Chapter One
Part two

"Wiseman!"

There was the sound of sandpapery laughter. "Wiseman? Yes, but maybe also . . . ." The laughter grew high pitched, more of a cackle than a laugh, as the black robes became a gown, high collared, black hair returning, but now spilling down past her feet in tight waves, cat slit eyes flickering dangerously down from the height of the dream mirror.

"Neph . . . Nephrenia . . . ." Confused, and now very afraid, Serena instinctively reached for the familiar weight of the Silver Crystal, her hands only clasping the cotton of the gown. Eyes filling with horror at her helplessness, Serena continued to back away from the mirror, backing up into yet another reflection.

Nephrenia placed a hand against the inside of the glass, pushing forward, the mirror stretching like elastic at her touch. Slowly, her fingers pushed through the border, accompanied by a piercing white light. "But in the end, Rabbit of the Moon . . . ." Her arms pushed though, long, white sleeves forming as they passed through the light. Her body escaped the mirror's trapping, the gown taking a simpler, more familiar form. Black shoes. A knee-length blue skirt. A dark red bow on the front, a pretty, heart shaped brooch pinning it together. And as Nephrenia's face emerged though the light, it also changed, becoming younger, prettier, with wide blue eyes and long blonde hair, bound up twice, on either side of her head, in a style Serena was very familiar with.

"In the end, Rabbit of the Moon . . . ." The white nightgown pooled around Serena as she sunk to the floor, edging closer to the mirror at her back. The new figure approached, towering over her with a smile. "In the end, I . . . ." The girl pointed a finger at herself, then at Serena. " . . . am you."

The door opened, and two figures were sketched in from the light beyond.

"Amy?" Came a familiar voice.

"Mom?" Amy turned and came over to the doorway, where Dr. Anderson and a

middle aged, slightly grayed man stood. "Are you here for Serena?"

Dr. Anderson nodded, placing her hands in her white lab coat, and taking in the number of people in the room. "Dr. YuRei and I are going to try a new battery of blood tests. We hope something new may turn up." She kept looking around the room, and her placid face frowned a little. "I'm afraid, Amy, you and your friends will have to leave . . . ."

That instantly brought a barrage of protest from the scouts. The cats took this opportunity to leap under the couch, peering up from under its edge, unseen. Dr. Anderson was nearly overwhelmed by the faces that had popped up into her view, desperately trying to back away from the Inner scouts. Dr. YuRei pushed into the fray, smiling and doing his best to placate the girls.

"All right, two of you may stay, but Dr. Anderson and myself need the space and quiet."

"I'll stay!" Raye snapped, in unison with Lita.

"Hold it!" Mina shouted into the oncoming argument. "If two of us get to stay, it's Darien and Rini, not us! They are her husband and dau-" Mina suddenly had Michelle's hand over her mouth, while Amara leapt in for the rescue, when the two doctors stared at the Soldier of Love. "Hey, you know how Darien and Serena will get married!" She pushed her way though

the swarming Inners, thwacking Dr. YuRaye on the back, making it a joke. "Hey, where's the cafeteria? We could use some coffee! Right, Michelle?"

Mina had finally managed to pull Michelle's hand off her mouth, and began to glare at the aqua haired woman, who was shaking her head in despair.

"I don't know about Michelle," Mina huffed, flipping her hair over her shoulder, "but I could use some. Come on, Girls!" Mina gathered her dignity and marched out of the room. Amy reluctantly followed her, hoping that if she went, the others would begin to follow. And Mina did have a good point. If any of them had the right to stay, it was Darien and Rini.

It was a big troop that wandered around the hospital, finding its way downstairs, at last stumbling onto the newly washed floors of the cafeteria. It had been decorated in accordance with the rest of the hospital, white, with sea foam green tiles bordering the floor, some plants to decorate it and make it seem less sterile. Hotaru found a quiet area to the back of the place, a wide window revealing the sidewalk and parking lot outside, cars lined up prettily in neat rows.

