So, it's been a few years since I've written on this. Family life and writing myself into a corner that I couldn't see out of, and drama, and things and stuff ;) I've gone back through and hopefully caught typos, grammar errors and things in the previous chapters, and added or changed a few lines here and there, particularly with chapter seven. Man, I seem to have loved ellipses. So many bits of dialogue that ended in ellipses!

Anyway, here's the continuation, and please hanker at me to actually finish. I want to start finishing these things, as it will help me finish the non fan-fiction works that I've got in the pipe line too.

EIGHT

I'm bursting with information for Rei and Minako when I get home, but they're not there. I know I must slump when I come through the door and find the house empty. There's a note on the fridge's whiteboard which lets me know they had a meeting with Shatcho to work some things out about the show they're going to be doing. They're expecting to be back sometime within the next half hour when I check the clock.

At first I think Artemis must somehow be with them, but as I change out of my work clothes to take a shower I catch sight of him sleeping on one of the shelves in my closet. After the shower and change I'm Googling recipes that use ingredients we now have in the house thanks to Minako's shopping spree when the door unlocks and Rei comes in followed by Minako.

"I don't care how cute they were—," Rei is saying, "there's something off about the WHOLE thing."

"Ami-chan, you're home!" Minako says. I wonder if she's attempting to divert the subject.

"Yes," I glance up from the computer and greet them, "it seems your day was as interesting as mine."

Rei harrumphs and drops onto the sofa putting down a couple of bags. She starts massaging her feet after she adjusts the pillows a little bit.

"Or not," I look to Minako for explanation as she is getting drinks from the kitchen and seems in less of a bad mood.

"The Three Lights are cute but weird in person," she says.

"Weird?" I turn away from the computer now, and look between them both.

"They're not weird! They're—and it's not just them," Rei says, "Michelle Ocean isn't what I'd call normal either, but with her it's different."

That's not really clearing things up for me, but my confusion must be apparent given Minako says: "Rei-chan thinks the Three Lights are aliens."

"I don't think they're aliens Minako-chan. They are aliens. Their energy feels almost exactly the same as the—the—bondage senshi from the other day. I don't even want to do the damn concert. I don't care what Michelle Ocean requested. She bribed Shatcho to get you here not me! This is all just too—and they ARE aliens!"

"Okay, so not only are they aliens they gender shift or something? Because I think you can agree those were clearly marvelous pectorals on Seiya today and not breasts. I like to think I know the difference. Ami-chan, what's your news?" Minako asks, giggling at Rei.

"Well, I did encounter a cross-dresser, actually…" They calm down enough so that I can relay everything that the teacher told me and the latest coma victim, "It's clearly a different youma. It sounds almost like it absorbed a car, or some of the parts, based on what Alex told me it looked like. Sounded like she was just parroting an expected explanation really, I don't think she believed a word of it."

"Some people aren't sheep." Rei remarks, guess we can check out the race track, or at least travel by there and see if we can get a sense of where it went. Good distraction." She glances at Minako.

"I'm not saying I disagree with you entirely. I just don't see how. Maybe there's a whole troop of them, and the guys are for some weird reason in a rock band and the girls are going around fighting youma." She shrugs, "We have to track down their music anyway, so we can learn some of the harmonies maybe there's something there. They've basically popped up out of nowhere, and I know Michelle has some weird energy with the things she's played. I've heard some of her work before and I always felt transported and I used to lace things into mine as best I could."

I set some of the music to download onto the computer.

"FINE." Rei says. She goes into her bag and picks out some things, and sets them on the living area side of the breakfast bar from where I'm setting up to cook. Minako and I have decided on one of the recipes I found and I become her prep chef while she does the main portion of the cooking. Rei seems a bit calmer now, "I picked these up at a store if you're okay with it I thought I might be able to try for fire reading without destroying the place. She shows me a big iron pan and a smaller bowl. She has what looks like some potpourri and a bundle of sage leaves and a couple of newspapers.

"Or we could invite Harris and his sister for a beach barbecue and see what she can come up with then?" Minako teases.

