Sailor Moon: Millennials

by PMSmiles

This is a fan repost of all available 33 chapters of The Judge's abandoned work. An epic length and very ambitions fic involving an amnesiac Pluto and a pregnant Usagi. Time and space travel abound in an effort to right wrongs and overcome evil.

6. Chapter 6

DISCLAIMER: Hello. Before I go any further I want to publicly state that this work of fan fiction is NOT of my own creation. I am simply a fan of this piece and after strenuously searching the internet to read it again after 20 years I have decided to upload it here for anyone else who wants to read it. The real author (The High Judge) never finished this work, or at least never updated past chapter 33 (even though it is obvious that the ambitious plot of this story should continue much past this point). So please don't come after me for more updates. There won't be any. Rather enjoy this incomplete fan fiction for what it is and please forgive me for any formatting errors, some of the text files had to be manually edited and I did my best

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SAILOR MOON: MILLENNIALS

Chapter 6

Under the Weather, or It's No Snow Day!

Monday morning, 6:58 am. The sun was just peeking above the horizon, rising up from the sea in a blaze of glory that was completely obscured by the smoky grey clouds in the air. A blizzard had swept in from the ocean the night before and dumped another layer of snow on Tokyo while it slept, before returning to the sea. Now it was back, and gearing up for round two.

On the second floor of the Tsukino household, in a room where snores filled the air, Setsuna's eyes opened. Anyone watching would likely have jumped at the sheer suddenness with which this happened. Unlike most people, Setsuna did not progress through a period of drowsy half-wakened unconsciousness on her way from being fully asleep to fully awake. One second, she was asleep; the next, she was awake.

The level of snoring indicated that she was alone in that regard. Sitting up and looking at the other two beds in the room, Setsuna had to smile; not-quite-yet mother and not-for-a-while daughter were both sprawled on their backs, one arm up on the pillow, the sheets tangled, mouths wide. Usagi wore a long white nightgown, ChibiUsa blue flannel pajamas—but in either case, the little pink bunny rabbits were out in force.

To judge by the intensity of the synchronized snoring, both of them would be out for another half an hour or so, so Setsuna pushed back the covers and got to her feet as quietly as she could. Near the end of Usagi's mattress, Luna's ears twitched just before one of her eyes opened; in the manner of cats, she stood, stretched, and hopped down to the floor just as noiselessly as Setsuna. Pausing to stick her feet into a pair of slippers—ordinary slippers in dark violet, from her own things, fortunately; the idea of walking around with bunny slippers was just TOO ridiculous—and retrieve the matching housecoat from the hook on the door, Setsuna slipped out of the room, holding the door open to let Luna out with her.

It was quiet in the hall. Someone—Ikuko, probably—was in the shower, but the other rooms remained silent, so Setsuna stepped lightly to avoid waking anyone. Luna, of course, made no noise at all.

"I've been meaning to ask you something," they both said at once.

"You first," Setsuna said.

"How do you do that? Get up at precisely the same time that the sun rises every morning, I mean. People do tend to wake up at the same general time, but this is the tenth day in a row you've been up with the sun."

"Twenty-third, actually," Setsuna corrected her. "Aside from New Year's Day, I've been waking up at dawn since I got here. Is that unusual?"

"If it were anyone else, I'd say yes. But you have a different relationship with time than most other people." Luna thought about it, then shook her head. "And what were you going to ask me?"

"How do you ever get any rest with all that racket? I thought cats were light sleepers."

"We are," Luna admitted. "Except for Artemis, anyway; he could sleep through an earthquake without batting a whisker. But what they say is true; with a little time, you can get used to almost anything. And besides," she added as they entered the kitchen, "I make up the difference with catnaps during the day."

"I knew there had to be a reason for it. You don't strike me as the lazy type." Setsuna took a couple of cartons out of the fridge, pouring a glass of orange juice for herself and filling Luna's bowl with milk. That done, she put the cartons away, loaded the toaster, and headed for the front door to retrieve the newspaper. The front page article was covering some sort of political scandal—"ELECTORAL FRAUD! DIET OVERDUE FOR A HOUSE-CLEANING!" the headline shouted—but Setsuna didn't read it. Instead, she set the paper down on the table, took a seat, drank a bit of juice, and waited for the toast.

There were, she had learned, certain rules of survival in this house. One was that any cooking more complicated than making toast or getting yourself a bowl of cereal was handled by Ikuko—end of story. Another was that Kenji always read the paper first—except for the comics, which were Shingo's domain. Unless ChibiUsa got to them first.

The toast popped. In the midst of putting the bread onto a plate, Setsuna had to stop and smile.

"Something funny?" Luna asked.

"One of my doctors would say that I must be making good progress, if I can look at a toaster without flinching after the last one I was near tried to vaporize me." Setsuna thought for a moment. "Then again, he might add that talking to cats is a sign that I've still got a long way to go."

"That is the sort of thing Doc would say," Ikuko agreed, entering the kitchen in her usual attire, minus the apron, looking ready to face the day and showing no signs of just having stepped out of the shower a few minutes before. "Good morning, Setsuna. How long have you been up?"

"Only a few minutes," Setsuna reassured her. "So you call him 'Doc' too? I thought Usagi-chan said he was related to you."

"He is," Ikuko confirmed, "but only in the same way that half the people in the city are related to the other half. One of my mother's older cousins was Doc's aunt by marriage; the relationship is through _her_ daughter, who is Doc's cousin by birth and..." Ikuko frowned. "I forget whether she's my third cousin or if I'm her fourth cousin, but you get the idea."

"I do. I think."

Ikuko chuckled. "I'd never met Doc in my life until I went in for a checkup when I was carrying Usagi, but we got along well. After a few appointments, he told me he'd gone through our family trees and found the connection. He never did tell me what his given name is, though." She glanced at Luna. "I wouldn't worry too much about talking to cats, though."

"Oh?"

"Everybody in this house except Kenji talks to Luna—don't we, Luna?" Ikuko bent down to scratch behind Luna's ears. "Just because she can't talk doesn't mean she isn't a person, too—after a fashion. She's easily the smartest cat I've ever met; sometimes it's like she actually understands what we're saying."

Luna purred outrageously.

"You see what I mean?" Ikuko laughed, scratching under Luna's furry chin. "I admit I had some doubts when Usagi asked if she could keep Luna. My first thought was that she was going to be a problem; she _was_ a stray, after all. But she never once set a claw to any of the furniture, she's very quiet when Usagi isn't falling on top of her, and she's never once bitten or scratched anybody who didn't deserve it. After a while, when I saw how attached to her Usagi was getting, I started to worry that someone might have lost Luna and would want her back when they found her—who _wouldn't_ want a cat this intelligent and well-behaved?—or that Luna might run away." Ikuko rolled her eyes. "Considering all the abuse she takes from Usagi on a regular basis, I'm surprised she _hasn't_ left us."

*Don't think the thought hasn't crossed my mind a few times,* Luna grumbled silently.

"Looks like there won't be any school today," Ikuko sighed, glancing out the window at the high-piled and still-falling snow.

"The paper got here," Setsuna argued.

"Our paperboy is as much a force of nature as any storm," Ikuko countered, shaking her head. "In three years, he's always delivered on time. Oh well." Ikuko reached for the coffee pot. "Did you want any of this, Setsuna?"

"No, thank you." Setsuna made a face. "I don't remember whether or not I liked it before, but I tried some at the hospital, and it was pretty awful stuff. Is there any of that lemon tea left?"

