated.

Akane still looked to where Tokyo Tower had stood. Now, there was nothing save a small group of twisted and melted iron girders rising up above the surrounding debris. All that moved were rescue teams and the injured who'd somehow managed to survive the dark blast wave the monster had thrown out before his apparent death. Hotaru stepped up beside her, still uncomfortable, but not so much now they'd stared down the end of the world together from behind the man they both loved. Little things like that brought people together in the weirdest ways, Hotaru reflected; what a pity normal people couldn't be subject to the same trials and tribulations of the hero. Then she quirked a slight smile; just with the problems she'd had over the last year, relationship, physical, evil overlord dominations, she was surprised she'd survived as intact as she had.

She cleared her throat softly, and Akane nodded towards the tower. "There was a helicopter... over there, you know. I don't know if they found him or... not."

Hotaru shook her head. "He's alive. I don't know where, or how, but he is."

"How can you tell?" Akane asked, detached, eyes still locked towards the tower's remains.

"You trained with Ranma, didn't you? Didn't he teach you... how to feel someone by their life force? Their ki?" Hotaru gestured towards the tower. "I feel him, but all I know is he's not over there. I don't know how I know that, I don't know why I think that, but I do know he's alive. It's too strong a feeling... for him to be... dead."

Akane pondered on that for a few minutes as rescuers stepped past them with a small girl in a jester's cotsume on a stretcher. At least, Hotaru assumed she was still wearing the jester's outfit. It was hard to tell under all the gauze and pressure bandages and blankets. If she survived to hospital, it would be a miracle. As the stretcher passed, she trailed a hand along the length of the girl, reaching out, pushing, and the girl, previously in pain, smiled and sunk into a deep sleep. Hotaru slumped groundward to lean up against Akane's legs, completely exhausted. That had been a lot of energy to expend, and in such a fast time. When not transformed, she didn't have the deep reserves Sailor Saturn did, and even though Ranma had been helping her build up her stamina and ki, she still wasn't as strong as she needed to be in a time like this. Too many wounded, too many dying, and Hotaru was helpless to help out. All she could do were small gestures, helping those who might be able to help others.

As the stretcher-bearers got the girl to a waiting helicopter, they were surprised to hear the girl snore. A quick check showed she wasn't suffering anything more than extensive bruising now, which confused them even more. That was the third such case of critically wounded people being miraculously cured of their most grievous wounds in the last hour. Just in case, they placed her into the helicopter and waved the pilot off.

Akane looked down at the young girl. At times, through her pain and jealousy, she could see why Ranma had been drawn to her. No matter what she was like under the surface, she was kind, helpful, and at times, playful. She knew the right things to say, and the right times to say them. Akane couldn't help but hate her, and yet... and yet she knew that for all she loved Ranma, she could never trust him. Instinctively. Something inside her would rebel at the thought of believing him, of trusting him. Intellectually, she knew the things that would happen to him when she confided in him, or got close to him, were just coincidence. Ranma wasn't responsible for everyone else's actions. If Shampoo threw herself at him, it wasn't Ranma throwing her at himself. But some part of her refused to accept that. Whenever it happened... she used it as justification for hurting Ranma more. She'd been thinking on this a lot since he'd broken off their engagement, and she'd had a lot of time to think about it. Kasumi had helped, too, calmly and cheerfully pointing out flaws in Akane's arguments and beliefs when she made them known.

If Akane didn't know better, she'd think Kasumi had come down firmly in Ranma's camp.

It had been that realisation, that single thought, that had brought down Akane's house of cards. There were no camps. All the people who wanted to avenge her honour wanted her hand rather than letting the absent Ranma have it, which meant they weren't acting in her best interests, no matter how angry she was. And she realised that, except for the public manner in which he'd broken up with her, he'd done everything he could have to preserve their friendship. He'd been right. She had problems. She was too violent, too jealous. She didn't think there was anyone else for her, though... Ranma had been the only male in her life, barring her father and the good doctor (a childhood crush, she had realised), who had been inside her barriers. And she just couldn't drop them all. Not yet, anyway. And Ranma couldn't sit around and wait and hope that one day, she *might* be ready for a proper relationship that didn't involve various forms of abuse.

No camps, no sides. These girls had banded around Ranma, she'd seen that in action. But not to protect him from her, but to protect him from threats. Which could include her, but didn't have to be. She realised that now. And she had to tell him. She had to tell him that as much as he was growing up, she'd decided... she'd realised... that she had to as well. She'd ran into a warzone to tell him that, to tell him she understood his problems. Not to beg him back, not to threaten him into returning, but to accept him and his faults, as she had to try to accept hers, in friendship.

She had to admit, they'd make much better friends as friends than as a married couple.

So she stood, and waited. And she could feel him, somewhere, distantly beyond the dust. She, too, couldn't pinpoint him. He was elsewhere. Major Elsewhere. But he was alive.

Akane sat down next to Hotaru, propper the younger senshi up against her. Hotaru, exhausted after the morning's exhertions, fell asleep almost instantly.

******

She sat in the government office, one of maybe a dozen who'd been called in, yet here she sat alone, waiting for her interviewer to arrive. He was late. Everything was late, apparently; the disruption downtown had caused a lot of property and collateral (read: people) damage and everything had broken down. The police were out in force, stopping looting in the inner city, and the JSDF were apparently on standby, if everything she'd heard in the foyer was true. Everyone spoke in whispers for the moment, everyone still shell-shocked. She herself had mostly been silent the last day, only speaking to confirm she could indeed speak japanese, and that no, she didn't know what her name was. She'd been sent to a school hall for the night, bunked down in emergency accomodations for those displaced by the explosion, and then at 6Am this morning, she'd been hauled onto a truck and taken to temporary government offices in Shinagawa.

Apparently, they'd been set up in these offices as a precaution against further explosions - as yet, she hadn't heard what had caused the explosion, only that people kept saying it was big (The explosion? she wondered) - and to spread out support for people displaced or with temporary memory loss. She qualified for the second, and quite possibly the first, too, but she didn't know if she had a house or apartment or not... she could have been running around naked for weeks for all she knew.

Still, she still didn't seem to have any bruises, but she did feel sore still. Movement seemed to lessen the pain now, and she'd woken up before the truck had arrived and ran around the hall a few times. It also helped that it was getting colder - snow wasn't expected to be far away - and she didn't have anything warm to wear. Still clad in what she'd found the day before, she sat, waiting, at the desk. The offices either weren't heated, or no one had bothered to turn on the heaters, for it was chilly.

She had been waiting in the office for an hour by the time the government interviewer arrived, walking in, tucking sunglasses into a pocket inside his jacket. He was immaculately groomed, hair slicked back straight, face clean. He looked fit, which surprised the woman. She had expected government officials to be overweight or otherwise unfit, seeing as they apparently did little all day. But this man looked to be rather handsome, even. He smiled at her as he sat down, but it seemed to be devoid of warmth. Her file was on the desk in front of him, and he looked through it, eyes glancing over reports and photos quickly. Then he closed the file and looked up at her, joining his hands on the table before him.

"So... you claim to have no memory."

"I have a memory," she corrected him, "just nothing I can point to as anything personal."

The man nodded. "A fine distinction. And an important one. Where you were found... is suspicious in itself. Do you know... where you were found?"

She nodded. "Yeah. In a lot of blown-up buildings."

The man grimaced. "You have no idea what happened at that precise point?"

She shook her head.

"Well... let me just say... it was interesting to read about yesterday. I look forward... to seeing the footage on the news... when television is restored." He patted her file. "Do you know the penalties... for lying to a government official?"

She shook her head again. "I'm not lying!"

"Oh," he continued, "I believe you... when you say you remember nothing about... yourself. But... you must understand the position... this puts me in. We are looking for someone... a terrorist mastermind... who used a weapon of mass destruction on Tokyo yesterday morning, along with... a hallucinagenic." He leaned back in his chair, looking long and hard at the woman sitting opposite him. "No... you're not our... man," he said, finally, then leaned forward again. "So let's start again. I am Sato, and we need to... fix you up with a temporary... identity. Until your memory... returns."

"Has... has this happened a lot?" she asked.

Sato smiled. It wasn't nice. "More than you... might think."

******

And so it was that, a little under an hour later, Kaname Mizuno left the offices, with a small amount of money to buy some new clothes, a temporary office job and a small apartment she could call her own... until she remembered who she was, of course. Clothing came first, as a biting wind had blown up since she'd entered the offices, and she found some warmer leggings, a jacket, hat and a scarf, as well as some clothes for work. After that, there was enough money left to buy a week's amount of food (until she was paid from her new job) and time enough to get to her new home before the sun set and the wind became really cold.

The apartment only had a few rooms: a combination lounge/bedroom, a small kitchenette, and a bathroom, but at least it had hot water, electricity, and a good-sized bath. She felt she could use one, the way her toes felt to be turning blue under her new fleecy boots. She quickly fixed some instant ramen up while water ran for the bath, and once the bath was full, she stopped eating, put the box on the bathroom floor, and peeled clothing from her body. It was damp; not surprising, the way the winds seemed to be carrying moisture everywhere. The fact she was currently standing in a huge cloud of steam didn't escape her, either. She realised she hadn't brought anything clean to wear in with her, but eyed the fluffy towel that had been sitting on the wall railing, and decided not to bother just yet. She dipped a toe into the water, nice and hot, and slid into the bath fully, retrieved her ramen, leant back and continued to eat. There she sat for most of the night, until the water began to chill.

The next morning saw her up bright and early. She had to be at work by 8AM, and she didn't know quite where she was going as yet. It was the Japanese corporate HQ of an American company, according to the small information pack that came with her temporary identity package. Mister Sato had been very nice after the initial quesitoning, pointing out all the little details, telling her that the basic necessary items for living had been bought already and furnished in the apartment, also mentioning the style of dress needed at the office. Not that Kaname knew anything about office work, but she guessed she'd soon find out.

It turned out, when she arrived at the offices half an hour early, that the firm was a software engineering company, and she would be carrying out data entry duties, along with some customer work from time to time. But to start with, she'd be partnered with someone who knew the job, and stepped through the first week until she was considered proficient enough to carry out her tasks without someone standing over her shoulder.

She quickly found out the work wasn't hard. She entered numbers in, over and over, over and over, until her break, at which point she'd come back from a few minutes' rest, and be entering numbers in again and again until the end of the day. She had the job down pat by the end of the first day, and was assisting customers on her second. By her third, she was working fine without supervision.

By her fourth, a bath at night wasn't calming her down as much as it had. So she climbed out after twenty minutes or so, and looked around the small apartment. There was a small television, but there wasn't anything much on the stations yet, mostly it was about the disaster. A few people questioned what kind of hallucinagenic could create a giant monster like those that had rampaged across Tokyo in the 60's and 70's, and early 80's, but as yet, no one had any answers: the samples had defied analysis. What was known was that a small, non-nuclear device had exploded at the Tokyo Tower, and had destroyed nearly everything within three kilometres of ground zero. A lot of the nation's central personnel and economic records had been wiped out, and the country was facing a massive recession unless someone could find a backup copy of the records, somewhere, or other nations stepped in to help ameliorate the problem. Whether anyone could or not, that was another story. And the news was still full of crying people, wanting to know if their loved ones were still alive or not. Photos were shown; this seemed to be the only way survivors could figure out who they were. Too many people, upwards of one or two thousand, had memory loss, just couldn't remember who they were.

Like Kaname.

The news was depressing, though. All these people... a nation in mourning. And in shock. Casualty estimates were in the range of one million, possibly more. There had been time for people to escape, and many had, but the bomb had still caught a great deal of people. There would have been more, if not for the courageous intervention of the heroes Japan still had remaining. It seemed to Kaname there were less and less of them now, as if heroes were a dying breed, and those that were left... those that had fought in Tokyo the other day... were hurt, injured, tired. Depressed.

So Kaname turned from the television to the computer. There was a DVD case lying next to it, a game. The World, the front proclaimed. According to a note scribbled on a post-it on the case, this had already been installed and was the biggest selling computer game in Japanese history. Some forty million people worldwide were supposed to be playing this game, and the case proclaimed "you could be a hero!" in great big writing across the back. Great. A hero. But as she read more into the blurb on the back, Kaname found it was also a social game, where people could go meet others, talk to people. She didn't know if the servers would be up, what with all the disruption to everything else, but she might as well give it a go. The case said all that was required was a computer, which she had, and a VR headset and dataglove. There was a dataglove next to the computer.

And she cast her eyes over at the headset lying next to her bed.

******

The Ai Sou was quiet. Too quiet for some. Ami, who generally liked the dorm on its more quiet days, was a little jumpy. No Ranma, nailing tiles on the roof. No Ranma, cleaning the springs. No Ranma, training them in the morning. And yet, at 6AM every morning, the girls were in their gis, downstairs, outside, running through katas and sparring matches. If their teacher wasn't there, then they would continue to act as if he was. Rei, Makoto and Mitsuki, the three who knew the most martial arts besides Ranma, acted as teachers as and when they could. They all felt bad. Hollow.

Grieving.

A sick feeling in their stomachs, made especially worse when sparring with Hotaru. Even with Mitsuki, who seemed to have settled down a lot in the days since the fight. Nearly a week now. Six days. One more day, and it would be a week proper. There wasn't any university or school at the moment, Tokyo University had been shut down due to blast damage adding to all the damage it had taken over the previous few months, and the high schools had been shut to get more people into the workforce, and try to recover Japan's economy before it went completely bust. According to internet news sites, Ami had been reading that iron refineries had been employing ten year old children for around a thousand yen a day to boost production. That really wasn't good, but then nothing about the current situation was good.

Right now, she was on her computer, IRC window open. The channel she was in was dead, but while she was thinking about how quiet things were, a message window opened up.

Kanrinin Morning, Ami.

Ami smiled. She started typing back, the clicking of the keys comforting her.

Mercurial Good morning, Keitaro. How is Naru?

Kanrinin She's good. She's working in a school at the moment. Troublesome students, so they wanted someone who can handle themselves.

Mercurial She's got her confidence back, then?

Kanrinin She's fine now. We're both fine. I wanted to ask how you were doing, though.

Mercurial I'm fine, Kei-kun.

Kanrinin Don't give me that - I saw the news.

Mercurial It was bad, but I'm fine now.

There was a pause of a few minutes, during which time Ami thought Keitaro had dropped his connection or something - lost connections happened a fair bit lately. But then, he sent a new line.

Kanrinin Can you connect to The World? Since I can't leave the dorm ATM, and it's too much bother for you to come over, I was wondering... did you want to join a party?

Ami pondered. Why not? Some socialising was just what the doctor ordered for a dead Sunday morning. She sent back an affirmative, transformed into Sailor Mercury, and dropped her computer's visor down over her eyes, plugging it into her laptop so she could access the game. Then she waited through the loading screen, finally being logged in and dropped into the game proper.

******

The city reminded Kaname of Venice, or rather, the pictures of Venice she must have seen at some point. She didn't think she'd actually been there, not that she could know for certain, but she thought had she been there, it wouldn't seem as familiar an appearance. The architecture, though, seemed to be almost North African, perhaps Moroccan rather than European. The main street was split in two by a canal, and almost lazily, a long gondola drifted along in whatever current had to be running through the water. Or was programmed into. Kaname wasn't exactly sure of how the game worked, just that it did. This wasn't her first time in, she'd been in several times. But there hadn't really been any people to talk to, then. Oh, lots of people, and everyone was talking, but they all had established friends. It was very... cliquey was the word Kaname wanted to use. People only really talked or interacted with others they'd joined with, or met early on in their online experience.

Of course, most people had insanely weird names, like Ticonderoga or Aeolus. Some went by initials, or combinations of initials or words and numbers, like the Piro416 she'd seen twice now, apparently testing out methods of killing oneself in an online world. Some had names that were japanese, but she suspected that a lot of them played opposite genders to what they really were. Some avatars of players were big, bulky, others small and meek. One girl she'd noticed had a bulky jewellery arrangement adorning her head just above her forehead. The outlandishness of the appearance had drawn kaname to look into her eyes, which were deep and, scarily, empty.

Kaname had used her real name in the character creation section of registration by accident, and so was stuck with the name 'Kaname' whenever anyone profiled her. She'd also missed the concept of 'role-playing' entirely, and picked an avatar with features very close to her own, and only now was kicking herself for not figuring out she could have been a big, strong manly man. Or a "geeked-out technogurl", as she'd heard one player already refer to the girl with empty eyes as.

So here she was, in The World again. she knew the basics, knew what was required to play, the combat, how to join groups, everything else. But she had no one to play it with. Her routine of food in bath, then online play, wasn't doing much different than snoozing in the bath all night long for her relaxation.

A player connected nearby, a youngish-looking man with glasses and a big floppy, pointed hat. He reached up and adjusted it, sighing when it fell back down again, looked up and made eye contact with Kaname.

Wow. Not that he was cute or anything. This was, after all, a game. And Kaname knew he was probably a girl with too much time on her hands anyway, so that killed the rest of any possible romantic or sexual thoughts, of course. It was his stare. If this had been real life, Kaname would have melted at the knees. As it was, she felt her knees wobble slightly under the computer's desk, which through the biofeedback in the dataglove, transferred itself to shaky knees in the game world. Greeeeat...

He started to make his way over, waving amiably. Kaname pulled back a little when she realised he was heading towards her, wondering if this was going to be some kind of cruel joke. But then, she thought. Most players did nothing morally wrong around the Scarlet Knights, and they seemed to be based on the gondola, so she stood her ground as he reached her.

"Hi!" he said brightly. "I haven't seen you around before."

Kaname shook her head. "I'm new. For the last few days, at least."

"Oh, a newbie," he nodded to her. "How are you enjoying the game?"

Kaname looked around dubiously. "No one wants to talk to me."

The man shrugged, and held up a hand. "I'm on my way to the Sun Grass Plains to meet a friend. Want to come along? We'll probably only be talking... but it'll be someone new you can talk to."

She thought about it for all of half a second before nodding. The Sun Grass Plains was considered by the instruction manual to be a fairly basic level for beginners. So basic, in fact, that a lot of players congregated there to talk away from the congestion of the major city networks. "That sounds good."

Kaname followed him towards one of the major Gates from the city, and they chatted lightly until they arrived. There, he lifted his arms and proscribed a quick icon in the air with his staff weapon, but before he gave the code words, he turned to Kaname. "I'm so sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Kanrinin."

She held out a hand, shook his when it was offered in return. "Kaname.

The Sun Grass Plains turned out to be a nice place, full of rolling hills with warm, soft green grass blowing gently in a simulated breeze. The sun was hot, so weird to feel that here, and knowing her body was cold back in her apartment. She blinked idle for a moment to get another blanket and to turn up the heat on the small electric heater she had down on the floor.

There didn't look to be any clouds in the sky, when she returned from idleness, and Kanrinin had moved off a few steps. He glanced back to see if she was coming, heard the blink of player reactivation, and smiled. She nodded, unsure of herself, and followed him again.

Two small hills over, they found the person Kanrinin was looking for. She was tall, with dark blue hair, and wore puffy, almost gauzy, pants and a kind of boob tube made from the same material. She had a staff as well, but a simple shaft of wood, broken up by painted patterns along its length, unlike Kanrinin's, which had a complicated shape resembling a mutant letter 't' trying to eat a shiny yellow sphere affixed to an end. She smiled at her friend, then nodded curiously at Kaname.

"Who's your friend?"

"Mercurial, this is Kaname." Kanrinin gestured at Mercurial to Kaname, and continued the introduction. "And Kaname, this is my friend, Mercurial. Mercury for short." Kaname nodded greetings, slightly embarrassed. She hadn't met too many people yet, in real life as well as online. These two had thus far been the first to not tease or or insult her, and for that she was grateful; she felt, perhaps feeling a little too grateful, but that wasn't something she could fix easliy. Kanrinin, meanwhile, sat down. "So, how are you really?"

Mercurial shook her head. "I'm fine. We lost... we lost a friend that day. Our manager."

Kanrinin nodded. "Ranma. I remember him. He brought Natsumi back. At least... Natsumi said it was him. It was a girl, though."

"That was him," Mercurial confirmed.

Kaname sat down, obviously left out of the conversation for the moment, and started picking flowers and staring at them closely. The detail on everything here was beyond what she thought video games should be able to manage.

"He hasn't been heard of since... since you know."

"Since he... and you... and your friends...? It was obvious, you know. We were all watching the news at the Hinata Sou."

Mercurial shook her head and threw a warning glance at Kanrinin that Kaname only just caught. "He was lost in the Zone, like all the others."

"I was found there," Kaname said, suddenly.

Both turned and looked at her. "What?" Mercurial asked.

Kaname's face grew hot, and she suspected that was being reflected in the game world as well. "In the... you know, the Zone. It's where I woke up."

"Where you... woke up."

"Yeah. I'm one of the, what are they calling us, Amnesiacs. Someone who's forgotten their name and everything."

Mercurial's eyes narrowed as she stared at Kaname. "Where exactly were you found?"

Kaname shrugged. "I don't know. It all kind of looked the same. And it's not like I could remember anything before the explosion, either, but I must have been some distance from it to still be alive."

"... yes," Mercurial muttered.

Kaname thought about it some more. "Although... that Sato guy was saying it was suspicious where I was picked up... so maybe I was around where the bomb went off? And something stopped me from being blown away like the buildings? I don't know. I just feel... I was somewhere before then. I think. Because I was naked when I woke up, you know? And the sun was coming down on me, and I felt warm and everything, even with the wind..." She continued speaking, rapidfire, trying desperately to shut up and stop the looks she was getting from her two new 'friends'. "... and I just felt, with all the sun, like I'd been somewhere dark and evil before then, you know? And I just think maybe there was something there... maybe I was..." she let her voice trail off. Kanrinin was looking at her in slight disbelief, Mercurial in shock.

And then Mercurial reached forward quickly, as if to grab Kaname, and Kaname did the first thing that came to mind.

She disconnected.

Sitting there, in her darkened apartment, she panted. She wasn't scared, no, no she wasn't. She was just... confused. Confused by Mercurial's actions, by their reactions, by their words. It was like she'd walked into a conversation they'd been having -

- and she realised she probably had. Been talking offline or something, and then logged in to continue face to face, as it were. And that Mercurial had probably lost a friend in the bombing, and Kaname's bumbling in had probably brought it all up, seemed like she was teasing. Or something similar, anyway. She felt bad. But looking at the time, there wasn't anything else she could do. She switched the computer off, and watched a little of a weird movie from the 70's called Attack of the Eternal Lesbian Midget, which had a storyline almost as bad as the title (and effects that were much, much worse). When the clock hit midnight, she brushed her teeth, had a drink, and crawled into bed.

******

Days passed quietly for Kaname. After a week, she logged back into The World, left an apology on the BBS for Mercurial and Kanrinin for her behaviour, assured them she hadn't meant any disrespect, and then tried to avoid them. There hadn't been any further communications from either of them, so that was okay by her. But she was still alone.

About the only thing that left was fighting, and Kaname found with a little practise, her character was getting some good stats. In two weeks, she'd lifted her strength five points, endurance five, speed eight, and she'd risen to fourth level. Which meant she could now tackle low-level dungeons by herself, basically. She was working no raising her stats even higher, so she could try some of the medium-level dungeons.

The first day of the fifth week since the incident, it started to snow.

******

It was a Saturday, and Kaname stood in her usual off-work clothing, her tights and a long woolly jacket, on the footpath, staring up into the clouds as the first smattering of snow fell. In her hands, she held her week's shopping in plastic bags. She was able to afford more food now, and had been starting to put on some weight... something hadn't seemed right about that, so after work one afternoon in the third week, she'd found at least an hour every day to work out in a local gym. She seemed to be getting better with much of the training, and that helped stop the pains she was still feeling from time to time. She found her punches felt good, and at least two attendants at the gym had suggested she join the Tae Kwon Do class on Saturday afternoons. She considered it, and accepted. Perhaps it would help her in the World.

She'd been to her first Tae Kwon Do lesson today. She'd stumbled a bit, fumbled some blocks (and ended up with faded bruises), and stubbed her toe, but she'd had a lot of fun. Which reminded her: she had to wash out the training gi that was currently hiding in her backpack when she got home.

But as the snow fell, the first flakes touching the cemented ground, someone screamed.

It wasn't just the first snowfall of the year, it was also the first reported ghost sighting.

******

Kaname saw it, too. It was a man, in a suit. He was pressed up against a wall, which could be seen through his body. He clutched a briefcase in one hand, and was staring with horror in towards the city's centre, where the Tokyo Tower had been until just over a month ago. She didn't know what was going on, but her body screamed at her to do something.

Thankfully, before she could embarrass herself any further than taking up a defensive stance, the ghost faded away. She turned, looked where he had been looking, and saw the various cranes that had gone up for the reconstruction effort. One of the landmarks opposite looked familiar, though, and with a jarring start, she found herself, naked, back where she'd woken up. Looking north from there, she'd seen the exact same landmark from the exact same angle. Wherever she had been found, it was indeed in that direction.

******

She dreams.

It is black, where she is. But for the moment, she dreams. She knows there are figures moving around her, touching her, doing things to her, but where they're touching, she can't see, what they're doing, she can't understand. Something is covering her eyes. Like a blindfold, but harder.

The one she knows is the Darkest touches her, and she screams.

******

Sweating profusely, Kaname didn't want to turn on the light. She had to tell herself it was just a bad dream. She was dreaming.

But the sense of evil was profound in that dream.

It reminded her of the feeling of being born from a dark place, from an evil place. A womb of darkness.

She wouldn't turn the light on. Because she knew the light would chase away the shadows, but they would wait, ever at bay, waiting for the day the light flickered, and died...

And as the person caught in the middle of the war between light and dark, she couldn't afford to be afraid of either side. So the light stayed off. And Kaname shivered all through the night in her warm apartment.

******

Sunday morning in the Ai Sou started like any other recent Sunday morning. Makoto was up before dawn, readying a breakfast, then as the first rays of the sun shone above the nearby peaks, she left the kitchen, tying her gi up as she joined the other girls coming down the stairs and heading for outside. Mostly, they were wide awake and ready. Usagi, as was usual for these training sessions, was yawning and not really awake.

That fact was made most evident when she invariably walked into a wall or a support pillar.

Outside, the snow on the ground had risen to halfway up to the girls' ankles, and it made several wish they'd decided to train indoors during winter. But no matter now. They ran through their warm-ups, practised a few basic moves as a group, and then shifted into higher gear, transforming into their senshi forms and laying into one another with whatever moves they could think of. Sundays were special training days. Not having to go to work, or school, for those very few that still were able to attend, meant they could cut loose for a day and give each other a run for their money. Punches and kicks weren't pulled, bodyslams and tackles were de rigour, and the occasional headbutt wasn't unheard of.