I can't help but blush and then almost cut myself trying to cool my face down with my hands.

"Don't hurt yourself!" Minako says, grabbing the arm with the knife and moving it away from my face.

"It's fine, Rei-chan. Go ahead. I'll just take the battery out of the smoke detector."

"Thanks," she says, and begins set up.

Rei has a small blaze going by the time I'm finished helping Minako and I slip by her cautiously to check what's going on with the computer. The songs have been downloaded for quite a while, and as I queue them up to play I realize I've heard some of Michelle Ocean's work playing through the lobby speakers at the hospital, and Minako is right about it being other-worldly.

Not wanting to potentially disturb Rei's work turning the music on I instead look up the Lights and Michelle's respective websites. I'm part way through the Lights bio detailing their sudden rise to fame and their gratefulness to all their fans who've helped make everything possible, when Minako starts to ask me something. She thinks better of it after a moment, afraid of interrupting Rei, and instead turns the temperature down on the food and walks over. She's almost to me when Rei falls backwards off the stool she was on. Tears are streaming down her face. Minako goes to pick her up instead and hugs her before I get there.

"What happened? What did you see?"

Rei shakes her head for a moment. She takes several deep breaths and leans against Minako's shoulder for a moment, "It wasn't so much saw as felt. There's a rift. There's a lot of pain and anguish. It's hard to explain."

I pick up the stool and move it out of the way as Minako leads Rei to the couch.

"I know better. I should have ironed things out in my head more, but everything is so screwed up right now," she shakes her head, "I was trying to find out about the other senshi the bondage girls had talked about, but of course, that made me think of them and the Lights and all of that mess, and I just felt this incredible sense of loss, of violence-war. Then there was this…this presence. Darkness. Worse than Beryl or Kaguya or any of that. It felt like it was trying to rip me apart from the inside and I felt like I was falling. Well, I guess I was falling." She gives a small laugh, "I just kept hearing this noise…then there was also bits of laughter, and feeling things breaking, and buildings falling, almost being crushed, trying to get away, trying to find someone, panic, and just death-so much death."She's crying again.

I get her a glass of water and she accepts it, drinking deeply and then setting it down on the table nearby where I put several napkins left over from the take out the other day not having any tissues in the house.

"What do you think it means?" Minako asks.

"Whatever this is it came from them." Rei says, firmly, "I'm very sure that was where they used to live that was what was full of war and terror, and that this…thing is what caused it. I'm," she sighed, "I don't want to accuse them of bringing it—well, no, I kinda do, but I can't let my ticked off mood color what I saw. I'm honestly not sure if they were chasing it in this direction or they were chasing something else and it was chasing them."

Minako sighs, "What about them being the same as the Three Lights?"

"I don't know on that." Rei says, "I still feel like their energy is the same but nothing in what I just saw confirmed," she puts a hand up to stop Minako saying something, "or denies," she continues, "my suspicions on that."

"I'll give you that."

"Don't they-." I pause going back to the computer and pulling up the music list, "They do."

"Do what?" Minako asks.

"The Three Lights, they have a song called "Chasing After You.""

"Not that that means anything." Minako puts in.

"Of course they also have "My Friend's Love" and—."

Rei cuts me off, "Just play them. Maybe Minako's not the only one who can put magic into music."

So, we listen to the music as Minako brings over bowls of food for us all, and we listen to the tracks again. The lyrics can be a little hard to follow at times, there is a small feeling of tension in some of them but overall it's just music. It sounds like any number of other boy bands lamenting that they want a girl who they can't have, or that they're searching for a way to be themselves, or they want to get down and have fun.

"Maybe it's different if they're live." Minako says after a moment.

"Don't try to appease me." Rei says.

"I'm not!" she says, "I just don't want to discount what you're saying. You're the psychic one. You have these feelings for a reason. I just…some of it makes NO sense even you have to admit that."

Rei sighs.

I go to turn the music off.

"Did you get any of Michelle Ocean's stuff?" Minako asks.

I nod, "I did. I think I've heard some of it at work before."