"A little." Ikuko took out the teapot and a packet of tea. "Just about the last of it. Remind me to pick some up when we go shopping tomorrow, will you?"

Setsuna blinked. "'We?'"

"You've left the house maybe five times in the last week," Ikuko pointed out. "Usagi told me that you have a problem with crowds, and I understand—I don't do well with heights, myself—but as my grandmother used to say, 'the best way to deal with what scares you is to go up to it and laugh in its face.' Of course," she added, "Granny also used to say, 'don't jump off the deep end until you know how to swim.' I do most of my shopping at the mall, on weekends, but there's a corner store a little ways down the street that has most of what we need. It's not far, and it's never very busy. Does that sound okay to you?"

That took some consideration. Finally, Setsuna nodded, albeit a little uncertainly.

"Good. That's settled." Ikuko reached for her apron. "Now, what would you like for breakfast?" She glanced meaningfully at the window. "I've got plenty of time to be creative this morning."

Rei woke up with a headache that morning.

Grandpa and Yuuichirou recognized the danger signs and took pains to make themselves as scarce as possible. Even her two loyal crows, huddled together near the largest of the shrine's various chimneys to keep warm, seemed to be trying to avoid looking at her directly as they stood watch over the snowbound courtyard.

"Traitors," Rei grumbled, heading for the bathhouse.

She'd had a dream last night. It had started out as a fairly ordinary, even pleasant sort of dream, then taken a disturbing turn for the prophetic.

Wearing what looked like a cross between her Senshi fuku and the armor of a medieval samurai, Rei had been traveling across a foggy dream world, following the wise advice of a river spirit with Ami's face and the idiotic riddles of a masked court fool with Minako's vocabulary, on a quest to save a lost prince from a wicked faerie queen and her dragon ally. The queen had looked like Usagi, and the dragon, somehow, had Makoto's features impressed onto its scaled snout, while the face of the prince was equal parts Mamoru and Yuuichirou. The mission seemed straightforward enough, but the catch was that the queen's castle magically changed its location at moonrise each night, and the only clue on how to reach the thing before it disappeared again was mixed up in one—or two or three or ten—of the jester's mind-boggling riddles.

*It was something about the new moon, wasn't it?* The riddles had been hard enough to understand in the first place, and the haze of having just woken up wasn't helping her to remember, but Rei was pretty sure that she had the details right. *Three nights each month, when the moon is dark and can't be seen, the castle can't move. I think that was it.*

Her dream-self had found the castle, tricked the watchful dragon into a riddle contest with the jester so she could slip by, then had the water spirit spread ice on all the floors in the castle—the queen, it turned out, had a nearly terminal case of imbalance because her wings were too small to allow her to fly, but too big for her to stay on her feet when she tried to walk. With everyone occupied in trying to help the queen, Rei had easily found the prince, asleep in a huge crystal. Getting him out of the crystal involved exposing the thing to the most piercing noise in the world, but with the queen shrieking just down the hall, that part was easy. Waking the prince up, of course, required a kiss...

And right there, the dream had gone all twisted on her. The world swirled away into infinity, leaving her in an empty void, alone except for two burning flames before her. They seemed identical, but she had been certain that one was the Fire of Mars, the source of her power as a Senshi, while the other was the sacred flame that burned only a short distance from where her body slept. The fires had expanded suddenly to fill the entire void, but she never even thought to be afraid; neither fire would ever harm her.

A shadow appeared against the burning infinity, or perhaps it had been there all along, unseen against the blackness. The shadow looked human, and eyelike holes floated above and behind it, pits as dark as the void had been a moment ago. The shadow threw dark, violet flames and blood-red lightning at her, black beams lanced out from the eyes, and coils of the fire all around her swirled in to intercept the attacks, consuming them and burning up their length to the sources. The eyes winked out before the fire could reach them, but the shadow was consumed utterly—only to have something just as dark rise from its ashes.

The fire looped in on itself, then, coalescing from all about into a solid form that hovered before her. A book? She opened the book, turned pages of fire, saw indecipherable characters of pure energy. Part of her mind seemed to be screaming at her that her hands were being burned to nothing, that the light from the pages would destroy her eyes and sear insanity into her brain; she hesitated, and the book vanished.

Unreality reappeared beneath her. Looking down, Rei saw sand—red sand—gathered about her feet, and looking up, she saw a hazy orange sky. Of course. This was the planet Mars. Her planet. She'd seen pictures of it in books at school, in one or two science fiction movies. Strange, though, how familiar it felt to be standing on the dusty soil, looking up at the dull sky. Almost like she'd been there before.

Something seemed to ripple in the sand to her left, but a dust storm swept in and hid the movement from her eyes. She looked into the sky again, and found that the storm had blown away the orange sky; now, she could see the entire solar system. All nine planets, all the scattered moons, even the millions of tiny stones drifting between them.

Seven points of light appeared in space, seven lights which spiraled downwards, like comets, towards the Earth. The first was brilliant white, the second a black so intense that the darkness of empty space seemed feeble by comparison. Next came a brilliant green, which was followed by what appeared to be an absence of color. The fifth falling light was a steely grey, and the sixth was—pastel pink? No, it was mustard yellow. No, wait, now it was royal blue. With orange spots. And _now_ it was spiraling loop-de-loops.

From everywhere and nowhere, Rei could have sworn she heard a profoundly long-suffering sigh—sort of like the sound Luna made when Usagi did something stupid, only on a larger scale. The acrobatic incandescence appeared to flicker, then proceeded on its way in a more sedate fashion, glittering like a mirrorball. She pulled her eyes from the bizarre light just in time to see the seventh and last streak by, to see that it was actually three smaller lights traveling together, each a slightly different shade of violet. All seven—or was it nine?—objects vanished into the atmosphere.

Then darkness was falling on Earth. Not the natural darkness of day turning into night turning into another day, but a sick, creeping blackness, like oil spilling from a wrecked tanker to ooze over the water. First it appeared in a hundred or more tiny spots, all over the globe; then a smaller number of spots appeared—more than four, she thought, but less than ten—spots much larger and somehow darker than the others, spots from which the darkness spread until it was covering most of the planet.

A rainbow of lights burst from the last part of Earth to be swallowed by the black tide, lights which crossed the void to strike the other planets and the Moon, which in turn began to glow the hue of whichever light had hit them. Rei looked around, saw that the sands and stones were glowing with the dull red of heated iron. Then light shot back towards the Earth, the nine beams brighter than they had been before. At the point where they touched, a shockwave raced out across the darkened Earth, but for a moment after it had passed, nothing appeared to happen. Then light began to appear in the darkness and streak towards the point of impact, cutting countless lines through the black shroud and gathering into a point too bright to look at. Rei thought she saw the beginnings of a shape, but the light flared up so brightly that she had to shut her eyes and turn away.

And in the same instant that she turned around, Mars and the rest of the solar system vanished, leaving her in the darkness again, alone except for a huge collection of boxes. Some were tiny, ornate coffers for holding jewelry; others were carefully worked wooden chests; still others were shipping crates. Rei saw her dream-self begin to open the boxes in great haste, obviously looking for something and just as obviously not finding it in any of the containers. The growing panic of her image began to affect Rei herself, and with each box that failed to yield the desired item—whatever it might be—she grew more frantic, certain that she was running out of time.

Finally, there were only four boxes left: a steel chest, a box which looked like a Rubix cube, another which was made out of some sort of smoked glass, and a looming, dirt-caked coffin. And though the need to find the object of her search was almost overwhelming, Rei hesitated.