Of course, in the full-contact sparring, the idea was to use as many combinations of the martial arts they were learning and the magic they knew about, and so quite often, after lunchtime on Sundays was designated clean-up time.

But the period from the end of weekend training, around 10AM, until 2PM, was considered free time, and everyone tried as best they could to relax.

Ami would log into The World or chat with friends on IRC while reading medical texts, Minako would either go shopping for a few hours or discuss boys with Usagi, Rei would meditate or spend time in the hot springs, Makoto would cook up lunches in advance for the next week, as well as breakfasts and try to prepare as much in relation to dinners as she could. Usagi would phone Mamoru and gossip. Mitsuki would take another pill and lie down, or go up to the roof and stare at the sky. Sometimes, Hotaru would join her, but more often than not, Hotaru would go and lie in Ranma's room.

Not on his bed, because after five weeks, his smell was slowly fading from the room, and the futon where he slept was all that was holding any memory of him anymore. She would lie there, remembering the times they had. Sometimes, she would see Akane Tendo in the city. They'd have a small meal, and exchange smalltalk, and then they'd part. They weren't friends, but both were trying hard to be.

Mostly, they came together to commiserate over their shared loss.

This particular Sunday, though, Hotaru was just in the dorm, on her own bed. She wasn't crying, but her eyes felt as if she might as well be: big, stuffy, watery. Just staring at the ceiling. She could see him, she realised. Sitting there, her head in his lap, him stroking her hair...

"Cheer up," he said.

She frowned. "Sempai..."

"I'm not dead. See? I couldn't be here if I was." That cocky, self-sure smile. It infuriated her right now. She wanted to punch him, but he just kept smiling.

It wasn't the same smile now, though. Now it was kind of sad, longing. Maybe she was projecting her own feelings on him, though, reading into his actions and emotions what she herself thought and felt right now. Maybe.

His hands... were warm. His eyes... full of life. And something else. Love? Something like that. He continued to stroke Hotaru's hair, then pulled his other hand down to stroke at her face, from cheek to chin... she closed her eyes, enjoying the sensations, letting them guide her to a place where this moment wouldn't end. They moved down her chin, down her neck... parted the front of her shirt, and slipped a warm, careful hand inside. "Sempaiiiii..." The hand moved lower, hesitating as it found she wasn't wearing anything under her shirt. It examined her curves, traced out her ribs, before coming up underneath one of her breasts, and followed the curves up, fingertips lightly tracing over her skin. It was exciting enough to give her goosebumps all over, and to bring something else out.

Which was when someone knocked on her door, startling her out of her reverie.

"Hotaru-chan?"

Ami. Oh god. Hotaru's hand leapt from her shirt, which she pulled together with one hand, blushing furiously before giving up on that idea and grabbing her pillow to hold in front of her. At least it felt like she was hugging someone... "Yes?" she answered.

The door slid open, and Ami entered. She seemed very unsure of herself, wringing her hands together as she stepped inside.

"What's the matter?"

Ami shrugged, and looked about for a few moments before returning to the girl hiding behind the pillow on her bed. "It's about Ranma," she said, finally.

Hotaru perked up somewhat. "Have you found him?"

"No," Ami shook her head. "I haven't. But I... I think I might know someone who MIGHT have been in the area where Ranma was... lost. Someone... I think you have to see."

"Everyone that close was killed." Hotaru lowered her eyes. "Everyone was. Ranma wasn't, though," she added, distracted.

"Perhaps he wasn't. This woman had lost her memory. She is one of these Amnesiacs we've heard about on the news." Ami looked away again. "I haven't talked to her in nearly a month, but I've continued to do some digging. There's not much information there. I know she's female, she's around Ranma's height and weight, and was processed by the government as one of those who temporarily lost their memories."

"I think that's weird," Hotaru said, suddenly.

"Weird?" Ami replied, caught on the back foot.

"All these people who 'temporarily' lost their memories," Hotaru continued. "Have you heard of any of them regaining them yet? I haven't..."

"Anyway, I've noticed that she usually logs on to The World around this time on a Sunday... and I was wondering if you wanted to perhaps talk with her?"

******

Kaname wandered The World, for some reason back in the Sun Grass Plains. The grass had grown longer, almost as if the seasons here were deliberately out of whack with the real world. Or perhaps the servers were in the southern hemisphere, where the seasons were all backwards. Kaname snorted; north and south were such arbitrary designations... the southern hemisphere could very well be the up-direction, rather than the northern. She shook her head, but nothing changed in it. The weather here seemed determined to throw off her concentration.

It was while traipsing over one of the low hills that she heard the beep in her ear of a BBS message. A quick check showed a new message, from someone using the avatar name 'GodSaturn', wanting to meet there, in the plains, where she'd met up wtih that Mercurial and Kanrinin a month earlier. The message went on to talk about how the player had known someone who'd vanished possibly in the area where Kaname had been found, and just wanted to discuss some things. Kaname was a little wary, but decided meeting this person couldn't hurt.

She arrived where she'd sat and talked with the two players previously, and found a youngish-looking girl sitting there. She was dressed in a combination of white and purple, with purple hair, bows on her shoulders where sleeves normally would have been attached, and knee-high boots. A long bladed staff weapon lay at rest beside her. She appeared to be looking around for someone, so Kaname guessed this was the girl who'd messaged her.

"GodSaturn?" she queried. The girl's eyes focussed on her. Intense stare, almost hopeful... strange... that for someone appearing so young, she could have a stare of ages-old strength. Although, Kaname reasoned, since everything in The World was simulated, there was no reason expressions of the players couldn't be exaggerated by the server's software, so as to make them more noticeable on lower-spec systems, or over longer distances. The same way as animated characters were often exaggerated so as to appear as recognisable caricatures, stereotypes, of types of people or animals, she assumed. But then, perhaps the player really did have The Stare Of The Ages. Who could know for certain?

"Yes... you'd be Kaname, correct?" the girl asked. She nodded in response to her own question, eyes travelling up and down Kaname's body. Kaname felt strangely self-conscious, and struggled to repress a blush at the attention. It was a battle, but she thought she'd won it. "Mercurial suggested I talk to you."

"Why?" Kaname couldn't help but asking. As sono as her suspicions were confirmed, she knew she should have left, disconnected, SOMETHING. Something kept trying to pull her away from her past, and she had a suspicion that these people, whoever they were, might have been able to help her - somehow - in recovering her past. She wasn't sure she wanted to know anything, because while she knew what she was now, she didn't want to find out she'd been some kind of super-criminal in a previous life, a technohacker of the worst sort, involved with shady dealings with evil creatures from an alternate dimension.

Quite why that theory kept popping up in her head at the strangest moments wasn't clear to her, and rediculous as it was, she couldn't easily dismiss the firm belief of the surviving population of Tokyo that there had been a giant monster that wasn't Gojira, or any of the others on Sogal Island. In fact, most of the public had a hard time that a hallucinagenic device could cause such a standardised illusion, while the various experts who'd spoken on the subject in public had said it also had more to do with mass hysteria in combination with the gas used, and witnesses "remembering" details after the fact.

The point that nearly everyone in Japan had seen the attack live on television was quietly ignored.

GodSaturn continued to eye her, until just as Kaname had decided she was idle, or not going to speak in any case, and was about to leave, she shook her head. "I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on what happened to a friend of mine."

Kaname shook her head in turn. "I don't know nothing about anything before the... the explosion. All I remember is..." and now she did blush, "finding myself lying naked on crumbled concrete and melted steel. That's my earliest memory."

GodSaturn kept staring. It was making Kaname very uncomfortable, and her finger in the real world shifted to hover over the disconnect button on her keyboard. But then, the girl smiled, warmly, genuinely. It looked to be something she didn't do often, and came across as more special because of that. "I'm sorry if I offended you, Kaname. I had hoped you might have seen something, considering where you were found."

"How did you know where I was -"

"But it's just a coincidence that where you were found was where... where my boyfriend disappeared." GodSaturn shrugged. "I didn't mean to suggest that you... might be lying or hiding anything. I understand... how hard it can be to be a new person, almost, after living another life that you're not aware of."

There was that ancient stare again, delivered in eyes that seemed to be finding Kaname attractive. What was this, Attack of the Eternal Lesbian Midget? GodSaturn cocked her head to one side, almost suggestively, and then smiled disarmingly again.

"I'm sorry. You just look a bit like a girl I knew once." She gestured around at other players. "Although that could be because I think they use a basic character set, and it's all decals and scaling that let's people play different-looking characters." GodSaturn shrugged again, and stood. "It's been nice meeting you, Kaname. I'd like to get to know you a little better - I guess with losing your memory, and having to start over again, you haven't got many friends?" Kaname shook her head. "Well, then, perhaps I can help fix that problem."

******

And so Kaname found herself later that afternoon sitting at an instant ramen wagon across from a mostly undevastated park, two blocks from the region of central Tokyo that had become known as the Zone. As she ate her way through a second bowl of beef ramen, someone cleared their throat behind her. She turned, and found a short girl who looked similar to GodSaturn, if only the avatar's hair had been black rather than purple, who had that same intense stare the avatar had held. After a few moments of being subjected to The Stare, as Kaname was starting to think of it, the girl let up and smiled. With that break in tension, Kaname realised the girl wasn't alone: she had several older women with her, who looked to be more Kaname's age. Two of the three were staring at Kaname, the third was staring at a fold-up map and complaining to the others that they were in fact two streets away from where they wanted to be. Then she looked up in the silence, saw Kaname, and her voice trailed off.

"Oh shit," she said faintly.

Kaname frowned, got up off her stool, and felt her body ready to make a quick getaway if something went wrong. Nothing did immediately, though. GodSaturn stepped forward and held out her hand. "Hi. I'm Hotaru, Hotaru Tomoe. This is Mitsuki Matsuda," she gestured to the woman who'd swore and was now desperately trying to hide behind a raven-haired woman as she folded the map up, "Rei Hino," a wave at the woman with long black hair that this Mitsuki was hiding behind, "and Ami Mizuno."

"Really?" Kaname couldn't help perking up at that. "We've got the same last name! Or rather," she corrected herself quickly, "for the moment we do. Mine's only temporary."

"You did say you were one of the Amnesiacs," Ami offered.

Kaname noticed that, while Ami and Hotaru had stopped staring, Rei and, surreptitiously, Mitsuki hadn't yet stopped. "Uh... is something..."

"You just look like... the person we're trying to find," Ami jumped in quickly.

Giving Hotaru a weird stare, Kaname replied, "GodSaturn said it was her boyfriend that... OHHH... he's... yeah... okay..." She felt herself blush. Hotaru slid her eyes to look elsewhere. It was so natural looking, that Kaname almost missed the faint blush on the girl's alabaster skin.

"It's... hard to explain," was all she offered by way of explanation. But instead of explaining, she shifted the conversation ever so slightly to a different subject. "You didn't see anyone else when you woke up?" Kaname shook her head. "Oh well. It was a long shot." Kaname got The Stare again, but the smile that followed brushed away any sneaking suspicions she had that this girl was inferring Kaname herself was this girl's boy... girl... partner. "He'll turn up, sooner or later."

"Did he dye his hair?" the one called Mitsuki whispered to Rei, not quiet enough for Kaname to miss, but she did miss Rei's reply. She fingered her hair that she'd tied back that morning into a ponytail off her crown, then grabbed at one of the bangs she had framing her face, and checked that. No, it was still the bright copperish-red it had been since she'd woken. She had to figure that these girls may have known her, or something who looked similar to her, before the attack, but weren't saying for whatever reason. She nodded silently to herself, noting this down for future ruminations in the bath, and decided she wouldn't forget the use of gender. Maybe they were talking about a brother of hers or something? Or maybe -

- no, the girl Hotaru had said already that he was her boyfriend, not Kaname's. Maybe they were kinky or something, though?

Her brain refused to cope with the thinking of her past, and so it all slid off into where she could bring it up at a later time and think on it at her own pleasure. Instead, Hotaru touched her elbow, and gestured towards the park. "Come, sempai, let's go sit and... talk."

She sounded awfully formal, like it was something she'd been practising for days, weeks even. Maybe she had. From just a few of the things spoken in The World, and here in real life, Kaname had a sneaking suspicion that someone in their group had been keeping tabs on her, or at the very least, doing some serious digging into her life. She didn't know for sure, but they had apparently already seen her picture, judging by the fact that they had all thought she looked like this man they were missing before they met, so she guessed someone had been following her. Possibly that Ami, who, although shorter and with a duller hair colour, was very likely Mercurial, had been investigating her to see if she might know anything she could pass on to Hotaru.

The park had emptied of people, and considering the snow that was still only lightly drifting down, Kaname couldn't blame them. It was cold, even in her new thicker, patterned leggings and fleecy jacket. Hotaru busied herself wiping snow off one of the benches, and unfolded a blanket from her small backpack to spread for them to sit on. The others drifted away to various areas of the park, and if Kaname didn't know better, she'd swear they were commandoes, taking up positions where they could discreetly observe the people around the park as well as the meeting. Quite why they would do that, Kaname didn't know, but the three girls were fairly unobtrusive and blended in well, each taking up what looked to be a different hobby or action to look occupied: Ami found a reasonably concealed place to read and watch two streets, Rei alternated between meditating and practising what looked like movie fighting styles, and Mitsuki... she set about building a group of snowmen. or snowwomen, judging by the skirts and curves each displayed as she continued. Of the three, she was the one who most kept an eye on Kaname, as if considering saying something profound but hesitating because she thought it would come stupid.

Hotaru started the smalltalk, and it seemed the talk went on for much longer than the hour that passed on Kaname's watch. They talked about work, about school, friends, life, love, hobbies, politics, religions, history, economics, war, peace, and almost anything that seemed to pop into Hotaru's mind. Kaname couldn't follow the conversation half the time - at one point, they were talking about pets, cats in particular, and the next - magical girls in sailor suits. Kaname guessed that was a reference to some anime, judging by Hotaru's age, and began talking about Gatekeepers, of which she thought she'd seen an episode of at some point in her past, but wasn't certain. Hotaru changed the subject again to astronomy, and started talking about planets.

When they were finished, Hotaru seemed strangely unsatisfied, and Kaname was completely lost. But the younger girl smiled, and patted Kaname's hands. "I'm sure your memory will come back, Kaname. Don't try to force it."

"I'm not forcing it," Kaname replied, shaking her head. "I'm not even sure that I want to remember."

"Why not?" Hotaru asked.

"I don't know. I just... have problems when I try to think about it. It's like... it's not there. Like *I'm* not there. That, to all intents and purposes, I was born in that rubble, that I... didn't exist before then."

The girl nodded understanding, and that ageless look came into her eyes again. "Perhaps that's the case, Kaname Mizuno. Perhaps you didn't exist before the monster. Maybe something happened in that final confrontation that birthed you fully into this world, whereas before... you hadn't existed. Or at least, maybe not yet." She smiled again, that smile that warmed something in Kaname's heart. It was the smile one gave to a loved one, she understood instinctively, although she hadn't ever had any prior experience of it. That sad, simple statement that one wasn't alone. Kaname's heart reacted to it, not, she felt, because of lust or love, but because it seemed to mean that there was someone Kaname could turn to, someone she could truly call a friend, rather than the cardboard cutouts at work and the pixels of light dancing on her retinas in The World.

Not that she had any friends at either place, but still...

Hotaru said, "Would you like to meet again?"

Kaname found herself agreeing.

******

"Everything is proceeding according to plan," Umiko announced, sweeping into Yoshihiro's new chambers. The battlecruiser had been partly disassembled so as to fit quarters into the existing sewer-base structure for the various youma under Yoshihiro's command and control, and also to mount some of the command systems into his new chambers. Communications crystals lined one wall, observation monitors and one large screen split down the middle dominated the next. The large screen showed two views of Tokyo, one full of people, full of life, hustle and bustle, the other showed a construction site, building in a large, kilometres-wise empty depression of earth. A new city rising up from the ashes of the old.

"The hyperdimensional engines stand ready?" Yoshihiro asked from the workstation he currently occupied, watching lines and lines of computer code scroll past. It was written in the language of the Mercury Librariums, scrolling vertically in glyphs as well as symbols ripped from Earth cultures of times long since past, and cast patterns on Yoshihiro's face as they scrolled by.

"The last connections were made a few minutes ago," Umiko confirmed. "Is there... to be a test?"

The blond man glanced up from his monitor. "How do you test opening a door? Or rather, reopening? It was done once, long ago, when Beryl led our armies and the balance was made. But... Serenity changed all that."

Umiko considered this for a moment, nodding, then asking, "You're a newborn, with the knowledge of the age of Might and Grace... and it often seems like you speak from experience."

Yoshihiro shrugged, returned to his viewing of the code. "There are some things... that transcend human thinking. I'd have thought by now -"

"I realise this. I wasn't querying, Master, just commenting." She added a slight wry tone to her voice. "In quiet awe."

"Heh. Tell the workers... as soon as our basic patterns in Tokyo are complete... we will reopen the doorways."

Umiko nodded, and made to leave. On the threshold, she paused, hand on the doorframe, and she looked back in. "You know... reopening this door..."

"Will leave the senshi unable to open the other. They don't know of its existance... they don't know it's importance... and Serenity opened the door we are about to first; this poor imitation of her mother has no moral high ground here." Yoshihiro gave a small sneer before beginning his work again. This time, Umiko took that as a sign of dismissal, and left.

******

"-gawa, there are more reports of these apparent ghosts from reliable sources. Government experts say there is no such phenomena, and that people are only experiencing after-effects of the noted hallu-"

Click.

"My Daimyo, no! How dare you raise a hand against Piitsu, your childhood friend! He only kissed your concubine Jubei because he truly believed you had given your blessing to their union! I, your loyal assassin Akane, now know this to be undeniable truth! You yourself must commit ritual suicide, else you will die by my -"

Click.

"-ment says the recent spate of apparitions in and around Tokyo's central districts are, literally, nothing."

Click.

"- honour and justice, I, the Green Helmeted Cyclist, shall give you a whipping with my broken chain you will not forget! And even if you do, the grease and oil stains won't come -"

Click.

"Shinji, you idiot, *don't* show Hikari your collection of nose gobl-"

Click.

"-iet formally authorised the opening of the Government's Office for Trade and Tariffs today, in downtown Yokoh-"

Click.

"Silverbolt, she's *just* in stasis lock?"

click.

"-sters don't exist. What about the so-called Monster Island? Please. How many children worldwide really believed there was an island called Jura-"

Click.

Static filled the screen of the television in the small governmental office, where Agent Sato currently sat. His fingers were steepled under his nose as he considered the news items. Five and a half weeks after the event, and he was no closer to finding his quarry. He'd come close, he was sure, but... there were things that seemed to be working against him. He was sure he'd interviewed the man called Ranma already, but whether he was in his male or female form, he hadn't yet found anyone who looked, smelt, acted and reacted and thought like Ranma did. The closest was a girl, back on the day after the event, and he'd had her followed for a few weeks. Agent Ito hadn't turned up anything, except a chance encounter with one of the suspected enemies from Kanagawa in the online role-playing game, The World.

Sato smirked at the coincidence.

But that was all that incident had been, also. There had been no direction, nothing. She had just started talking to someone, followed him, and talked. This... Kaname Mizuno... had been talking to another Mizuno.

He leaned back in his chair, wondering whether he'd named her Mizuno unconsciously because of the possible connection to his... rather advanced expertise? But no, he discarded that idea. It was just coincidence, even here in Tokyo. He smiled at that thought. Things surprised him all the time, since Yoshihiro had freed him from his previous existance. He took some small joy in knowing things weren't always guided by rules, regulations, laws of physics. And yet, he did like some things to stay the same. He wanted to be the strongest in Tokyo; now he was. And forever more would he be.

At least, until the Master was finished with his constructions, and then... well... then it would be a completely different game. New rules to learn, new players to push around. Sato was looking forward to it.

Still, that didn't help him in his search. Investigating the ghosts had turned up nothing of interest, either. No Agent could make it to the scene before the ghost had faded, and no evidence of it remained. Which, as one could guess, amde investigating them incredibly hard. No Agent had yet been around when one had appeared, and Sato had them combing the city. If the Government was going to rein in the free elements in the city, then all variables had to be accounted for. Humans were easy to control. Youma could be accounted for. The senshi and the other heroes, most of whom had faded immediately back into the everyday hustle and bustle of japanese life in the confusion of the rescue mission to the Zone, were the biggest threat to the stability of the city. Stability was important, very important, as it would allow control to be exerted over the populace, which would in turn provide the Master with all the energy he needed when his constructions were complete.

It wouldn't be too much longer, and there wouldn't be any surprises left. But Sato would deal with that when the time came.

******

"Thank you greatly, Shibby-chan, I owe you one," Kaname murmured into her headset as she finished typing in a thirty-character long password someone had most likely accidentaly put in as the new password to the new user access setup commands, but for the life of her, she couldn't figure out how someone typed thirty characters twice. So she'd very nciely rung up Shibaru in tech support, and asked him sweetly to hack into the system and retrieve the new password for her.

He'd done so, and she was grateful. Having to set new trainees up in the system seemed to be her latest ongoing task, and while the system had been working fine an hour ago when she'd last added someone to it, now it seemed to have been altered. She frowned, but activated a new account. When the next screen flashed up, she couldn't quite stifle her gasp of surprise.

"What?" Asuka, the new user, asked from the chair across from Kaname. She couldn't see the monitor. "Is something wrong?"

No, nothing was wrong, Kaname wanted to say. And technically, nothing was. All Asuka Hayashi's details were already on the screen. Every last one of them was completely correct, as far as Kaname could tell. And that worried her. Kaname knew Asuka wasn't on the system, or shouldn't have been, and yet, here she was. What was going on? Some kind of computer glitch? She pulled the headset's microphone closer to her lips. "Shibaru, are you still there?"

"Waiting to collect my prize," he replied.

"Have you... have you done anything to the system?"

"No. Why?"

"Are you sure you got the correct password? I mean, really sure?"

"What's the problem?"

"Oh, nothing. I've just gone to input a new user, who's not on the system..."

"Which was why you asked me to hack out the new password, yes, your point?"

"And all her details were already *on* the system..."

"Kinda a digital deja vu, huh?"

"Is everything all right?" Asuka interjected. Kaname nodded, and quickly wrote down a user name and password as was given in the open file on her monitor. She needed to think, and she couldn't so long as she had Asuka standing there still. She handed the card to the young woman, who thanked her and left to be directed to her new cubicle.

"Shibby-chan, are you sure everything's okay with the system?"

Shibaru was silent, but she could hear something in the background. It sounded like he'd taken his headset off to go look at something else for a moment, and she could hear snatches of the conversation.

"What do you mean, the system's -"

"- like it is, man, like a -"

"- worm? Trojan? Give me something to work -"

"I dunno, man, it's just some kind of massive surge -"

Kaname's monitor went blank. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw other people react to their monitors blanking out, too. Power surge, she guessed, judging by what she was listening to. Except she didn't even have to look up to know the lights hadn't so much as flickered, and her harddrive's quiet purr under the desk didn't stutter, either. Something was up.

Something was. A moment later, her screen flickered back to life, with a pixelated pair of eyes. Twin bands of blue capped top and bottom of the screen, and the eyes looked...

... familiar...

... something she knew...

... someone she knew...

"This is a Streaming Freedom Video hack. It will last exactly twenty seconds, and cannot be traced. So don't even try. You have been led astray by forces beyond your comprehension. Dark evils from the dawn of time have conspired to make slaves of you all and utilise your... oh bugger," said the eyes, before the monitor went black again.

"What the hell was that?" Kaname heard clearly over her headset from tech support. "Is Hiroshi at home again? I swear, if he hacks us one more time -" Whatever was said by the other person cut him short. "Oh," he said, eventually. "I, uh, didn't... shit... I didn't know." He came back to the headset shortly after. "Sorry, everything went screwy down here."

"I heard."

"No, I mean... not just here. We had system malfunctions like yours reported to us all of a sudden from seventeen terminals on eight different floors. And then there was this video transmission..."

"We saw that. I think everyone did on this floor."

"Anyone you recognise?" Shibaru asked, hopefully.

Kaname shook her head, then smiled. Not that Shibaru could see. "No, no, but it did seem familiar... I don't know what it was."

"Probably some bored role-playing freak hacker off The World. I mean, you know the nutjobs who play that game... I'm sure you know some..."

Yeah, me, Kaname thought silently. She said nothing of the sort, though. Shibaru was kind of cute. "Perhaps, but I'd have thought hackers would go after something really big and powerful. The government, the JSDF, the banking industry. I mean, we're unimportant."

"Are we?" Shibaru gave a short bark of a laugh. "We've got computers that can predict the future now," he added, and Kaname could imagine the huge grin on his face. "Doesn't that make us important?"

"I guess so," Kaname found herself grinning back. "I've gotta get back to work. Talk to you later, okay?"

"Okay." Shibaru hung up, and Kaname found herself sighing contentedly.

******

But that night, she was in The World again, hacking (in the original meaning of the word) through hordes of Gob-Goblins, tiny mouths on legs that had a nasty bite. As she swung her sword into the last of them, she felt the important news vibration go off in her helmet. She'd levelled up. Great, she smiled. Higher stats again. More health, more strength, more agility. No more speed. That sucked a little. But she had a bonus to strike with her sword now, and an extra parry option. Next level, she'd heard, would be a new powered-up attack. More cool combat options. But done now, for the moment, she decided to take a break and glance at the BBS before heading into the next section. A quick flick into idle mode let her drop to the shell menu, and from there, it was only waiting a few seconds for the subject headers to pop up.

203 new messages in 43 new topics since you last logged in.

Nice, she thought.

1 Has anyon3 3ls3 s33n that cat PC? (87 replies, 401 views)

2 $ucks to be BUU! (2 replies, 837 views, locked thread)

3 Sidekick seeks Magical Girl, serious enquires only (1 reply, 1032 views, locked thread)

Ah, Kaname snickered softly to herself. Some poor deluded fool thinking he - most likely a he, anyway, thinking of getting all those panty shots so many shows *just* miss out on giving - might be in with a chance, with the recent devastation of the ranks of heroes in and around Tokyo. Poor guy, doomed to a lonely life consisting of instant ramen, alone in a small apartment with no friends, and never having had a girlfriend...

She noticed his handle - Shibby - and decided instead to keep reading rather than dwell on the noble individual pining for world peace and a tender loving relationship.