"Probably," Minako says, "She has some 'relaxing classic' albums playing up on the whole ocean thing, whale and dolphin songs and such as well as the more modern poppy-techno stuff."

I switch over to her prompt and press play. There is the sound of the waves and a few clicks from dolphins, a piano starts softly playing almost like a rumbling sound and then it begins to pick out a subtle melody which is answered by the more intricate violin.

It's like it's playing to my inner being, I feel like I want to cry almost, the feeling I had when Harris met me at the fountain the other day, as though the water is calling to me. I look towards Rei and Minako and they seem as though they're so far away, the energy swirling around them, showing me their other forms. It's as though the apartment folds away around us.

I'm underwater. I'm not the only one there. There's another girl, a woman, she's swimming beneath me, long blue-green hair flowing behind her. She shimmers as she swims. A mermaid. I start to swim down towards her, but she's deeper than I can go. I try to push myself but I don't have that control. When I surface there's someone watching the water. They're watching her, not me, though I attract their attention coming up. I want to look around and see where everything is but it's not that sort of dream. I can only do what I did.

"Oor-rahn-uss," I hear myself saying.

"Mah-cure-ee," they reply, "all is good?"

"Yes. I needed that." I glance back to the water, "She's able to go so much deeper."

"She has reason."

"You never join her."

"Water is not my thing. Too wet." She gives a strange smile, perhaps a memory of her own and shakes her head, blonde, almost dusty. Then she pats me on the shoulder, "Your little princess needs you I'm sure. Go on."

She walks passed me towards the water, picking up a small stone as she does, and I walk on. Now I can see where I am. There's a large palace, white stone, marble, maybe? And it's many towers. There are others milling about, some seem half familiar, but I can't place anyone.

Then the scene is ripped from me. Its night time suddenly and there's someone singing from the large room behind me that's full of people. I'm running somewhere. My brain hasn't caught up with what exactly is going on. A meeting? Something important that's being set up. As I run up the stairs, the swimming woman and "Oor-ran-uss" are coming down the middle of the stair case.

They're arguing but I can't hear it all. There's something about refugees, the Queen, travel. When they see me stopped on the stairs the green haired woman gives a short wave, but then someone else calls, "Nep-chuun" from the shadows of the other side of the main room. This person is extremely tall, and her hair falls almost down to her feet and she doesn't quite make it into the light of the room. Nep-chuun runs down the stairs slowly followed by Oor-ran-uss and they quickly go off somewhere.

As I turn to continue my way up the stairs there's someone standing on the landing above me who I didn't see. At first I think it's Mars, but as she turns to speak to me I realize it's not, "It's all going to end, you know." She says, "It's coming to our region first, and then it will come here. The Queen doesn't listen to us, now we have to leave and we won't see you again."

"I don't thin—that can't be true."

"It is." She reaches a hand towards my face, "Don't worry. We know our duty." As she touches my face I want to cry, "We do what we must and then she will see what happens and things will be differ-." Then she trails off looking beyond me and her voice catches, and then she fixes me with a watery smile, "We'll meet again, somewhere." She says, gives me a long tight hug, and runs down the stairs and out after where the others went.

I want to go after her, but my body is trapped in what I realize now is a memory, and so it goes barreling up the stairs calling out for someone else whose name I don't make out as the palace walls fade from the stairs to a garden and there we all are, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and the Princess watching as the four figures zip through a portal from the gardens of the Moon to another planet, sent like beams of light.

The Princesses face mirrors our own, "Mother says they'll be back soon, just scouting. I don't…" and she bursts into tears. Venus reaches to comfort her and a firm masculine hand rests on my shoulder and I turn looking to the white haired face, his features are blurred by my own tears. As he starts to say something I feel myself tumbling, the dark sky and the shaded trees fall away and I'm back to my apartment struggling to my feet.

Rei and Minako look equally dazed and there we all sit with tears in our eyes each equally crestfallen. I don't have the voice to say anything, to ask them what they saw. The quietness in the room is so all encompassing it's as if its' sucking out even the will to make sound.