Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon.

A/N: Thanks to everyone reading and reviewing! I'm trying something a little different with POV and the story timeline so if anything is confusing please let me know. Enjoy!

Chapter 2: Locked Doors

-Twenty Six Years Earlier-

Haruka grunted as she was thrown roughly to the ground. She had just enough time to draw a shallow breath before Makoto dropped down on top of her, effectively pinning her. She struggled frantically to find purchase and finally managed to brace her foot flat on the grass. With a huge effort, she pushed off, flipping both of them and reversing their positions. Makoto's eyes went wide as Haruka captured both of her wrists above her head in one hand. "Yield," Haruka said in a deadly whisper. Makoto tensed, emerald eyes narrowing at her captor. Before she could move Haruka brought her free arm up, pressing her forearm to Makoto's throat.

Makoto gave her wrists a fruitless tug before going limp in the grass. "Alright, you win," she said with a grin. Haruka chuckled, sitting back on Makoto's stomach with a triumphant smile. Makoto twisted her hips, trying to dislodge the blonde. "Now, get off of me before you make your wife jealous."

Haruka obliged, shifting to kneel beside the prone soldier. Makoto sat up and looked around at her small audience. Her grin widened as it fell on Ami and the book that had been abandoned in the grass beside her. Ami rolled her eyes when she caught the direction of her gaze. Still she smiled when Makoto crawled over and collapsed in the grass beside her, resting her head on the genius's thigh. "You almost had her," Ami assured her, running a hand soothingly through her bangs.

"Hah, right," Haruka laughed as she stood and dusted herself off. Michiru and Setsuna were leaning against the base of a tree, both with identical indulgent smiles. Haruka's gaze moved from them to Hotaru, who was lying on her stomach beside them. "I was going easy on her," she informed the younger girl in a stage whisper. The group giggled as Makoto lifted her head to shoot her an outraged look.

"So who's next?" she asked, looking around. "Any challengers?" Her gaze fell on Rei and Minako by the opposite tree. "Rei?"

Rei was leaning against the trunk with her eyes half closer. Her legs were stretched out on either side of Minako, who was curled up in front of her and resting against her chest. Minako looked over at Haruka, arching a blonde eyebrow in disapproval at the suggestion. "She's busy," Minako informed her. She leaned up to press a firm kiss to the soldier's lips.

"Right, busy," Rei agreed, grinning as she pulled the blonde closer.

Haruka laughed but held back any comment as they were approached by several others. "Here's where everyone disappeared to!" Serenity exclaimed as she reached them. She and Mamoru were grinning brightly and each held one of Chibi-Usa's hands. They swung the little girl between them for a moment before depositing her in the middle of the circle. The pink haired girl immediately moved to lie in the grass beside Hotaru. "What are you guys doing?" she asked, smiling up at her friend.

"You just missed a wrestling match," Hotaru informed her, grinning at her parents over her shoulder. The girl's garnet eyes sparkled excitedly at the idea. "Makoto challenged Haruka-Papa," she added, gesturing toward them.

Chibi-Usa nodded as she considered, then looked over Hotaru's back to where Makoto was lying. "Did she hurt you?"

Makoto stuck her tongue out at the young princess, earning more giggles from the group. "I almost had her."

"I'm sure," Serenity laughed, flopping down in the grass and lying back. Mamoru sat down beside her and leaned back on his hands, shaking his head good-naturedly. The group was silent for several minutes. "It's so peaceful out here," Serenity mused softly, staring up at the cloudless sky. "It's perfect." Her hair was lifted by the slightest of breezes and she closed her eyes.

A small thoughtful growl drew everyone's attention. Rei had straightened and her amethyst gaze was focused in the direction of the palace. "Something wrong?" Minako asked, touching her shoulder lightly.

Rei blinked and frowned briefly, then shrugged and relaxed against the tree again. "No," she said quietly, smiling as she curled an arm around Minako and let her eyes drift closed again. "It was nothing."