Trista and Amara, along with Lita, took orders for food and drink, and came back a minute later, laden with trays of coffee, sugar, cream, chips and a Pepsi for Hotaru. They settled into the long table, passing the drinks and chips around in a circle. The crackling of bags opening was heard, and the smell of coffee floated upward around them.

"So," Amara began, "now what?"

"We wait for the tests, and hope that they show something," Raye said, not liking it. "I can't feel any presence of evil . . . she must really be sick . . . ."

"But there is no evidence of it," Amy commented, shaking her head. "Unless these new tests do . . . but honestly, I don't think they will . . . ."

"Amy!" Raye exclaimed, staring at her from across the table. "Don't give up already on Serena! She's fought so many things . . . she won't give up on some stupid virus or whatever!"

Lita lifted an eyebrow. "That's interesting to hear, coming from you, Raye."

"Yeah, well," Raye folded her arms, settling into her seat, glaring around,

"I just wish . . . well," she shifted around, staring at the table. "I just wish we knew what it was. Then we could fight it with her. For her, if we need to." There were murmurs of agreement around their circle of eight, an empty seat down on one end of the table.

"Either way," Mina decided, "we'll keep our eyes and ears open. If there is some new enemy, then they'll attack. And we'll know what to fight."

"Hotaru?" Lita asked the young girl next to her. Dark purple eyes looked up as she set the can down. "Did you sense anything when you tried to heal her last night?"

Hotaru fidgeted, wringing her hands in her lap, the straight cut of her hair slanting downward as she tried to sift though her memories. "Something . . . dark. But not evil. But still evil. I don't . . . I don't know. If it's a youma, then it's hiding very well. All I felt was the Princess. There was nothing to fight."

There was a moment of silence, and then, very softly, a light voice was heard to say, "The most dangerous demons are the ones we create for ourselves . . . ."

"What?" Several voices asked immediately, startled, but hearing the same words. They searched for the source of the words, and the only one who did not look up was the one who spoke, the scout of Water, who sat on the other side of the scout of Silence.

Amy's wide, indigo eyes turned upward from her lap, and she placed her hands around the warm coffee cup. "A friend told me that once. Maybe . . . maybe Serena is . . . well . . . " Amy trailed off. "Oh, I sound so silly."

"Who?" Trista asked quietly. "And why do you think Serena fights herself?" Eyes shifted from Amy to Trista, and back again as she completed her question.

"Herself?" Lita asked, bewildered. "How can a person fight themself? Amy?"

"It was just a thought . . . I'm sure I'm imagining things. Never mind it . . . ."

"Like hell!" Lita pounded a fist on the table. "Amy, if you have an idea-"

"Lita!" Mina broke in, standing and leaning over the table, looking at her friend. "There are other people here," she ended in a low voice, eyes checking people several tables over, who were staring at them. Lita saw this, and hunched down, lowering her voice as Mina returned to her seat, munching idly on a potato chip.

"Fine . . . but Amy, right now, we'll take about anything. What is it?"

Amy looked at her friends and fellow soldiers, graced with the blessings of the planets. She was reluctant to tell them of how she had felt only a little more than three weeks ago. The depression that she was worthless, that she was powerless. She was stronger now, having faced it. Having come to understand it. But such things were deeply private, and she did not wish for even her closest friends to know. Not about the feeling of despair when your dream is torn away. Not of the sensation of water filling her lungs, and river rocks breaking her bones in the storm. She shuddered at the memory of it. No, she couldn't tell them such things. But there was Serena to think of. And Lita was right.

"Not so long ago," Amy began carefully, "I wasn't feeling so well. You remember?" She looked at Mina, who nodded. She remembered coming to Amy's apartment with Serena, when Amy had missed school. "I told you that my friend died . . . Kami? You remember?" Mina was continuing to nod, urging Amy to continue with her story. The other scouts were watching the blue haired one, and there was the sound of them moving slightly as they did so, breathing and sipping coffee and eating chips. Amy took a breath and continued. "Kami . . . well. Kami didn't just die. She . . . she drowned herself . . . ."

