"Serenity" he gasped.

He took off after her without a second thought. She had already gained a head start on him but, he was able to catch every corner she turned and every street she ran down. Thankfully, she was so preoccupied with making it on time to school and was so far ahead of him that she had no idea that she was being followed.

She turned the last corner as he continued to follow her but he stopped when he saw that she entered a large, building:

Juuban Municipal High School

As she disappeared through the entryway a loud bell began to sound off:

Ding Dong, Ding Dong

He stood outside the gate and stared up at the building questioning if he should go inside or not.

'I know I'm not supposed to have contact with any of the sailor senshi, but, I just want to see her face at least one more time.' he thought.

He decided to go ahead and take a chance. Besides, with his disguise, there is no way she'd be able to know of his identity. For all she knew, Prince Demande of Nemesis, has been dead for the past couple of years now so he should be fine as long as he never lets Saphir know of this.

He took a deep breath and walked into the building. He didn't see anyone inside and as he roamed the halls, there seemed to be multiple rooms and stairs leading to different levels of the school; it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. He had already been informed on the concept of public schooling, where children go through 12 grades with each one harder than the last until they finally either graduate and find a job, or continue their education in college. He had private tutors growing up on Nemesis and never got the chance to even be around many other children his age, except for his brother and then eventually, Esmeraude and Rubeus. He was always lonely as a child so, he would've liked going to go to a place, such as this, where he could've been able to make real friends instead of everyone groveling over him all the time just because he was their prince.

He walked through one of the halls and saw that there were test scores posted sequentially from the lowest grade to the highest on the wall. The top score posted was from a girl named, Ami Mizuno. He touched the paper it was posted on trailing the name with his fingers. The Queen was supposed to have been well versed in all subjects which was one of the reasons she was such a brilliant leader.

'Ami Mizuno…are you her?' he wondered.

"Excuse me sir, can I help you?" A man spotted him.

Demande tried to think of an excuse, "Uh, I was wanting to inquire on if this school was hiring at all right now? I was looking for the office but I'm afraid I took a wrong turn and ended up where the classrooms are."

"We have no openings as of right now sir, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave." He was stern about it but he seemed to buy his story.

"Alright, thank you, I'll let myself out." Demande walked out of sight from the man quickly and hoped he wouldn't follow him.

He would have to try and spot her when she left the building for the day, whenever that was. He decided to leave and try again at a later time but, as he was walking down a hallway that led towards the exit, a room caught his attention. It was rather large and contained shelves upon shelves of books. Saphir had informed him that in this time, libraries kept their literature printed onto pages made out of paper that were kept together individually. Saphir was excited that places such as these existed because in the time they are from, books made of paper hadn't been around for centuries due to the advancement of technology, where literature was stored into a main database that could be accessed through holograms. Few copies of paper books had still existed of course, but only on Earth in the Queen's library that was in the Crystal Palace. He knew that he was supposed to leave but, he decided to go inside and take a look around anyway.

As he entered he could hear someone in between a set of bookcases, but ignored it and started looking through some books that were sprawled out on a cart next to one of the tables. He had to admit, that some of the covers were beautifully illustrated and looked really interesting.

"Excuse me young man, is there something I can help you find?" An elderly woman started walking up to him, "Oh wait, you're not a student are you?"

"Um, no. Are you a teacher here?" he asked.

"No, I'm the librarian, Mrs. Tatsumi. If you aren't a student then what are you doing in the building?" She asked with a sudden suspicion.

Again he had to think of a quick excuse, "I'm getting hired on as a teacher here and was just looking around the place and took notice of your library, it's really fascinating."

"Oh, it's alright I suppose, I've been working here for over 30 years now, so I'm so used it. I could've retired by now but I just love my job and the kiddos so much that I can't stay away, even though my husband would like me to. So what subject will you be teaching-"

Demande cut her off, "Wow, 30 years that's a long time. You know I've always been curious about what exactly a librarian does?" He knew it was a dumb question but he really didn't know.