7 Welcome to Sogal Island! (90 replies, 1701 views)

8 Ranma, come home! (0 replies, 5 views)

9 Anyone else have weird computer glitches today? (17 replies, 5000 views)

That one looked interesting, so Kaname clicked on it. Skimming quickly, she saw that more people than those in her office building had suffered weird computer glitches around the same time of the day as she had. No one had seemed to have information yet to be entered already entered, but people had had games generate spontaneous storylines and characters, some word processing programs decided only to show Mandarin on the screen, but print in Arabic, one or two had exploded, and yet others had started singing some song called "Daisy Daisy", to which the last reply had been an ROFLMAOUIPMGO.

Kaname wasn't sure what that was, but her stab in the dark came out at 'rolling on the floor laughing my ass off until I puke my guts out', or something similar. She didn't get the reference, so just added a little story about her day at the office, including the "evil" hacker who'd infected the systems with his presence moments afterwards, and was now the butt of many a joke in the office - who gives themselves twenty seconds to say something they need much more to get out?

When she quit browsing the BBS, ready to go back and fight some more Gob-Goblins, Kaname jumped. She wasn't alone anymore. Sitting around her idle form were Mercurial, GodSaturn and a couple of other people. They hadn't yet realised Kaname was back active again and were talking among themselves.

"Are you sure he's not Ranma?" asked one of the two newcomers.

"NemesisAngel, we've explained this offline."

"I just don't get it. How can he *not* be Ranma? I mean, you've seen him, he *looks* like Ranma! He sounds like Ranma! I'd bet if I threw a punch at him, he'd -"

GodSaturn's voice was quiet and calm, and it silenced everything. "Ranma isn't present. He's... gone for the moment. I don't know where. I don't know why. I don't know how. He's just not... here. In the real world. I don't know where he is, but I do know he's alive. I can... I can feel him."

"We know," complained the second newcomer, shifting into a parody of GodSaturn's voice. "Oh, seeeeeeempaaaaai, that feeeeeels so good..."

"Oh, shut up, Venus," GodSaturn mumbled. "Like you'd never - Oh! Hello. Welcome back to the land of the living."

Kaname eyed GodSaturn, who was in the midst of a fierce blush. "Hi. Uh, what are you all doing here?"

Mercurial shrugged. "We logged in together - you know Mitsuki," she pointed to NemesisAngel, who looked subtly embarrassed and glanced down at her feet, "and this is Venus, who you haven't met -" The blond with them smiled flirtatiously at Kaname and curtsied politely. "And we saw you online and decided to join you, see if you wanted some company. When we got here, though, we -"

"- Were idling, so you sat down to wait," Kaname finished, nodding. "Company's fine... I think... so long as the conversation doesn't get *too* personal... I don't know you girls and I just keep walking in at the wrong moments, I think."

GodSaturn blushed deeper. She mumbled something that sounded like, "I didn't *do* anything..." but Kaname couldn't be too sure. The four girls surrounding her stood, and followed as Kaname strode to the doorway into the next section.

No more Gob-Goblin hordes were to be found, but instead, there were a trio of huge evil Nagallamas that slithered from cracks in the walls, firing off sonic honks. Mercurial spun her staff to create a small vortex forcefield, and the worst of the sonic honks were deflected into the walls around the group; what got through was enough only to disorientate the party.

NemesisAngel unslung her sword from her back and growled, incoherently, leaping at one of the Nagallamas and taking a mighty swing. The attack decapitated the Nagallama, and it fizzled into a cloud of pixels before vanishing, as GodSaturn thrust her bladed weapon at another. The blade slid deep into the Nagallama's chest cavity, and then with all her strength, she pulled the weapon upwards, taking with it a whole mess of dissolving pixels as the dying beast vanished. Kaname took on the third, and moved too slow to avoid a second sonic honk. It grazed her right arm, and numbed it to her control. She switched her sword over to her left hand, but it felt wrong. She'd built the character up to be right-handed like she was, and so there was a corresponding loss of precision and control with weapons held in the left for her character.

With the group behind her, she found herself nervous. Before, she'd played in The World by herself, not joining parties because she couldn't rely on anyone else, couldn't trust anyone else. Now she was part of a group, and they'd shown her what they were capable of - now it was her turn to show them.

Too bad that put a lot of pressure on her, and she didn't handle pressure too well.

There was a shimmer in front of her, and something warped in - a person, she thought, looking male from behind but she couldn't be sure from her angle. His clothing was weird, outdated, and he struck a pose Kaname recognised from her few Tae Kwon Do lessons. She stopped still for a moment, then moved into the position herself. The transparent PC in front of her made a kick, which she copied, and she leapt at the top of the kick, like he was doing, brought her other foot up, kicked the Nagallama in the chin before flipping right over and landing, facing the creature head-on while it staggered backwards from the kick. The PC thrust with his left arm, and Kaname did the same, her sword biting deep into the Nagallama before she withdrew it.

But it wasn't dead yet. It reared back, and fired another sonic honk at her. Kaname saw this happening as in slow motion, and managed to dodge most of the strike by again following the PC, who had spun off to the left. Once clear of the shot, he planted a foot and threw himself back into a ran forwards, left arm held trailing. Kaname copied him, move for move, as he cut back across the Nagallama, cut close to the beast's left side, and raised her sword arm and let the blade slide through the creature's flesh. Pixels blasted from the wound, but it wasn't yet enough to kill it. The Nagallama's tail swept up and round immediately, but Kaname leapt into it and turned on one foot, heading directly up the back of the creature's body, where she raised her sword, and thrust it down between a pair of vertibrae.

A killing blow, this time. The Nagallama let out a death-howl, and toppled slowly onto its side. Kaname retreived her sword as she landed lightly on the ground before the beast vanished in a puff of twinkling pixels.

And then the women were around her, gossipping like they were old friends, moving her along, giving her no time to wonder who the PC had been, nor to ask if the others had seen him. Eventually, she decided not to bother asking. The others would think her weird.

******

It was sticky. Bubbling goo. Black ichor shifting over her skin and unknown liquids being forced into her veins. Not conscious enough to scream, sufficiently awake to be scared and in pain. Wires writhed beneath her skin, and she could feel things in her organs, doing things she wasn't sure of. The chair she sat in felt wrong, pointed, hard, scaled. And something was covering her eyes. She couldn't see. Couldn't hear. Couldn't smell. Couldn't taste, apart from the overwhelming taste of rotten flesh in her mouth.

Things moved around her, and she knew they spoke by the way air impacted on her skin. Rhythmic. She could almost understand what they were saying, but her brain was too unfocussed to concentrate for long enough to make out single words. Instead, it seemed like a constant drone.

In the world of darkness. She was awake. She was alive.

She was the last hope for the world.

******

Kaname found herself on the floor, chilled to her bone. It wasn't just that she'd torn her pyjamas half-off, nor that she'd turned the heater off and the room had grown cold, nor that she'd left her blankets behind on the bed... it was the dream. It seemed so similar to the previous one, and yet, more indepth, more detailed. She didn't know what it meant. Probably nothing. It had just been a dream.

But she still felt dirty. She could still taste rotten meat in her mouth, could feel the vile sensation of thick, bubbling liquids crossing her skin, and in the near-total darkness of her room, she felt blind.

She panicked, and scrambled backwards to the wall, scrabbling for the light switch. She found it and toggled it, the light spilling throughout the room. Yet, something still seemed wrong. The colours were too bright, the shadows too dark. Objects were too sharp, and detail too muted, dulled, blurred. Then reality caught up to her vision, and everything shifted back into normality within half a second of the light coming on.

It didn't calm Kaname down much, but her heart had stopped racing to the point she could think rationally. Well, partly rationally.

She grabbed her phone, and shakily, dialed the number Hotaru had given her in the park. It rang, rang, rang some more. Finally, Kaname was about to give up and hang the phone up again, when the phone at the other end was picked up.

"Hello?" asked a woman Kaname hadn't heard before asked.

Kaname hung up the phone as soon as she realised she didn't recognise the voice. Then, feeling stupid and embarrassed, and even more frightened, she redialed straightaway. The phone was answered again directly.

This time the voice was even more determined. "Hello?"

"Uh... hello... I'm sorry about -"

"Ranma?" came the other voice, quickly, whispered suddenly. Kaname got the idea that she was trying to keep others from overhearing the conversation. "Dammit, where the hell are you? You're scaring the hell out of Hotaru and Mitsuki! Well, Mitsuki, but she doesn't need much scaring... you've just made Hotaru go all Rei on us!"

"Uh... have I got the wrong number?" Kaname asked, weakly. "I just want to talk to Hotaru... Hotaru Tomoe?" She knew she didn't have a wrong number. And the woman had mentioned a Hotaru...

"Yeah, yeah, she's here. You'd better have a good explanation. Here she is." There was the noise of a phone being fumbled to someone else, and Kaname heard the woman mutter, "It's him. I don't wanna be woken until Mamo-chan gets here from now. Okay? Any objections? I gotta get some beauty sleep... gaaaah..."

Hotaru spoke as Kaname heard footsteps thumping away. "Sorry, sempai, that I didn't get to the phone in time. That was... Usagi. A friend. She's a little on edge at the moment."

"I'm not your boyfriend. Why does everyone think I am?"

Hotaru muttered something under her breath, but louder, she said, "You just resemble him strongly, sempai. Why are you ringing at this time of night?"

Kaname felt incredibly stupid for saying it, but she said, "I had a bad dream."

"Oh."

"And you were the first person I thought of who... who I could talk to about it." Her voice, now she was hearing other people talking to and around her, grew stronger, firmer, as the fears of only moments earlier were forgotten.

"What was it about?" She sounded curious, and concerned.

"Don't worry about it. I'm sorry to wake you, it was just -"

"Sempai. What was it about?" That voice, the vocal equivalent of The Stare.

"I... it was... scary. Very scary. I was in a dark place, cold, wet, things... plugged into me... things making me blind... making me feel pain... and I could hear voices... but... not making any sense. I couldn't make anything out."

"That sounds -"

"I've had this dream before," Kaname blurted suddenly. "But this was worse, much worse, because I was more aware of things this time. The last time, it was impressions. This time... it was like memories..."

"Sempai?" Hotaru sounded concerned. "Do you want company?"

Kaname would normally have gone into work the next day... or rather, later that day, considering the time on the clock... but after the problems with the computer systems, the offices had been temporarily shut down for a few days. She had a few days to be alone, and she found she didn't really want to be by herself all that time. "Hotaru... I..."

"It would not be a bother, Kaname-chan. I can come over right away, if you'd like some company." She sounded concerned. What about, she wasn't sure, but she sounded so concerned... or anxious...

"Right now would be great, Hotaru, but there's still so much lawlessness on the streets at this time of night, I couldn't possibly ask you to -"

"Don't worry about me. I can look after myself." She sounded amused. "Give me an address, and I'll be there shortly."

Kaname gave Hotaru her address, and settled in for the long wait until the girl arrived. She was coming from the far side of Kanagawa, so to get to Shinagawa, that would take...

... much longer than the fifteen minutes before there was a knock at her door. Hotaru was paler than usual, dressed up in a woolly overcoat, with a backpack and sleeping bag slung over her shoulders. Behind her stood Mitsuki, her purple hair sticking out in all directions. She yawned and shrugged. "Just makin' sure she got over all right." She nodded a goodnight, and headed off back to the elevators.

Hotaru looked suddenly nervous, and Kaname felt the same, to be honest. There was something about the younger girl that stirred something in Kaname, but she wasn't sure what. Did she prefer women? She didn't think so. She had what she assumed was a perfectly natural reaction to men, but this woman... this girl... she did something to Kaname that Kaname couldn't explain. She stepped aside, and gestured. "Come in."

Hotaru lowered her head and blushed. As she stepped inside, Kaname thought she caught a murmured, "I'm home," from the girl as she passed, but couldn't be sure. Kaname directed Hotaru where to stash her gear before working on sleeping arrangements.

"I'm afraid my futon doubles as my couch, so... unless we take turns at the futon, it'll be a tight squeeze."

Hotaru didn't look around, but Kaname caught the tips of her ears turning red as she blushed. "I'm small, sempai."

"You weren't this nervous in the park, you know."

The girl turned around, all evidence of the blush hidden under her usual alabaster appearance and The Stare. "But I'm not the only one who's nervous, am I? If you aren't comfortable with me sleeping with you... on the futon I mean... I can sleep on the floor."

But Kaname was comfortable with it, that was the problem. And as they lay down to get the rest of the night's sleeping done, Kaname felt strange. Incredibly strange. Like she shouldn't be doing this; that they should walk, not run; that there were people they had to talk to first. But she said nothing. She remained just out of touch of Hotaru all night long, unable to fall asleep. Hotaru's deep and steady breathing told Kaname that the girl was sleeping peacefully.

At least until Hotaru rolled over, her nose barely a centimetre from Kaname's face. "I'll sleep better if I know you're okay, sempai. Tell me about this dream. Everything you remember."

And Kaname did tell her everything. Every detail she could remember, from both dreams. And she told Hotaru about the ghost she'd seen only a few days before, as well as the PC that had appeared ghostlike in frnot of her the night before, in The World. Hotaru admitted that was strange, and she couldn't explain it, but suggested maybe it wasn't so much a PC, or a ghost, but a memory of a past life?

Considering that it was a male that had appeared, that probably would explain why Hotaru appeared to be stalking Kaname, she thought to herself.

"The rest of it... I don't know what to say." Hotaru's eyes grew distant, remembering things obviously very long-since past. "I could tell you a story, but you would think me weird."

"At the moment, you can really only better that opinion, Hotaru-chan, so fire away." Kaname snuggled under the blankets even more before sending a toe out backward to switch the heater off again. Once it was off, the foot whipped back under the covers, making her heat forcefield complete once more.

Hotaru cleared her throat quietly, then began. "It started at the dawn of time. Primeval chaos and order collided, creating the first beings capable of thought. But they weren't happy with the developing universe, and created universes of their own, brilliant examples of thought. Each universe had the most beautiful music, the most artistic painting, the most incredible philosophical discussions... and it was this last that was their bane. Each of these two races embodied different schools of thought. One had developed in a place where there had been no disaster, no trials, no want for anything because all needs were catered to. Where they grew in this universe was so diverse and rich, wherever they moved, they had resources and inspiration. The other race... developed out in intergalactic space, where there was nothing, and only the smartest survived. Their music... was different, but just as inspired - only lonely. Their paintings weren't of green pastures and happy children, it was more shocking, lives torn apart, a random, chaotic, lonely planet, roaming through nothing but dust. Their philosophy was of survival of the fittest, and domination of those not fit to lead - their only resource on their lonely world." Hotaru shifted, getting comfortable again.

"At the same time as the other, each race designed a method to make a universe of their own. Those who had rich resources built a magical kingdom where everyone could be happy, where they weren't limited by the problems of the primal flesh. Death became a thing of the past, as did aging and illness. Great advances were made in peace... and yet, there was a problem..."

Hotaru paused, shifted a little closer before continuing. "Those who had lived on the edge of nothing came to the centre of this Kingdom, their poor world drifting into the system the bright, happy people had been born from. And their world was trapped in the gravity of this star as it had drifted close to the upper edge of the galaxy, millions of years ago. Their Kingdom came into contact with the Kingdom already there, and it wasn't a happy meeting. Their philosophies were too different. Made even worse, their homeworld was subsumed into this other Kingdom, made part of the bright, happy universe, while it's people were left trapped in the universe they had made, grown twisted and dark in their minds' image. No world to call their own, no resources, nothing they could do. Except watch, and hate, this ordered universe, and plot for its eventual destruction. Only that would make them feel any better."

Hotaru's eyes flickered off into the distance. "Realising that her Kingdom was coming close to a war, Queen Serenity of the Moon Kingdom, the 'good guys' who had trapped this rogue planet, selected a member of her population from each planet to become the Guardian Protector of each planet's region. These people were known as the senshi, fighters for love and justice, defenders of order, protectors of truth and innocence and life. They were made strong, normal people warped by the technological entities developed long ago for other purposes. She used this process on her only daughter, preparing her for the time she would have to take over as Queen. And now, the senshi were strong, enduring, and possessing near-magical powers, but what the Moon Kingdom lacked was an army to follow up on what the senshi would start. Instead of developing an army, they built a proud tradition of a space navy, huge starships capable of crossing into real space if needed to combat this growing threat. Small skirmishes had been proceeding for... millions of years... when something occurred to Queen Serenity. The planet her throneworld orbited was growing an intelligent race. Not the first since her race and the other had risen, but the closest, and the strength of the minds below was beginning to affect the stability of the Kingdoms. Currently, they were in balance, and so long as the balance remained below, so it would remain above, where it counted."

Hotaru's eyes focussed further back in time as she continued. If Kaname didn't know better, she'd have thought that Hotaru actually believed this, that she had lived this. But she knew better. "But Serenity knew that one day, the balance would be tipped. It was the nature of intelligent life to rise above itself, set higher and higher goals and reach for the stars. And this would be the problem. If the balance shifted too far in the direction of chaos, the Dark Kingdom would gain ascendancy over the Moon Kingdom, and having her populace subservient to the fickle rulers of the Dark Kingdom wasn't something she could handle. So Serenity decided to tip the balance her way."

"Sounds like a good idea."

"Changing the rules to suit the circumstances doesn't work, Kaname," Hotaru chidded, snapping back into the present. "It could make things go easier for you, but very likely, it can make things even worse than they were. And it did, here. She created a protector Knight of Earth, and engaged him to her daughter - and that caused the final breakdown between the Kingdoms. The Dark Kingdom possibly would have been happy if the Moon Kingdom had returned its homeworld to it, but Serenity would not give over a world of the Moon Kingdom to the ascendant General of the Dark Kingdom's throne, Beryl, and war broke out in earnest. The Moon Kingdom had the upper hand, until the Dark Kingdom committed everything to an attack on Mercury. Serenity evacuated the staff of the libraries and factories of the world, then bombarded it from orbit. The Mercurian fleet commander defected to the other side, as did the Martian, Venusian, and Jovian fleet commanders when their worlds were deemed expendable by Serenity to try to stop the Dark Kingdom. And yet, as she bombarded worlds and devastated the Dark Kingdom armies, she bolstered those enemy forces by forcing her own agents to turn against her. The senshi stood by, ready to protect the Moon and the remaining population, and the Kingdom's two strongest senshi still remained... then the Dark Kingdom fleets had laid a series of bombs across their former homeworld and catapulted it out of the system... which resulted in te loss of one of those two strongest senshi, and the final collapse of the armed forces. Serenity lost most of the rest of te Kingdom before she sent her child, her child's betrothed, and her remaining planetary warriors to new lives on Earth... where they would be born thousands of years later into new bodies, to reinstate the Moon Kingdom." Hotaru fell silent, then.

Eventually, Kaname asked, "So, how does that fit into my dreams?"

Hotaru shrugged, sleepily. "I'm not sure. But, I think it has something," she yawned, "to do with the Dark..." Her voice got too quiet, and then she started snoring softly. Kaname was disgusted with the rapidity that the girl had fallen asleep, but was also a little freaked - Hotaru had obviously believed everything she'd said, that had become apparent during the last bit of the story. Which left two options. Either this was something made up, for and through whatever reason, or else it was true.

Hotaru had made it to Kaname's apartment in around fifteen minutes, after packing. There were ghosts. Heroic people. Strange monsters. Huge explosions. Nightmares of being trapped in a dark world, fears of a war between the light and the dark... perhaps Hotaru was telling the truth. Except, that would mean Kaname had to be a man.

Just to be sure nothing had changed while she was lying next to the girl, Kaname checked herself. Nope, still just a herself. She rolled onto her back, and sighed, raising the back of one hand to her forehead. She wasn't afraid to go to sleep again. Not with someone sleeping with her. No, not at all. Not at

******

Birds. Light. The smell of hot tea, and a home-made breakfast. These were the things Kaname woke to.

They were something of a surprise, but she opened her eyes, and found Hotaru was no longer lying opposite. Instead, she was moving about the small kitchette, heating a prepared meal with haste. It seemed she hadn't woken too much longer before, her hair not having been brushed down or anything, pyjamas mussed and crinkled still. More than that as a telling sign, though, was the way she had to stare blearily at everything for half a minute before she was certain as to what she was looking at.

"You couldn't find anything in the cupboards?" Kaname asked, propping herself up on an elbow. She wasn't sleepy, even with the somewhat early hour and only very recent time of falling asleep. Hotaru, on the other hand, took a few moments to focus on Kaname as the older woman reached out with a dexterous pair of toes and turned the heater back on.

"Um.... no... but Makoto gave me some things to bring over that you l... might like..." She gestured at the fresh foodstuffs, reminding Kaname she had to do another shop. She was getting low on food, come to think of it... and what she had left likely wouldn't have been too tasty to start with. She was used to her food habits - she could eat just about anything, and she forgot that other people mostly just couldn't bring themselves to eat week-old meals.

So long as it wasn't growing anything and wasn't mobile, Kaname could eat it. She thought in a past life, she must have constantly been near starvation and had to fight for her food or something silly like that.

And yet, Hotaru was still saying weird things. Like she really did know her, and really did think she was Kaname's girlfriend. Just little things. Slips of the tongue. Which was a slip of Kaname's mental tongue in itself and she blushed. Kaname was quite sure she, as a woman, wasn't interested in other women. Especially not as she was interested in Shibaru. At least, she thought she was. No, she was. She had to be. She wanted him to buy her things. Take her places. To be seen with him, for him to be seen with her. No, she was definitely interested in guys.

Which set off a new train of thought. Was she interested in girls as well as guys? Now, *that* was a kettle of fish-head soup that Kaname didn't want to open. Hotaru seemed to be content in acting according to Kaname's beliefs, too, and was trying really hard not to slip up... apparently. Her friends, though, weren't making as hard an effort.

Hotaru said something that Kaname missed, deep in thought. She caught it the second time around, though. "Any more bad dreams?"

Kaname shook her head. "No. Nothing. Thankfully. I... they scare me."

"I can understand why, from what you said last night," Hotaru replied. "Dreaming of things out of your control, dreaming important things that you've got to understand..."

"What?" Kaname asked, puzzled.

"Forget I said anything," Hotaru waved away, waking up faster in that moment than in the few minutes before. "Breakfast is ready. Do you... uh... have a table or anything to eat on?" Kaname shrugged and nodded at the bed. "Oh. I should have guessed," Hotaru sighed, bringing a pair of trays over, one at a time. She gave the first to Kaname, who quietly slid it across to Hotaru's side of the futon, and took the tray Hotaru brought back. The girl looked cold, so Kaname bent sideways and twisted around, grabbed the heater, and dumped it uncerimoniously behind and to the left of Hotaru. She then waited until Hotaru was ready to eat before speaking again.

"Thanks for the breakfast," she mumbled, and then ate. And ate some more. She noted Hotaru watching with a twinkle of amusement in her eye, and wondered what was so funny. Not knowing, she asked.

"It's the way you eat. I haven't seen it in so long."

Kaname's eyes narrowed. "*Have* you seen me eat before?"

"Yes." No hesitation, just a rapid answer around her chopsticks.

"Ignoring the other day at the street vendor's?"

Now Hotaru paused and thought. Then, slowly, "... Yes..."

"When?"

The girl looked uncomfortable. "You... aren't ready to know yet."

"Isn't that my decision to make?"

Hotaru looked away, and wouldn't look back.

"You're claiming to be my friend, but you're lying to me. And you've been lying -"

"You aren't ready for it, trust me, please," Hotaru said in a small voice. "Sempai, I'm not comfortable talking about this. Not with you. Not now, not like you are. You should remember what you were before you became this... new you. I knew, from the moment I saw you, you weren't the person I'm missing. That all my friends, and all his friends, are missing. We've not seen you in nearly six weeks, and most of us... Kaname, we miss our friend dearly, and I, I can wait, and my friends and sempai's friends... they have to wait. Not because they want to, but because *I'm* making them wait. You're not ready. Please, just... just act like you were before, when you didn't want to know."

With a start, Kaname realised Hotaru was near tears. She pulled back from the subject. "This is a nice breakfast, Hotaru-chan," she said with genuine feeling. "Please, tell this Makoto her cooking is wonderful."

Hotaru nodded, sobbed once more, and tried to pull it in. Kaname could see she was desperately lonely, separated from her... boyfriend? That didn't seem quite right. Everyone was suggesting that Hotaru and her friends had been looking for a man, but they all seemed to be looking AT a woman... maybe they all thought Kaname knew? Maybe he was a criminal, this Ranma, a scoundrel, scourge of women, a lusting, wanton man with a burning desire for debauchery.

But that couldn't be right, because Hotaru didn't seem to be into that.

Then again, Kaname didn't think she went for women, either...

Hotaru didn't look up for the rest of the meal. She didn't do much talking, either, so Kaname tried to fill the silence. First of all with insane chatter about what to do for the day, then she turned on the television and let the news fill them in on the troubles of the night before. As they finished breakfast, Kaname took everything up into the kitchenette, cleaned what needed to be cleaned, then turned to find Hotaru stripping off.

Oh god...

But no, she had a gi with her she was pulling on. Thankfully. Had she gotten naked, Kaname wasn't sure what she'd have done. She wasn't sure she wanted to find out. But Hotaru was oblivious to Kaname's eyes - partly perhaps because she had her back to Kaname and possibly thought Kaname was still working at the sink. Water was still sloshing about before draining, after all. Kaname turned back to the sink and worked studiously for a few minutes with a heavy blush on her cheeks, until she was certain Hotaru had dressed again.

She found the yougner woman working out, going through some warmup stretches. Kaname shrugged, and joined her with what she'd been learning at her few lessons. Hotaru's eyes noticed Kaname's workout, and offered little hints along the way as they ran through a few moves and a few rounds of slow sparring. "I usually go faster and harder," Hotaru said at one point.

"And me?" Kaname asked, remembering to block a punch with a forearm.

Hotaru hesitated. Then, decided it likely wasn't too important in the scheme of things if Kaname knew some small things that wouldn't blow whatever worldview she had currently out of the water, because she said, "You were an expert. Faster, stronger, harder, more skilled... I'm surprised you haven't come apart at the seams..."

"I try to keep active," Kaname said, remembering the pains in her joints when she slowed down for too long. "My runs, time in the gym after work, Tae Kwon Do on weekends... I just keep feeling something's missing. I'm not sore when I'm active, though..."

Hotaru nodded, and slipped in a light tap to Kaname's shoulder. "I'm enjoying this, sempai."

"Oh? Glad to be of service. Kaname Mizuno, the human punching bag..."