Fire appeared above her, a flame which danced and crackled and gave strength and peace of mind. She couldn't tell if this was the sacred flame or the Fire of Mars, but its presence was welcome, burning away the panic in her mind and leaving cool resolve behind. In a moment, she could...

The flame flickered. Rei stared at it in astonishment, and it flickered again. It flared up, then grew small. It was strange, it was almost like...

Rei froze. Like the fire was going OUT. Panic returned. Now she understood; the fire, whatever it was, was going out, and it needed more fuel to keep it burning. That was what she had been looking for.

Rei considered her choices. The glass box was far too small to hold anything that could be used to keep a fire going, and she shied away from the coffin's rank air of decay. The patterned box, she saw after a moment's inspection, really _was_ a Rubix cube, the only way to get the lid open being to solve the puzzle. And she didn't have time for games.

That left the steel chest. The lid was rusted shut and took several moments to open, but once it was, carefully cut and stacked firewood was visible within. The dream-Rei lifted out a stick and thrust it into the fire, but the wood burned to ash instantly, hardly feeding the flame at all. She tried another stick, and again, it was consumed. This wasn't working.

She looked at the remaining boxes. After a moment, she lifted the small glass case, thinking that if wood couldn't keep the fire burning, maybe what she needed might fit in this small a container after all. The glass case opened easily, and tiny, sparkling gems poured out, falling up towards the guttering fire. The gems passed through the fire, and for a moment, it burned more steadily. But then it continued to shrink.

Rei looked at her last two choices. The puzzle box, then. Maybe she could figure it out in time.

But after several minutes, the box hadn't opened, and the fire was almost gone. It seemed that the harder she tried to solve the puzzle, the more complicated it became. Weeping in frustration, the dream-Rei threw the puzzle box away into the darkness, and turned to the ominous bulk of the coffin. Its lid opened smoothly, silently—and Rei recoiled in horror as a bony, half-rotted hand emerged. She almost turned away completely, but the fire wavered again, barely any larger than a candle flame. Gathering her courage, she reached out for the withered, decaying hand, felt her flesh crawl in anticipation of cold sliminess. The rotted thing in the casket moved with surprising speed, holding a three-and-a-half fingered hand up in a gesture of denial, pointing at her with the handless stump of its other arm.

Just then, the fire went out. Terrified, the dream-Rei turned and ran for where she'd thrown the puzzle box. If she solved it in time, there just might be something inside to restart the fire.

She found the box, but realized that she was very cold all of a sudden. Hard to move, hard to think. The fire that had gone out had been part of her, inside her, and now there was nothing in its place except a sick emptiness. And the cold, spreading. She almost had the puzzle, she was certain, but her hands were numb with the cold, she couldn't keep her head up or her eyes open, and what was the point anyway the fire was out and the box was so heavy just set it down for a minute so tired have to rest for a little while have to sleep...

When Rei fell asleep in the dream, she woke up in reality, drenched with sweat, short of breath, her heart pounding and her entire body shivering with the remembered chill of the dream. She had wanted very much to cry or scream or be sick, but managed to fight off all three urges. A quick glance at the clock had shown it to be only 1:49, far too early to get up, but after that awful dream, she knew sleep would not come easily.

So she sat there, in the darkness, listening to the whistle of the blizzard winds, the sheets pulled up around her as she tried every trick of meditation and relaxation at her disposal to dispel the fear. It was not easy; the old tale that, if you died in your dream, you died for real, kept creeping into her thoughts. Eventually, though, she fell asleep again, and did not dream.

Now that she was awake again, Rei thought that maybe dying might have been preferable. She usually slept soundly and woke only moderately grungy, but on the infrequent occasions when her sleep was interrupted for any extended period of time, she always felt awful the next day. It had been more than half a year since the last time, so Rei had forgotten what the experience was really like.

Her body, apparently, took that as a sign to re-educate her, and the headache—the equivalent of a roadcrew at work with jackhammers, just behind the bridge of your nose—was just part of the lesson. Every muscle in her body was stiff. Bones ached, joints creaked, and her mouth tasted as if something had crawled in and died. The fact that her eyes were gummed up to the point where she could barely see was actually a blessing, because it prevented her from seeing the wreck that had been her hair.

She felt much better after soaking in the tub. Not for the first time, Rei was glad that her tradition-obsessed grandfather had had the good sense to let modern convenience win out over 'the way things used to be.' No doubt heating up the water before a bath was an excellent means of building discipline, but there were other, often equally smelly ways of doing that—and beloved grandfather or not, Rei probably would have strangled the old man if he'd insisted she haul buckets of water around every time she wanted to clean herself up. Especially in this kind of weather. Or in this kind of grand mal funk.

There was a noise at the door. "Rei-chan?"

"What is it, Yuuichirou?"

"The morning report on the radio says the roads are closed, so classes are canceled. I thought you'd want to know."

She could almost have kissed him for that. "Thank you." The faint shadow of Yuuichirou's presence seemed to nod before turning and walking away. Rei leaned back in the tub with a contented sigh, profoundly relieved that she wouldn't have to face a day at school after a night like that—and profoundly grateful that she now had the time to clean up properly.

Rei knew that she'd have to call the others—dismissing dreams of this sort wasn't just dangerous, it was stupid—and she knew that they'd probably end up having a meeting before the day was out. That meant she was going to have to get out there and face the snow, the wind, and most likely Usagi's whining as well.

*But not right now,* she thought. Right now, she was just going to sit here, close her eyes, soak up the heat and the water in equal measures, and relax.

There are worse ways to spend a morning.

Ami woke up to the droning buzz of an unidentifiable electric device. Glancing at the clock and adding the subject 'Use of Kitchen Appliances Before 7:30' to her growing list of Things To Have A Talk About With Makoto, she got up and headed for the door.

The only kitchen appliance currently in use turned out to be the teapot; the buzz was actually coming from the radio. Makoto was leaning over the counter in the kitchen, reaching for a cup from a higher shelf and coming dangerously close to falling out of her loosely-gathered emerald green housecoat.

That was another little item on Ami's list. Not the housecoat itself, by any means—green was a very good color on Makoto—but the fact that Makoto wasn't wearing very much else underneath it.

Ami had no real personal objections to her friend's habit of sleeping in the almost—or entirely—nude; she had pajamas that she wore at sleepovers, but if it suited Makoto not to wear them at home, that was her business. Considering that the temperature in her apartment was kept fairly high to protect the plants, her choice of sleepware—or the lack thereof—made a certain kind of sense. It was warm enough in here at night that Ami'd had to switch to the lighter blue pajamas she had on now, instead of the heavier flannels she usually favored during the winter months.

The problem was that Makoto was one of those people who was a little foggy in the mornings, and until she finished waking up, she tended to be a bit... well, careless. With a shudder, Ami remembered last Saturday, when the paperboy came by to collect the monthly delivery charge. Oh, Makoto _might_ have remembered to close her housecoat in time on her own, but she'd been about four steps away from the door when Ami intercepted her.

Greeting the world in your birthday suit was probably a good way to make friends, but there was a time and a place for everything, and the front door at eight in the morning was NOT one of them!

*Stop it,* she told herself. *So Mako-chan has a different... fashion sense than you do; so what? It doesn't concern you.*

*It does if Ryo-kun happens to be the one at the door,* she shot back. *He'll be back in town before long, and he likes to surprise me by stopping by unannounced; do I really want to run the risk of him getting _that_ kind of surprise in return?*

Her other side thought about that, about Makoto, her friend—with a body that no typical teenaged human male could fail to notice unless he was blind and three days dead—and conceded the point.