"What do you mean? Students here check out the books, return them and I put them up, it's really as simple as that. Also if they need to know where a particular book is, I help them find it." she looked as though she'd never been asked that before.

It sounded like a very easy job, a job that he could do and it could be a way to get close to… her. He began to get an idea and looked to each corner of the room to check for cameras then back to her, "Of course, sounds simple enough. You know when I first came in, I took notice of a book on the shelf over there that I would like to check out, I'm allowed to as an employee correct?"

"Yes of course, show me where it is." They began to walk toward the area he pointed at.

"Are you by any chance foreign? Those green eyes of yours are quite lovely. You actually remind me a bit my grandson." She commented.

"Possibly. I was adopted." He replied. He and Saphir had been getting asked that question a lot from people in the area.

They reached their destination that had a large bookcase covering either side of them.

"Oh yeah, you never told me what subject you'd be teaching, Mr.-?" she looked up at him.

He didn't say anything but just stared back intensely and then smirked at her. He then abruptly clasped both his hands on her arms giving her a fright.

"What are you doing?!" she noticed his demeanor had completely changed.

All of a sudden, she looked up at his face and saw that something on his forehead started to blink and then open up, almost as if it was another eye. She couldn't look away from it, her pupils began to disappear from her eyes and then eventually felt all self-control begin to slip away.

"You know, Mrs. Tatsumi, 30 years here really is a long time and I feel as though you're starting to get tired, don't you think? Maybe it's time you should retire." Demande had her completely under his control.

"Yes...I'm getting so… tired. I think I should retire and spend time with my husband." She said robotically.

"Good, very good. But not today. Tomorrow morning, you will let your boss know that you want to quit, is that understood?" Controlling a mere human would be no trouble.

"Yes, Prince Demande-sama."

He then, took his hands off of her, "I'll be seeing you tomorrow for training then." He started to walk away before turning his head back to her one more time, "Oh and I guess I won't be needing that book after all." He left her in a stunned state and walked out of the library then, out of the school building.

His bad mood seemed to have finally lifted and it would only be a matter of time before they would meet again. As her enemy, the prince of Nemesis, she may have rejected him, but, with a new approach, he may be able to succeed in getting what he wanted this time. Saphir could never know that he used his powers and he could never know that he is going to be around the one person who they're supposed to avoid at all cost.

By the time he arrived home, it was already late in the afternoon so Saphir was done working on growing the Malefic Black Crystal for the day. He was sprawled out on their couch looking absolutely tired and exhausted. Since this was for his brother, Saphir always gave 110% for anything he wanted, and due to him not wearing the black crystal earrings, it put more of a strain on his body than it did Demande whose body became more infiltrated with the dark power each day making it easier for him to handle.

"Welcome home, Nii-san. How was today?" he asked cracking a smile.

"It was interesting…I sort of got a job." He mumbled out.

Saphir sat up quickly, "What?! A job? Doing what?"

"Well, you've been telling me about these libraries you go to so I decided to stop by one today to read some books. The librarian there, an older woman, made small talk with me since she said I reminded her of her grandson and told me how she had been thinking of retiring but, had no one in line to replace her. Since it seemed like a job I could do with little experience, I let her know that I've been looking for work and next thing you know, she said that she could start me tomorrow." He hoped that he'd believe it.

"I don't believe it…" He said

'Shit'

"My brother has an Earth job already, that's incredible Nii-san I'm so proud of you!" Saphir looked as if all excursion had left him.

"I swear you act like I'm completely helpless sometimes when I'm supposed to be your older brother." He smiled in amusement trying to act as confident in his lie as possible.

"I just can't believe how quickly we're assimilating into this new world, I wonder if it was this easy for Petz..." He sat up and changed the subject quickly since it pained him to think of her. "By the way I called Mrs. Osaka and she said that she had the rest of our funds so after I shower, I'm going up there and thought that when I come back with our money, we could go out and celebrate tonight, you deserve a break."

"Yeah…that sounds great." Demande tried to seem excited.