"It's nice to be able to touch you," Hotaru said, tagging Kaname again. Something must have shown on Kaname's face, because Hotaru suddenly blushed and clapped her hands to her mouth, dropping out of the fight. "I didn't just say that... oh no, I did." She covered her face with her hands, blushing. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I really didn't -"

Kaname shrugged, embarrassed, but trying not to show her mortification at the innocent comment. She'd known what Hotaru ahd said, but yes, from her it had sounded *really* wrong. "It's okay, I know what you mean." She resumed her opening sparring pose, waiting for the girl to get back up again, but Hotaru didn't. Instead, she slumped to her knees, and stared at the floor.

"I'm sorry, Kaname," she said, through sobs. "I thought I could do this. I thought I could just be your friend again, like we used to be. I thought... I could make sure none of your past got through to you until you were ready to hear it, and you're not. You're not ready. And I thought I was strong enough, you know, to hold back my feelings. To make myself just be your friend and not your girlfriend. You know? I thought if I could believe it hard enough, just tried not to remember what it was like holding hands, staring at the stars... kissing... I was bad to you. I was so bad to you. I hurt you, and then I compounded that error in hurting you again by not believing you when you said everything was all right. And when you punched your way out from under that building, I... was overjoyed. And you saved Mitsuki, and the rest of us, and you were scary, and I looked at you and felt your power and your determination and thought, was this what you felt like when I was bad? And then -" She stopped as Kaname's fingers, placed under her chin, rose and shut Hotaru's mouth. She sat there, crying still, looking into Kaname's eyes.

Kaname didn't like the situation much. She realised, at that point, that she, Kaname Mizuno (or whoever she really was), was the mysterious boyfriend of Hotaru's they were searching for, this Ranma. And while everyone else spoke of this Ranma as a man, Kaname was very obviously female. She felt disturbed by this, but not as much as she thought she would have before. Perhaps this was something she was meant to know, something that she was ready for. "Hotaru, I thought you said I wasn't ready." She was only mock-angry, but Hotaru burst into a fresh batch of tears.

"I'm sorry, sempai, I'm really, really sorry..." Kaname sank down next to Hotaru and wrapped her arms around the girl, rocked her until most of the sobbing subsided. It took a little while, but Hotaru eventually settled down in the embrace, occasional sobs wracking her body. When she was quiet, Kaname released her, and the young woman pulled back, sat very formally. "I am very sorry, sempai, I thought I had better control of myself than that."

"We all have to break down sometime, Hotaru-chan," Kaname said, not believing she just had. She shook her head. "People can't exist by themselves, within themselves. Look at my apartment. There's nothing here."

"It's certainly cleaner than I'd have expected from your room at the dorm," Hotaru agreed quietly in a voice that told Kaname she was still close to tears.

"It has no personality. No warmth," continued Kaname. "Nothing. It's empty, devoid of personality. A reflection of its owner. Me. I have no past. I have... well, if I get my memory back, it's like I have no future. Kaname Mizuno dies when I know who and what I was. When I remember. I haven't consciously thought like that, but that's how it's been. And being here... being like this, holding everything inside, it kills you. Perhaps that's because there's nothing in here," Kaname tapped her head, "but I don't have a life. I'm dead inside. Sitting here, night after night, I nearly made me dead on the outside, too. Joining The World, that made life good again. For a while. Then it got to be boring again. It was just me. Again, alone. That's when I met... Kanrinin, and he directed me to Mercurial, which led to you. You hold my past. I think you might hold my future. And that's scary, because -"

"Because you think you won't be you anymore if you're Ranma," Hotaru finished. "Because although you're not satisfied with life, with YOUR life, you don't want to stop living and become someone else."

"Yeah. I want to fight, I want to keep this life." Kaname watched Hotaru seemingly break inside, but before the tears could roll again, she added, "but I think there are more important things in life right now."

Hotaru looked up, mystified. "What things?"

"You're crying, for a start," Kaname remarked. "And my nightmares. Whatever they mean. And... and there was a video two days ago at work... it looked to be someone familiar... but I don't know anyone, remember? Maybe you do." Kaname shrugged. "All I want to know is why you keep saying you're looking for your boyfriend but keep finding me."

"You... uh... that's a bit hard to explain, sempai," Hotaru sniffed, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her gi. Then she sat upright, a strange look on her face. "But... it's something you have to know. Come with me." She got up, and led a mystified Kaname into the bathroom, where she proceeded to run the hot tap until the water had heated sufficiently for whatever purpose she had in mind. "You see, Ranma suffered from a curse. When he was splashed with cold water, he turned into a girl. And when he was then splashed with hot water -" Hotaru scooped up some hot water in her hands and drenched Kaname with it. Kaname stared back in mild shock and surprise. "- he turned back into a man." She waited, expectantly, for something to happen.

It didn't.

Hotaru leaned forward and, very slowly, poked Kaname in her left breast. It sank into the soft flesh. Kaname glared.

"I... I don't understand..."

"Hot water, eh?" Kaname said, reaching for a towel. "I could have TOLD you I stay a woman when immersed in hot water. I *do* bathe, you know."

******

Akane waited, that Monday morning, on the back steps of the dojo. She had been waiting there, ready, clean and dressed up nicely, since shortly after the phone call had come through two hours earlier. Hotaru was coming out with a friend for the afternoon, someone Akane knew very well who Hotaru said didn't know Akane. She guessed it was Ranma, and having seen some of the so-called Amnesiacs where she worked now, she guessed he was one of them. Hotaru had asked Akane that this person had only just been told who she really was, and was taking it fairly well, but wanted to proceed slowly.

Akane could understand that. And so, she'd been sitting outside, in the chilled wind, meditating. Or trying to, anyway. The snow that fell... she was sheltered from it, but she was focussing on the snow as it blew on the wind she was sheltered from. It wasn't working, though. She needed to talk to Ranma still. She'd been working on her maturity while dealing with her grief, but the emotions that would spring up with Ranma when they were together... she was scared they'd spring up again while talking to this Ranma with no memory, and she'd scare him off again. She couldn't handle doing that a second time. She just couldn't.

So she tried again, angrily picking a snowflake, and following it to the ground. Then picking another one, and watching that hit the ground also. It wasn't working. She just knew, after all this time, all this preparation, she was going to blow it. It had been easy keeping in touch with Hotaru and the others while Ranma had been gone, but now he was back... or someone who looked like him, would she revert back to type? She hoped not, but the damned snowflakes kept -

A hand reached out, cupped one of the flakes as it tumbled by, picked out on a random breeze that just happened to turn back on itself and flutter under the eaves of the roof above Akane.

"Who -?" Akane asked, turning, wondering if Akane and Ranma had arrived earlier than expected.

But it was just Kasumi, staring at the snowflake which somehow kept aloft in her palm. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she asked, her voice soft and distant.

"I can't focus on it, Kasumi," Akane grumped. "I'm trying to get calm before... before my friends turn up, but... I can't."

Kasumi nodded, almost to herself, as she knealt down next to Akane. Her face wasn't far from her younger sister's, and she held her hand up between them. "Look at it. How it moves. How it flutters. Perfection in nature."

"I don't -"

"Just look at it," Kasumi urged gently. Akane did. It was a snowflake. "No; *really* look at it."

Akane tried again. It was just a snowflake. She'd thought they could help her calm down, but they hadn't. There was nothing about them that inspired serenity. It was just a stupid snowflake after all, in Kasumi's hand, held aloft on invisible currents of air, twisting, floating, turning...

For a moment, Akane was lost in the snowflake. Then she gave her head a slight shake, and came out of it. "Wow. That's powerful."

"It is, isn't it?" Kasumi smiled. "People are like this, too," she said, stretching her hand out so the flake could escape. Akane followed the gesture with her eyes, and saw millions of snowflakes twisting and turning as they floated to the Earth's surface. "Millions upon millions of perfect creations, fluttering in the winds of time, all unique and all worth watching. If we were as a god, we could watch all the single lives that make up this world, and those lives that go wrong, we could be tempted to reach in, adjust it just a little to make it go right. But would that be right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Akane, if I was... a being of great power... how could I best use that power?"

The subject wasn't something that Akane had heard Kasumi talk of before, and for a moment she was confused. She thought about it while she considered the snow. "I don't know," she replied, eventually. "Save lives? Give people money? Stop wars? Destroy diseases?"

"Good answers," Kasumi smiled. "But saving lives is an eternal job. Money... can be spent easily, and too much would ruin economies. What is to say that stopping a war would allow the right side to triumph? If there is a right side in war. Or that it would stop other wars from starting? And diseases always change. They are always different. Destroying diseases is also a full-time job." She paused, looking out distantly into the snow, serious again. "Is that an effective use of power? Throwing it at problems that can only be fixed if people want them to be fixed?"

"What do you mean, Kasumi?"

"Think for a moment, Akane. I have power. I can stop wars. I do stop wars. People find other reasons to fight, or other battles to win, or perhaps the people involved in the fighting don't want to stop, or their leaders do. What do I do then?"

Akane thought hard again, but couldn't come up with a neat answer. "I don't know... change their minds?"

"By talking to them? If that doesn't work?"

"Then really change their minds. So they don't *want* to fight..."

"How does that make me any more right than them, then?"

"What's the answer, then, Kasumi? How would you stop a war?"

Kasumi smiled. "I wouldn't try."

Akane looked confused now, and she asked, "Then what would you do with the power of a god? If you didn't do any good with it..."

Kasumi's smile grew wider, and she closed her eyes, and suddenly, she looked normal. As if she hadn't been these last few minutes. "What would I do if I had power, Akane? I would try to make those around me happy. Make them safe. Make sure they can life their lives as they wish to rather than what life forces upon them."

Akane digested this, and briefly, from nowhere she could discern within herself, felt a very strong urge to ask for a pony. "What does this have to do with snow?"

"The snow... is just a convenient means to concentrating. Of focussing. Father taught that to me before you were born." Kasumi's eyes took on a distant gaze again and she sighed. "You've grown up a lot recently. You've become a very nice young woman."

"I wasn't before?"

"You had some rough edges," Kasumi smiled. "Now the rest of your life is before you. You have great power in your hands. You can make or break people, force them to your will if you so wish. But this responsibility is yours, Akane. What you do now you are an adult... is on your shoulders."

"Kasumi? Are you... are you talking about Ranma?" Kasumi nodded, and Akane felt fear again. Fear, hurt, pain, anguish. She'd lost him. And if she was right, and Ranma had lost his memory, then if Akane wanted to, she could get in with him again... and with a start, she realised this was exactly what Kasumi had been talking about, in a roundabout manner. She had power, right now, that she could use and abuse in a manner she thought best for her. Or that she fooled herself into thinking was best for other people, but really for her. And at that same moment, she realised her older sister was right again, with what Kasumi would do if she had power. Right now, knowing this, seeing with a touch more maturity than she had when Ranma had broken up with her in the first place, broken their engagement off, even after deciding they could be friends, she knew now she *would* be friends. There wouldn't be any problem, not with her, not with Ranma, and they were the only two people who mattered in that respect. Akane wouldn't abuse her knowledge of him to try to steal him back, or saboutage his relationship, or stick a dagger into his back to get back at him or make him look at her again, any of the things she would once have done had he turned his back on her; no, she wouldn't. She'd do her best to make sure Ranma was able to move on with his life, in whatever it was he wanted to do with it. She'd help him with every fibre of her being for as long as she could or was needed or wanted, and she'd be happy to do so. She had to move on, too, and watching Ranma move into a new life... well, it would hurt, and probably it would hurt more than she had with the break-up, but knowing for certain he was a friend and always would be one would help her there. No doubt, knowing Ranma, he'd be there for her just as much as ever, possibly more so, having seen the 'new', mature him in action twice now.

That made her strangely happy.

The snow fell, and the bell out by the front gate rang. "That will be Ranma now, I expect," Kasumi said, standing again and heading for the gates.

Akane nodded and stood herself, brushing down her pants and jumper. Then she stopped, confused. "Kasumi? I didn't tell you Ranma was coming over..."

Kasumi stopped, and out of Akane's line of sight, she smiled. "Oh? Didn't you? How strange."

******

The meal had been nice, and there had been an awful lot of it. Akane's older sister, Kasumi, cooked well, and Kaname had thanked her profusely for the good food after the meal. Akane kept looking at her weirdly, though, all through the meal, and finally, Kaname had to whisper to Hotaru while Akane's back was turned, "What's going on with your friend?"

"Pardon?" Hotaru replied, taken aback a little. Then she considered, shrugged, and said, "She's your ex-fiance. You... broke up with her and made things... official with me." Akane turned back to face them, and Kaname smiled nervously at her.

"Excuse us a moment," she said quickly, before dragging Hotaru out of the room. "How could you fail to tell me we were going to see my - how many women was I involved with?" She sagged back against the wall, drained. This day, whether she wanted them or not, was turning out to be full of surprises. The more Kaname found out about herself, about her old self, the more she wasn't a fan of the type of woman she'd been. "I don't even *like* women, not like that... and I was engaged to one? How'd we get around the law? Oh man, I was a cross-dresser, right? Some kind of perverted freak like this lech HANGING OFF MY CHEST GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!" Kaname brushed ineffectively at the wizened piece of fruit buried in her cleavage. No amount of slapping was removing him from her.

"Ahhhhh! Ranma, how long it's been since I had the change to sample your unique helloes!"

Akane poked her head through the door beside Kaname at the commotion, and her eyes lit up in a way Kaname hadn't seen yet today. She looked as if she could kill something, and had just been given permission to do so. "LECH! Pervert! Freak!" Kaname watched in amazement as Hotaru's friend - er, Kaname's ex-fiance - developed a mallet from nothing and belted into the thing clutching at Kaname's bosom so hard it was dislodged and knocked down the hall, through a wall. Akane panted angrily, then forced herself to calm down. "I'm sorry you had to meet him again, R- Kaname. I was hoping he'd stay out longer, but he seems to have come in with the cold."

"What... what was that thing?" Kaname got out. Hotaru was still looking up the hall at the hole in the wall the old man had made.

"That... was Happosai. The man who trained our fathers in martial arts. Or at least led them on a rampage across Japan years ago." Akane shrugged. "He's a pervert. Don't be afraid to hit him if he grabs you or... well... touches you in ways you don't like."

"No, him I understand. What was *that*?" Kaname repeated, looking pointedly at Akane's now-empty hand and miming striking something with a mallet with her hands.

"Ohhh..." Akane held her hands up. "Ki. You know."

"Actually," Hotaru said, turning back, "She doesn't. She doesn't remember anything of Ranma."

"She does martial arts, though, you said," Akane replied, brow furrowing.

"I took up exercising because I was hurting all the time if I didn't get in a lot of physical work," Kaname explained, "and I only just joined up for Tae Kwon Do at the gym. Can you teach me how to do that?" She looked interested, and had apparently forgotten all she had just been saying. At least, for the moment...

"Uh... Ranma... knows all this... don't you... somewhere?" Akane asked hesitantly.

Kaname shook her head. "No, I thought you only got those things in bad anime. How do you do it? Come ooonnnn! With everything you two have been dropping around me today, *someone* owes me something good to take my mind off things until I can deal with them..."

"Both of us?" Akane asked, looking to Hotaru.

"I told him you two had been engaged," Hotaru replied, embarrassed. "It was... pretty obvious in there."

Akane looked upset. "I... wanted to talk to Ranma... and this..." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Kaname, this has got to be hard on you, too. We're all wanting to see who we knew, and we keep looking. Hotaru's been doing it, too, but you've been focussed on me all afternoon. We look at you, and everything's the same. The gaze, the smile, the laugh... the only thing that's different... is it isn't Ranma." Akane's eyes shifted upwards slightly. "Oh, and your hair. Your hair should be red. And... tied up..."

"That's confused me, too," Hotaru added. "Or black. When Ranma... drained us all, in his girl body, his hair went from red to a really deep black."

Kaname shook her head, grabbed one of her bangs, and waved it under Akane and Hotaru's noses. "My hair's always been this colour, it's natural."

"For you, yes," Hotaru replied, taking the bang from Kaname's grasp and letting it drop back against the woman's cheek. "But for Ranma... no. And that's his body..."

"I don't believe all this stuff about a curse, y'know. I'm a girl an' I always have been!"

Akane blinked at the sudden change in speech. Hotaru did likewise. Before either could say anything, though, Kasumi intercepted them by appearing from nowhere, taking Kaname's hand, and guiding her back to the table. "The next course is served," she offered with a smile.

That defused the situation, for the moment, but Kaname still gave dark looks to both Akane and Hotaru. Akane looked like someone had killed her pet pig (that was curled up protectively in her lap, glaring evily at Kaname), and Hotaru... well, she was just picking at the small desert, not really doing much looking at anyone. Kasumi carried most of the conversation, asking Kaname about her work, her home, her life in general. As Kaname told her about how she met Hotaru and her friends, Kasumi cast a speculative eye over Hotaru for a moment before nodding, then she asked for some insignificant point of detail, just to show she was indeed listening to every word spoken.

Once the meal was finished, she gave Akane a knowing look that appeared to unnerve Hotaru a little, then smiled at Kaname. "Thank you for taking the time to stop by and say hello. You're not Ranma, as these two still look at you and see, but it is nice to know that our friend... lives on... in one form or another. For the time being," she added, thoughtfully. "I will begin cleaning up. I'm sure the three of you can find somewhere to sit and talk, as befits friends?" She stood, and started gathering dishes. Kaname made to help, as thanks for the meal, but Kasumi waved her down with a smile and continued picking up used plates and bowls before heading for the kitchen.

Akane still looked a little uncomfortable, but then looked as if she'd had some inspiration. "The dojo!" she announced, and scrambled to her feet. She ushered Hotaru and Kaname out of the room, along the exterior veranda and into a large room with padding aorund the walls and hard mats covering a large proportion of the polished wooden floors. Around the edges of the room stood various implements of messy destruction: kusuri-gamas, sai, a lonely pair of nunchuku, even a halberd. Training dummies were propper up in one corner, broken and smashed straw and rock dummies lying in front of the unbroken upright ones. Kaname looked around, and kept silent, her eyes opening wide. Hotaru stepped up beside her, her sholder just brushing Kaname's back lightly. The younger woman didn't back away, though; instead, she appeared to press in slightly harder.

"This is the dojo," Akane said, unnecessarily, gesturing widely with one hand while turning to face Kaname and Hotaru. She almost looked desperate, eyes wide, smile unusually wide. Her pig also looked worried at Akane's reaction, and actually growled at Kaname. She backed away a step, beginning to raise her hands defensively to disarm any coming situation, but turned, and changed her gesture into placing her hands on Hotaru's biceps, pushing her back out the door.

"Wait out here for a moment," Kaname said before sliding the door shut and clicking the lock behind her. She turned again, to face Akane, who was looking more worried, and stepped closer to the woman again. "Akane? Is something wrong?"

Akane turned away, and the subtle movements of her shoulders told Kaname she was trying to breathe deeply and calmly, forcing herself to relax. She could almost visualise the image the woman was using to calm herself... the pond she'd seen hints of outside under the snow, surrounded by a ring of rocks in the midst of a spring afternoon with cherry blossoms drifting past on the breeze. Quite why that image popped into Kaname's head, she didn't know. It didn't seem to be a memory of her past life, as she had none, and thoughts she had about anything prior to the day she woke up naked invariably slid out of her mind or gave her headaches - no, this seemed different.

Almost like she could read Akane's mind.

She knew Akane wasn't crying, but was close to it. Obviously, this Ranma person had been close to Akane, and Kaname felt wrong that she had his body, but nothing of him to offer these two women who had apparently been very close to him.

Fiancee. Boyfriend.

Man, was this Ranma ever a playboy...

Kaname sighed inwardly. It sounded as if she was already coming around to the possibility that she may have actually been a he at some point in time. She hadn't noticed any scarring or any other evidence that she was only recently a female when bathing, but then, Hotaru had been convinced there was some kind of curse involved that worked with water. And while Kaname thought that maybe, just *maybe* she was being fed a line... there really were magical girls. And mystical knights. Strong magic forces encircled Tokyo protectively against the forces of darkness.

- pain, complete and utter. Raw dejection, depression, resignation. But no, no, He would not win. She could still fight. Fight in small ways. There were still heroes, just not where they were needed. She had to move them, like playing chess, or Fantasy Knights Ultra, and do it in ways that wouldn't trigger responses from Him and His. For her to escape the Darkness, to bring Light to Japan once more -

Kaname managed not to stagger backwards, but only because her ankles gave out and she toppled to the ground in a mess of suddenly spasming limbs. She did it silently, though, or mostly so - Akane didn't turn around, nor did Hotaru attempt to gain entrance - so she held herself on her knees in a crouch, until she knew whether or not she could stand properly again. Once she was sure, she stood, and seeing Akane was still working on her relaxation technique, she placed a hand supportively on Akane's shoulder and spoke.

"I'm not him. I should have been nicer about saying that before. But you know me; or rather, you don't. Neither does Hotaru. You both keep trying to see someone I'm not and likely never was in me, and that hurts me, because I can't make friends here, now, if people keep thinking I'm not here. I'm not temporary, I'm not a glitch - this is me, this is who I am. I'm rude and abrupt occasionally because people... well, people expect me to have a life. Experiences I can fall back on. Even if they know I'm an Amnesiac. Most people think we're just faking our memory loss. I can tell you, I don't have one single memory before waking up in that hell-hole. And I have no experiences, besides what I've seen and done in the six weeks since then. I work, now. I'm single, Hotaru says I'm 19 and some months, I flirt with Shibby-chan in IT and have weird things happen to my computer at work. I play too much in The World for my own good, and met a whole bunch of girls who know who I was but don't care to know who I *am*. I'm not him. Not a perverted cross-dressing cursed lech who can't hold a relationship or a job down. I'm me. Kaname Mizuno, age 20, and please, please stop crying."

Akane bent down, released the pig, who scowled at Kaname before Akane patted him on the backside and he trotted off, unhappily, towards one of the walls where he took up a position watching the proceedings. She stood upright then, removed Kaname's hand before turning to face her. Akane's eyes were rimmed with red, and she wiped at her cheeks. "I know. I know all this. It's just - I was so mean, so nasty to him without realising. I should have known, he wasn't the only person who'd said anything, but - I loved him and I thought that was enough for him to accept me as... me. I'm not the most trusting person when I really should trust, and I did Ranma an injustice... many times over... by not trusting him, not believing him, not believing my own eyes... and I finally realise this, and many other things - and..." She sniffed, rubbed at her eyes again. "And I didn't get the chance to tell him I was sorry. That I was the idiot, that I was the one who ruined our chances at marriage. He was an idiot too, but... he was more honest with what and who he was than I was. Ranma was Ranma. What you saw was what you got. He was stupid, easily bored, adversarial, inconsiderate, and rude - but that was him... before he grew up. When he came here, Kaname, Ranma was like that. That was how his father was. A crude brute who cared about nothing but fighting, food and fun. He couldn't take anything seriously, and was so blind he didn't know there were lines to step over. He changed, though. I got to know him, and he changed, very slowly. He wasn't exactly honourable - but he wouldn't do anything to deliberately hurt someone he loved and he would defend you with his life if necessary. He had his own code of conduct. And that grew as he did. And when we... when he left here and moved in with Hotaru and her friends, away from me, he grew up faster. Because I wasn't... hitting him, hurting him, pushing him away when I should have at least been pulling him closer... he became a man. A strong, proud man who seemed to have thrown off his father's influence. A man I wanted to apologise to. To tell him I know why he left, why he split up with me... why I hoped we could still be friends. He wanted to be friends. I had to tell him I wanted to be, too. And that I was trying to grow up, like him, and throw off my childishness and my old problems and try to make myself someone who didn't push people who I wanted close to be further away with every word, every action. I wanted him to be a tiny bit proud of me, as I was proud of him." Akane sobbed again, and Kaname felt she would start crying, so she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Akane.

The dark-haired woman buried her head in Kaname's shoulder, and cried.

******

Outside, Hotaru looked around the backyard. It seemed to be in one piece again; of course, the last time she'd seen it, she had been fighting Ranma, to kill him, or at least hurt him as much as she was being hurt. Dressed in that outfit... she sighed, and wondered if she'd ever get a chance to model it for Ranma in private. No use wondering, though, she thought to herself. Ranma was gone and she had to accept that. Hotaru loved Ranma enough that she felt she could continue her feelings for him with this new woman, this Kaname, but that wasn't possible. She wasn't interested. And, well, not being cursed kind of threw a spanner into the works there. It was so frustrating! Most of her friends had by now died and come back to life at least once. Ranma had only lost his memory, but Hotaru was starting to think it may have been more than that, that perhaps Ranma's memories no longer existed. That Kaname had been a blank slate, and who she was now had been pieced together completely through her sheer force of will. That was what Kaname believed, at any rate, and Hotaru had to admit she believed her. So did that mean Ranma was lost for good?

"No," Kasumi said, from behind where Hotaru sat on the edge of the veranda. Hotaru jumped, and pivoted around quickly. Kasumi smiled disarmingly. "It's nice to see you when you're not trying to destroy my home," she added.

"Um... I'm really sorry about that," Hotaru offered, knowing how stupid that sounded.

Kasumi waved it off. "It was paid for. And it's no different to the damage done to the house when Ranma was living here. Ahh..." Her eyes drifted backwards into the past, and Hotaru nearly found herself joining the elder Tendo sister. "You know he is still alive," she said, very matter-of-factly.

Hotaru nodded. "I can feel him. All around Kaname. But... I don't feel him *in* her. It's like... they've been separated. I don't know how, I don't know why. And I can't ask - Ami, because, because, I can't explain it to her."

Kasumi smiled, studied the snow as it fell in front of them. "He has been gone before. He will be gone again. But then... Ranma's journey... it is a long, hard journey. To walk the line he has chosen for himself. And had chosen for him. Because no one lives in a vacuum, and other people influence our decisions."

"What do you mean?"

"Perhaps the greatest gift we have, as living creatures, is the power of choice. It's what separates humans from animals. We can say no to our instincts." Kasumi chuckled lightly. "We don't often say no to them, but we can. Our choices can be mundane, or profound. Ranma's choice is approaching. He has both avenues in front of him, right now. He can go either way."

"Light or Dark," Hotaru realised. "He's not just a Dark General, he's also a senshi! But - isn't that impossible?" Then she kicked herself for asking that out loud, knowing full well that Kasumi couldn't answer.

But the eldest Tendo sister surprised her, for she considered the question seriously before answering. "Just because it hasn't happened before doesn't mean that it can't. The most loyal of military leaders can change sides if they feel their cause is no longer just. Politicians can side with opponents for causes that their constituents hold dearly. And Knights can be turned into Generals with the touch of a King's sword, and vice-versa. Ranma is Ranma, no matter what else affects him. Trust in him, and that trust will be returned."