There were murmurs of sadness among the group, and Hotaru put a hand on Amy's arm to comfort her. It seemed wrong that the youngest of them knew the pain of death better than any.

"Kami had her dreams torn from her . . . it doesn't really fit Serena, but Kami told me that our greatest demons are ones we create for ourselves. She helped me when I was so down . . . kept showing me scenes of what made her happy, and it helped me to understand myself better . . . . Like I said, it's silly . . . it doesn't apply to Serena at all . . . ."

"Amy . . . " Trista began, garnet eyes intent on the younger girl. "How did this Kami person show you scenes of her life?"

Amy looked up at Trista, becoming uncomfortable in her gaze. "In my dreams. It was very strange . . . she would come, and act like we had known each other forever. But she knew the whole time . . . that it was just a dream."

"She created the world of the dream?" Startled at Trista's sudden sharpness, Amy met her eyes. The various girls were all watching this peculiar conversation between the two, Trista's intensity, and Amy's uncertainty.

"Yes."

Trista's head bowed, and she looked deep into the depths of her coffee, her shoulders bent as she thought.

"What?" Amara asked, seeing her eyes considering beneath the strip of hair

that fell over her shoulder. "What is it?"

"Nothing. An impossibility, as Amy said," Trista decided with a frown, then drank from her styrofoam cup, as though that was to be the end of the matter.

"Trista . . . ." Lita began warningly, beginning to stand from her seat.

Michelle grabbed her skirt and pulled her down. "Calm yourself, Jupiter."

At the sound of her scouts name, Lita subsided, folding her arms. "I just don't see why we have to pry things out of her every time we need some information," Lita managed, looking pleadingly at the others for help, finally settling on Mina. "Mina, help me out here."

Mina looked around, running a finger in idle circles on the dark, fake wood table as she thought. "Lita is right. Trista, even if it is impossible, I think we all want to hear it anyway." There were nods, slowly, but one by one they agreed. They wanted the story.

Trista sighed heavily. "If this Kami person is dead, then there is likely nothing that can be done."

"Oh, for the love of God, Trista," Amara groaned. "Out with it!"

"Very well," Trista agreed at last. "It is the past, and I do not see how it would harm the future." She settled herself, and the others got ready to hear whatever tale Trista was crafting in her head. "Once upon a time, in the Old Silver Millennium, the royalty of a planet were to have a child. This child was to have the power of death, for all things must eventually end."

Trista looked up to the ceiling, and Hotaru felt a strange feeling begin to form in her stomach. Not quite sickness, but as though thinking of something terribly sad.

"But it was not to be. She would have been the oldest of us, my elder by some few months. In those times, the people of the Moon were still new to the system of Sol, and the worlds were still in the delicate terraforming processes. Those of us outside the asteroid belt had a more difficult time of it, our planets being unstable. Only Jupiter remained in close contact with the Moon and its Kingdom. The rest drifted, allied but far, our own worlds to worry us. So it was with the ice rings of Saturn. The child that the queen expected was stillborn.

"It was known in those days, that Sleep and Death were as siblings, and they are remembered even today as brothers in legend. The eldest was to be Death, the younger, Sleep. When at last the queen produced a child, the realm of the dead was passed to her, and the power of the Silence Glaive. Before a new daughter was born, the Silver Millennium fell. The power Amy described, and the ability to slip between minds is very like what I have heard to be the power over dreams. It was how the lemures of the Dead Moon Circus invaded our thoughts, though darkly." When Trista remained silent for a moment, they realized the story was complete.

Hotaru looked at Trista from across the table. "I had a sister?"

Trista smiled sadly at her adopted daughter, pitying her. Having someone would have helped her so much though her life. "You would have, Hotaru. You would have." Hotaru lowered her head to think, not sure what this meant.

"Wait a minute," Mina said as she rubbed her forehead, trying to take this in. "If there was supposed to be a scouts of dreams . . . dreams, right?"

Trista shrugged. "That was the idea."

"Okay. Then if there was supposed to be a scouts of dreams, why wasn't she reincarnated with the rest of us?"