-Crystal Tokyo: Distant Future-

The morning was just as dreary as the night before as Hotaru made her way across the city. A cold breeze scattered fallen leaves around her feet and she suspected that it would rain later. It was tempting to return to the palace until the weather warmed up, but today she had a specific destination in mind. A place she hadn't been in a decade: the Mizuno Research Center.

As Hotaru continued walking, the crowds thinned out around her. Since the labs had closed ten years ago, the area had gone downhill. Ami's research labs had been built in Old Juuban, near where she'd gone to cram school as a teenager. The facility was huge, employing thousands of scientists and researchers working on hundreds of projects, and had been a monument to knowledge.

Ami's largest ongoing project for much of the last millennium had been returning the other planets of the solar system to a state where they could support life. She'd recreated their atmospheres and facilitated plant growth, helped along in many places by her fantastically complex creations. She'd started with Mercury and to date had restored the conditions as far out as Uranus. It was amazing what one could do with unlimited time, resources and a mind like hers.

Hotaru reached the buildings and sighed again. The facility took up three city blocks, but the windows were all dark and there was no sign of life. The walls were gray and dirty, more so than the rest of the city. Hotaru stopped abruptly as she approached the front doors. Someone had spray painted a monstrous creature with a crude symbol of mercury held in its claws. Beneath the image the word 'Demon' was scrawled in block letters. It illustrated the fear and mistrust the people of Crystal Tokyo held for the facility and its creator in recent years. She shook her head sadly and reached for the door handle.

Hotaru jumped violently when a hand landed on her shoulder. She called her glaive to her as she spun around to face her assailant. The weapon materialized in her hand and Chibi-Usa took a sharp step back from the lethal point in front of her.

Hotaru let out a breath and banished her glaive, letting it wink back out of existence in a purple haze. "Are you crazy?" she accused tightly. "I could have killed you."

Chibi-Usa shrugged and gave her a sheepish smile. "I called your name twice." Hotaru scowled, causing her friend to giggle and move closer to her. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"You didn't," Hotaru huffed, turning back to the doors. Chibi-Usa hid a smile as she moved to stand beside her. "What are you doing down here, anyway? It's not safe to wander around by yourself."

Chibi-Usa raised an eyebrow at her. "You do it all the time." Hotaru frowned at her but she continued before the raven could respond. "Anyway, Puu told me what you were doing and I thought you might need this." She held up Queen Serenity's master key card.

Hotaru looked at the door again, her eyes falling on the dusty card reader. Even though the building's power was cut, the tiny red light shone back at her from the lock. "I didn't think of that," she murmured, allowing one corner of her mouth to pull up in a half smile. She held out her hand and Chibi-Usa grinned as she gave the key to her. The door protested loudly as it slid open and both girls stood for a long moment as they stared into the dark hallway. Hotaru swallowed and turned toward her friend. She handed back the card and Chibi-Usa took it but didn't move. Hotaru considered the deserted street behind them and the steadily darkening sky. "Since you're here, do you want to come with me?"

Chibi-Usa nodded reluctantly and wrapped her arms loosely around herself as they walked inside. Hotaru activated the LED beam on her glove and raised her hand to illuminate the hallway. "I should get one of those," Chibi-Usa said with a nervous chuckle.

Hotaru smiled. Her gloves were another invention of Ami's. They were made of an ultra thin material that protected like leather but felt like silk. The right hand was equipped with an LED ring around the wrist and had her communicator attached just above that. The left had several utility tools. They were convenient when she needed to keep her hands free in situations like her current one. "Maybe we'll find another set in here somewhere."

"Ami always gave you the best toys," Chibi-Usa pouted. She shot Hotaru a sideways look when she chuckled softly. Hotaru grinned but didn't respond. It was true that she'd been Ami's usual test subject for her gadgets, but it had nothing to do with favoritism. She'd simply shown more interest than the other Senshi. After a moment of silence, Chibi-Usa rolled her eyes and laughed. "So, what are we looking for, anyway?"

