The next day, Haruka and Michiru reported to Setsuna.

"So what have you learned?"

"Well, we know her boyfriend goes by the name Diamond because we saw him at a club a few months ago, but we don't know if that's a nickname or not. He drives a BMW, black, pristine, expensive for his age. He looks around 18-20." Michiru reported on the more innocuous information.

"We also know he and Usagi are hornballs who like fancy food. They went to Morimoto's for dinner on Saturday and then they went to the beach where they went at it like rabbits."

"You mean …"

Haruka made a circle with one hand and plunged two fingers from her other hand into it. "Granted, they thought they were alone on the beach, but still, hornballs."

"We left after that," Michiru said, glaring at her lover.

"So you have no idea who he is or where he came from?"

"Not yet, although I did write down his license plate, so maybe we can figure out something about him that way."

Setsuna grumbled. She was debating whether or not she should tell Endymion. On one hand, she could really use an ally who had seen the future to help her get things back on track, on the other hand, he has the most to lose if Usagi won't go back to Mamoru, so he may behave rashly.

What really irritated her was all of the doors the future seemed to have. There had been a clear path to Crystal Tokyo, but now it was muddled.


As far as Endymion's was concerned, his plan was going as intended. Mamoru ended it with Usagi and kept his distance. He would do whatever it took to protect her. Now it was time to reunite them, so that they could face the enemy that would be coming for Chibiusa.

He sent the same nightmare to Usagi, knowing that once she had it, she would understand why Mamoru dumped her and would seek him out.

"RUN!"

Usagi tries to run away, but it is too late, she gets sucked into a hole made by a youma and the hole only gets bigger, swallowing everyone. "If you love him, you will stay away."

Usagi snapped awake, weirded out by the dream. Is that what Mamoru has been going through all this time? That was dreadful.

Diamond felt her stirring in the bed and wrapped his arms around her. She leaned into his chest and went back to sleep.

When she woke up, her brain felt tired, like it was still trying to process. She grumbled when Diamond asked her if she wanted breakfast.

"Earth to Odango!"

"Huh!"

"What is it Love? You were all shaky last night and now, you're totally gone."

"I had a dreadful nightmare." She explained it to him. "I think Mamoru has been having the same one."

"Shared dreams? That is weird. Maybe Rubeus can help."

"How?"

"He's a dream weaver. He can go into your dreams and look for what's causing the nightmares."

"Really? I don't know if or when the nightmare will come back, but maybe we should try it anyway."

"I'll see when he's free."

After she got home, she called Mamoru.

He hadn't seen her number calling him in months. "Usagi?"

"Hi, Mamoru. I was wondering if you were free to talk. I had a nightmare last night. I think it's the one you've been having."

What? What else did this youma want? They broke up for good!

"Um, sure. Meet at Crown?"

They met there an hour later. Motoki was surprised to see them together. "So you two can talk without killing each other."

"Yes, but I might kill you," Mamoru glared at him, way to make this even more awkward.

"Okay, minding my own business." Motoki ran away.

Usagi described what happened. It was virtually identical to his dream.

"And last night was the first one?"

"Yes. I don't know what this guy wants. We have stayed away from each other."

"I know. I wish there was a way to track him down."

"Actually, there might be. I have a friend who's a dream weaver."

"A what?"

"He can go in your dreams. If we have the nightmare in front of him, he can try and go inside our dream and figure out who's causing them. I don't know of his success rate, so it might fail, or we might not have the nightmare in front of them."

"Mine are pretty routine. I have one every Wednesday."

"Still?"

"Yeah, still."

"I'll see if he can do Wednesday."

"Sounds good."


Haruka and Michiru were able to hack into the police database and find Diamond's license plate number. Car is registered to a Derek Kuro Age 18.

They found his address from his driver's license information and ran a search on the house, co owned by: Derek Kuro and Sergei Kuro.

Now who are the Kuros? They did a search on the two boys. Derek Kuro graduated high school as valedictorian at 16.

"Now let's look for him in his school paper," Haruka mumbled to herself. Aha. His valedictory address. He thanks his mother and his father rest their souls. So they're dead?

She struggled with surching for them without their names. Just searching Kuro had too many people.

"Hey Michiru?"

"What?"

"If you were looking for what happened to someone's dead parents, but you didn't know their names, where would you look?"

"An newspaper article. It would probably reference their kids."

"Duh!" She tried searching dead, father Kuro, Derek, Sergei. She found it, an article one for a man Widower and Father of Two Killed in Head-on Collision. She started skimming. His wife died of breast cancer six months before. Ouch!