It was Hotaru who answered, her reason simple. "She wasn't alive when Queen Serenity sent our souls to the future. She was either already Riencarnated, or was still in the afterworld."

There were blinks from around the table.

"Then we get her!" Raye exclaimed suddenly. "We get Kami! If she can get into people's dreams . . . their minds . . . all of it . . . then she can wake Serena up, or help her fight off whatever it is that's got her in that coma!" The only ones who did not jump up in excitement were Amy, Hotaru and Trista, who seemed to actually understand the situation.

"Girls," Amy began, only to be drowned out by the chatter of the scouts. "Girls?"

More talking.

Amy glanced at Trista and Hotaru, who shrugged, shaking their heads, leaving it up to her. Amy sighed, placed her fingers in her mouth and whistled long and sharp. The others were so surprised at the loud sound coming from the usually quiet girl, they blinked in surprise, then settled in to listen.

"Other people, remember?" Amy gestured at the rest of the cafeteria. A few more people had begun to wander in, since it was approaching dinnertime. "Quiet, okay?"

Quick nods.

"Girls," Amy began as she settled herself into her chair, "Kami is dead. She has been for nearly nine hundred years. Dead, remember? She can't help us."

"You can't contact her somehow?" Michelle asked, leaning over the table, her hair waving down like a curtain behind her. She folded her arms over her uniform as she shook her head. "There has to be some way."

"Kami came to me, not me to her. I don't know how. We don't even know if she really is a scouts. We can't jump to conclusions."

"But if there's a chance . . . ." Raye argued, placing her fists on the table. "If there's a chance, we have to try it. We'd be failing if we didn't even try."

"So you're talking about what?" Lita asked, polishing off her coffee with a gulp. She picked a fuzzy off her uniform. "Going to the underworld?"

Dead silence.

Lita began to absorb the consequences of her words, and paled. They had died before, but to actually make a trip deliberately? They weren't Sailor Moon. They didn't have the Imperium Crystal. They had no way to revive themselves if something went wrong. None of them ever had kept their memories of the afterworld. Who knew what existed there?

"I'll go," a little voice said into the silence. Eyes turned to Hotaru, who met their gazes. She straightened herself in her chair, placing her arms on the table and looking defiant. "I am the Soldier of Death and Destruction. And she may have been my sister. It is my realm. If any of us can survive it, then let me try."

"You most certainly will not!" Michelle responded instantly, every motherly sense she had towards Hotaru rebelling against such an action. "That is completely out of the question!"

"Michelle-mama . . . ."

"No! Like Trista and Amy said, there isn't even a way to reach her."

It was Amy who thought of an idea just then, and she offered it. "Unless one of Pluto's timekeys can open a portal into the underworld."

More silence.

"Trista? Will it?"

Trista crushed the empty styrofoam cup in her hands, a bitter look on her features.

"Then I'm going too," Amy announced, Trista's thoughts on the idea clear. "I've seen Kami. She will know me. She will," Amy repeated firmly, to chase away the doubts of the others, and the doubts of herself.

"Amy, you can't be serious-" Raye began, but was cut off when Amy locked gazes with the opposing element.

"Raye, I hope you're not suggesting that I'm incompetent."

Raye paled, and amended hastily, "No, no of course not . . . .but let me come too then. I'm a priestess, I know about-"

"No!" Trista snapped, banging her fist against the table. "No! Hotaru and Amy. That is all. I will not risk any more scouts's lives in what is very likely a futile attempt! Absolutely no more than these two, for the reasons they have stated! Space is my realm, and I will not allow it!" The quiet fury in Trista's voice negated any further argument. "Absolutely not," she repeated, looking each in the eyes. "Such a thing has never been attempted outside of myth. I do not know if it will even work. Nothing may happen. Or they may die. I do not know. I will not risk the lives of any more scouts. That is final."

And so it was decided. To the Underworld, only two would go.

NOTE: so...what do you guys think? please review so i know if it's even worth it to put up the other chapters.