"You're not as-" Hotaru caught her tongue before it could finish the sentence, but again, Kasumi surprised her.

"Out of it as people would assume?" She chuckled. "I have my moments."

"Ranma said you could be scary."

Kasumi looked thoughtful. "Perhaps I am when my family's happiness is threatened. I cannot really say as I don't upset my family." She smiled wanly. "I may have misjudged Ranma. I consider him family, of course, but he hurt my little sister badly. Which resulted in her losing some of her more... unsavoury attitudes."

"Children often grow up when confronted with painful changes to their comfortable existances," Hotaru remarked, suddenly feeling Saturn inside her, feeling ancient.

"Indeed," Kasumi agreed with similar weight to her words. They sat in silence, while muffled sobbing continued in the dojo.

******

"Agent Sato. Have you found him yet?"

"I have not," Sato replied. "Of all the people... who I have interviewed over the last month... none display the properties you told me of." He leaned back into his chair, steepling his fingers as he gazed down at the small monitor on his desk. A face stared back at him, blackness behind the figure.

"My plans depend on his demise," Yoshihiro reminded the government official. "You assured me in this capacity, you could find him if he wasn't destroyed by Raijin, and make sure he was eliminated from the equation."

"He is... in my world now, and... I will dispose of him. Delete him from... your plans. Permanently." Sato leaned forward. "But first... I must know... how to find him."

Yoshihiro turned his face to look at something off-screen, nodded at something, then turned back. "We have uploaded all our data on Ranma Saotome to you. Even if you can't find someone who looks like him, then perhaps... perhaps you can look for other aspects of him. As he was when last seen, last felt, he should be pouring Dark energies from within himself like a harbour wave and should stand out. Even if he hasn't embarked on a life of crime with the negative aspects of his personality that would have surfaced when he... became a General."

"I have examined... all those aspects. One person... fitted the visual aspect... to within ninety-seven point three percent. But her personality... was different. As was her makeup. And..." Sato paused and leaned forward. "She had... no memories of Tokyo... of Raijin... of anything... before waking up in The Zone. She still... has no memories of that time, nor... of who she was."

"What... aspect of her differed from the models you received?" Yoshihiro wanted to know.

"Her hair... was coloured differently."

"You let her go. Based on her hair colour?" Yoshihiro looked as if he was going to explode, then calmed down. "That was most likely him. Mr Saotome. Hiding himself in plain sight. After all... these Amnesiacs... there's no logical reason for them having lost their memories. He must be faking it. I assume you know where he is now?"

"We know... where she works, and where... she lives."

"Bring him in, Agent Sato." Yoshihiro stepped back from the monitor. "And take no chances." The monitor clicked off.

Sato smiled. It wasn't nice; it was superior. "She doesn't... stand a chance against me."

******

Akane finally stopped crying. Kaname's arms relaxed, and inwardly, she sighed, feeling her shoulders wet from tears. The Tendo woman was still looking very upset, though, and Kaname wasn't quite sure how to act. Akane wasn't meeting her gaze yet, as she stepped back, away from Kaname, starting to turn around.

"I'm sorry," Akane started, before Kaname surprised herself by reaching out and taking Akane's face by her chin and turning her to face her again.

"There's no need for apologies," she told Akane. "I'm not the person you have to talk to, and I don't know if I ever will be. I kind of hope not, because... that would mean the death of me. But... he's more wanted than I am," she added with a slight chuckle. She hoped Akane didn't notice the small catch in her voice. "And I'm sure... if he was as nice as you and Hotaru suggest... and Hotaru's friends... I think he knew. I think he respected and admired you, and loved you and wanted to be with you, and -"

Akane held up a hand. "No. No, you're wrong. He wasn't nice. He could be... so selfish. So uncaring, unkind, just... wouldn't notice anything else outside of his own head unless it related directly to him. He... loved me, maybe... once... but that changed... and I want to be friends again, but unless he comes back... we can't be friends." Tears threatened around the corners of her eyes, but she looked to be calming down again. "And he didn't want to be with me. For good reason, maybe. I... for all that I now understand his reasons, I think maybe... just maybe... we could have worked it out together. But... without him leaving me, I'd never have realised. I'd never have been forced to think about my actions and reactions and how they affected him. I don't know. Maybe I was affected by seeing my father after my mother died... and didn't want to chance being hurt like that... maybe it's something deeper inside me. I don't know. It... was something I wanted to explore with Ranma. As friends, finding out why I act the way I do."

"He'll be... fine," Kaname said, after a while. She was feeling definitely uncomfortable now, it felt like everything had been said. Akane must have felt similarly, because she gave a small, sad laugh, and gestured at Kaname.

"But you don't need to hear my problems," she said, "you've got your own, and they're... we're all so mean. We look at you and see Ranma, and like you said, we're not seeing you, who's there, we're seeing him. Our... friend. And look at me, just dumped all my baggage on you as if you were him, and you're not."

Kaname shook her head. "No, I'm not. But you needed to talk to someone who... looked like him, so I guess that's okay." She gestured at the doors out. "Um, do you mind if we go? I've kind of got to get home and find out if I'm working tomorrow. Because, you know, the computer systems went down on the weekend, and I don't know if they're back up yet. And I've got to ask when Shibby-chan's free, and do housework, oh, and after this morning, I've got to shop and fix up the bathroom, since Hotaru kindly threw water all over me..."

Akane held her hand up again, cutting Kaname off. "Yes. Yeah, we can go. I'm sorry... again." Kaname waved it off as Akane opened the door and they walked out onto the veranda, where Hotaru and Kasumi was watching snowflakes and conversing in low tones. "It was nice meeting you, Kaname Mizuno. I'd like to think we can be friends, if we can ignore my... breakdown earlier."

Kaname nodded. "It's always good to have new friends. For what it's worth... I hope you do get to talk to him, you know?" Akane nodded in return, and Hotaru stood up.

"We're leaving?"

"Uh huh. Kasumi, thank you for a wonderful lunch. It was delicious. Your house, also, is a testament to your hard work." Kaname gave a slight bow. Kasumi returned it with a smile.

"It was a pleasure meeting you, Kaname Mizuno," she replied. "I hope future events won't be too troubling on you."

******

"That was a weird thing to say," Kaname muttered once they were down the road, away from the household and out of earshot.

Hotaru shrugged. "What do you expect from an incarnation of an Elder God?"

"*What?*"

"Kidding, just kidding," Hotaru smiled, reaching out casually for Kaname's hand before realising, remembering, and withdrawing it. Kaname, looking over her shoulder at the Tendo home, unsure still of whether Hotaru was actually joking or not, missed the move.

"I'm looking forward to getting home, though," she sighed, running her fingers through her hair and rubbing at her damp shoulders under her jacket. "Get out of this cold. And I've got to get some groceries on the way home. Oh, and I had another dream. While I was in the dojo with Akane."

Hotaru nodded, thoughts distant, missing that statement at first. Then her head whipped around like it was attached to an engine, and asked, "What?"

"I had a dream. Something about the fight between darkness and light, and heroes in the wrong place." Kaname shrugged. "I think it was about a chess game. A losing one."

"Or one where the white player starts off with a huge disadvantage," Hotaru murmured thoughtfully. "You know, like I was saying the Dark Kingdom and Moon Kingdom? And how Queen Serenity had tipped the balance when she shouldn't have? And now the board, this game, has tipped the other way."

"That was real?" Kaname asked, voice rising in disappearing disbelief. Then, she lowered it again. "No. That's not real. I don't know what kind of fantasy world you live in, but... no."

"Why do you not have a problem believing in giant monsters, but do in having a gender-changing curse? Or, for that matter, opposing magical forces from a time long ago, locked in eternal battle for supremacy?"

"Why can't they all just... get along?"

"It's not that easy," Hotaru muttered. "We hate them just as much as they hate us. There's too much bad blood between us. Oh, and there's that whole 'we like to kill people for no reason' thing they have going."

"Oh," Kaname offered in reply. Then: "Why not just agree to disagree and move away from each other? You know, like it was before."

"Earth was drawn into the conflict by Serenity, against the advice of her advisors at the time." Hotaru shrugged. "I mean, everyone thought I was the big strong protector without a brain... but I had plenty of time to think, and I always thought we were wrong to involve this world in our battle..." She shook her head.

Kaname smiled suddenly, and thought, 'she's crazy. Smile, smile, smile, keep her talking, keep her happy, then RUN.' to herself. Aloud, she said, "That's..."

"You're thinking I'm crazy. But how about I show you?" Hotaru looked back up the street, then pulled Kaname off the road into a walkway between two yards with tall brick walls hiding them from view. From a pocket appeared what looked like a chunky ballpoint biro, with some kind of design affixed to the top. Some small part of Kaname's brain registered it as something from Ancient Europe, probably Rome, but she couldn't place it further than that. She held the pen up high in the air, and yelled, "Saturn planet power make up!"

There was a burst of purple ribbons, and when Kaname's eyes blinked themselves clear of momentary flash-blindness, Hotaru was gone and in her place was... someone who looked exactly the same, but dressed as a cosplaying-schoolgirl. Purple pleated skirt, white bodysuit, purple knee-high lace-up boots, purple sailor-suit collar, bows, and a glaive she had with one end resting on the ground. "Does... does this ring a bell?" she asked, hesitantly, as if suddenly unsure if she'd just made the right decision or not.

******

Saturn watched Kaname carefully. While the woman had some aversion to her previous life at times, even just thinking about it, this day hadn't seemed to be one of them. She'd had more shocks and revelations than she thought Kaname could actually take... more shocks, Saturn guessed, thinking back. She'd been drenched in hot water, had a young girl hitting on her all day long, had lunch with an ex-fiance, and now found out her current girlfriend... well, perhaps ex-girlfriend for the moment... was a magical girl. She watched Kaname's face very carefully, saw the blood drain from it in shock, her mouth open wide. She knew the woman thought she was at least slightly crazy, but perhaps now she might start taking Saturn seriously.

The senshi wasn't used to being humoured until one could find an escape route.

Especially now. It wasn't safe for Kaname. Not as long as Yoshihiro's forces were after the senshi and anyone involved with them. And if Yoshihiro was worried in any way about the senshi, about Ranma in particular as his manipulations of her suggested, then this was an opportune time to strike without fear of retaliation from Ranma.

While he couldn't remember his life and his skills, he was defenceless.

Kaname took a step backwards from Saturn, and the senshi resisted the urge to step forward, to reach out and take her boyfriend into her arms, hold him until he was him again. She knew, deep down, that this wasn't Ranma, though. She could feel it. It was just his body, the meat that had made him. His mind, his soul, was elsewhere.

'Come back, sensei, sempai,' she thought to herself as she tried not to react to Kaname taking another step backwards. She was on the verge of panicking, and there wasn't much Saturn could do without making matters worse.

"You... you're a magical girl!" Kaname announced, like this was something completely unexpected. And Saturn had to admit, for Kaname, this likely was.

"Yes. One of the Sailor Senshi, actually," Saturn replied, nodding, trying not to step forward in urgent affirmation. She felt urges, very strong urges. But she had to deny them, because giving in would make things so much worse...

Kaname took another step back. "And you're... a good guy, right?"

"That's right," Saturn nodded again.

"SoifIsaidIneverwantedtoseeyouagainIwouldn'tright?"

That hurt. Saturn stepped back now, knowing that her pain was written across her face for all to see. Kaname saw it, at least. Saturn watched Kaname take two steps back now, growing in confidence that she wouldn't see this young girl again, that she thought Saturn was a freak still, that she wouldn't have anything more to do with her. That really hurt. She let her transformation drop, and Hotaru looked downcast. "That's right," she said softly, not trusting her voice enough to speak any louder. "I would respect your wishes."

"That's all I wanted ta hear," Kaname said, turning.

Hotaru reached out now, took steps forward, brought an urgent, needing hand down on Kaname's shoulder. "I didn't mean to scare you! I didn't -"

But Kaname was gone, out of the walkway. She sprinted, and even with Hotaru's recent move towards some minor level of fitness that everyone else called normal, she couldn't have caught up even if she'd wanted to. Instead, she watched the older woman leave at speed.

She slumped to her knees, and cried.

******

Nearer her house, Kaname slowed to a stop. Damn. Hotaru still had things at her apartment. She'd either turn up, or perhaps have someone else turn up for them. Hopefully someone else. But Kaname could leave things outside her apartment's door anyway.

Of course, if it was Hotaru who arrived... she was strong enough to kick the door in.

She shivered; the snow was blowing against the back of her legs, and even her good thick leggings weren't keeping the damp cold out any longer. She just wanted to go home... and so she sighed, then squared her shoulders, and headed off for home.

******

The phone in the dorm's lounge rang, and being the only person in the room, watching television, Mitsuki answered. "Yes?"

"Mitsuki, it's me," Hotaru sobbed. Mitsuki felt her hackles rise. Something had gone wrnog today. She felt it had to do with Ranma, but after their last actual encounter... Mitsuki had been... different. She was feeling more proprietry towards him and his, and this Kaname... she wore his face but wasn't him, and if she'd hurt Hotaru...

"What's the matter?"

"It's R- Kaname. I... did some stupid things today, and... and... dammit, Mitsuki, why did I fuck up like this? Why NOW? I was going to go slow with all this but..." Hotaru broke off into a new series of sobs.

"Um... so you want me to...?"

Hotaru spoke jerkily, haltingly, trying to keep her emotion to a minimum for the request. "I... left my stuff... at Kaname's apartment and I don't... think it's a good idea that... I go back there. Can you... can you go pick it up?"

Mitsuki found herself agreeing, and so, after a hurried transformation and the grabbing of a jacket (and on second thought, after looking out a window, some tracksuit pants which she pulled on) Nemesis leapt off the Ai Sou's hill and bounded north towards Shinagawa.

******

Kaname stepped onto the road across from her building, checking for oncoming traffic. Nothing was coming, so she continued across. There was a car parked just up a little, with shaded windows she couldn't see inside, but nothing else. No cats, no dogs, nothing. She entered her building's foyer, and headed for the elevators. She pressed the call button, and looked up at the floor indicator: both lifts were at the top of the building, and would take a little while to come down, so Kaname decided to try working off some of Kasumi's lunch by running up the stairs. Five flights of stairs later, she wasn't even puffed, and she considered trying for the full fifteen. A moment's hesitation, and she kept on running up the staircase.

******

Nemesis touched down lightly outside the building, and headed for the doors to the foyer. But, on the threshold, she stopped and looked around. Something felt wrong. Something felt incredibly wrong. She didn't know what, though... she shook her head, and walked inside. An elevator dinged and the doors opened as she reached them, so she shrugged at providence, stepped inside, and hit the buttno for level five.

******

On the fourteenth floor, Kaname passed a cat, who took off in fright. She reached the fifteenth floor, cheered silently to herself, the minor victory cheering her up after all the stress and shock of late afternoon, and then she started running down the steps again for the fifth floor.

On the fourteenth floor, she passed the cat who'd obviously thought it safe to return, and it took off in fright. Kaname kept running.

The fifth floor door, she exited, and found someone walking to her doorway. Dressed in bulky clothing, somehow sticking mostly to the shadows as if dragging them with it, she didn't recognise the figure. It raised a hand to knock on the door, and with everything that had happened, Kaname was in no mood to wonder why someone dressed threateningly would be wanting to see her. She guessed Hotaru and her magical girl form, but she didn't know. She saw red, and charged.

The yell she gave was vicious, uncontrolled, just sheer anger and stress leaking out. The figure turned, and raised a gloved forearm to block the leap-kick Kaname was making, but stepped back in surprise. "Kaname?" she said.

Kaname didn't recognise the face, but the voice was unmistakable as the woman who'd sworn at her only a week before. She pulled the kick even as she asked, "Mitsuki?"

The figure shrugged the jacket's hood back, and purple hair spilled from it as the occupant twisted her head around a little to work out kinks. "Yeah."

"What do you want?"

"Hotaru said you guys had an argument. She asked me to come by and pick her things up. I guess something was said -"

"You know she's a monster?"

Mitsuki was taken aback. "A what?"

"She less than human!"

"This is new. What? Has a vampire been at her, or that bastard Yoshihiro again? I swear, if she turns evil again -"

"She's... she's..."

Mitsuki stopped, her eyes partially unfocussed, as if listening to someone else, then she turned fractionally to face Kaname again. "She told you she's a senshi, right?"

"You know?" Aghast shock.

"Well, duh. I live with her." Mitsuki rolled her eyes. "She's nothing to be scared of, you know. She's... harmless. Except when possessed by ancient pretty-boy evil babies. Or witches. Or when she's on her -"

"You're *okay* with that?"

"How can you not be? If it wasn't for her, you'd be dead! Several times over!" Mitsuki found herself growing heated, Kari wanting to slap some sense into Kaname, but she held back. She knew this wasn't Ranma, knew that Kaname didn't have any memories, no recollection whatsoever of the time he'd spent with Hotaru, let alone the trust he'd placed in her. "Ranma liked her."

"I'M NOT -"

"I know. And I suspect everyone's said that to you a lot. I got told not to say anything, but I'm going to. She's younger than you, Kaname. She's in love with you. You're just... this great big shining star in her sky that she can't help looking to, turning to when she needs reassurance. And after recent events, she needs reassurance from you. Well, from Ranma, but she looks at you and sees him." Mitsuki stepped back and turned away, folding her arms under her chest. "And you know something Kaname? I need him too. He... is a reason for me to stay..."

"Sane?"

Mitsuki nodded. "Yeah. Basically, sane. I suffer a mental condition that's... made worse by... certain aspects of my life. I can become really not nice at times, and the medication I'm on for the condition doesn't always work. It can wear off at the worst of times. And my life, you know, I've killed people. Men. In... bed. But... Ranma... he... sees past that and he trusts me. He trusts all of me."

"You sound like you love him."

"I think I do," Mitsuki admitted, turning around. "For a world so dark and remote, he brings me light, offers me hope of redemption. That perhaps I can make up for sins of the past if only someone tells me I have."

Kaname paused. Then reached behind her with her keys to unlock her front door. "I'll get you Hotaru's things," she said before she slotted the key into the keyhole.

Or, rather, tried to. The door swung open at the slightest touch. Inside was a man in a suit.

"Agent Sato?" Kaname asked, confused. "What are you doing in my apartment?"

He smiled, humourlessly. "I'm here to take you... into custody, Ms Mizuno."

"What am I supposed to have I done?" she asked.

"I'm sure... something will be... fabricated to cover... those questions. For now," he smirked, "all you... need do is do... as I say and come... along quietly."

Kaname stepped back. She'd run once tonight already, and her adrenalin was already up; she was ready to run again. Mitsuki's hand clamped down on her shoulder to stop her from fleeing. "Officer? What's the charge?"

"Conspiracy to... commit treason, perhaps. Or jaywalking." Sato smirked again. "I really... don't know and... really, I don't care." He started walking towards Kaname, but Mitsuki shoved her to one side and took up a combat stance.

"I'm not going to let her go without a fight," she said, waiting for Sato to move into range of her fists.

She wasn't waiting long. He was within her reach before she finished talking. "I'd expect no less... from one such as you..." Two punches, in rapid succession, and he dodged both. Simply bent out of the way as if Mitsuki was standing still. Kaname watched from the sidelines, amazed with the speed Mitsuki was showing, more so with that of Sato's. She threw another barrage of punches, rapidfire, one after the other. Sato deflected two, dodged the rest. One of the deflected shots exploded part of the door frame into sawdust, the other punched right through one of the walls. Finally, she swung a leg in behind Sato's knees, intending to drop him to the ground, but he stepped over her leg as if it wasn't there, and punched her in the chest.

Mitsuki's eyes opened wide, and she flew backwards into the wall opposite. Plaster dust exploded outwards, and the wall caved partly in, Mitsuki looking stunned as she slid down the wall to her feet. Then, as Kaname watched, it was almost like Mitsuki's face changed. "Oh, you just royally pissed me off!" she snarled before leaping back into the fray. She managed to grab the front of Sato's suit, and she bodily swung him up in the air, then smashed him down into the floor, but he shrugged off the attack, jumped to his feet, and continued trading blow for blow. Kaname swore she could feel miniature shockwaves from each punch, but dismissed that as imagination until they passed a window that exploded when Mitsuki impacted a kick in Sato's stomach.

He flew backwards, Kaname just managing to dodge him as he passed her, then strong fingers encircled her wrist, and she found herself being dragged along behind Mitsuki as they sprinted for the stairs. Her face had changed once again, it seemed, and she muttered to Kaname as they ran, "He's too strong, I don't understand it," as they slammed through the doorway into the stairwell. Kaname regained control of her feet, and stumbled a few steps before she got into the rhythm the older woman was setting. Mitsuki let her arm go then, and they continued their headlong dash down the stairs. Above them, the stairwell doorway was kicked in, splinters audibly peppering the wall opposite.

"What's going on?" Kaname asked, feeling proud she wasn't even panting, like Mitsuki was starting to.

Mitsuki shook her head. "I dunno. You recognised him. You tell me."

"I don't know," Kaname admitted, shaking her head also. "He was the man who interviewed me after I was found, set me up with my new identity and job and everything... what's he doing? And how were you throwing..." Kaname's voice trailed off slowly as she watched Mitsuki yank her jacket up over her shoulders and head as she bounced into a landing's back wall to turn her around into the new, last flight of stairs. She saw the same style of outfit as Hotaru had been wearing when she's turned into that... thing, and it was then that she noticed the pleated skirt, previously held down by the jacket, bouncing up and down with Mitsuki's every movement. She fumbled with her pants for a moment as they reached the exit door, rolled her eyes as she gave up and tore them off revealing high-heeled boots that rose halfway up her thighs. Regardless of her tasteless choice in footwear, Kaname noted that Mitsuki, or whatever she was, could make a decent turn of speed in those boots. "You're like *her*."

Nemesis noted that Kaname had stopped following as they crossed the street outside the building, and she stopped, too. She turned and gestured. "Come on! If I can't beat that guy like this, then you don't have a chance! Come on! We've got to get -"

"Maybe I was a terrorist. Maybe that wasn't a monster attack, maybe it was something I did," Kaname said, stepping backwards. Her eyes were wide, and her steps were gaining in size and speed. Momentarily, she'd be running backwards. Nemesis reached forward to stop her, then paused, pulled her hand back.

"Kaname, I know what you're going through. People keep treating you like you're not you. Believe me, I know. I told you I suffer a mental condition," Nemesis said, and forced herself to finish. "I've got a multiple personality disorder. There are over ten of me, all in my head. Fourteen all up, including Sailor Nemesis, or what was her before her world was blasted from the Moon Kingdom. All me. I'm not always aware of the others, and the others aren't always aware of me. But when they're in charge, they're called Mitsuki. No one calls us anything different. They get hurt, because no one can tell them apart. That no one notices the differences, except when one of them makes some major mistake. Right now, we were making a mistake. You're not Ranma. Maybe you never will be. But that's not the point. No matter what my actions, no matter what my motives, know I, and the others like me, the Sailor Senshi, we're the good guys. And so are you. A selfish bastard who's too damned sexy for his own good, but completely oblivious to women, but who tries to do the right thing, the moral thing, the honourable thing. Right now, you're questioning what of your current life is a lie; you've heard about Ranma in bits and pieces and most likely are drawing the wrong conclusions because you can't remember anything of him - but all I can say right now is -"

The door to the apartment building was kicked open, and Agent Sato stood there, hands slightly spread from his hips. He locked his eyes on Nemesis and Kaname, and started to stride towards them, straightening his suit as he did so.

"- that if you don't run, believe me, there may not be another chance - ever - for you to ever think for yourself by yourself ever again!" Nemesis again reached out a gloved hand, an urgent, imploring expression on her face, and Kaname turned, worriedly, to Sato, seeing the grim smile of satisfaction on his face.

"Leaving so soon, Ms Mizuno?" He tut-tutted. "By going with her, you only... add to your crimes against the City. Please, spare me the... trouble of hunting you down - again - and come... with me." He also held out a hand.

Kaname didn't know which way to turn. There was the third option, of course - try to run from both. But she had no doubt they'd both track her down as soon as they'd finished with each other. So, which was the lesser threat?

Agent Sato had helped her, given her a name, a job, an identity - all things she hadn't had before that morning in the temporary governmental offices. He'd given her something special.

He'd given her life.

******

But there she was, naked, standing in the chill breeze, but not noticing, because the sun was shining down on her. Sunlight, warm, bright, strengthening. Like she'd been born again, anew, from some terrible place of darkness and corruption.

Or from underground, a tight cocoon of concrete and iron, soft flesh torn and pulped by chunks of building the size of buses, nuclear fires scouring the city floor clean of life. Giant monsters, trumpeting their victory over the forces of Light, preparing to do... something...

******

Kaname screamed, bloodcurdlingly, and collapsed to the road surface. Sato grimaced, reached down for her to pick her up, but Nemesis' foot stomped down on his hand, pinning him to the road. He looked up, annoyed. "You... don't want to do this," he growled.

Nemesis shook her head. "No, you got that wrong, you really don't want to get between me and her."

"You didn't fare... well against me upstairs, what makes you think... you can do better here?" Sato jerked his arm back, and Nemesis slipped into a ready position.

"Here? I've got room to move. NEMESIS ARCTIC FIRE!" Blistering energies with the concussive force of a speeding locomotive slammed into Sato, who crossed his forearms in front of his face. The blast struck there, and shoved him back along the street, his shoes digging furrows in the road before he hit the footpath and continued digging through that. The blast faded, and he dropped his arms, straightened his tie, and smirked at Nemesis. "No way..."

"I'm afraid you're... obsolete," Sato continued as he walked back towards Nemesis. "With me... here, and you... there... me, the upgraded version of a... heroic figure... you... yesterday's discarded version." He snapped out a kick, which Nemesis tried to block, but couldn't move fast enough to. It connected with her stomach, lifted her from her feet and threw her back twenty metres to slam through a wall. Sato continued after her. "You're a walking anachronism. You... don't even know it. There was a recall... on all defective products... and you were returned. How pitiful." Nemesis staggered to her feet, a little woozy, but shook it off.

Just in time for a devastating roundhouse punch that nearly took her head off. Or broke her jaw. Perhaps both, Nemesis thought, rubbing her cheek gingerly as she climbed to her feet again. He moved like lightning towards her again, and this time, Nemesis knew she couldn't react fast enough, wasn't strong enough, for her to dodge the blow... nor, likely to survive it. She closed her eyes, and waited.