"Good morning, Ami-chan," Makoto greeted her, not turning around. "I'm making some hot chocolate; did you want any?"

"That sounds good," Ami agreed, trying to think of a polite way to tell Makoto to go put some actual clothes on, "but shouldn't we be getting ready for school about now?"

"Not today," Makoto replied, shaking her head and setting two cups on the counter. "I haven't heard anything on the radio yet, but I took a look outside, and the snow's piled up about two feet deep in most places; then there's the drifts. And it's _still_ coming down." She chuckled, adding, "You can brave that if you want, but I plan on kicking back and watching some TV."

Ami looked at her like she was crazy, then looked into the living room, and beyond that to the sliding glass doors, and the snowbound balcony beyond them. "That's impossible!"

"What? Watching TV on a snow day? Fairly common, I'd think."

"No, no, no. Not that—that!" Ami pointed towards the swirling winter wasteland.

Makoto looked. "I see snow, ice, and more snow. What's impossible about that?" She turned back to Ami, frowning. "You're not coming down with the flu or something, are you? I could make some chicken soup if..."

"Makoto, will you be quiet for a second and listen?" Ami took a deep breath. "You told me once that you can tell when there's a thunderstorm coming, right?"

"Sure. There's a feeling in the air, sort of like..."

Ami interrupted her again. "Would it surprise you to learn that _I_ can tell when there's going to be rain, snow, or hail?"

"Not really. Michiru and I talked about something like this while we were sneaking around the airport."

"Good. Then you'd accept that I have a sixth sense for weather, and that any sort of precipitation always sets it off?"

"Sure."

"Then why isn't it working now?" Ami nodded towards the balcony. "Why does this weather sense tell me that _that_ isn't happening?"

"You forgot to pay the bill?" Makoto joked feebly, waving away the resulting glare. "I know, I know, it's not funny. I'm _tired,_ Ami-chan; mornings just aren't my thing."

"Then I suggest you go have a shower and finish waking up," Ami told her curtly. "This weather isn't natural, which means that someone or something created it—and _that_ could mean serious trouble for us."

"All right," Makoto sighed. "Are you going to call the others?"

"No. I want to get some readings on this blizzard first and see if I can pin down the source, or at least get an idea of what it might be. And besides," Ami added, "Usagi-chan's probably not even out of bed yet. Depending on what I find or don't find, we may have to meet, and it's going to take some pretty solid evidence to get anybody to go out in this." Ami looked at the raging, impossible storm and shook her head. "Only a maniac would go outside on a day like this without a really good reason."

"You can say that again," Makoto said, on her way to the washroom. She stopped short as something occurred to her. "What do you suppose Mina-chan's up to right now?"

"I LOVE winter!" Minako squealed, face pressed to the breath-frosted pane of her bedroom window. "Just look at all the snow! Isn't it beautiful, Artemis?"

"I suppose," the cat said groggily, curled up in the warmth of the bed. Artemis wasn't much better in the mornings than Makoto. "If you're into Ice Ages," he added, yawning.

"Yeah!" Minako agreed enthusiastically, completely missing her feline companion's sleepy sarcasm. "I can hardly wait to get out there!"

Artemis' ears stood up straight, and his eyes went wide, all trace of the morning blahs gone.

*Oh no.*

The master bedroom was quiet. Haruka had gotten up briefly perhaps two hours before and returned shortly thereafter, saying something about acts of God, being buried alive, and complaining sourly about having various portions of her anatomy frozen. Something about that particular complaint had nagged at Michiru but, since she was only half-awake, it failed to get any response. The bit about being snowed under had been clearly received, though, and she decided it gave her plenty of time to do something to put a stop to Haruka's grumblings.

Haruka had been right about her hands being frozen—and they were _still_ cold. Michiru couldn't figure out how that was possible, seeing as how the rest of the body they were attached to was so much warmer now. And quieter.

The tranquillity was not to last.

"YEEEE-HAAAH!"

A black-haired cannonball exploded into the middle of the bed. Since it was a waterbed, the whole thing shifted away from the point of impact in rippling waves that would have woken Haruka up even if the pre-impact howl and the sensation of having about fifty or so kilos of childish enthusiasm dropped on her hadn't.

Not for the first time, Michiru wondered how Hotaru managed to cover the distance from the door to the bed without either of them ever seeing or hearing her until after the fact.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

"We're up," Haruka grumbled, trying to dredge up enough blankets for the sake of modesty—and warmth. *This big house doesn't hold heat very well,* she thought absently, looking around for her housecoat, which hung within plain sight on the nearest bedpost.

"We've talked about this," Michiru said, as sternly as she could manage— which wasn't very, since the blankets were the only thing she could even loosely be considered to be wearing. "You're supposed to knock first."

"Oh, come off it, Michiru-mama." Hotaru's voice was suddenly a lot older than she seemed, her smile far too knowing for the almost-child she appeared to be. "Do you _still_ think I don't know what goes on in here? You need thicker walls."

In the middle of reaching for her housecoat, Haruka fell out of the bed with a startled exclamation. Her head popped back up over the side a moment later, red-faced, with eyes nearly as wild as her hair.

"Another parental illusion shattered," Hotaru observed in a mockingly regretful tone.

"Stop that," Michiru admonished the younger girl, trying not to smile. "Now, what was so important that you had to run in here shouting about it at the top of your lungs?" *Come to think of it,* she added mentally, glancing at the bedside clock and seeing that it was closer to ten than it was to nine, *shouldn't she be in school right now?*

"Have you taken a look out the window at all today?" Hotaru looked consideringly at the two of them. "On second thought, forget I asked that." While her foster-family were still trying to decide whether to be embarrassed or irritated, Hotaru sprang off the bed, raced over to the bedroom's huge window, and hauled back the drapes. "Take a look!"

Michiru looked. She stared, actually.

"Something wrong?" Hotaru asked.

"HOW DID _THAT_ GET THERE?" Michiru shouted, pointing at the snow. Haruka and Hotaru blinked, looked out the window, traded glances, and then looked back at Michiru.

"Um... it fell?" Hotaru supplied helpfully.

"I told you earlier it'd snowed," Haruka added, pulling her housecoat shut and getting to her feet. "Weren't you listening?"

A faintly growling sort of response issued from the bundle of blankets that was making its way to the bathroom. Haruka and Hotaru looked at each other again before Haruka followed after the bundle.

"Is there a prob..." Haruka was cut off by the larger part of the blankets coming back at her in a projectile mass, right before the door closed in her face, knocking her to the floor as, behind her, Hotaru hooted with laughter. After pulling free of the tangled mess of fabric, Haruka knocked hesitantly on the door. "Michiru? Is everything all right?"

"No, everything is NOT all right!" Michiru's voice was hardly muffled by the door. And it was a pretty substantial door. "Call the others and ask them if they've noticed this isn't a natural storm, tell them to get their collective act together, and then get dressed!"

"The driveway's snowed in," Haruka said. "And I don't think the streets can be much better."

"Then we'll walk!" The blast of the shower obliterated anything else that might have been said.

Hotaru came up next to Haruka. "Did I hear that right?"

"I think they heard it on Kyushu."

"She's not _actually_ going to make us go out in this kind of weather, is she?"

Haruka's wry, resigned look was all the answer Hotaru needed. Sighing, she went back to her room, her own shower; Haruka picked up the discarded sheets and put them back on the bed before heading for her own room.

"And this was looking like such a _nice_ day," she complained.

