Hatsu left the men back at Nephrite's office to get reacquainted and had decided to take her moment of solitude to return to her scrying. With each addition to her small search and rescue team she could feel her own powers becoming stronger. Each man had added to the surrounding magic that she could call upon and she hoped that it meant that it would now be easier to detect changes in the surrounding energy that could indicate that the prince or the last remaining general were nearby.
After walking for quite some time, she ended up at a large reflecting pool. No doubt, in the daytime the area would have been teaming with people enjoying the serenity of the area but at such a late hour she was alone. Precisely as she liked it. She sat on the edge of the waterway and stared across the calm and peaceful pool for more than an hour before her own reflection began to shift and was replaced by a mountain scene. Snow still covered the ground and Hatsu could see people zipping across it with strange contraptions on their feet while holding onto sticks to help push themselves along. That was when she saw him. Zoisite was talking to another man who looked oddly familiar to her. She'd seen the general's companion before; she just couldn't place where.
As she focused on the general Hatsu was taken by surprised when she felt an intense amount of energy nearby. It wasn't like that of the generals nor the prince's. Hatsu stood from her place at the pool as she heard a scream coming from a nearby alley. Before she had time to react a tall man with dark hair came stumbling down the street. It was clear that he'd been attacked by the blood pouring down his forehead from the shallow wound there. It was also clear just how he had gotten that wound and why he was screaming. Behind him were two large avian creatures that resembled a cross between hawks, vultures, and men.
The man stumbled toward Hatsu after seeing her but was stopped short when the creatures caught up to the man once more. Meanwhile Hatsu felt frozen in place. After awaiting their arrival for more than a year and sensing them in this time period for little more than a week, she was now face to face with the Benu. She tried to call to her own powers but while they had felt stronger than ever only moments before she now felt completely powerless.
One of the creatures sent a burst of power in her direction which caused her to fly backwards into the reflection pool. She felt her head hit the hard surface of the edge of the pool as the other creature dipped a claw into the wound of the man's seeping blood and examined it carefully before shaking his head at his companion. The two creatures then vanished into thin air; leaving both of their victims behind.
Hatsu did her best to climb out of the water only to feel her knees buckle beneath her. She pulled herself up onto the small ledge and rolled out of the water instead and landed hard just outside of the pool. With the creatures now gone, she began to feel her magic return. With blurred vision she used what power she could call upon before she blacked out.
That was how she was found moments later by an individual who had been passing nearby after he had developed a sudden desire to visit the reflection pool. He had never expected to find the two victims of assault when he did so. The stranger then quickly used his phone to call for the authorities and remained with them until help could arrive.
Ami arrived at the hospital for her volunteer shift the next morning and was only mildly surprised to learn that another man had been brought in with similar wounds to the other men who had been attacked lately. What was different this time was that there had been a woman found injured as well when the cops and ambulances showed up.
She'd heard that the man must have been found sooner than any of the prior victims since he hadn't even needed a blood transfusion; something that each of the prior victims had. He was awake and was telling all who would listen that he'd been attacked by monsters that looked like scary birds. The cops had discounted the man's story, figuring that he was still delusional from the shock of the attack, but Ami wasn't so sure. Hadn't Darien said that he'd dreamt of giant birds fighting the generals?
Ami then went to see what she could find out about the woman who had been brought in with the injured man. She found out that the woman hadn't regained consciousness since the night before and the doctors were concerned that she'd suffered a concussion. Curious, Ami discreetly snapped a picture of her with her cell phone before slipping back out of the room. She knew that taking the picture could get her suspended, possibly kicked out of medical school, and couldn't really explain why she'd done it.
Quickly, Ami went about the rest of her duties for the rest of the morning. The entire time she kept an ear out for any more information about the latest victims of the mysterious new enemies. She then waited until the afternoon when she could meet up with the others for a Scout Meeting. Particularly Darien.
Jed had once more spent the day at work while trying to act as if his whole life hadn't changed so dramatically in the last week and a half. He'd spent much of the night before with Malachite and Nephrite before both he and Mal had returned to his apartment for the night. Jed knew that both of the other men planned to work out a plan for where they should go with their search for the others now that the three of them were together while he was out at the shelter.