Haruka researched the parents, but they seemed to be normal people. The wife had been an artist and her husband was the CEO of a tech company, which explains why the kids seem to be well off. So Usagi fell for a normal boy with a normal family. Not what Setsuna was expecting to find, but there's nothing here.

She called Setsuna, but the girl was out, so she left a message.

Setsuna went to the time gate, looking for a clue to explain to her what had happened to time. She looked for signs of tampering, but the gate seemed to be working as designed

Chibiusa still has the key, so how could someone have passed without me knowing?

She needed more information. She went back home and found that Haruka had left a message.

She called her back. "Can you and Mich come over? Yeah, an hour's good."

Setsuna took a long shower, trying to get her nerves to calm down. Her position gave her so much stress.

The doorbell rang. Setsuna let them in, her hair still wet from her shower.

They came inside. "Still have wet hair. Did you just wake up?" Haruka teased.

"No. I feel like crud."

"Whoa! Let's get to it then, so we can get out of here."

"So Usagi's boyfriend is named Derek Kuro. He's 18, graduated high school at 16 and has a little brother Sergei. Both their parents died. Mother had cancer and father died in a car crash. It looks like they have no other family, and we couldn't find anything weird about them."

"So you're telling me, Usagi fell in love with a normal boy and not some super villain."

"From what we can tell, he's just average. There was nothing special about his parents and we followed him around for days. He didn't conjure up any youma or anything."

"He teaches English as a second language. That's all we got."

Setsuna growled.

"Isn't this good? It means Usagi isn't in any danger from him."

"That is good," but it would make it harder for her to end up with Mamoru. If he had been a villain, than Usagi would have had to defeat him and them she could fall for Mamoru again.


Wednesday Night

Usagi and Mamoru were lying down in bed. "I never thought our first night in bed would be like this," he laughed.

"Baka!" She swatted him with a pillow.

Rubeus was making an elixir out of various herbs that he had in his messanger bag.

"What is that for?"

"It will help you remember your dream when you wake up. I doubt that I will recognize whoever is causing your nightmares, but you might. I'm going to try to lure him out so you can see his face."

They each drank half of the vial he had prepared.

"That tastes like socks," Usagi told him.

"Dirty socks," Mamoru added.

"I don't know what socks you've been eating, but I promise, there were no socks involved."


Diamond and Sapphire were in Sapphire's room, discussing his relationship with Minako.

"She asked me if I wanted to have sex." Sergei sounded scared as he said this.

"Do you not?"

"I do, but what if I'm bad at it. Like really bad. I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't think she does either, and what if I hurt her or something."

Diamond started snickering.

"You jerk!" Sapphire smacked him.

"Chill, little bro. Look. This is one of those things you have to find out by doing. Will your first time be the best? Certainly not, but you have to do it sometime. If you just psych yourself out, it will be worse. You just have to relax and take your time. Think about what she already likes and make sure to do that before you get to the main event."

Sergei was confused. "What do you mean stuff she likes?"

"You know," Diamond raised his brow. "Tell me you've given her an orgasm before."

"What?" he squeaked. "All we've done is kiss."

"What? No wonder you're freaked out. You can't go to home plate, without going past the other bases."

"What does baseball have to do with this?"

"Sapphire, there are plenty of ways for you to please Minako without having sex with her and you need to start there. If you rush into it, it's just going to be terrible."

"No offense, but didn't you and Usagi rush into it?"

"No. We didn't even start having sex until last week."

"Then what were those noises that came out of your room all summer."

Diamond just realized how little his brother knew about intimacy. "This is going to take a while."


Usagi fell asleep easily. Mamoru on the other hand was struggling. It was so weird having her this close to him again. He could smell her perfume and hear her breathing as she slept.

Eventually, his eyes became too heavy and he passed out.

Usagi looked peaceful at first, muttering happily as she slept. After a couple of hours, however, she started to twitch. Rubeus put his hand on her forehead and recited an incantation before his world went black.

He focused his eyes and saw the shadow of a man. He started chasing him, going from a run into a sprint as the man tried to escape. The man, however, was too fast. All Rubeus saw was a man in white. He quickly jumped into Mamoru's dream, hoping the man went there next.

There he was, creating the same nightmare. Rubeus started sprinting towards him. Halfway through the dream, the man saw him and started to run away. He was very fast. Rubeus couldn't catch him, but this is a dream, so he cheated. "Paralyzing dart" he dreamt one up and threw it at the man, causing him to freeze as he fell onto the ground. Rubeus dragged the man into the middle of the dream.

"This is the guy who's been making your nightmares. Do you know him?"

Rubeus left the man there for Mamoru to get a good look and then he jumped out of the dream.

Usagi had already woken up at this point and Rubeus was just coming to. "Did you see him?" he asked her.

