The Ambassador of Romania looked vaguely different from when she had said goodbye to him in the entrance hall. He also felt rather strange, but Serena couldn't help thinking that her mind was making it up. She couldn't really explain the feeling she got from him, except that it was almost like frozen ants crawling across her skin.
He wasn't much taller than her. He had dark brown hair streaked with gray. His skin was so pale that Serena had thought that he was extremely ill, but really wanted peace to strive so hard to appear well enough to go through with the talks. His eyes were ice blue, but seemed to glow. Serena had never seen eyes like that before, but guessed that they appeared that way due to whatever illness he had.
He seemed to be studying her, as if he was considering what kind of person she was.
"Did you have a question, Ambassador Valladao?" Serena asked, wondering why he had come back to the palace. "Did you forget something?"
"No." He seemed to stare intently at her eyes, until she felt uncomfortable and looked away. He frowned. He moved closer to her. "How did you escape notice when the whole world seemed to be looking for you?" He asked with a thick accent. Serena shrugged.
"I don't think that it is of any importance to the peace we all yearn for," Serena said softly, trying to remember how to phrase things so that they wouldn't be taken for an insult.
"You are a very, err, interesting Lady, Princess." He said moving closer. Serena stepped back.
"Ambassador, I do not believe that how interesting I am has any grounding on the talks. I bid you farewell." Serena told him curtly. She turned and started to walk up the stairs to the patio.
A hand grabbed her arm and jerked her back, causing her to stumble. She cried out in surprise.
"No one turns away from me." The Ambassador growled, the accent gone. Serena stared at him. The skin on her arm had grown ice cold, and the hair stood on end. The strange energy, that she had felt earlier, crept along her skin. Serena pulled her arm from his grip.
"I will thank you to not touch me again." She snapped at him.
Something was wrong, she couldn't put her finger on it. Something about him was very different from all the people she had ever talked to. Her heart hummed with fear, and she found herself trying to cover it with anger. Her instincts told her that the man in front of her was not a man at all.
Some kind of energy emanated from him, a cold blast that felt dead. Dead longer than anyone could have believed. She backed as far away from him as she could, but he didn't seem to notice. He cornered her against one of the bushes, and reached out to touch her face.
"So Beautiful." He murmured.
"Mars…flame… THROWER!" Raye's voice tore at the still night air. A spiral of almost blue flames burst from nowhere, striking the Ambassador in the back. But instead of stopping, like Mar's flames usually did, they kept streaming from where Mars stood, her fingers steepled together to help her aim. Her face was filled with concentration, even though her indigo eyes were closed.
Her flames seemed to envelope the Ambassador. He screamed with rage and pain. But quicker than should have been possible, the fire that Raye had created consumed his entire body. The Sailor Scouts appeared on the patio and stared in disbelief at the writhing body on the ground next to Serena. Serena leapt over it and ran up the stairs to stand beside them. In almost no time, all that was left of the body was dust.
Serena turned to the Sailor Scouts. "What was it? What did you do, Mars?" Serena asked, but from the look on Mars face she didn't know what had happened either.
"Negaverse?" Mina asked.
"That was too easy, even for the Negaverse." Raye said, her eyes wide in shock, her voice trembled slightly. They fell silent for a moment, thinking.
"It wasn't human." Serena said, "And it wasn't the Negaverse, either. It felt off." She looked at the pile of dust at the ground. "It was older than it should have been, and I don't think it was alive." She glanced at the others, "at least not in our sense of the word."
"How do you know?" Amy asked.
"I don't know how. I just know. That thing was over two hundred years old."
"What do you mean he burned to a crisp?" Darien asked outraged. "You just killed the Romanian Ambassador and now you are telling me that he wasn't part of the Negaverse?" He couldn't really understand what they were talking about. An ambassador turning into a fireball then to dust in a few seconds? That just didn't happen. "Was he the one that has been attacking everyone?"
"We don't know." Serena said calmly from her perch on a couch. He had returned to the palace earlier than was expected, to find Serena and the others talking about what had happened the night before. Darien got the feeling that they had stayed up all night.
"Ok. Him attacking Serena wasn't the best move in the world. But Raye, hitting him with… Maybe he was human. We don't know the full properties of your fire attacks. Or anyone else's for that matter." Darien growled. Raye looked down, for once not responding with anger. "We've never hit a true human with any of the Planet Attacks."