Outside, the wind blew a deep, roof-rattling note of sympathetic agreement before going back to its work. The wind was very easy to satisfy. Give it a few hours in which to blow at full strength, and it called the day a good one.

This was a very good day, indeed.

"You call this a _minor_ storm?"

Archon's image was smiling faintly as his student let the drapes fall back into place, closing off the view of the storm. Inwardly, she sighed; no matter where she went during these sessions, the hologram of her distant tutor was always facing her when she turned around.

"It is not quite so impressive as you think," the black-eyed image told her. "When employed to its utmost, weather magic is one of the most potent and complex of all forms of spellcraft. It takes a truly masterful mage to be able to call down whirlwinds and thunderstorms with which to destroy his enemies, without being caught up in the destructive force of his own spell."

"So I'm not ready to send anyone to Oz," the student said, enjoying a brief moment of satisfaction at the obvious confusion on her master's face. Modern pop culture and slang, she had discovered, always did that to Archon. At least the first time she used a given phrase; by their next lesson, he always seemed to have found out what the various words meant. Learning Atlantean, she had discovered, was quite a bit more difficult; the fact that there were three main languages didn't help. "I called up this storm, didn't I?"

"Yes and no. You called the clouds, but the wind was already here. And you are, I must remind you, practicing your spells above the largest concentration of magical force on Earth. The overabundance of local mana energy here makes even complicated castings far easier than they would be elsewhere. To be a true wizard, you must be able to bend the forces around you to your will, to call up the necessary power from anywhere on Earth—or beyond—not just here, where the very air is all but crackling with magical energy." Archon smiled, the smile of a master to a student. "When you gain the control to harness wind on the other side of the world while you stand in an area almost dead to magic—as I did to help you create this storm—then, I think, you can call yourself a wizard. Of weather, at least."

"YOU did this? ALL this? Just to teach me a lesson?"

"Hardly." Archon's image looked at the window as an unseen force drew the drapes aside. "There is something in this city that I do not understand, a kind of magic even I am unfamiliar with. Three times now, it has interfered with plans laid both by myself and by my masters, and three times, it has cost us valuable time and resources. We have set eyes to watching this city, laid traps to test our unseen enemy until we fully know their capabilities and their purpose. Now that those traps are nearing readiness, all that is required to spring them is bait. Hence, the storm. Created by magic and sustained by magic, it will draw the notice of any who work magic, and its dangerous nature will surely compel our foe to stop it. That can only be done at its center, and with the center affixed in an area we can observe, we will at last begin to understand our enemy. And when we understand them, we will crush them."

"That might be more difficult than you think," the girl said.

"You still believe that this unseen force is connected to your 'Senshi?'"

"It fits with everything I've heard about them."

Archon shook his head. "There were Senshi in the great age of Atlantis, my student, and their powers were no greater than those of any competent wizard— and nothing at all beside the might of a true archmage. Your own powers already far exceed those of all but two Senshi I have ever known, and if those two or any other Senshi were moving against us, I would know it. I know the magic of a Senshi better than any now living, save only one—and she remembers nothing of what she knows."

"Who?"

"A traitor," Archon said, sounding almost sad. "A traitor to her friends and family, to all her people: her ancestors, whose struggles and accomplishments she destroyed; her contemporaries, whose world she left open to its enemies, to be pulled down and forgotten; to any of her descendants now living, who walk upon a primitive world, at the mercy of uncaring nature, when they could have ruled the stars." Archon sighed, his strange eyes seeing something in the distant past before they returned to the here-and-now. "Enough. You will learn about this and more when you are ready to be presented to the court of Atlantis as an accomplished wizard. And you are still a long way from being ready for that."

The girl nodded and took hold of a fine silver chain about her neck, drawing forth a small, tear-shaped translucent crystal. With a single word—a word she now understood to be the Atlantean form of 'activate'—she caused the pendant to float in the air, slowly turning.

When she had first shown this little stone to Archon, he'd called it a memory crystal, a device invented by Atlantean wizards centuries before even his time, for the purpose of storing information with far greater precision and durability than paper could provide. This one had been created about twenty-two hundred years ago, by a wizard calling himself Leoric, for the purpose of storing spells, rites, and other magical lore.

Archon knew of him, a well-loved master wizard in the days when he himself was just beginning to study magic, and remembered that the man had been killed in a duel with three rival wizards; there had been some story of a plot against the crown which Leoric uncovered, but which did not end with the three treasonous mages that he took with him into death. The other conspirators, if any existed, were never discovered, but after two of Leoric's family had mysteriously died, the rest fled the island nation in fear, vanishing into the wide world with many of Leoric's possessions. Rumors circulated for years afterwards that the family were merely in hiding, hoping to build their strength and someday return to unmask the ones who had killed their patriarch.

But Atlantis had fallen, and the world had changed. Archon suspected that the memory crystal had become an heirloom of the family, passed down through generations who gradually forgot much of its power and meaning, until it came into the hands of the student he was teaching now.

The girl had known none of that; all she knew was that the pendant had been a gift from her great-grandmother, given to her on her tenth birthday along with several books and a lengthy discourse on family history. Other people all thought her great-grandmother was a little crazy, but she'd always looked up to the old woman, who, even bedridden with age and illness at 95, had enough strength of will to make the other members of her family do what she asked, when she asked, no matter how 'crazy' it sounded. And not just strength of will, as a little ten-year-old girl had discovered.

"We're not like other people," Great-Granny had said as they sat together in her huge, comfortable bed. "Our family has old blood, older and mightier than any king or queen left on this world. A very long time ago, our ancestors ruled this world and traveled to many others. Their empire is gone, and only a half-remembered legend of it remains, but the core of their power, their magic, is still here. It's our birthright."

"Does magic really exist, Great-Granny? Mother doesn't believe in it."

"No, she doesn't, does she?" Great-Granny had sighed. "When your grandmother and her sisters—my daughters—were young, I watched them, waited to see if any of them were strong enough, if they _believed_ enough for me to share the magic with. But they weren't strong enough, or didn't believe enough, so I kept the magic to myself and waited for their daughters to be born. They all disappointed me until your mother was born; from the start, I knew she had the strength. But she was her mother's daughter, too, intelligent and practical to a fault; she didn't believe in magic. So I waited again, to see what kind of man she'd marry, whether or not there was a chance that any of their children would turn out right." Great-Granny had looked at her. "Your mother doesn't believe in magic, child, but what about your father? What does he say when you ask him about magic?"

"Daddy? He always says funny things." She'd scrunched up her face in an attempt to get her father's words right from memory. "Daddy always tells me to look around, that even if I don't see dragons or unicorns or flying people, magic's all around me. When flowers bloom, when children laugh, when you make a friend, when the sun comes up in the morning; he says it's magic enough for him."

"He's a very wise man," Great-Granny said, with a strange look of remembered fear her granddaughter hadn't understood. What could possibly scare Great-Granny?

"But none of those things are magic," she'd protested. "I heard in school that the sun comes up because the Earth goes around it and turns while it does, and that's why we have night, because we're not always facing the sun. Flowers bloom because they're supposed to bloom, and I laugh when I think something's funny. None of it is magic."

"Better to say that they aren't _caused_ by magic," Great-Granny told her. "At least, not any kind of magic people can use. But that doesn't mean that they stop _being_ magic, you understand?"

"I think so."