He'd been surprised that Hatsu hadn't shown up by the time that he'd gotten ready for work, but Malachite had said that he doubted that she'd return until she either had news on the prince or their last remaining general. She'd always been a bit of a loner and now that she had helped to bring three of the generals together, she very likely was taking some needed time to herself. Thinking back to just how different the woman's life had been since jumping through time from how it had been back at the palace, Jed supposed that Mal was right. The three generals would continue with their mission as best as they could, pooling their powers together to look for their prince while on the lookout for Zoisite as well as the Benu.
When Jadeite reached the door to his apartment, he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a yellow piece of paper pinned to his door. It was a notice of eviction for violating the terms of his lease. After eyeing his neighbor's door, Jed ripped the paper off of the door in frustration before trying to open the door only to realize that the locks had already been changed. Sighing, he carefully looked around to make sure no one was in the hall before using his magic to get him inside.
"Well, it looks like I'd better contact Neph. Maybe he can put the rest of us up for a while."
Darien sat and listened to Ami as she described the story that the most recent man found after being attacked had told all who had listened while at the hospital. The strange creatures matched those from his dreams precisely. Having the fact that they did in fact have a new and deadly enemy attacking folks in town was bittersweet. On one hand, he always hated waiting around for the next shoe to drop. On the other, the fact that this new opponent attacked differently than any others before them worried him. Then of course there were the strange dreams. Does the fact that he'd seen the generals mean that he should try to find a way to contact them in the other dimension now?
"There is one thing about last night that was different than the other times that men have been assaulted lately," Ami said as she finished giving her report on the man who had been admitted into the hospital the night before. "This time it looks like there was another attacked. A woman."
Ami pulled out her phone and showed her friends the picture that she'd taken of the unconscious woman earlier in the day. She'd heard that she had finally woken up just as she was leaving but Ami hadn't been able to see her since she'd been taken out of her room for tests.
"That's her!" Darien's eyes went wide when he saw the woman from his reoccurring dreams in the picture.
At the same time Rei said the same thing regarding her strange visitor who had gone out to the temple twice already. Each time with a general in tow.
"Who is she?" Lita didn't believe in coincidences. This woman had been at the site of the latest attack by the strange creatures who had nearly killed more than a dozen men already and she'd been seen using magic at the temple. Plus, she'd been in Darien's visions.
"No idea. She had no identification when she came in. The hospital filled out a paper for anyone going to the police looking to fill out a missing person's report matching her description but so far no one has come looking for her."
Darien worked his jaw as he felt as if there was something about the woman that he was supposed to know just trying to make it to the surface of his memories. Just as he did during his visions, he felt like he knew her. At least he believed that he could count on one thing; if she had been injured by those enormous bird-like creatures, then that meant that she wasn't a potential enemy. That meant that she had to be on their side, right?
He just wished that he could remember who she was. Did she have a connection to the generals? Is that why he'd seen her in the same visions with them?
"Rei, have you been able to locate Malachite yet?" Darien asked after remembering that the woman planned to try to use the mat that he'd used while at the temple to find him.
"Not yet. He may not be in town, or even in this dimension, any longer. I'll keep trying, though."
"I guess now that we know for sure that we have a new enemy in town, we should contact Kyle and Serena," Mina said reluctantly. Like it or not, they needed to know that they may soon be asked to return to Tokyo to help face this new threat. Mina didn't like that they knew so little about their new enemy; especially since this will be the first one since Serena was stripped of her powers. She just hoped that together, along with Darien and Kyle, that the Scouts were ready for the new challenge.
As the new leader of the Scouts, Mina knew that it would be her responsibility to lead them all into battle. She supposed that the first step, however, was to inform her absent ally of the newest development. She had decided earlier that until they had more proof that the attacks hadn't been the result of a human evil, there wasn't any reason to bother the newlyweds. Now with the latest information, it was time to end the honeymoon.
Hatsu tried to remember what had happened to cause her head to hurt so terribly. She vaguely remembered someone, the palace physician perhaps, asking her a few questions. Among them were her name and the year. As if she could forget that it was the twenty-third year of their king's reign. After a time, the physician had finally left her alone and allowed the brightest torches that she could ever recall lighting up a room to be put out. She was glad of that since the light made her feel nauseated. Feeling as if she was going to be sick, she climbed out of the strange bed in search of a chamber pot only to stumble to the floor. The room was spinning which didn't help her nausea. After getting rid of what had been in her stomach, she felt herself being lifted back into the bed. Once there, she fell into a deep slumber. One like she had never had.