Hotaru glanced around the wide hallway, slowing her steps as she pictured which area they were in. "I thought it might help if we could find information on the Planet Project."

Chibi-Usa nodded thoughtfully. "Most of that was kept in Building Two," she said slowly, "But she probably kept files on everything in the Records Room."

They paused at an intersection. There was an old directory mounted on the wall and Chibi-Usa swiped her hand across the dust to read it. Hotaru moved to read over her shoulder. If they continued forward, they would eventually reach the botany and biology labs. To the left were the halls that led to the administrative offices and eventually to Building Two which held most of the larger projects. To the right was Building Three.

Both girls looked down the hall in that direction. "The Records Room is next to her private office, so it will be down the left hall," Chibi-Usa said softly, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb. Despite that, she kept her eyes trained on the right hallway.

In the years following the Dead Moon attacks, Ami had become increasingly curious about what gave the Senshi their power. Her idea was to allow all the Senshi to fight without having to transform. It would save time in battle to simply be able to fight an enemy without the complex transformations and attacks they all had to use. She'd devoted all of her resources to the research and had spent most of her waking hours in her labs. In the end, Rei was the one who had made the breakthrough she'd been looking for.

Once, while they'd all been much younger, Rei had used her powers by accident while in a trance. The Inner Senshi had been in the process of sorting through their past lives and the incident had done nothing but scare them. But Ami had remembered it years later and it became the catalyst for one of her biggest breakthroughs.

It was a few weeks later that she'd presented her findings to the others. The transformations and alternate personas they had always used were merely tools to access the power locked in each of them. With practice, each of them had managed to find the power inside themselves; the power that High Queen Serenity had imbued them with thousands of years ago.

But Ami didn't stop there. Looking back, Hotaru could see that the change had come when the darkness had begun to taint the city. She was increasingly convinced that the spreading shadow could be studied, controlled and eventually eliminated. As the research continued, the lines of ethics and morality began to blur. She stopped sharing her findings with them and, as the other inner Senshi began to go their separate ways, she spent more and more time with her questionable studies.

The last time Hotaru had come here had been just before Ami had left. She'd called the younger soldier to the facility to test out her newest invention. Hotaru could still see the manic glint in Ami's once soft blue eyes as she'd explained the gun's functions and how she had developed it. She'd taken her through Building Three to get it and Hotaru caught glimpses of the research being performed behind the tightly closed doors. Ami was studying the youma. Not just studying them, taking them apart. Digging into them in search of the source of the darkness inside of them. The memory still made her shudder. The rumor was that, when Ami left, she left all of her research and projects as they were. No one had been willing to check.

"Do you think we should go down there?" Chibi-Usa's nervous voice brought her back to the present.

Hotaru cast one more look down the hall and shook her head. "No," she decided firmly. She'd told the others what she'd seen, but she didn't want anyone else to witness the horrors of those rooms. "Let's just get those files."

They started down the left hallway and soon had reached the administrative area. They slowed down to read the plaques on each door. It wasn't long before they stopped in front of the Records Room. Chibi-Usa used her mother's card again and the door slid soundlessly open.

The room was fairly large and rows of file cabinets reached the ceiling. They grimaced at each other and moved to opposite ends of the room. Hotaru had to swipe her fingers through ten years of dust in order to read the labels on the drawers. She was in the B section. She sighed. "Didn't she have an easier way to find things?" she called as she pulled a drawer open at random.

"She kept virtual records of everything," Chibi-Usa yelled back. "But we can't access them without power." Hotaru nodded glumly and began thumbing through the file tabs. "Found it."

"You're kidding!" Hotaru slammed the drawer closed gleefully and hurried around the side of a wall of file boxes.

Chibi-Usa used her hip to close a drawer against the far wall and Hotaru could see several massive folders clutched in her arms. Her mouth fell open. "It's going to take us weeks to go through all of those," she said faintly.