Great-Granny had hugged her. "I think you do, too. I always knew you'd be the one; you've got your mother's mind, but you use it like your father uses his, and you're brave enough to look for things he can't or won't see. Watch closely; I'll show you a little magic." And she'd made one of her books get up and fly around the room by itself, circling over and around them and turning end-for-end to settle in an amazed little girl's hands. "That's about all the magic I can do these days," Great-Granny said, coughing. "I used to be able to do all kinds of things, but it's gotten harder as I've gotten older. I expect the day I die, I either won't be able to use any magic at all, or I'll die in the attempt."

"Great-Granny, you can't die! You're my only friend!"

"Hush, child. I can die, and one of these days, I will die; not even magic can change that. Not now, at least." She sighed. "I'd be surprised if I make it to next spring."

*So soon?* "But... but who'll teach me?"

"My books will." Great-Granny waved one hand, taking in the book in the child's hands and a dozen others like it, almost all of them too big for her to carry any more than two or maybe three at a time. Then she'd taken off the little pendant she always wore, the crystal on a chain no one had ever seen her without. "And so will this. It's the only thing we have left of what we used to be, and it's where everything in these books came from. You could say that the books are just an introduction to what's inside that little stone."

Opening the first book, the smallest of the lot, the little girl had found weird, nonsense-looking words in her great-grandmother's writing. "But I can't read this!"

"It's easy, once you know how. The words are all in that little crystal, but they're written differently, and things can go wrong if you say them wrong, so I translated as many of them as I could. You say these words like they're written, see? I'll show you." Great-Granny took the book in one hand, her great- grandchild in the other, and looked at the pile of books. "You know, those books are awfully heavy. Why don't we move them to your room in your house, so your mother doesn't know?" Great-Granny turned a few pages, then read some of the words. One of the books immediately vanished. She made three more disappear, then had her granddaughter try.

She got it on the first try. "Did it work? Did I do it right?"

"You did it _exactly_ right," Great-Granny said, hugging her. "See how easy it is? Try it with the rest."

She'd done that, and it got easier each time. Finally, all the books except the first were gone. Great-Granny took it, repeated the funny words, and sent it to join the rest.

"That was fun!"

"I knew I was right about you," Great-Granny said. "It took me three months of practice to get that spell right. If you work hard, you'll be even better than I was."

"I'll be the best!"

"Now, child, I want you to listen to me very carefully. You have to be careful about what you decide to do with magic. If you use it right, and if you're strong enough, magic can give you almost anything you want or need. But you have to give back something to the magic, too. Sometimes all you have to do is give up a little time so you can study, but other times, using the magic may hurt you. You remember when you broke your arm?"

She'd nodded; it had hurt worse than anything.

"Sometimes the magic will hurt just as much. Sometimes it can hurt even more, but in different ways. If you're really going to use the magic, if you're _really_ going to be the best, you have to be ready for the pain. If you can do something or get something by yourself, you probably should, even if the magic seems easier. Use your mind, think and learn. You make yourself stronger that way, see? You still get what you want, you learn things about the world, and you save the magic for when you really need it. Understand?"

"Yes. I promise, Great-Granny. I'll make you proud of me."

"I already am, child."

Great-Granny had died in her sleep that night. A few days later, at the funeral, everyone had been surprised when her favorite grandchild hadn't cried; Mother and Father had worried about her for a long time. They didn't know—nobody did—about the books; Great-Granny had written all of them, and that meant they were part of her, still here, still with her great-granddaughter even when the rest of her was gone.

She remembered her promise and studied, both in Great-Granny's books and at school, and made herself as strong as she could be, as smart as she could be. Smarter and stronger and _better_ than anyone else, and learning a little more each day. She was going to show everyone, to be the best in school, and everything after that.

But then she realized that, as good as she was, everybody was talking about someone else, about HER, about how special SHE was, how clever SHE was, how pretty, how SHE'd really make something of HERself someday. She'd tried and tried and tried, but always come out second best to HER. She'd even tried to use magic to fix things, but found, to her utter dismay, that none of the spells in Great-Granny's books seemed to work against HER.

Then her parents had decided to move, and SHE was gone. Everyone at the new school talked about her, was impressed by her, and even her magic was working like it should—but knowing that SHE was still out there, that she was still only second best to HER, made it all empty. She knew, or came to know, that someday they'd meet again, so she went at her studies for all she was worth, learning everything she could, finding out how to understand the words in the crystal, learning spells even Great-Granny hadn't known, always getting ready to face HER again.

Months back, she'd used a spell to find HER, to gather whatever information she could. It was sickening; everyone was still talking about HER, acting like SHE was some sort of queen or goddess or miracle made flesh. And now, she had learned, SHE had friends just like HER, and everyone talked about THEM, how special THEY were...

Without ever meeting THEM, she hated THEM.

It had taken a little bit of doing, but she'd convinced her parents to transfer her to another school, a school with a very good reputation—even better, to her mind, because it was a school near where SHE lived, where THEY lived, and was exactly the kind of school SHE would have gone to. The perfect place to take back everything SHE had taken from her, by taking everything SHE had now. Everything THEY had.

Her first attempt had failed miserably; whatever had made her magic go wrong before was still there. It had to be something about HER, because she knew her control of the magic was much too good to be defeated so easily. After several tests to confirm that and find the limits of whatever strange protection SHE had, she decided to use one of her most dangerous spells, confident that it would work, that the creature the spell called would be able to do what she could not, to drag HER down, to drag all of THEM down and ruin THEM.

And she'd summoned Archon instead. At first, that had seemed to be another failure, but now she knew it had been a success, of sorts. She was learning things from the black-eyed archmage that she'd only dared to dream possible before, was getting stronger all the time. And when the day she now dreamed of finally arrived, when Archon confirmed that she was indeed ready...

But that day was not today. Today was a day for learning.

Proteus watched the lesson continue, its tiny sensory extension carefully monitoring and recording every word and gesture made by the two figures, transmitting that information through a mile-wide network of concealed cables of some weird, ropy substance that was almost, but not quite, fungus.

Elsewhere, in a different part of that ever-growing network, another part of Proteus watched with sensory nodes that saw far more than any human eyes as the heart of the spell-conjured storm continued to swirl with magical force. This part of the entity also sent everything it observed back into the vast network, sharing the information with all parts of Proteus.

At the center of the web, in the walls and under the floors of the telecommunications center, the living core of Proteus, the closest thing it possessed to a heart or a brain, received information from these two sources and dozens more like them, processing it all at tremendous speed. Learning. Understanding.

From its enslaved minds and from countless absorbed records, Proteus had learned that most humans regarded magic and science as two entirely separate forces, two things with no common ground, no way to coexist. The very existence of the memory crystal disproved this; magic had created it, but Proteus, observing the patterns of its molecular and atomic and even subatomic makeup, suspected that science could duplicate it. And as Proteus watched the seemingly chaotic ebb and flow of the storm-shaping magic, it began to believe the same thing; magic did this, but science could also do this.

It was, Proteus was beginning to think—to believe?—all a matter of energy. Positive and negative and neutral energy, hot and cold and mild, light and dark and shadow; whether invoked by magic or harnessed according to the laws of science, energy was at the center of it all. Once the energy was tapped, the _how_ of its control made very little difference. That the control existed at all was enough. And there was, as Archon had told his student, energy almost beyond measure in this place.

Others, Proteus had learned, had come to seize this power before. Traces of their presence, echoes of dark energy scattered over the city, confirmed the unclear reports of the humans, told Proteus that others like the master and Archon—and itself—had been here before, seeking the power of this place.