And waited.

She opened her eyes, to see what was taking so long. Her lives had already flashed past her eyes, and she was getting bored now. There was a forearm blocking Sato's blow, and a pair of very determined blue eyes galring up at Sato from beneath his arm.

There were no words from Kaname as she struck, a flurry of blows, punches, kicks, jabs, that Nemesis couldn't make out as anything other than a general blurring of Kaname's small body. Then came the roundhouse kick, almost in slow motion, with all of Kaname's weight behind it - Sato flew backwards and into a wall. Kaname started jogging towards him as he righted himself and picked himself up, picked up speed as he looked up towards her again. He started towards her, but she blurred, vanished, and appeared to his left, throwing an elbow into his unprotected back. A quick backflip across his outstretched arm, and she planted her other in his stomach. His breath gusted out and he collapsed backwards. Kaname stood, victorious above his body, facing towards Nemesis with an angry glare.

She didn't see Sato's hand twitch, didn't hear his catlike moves as he flipped to his feet. But she dropped to her hands and kicked backward with both feet as hard as she could into his stomach regardless. Sato flew again, this time up and back into the wall of a building, smashing through it and disappearing in a cloud of dust. Kaname righted herself again, glared at Nemesis before striding over towards her.

Standing above the collapsed, injured senshi, she was impassive, as if whatever was behind the facade had forgotten how to operate her face. She stared for a moment, then reached a hand down. "Come with me if you want to live."

******

"Is... is he dead?" Nemesis asked, a few blocks away from Kaname's apartment. Kaname hadn't yet returned to normal and was nearly carrying Nemesis along as the senshi's body slowly healed itself. She wasn't entirely sure where they were going, but as far as Nemesis could tell, Kaname was heading towards the Ai Sou.

It would be a long walk.

"He... isn't functioning," Kaname replied.

"He's unconscious?"

"He is no more," Kaname replied.

Nemesis thought some more. "How did you do that? Hotaru said you didn't know much about martial arts. Just -" She fell silent as Kaname stopped and stared coldly at her.

"Do you always talk so much?" Nemesis was speechless. Then, Kaname surprised her even more. "No, you never talked this much during training."

"Ranma...?"

Kaname collapsed suddenly, Nemesis falling on top of her but quickly righting herself and rolling off the woman. What had just happened? She watched Kaname's hair fade from black to its normal reddish-black shade of copper with a small start - had Kaname's hair changed colour? Well, obviously, but what did that mean? She didn't know. But there was only one thing she could do for the moment. She gathered up the unconscious woman in her arms, jumped for the roof of the nearest building, and began the long trip home.

******

In her dream, she smiled. Moving the pieces took a lot of work, when they were as small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things as they were, and she was exhausted from tracking down pieces.

In her dream, she smiled, because, for the moment, the pain and agony stopped as the Dark Thing examined her, made sure she was being leeched as she was supposed to be. Everything must have been in order, because the pain started up again almost instantly.

In her dream, she smiled, because she'd just turned her pawn into a queen.

Just for a second, she smiled. And then the pain continued.

******

Birds. Birds were what Kaname heard when she awoke. Dim sunlight filtered into the room she was in from a curtained window, revealing nothing much in the room bar the futon she lay on. There were some clothes strewn around the floor, and across a chair, but they weren't hers. She panicked, and sat up, scooting back against the wall with a small bump.

Someone heard the noise, came walking towards the room's door. Kaname forced herself to stand, readying herself for an altercation. This wasn't her room, and her memory was fuzzy, and she didn't know how she'd come to be here. Just, wherever here was, she didn't think she'd come willingly.

The door slid open, and there was a tall brunette standing there, in a long green skirt and white skirt. She paused, at seeing Kaname standing upright, but failed to respond to the physical challenge offered by the woman's combat stance, and stepped inside. She held a pile of towels, and offered them to Kaname. "The hot springs out back are nice this time of day. I suggest you go take a dip before dinner."

"How long have I been out?" Kaname demanded as she automatically accepted the towels. The other woman stepped back again.

"Well... Mitsuki brought you in last night. You've been sleeping since then," the woman said, thoughtfully. "If you go for a dip, the others and I won't bother you. Just... hang a sign outside on the door so we know you're in there, or use the men's." She turned to go.

"Wait!" The woman paused, and turned back.

"Yes?"

"Where am I?"

"Kanagawa prefecture. You're at the Ai Sou," she was informed. "Oh. Uh... we haven't met before, have we? I'm Makoto Kino. In case you're wondering, Sailor Jupiter. I know Hotaru and Mitsuki both said to not say anything because of the fact you seem to be having a hard time dealing with everything at the moment, but... I think in not telling you you're living in a dorm full of senshi at the moment, it's... going to make things even worse." She smiled, cheerfully, happily. "If you need anything, I'll be in the kitchen. That's in that direction," she pointed in one direction, "and the springs are in that direction," and she pointed in the other before nodding a goodbye and leaving. She slid the door back with a toe before Kaname heard footsteps walk away from the door in the direction Makoto had indicated for the kitchen.

So, what to do now? Prisoner of magical girls? Sounded like some lame anime show, and it likely would have been, had Kaname been male, and surrounded by lots and lots of beautiful women. As it was... how many senshi were there entirely? And magical girls besides them... she'd heard in the media that the attack in Tokyo had involved over two dozen magical people defending the city, and she guessed that, by the usual sorts of statistics of female heroes in Japan, that at least three-quarters of them had been women. Or girls, at least. Probably this 'Ranma' that she was supposed to be, if this cursed form was true, knew them all. And was on good terms with a lot of them. And all those women Akane had hinted at...

Oh great. She hadn't just been a playboy, she'd been a megaplayboy. Probably with some weird genetic powers to shoot laser beams from her eyes and make women swoon at each smouldering glance.

She shook herself from fantasy, gathered the towels to her chest, and crept out, heading in the direction of the springs.

They were indeed warm, and lovely at this time of year. They were open-air springs, so there was snow through the enclosures, but the springs themselves were like heaven on a stick. The hot water mixed with the cold air gave Kaname goosebumps as well as a delicious warm sensation that spread through her body, from fingers and toes to her core. She smiled, forgot about magical people and secret government agents, and sank to the bottom of the spring...

******

In the lounge, the senshi perched on couches and chairs, wherever any could find a place to sit. The atmosphere was solid, as Mitsuki nursed bruises along her jawline with an icepack, and Hotaru distantly stroked Luna's back. Artemis sat perched on Minako's knees, sharing glances with Luna at Hotaru as she seemed to be somewhere else completely.

"I still think he's just being lazy. Pretending not to know who he is," Usagi grumped. "I mean, he's this super-dooper martial artist who's been a senshi and, according to Hotaru, a Dark General! So, what power on Earth or in either of the Kingdoms could make him forget who he is? I think he's faking it."

Usagi probably actually believed that, the others thought, but they simply couldn't be sure. After all, Usagi seemed to see Ranma as competition for her Mamoru and probably thought anything that demonised him in their eyes was a good thing. Then again, she was very protective of the other senshi to outside influences, and if Ranma was indeed now part of the Dark Kingdom, then she was acting perfectly within character in trying to alienate his memory as she was.

"He's not a threat," Hotaru muttered under her breath distantly, turning her distant gaze on Usagi. "He's not himself right now. But he will be, soon."

"So he can try killing us now?" Usagi shot back.

"How many times did you lose Mamoru to someone else, Usagi? Or to the Dark side of our forces?" Hotaru started bringing herself into focus. "How many times did you put your life, and everyone else's, at risk, just to save one man? One insignificant man? Sure, he'd helped you - he's helped us all - but ultimately, what does he do? I've listened to you all, and for those first few years, what did he do? Untie you guys when you got tied up, told you to never give up, never surrender, and to fight the good fight regardless." She twisted her face into something that made Usagi wish she could crawl under a rock. It was one of those Saturn looks, the ones that made the young woman look ancient beyond anyone's years. "He was a *cheerleader*, Usagi, and a convenient hostage."

Usagi found her backbone again. "Oh, and Ranma is more of a help? He treats us like -"

"He does help us," Ami said, quietly, from her corner. "Whether he's wanting to or not."

"There's something about him that transcends us," Rei murmured from where she was pressed back into a deep chair. "He doesn't realise it. We don't realise it. There's something inside him that's growing and will make him... better."

Usagi threw up her hands. "The guy is evil! He's a Dark General, and if he's really lost his memories, then shouldn't we do something about that? Make him forget for good, or kill him now while we've got the chance?"

Makoto sighed. "Didn't we have this discussion once before, after Keitaro was turned? I mean, shouldn't we be still trying to save these people who're being altered against their will?"

"Have you ever known Ranma to do anything against his will?" Usagi replied. "He'll have begged someone for this, just so he could fight us, beat us in training."

Hotaru's head lifted. "He doesn't need that power to beat us," she interjected quietly. "Ranma might now be as strong as us, but he's faster and more skilled. He can dodge our attacks, we find it very hard to dodge his. If we weren't nearly invulnerable to physical attacks, he'd have been able to kill us almost from the start. Right now, Ranma's not here, but his body still is. For some reason, it's not acting as it should in some senses, and overly so in others. I don't know why; and neither does the personality that's grown in his absence. Kaname isn't evil; she's just very scared and unsure."

"What, because she's friends with magical girls?" Usagi snorted and rolled her eyes. "Anyone in Japan would kill for that privlege."

Minako shook her head. "Any boy, maybe. She's a girl. With no memories, who's been confronted with a life she can't remember, which suggests she's in danger. She's instinctively responding to her urges to hide from anything that may cause her harm; she's not aware she can fight back. Not against the things that birthed her, anyway. Think about it: she became who she was in the midst of the most devastation Tokyo has faced in... well, ever. Over a million people died in that attack. She woke up unharmed, at ground zero. I'd say she's pretty scared."

Mitsuki added, "She also thinks that maybe there wasn't a monster attack, and maybe it was a terrorist strike. And that she's the terrorist." She looked a little detached, staring down at the small bottle she was capping and uncapping with her free hand. "She's not sure. I don't think she believes it, but she can't help but wonder if she's responsible for everyone's death." She felt someone's hand on her shoulder, and looked up to see Makoto there.

"Are you all right?" she asked. Mitsuki nodded.

"I just need a glass of water," she replied, tipping the pill bottle over and removing a few as she stood and ehaded for the kitchen. "I'll be back."

"I don't believe her story about this govenrment agent, either," Usagi grumbled. "She's strong. And she can fight. So why'd she lose and Kaname came out without a scratch? Huh? 'Cause that girl's a Dark General, that's why! We've got to-"

"Give it a rest, Usagi," Minako sighed, and looked around. "Um... is anyone actually watching Kaname at the moment?"

Makoto shook her head. "She's in the springs, I think."

Mitsuki walked from the kitchen door. "Oh? I should... I should probably go apologise to her. You know, for scaring her unnecessarily and all... be right back," she said, already heading down the hall towards the doors to the springs. Hotaru's eyes followed her curiously, distant again, but she made no move to go out with her, at least until Rei caught her eye. She was wiggling her eyebrows and glancing at the hall. Hotaru got the message, and got up slowly, stretching. She hadn't moved much all day, and now she trudged slowly after Mitsuki.

Making sure she was gone before speaking, Rei said, "I'm worried about Hotaru."

Ami looked up from the medical text she had displayed on her computer. "She seemed pretty down after seeing Kaname yesterday. She hasn't said a lot about it, though. To us, at least. I think she said something to Mitsuki that they're keeping to themselves a little."

"What could that be?" Makoto asked.

Ami shrugged. "I don't know. I would guess perhaps the extremity of her reaction to finding out our Hotaru is a senshi. She still is a young woman, for all her memories of her prior life. And to have expectations of a wonderful reunion shattered by the reality of a woman who's frightened of her... I suspect she is experiencing some -"

She was cut off by a yell from the direction of the springs. Ami, already in action gesturing through her conversation, grabbed her computer in one hand and launched from her chair with the other, but it was Rei who made it into the hallways of the dorm building first. They found Hotaru throwing the door to the springs area open so hard it slammed into the wall to the side and boucned back. Hotaru had made it through, Rei dodged, but it smacked Usagi in the face. She staggered back, scowling, as the others pushed past her, not so much as glancing at her red face.

"Someone is going to pay for this..." she trilled, in a mock-happy voice, before joining the others outside.

Mitsuki was already in the water, drenched as she struggled to lift Kaname from the bottom of the pool, where she lay, calmly, face up. She wasn't breathing, either. Her arms were crossed over her chest, no towel in evidence - wait, there it was, up on the rocks surrounding the spring. But, no matter how much Mitsuki strained, she could not move Kaname from her position. Hotaru splashed into the spring, as did Rei, and Ami rushed over, flipping the computer over from laptop to Mercury mode.

"Help us!" Mitsuki yelled, as the three women in the water tried lifting, to no avail. Usagi transformed into Sailor Moon, and hesitated only a moment before splashing into the water - regardless of her feelings, and her words, she wouldn't have been able to kill Kaname, nor Ranma. Tried to have saved them, yes, no, wait, save them, yes, she would. But not killing. That never solved anything; it only created new problems.

Ami gasped. "She's not breathing!"

"No kidding! HELP US!" Mitsuki returned as Sailor Moon tried helping to shift the woman from the bottom of the spring. Still, no luck. Rei and Hotaru also transformed, and added their extra strength to the equation, but Kaname wasn't so much as rolling under the water.

"I mean, her metabolism has slowed right down! Almost to the point of shutdown. I think..." Ami's voice drifted off.

"Yes, Ami?" Saturn asked, worried. She didn't want to lose Ranma again, and she was already pulling at her gloves, to free her hands to lay them on Kaname.

"I think she's meditating."

******

Under the surface, Kaname stirred. Light played across the surface nicely, in pretty patterns, all shades of blues and whites. Some yellow. She sat upright, breaking the surface of the water. It rolled back like a stop-motion clay version of water, no drips, no flying drops, just a plasticy feel to the liquid. She gazed at the surface of the lake in awe, watching the reflection of the blue, blue sky, and the white, white clouds race across her. Then she looked up into the sky, saw it was dark, stormy.

It was another dream, she knew. But this was... different.

Across from her was a girl. Kaname couldn't place her age. Like Hotaru, she seemed to be young, but ancient. It wasn't anything to do with the face, or the body - Kaname realised it was in the eyes. That stare that has seen everything, anything worth seeing. Experienced the highs and lows life can offer, time and time again.

She had something on her forehead, and with a start, Kaname realised the girl was wearing her VR headset. Even as Kaname recognised it as hers, the girl raised a hand, and without expression on her face, slid her fingers across the words 'Mercury'. Apart from the headset, the girl was naked. Kaname was, also, she realised.

The girl stood, and turned around. Her back was scarred, pitted, and tubing squirmed from her insides down into the depths of the water. Kaname looked away, horrified, but morbidly curious, she turned back. Fluids chugged up some tubes, squirted out through hoses to be taken away. Others climbed up her body, then penetrated her, and ran just below the surface of her skin in parodies or veins and nerves. When she turned back, with the ancient look, Kaname realised that the girl wasn't intolerably old; she'd gotten that look through torture: her body showed the signs of repeated abuse with the equipment running in and out of her. It was memory of pain, every kind of pain imaginable, that showed in her eyes. Negative experiences.

"I thought this was all behind me now," she said, simply.

"Who are you?" Kaname asked.

"I am the Alpha, and the Omega," the girl explained. "I was here to start The World, I will be here to finish The World."

"Is this... is this a computer game? Are we in The World? There's rumours about some guy who's circumvented security -"

"This is not the world you know," the girl continued. "But it is subject to the same rules as the world you know."

"Are... are you one of the gods? Are you God?"

"I am The Beginning, and The Ending."

"That's not explaining anything! What are you? WHO are you? Why am I here? What are you doing to me? To us! To everything!"

The girl motioned for silence, and Kaname fell silent. "I cannot answer your questions. You are not who you need to be. Perhaps in your next life... but then you will not need to be told the answers."

"I need answers!" Kaname was close to tears.

"I came to you before like this, and what I said came true. The power is consuming you. But you have the chance now... as I knew then, that the ability to balance out that great power is within you. You just haven't realised this yet."

"I... I don't know what you're talking about!"

"But I do," said a masculine voice behind Kaname. She turned, and found a man standing behind her who looked similar to her, but with jet-black hair tied up in a ponytail. He wore Chinese clothing, loose black slacks and a red sleeveless shirt. His arms were crossed, just as Kaname's were.

"Who are you?"

"I'm nothing. A figment of my imagination at the moment. A ghost." He grinned at some private joke.

"Ranma Saotome... sempai..." the other girl whispered.

"Geeze, Natsumi, look at you," Ranma said as he stepped past Kaname, wading through the water to reach the girl. He took her into his arms. "I didn't want this to happen to you... I thought you'd be safe."

"I was safe," she replied. "Yet not safe enough. I still had my gift, buried deep down... I was selfish, and didn't give it all to you. Had I done so, perhaps I wouldn't be here now. Perhaps none of us would be."

"Ranma Saotome?" Kaname queried, stepping up behind him and peering around his shoulders at him. "You're Hotaru's boyfriend?"

"Yes," he answered, his eyes not leaving the girl. "God, Natsumi, he mutilated you. I've got to -"

The girl pushed him back with a finger. "I try to set a mood here and you ruin it. Typical. If I'd known you were going to be like this, I'd have toasted you back in that alleyway." She paused. "But... it is good to see you."

"You remember?"

"I remember everything now. I remember it as if it only happened yesterday."

"Natsumi..." That was concern in his eyes, in his voice. Kaname gazed at him. This was the man everyone thought she was? Experimentally, she poked at his chest. "OW! Whaddya do that for?"

"Sorry," Kaname said, automatically pulling back and looking down. "I was just checking. They say I'm you, or you're me, or something, so -"

"Yeah, I'm a guy and you're a girl. I dunno how that happened, but... Natsumi?"

The girl called Natsumi shook her head. "I can't say a lot. Really. I'm being... watched. I've made as many plot holes as I can, though. You've just got to... find them." She smiled at Kaname. "But I can tell you this: he is your next life."

Kaname squinted in recollection and consideration. "The ghosts? The Amnesiacs? These super-strong government agents?" She shook her head. "But... if I don't... know you, don't remember you, and it... hurts to try and I really can't even fathom myself as what people say... and what I can see... you are, how come you're here?" she asked Ranma.

Ranma shrugged. "Dunno. I donno where I've been lately. It's - weird."

"Nowhere." Natsumi's voice startled both, and they looked around at her. "Look, if you two are going to talk, it's going to have to be somewhere else. I can't drag both of you mentally to a pocket dimension for too long without someone noticing something's been set up."

"Is she gonna remember this?" Ranma asked, looking back to Kaname.

Natsumi shrugged. "Hopefully, else I've just maybe endangered every life remaining in Tokyo for nothing."

******

Ami was still frowning at her laptop while the other senshi sat around the edge of the spring, watching Kaname float peacefully on the bottom. There wasn't anything they could do to budge her, so they'd given up, and just started watching, curious as to how long she could stay down there without a breath. Every five minutes or so, a silverly bubble of depleted air would rush to the surface from her lips; yet she still remained motionless.

Ami frowned some more, and tapped a few more keys. Then she pulled her transformation wand out, spun it and transformed, lowering her visor and using that in concert with her computer. "That's strange," she remarked.

"What's strange?" Sailor Moon asked straight away, anxious for something to break the monotony. Jupiter hadn't even wanted to go bring some biscuits out for the other senshi while they waited for some sign from the underwater woman, and Sailor Moon was desperate for anything to happen.

"There's not nearly enough data on Kaname," Mercury continued.

Minako asked, "What do you mean? Like you don't have a background or history? That's understandable because -"

Mercury shook her head, "No, not that. I have a pulse, temperature, oxygen levels, CO2 levels, blood pressure, some other statistics... and nothing else."

"'Nothing' else?" echoed Saturn curiously, eyeing the prone woman.

"This is all digital information," Mercury remarked. "Everything about her. She's not real. And there are large gaps where there should be massive amounts of data... memories, experiences, skills... it's almost as if she's a character in The World..."

"What?" Nemesis asked from Kaname's side. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly that. She's a character from a computer game."

"A computer game," Sailor Moon repeated. "What kind of game?"

Mercury shook her head. "That doesn't matter. What matters is... she's not real."

"Why should that matter?" Saturn asked. "I mean, she thinks she's real, she's solid enough, she's..."

"This is starting to sound really familiar," Sailor Moon remarked out loud.

"Here, here," added Mars. "Keitaro's little friend, remember?"

Saturn nodded. "I remember. I was outside, remember? But... Kaname is what that was like? The characters... monsters you fought in the game?"

"No," Mercury responded after a moment's consideration. "Those monsters weren't modelled to have things like oxygen capacity and levels, blood toxicity, digestion times and modelled digestive systems... Kaname is a mathematical model of a normal human, with some... advanced abilities. I suspect a hold-over from Ranma when he was transformed into a monster himself."

"It wasn't like that," Saturn said quietly. "It was still him. I could feel it -"

"Yeah, like you felt that Yoshihiro?" Sailor Moon threw in, acidly.

Saturn turned cold eyes on the Princess. "I felt the surge of... lust for him, yes. However, that was all I felt with Yoshihiro, because I was wanting Ranma to look at me and pay attention to me. That was what made me weak there. Ranma was... different. Whole. Still himself." She gestured at Kaname. "I don't know... what..." She fell silent, her mouth remaining open as she stared behind Sailor Moon.

******

"I've got to go now," Natsumi said, suddenly. "Ranma, help me. Again, please. Kaname, please, trust him, trust what you feel with him, trust what he makes you see, do and feel. Trust him."

"And trust the senshi," Ranma remarked suddenly, then he was gone, mist above the water blowing away. Natsumi, too, was gone, and then Kaname felt very cold, very wet, and found, while she was underwater suddenly, she couldn't move.

******

"What?" Sailor Moon asked, waiting for Saturn to reply. But she noticed Nemesis, and Mercury, were also looking behind her, and the others turned as Sailor Moon did. There, at the door, was Ranma, stepping through the still-closed door. She was able to see through him, see the door still closed, yet he acted like it was open and he had opened it. He saw something, in the springs, and bounded towards the water. Sailor Moon flinched as he shot through her, but she felt nothing. Mercury, caught by surprise, was only now starting to look down at her computer, beginning to tap keys -

Ranma reached into the water, and pulled Kaname up from the bottom of the pool, where she coughed and spluttered and spat up a mouthful of water. Her eyes were very large and frightened, but then she saw Ranma, looking panicked above her face even as he draped something she couldn't see across her torso. He started mouthing something to her, then. She couldn't make out most of it, but she felt it was important to what was happening, what he was saying. She caught a few of the mouthed words, though... "...passing by... sick... moaning... you'd hit... splashing of water... sorry... one of the girl's...".

He started, and his eyes darted to one of the hands holding Kaname up, and then shot back to Kaname's face, like he was listening to her. Then he started to pull back, but froze... his eyes drifted into the distance, and then he vanished.

"What the hell was that?" Venus asked.

"An image, I would guess," Mercury hypothesised, running her fingers over her keyboard.

Nemesis and Saturn both looked pale. Mars was strangely silent.

Kaname looked around at the women in sailor suits surrounding her, and quietly decided now was not a good time to scream Instead, she asked, "Did anyone else see that?" She was answered in emphatic nods. "Oh good. So the dream I just had might actually mean something."

"Dream?" Venus asked, turning her head to gaze in confusion at Mars. "What on earth are you thinking about? I can feel that from here..." Mars shook her head, blushing now, and looked away.

Kaname stood, reaching for her towel, a little self-conscious. Sailor Moon seemed to be awfully interested in her body, for sure. "Yeah. About a girl with my VR headset and lots of tubes and pipes poking into her... like something out of Spriggan..." While Kaname talked, Mercury frowned again, and turned her computer to Mars. "She was talking about worlds and dimensions and people watching her and -"

"- And it makes sense," Mercury concluded. Kaname looked up at her for explanation. "None of us are real. I have just checked. We're all digital entities in a digital world."

"I am *not* fighting digital monsters again," Sailor Moon declared haughtily. Mars coughed in agreement, still blushing bright red. Venus slid over to sit next to her and whisper in her ear. Mars blushed deeper and nodded. Saturn rolled her eyes and turned to look back at Kaname, who had turned her gaze to face her. Nemesis, also, was watching Kaname. "I mean, it's most undignified."

"Yes, yes, Usagi, very much so," Jupiter agreed, to shut her up for the moment while Mercury explained her statement. Behind them, Luna and Artemis jumped through a window to see what was taking so long. They padded up to the senshi, sat down, and listened.

"I think... I don't know for certain," Mercury added, "but I think we were all transferred into a digital realm when that monster... exploded. Perhaps. When the monster grabbed the tower, he let out a huge pulse of energy that discorporated the atoms of everything. That would have created a huge amount of energy, and if augmented with Mercurial computer systems, from the Moon Kingdom, there is a possibility that someone with sufficient proficiency in data management could manipulate a system with the right receivers into taking the data attached to the atoms in the moment before destruction and channel that into a hyperdigital representation of reality. Technically, making everyone into a data structure that inhabits a set region of a subspacial pocket equation."

"We're all dead?" Nemesis asked, turning her head around to face Mercury.

"To the people of Earth? Yes. And Tokyo is most likely physically destroyed. Little more than a hollow in the ground. I suspect the explosion did much more damage than we saw." Mercury raised her visor and dropped her transformation before slumping to the ground. "Who knows what is going on outside the system?"

Kaname almost raised her hand, but thought the better of it. She didn't actually know, but her dreams, when considered with the theory Sailor Mercury had just put forward, made some sense. She guessed the person she was in them - she guessed that girl she'd seen in her vision whlie underwater - was the person who had made this event possible. That made sense of some of her comments. Particularly about her being the beginning and the end... but... "If we're all dead, is there any way we can... come back to life in the real world?"

Ami shook her head. "I do not know. I would assume that our full data is being stored somewhere, but I do not know for certain. That Tokyo and we are stored, so to speak, like data on a CD. The explosive energies were the binding force of the atoms letting loose... similar to a huge nuclear detonation. But all the information to rebuild everything... I believe that would be stored somewhere. There's no explanation for us otherwise."

The other senshi dropped their transformations, and almost looked defeated. Rei grumped; "We can't stop a thing while we're in here, can we? We're just out of the way."

Hotaru, although troubled by the possibility, also looked thoughtful. "Why are we all still alive, then? I know Yoshihiro. A little, at least. He wouldn't have kept us here if he didn't have some other use for us in mind."