As Saphir went into the bathroom, Demande sat on the couch with his hands on his face then traveled them through his hair, dropping his disguise for a while changing his hair back to white and his eyes to purple. He felt extremely guilty for lying to his brother and knew that he was reckless in what he did and that he could've ruined everything but, for some reason he just couldn't control his impulses. When it came Serenity, he would walk into the depths of Hell if it meant that there was a chance of having her.

His brother emerged from the bathroom looking completely rejuvenated from the day's arduous session, "I'm heading out now." He started to put his hand on the door knob before he stopped and turned back to him, "By the way Nii-san, I've been holding this thought back for a while now, but, I've noticed that you don't really ever take off your earrings. I mean I know that it's necessary to wear them sometimes but, please don't overdo it okay?"

"Sure. I'll see you when you get home." He replied.

After Saphir left, Demande took his earrings off and looked at them in his hands wondering,

'Are these the reason that my emotions have been getting the better of me?'

Oh well, it didn't matter, from tomorrow on he would have to take them off while he was at the school anyway or Serenity and her guardian senshi would surely be able to discover his identity. He put his earrings on the coffee table and leaned back onto his couch and closed his eyes picturing her face in this thoughts.

'Soon, my dear Serenity, soon'

5 days later:

Usagi was sitting in her English class not listening to anything her instructor was saying. She had a million things on her mind currently and was worried about them too much to be able to pay attention to what the teacher was lecturing about.

The first thing was that her boyfriend had been in America for 3 weeks now, and had yet to call her or reply to any of the letters she had sent him. She had written to him every night since he left and has called the number he gave her over a dozen times, leaving voicemails every time and still, she got no response. She had started questioning on if he really meant it when he told her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life together with her, she didn't know what else to think and the more she did, the more she became depressed about it. Having to keep this from her friends and pretend like everything was okay was what she thought was best for the situation since she didn't want to worry them. But she couldn't help but have it in the back of her mind constantly that something terribly wrong was going on that was out of her control.

Secondly, multiple new sailor senshi have appeared. Sailor Iron Mouse who has shown herself to be their new enemy has been transforming high profile celebrities into Phages when they don't possess a "true star seed". What makes a "true star seed" is unknown at this time to any of them but she has had to heal them using her "Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss" technique, transforming them back into their human form every time. Also, three sailor senshi who are working in a group called, the Sailor Starlights have also been showing up every time a Phage appeared, however, she didn't think that they were enemies but weren't exactly their allies either. It seemed they had a goal of their own they were trying to accomplish and weren't interested in teaming up with her or her guardians. When they first met Haruka and Michiru, it was a similar situation before they came to all work together in the end but, she had never heard of a sailor senshi hurting innocent people before and that troubled her. They have had many enemies in the past but, this is the first time that they have had to fight a member of their own kind.

While Usagi was deep inside her thoughts, her teacher presented an assignment to the classroom,

"Class, we are weeks into our Fall semester and that means that I will now go over with you what you are expected to turn in for your end of the semester project. I want you to pick a book written by an English or an American author and write an extensive 5 page book report with the last page based on your thoughts of the book. For example, would you have written the ending differently, take out or add in additional characters, or keep it the exact same, and if you do, I want reasons on why you would. It seems like a big work load so that's why I am allowing a partner of your choosing to help share the burden with you. It's due 2 months from now so I would suggest that you all immediately get to work on it and not wait until the last minute since it's worth a large percentage of your final grade. I will allow the next 5 minutes for you to go ahead and pick your partner so I can go ahead and mark it down before we move on."

Someone slammed his hand on Usagi's shoulder, "I call Odango as my partner!"

It startled her, "S-Seiya stop calling me Odango, and what do you mean partner?!"

"You mean didn't hear what our teacher just said? Don't worry I'll fill you in later." He whispered to her.

"Alright Seiya Kou is going to be partners with Usagi Tsukino. Got it." the teacher began to mark down.

"Wait teacher I didn't agree to this!" Usagi tried to tell him but it seemed that he wasn't listening and moved on to other students.

"Why don't you be partners with Yaten or Taiki-san?" she turned to Seiya and asked.