Her friend nodded grimly. "Probably. Will you hold these while I get the rest?" She dumped the files into Hotaru's arms before she could respond. The raven watched as she paced down the short aisle and stopped near the end. She pulled a drawer open part way, ran her fingers along the reams of pages and pulled out a wide section.

Hotaru tilted her head, impressed. "How do you know which ones to take?"

Chibi-Usa spoke while she gathered up the files. "I used to spend a lot of time here." She shot Hotaru a crooked smile. "I had to make sure I didn't inherit my mother's study habits."

Hotaru had to laugh at that. Growing up she'd had plenty of experience dealing with Usagi during group homework sessions. "Is this everything?"

Chibi-Usa nodded and tightened her hold on the stack of files. "It should be." The two stepped back into the hall, but the princess's attention was drawn to the next door over.

Hotaru had already started walking but stopped when she realized the other girl was no longer beside her. "What is it?" she asked softly, returning to her friend's side.

Chibi-Usa nodded toward the door. "This was Ami's office." Hotaru stared at the plain, windowless door. 'Mizuno' was faintly visible on the dusty plaque. They looked at each other and came to a silent understanding. Carefully, they set the files on the floor by the opposite wall and returned to the door. Chibi-Usa pulled out the master key and dipped it into the card reader. The tiny red light blinked twice and the door stayed stubbornly shut. Coral eyebrows drew together in confusion as she tried the card again. "I don't understand," she said after the third failed attempt. "This should open every door in the building."

"Maybe she changed the lock," Hotaru suggested, studying the card reader.

Chibi-Usa shook her head and stepped back. "Why would she?"

Hotaru didn't have an answer, but she knew how to find out. She put her arm out, pressing her friend back against the wall. Then she held her free hand out and, in a shimmer of purple, her glaive appeared. She turned to look questioningly at Chibi-Usa and received a nod of assent. Grimly she lifted the weapon and brought it down in a quarter arc. Her blade sliced through the device easily, throwing sparks in every direction. There was a low buzz and a moment later the door slid open.

Chibi-Usa let out a nervous laugh as she leaned forward and peered through the opening. "Ladies first," Hotaru joked as she looked over her friend's shoulder. The princess narrowed her eyes in her direction and Hotaru chuckled softly. She held her glaive out in front of her and took a slow step into the room. When nothing jumped from the shadows, she straightened from her fighting crouch and moved in further. When she reached the desk, she banished her glaive. Instead she held up her fist, illuminating the room.

Chibi-Usa inched into the room behind her and frowned as she looked around. "Everything's gone," she said sadly as she moved to stand by an empty bookshelf. It was true. The room looked like it had been packed hastily; loose papers were crumpled on the floor and the lamp in the corner was knocked over.

Hotaru moved around to the other side of the desk and began checking the drawers. She was unsurprised to find them all empty except for a few paperclips and bent staples. The top of the desk was covered in a layer of dust so thick she almost didn't see the rectangular outline near the edge. Curiously, she prodded a corner. There was a tinkling sound as the object slid through the filth.

Chibi-Usa carefully picked it up and jumped as shards of glass fell out and shattered on the floor. Hotaru skirted around the side of the desk and studied the thing as Chibi-Usa carefully turned it over in her hands. The glass front was cracked, but the photograph in the frame seemed to be in good condition still. She snapped the back out of the frame and carefully pulled the picture out.

Hotaru held her hand closer so the image lit up. She felt a sad smile form as she stared down at it. The picture was of Ami and Makoto when they were much younger. They were both wearing their high school uniforms and were grinning happily at the camera. Hotaru recognized the background as the living room of Rei's shrine. Makoto had an arm across Ami's shoulders and the bluenette was leaning into her.

Chibi-Usa sniffed and handed the photo to Hotaru so she could wipe her eyes. Hotaru carefully tucked it into her jacket pocket. She laid a hand on her friend's shoulder and squeezed lightly. "We'll get them back," Hotaru assured her. "We'll get them back and everything will be alright again."