Something struck Kaname, and she disagreed slightly with the statement, but she couldn't say why. She got out of the spring fully, dried herself with her towel, then dressed quickly, still listening to the girls as they talked. The black cat with the women caught her eye, and Kaname smiled and waved at it. It smiled back and nodded it's head at her. Curious. Kaname wasn't so scared now. Something of that dream, that vision, had calmed her fears. There were magical people. They were trying to fight something evil. She didn't have to fear her past now. If only she could remember it...

Ami shook her head. "I don't know why. But I would assume we must be going to be used as a power source. That whatever this fellow wants to do now... he needs lots and lots of living people. Technically, here, we live." She shrugged.

"Perhaps," Luna suggested, making Kaname jerk as she was pulling her pants on and tripping over onto her face in the background, "he is operating in both worlds? This agent Sailor Nemesis fought last night seems to be a monster himself."

"I don't think so," Mitsuki said, also shaking her head. "If Ami's right about this, and about us all being chunks of data, then whatever stats he's got are probably just so high above ours it's not funny."

"But he can be beaten," Kaname said, suddenly. Then she blushed as everyone turned to face her. "I mean, apparently I beat Agent Sato up last night. So, you know, that kind of means it can be done."

"I saw this in a movie once," Usagi said, suddenly perking up. "About people who lived in a computer world, where evil computer programs wanted to rule the human world. It was called Tron -" She ouched as Minako whapped her around the head. "Hey! I'm just saying, maybe we should look at movies for inspiration! It's a start and it gets us doing something about the problem..."

"Usagi may be right," Artemis conceeded. "We have to start thinking of a way to tackle this new problem. This is probably why there haven't been any monsters over the last six weeks. But we need ideas of how to solve this before we can start working on solving the problem. So, does anyone else have ideas?"

Usagi did, but no one wanted to try to catch the 'flu and then sneeze on Sato to find out if he was susceptible to virii.

Luna sighed. "All right. It's been a long day. It's also getting very cold out here, even right by the springs. Let's call it a day and get an early night. We've got a lot to think about, starting from tomorrow..."

******

Sato leant back in his chair, apparently none the worse for wear a week after his fight with Kaname. The Mizuno woman hadn't been seen since that night, but the fact she was in contact with at least one of the rogue variables wasn't a good sign, not to Sato. He liked... order. And these senshi were anything but part of the natural order of the system. If it was up to him, he'd have been tracking these senshi down and deleting them, but it wasn't. Now that there was actual proof rather than strong supposition that they were loose in the system, Sato hoped Yoshihiro would give orders for them to be dealt with; after all, the Master couldn't take the chance that something in the system's makeup would allow the senshi to reverse what had been done. Sato wasn't entirely sure, but the fact that it had been a Mercurian computer system that had allowed this transferrence from the physical world to take place suggested that there could exist a system that would reverse the effects.

However, the energy necessary would likely be staggering - in the physical world, it had taken the destruction of a large part of Tokyo - and that probably couldn't be replicated in the system.

There were too many suppositions and too much guesswork in those thoughts for Sato's liking. He leaned forward again, gathered his paperwork together and began shuffling through it once more.

No more ghosts. Since that last Friday evening, or, rather, mid-Saturday afternoon, there had been no reports of these so-called 'ghosts'. Sato had no idea what they were, but guessed it had something to do with the Amnesiacs. There had to be a reason they were without memory; he suspected that perhaps it was more to do with the Ghosts than anyone had realised.

He changed piles of papers, skimming through reports from the physical world. Construction reports, mostly, and their system analogues. Interesting. Another sixteen weeks, and construction of Project Tokyo would be complete in both worlds, upon completion of which, the Master's plan could begin.

And here, Sato paused. If there was anything the senshi could do to stop the Master's plans, if there was any method they could employ to find a way for themselves back into the physical world (assuming they realised that they were now digital entities in a digital simulation of their world, but here Sato was assuming the worst) it would be through the disruption of the constructions. Without them, the Master's plans couldn't come to fruition. Both constructions had to be complete, in RealTokyo and SimTokyo. Sixteen weeks was almost too long for construction to proceed, but there were rules in the system, unfortunately, rules that had to be followed. Sato was bound by them as much as anyone else - even the senshi.

That Kaname woman, though - Ranma. It seemed she wasn't quite as bound by them as she should have been... there should have been no way her statistics should have allowed her to move like that, let alone pummel him as she had, and yet she did. Sato made a mental note to investigate the problem further. Perhaps there would be a method to... block her manipulation of the system, or at least a method of manipulating the locality to make such attempts useless.

The phone on his desk rang. It was an old, black design that Sato liked for its ungraceful lines and shining plastic finish, and most amusingly, when the phone rang, the receiver jiggled from the sound on its cradle. He let it ring twice, as was his routine, then picked it up. "Yes?"

"Construction on the Doorway has slowed due to bad weather conditions in Tokyo," said a voice at the other end, briskly, with no preamble. It didn't matter; Sato knew his Master's voice.

"How long... will the project be delayed?"

"Only a few days. Perhaps a week," came the measured response. "Umiko is preparing a press release to be delivered to the government as we speak."

"How does the... government's investigation into the... destruction of Tokyo proceed?"

"It has been hampered somewhat by our operatives in the Diet and related sub-organisations. I suspect others are watching with interest... in the possible applications in war of giant monsters." Yoshihiro actually snorted. "I cannot believe the audacity of these humans sometimes. Harnessing monsters, indeed. Sogal Island is full of them, and yet all they can do is make sure they don't leave the area bound by the reef there. And they would attempt to use one as a weapon of war?" He snorted again, and returned to the subject. "I think those investigations can be curtailed. And in a little over sixteen weeks, the point will be moot."

"Are... plans being made... to integrate the population of... your homeworld into Earth's standing population?" Sato asked.

He could already picture Yoshihiro shaking his head and smiling. "No. No such attempts shall be made. With the unlimited reserves from the Dark Kingdom under my command... the Earth will not stand a chance. We shall have a physical home once again."

"The Seal... must first be... broken," Sato reminded his Master.

"Indeed." A pause. "Do you have any further information relating to activities of the senshi and their... charge?"

"No. No, I do not. And that... is troubling me. Can I have... your permission to hunt them down?"

There was silence on the other end. And then: "No. Not for the moment. They may yet serve a purpose. Yet... we can't leave them to their own devices. Send an Agent or two to deal with them as you see fit from time to time. Yet... don't kill them. Yet."

"And if an... accident should... occur?"

A vocal shrug. "Accidents happen. But best not too often. I will ring again in the next few days with an update on construction schedules." Then there was nothing but dialtone to show Yoshihiro had hung up on his end. Sato likewise returned his handset to its cradle, and smiled.

Accidents, hmmm? Yes.... but where to find a senshi when you need to play with one?

******

Two weeks later, after Sunday morning training, Kaname relaxed in the men's hot springs. She still wasn't certain of the senshi one hundred percent, and while she was now certain her life wasn't in danger from any of them - heck, even Usagi could cook, it just looked terrible - she was still unsure about living around people who'd known her Before and who knew more about her past than she did.

Okay, she knew about Ranma Saotome now, and she didn't like him. He was an arrogant, selfish jerk. Even if, according to Hotaru, he'd grown up a lot, he was still a jerk. That was something Kaname wanted to change. If anything of her survived getting him back, *if* she got him back, that was what she wanted changed. That final bit of maturity. She hoped, anyway.

She knew about Ranma, and she knew more about the senshi. She knew that Mitsuki, for example, suffered from some huge mental trauma that had created a bunch of personalities that weren't necessarily anything like Mitsuki herself. A week ago, Mitsuki had started referring to herself in the third person while she stretched every combat skill Kaname had learnt to their limits. Even her speech patterns changed, and Kaname swore blind that her hair had fallen differently, that her eyes had changed colour a little, that she was subtly, but completely, different. Later, she'd put it down to a personality shift to something... someone... that had wanted to test her. It had been grudgingly impressed, although Mitsuki was fighting unenhanced by her senshi form, like the others fought when they sparred together. Each had to drop their transformation when they sparred with Kaname, though, because they'd quickly found out that however she'd saved Mitsuki... Sailor Nemesis... Kaname couldn't repeat that change. She didn't actually remember much of it, actually. It was like she'd been someone else. Which also worried her a lot. But then, Mitsuki had said later it was Ranma who'd been speaking, and she guessed, if she was a part of him, he technically was a part of her.

That whole split personality thing made her feel closer to Mitsuki than the other senshi.

So here she was, after the high-energy sparring that had gone on that day, and to be honest, she felt good. Damned good, for someone who'd been slammed into walls a few times, and slid over in the snow more than once. She guessed the springs had something to do with that, the hot water working magic on sore muscles and bruises that were, even now, fading. She guessed by later afternoon, she'd have no ill-effects, if not sooner. She'd noticed she healed faster than even the senshi - well, when Hotaru wasn't working her voodoo, anyway.

She looked around the enclosure. The men's springs were much smaller than the women's area, as the dorm was primarily an all-girl's dorm. Yet, Kaname guessed that previous managers must have been male, even before Ranma, because the area did exist. If the place was an all-girls dorm, she couldn't see any other reason that readily came to mind. Kaname shifted on the rock she was sitting on, feeling it dig into a bruise on her backside, reflecting that the women's springs were much more comfortable, but she'd grown rather uncomfortable in there with the other senshi, seeing as Rei, Hotaru and Mitsuki often stared, making her feel very uncomfortable. Minako just found it amusing.

They didn't venture into the men's area, so that morning after practise, when everyone had headed for the springs, Kaname had diverted from the others and headed into the men's area. She'd heard the muted tones of conversation from the other side of the bamboo wall separating the two areas, but she hadn't paid any attention to it; it was just noise. She tried to focus everything out, so she could meditate, try and reflect on what she'd learnt that morning in sparring - the senshi weren't very good teachers, but Kaname was learning by watching. She didn't think half of what they were doing was actually martial arts - it looked more like something you'd see in anime - but the senshi assured Kaname that they had been taught all this by Ranma. So Kaname soaked up what she could, combined that with what she knew already, and tried to match the more-experienced senshis' speed and ferocity. Oftentimes, she was caught offguard by a move, but hardly ever caught the same way twice. Although, it had to be said, Kaname seemed to be better at avoiding punches and kicks than she was at landing them.

She shifted on her rock again as the voices melted away on the other side of the bamboo. Water slowly splashing over that side suggested someone was still in there, and Kaname assumed it was Rei, seeing as she liked her private time for 'meditation'. Over the next few minutes, though, she became aware of something else going on with the splashing. Not the soft whispers of pleasure she expected, but something else she couldn't make out; there was just a little too much splashing.

Kaname was startled by the doors to the men's area opening, and Mitsuki stalked in, discarding her towel and the few items of clothing she must have been pulling on in the anteroom to the women's area before she slipped into the water. She paused for a moment, a soft glow of pleasure lighting her face up as the warm water took away the biting cold of the snow and cool breeze blowing into the enclosure, then moved over to sit beside Kaname.

"So. How far are you willing to go with a person?" Mitsuki asked, the subject coming from nowhere that Kaname could ascertain, and she felt at a loss with regards to an answer.

"Pardon?"

"You know, physically." Mitsuki raised an eyebrow in query. "How much would you be willing to do? Kiss someone? Hug them? Maybe be groped, or perhaps you might wanna, you know, caress an inexperienced kid who needs the security of a woman? Perhaps you'd like to just... you know... lie back, spread your legs, and let someone who knows what they're doing go to town."

Kaname blinked, then blushed. "What right have you got to ask that kind of question?" she demanded in a shaking voice.

"Oh, relax," Mitsuki waved Kaname down. "I don't want to do anything to you. Well, not me. Mitsuki, now, Mitsuki, she wants me to say something else. Anything else, actually. So, yeah, I find you very appealing. But then," she said, shrugging, "I'm a guy, so what do you expect? You're a naked woman, what guy who isn't into guys isn't into that?" The question was rhetorical, but Mitsuki answered herself anyway. "Tetsuya, actually. He's not gay or anything, just respects Mitsuki's right to make decisions about her body, and she's not into lesbianism...s...istic stuff. You know. Kinda like you, I guess. Man in a woman's body, but the woman doesn't remember it. Gotta be hard on the libido. I mean, you know Ranma's into girls. And that perhaps you won't be in control all the time. And it's Ranma's body and stuff... so he's kinda in charge, right?"

"No..."

"Yeah, I'm right. Trust me on this," Mitsuki said seriously, touching Kaname on the arm and peering into her eyes in a show of certainty and experience. "We all have this knowledge. If Mitsuki ever figures out who's in charge properly, well, we could all be in trouble, so mostly, most of us don't give her reason to think about it."

"... Who are you?"

"Me?" Mitsuki pointed to herself with a thumb. "I'm Shuuji. I'd say pleased ta meet cha, but you know, we've met already. Kinda. I've checked you out in the other springs." She jerked the same thumb at the bamboo wall.

"So... what are you doing in here, then? Hitting on me?"

"Nah... nah, not at all." Mitsuki shook her head emphatically. "I mean, sure, most of the others'n me, we'd all like to, but Mitsuki..." She took a deep breath, then sighed. "She's scared of saying things sometimes. Most times. So it's us, usually, you know? And she kinda wants you to go next door and comfort a crying young girl who's lost her boyfriend, and thinks who he's become has just turned her back on her."

"Hotaru..." The sounds from the next spring snapped into place: the girl there was sobbing quietly, under the motions of the water. After the senshi had left the springs, that was probably the most private place in the dorm.

"Bingo. Nice as you are, and as much as we kinda feel you make the Earth move for us, we, well, want you to go next door, make things right with her."

"I'm not having sex with her," Kaname said in a firm, clear voice, shaking her head.

"Didn't say you had to, right? Just..." A change swept over Mitsuki, very subtle. Like she changed her clothes, Kaname thought, and realised it was someone else now. The way she shrank into her shoulders suggested she wasn't comfortable talking about this very much. "J-j-just go in t-there and c-c-comfort-t her," Mitsuki finished, before blushing furiously and climbing from the spring and leaving the area at a fast clip, leaving Kaname in thought.

******

Hotaru wiped at her face futilely for a moment when she heard the door open before realising her arms were as wet as her face, and simply dunked her whole head underwater to erase any obvious evidence she'd been crying. She bit back on a few sobs, her breath choking as they tried to force their way out, and she moved until she sat with her back to the doors, hoping whoever it was who'd entered was either leaving again directly, or, if they climbed into the spring again, would be sitting behind her and not see her eyes.

Hopefully.

There was a pause after some padded steps, and the swirl and swish of water as someone entered the springs. Hotaru tracked the person's movement by sound, then lost it somewhere opposite her. She chanced opening her eyes, to find herself staring into Ranma's bright, happy eyes.

Hope surged in her heart, then died as she realised it was Kaname rather than Ranma, that her hopes and dreams had been dashed - again - and she looked away.

But Kaname sat, with a moment's hesitation, next to Hotaru. Very next to Hotaru. So next to Hotaru that Hotaru felt like she'd burst out of her skin of Kaname so much as moved. She reminded herself she was older than Kaname ever would be, and the cold, clinical side of herself - Saturn - chidded herself for reacting like a horny teenager, but then sighed and gave up, most likely because Saturn herself realised Hotaru wasn't much more than just that.

"So," Kaname said. It was very neutral, both in quality and delivery.

"Yes. So," Hotaru repeated, also neutral by way of hormonal surges.

"I understand you've been crying," Kaname continued.

Hotaru felt herself sag, and the elation of only moments before deserted her.

"I, um, I'm not Ranma. But, um, you should know that... well..." Kaname's voice trailed off.

"Yes?" Hotaru asked in a small voice.

Kaname wrestled with herself for a full minute before turning, grabbing Hotaru's chin and guiding the younger woman into a kiss. It lasted for more than a few seconds, Kaname obviously giving it consideration, Hotaru trying desperately to inject her previous relationship into Kaname by way of staggeringly huge amounts of telepathic images, before they pulled apart. Hotaru touched her lips cautiously. Kaname rubbed hers idly. That image fell like a lead weight in Hotaru's stomach.

Then, "That wasn't too bad," Kaname conceeded. "Like kissing... a mother... I think..."

Hotaru chuckled, despite herself, then caught herself as she caught the twinkle in Kaname's eye.

"Hotaru, look. It's like this." Kaname sighed. "I'm not Ranma right now. You know that, I know that. I've said things that have hurt you, and I hope you can understand why. I don't consider myself a lesbian or anything - because, you know, I suspect Ranma may only have had a rudimentary idea of sex, and I've got more than that..." Kaname sighed, and continued. "And I don't think Ranma, from what you guys have said about him, I don't think he had thought about what would have happened if you two had had sex while he was a woman. If he was stuck like that. And I'm heterosexual, I think, I mean I haven't had a chance to find out yet, and I think I'm confusing the issue even more here." She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she stared at Hotaru directly to make sure there would be no misunderstanding. "I... draw the line at sex, okay? No sex. Not in the slightest. Someone else's virginity isn't mine to throw away. And I think I've got to respect Ranma's wishes here, since if he comes back... well, anything I start'll likely finish, you know? So I'd like to work at something I'll be remembered fondly for rather than cursed for not being able to have it continued."

Hotaru nodded. "Yes, sempai," she said, not actually believing her ears and thinking she'd slipped under the water and that someone was going to start resuscitation procedures fairly soon.

"And - and you know, let me... um... let me lead with new things. Because I don't know if I'll like them yet. Or stand them. Or... you know, be able to accept them if they're thrown at me. You've had time to consider a relationship with a woman, I haven't, and yeah, kissing I can handle, I think, and... and..."

"You don't have to explain, sempai," Hotaru said quietly, shyly now that everything had apparently been resolved. She nodded. "I'll respect your wishes. Just... please... don't hurt me like you did the other week again?"

Kaname reached out and stroked Hotaru's wet hair back across her forehead. "I'll try not to."

Hotaru seemed to be happy with that, and shifted to sit up against Kaname for a moment, cheek pressed against the copper-haired woamn's shoulder for scant seconds, before she turned and kissed Kaname's shoulder and climbed out of the springs to grab a dry towel and head inside. She paused at the doorway, looking back in.

"Thank you, sempai," she said. And then she disappeared inside.

******

Kaname found dinner that evening... interesting.

After Hotaru had left the hot springs, she'd stayed away from Kaname the rest of the day, finding reasons to be elsewhere. Kaname thought the younger girl was giving her space to make the first move, but dinnertime proved that to be a lie. Seated around the table, Hotaru had insisted on sitting opposite Kaname, almost pushing Rei from her feet as she went to sit down in that position. Rei grumbled, but sighed, shook her head, and moved somewhere else; it seemed as if everyone else had guessed something was up.

Makoto gave them both weird glances as she served dinner, leaving the bowls of steamed rice unopened while she brought out the various toppings and side dishes from the kitchen quickly. Hotaru's eyes were locked straight on Kaname's from the moment she had sat down, though, and remained locked on until she quickly picked some dinner from the table's centre. Once she had her dinner in front of her, she thanked Makoto for the meal with the others, but her eyes were focussed on Kaname once more.

Kaname came to realise during the meal Hotaru had locked herself away to avoid doing something stupid.

And she also realised that Hotaru hadn't yet realised that locking herself up hadn't cooled her down, but had in fact done the complete opposite: she was sending off waves of something almost palpable. Minako looked interested, eyes darting back and forth between each of the two women, and Kaname, now knowing something of the senshi, realised why Minako occasionally sent the women those gazes and quick glances - the senshi of love picked up on a lot more than she let on.

After the main course, Makoto cleaned up, with muttered help from Rei, who had just taken to avoiding Kaname's pleading glances to distract Hotaru. Hotaru fidgeted on her chair as the dessert came out, and then Kaname felt something under the table. Hotaru had just kicked her, and was looking smug and shy at the same time, by way of slyness. Kaname groaned inwardly. She should have handled Hotaru differently, she knew, but kissing her had seemed the right thing to do at the time. She should have gone slower. But no, she'd had to go set the pace at a high level. Nasty, nasty woman, she kicked herself mentally. But she sighed, and smiled back at Hotaru, raising her eyebrows to say, not now, wait. Hotaru pouted, but then sank into something resembling normalacy, and dessert was indeed what Kaname had come to know as 'normal' in a dorm full of senshi. There were no food fights, although one did threaten to break out between Usagi and Minako over men, and there was no sparring, apart from the light verbal barbs traded between Makoto and Mitsuki over who was doing to clean up afterwards. Kaname forestalled the argument by simply getting up and cleaning up herself.

Once the plates and bowls had all been cleaned, and left-overs placed in the refrigerator, Kaname retired to the lounge to watch some television, if there was anything much on. Television had returned almost to normal, but there was little coming in from overseas, so Kaname couldn't watch any new episodes of the American law dramas she'd come to enjoy, simply because the new stock had been run already. They were only repeating those shows now, for the second time, it seemed. So Kaname joined in with Mitsuki, who'd taken her medication for the evening, and watched anime.

This particular show seemed to be about giant robots that joined together to form an even more powerful giant robot, and didn't seem to be too bad from a technical standpoint, as the designs were almost real enough to look as if they could exist if only someone put money towards them. The characterisation, on the other hand, was laughable, but Kaname kept silent on the matter. After a while, she began to enjoy the simplicity of the characters for what they were, ciphers of stereotypes. The fact that Kenji was an arrogant, egotistical jerk who thought his Mega Robo could triumph over anything by itself reminded Kaname of how people described Ranma, and how she'd experienced him in that one vision. The fact that the Mega Robo could often beat many of the lesser, non-boss-type monster characters suggested Kenji wasn't far off in his claims of ego and pride, but she suspected by the end of the series, that would be his downfall. Himeko, the Princess, was the token female. Stupid, a complete airhead who giggled too much and missed all of the character interaction going on around her, she was very kind-hearted and friendly, reaching out to those in need and giving her life, or nearly going that far, very often. As far as Kaname could tell, she hadn't actually died yet. She piloted the agile Rabbit Robo, a fast, light combat unit. Kyoto, nicknamed because he came from the nuked city of the same name - he was the only survivor - piloted the extra-heavy Gorilla Robo, armed with nova cannons on the shoulders and a double-punch that could tear enemy droidians apart. Kyoto was the mechanic of the group, slow to anger, but a raging torrent of emotion once roused. There was the street urchin, Shinji, who'd been found in ruins clutching an activation key for the Tank Robo, the last giant robot of the team, able to transform from tank to robot and back. Shinji had lived a hard life, and was assailed by voices in his head.

Kaname realised why Mitsuki was transfixed by the screen with that revelation. She guessed, though, that Shinji's voices were in fact created by Biolumass, the evil scientist working for Lord Dread in the deadly Waste Zone, as they obviously had the same voice actor.

This particular episode had captured Kaname's attention for other reasons, too: most notably that the Ultra Robo team (the name of the combined giant robot form) had been removed from their reality and placed into a parallel dimension where instead of being heroes, they were now criminals on the run from the Universal Planetary Hegemony and were separated from their giant robots. Of course, it was complete and utter rubbish, with plot holes appearing everywhere, but it was an interesting take on their current predicament.

As the credits started rolling, and Himeko's voice actress starting belting out a pop song - Kaname's eyes opened as she saw Megumi Hayashibara's name scroll past in the cast list, wondering who actually liked her squeaky voices, considering her roles were so widespread - Mitsuki leaned over the edge of her chair. "So, what did you think?"

Kaname wasn't sure what was expected of her. Conversations with Mitsuki often went off in directions she couldn't fathom, but she gamely took a stab at what she thought Mitsuki was talking about. "I think that Biolumass is the person making the voices in Shinji's head," she hazarded.

Mitsuki pursed her lips for a moment in thought, then nodded. "Yeah. You spotted the voice actor too?" Kaname nodded. "Mmmm. Think that's what's wrong with me?"

"There's nothing -"

"Pfffft. I know I have voices, and people, in my head. Nothing to be that embarrassed about now. I mean, had them there for the last ten years, more or less." Mitsuki shrugged. "And I know why, too. Kind of. Things I'm still not comfortable talking about... with you." She looked at Kaname strangely, as if trying to send a telepathic message to the woman about some subtle subtext there. "But," she conceeded with a glance back at the mercifully muted television, "I almost wish it was some evil person speaking in my head. If it was just voices, I might accept that idea, you know," she said, turning back, "but... it's not just voices. They're there all the time, and they're like... mini-me's. Versions of me that... aren't complete. Fragments of my mind. Each tends to follow some aspect of my personality or mental state... Shin, for example, is my intelligence. She's my intelligence let loose, with access to all my memories, everything I've learnt over the years... if she was bad, I don't know, I could probably give Ami a run for her money. Because Shin's just brain. Little emotive content, very passive. Seemingly ery understanding, but just empty. Kari, on the extreme other hand, is emotion and emotive reasoning. She's the extreme, the opposite of Shin, acts without thinking just based on how she feels, which can lead to some good, occasionally - I think she saved your life, but she won't say why..."

"Say? You... communicate?"

Mitsuki nodded. "Mmmm-hmm. Not like you'd think, I expect. But... I can see them when they talk to me. And, likewise, when they're in charge, they can see me if I talk. It's... weird. My last psychiatrist said it was that I was visualising them in my head... that my mind is constructing an elaborate virtual reality to interact with my psyche in... and that none of it is real. But I think... you know, I'm a reincarnated soldier of the Moon Kingdom, right? And I think *that*... has done something to my brain. I first started having... problems... right after I found out I wasn't a normal person... I think the problems I was having at the time were exacerbated by becoming superhuman." She shrugged, changing the subject back. "Where was I? Oh yeah, Kari. She does good sometimes. But mostly, because she has little intellect to think things through with, or at least uses none because she acts on emotive impulse, mostly she's interested in self-gratification. The, erm, things I've done in public in times past... well, would worry me greatly if I hadn't moved about so much."

"One of the others was saying something about you being a... killer?"

"No, not a killer. Well, not quite. And understand, that was nothing I wanted to do. It just... happened."

"What 'just happened'?"

Mitsuki stood, prowled around her chair, anxious again, like she hadn't taken her medication. She made sporadic eye contact with Kaname, and it was rather obvious she was wanting to say something, but also at the same time, didn't want to. When she started making eye gestures to people who weren't in the room, Kaname guessed Mitsuki was having an internal conversation. Finally, she locked eyes with Kaname again, stopped her pacing and leaned down, almost agressively on the back of her chair. "I gave him a stroke, on top of other assorted injuries. He, um, became conscious a few months back for the first time in a while, actually, and he, um, still wets himself at the mention of my name."