He looked back at Serena who was watching him. Something about the way she looked at him scared him. The look was deep, like she had realized something and it wasn't good. She straightened up and walked over to him. Her fingers stretched out and touched the bandage on his neck, and he felt the world shiver beneath his feet.
"Then tell me, what happened here?" She asked softly, her hand trailing from the bandage to his shoulder. Then, as if she realized what she was doing, she jerked her hand away from him. He stared at her.
The room suddenly felt stifled, like there wasn't enough air. A low pulsing energy seemed to arch between Serena and himself. He vaguely noticed that she had put her hair back into the meatballs she was famous for, and because they were shorter than they had been, they looked unusual.
On impulse he reached out one of his hands and cupped her cheek. The energy around them seemed to jump and writhe frantically like it yearned to burst. Serena half closed her eyes and leaned into his hand. His pulse jumped and started humming in time with the frenzied energy he felt in the air.
Lita cleared her throat somewhere behind Serena and he jumped. "You guys. You might want to save that for later. We do have a problem right now." She said, but there was a slight humor in her voice. He pulled his hand away. He wondered if he should touch Serena, she could take off again at any moment, like she had two years earlier. He couldn't trust her, not anymore, not like he and the others had. He wondered if the other girls knew that as well, and decided to have a talk with them about it.
"The doctor said that it looked like I had been thrown into a bush or something, the whole side of my neck was torn open." Darien said, trying to ignore the pain in Serena's eyes. She finally looked away.
"Well, it probably doesn't mean anything anyway. We don't know for sure what it was. It could have been human and there could have been a weird fluke with Raye's Mars Attack. Serena could have been imagining the feeling she got from the Ambassador, since she was frightened by the way that he had been acting." Amy shrugged. "Or it could be the Negaverse. We won't know unless something else happens, and I doubt that it will."
I hope nothing else happens. Darien thought looking at the back of Serena's head.
Serena doubted whether she had hallucinated what she had felt. She forced herself into thinking of the Ambassador's attack as something from the Negaverse. With a sinking heart, she realized that she wouldn't be able to leave New Tokyo until she destroyed the new threat that the Negaverse had sent after them.
The thing bothering her most was how she had felt being so close to Darien again. She couldn't be with him. She didn't want to be the Princess. No one had ever thought her to be good enough, and she didn't want to deal with that fact. No matter what she did there would always be the reality that she was a klutz. She didn't want to be reprimanded for the rest of her life.
Her mother had dropped her things off earlier that day, along with Cammie, her kitten. Most of the boxes were opened with things draping from them. Cammie laid curled into a ball on the bed, staring at Serena with a look of resentment. Serena wondered whether Luna had met Cammie, yet, but decided it didn't matter.
Darien had wanted to talk to Serena privately, and had offered to take her to dinner, away from prying ears. So Serena had searched through the boxes for one of her favorite dresses. She had bought it on a whim while in America, but had never had a reason to wear it before.
"I'm sorry. I would stay and play with you, but Darien wanted to talk to me." She told it, but the kitten promptly stretched and turned away, effectively ignoring her. For a moment, Serena felt a pang of sympathy for the little kitten. She hadn't been able to spend any time with Cammie since she had returned to New Tokyo. Serena made a mental note to spend some time with Cammie when she got back after her talk with Darien.
She was glad not to have a maid. She hated having someone else take care of her. She was good at taking care of herself, anyway. Everything was left the way that Serena and her mother had dumped it. She would make time later to clean her room, and set her things up. But she wondered whether she really should. She was pretty sure that after the Negaverse was taken care of, she would go back to America and restart her life. She wondered for a moment whether Lily would let her stay with her when she returned home, but shrugged, knowing that at the moment it didn't matter.
Serena finished pulling on the dress and turned to look critically in the mirror. She had tied her hair with a little difficulty into an elegant topknot, leaving thin tendrils to trail over her shoulders and down her back. The dress hung low over her shoulders, sweeping out in wide sleeves that almost looked like wings, and clung to her chest stomach and hips before sweeping over her thighs to end just above her knees. She had loved the dress on sight. She wondered, for a moment, whether Darien would like it.