Obviously, they had failed. *Reason enough for caution. Reason enough to wait, until I know more, until I understand better, before acting.*

Based on its study of the human records, of the minds of its slaves, and a careful, methodical calculation of probabilities, Proteus concluded with a high degree of certainty that Archon's student had made the correct analysis, that these mysterious 'Senshi' were in some manner connected to the destroyer-force, regardless of what Archon believed. Interesting, how an ordinary human mind had reached the same conclusion as Proteus' own, made the same connection, and yet done it with such limited information to draw upon. Intuition, that was the word. It was a trait Proteus did not possess. At least, not yet.

It was not the only one. There were many things about humans Proteus still found incomprehensible, things in how they thought or did not think, in how they felt or did not feel, which mere observation and analysis seemed unable to explain. In spite of their many shortcomings, Proteus was beginning to develop a curious feeling towards humans, something that its rational thought pattern could not identify, but which the captured minds suggested might be respect.

As with the matter of energy, this would require more thought.

Other than Usagi, the members of the Tsukino household were typically up and around well in advance of eight in the morning. Not today, however.

After fixing a short, high-energy breakfast consisting primarily of spiced omelettes, honeyed rice, and a few of those little flat sausages for herself and Setsuna—and a fresh can of tuna cat food for Luna—Ikuko had put her guest to work, helping out with the dishes.

As Usagi could attest, Ikuko was a firm believer in chores, but to tell the truth, Setsuna didn't mind. These people had taken her in without cause or complaint, and the least she could do in return was to dry a few dishes. She even found something strangely comforting in the almost mindless routine of sweeping up with broom and dustpan, or scrubbing flecks of food from a plate.

It was just that she didn't see how Ikuko had any real _need_ for the extra help. The older woman was the ultimate housewife, equal parts waiter, cook, secretary, janitor, and maid, and all mother—and it showed.

In the midst of drying one plate, Ikuko had the phone caught between her head and shoulder, informing someone named Yoruno in a sweet, overwhelming sort of voice that Kenji wouldn't be in for work today, what with all the snow, and asking how was Neiko, and how had Masada done on that last report card, and so on. That done, Ikuko set down the plate and briefly disappeared upstairs to inform her family that there would be neither school nor work today, and that they might as well go back to sleep. In Usagi's case, she didn't even have to do that much, and instead just switched off the alarm—and the second alarm—pulled the blankets up a little better, kissed her daughter's forehead, and quietly left the room.

With no urgent need to be anywhere, it was almost nine-thirty before any signs of life manifested themselves upstairs, a slightly bleary-eyed ChibiUsa wandering downstairs to the first faint sounds and smells of sizzling bacon and cooking pancakes as Setsuna's re-education in the finer arts of cooking continued. Kenji and Shingo followed close behind, and Usagi brought up the rear at about ten. Strangely, of all the late risers, it was Usagi who showed the least signs of having overslept. In a twisted sort of way, that made sense.

Most of the late breakfast had been packed away by the time the phone rang. Shingo and ChibiUsa were fighting over the last pancake while Usagi stole a few pieces of bacon from both of them; Kenji had withdrawn to the living room some time before, to read the newspaper in peace; Ikuko was busy attending to the dishes, preparing another round of toast, and refereeing the battle between her son and 'niece,' to say nothing of the ruckus that ensued when Usagi's thievery was discovered; and Luna couldn't have picked up the phone anyway.

So Setsuna lifted the receiver, shut out the steadily increasing sounds of squealing—Usagi was very ticklish—and greeted the caller.

"Tsukino residence; can I help you?"

"Setsuna?" Haruka's voice. "Is that you?"

"I've asked myself that question a number of times."

There was a pause. "There's a reason I'm not taking that morning Philosophy course at the university," Haruka muttered, half to Setsuna, half to herself. "Look, could you get Usagi? Something strange is going on. I think."

"You think?"

"Michiru's been going nuts for the last half hour or so, saying that this weather we're having isn't natural. Something about the water being out of place, I think she said." Haruka paused again. "I'm starting to understand what she means. Something in the air, the wind... it just feels _wrong_ somehow. It's like..."

BEEEEP!

"Hang on a second," Setsuna apologized, putting Haruka on hold and switching to the incoming call. "Tsukino residence."

"Setsuna?" Ami, this time.

"Hello, Ami-chan. By any chance, are you calling to tell me that this blizzard isn't supposed to be here?"

Another pause, followed by a curious, "How did you know?"

"Haruka's on the other line, and she..."

BEEEEP!

"Excuse me a moment," Setsuna said, again switching lines. "Hello?"

"Hello, Setsuna." Rei.

*Why does that not surprise me?* Setsuna thought. "Hello, Rei. Yes, I know that the blizzard's not of natural origins."

Yet another pause. This time, the reply was confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, sorry. I just thought... could you hold on for just a second? Thanks." Setsuna held the receiver to her shoulder while she looked at the buttons, trying to remember which one enabled the 'conference call' function. Usagi had shown it to her the first day, and it was... that one. "Is everyone still there?" Three voices answered yes. "Good. Now would you all just hold on for one more second?" Setsuna glanced at the table. "Usagi-chan? It's for you."

In the middle of fending off two irritated younger relatives, Usagi smiled gratefully and rushed over to the safety of the phonecall. "Thanks, Setsuna. Hello?"

"Hello, Usagi-chan," Ami said. "We've got a problem." She quickly explained about the storm, with Haruka making several sounds of agreement; Rei remained quiet. "I've been trying to pin down the source of the disturbance for the last two hours," Ami continued, "and I think I've got the location, but when I tried to identify the type of energy involved, my computer shut down."

Usagi blinked. "It shut down."

"Three times," Ami confirmed. "It starts up again with no problems, and it traces the disturbance, but each time I tell it to analyze the thing, I get a message in some kind of language I can't read. I think it's some sort of request for password identification, because about thirty seconds afterwards, the system shuts itself off."

"Has it ever done that to you before?" Rei asked.

"Not once." Ami sounded worried, and the others could understand why. She'd been using that little blue computer for so long, under so many dangerous or extreme circumstances, that it had become far more than just a tool; as much as the fire at Hikawa was a part of Rei or the Space Sword a part of Haruka, so too was the computer to Ami. The thought that it might be keeping something from her, that it might not _trust_ her enough to tell her something, was unsettling. "Usagi, I really need to talk to Luna about this."

"No argument there, but have you looked outside? I haven't seen this much snow since we went up to the D-Point; Luna'd never make it all the way to Mako-chan's by herself." Usagi thought for a minute, looked around to make sure nobody was paying too much attention, then lowered her voice before continuing. "Ami, if you transformed, do you think you could get over here?"

"Easily."

"And of the three of you, who's closest to this disturbance you mentioned?"

"I am," Ami replied. "It's about ten blocks from Mako-chan's apartment."

"Okay. You get down here as fast as you can, and Luna and I'll meet you on the upstairs balcony; remember, I'm in a different room. Haruka, Rei, get over to Mako-chan's and wait there until Ami-chan gets back so you can move in on this thing."

"Michiru's not going to like this," Haruka predicted gloomily.

"She doesn't have to like it as long as she does it," Usagi said flatly. "And somebody should try to get in touch with Mina-chan and let her know what's going on."

"I'll get Mako-chan to do that before I leave," Ami promised. "See you in a few."

"G'bye." Usagi hung up the phone.

"Who was that, dear?"