"How do you give someone a stroke?" Kaname asked, incredulously. Every day, she learnt something new in this dorm that she hadn't thought possible before. Magical girls, talking cats, mystic healers, perverted gremlins, and now a woman who could conjure up illnesses. Well, supposedly.

"I don't know," Mitsuki admitted. "I think it was a reaction to my body, um, you know, not like 'woah, you're hot,' but more like my energy field. My ki, as you... Ranma'd say. My other personalities didn't give me much of a problem until that act. I... nearly killed him. Accidentaly. I just wanted to lose my virginity, you know? Have sex? And then I blew this poor boy up. He'd been the only boy who'd been interested in me in that town, and... and do you know what that feels like? And after that, I fell apart and the others had to... help me get by. Else I'd have killed myself too."

Kaname was horrified by the explanation. "You... went free?"

"I ran, actually. Well, Kari did. Taki came forward, thinking if I was incarcerated, I'd lose the will to live and let someone else in, but I wasn't charged. Instead, I was put into psychiatric care for a few months, on medication, and went through therapy and counselling, and then I left." Mitsuki moved back around her chair and sat down again, leaning forward to rest her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees. She looked upset, troubled. "I almost believed the doctors, you know? When they told me it wasn't my fault, that I wasn't strong enough to break legs and arms and ribs and his pelvis and rupture major blood vessels in his head as well as fracturing his skull majorly without leaving a mark on him, you know? I just wanted to believe that. But... I know differently. Kari thinks it was me, too. She kind of enjoyed the act that much more because of it."

"How'd it happen? I mean, was he something special?"

"No... not really. I moved into the street for a while, went to school. He kind of drifted around the street, going from girl to girl, not staying with any, but with me... it was different. Like he'd fallen into a holding pattern. He'd come see me, head off to see another girl, but not do anything with them. And then he'd come back. And go again. And eventually, he spent more time around me than he did around other girls. Until one afternoon, when his parents were out, we fell into his bed together, and stayed there for a while. And then..." She looked wistful, staring backwards in time. Intense, as if by concentrating hard enough, Mitsuki could indeed travel back in time to that moment. "We started. And when we finished, when he finished, it was, it was horrible. Not at first, I just thought perhaps it was a lot better for him than it was for me. And he just trashed around a bit, moaning, jerking, almost like a puppet with its strings cut. I really did my best then to make it good for him. You know, faking it, grinding up against him, trying to scratch at his back... I first realised something was wrong when I watched his eyes... just flash bloodshot. That was when I panicked and pushed him off me. I'd thought I was transformed, but I wasn't. I was just... me. Like this, now. And I panicked. I really did. I called an ambulance, and I think that was what saved his life. That was six years ago, coming up on seven."

Kaname did the mental maths. "You were fourteen?"

"Yeah," Mitsuki confirmed. "Fourteen and on the run from my past already. And then on the run from my present when I nearly killed my boyfriend. When I was thinking right again, I decided I wasn't going to let that happen. But... I have a way of losing control when I can't afford to. And that means bad things when people are around."

"You haven't touched a man in six years? Wow," Kaname said, trying to find something she could talk about. "I find it hard after, you know, nine weeks, but..." Mitsuki looked hurt. "I mean, you're not even *tempted* to try again? I have to say, that sounds like a one-off thing."

Mitsuki shook her head at Kaname's comment, sounding defensive. "No, it doesn't, not when you know me. I want to try again, believe me, I *really* want to try again. I've touched men, but not in the ways I want to. The ways I think I need to. Or, rather, need to be touched."

"Have you tried women?" Kaname suggested.

"Have you?" Mitsuki shot back immediately. "How's that working out for you?"

"What?"

"I saw Hotaru at dinner. She was all over you! She only found your legs *after* she'd found mine. I guess that's why she was a little abrupt with you. And, you know, Shuuji might be what I'd call a fence-sitter in that he's not taking part in the war for my head but just interested in seeing the outcome, but he's a talkative fellow and he was the one who decided to put into action what I'd have liked to... but didn't have the courage for."

"You're fairly talkative yourself."

"It's the medication. My brain slows down in forming thoughts and alters other thought patterns. That's why I'm usually in here watching television while my medication is working at its best. You don't know awesome programming until you watch some of this anime where the anime talks back to you."

"Weird."

"Yeah." Mitsuki looked away for a moment, and Kaname had the sensation of yet another invisible, but brief, conversation. "Oh, yeah, and be nice to her, okay? She's been through a lot."

"So have I," Kaname reminded her. Mitsuki looked thoughtful at that, then got up and sat down next to Kaname, looking into her eyes all the time. After a moment of sitting still, Mitsuki's arms jumped up around her shoulders and pulled her into a tight embrace against Mitsuki's ample chest.

"I forgot. I'm sorry." One hand freed itself and started stroking Kaname's hair idly. "We all have our problems, and perhaps I shouldn't be bothering you about Hotaru's. But she and you mean a lot to me, you know, and I'd hate to see her hurt."

Muffled as her voice was by the enveloping presence of Mitsuki's breasts, Kaname managed, "I thought you two were rivals for Ranma?"

"We are. But Saturn is also what grounds me, and keeps me within the Kingdom." She kissed the top of Kaname's head, released her, and headed down the hallway, deeper into the dorm buildings.

Kaname's eyes followed her as she vanished. "Weird."

******

Hotaru was quiet, sitting on Kaname's futon. She was there when Kaname came in after watching another television programme, and she kept her eyes averted while Kaname changed, only minorly self-conscious about the fact she was almost completely undressed in front of the young woman who very obviously wanted to be watching. It wasn't so much that she'd be changing in front of someone that troubled Kaname, it was rather the fact that the person she was changing in front of was apparently lusting after her.

Once she was in her pyjamas, she sighed, unable to pretend Hotaru was there for anything less than a friendly chat anymore, and she sat at the top end of her futon, without looking at her. "You do remember I said let me do -"

"Yes, sempai," Hotaru said, quietly. "I wanted to apologise for my behaviour earlier."

"How long have you been in here for?"

"Not long."

"How long?"

"About an hour. Maybe a little longer."

"Oh god, Hotaru, why didn't you come find me if you had something you wanted to get off your chest?"

Hotaru looked around, the hints of a smile playing at the corners of her lips. But then it faded under the blush that came to her alabaster skin as something even worse apparently occurred to her, and she looked down, her fringe covering her cheeks. "I'm sorry, sempai. I have more to be sorry for, too."

"What about? Shouldn't I be apologising?"

"You?" Hotaru looked up, surprised.

"Yeah, me," Kaname shot back. "I mean, I'm the one who messed up and told you to go away and got you upset in the first place, and -"

"And you couldn't help yourself," Hotaru interrupted, shaking her head. "I know that. You're not Ranma, even if you have his body. But I think there's something there of him, that just wants a rest, time to deal with everything that's happened to him lately and around him." Hotaru paused. "I tried to kill him, you know," she added, softly.

"What?"

"I was made evil, and I tried to kill him and other people."

"Are you trying to scare me off? Because, it's working really well."

"He stopped me. He - did something. He stopped and made me think. And it wasn't his fighting that stopped me. No; it was something deeper, something within him. Because -" She fell silent, remembering events in her head but forgetting that Kaname wasn't privvy to them.

"Because?" Kaname prompted after a minute.

Hotaru started, blinking at Kaname. "Because he didn't fight me back to normal. He fought me, but that was to keep me occupied. He didn't want to hurt me. He talked me back to being good. Like he realised that fighting wouldn't do anything except keep him alive long enough for him to reach me." She looked confused. "And you know, it's almost like someone had told him to do that, sometime, somewhere, because I think fighting was all he knew before moving here. And this... he wasn't fighting. He was... talking. Talking in ways that I thought were beyond him."

"He wasn't much of a talker?"

"More of a doer," Hotaru nodded in confirmation. "But he knew me in ways the man who twisted me never could. I... pushed Ranma away after that, because I felt I had to atone. But, in the end, that last moment before he saved us all, I realised that it wasn't needed, that he really did understand, and more importantly, that he accepted that I had... tried... to do that to him. That also surprised me. I mean, completely apart from him showing up from under that building as an evil General-monster thing, but still saving us... I don't know."

"I don't either," Kaname echoed hollowly. "Everyone keeps talking about him, and I've met him - once. Twice, actually. No... maybe three times. But I don't know him. I probably never will. I'll just blink out of existance when... when he comes back."

Hotaru lay a hand on Kaname's thigh, and queezed gently with a smile. "I don't think so. You might be what sprang up in his absence, but I think perhaps you're more like him than you realise."

Kaname went to ask a question, but there was a knock on the door, and it slid open. Usagi peered inside quickly, scowling, as if she was checking to see if Kaname was ravaging her young friend, but seeing nothing was going on, she leaned back, hands going to her hips. "Phone for you, Kaname." She turned, and disappeared further down the hall. Kaname gave Hotaru an apologetic smile, and left the room.

Makoto emerged from the kitchen, looking curiously at Kaname as she picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Uh... Kaname-chan?" the voice on the other end of the line said hesitantly. Kaname felt her knees go weak and her fingertips drain of blood. Shibaru. Unconsciously, she glanced down the hallway to see Hotaru emerging. She turned her back to the young woman before she could see Kaname was watching.

"Shibaru. Um, hi. How'd you get this number?"

A nervous laugh at the other end. "I wouldn't be much use in tech support for you girls if I wasn't some use at tracking down... rogue variables."

"Rogue variables, riiiiight."

An uncomfortable silence permeated the conversation, broken by a light touch on Kaname's elbow as Hotaru walked past, smiling slightly and nodding at the phone. She had that ancient look about her again. She mouthed, "Go for it," at Kaname before continuing on to take Makoto by the arm and led her into the kitchen again.

"So, uh, Shibaru, what's up?"

"Oh... you know... lonely nights, boring days without work..."

"Computer system still not fixed?"

There was a nervous sigh in Kaname's ear. "No. And they've got new experts in to look at it. There's all kinds of gibberish written through most of the mainframe's system files, every printer on the network server's spouting out some english song, 'Daisy Daisy', and our employee roster is..." Shibaru's voice cut off suddenly, and Kaname found her self grabbing the mouthpiece closer ot her lips.

"Shibaru? Shibby?"

"Um, yeah. Here. It's just... weird. And we're not supposed to talk about it."

"Why not?"

Kaname could almost see Shibaru shrugging, probably in frustration. She could hear something in his voice that made it quaver ever so slightly. "Orders. You know how it is," he added, lamely. Then, he paused, took a deep breath, and asked, "Would you like to go out to dinner tomorrow night?"

"Monday?"

"Yeah."

Kaname's mouth started to form the word 'no', and her breath started escaping from her lips even as she forced herself to stop and consider why. She'd made a pact with Hotaru, if not in so many words, that very afternoon that she didn't want to break, and yet, this was something that she had been wanting for the last two months. Shibaru. She could imagine the two of them already, having dinner at an expensive restaurant, the embarrassment of going home, the warm glow as he asked if she'd like to come back to his place instead of driving all the way out to Kanagawa from the city, the soft rasp of sheets on skin and the delicious, incredible heat that only two entwined people could produce in the middle of winter. She went to say no again, but remembered Hotaru. That old-before-time look, that understood, that accepted. The "Go for it," as she'd passed by.

Damn, she'd known. Damn. Kaname went to say no again, not wanting to hurt Hotaru any more than she had, when she realised Hotaru was there beside her, taking the phone from her hand. "She says yes," Hotaru said to Shibaru. "She just can't talk right now. In shock." And she handed the phone back to Kaname with a smile. "Enjoy yourself," she mouthed before heading back into the kitchen.

Dumbly, Kaname nodded.

******

"I thought the two of you had worked something out," Makoto accused Hotaru as soon as the door had closed behind her.

Hotaru was wearing her Saturn-face again, the cold, clinical expression one who has seen too much often wears. Her eyes her deep and distant as she turned to face Makoto. "As much as I want her to say no, I don't want to," she said, simply.

"Why not?"

Why not indeed? Hotaru wasn't sure. She'd seen Kaname's reaction as she'd come out of her room, saw her finish her turn away, the furtive posture of her body. She'd heard the way Kaname was talking to who was obviously a man on the other end of the line, and she just knew.

Knew that, if Kaname didn't do this, if she didn't take this chance, she may regret ever having said anything to Hotaru. She was nine weeks old, basically, and for most of that time, had obviously been interested in this guy she must have met at work. She considered herself heterosexual, and thus wasn't interested in women as such, especially as she seemed to be one. And when the man she'd been mooning over called her up and was working up to ask her out... Hotaru knew Kaname wouldn't say yes to him. She might have resented having said anything to Hotaru, and she coudln't really deal with much more resentment from her boyfriend... well, her boyfriend's body.

Ultimately, she knew that Kaname wasn't Ranma, and that she didn't have any claim to Kaname. Eventually, Ranma would come back, and it would help if she tried to separate the two in her mind. If Kaname left her, broke her agreement, to be with this Shibaru, that would have to be okay with her. Ranma would come back one day, and he was hers, as much as she was his. If Kaname didn't, well, Hotaru hadn't lost anything, and may have made up some trust in her display and actions.

But all she said was, with a shrug, avoiding eye contact with Makoto, "That's my decision." She took the back service exit into the rear hallway, and took the long way around the dorm to her room. Just before she could close the door, Kaname's foot intercepted it and blocked it from sliding shut.

"Hotaru! Wait!"

"Yes?" She found herself leaning on the door, body mostly behind it, with her head and a hand poking around the edge. Butterflies exploded in her stomach.

"It's just dinner," Kaname said.

"I know." Hotaru reached out and took Kaname's hand. "Enjoy yourself."

Before Hotaru could pull her hand back, Kaname's other hand clamped down on it. She could be surprisingly strong when she was determined to say or do something, Hotaru realised. "I will be. But it will just be dinner between friends. I made a committment -"

"You're not my boyfriend," Hotaru said quietly.

"I know, but -"

"It doesn't matter what I want," Hotaru continued. "I was being selfish. I'm young, and will get over that one day - now is as good a time as any. You pointed out that while you are here, you don't know how long, and then you may be gone for good. I think you won't be, but I don't know for sure. I think... you should go be happy. We will still be friends, like we are now."

"If you're sure," Kaname replied uncertainly. She let Hotaru's hand go. "I don't want to hurt you. Again."

Hotaru shook her head. "You won't," she continued in her quiet tone. "I'm much older than you'll ever be, Kaname, even if I don't look it. I have died before, I will again. I have outlived partners, and I know how ephemeral your lives are. How short, and thus how much more important that you enjoy what you can while you can. I won't stand in the way of your enjoyment." She slid the door shut, and leaned against it, breathing hard, but quiet, the corners of her eyes prickling and her lips hurting as she forced them together to stop from sobbing. Once she was sure Kaname wasn't going to try to open the door, she flung herself at her bed, buried her face deep in her pillows, and cried until she fell asleep.

From the window, Luna watched over her.

******

That next evening was doubly uncomfortable for Kaname. It was her first time in what could almost be termed a formal date dress, a deep blue to play against her eyes, tight around the bust, but flowing outwards from her waist into a loose skirt that hung down to just below her knees. A pair of thick straps with ruffles running down to her breasts held the garment up over her shoulders and helped it sit straight across her otherwise-athletic frame. Under the dress, she wore a skintight grey sweater with long sleeves, as well as boots that rose up past her knees.

Hopefully, she'd be warm.

Christmas was fast approaching, and Usagi had gotten into the game of dressing up Kaname for her date that had started by giving her white gloves with huge fluffy cuffs and a woollen scarf taht could wrap around her neck enough to come up to just under her eyes to keep her warm. Usagi had then stepped back, and gave her critical opinion: "Hey, not bad. I've got to try that outfit next time I go out."

Mitsuki, sitting silently by watching the crowd, abruptly stood up then and gestured at her watch. "If we don't go now, you won't get there on time."

"Okay," Kaname said, checking herself once more in a mirror, worriedly picking at non-existant fluff before Mitsuki sighed, grabbed her arm and pulled her from the room.

Outside, Mitsuki transformed into Sailor Nemesis, and wrapped her arms around Kaname's middle, and when she leapt off the ground, Kaname found herself sliding back with the force of the leap until her armpits caught on Nemesis' biceps. "Don't worry," Nemesis murmured, "I'm not going to drop you."

"I wasn't worried about that," Kaname replied.

"Liar."

"What?"

"You're lying. To me. You think I'm going to get angry at you for getting Hotaru's hopes up, then dashing them like this." Kaname felt the senshi shrug above her. "But I'm not. She's a big girl, and I can't watch out for her if she keeps putting herself in stupid positions, you know."

Kaname face grew warm with an embarrassed flush. "I didn't want to break my agreement."

"I know. That's why I'm not angry." They whistled down, and Nemesis spun around so her feet took the impact on the concrete roof of the building they landed on, then they flexed, and the women were off into the air again. "She's trying to make you happy, you know. As well as make sure her boyfriend is close to her. And as well as seeing how much she can trust you, how much you like her."

"I know," Kaname answered softly. "You think I don't? It's funny. I get over my preconceptions, break through any number of barriers I have about things, to make her happy - and she then tells me she doesn't want me like that. I know she does, I want -"

"Yes?" Nemesis asked after a couple of minutes went by without Kaname completing her sentence.

"I think I want her," Kaname completed, finally. "But I want... to make sure. This has been really quick for me. Two weeks ago, I was scared of her and didn't want to talk to her. Now, I'm kissing her and picturing doing more. Not that doing more is appealing to me right now, but two weeks ago, I couldn't conceive of me kissing her, either. I need to make sure that I'm not going to hurt her, that I'm not going to want to. Shibby-chan... he was the one man I wanted desperately to notice me. To... think of me like a woman, rather than a person with no memory. I mean, as far as he knew, I could have had a husband, children, diseases... I could be a murderer, or criminal."

"That Agent Sato said you were a terrorist," Nemesis reminded her.

"Gee, thanks for reminding me that the government - or what passes for one here - thinks I blew up half the city." Kaname snorted as they leapt from another building. "I need to know if the feelings I have for Hotaru-chan... will be negated next time I see or hear from a cute guy. A guy I could - well, you know."

"Make slow, passionate love to all night long, or just have him quickly up against an alleyway wall?"

Kaname chuckled nervously. "Well, yeah, I guess."

"Good reasons. We can accept them, anyway." Nemesis was quiet for a minute, then: "We're coming up to where I'm dropping you off. You'll have a block to walk from here. I'll..." They landed, and Nemesis said no more.

"You'll?" Kaname prompted after she dusted snow off her dress and boots and straightened up to look at the senshi again.

"I'll..." She turned away. "Look, Kaname, I'll be in the area, you know? Just in case you need help. Or something. Or a ride home. Because... in this day and age... in this world, a girl can't be too careful. So if you need me, call for help."

"You won't hear me," Kaname pointed out.

Nemesis' outfit dropped away to reveal Mitsuki, wearing decent-enough clothes for a meal in a nice restaurant. "I, uh, made reservations this morning," she admitted. "Just in case."

"So you could keep an eye on me," Kaname accused.

"Yeah," Mitsuki admitted freely, "but I also don't think you should be out on your own. Not after what happened back at your apartment."

An image of Sato beating Sailor Nemesis up in the street flashed up like a ghost in front of Kaname's eyes, and she shuddered involuntarily. "Point taken."

"I'll follow you up in a few minutes," Mitsuki assured Kaname. "Don't worry, we'll be discreet. We've got a vested interest in being nice to you." She smiled, and gestured for Kaname to go ahead.

******

The restaurant was warm, and Kaname rubbed her hands together vigourously to try and rub some warmth into them under the material of the gloves. With the speed they had been travelling at outside, as well as the temperature, they hadn't done much to keep her warm.

For that matter, neither had the rest of her clothing. She spoke to the doorman, who directed her to the maitre d', who in turn checked the entry log, then grabbed a passing waiter who guided her through the throng of people. Kaname barely registered anyone else in the restaurant, but did see a family of five checking a menu, three businessmen who were discussing folders spread out in front of them, a single woman, sitting at a table for two, gazing forlornly into the distance, a finger tracing an idle path around the lip of a crystal glass. There was a low hum from that table as Kaname passed that she realised was the audible aspect to the crystal's vibration.

Without seeming to have expended any effort at all, the waiter reached a seemingly random table, and gestured to it. Kaname sat down, looking up into Shibaru's eyes. Once more, she was almost lost in them, and felt an almost-tangible pull towards him, like a star's gravity well yanking at a rogue planet. She willingly gave in, almost melted into the chair.

He looked as gorgeous as ever. His hair was scruffy, but slicked back with a little water and a comb. His dress was neat, but not quite formal - more a casual style of clothing. But it was ironed, and that in itself was a little weird, seeing Shibaru in ironed clothes. His gaze... well, he dropped his nervous cow-like eyes to the table after the initial blast of power from his glance, and stared at the table. His shoulders were rigid, and Kaname realised with a start, he was actually more nervous than she was.

Which made her feel better, grounded her. She couldn't let her hormones control her life, nor could she let vague wishes and notions of familyhood drive her actions. She crossed her hands in her lap, conscientiously, and glanced down, trying to let Shibaru take the lead. It didn't feel right to her, for some reason she felt she should be taking the lead, but not knowing the emotions she was feeling too well, she wanted someone to guide her, someone she could take her lead from.

Eventually, he did take charge. "You look nice," he blurted.

"Thank you," Kaname replied, blushing. "You do, too," she returned.

Shibaru nodded, and glanced off to one side. "You know, I uh, I... couldn't find anything wrong with the computers," he continued. "The problems just fixed themselves. I think it might have just... been hacked by someone who put government data in there or something."

"Shibby-chan?" Kaname asked as something occurred to her.

"Yes?" His eyes shot back to Kaname, his frame still rigid with nerves.

"Why did you ask me out?" She shook her head quickly. "Not that I'm complaining, but you... you kind of didn't really want much to go out with me, I thought, regardless of what I felt... for you..."

"Uh..." She watched Shibaru think fast, his eyes rising and sliding to the right instinctively as he tried to think of something. That was Kaname's first realisation something was wrong with the scene. "It was, you know, I did feel things for you. I just wasn't comfortable with -"

"Shibby, we'd have just been friends if it was left up to you. It was me interested in you. I mean, god, you wouldn't even have thought of me if I was living with -" Kaname cut her words short, and glanced down at the table, eyes wide with surprise. Dammit, how hadn't she realised? "How could you do this?" she asked in a low, tight voice. Anger, and fear, constricted her throat. Someone standing on the other side of the room told Kaname that Mitsuki had realised something was wrong with the date, even if she didn't know what it was. She was a little too forceful with her chair, and that tipped over as she fished wildly in her pocket for something.

"How - how could I do what?" Shibby stood up, and stepped, almost jumped, back from the table. His eyes were growing larger now, with worry, fear - Kaname could see that through the tears that were threatening to stream free. Only her anger kept everything in check for the moment, and to keep momentum going with whatever was going to happen, to make sure she was ready, she stood also, pushed the table aside, and kept after Shibaru.

"How could you trap me? How could you be party to lure me, an innocent woman, to this place to let them get me?"

"If you were innocent, you wouldn't need to fear arrest," Shibaru gabbled, stumbling over an empty chair. His eyes darted over Kaname's shoulder, and a sudden chill and a staticky sound told her there were government agents behind her. She didn't quite understand how she knew there were three of them there, but Sailor Nemesis was making large strides towards Kaname and Shibaru and bringing her hands up for a Richter Wave attack on them. Then Shibaru screamed as his form twisted, blurred and stuttered with a very loud static noise pattern ripping through the air, before he settled down into the form of Agent Sato. Even before the change had settled, the crowd was up, screaming and running for the exits.

There was silence around Sato and Kaname as the crowd automatically parted around them, and Nemesis entered the area devoid of people and skidded to a stop, seeing what Shibaru had become. "What... gave our hand... away?" Sato asked with a slight scowl.

Kaname growled, pulling herself upright from her angry, hunched position and forcing herself to take a ready stance. "No one from work, or my old life, knows where I'm living now, and Shibaru managed to ring me at the dorm. Only someone with access to the system we're in could manage such a thing. So you guys had to be behind this somehow."

"Poor, poor Mister... Tamashii thinks you're responsible for the deaths... of a million people. His heart is broken, you know. That special... feeling takes a woman's... touch." Sato shifted his expression to a smirk, and stepped forward purposefully towards Kaname. She waited until he was in range, then snap-punched, but he simply stepped to the side in a blur of motion, caught her arm and looked along it at her before flipping her bodily across two tables, where she slammed into the ground.

Nemesis began moving again, but was grabbed by two other Agents, one for each arm. She twisted downwards, trying to break their grip, and when that failed, she spun over backwards, using her momentum to bring both legs up to knee the Agents in their faces. Their heads snapped back, but their grip didn't alter, and Nemesis felt her arms wrenched in their sockets for a shocked moment before she started screaming incoherently in pain.

Kaname rose to her feet, unsteady, and focussed on Sato again. He strode through the restaurant towards her once more, but this time she waited for him to make an attack. The punch was firm, strong and straight when it came, and it caught Kaname's side as she twisted violently, bringing a foot up into Sato's gut. He folded in two but stood upright again without the slightest indication of injury, the movement only suggesting he'd been affected by the motion rather than its strength or power. He kicked this time, and Kaname danced backwards, her thigh's sudden flaring into agony telling her she didn't quite dodge the kick. When next she stood on it, pain lanced upwards and downwards, and she felt something shift - she'd splintered bone in there.

"C'mon," she whispered to herself, "Now! Now!" Nothing happened. No man moving in the corner of her vision, no new strength flowing through her body, just her pain. In her peripheral vision, Kaname caught sight of another fist before it crashed into the side of her head like a freight train. She flew, and that was all she knew, her suddenly lightened mind marvelling at the sensation of being lighter than air. Then she wondered why the lights had gone -

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

A friend started me on the path to releasing this first part of the chapter today (thanks, Rugle, thanks also Misha ^^) and so here it is... first of a new duology/trilogy leading up to the last chapter of Love. The chapter keeps getting longer, and longer, so I'm not really sure exactly HOW long it will go... but this is definitely the first part. Still, it's big. And the next chapter should be around the same size, maybe just a touch bigger (perhaps, unless I split that into two parts).

I think this chapter hangs together pretty well; and that is the feedback I've received thus far as well, so hopefully it's not just in my imagination.

Of course, the next part is now the rescue of Kaname... and maybe some other stuff. Well, definitely other stuff, ubt that can be a surprise.