She twirled experimentally and watched as the skirt billowed out in a circle around her. Nodding to herself, she turned back to her boxes and searched for her jewelry chest. The jewelry box was cute; she had gotten it because it had a crescent moon and a star, both cut into the wood in a Celtic design, on the lid. She sifted through the small box until she found a pair of earrings, a pair of dangling royal blue crescent moons that matched the dress and a pearl choker for her throat.
Again she turned to admire the effect in the mirror. The effect of the necklace, earrings, and dress, seemed to make her skin glow, and her eyes turn a more remarkable shade of blue. She loved the result.
Turning, Serena glanced at Cammie, who was again watching her. "What do you think?" she asked, doing a pirouette for the kitten. When she was facing the kitten again, it had raised it head. It blinked, yawned, stretched, and then curled back into a tight ball, closing it's eyes. "Well, I didn't think it was that boring!" Serena told it, grinning; she grabbed her purse and left the room.
At the grand staircase to the entrance hall, Serena froze, staring down at Darien. He looked immaculate. He wore a white tux, with a royal blue vest, and black sash across his waist. He wasn't wearing a top hat, like he did as Tuxedo Mask. His black hair and blue eyes seemed to stand out against the pale white of his suit. He was turned away from her, talking to someone else, and didn't notice her staring at him with her mouth wide open.
Her mouth snapped closed when he turned around. She smiled sweetly at him, but then noticed who he was talking to. Raye stood to one side of him. She looked at Serena with a mixture of surprise and anger.
Serena looked at Darien, and frowned. Then made her way down the stairs, not really paying attention to her feet, but watching Darien and Raye openly. She managed to reach the bottom of the steps and stopped, clasping her hands in front of her.
Darien walked up to her, and offered her his arm, which she took, and they both walked out into the falling darkness to the limo that waited on them.
Dinner ended up being a complete fiasco. When they ordered, Serena shifted, knocking her chair into the waiter who was taking their order, who then fell into another waiter carrying someone else's order, which went flying into a quietly giggling couple, who got upset and jumped up and knocking over several other waiters carrying food. Darien swore that it was a domino effect.
They ended up being kicked out before they ate, and Darien, worried that Serena would klutz out again, ordered fast food. He directed the limo to a park and he led Serena into the shadows so they could eat and talk in private. Serena, horrified at what she had done at the diner didn't touch anything, and sat as far away from Darien as possible without going clear across the park.
"What is bothering you, Serena?" He asked softly.
She glanced up at him, her eyes wide. "Nothing. I'm just thinking about the meeting tomorrow." She replied. He knew she was hiding something, and found himself wondering if she was thinking of leaving again. Apparently, some of that thought showed on his face, because her gaze darkened and she looked away.
"Serena, you can always talk to me about anything." Darien said. A bitter laugh answered his statement. He stood and touched her shoulder, trying to get her to look at him. "I will always be there for you." He knew he was beginning to push, but he couldn't seem to help himself.
She stood up abruptly, startling him. "I want to go home."
"Why?" He asked before he could stop himself. She met his eyes again. He saw a pain in her eyes that made his gut clench.
"I don't want to talk, Darien." She said, her voice cold. "I want to go home."
Darien shook his head, "Not till you talk to me."
"Dammit, Darien. I don't want to talk! Thank you for dinner, it wont happen again." She turned and stalked back the way they had come. Darien grabbed her arm before she got more than a few steps. She turned and glared at him. "Leave me alone, Darien!"
"Why are you being such a spoiled brat? You act as though you are ready to get chewed out by any of us, like you know that you did something wrong, but when someone tries to talk you turn away and hide. You wont let anyone tell you anything." Serena stared at him, her mouth open like she hadn't expected him to say what he did. "Raye is right you are acting like a child." He knew the moment he spoke, it had been mistake. Her face turned red, her eyes sparking.
"Yeah, Raye is always right isn't she?" Serena spat "Let me guess, you turned to her the moment I vanished. Was she really that comforting?"
"Serena, that isn't fair, nor is it true and you know it."
"No, I don't Darien, I wasn't here, remember? I don't know what any of you did. And honestly I don't care!" Serena growled. Darien could tell that she did care.
"Serena, I-" He started. The wind seemed to still suddenly, and Darien felt something approaching him from behind. But before he could react, he was slammed to the ground.
Then he heard Serena's scream.