"They already chose each other as partners and I still don't know many people here. Why? Afraid we'll get a little too close for comfort?" he winked at her.

"Hmph yeah right! I told you already that I have an amazing boyfriend that is waiting for me overseas who is way cooler than you are." She turned her head.

"Oi, you don't have to be mean about it." Seiya slumped back in his desk.

The third thing that was on her mind; the school has completely turned itself upside down over the new students who transferred into their school a couple of weeks ago, the Three Lights. When they went to the park at that time, Usagi had met Seiya by chance, not knowing that he was part of the famous trio and they even bumped into each other another time after that as well. It was exciting and she liked getting to know Seiya, Yaten and Taiki and was even jumping on the bandwagon becoming a new fan of theirs. Seiya had gotten particularly close with her since she was technically the first student at that school that he knew before transferring here but, this made her a bit uncomfortable at times because she could see some of the negativity that was being projected onto her from some of his die-hard fans. But, she already had a man that she was deeply in love with, so they had nothing to worry about.

'Ding Dong, Ding Dong'

The bell rang, sounding off the end of school for the day so, everyone began gathering their things and started leaving the classroom. Usagi sluggishly did as well.

"Miss Tsukino, may I see you for a moment before you head out?" Her teacher called to her.

She went up to the front of the classroom to him and she noticed that he had a serious look on his face.

"I noticed that you have been lackluster in my class here lately, to say the least, and your grades are starting to reflect that. This project is the last chance for you to make a huge improvement to bring your grade up for the semester so if I were you, I would suggest that you head to the library right now and at least find the novel you will be doing your report on. If you can get it read within the next 2 to 3 weeks, then that should give you a good amount of time to write a decent report." He informed her.

"I'm sorry Sensei, I haven't been sleeping very well lately but, I'll start working on finding a book right away." She bowed and then left.

She wasn't lying about not sleeping well and that was the final thing that had been plaguing her mind. Every night for the past week, she has been having horrible nightmares and she didn't know why. It was always the same thing from that time 2 years ago when they traveled to Crystal Tokyo when she was kidnapped by their enemy at the time, the leader of the Black Moon Clan, Prince Demande. The look in his eyes that he gave her that time, frightened her and if it hadn't been for Mamoru rescuing her, she didn't know if she would have ever been able to escape. But every night the dream seemed more and more realistic and the part where Mamoru rescued her would either be delayed or wouldn't happen at all which she took as a sign that something was wrong. However, he seemed to have not been such a bad person in the end which he proved by sacrificing his life in order to save her from Wiseman's beam of power that he shot at her. So, she didn't understand why she kept going back to that time inside her dreams when he frightened her so much. She doesn't have Mamoru here to comfort her when she wakes up so she truly feels like she did at that time when she woke up in that bedroom Prince Demande placed her in back then; vulnerable and alone. Maybe going to the library would help take her mind off things.

She walked out of the classroom and looked around to find that everyone seemed to be waiting on her including her friends Makoto, Ami and Minako along with Seiya while the other members of the Three Lights, Yaten and Taiki seemed to be waiting on him.

"Is every alright Usagi-chan?" Ami asked.

"Yeah, Sensei was just letting me know that I'm not doing so well right now so I have to start working on my project right away. I was thinking of going down to the library, did any of you want to come with me?" Usagi asked.

"Actually we have club activities that are about to start so we won't be able to but, we just wanted to check and make sure everything was alright. We've got to get going though, we'll see you tomorrow!" Makoto and the rest of her friends waved goodbye and went off to their activities.

Usagi then turned to Seiya, "Well, I guess we can go ahead and start since we're partners for this thing."

"Actually, that's what I was waiting out here for, is so I could let you know that me, Yaten, and Taiki are going to be starting rehearsals for our Three Lights musical today. I will be having to spend the next 2 weeks after school on it so, whatever book you decide on, I'll just read on my own time and then we can start the project together after we're done having to go to the rehearsals." Seiya could see Usagi looked irritated at this.

