Notes: Episode 162, "The Center of the Darkness Dead Moon Circus" (Or, "The one where the Senshi infiltrate the circus.")

Episode 162

If Serenity thought they'd get away without some kind of security detail in place, she was sorely mistaken. Rei reviewed the latest plans for the fifth time that day. She'd been pouring over them for nearly a week, and refused to sign off until they'd gotten it right. Serenity believed Crystal Tokyo was a haven. It was Rei's job to ensure Serenity could KEEP believing it.

That wasn't going to happen with such spotty coverage in quadrant B1. "Sloppy," Rei muttered, typing out notes on the holographic display. Not for the first time she missed the tactile sensation of bashing real keys. You're protecting your queen, not a sack of flour. Act like it!

Rei was so busy grumbling to herself – damn Serenity for insisting she make a personal appearance at this festival! – that she nearly missed the door entry chime. If it was Minako coming back to tell her, again, to stop worrying, Rei was going to lose it.

She would've killed Minako by now, but that would leave D5 unforgivably under-protected.

"Come in," Rei said, not looking away from her screens. Were they really trying to get away with only three units in the food pavilion? It was THE FOOD PAVILION. Did these morons even know who Neo-Queen Serenity WAS? Rei's fingers flew as she added new scathing commentary to her response. More than a minute passed before Rei remembered someone else should be in the room.

She swiveled in her chair and was surprised to see PallaPalla standing before her desk, arms clasped and head down. As soon as they'd made eye contact, PallaPalla broke into a wide and innocent grin, then seemed to remember herself and looked down again.

"PallaPalla?" Rei prompted, her security work temporarily forgotten.

"Lady Mars-sama!" The young girl bowed even lower. "PallaPalla didn't want to wait one more second! PallaPalla came to apologize right away!"

Rei was used to most everybody needing to apologize for something, but she was drawing a blank on PallaPalla and rest of the Amazon Quartet. "Asteroid Senshi" now, she supposed. They'd only been in this time for a little over a week, which hardly seemed long enough to have done anything warranting apologizing.

Then again …

"What for?" Rei asked with forced nonchalance. Her eyes flicked to the drawer where she kept a squishy stress cow that Ami had given her for Christmas untold years ago. She'd never admit to it, but she loved that thing. A squishy stress cow would not go amiss at the moment.

Impossibly, PallaPalla seemed to bow lower yet. "The ball," she said in a mournful voice.

The what? Rei searched her memory and came up empty. Her strongest recollection of the Quartet was when they had worked together on a Coming of Age celebration, but that hadn't been anywhere near fancy enough to be considered a ball. And besides, the ones who had really pissed Rei off then were the red one and the pink one (what were their names again?), not PallaPalla.

"Lady Jupiter-sama said that in order for PallaPalla to show she was truly sorry for being bad, she had to apologize to everyone she had been bad to." She clasped her hands and peered at Rei with huge watery eyes. "She is truly, truly sorry for trying to smoosh you with her giant ball!"

Like most everything from that weird time period, what little Rei could remember was fuzzy and confused. "Dream fog," Ami had said, which none of them really understood, but Rei long accepted confusion as an occasional feature of their lives. With everything else that had happened over the centuries, and the endless parade of creative ways Rei had been nearly killed (or sometimes ACTUALLY killed), a giant ball really didn't rank.

It was important to PallaPalla though, that much was clear. "Apology accepted," Rei told her, and turned back to her security report.

Only to be face-to-face with PallaPalla. Rei swallowed her scream.

"PallaPalla wants to give you a present to make up for it!" she said, pumping her fists up and down in her enthusiasm.

"That really won't be necessary," Rei told her. Her eye caught the display again and twitched as she spotted a glaring hole near the anti-grav rides.

"You're grumpy!" PallaPalla recognized, thrusting a finger at Rei like she'd just identified some strange new creature and not just basically described the Rei Hino condition. "Do you like dolls? PallaPalla can make a doll for you!"

"I don't think that will—"

A memory stirred. Watching the doll's arms twist in PallaPalla's hands and feeling her own instantly mirror the action. A dangerous thing in the hands of a child who'd never learned right from wrong, but Rei was, of course, a person of great morale standing and discipline.

"Can you make a doll of Sailor Venus?"

"Yeah!" PallaPalla cheered, and with a puff of blue smoke, the doll was in Rei's hands.

Rei grinned. She was pretty sure it wasn't her friendliest grin ever, but PallaPalla giggled and hopped from one foot to the next.

Leaning across her desk, Rei keyed in a code, and a security feed popped up on her display. There was Venus, giving some kind of press debriefing of something or another. Keeping her eyes glued to the feed, Rei tickled the doll's nose.

Venus's nose twitched, but it was the only visible reaction, and she kept right on answering the question.

Rei tickled again, relentlessly. She was rewarded by Venus desperately scrubbing at her nose while listening to another reporter.

"Do you know how to make the doll need to use the bathroom?" Rei excitedly asked PallaPalla.

PallaPalla was delighted that Rei was so happy, but her eyebrows knit together despite her ongoing smile. "Lady Mars-sama?"

Rei brushed it aside. "Never mind, I'll figure it out. Thank you, PallaPalla. You've totally made up for the giant smooshing ball."

With a cheer, PallaPalla jumped into the air and spun in a circle. "PallaPalla loves forgiveness!" She skipped to the door, but stopped and turned back as Rei called her name.

"Do you know the captain of security?" Rei asked her, just a touch too eagerly. PallaPalla shook her head. "I'll send you some pictures later."

"Okay!" PallaPalla replied, then bounced out of Rei's office to apologize to the next person on her list.

Rei carefully placed the Venus doll in the drawer next to her squishy stress cow.

These security plans were going to get worked out one way or another.