"No, but I saw you chasing him."

Unfortunately, Mamoru couldn't wake up until his dream invader woke up. Endymion was trapped there until he realized he could just dream up an antidote to cure his paralysis.

Endymion got up off the floor. "Who the hell was that?" he wondered. He didn't see who ambushed him. Has someone else been messing with Mamoru's dreams?

He got up and escaped, allowing Mamoru to wake up, dreary eyed. "Was that you in my nightmare?" Mamoru asked Rbeus.

"Yes, I caught the dream maker. Did you get a good look?"

"I did, and he looked like me."

"What?"

"Not me, but maybe my past life or something."

"You have a past life? This shit is weird."

"I saw him, the man who was making my nightmares and I think he was me."

"Well, that is a surprise," Rubeus said dryly. "So you either have a split personality, a doppelganger, or ….."

"Your future self came here," Usagi stated.

"You think?" Mamoru asked her.

"Well, I can tell when I am seeing my past life, and I assume you could do if yours was visiting you, but you wouldn't know your future self, so it makes more sense that your future self came to the present."

"But why would my future self conspire to break us up?"

"I have no idea, but it's the best guess we got."

They debated on what to do next. Mamoru wanted to find this double, but he didn't know where to look. Usagi thought they should get everyone together and see collectively what they knew about time travel, but Mamoru was hesitant to get everyone involved and amped up without more information.

They agreed to try Luna and Artemis first as they were the most levelheaded and see where that goes.

The next day, after school, Usagi told Luna about the dreams.

"You think it was Mamoru's future self?"

"It looked just like him, well according to Mamoru. I didn't see him. Maybe it could have been a disguise, but that just seems convoluted to me."

"How so?"

"The only way to see who is in your dreams is with a dream weaver, so if it were a disguise than whomever is behind this would have had to know that we would have a dream weaver available or else the disguise is for naught."

"I suppose that is a bit farfetched. But how would he have gotten into the past."

"The same way Chibiusa did."

Luna shrugged. "Why wouldn't he just contact his past self directly?"

"Maybe there are rules against that."

"There could be." Luna needed to mull this over. "Have you told the other scouts?"

"No, Mamoru doesn't want to involve them before he knows more, but I don't know how to get more information. This guy might not appear in our dreams again, since he got seen the last time."

Luna decided to talk to Artemis while Usagi got started on her homework.


She heard a whimpering sound. "Chibiusa?" Usagi found the girl curled up in a ball with Luna-P. "What's wrong?" She sat down next to the girl and started stroking her hair.

"I miss my mommy and I want to go home!"

Usagi hugged her. "I know. It must be so hard being in a different time and away from everyone you knew, but we'll save her and we'll get you home." I don't know how, but we will.

"The worse part is, it's all my fault. They came after me, but Mom fought them and she got hurt."

"It isn't your fault," Usagi insisted, a bit louder than she had intended. "Your mother protected you because she loves you and that's what mother's do. They fight for their kids no matter what. She was there for you then and we'll be there for you now."

"When do you think I'll be able to go home? It's been so long."

"I know, and I'm surprised we haven't heard anything from those people how came after you before. It's like they gave up, but we'll figure it out." Usagi had an idea. "Did you ever meet Mamoru's future self in your timeline?"

Chibiusa looked up. "Why?"

"I think he came to the present. Mamoru saw him, but he left before he could reach him. We were wondering if he came here the way you did."

Chibiusa was told not to say who her parents were or that her father had come to the present, to try and minimalize disruptions to the timeline, but if he got caught, that could be a problem. "My mom knows him." She didn't elaborate further.

How does her mother know the king of Crystal Tokyo? "Well, we'll figure it out, and when we find him, maybe he can help us save your mom."

Chibiusa needed to find Sailor Pluto. "Do you have a phone book?"

The girl wrote down Setsuna's number and decided to call her the next day. It was almost Chibiusa's bedtime.

Setsuna was awakened by a phone call.

"Hello?"

"Is this Setsuna?"

"It depends. Who are you?"

"It's me. Chibiusa!"

"Small Lady. What can I do for you?" And why are you calling so early?

"Usagi asked me questions about my father, and I didn't know what to tell her."

"What did she want to know?"

"She wanted to know if I knew Mamoru in my timeline. She said that Mamoru thought he saw his future self, but he disappeared before he could reach him."

Setsuna gulped. That's not good, especially if Endymion learns that Usagi has found a new lover. "Have you heard from your dad?"

"Not since he sent me to get the silver crystal," which she still didn't have.

"If you do hear from him or see him, give me a call."

"Okay, and what should I say if Usagi asks any more questions."

"You can tell her to find me."