"What the hell Seiya, you picked me as your partner and then can't even work on the project with me?! Fine! I'll go by myself then!" she stormed off not even looking at his reaction.

She normally wouldn't get mad about this but, with everything going on with her boyfriend not talking to her, her senshi duties, lack of sleep and on top of that, almost failing English, she just needed a break from everything right now.

As she approached the library, a couple of girls were exiting with blushed cheeks giggling amongst themselves, "Wow how lucky are we to get such a good looking librarian?" then the other one replied, "I know, I'm definitely going to start reading more often, that's for sure."

They continued past Usagi but she didn't even pay attention to what they were saying, she was in such a horrible mood because of Seiya right now. She tried to calm her anger as she walked inside the library.

Meanwhile:

Demande was now an official employee at the high school as his plan had worked exactly how he had intended it to. After Mrs. Tatsumi presented her resignation as the school's librarian, Demande came in at the right time and scooped up the position from her. He had her train him on all the formalities that he needed to know about this job such as learning about the dewey decimal system and how to check out books to the students. With her still under his control, he felt free to ask all the 'stupid' questions he needed to without any repercussions of drawing suspicion.

On his first day, he was almost late trying to get through an enormous crowd of the students gathered around the school's entrance since they wouldn't budge for anything. Whenever he pushed himself through the students, he noticed that it was mostly high school girls, which he found strange but, since none of them was the one particular girl he wanted to see, he didn't really think too much on it. He was nervous as the hours went by, wondering on when it was she was fated to step inside the room or if they would bump into each other in the halls, but, going through the scenario over and over in his head, he came to the conclusion that he would try to act as nonchalant about their meeting as possible in order to conceal his identity. He would use this as a chance to start over with a clean slate and try a more subtle approach than how he did the first time they met and hopefully, he'd be able to build her trust with him first before charming his way into her heart. She wasn't like the typical human that he could just use his third eye to control with and no matter how much of his powers he would gain back, she would always be able to overcome him, so he would try to conquer her love as a human rather than using his powers this time.

Days passed and she never entered the library once and at first he would be alert to every student that would walk in but, as each day passed, he paid less attention, losing faith that he would run into her that easily. So, he would just pass the time reading since there wasn't really much to this job and not many students ever came in. He enjoyed reading, as he never got the time to do much of it on Nemesis since he had focused all of his energy on conquering the Earth and usually all the literature they had was originated on Nemesis, so everything he read here was new to him. Now he understood why Saphir would spend hours at a time in these places since they came here because some of these stories would absolutely draw him in and if something interested him enough, he would end up losing himself for hours. Every once in a while, when books would pile up on his desk he would have to go put them back on the shelves. If no students were present in the library, he was able to use his powers to put the books away quicker so that he could go back to what he was reading, but, if someone was in the room, he was able to get it done quickly anyway since his abnormal strength allowed him to carry large amounts of books at a time.

Two girls were currently checking out books in the library, so this was one of those times. They were talking amongst themselves sitting at one of the tables, shooting glances at him and then, giggling back to each other while he would make trips back and forth putting books away. He was hoping they would leave so he could get back to what he was currently reading because it was starting to get to a really good part. Thankfully, as if they could read his mind, they both got up and started to walk out still giggling amongst themselves, unfortunately he could hear someone else enter the library. When he finished placing some of the books in one bookcase, he picked up the remaining books from the ground that piled so high surpassing his height that it blocked his vision.

As he started to walk, he ran into someone causing himself and all the books he was carrying to fall down. He was startled by this but, when he came to his senses he looked at all the books that were now sprawled out on the ground, then looked to the person who ran into him before paralysis overtook his body as he saw the woman who he had been anxiously waiting to meet.

The collision had caused her to fall back onto the ground as well, and she was so busy rubbing on her sore bottom that she didn't even look up to see who she had ran into.

With her eyes closed in pain still, she said, "I'm so sorry, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going! Here let me help you pick these up."

As she reached out and picked up one of the books, she finally looked up at him with those eyes he had been longing to see but, after a moment of studying his face, they had visibly widened as she choked out,

"Pr-Prince Demande?"