"Hmm? Oh, just Ami-chan." Usagi made up a story on the spot. "She's helping me with some things in history class by downloading stuff off the 'net, but her computer blew a fuse on her or something and lost most of it. She's a little upset about that, but she called to let me know she might be a bit late with the study aids." Usagi stretched and yawned theatrically, noting that both Luna and ChibiUsa had started paying attention when she mentioned Ami's 'computer problems.' "I think I'm going to go back to bed for a while. Wake me up if it looks like I'm going to sleep through lunch, okay, Mom?"

"Okay, dear."

Usagi started towards the stairs. "Coming, Luna?"

"Meow." Luna crossed the kitchen and followed Usagi upstairs, keeping up the ordinary cat act until they were out of earshot, at which point she looked up. "What's going on, Usagi?"

"Something strange is happening to Mercury's computer, so she's coming over to talk to you about it."

"Did she say what was wrong?"

"This blizzard isn't a natural event," Usagi explained. "Ami-chan, Michiru, and Haruka can all notice something wrong with it, like it shouldn't be here. Ami was able to find out the location of whatever's causing it, but every time she tries to identify it, her computer locks her out and then shuts itself down."

"I don't like where this is headed," Luna said as they entered the bedroom.

"You're not the only one," Usagi noted, closing the door behind them. They sat on the bed and waited for several minutes until a faint knock came from the glass door; Usagi pulled back the curtains and found Mercury's slightly snow-frosted self waiting on the balcony. *Funny,* Usagi thought. *Ice and snow don't look all that bad on her. Sort of brings out the blue in the uniform.*

"What a day," Mercury said, brushing snow off herself but otherwise not looking at all like someone who'd just run halfway across town in the middle of a blizzard. "Sorry about the mess."

"I took precautions," Usagi said, handing Mercury a towel and pointing at the other one under her boots. "The rest'll evaporate, won't it?"

"What's wrong with your computer?" Luna asked.

"Take a look for yourself." Mercury sat down on the floor next to the bed, took out her computer, entered a few commands, then held it up so Luna could see the result. Usagi peeked over their combined shoulders to see what all the fuss was about.

The computer's tiny screen showed a map of part of Tokyo, with weird lines superimposed over it in a sort of spiraling pattern. The spiral was centered over a small flashing block, and when Mercury pressed another button, the computer began a familiar series of beeps as it started to analyze whatever was in the red area.

The device made a sudden whirring noise as all functions displayed on its screen came to an abrupt halt. The screen went blurry as the map and the spiral were replaced by several lines of odd silvery symbols on a black background. The only symbol Usagi recognized was the one at the bottom, the same upturned crescent they had all long since come to associate with the Moon Kingdom, but there was something uncannily familiar about the entire sequence of characters.

Luna hissed in amazement. "The Silver Script!"

"The what?" Usagi and Mercury asked together.

"The Silver Script," Luna repeated. "It was the major form of writing used on the Moon Kingdom, and most of the other worlds adopted it during the Silver Millennium for use in administrative records and diplomatic dispatches. I haven't seen it in..."

"Never mind that," Usagi interrupted. "Can you _read_ it?"

Luna looked slightly annoyed. "Of course I can. So could you, if you'd just stop and think for a minute. 'Security lockout,'" Luna began to read, her eyebrows rising as she continued. "'By Royal Decree, access to the following information is restricted exclusively to members of the Silver Council, Eclipse-level authorization. Identity verification required for further access. Enter password.'" Luna sat back on her haunches as the screen went dark. "Oh my."

"That was about as clear as mud," Usagi grumbled. "What was it talking about, Luna?"

"The Silver Council is, or rather, _was_ the absolute upper level of authority during the Silver Millennium," Luna explained. "It was made up of the rulers of the various planets and a few of their chosen champions, with the Queen of the Moon as the council's head. They dealt exclusively with matters that affected all the planets, all the races."

"Then you must know the password, right? You and Artemis _were_ Queen Serenity's advisors, after all."

Luna shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mercury, but I don't know the password. Artemis and I advised Serenity in her capacity as Queen of the Moon and oversaw the education of the children of the Royal Court, but we weren't part of the Silver Council."

"Maybe we could guess the password?" Usagi suggested.

"Absolutely not!" Luna snapped. "First of all, the password could be absolutely anything, and we don't have the time to sit around trying to guess it. Secondly, we'd only get one chance to get in, and the next step in verification would be a retinal scan. And since every last member of the Silver Council has been dead for over a thousand years..."

"What about us?"

Luna shook her head. "Wouldn't work. None of you were old enough back then to have been part of the Council, and even if you had been, you don't have the same eyes anymore. Besides, not many Senshi were full members of the Council. Certainly not up to the Eclipse level."

"Why not?"

"Because they were _soldiers,_ Usagi," Luna said, exasperated. "The Senshi were the bodyguards and personal agents of the Royal Family, so they could end up almost anywhere in the system—or even outside it—on short notice, and even during the Silver Millennium, a lot of those places weren't safe. The Council simply couldn't risk having someone with full security clearance being captured or turned against them."

"Oh. So where does this leave us?"

Luna glanced out the window. "I think the best we can do is for Artemis and I to go with the girls when they investigate whatever's going on out there. There's a chance that we _might_ be able to tell what it is." She looked at the snow again and shuddered. "This is not going to be pleasant."

Mercury sighed, then nodded. "I was afraid this might happen, so I brought something along." She put her computer away, placing it into whatever separate chunk of reality her power allowed her to access; from that same place, Mercury pulled out a small blue backpack. Opening the top revealed it to be stuffed with what looked like a folded-up towel or small blanket. There was just enough space for Luna.

"That was very thoughtful of you, Mercury." Luna was all but purring as she climbed into the snug little space.

"The top folds over far enough so that you'll stay dry and relatively warm, but you won't be able to open it from the inside. It was the best I could come up with," Mercury apologized.

"It'll do fine, just as long as you don't start swinging me around." Mercury nodded, waited for Luna to make herself comfortable, and then closed the pack. As she slipped her arms into the straps, Mercury glanced at Usagi.

"After we've dealt with this, I think we're going to have to get everyone together for a meeting. That includes you, Setsuna, and ChibiUsa, so you'd better think of something that'll convince your mother to let you out of the house in this kind of weather."

"Not to worry," Usagi said grandly. "You said this wasn't a natural storm, and every time we've gone up against something messing with the weather, things went back to normal as soon as we took out the source."

"You've got a point, there." Mercury stopped at the threshold, switching on her visor to help her find her way through the blowing snow. "Guess we'll find out in a little while whether you're right or not."

Not for the first time, Anon was contemplating a career change.

There were certain tasks required to keep a city the size of Tokyo running, certain jobs that simply could not be interrupted without serious consequences resulting. One group of such jobs included things such as police, fire, and medical services, things which, in a pinch, the city could continue to function without. At least for a little while. The other group of jobs were things like power and water, which absolutely had to be maintained at all times.

As a maintenance technician at one of the city power plants, Anon's job fell into that second category. Like everybody else, he had a carefully defined and negotiated set of working hours, but unlike everybody else, Anon was one of a small handful of specialists who knew how to get a stubborn, old-model generator at the plant up to speed. Only three other people knew how to keep the monster everyone referred to as 'Smoking Joe' from overheating itself and shutting down half of the surrounding district; one of those three was taking a two-week vacation in Australia, another was out with the flu, and the third was working his twelfth straight hour, and would soon be beyond the reach of even the most potent coffee.

Which left Anon to trudge through the waist-deep drifts, the icy, blinding spray of still-falling snow, and this howling wind that seemed to have come from somewhere well above the arctic circle.

*I don't deserve this,* he thought, speaking to whatever higher power happened to be looking down and listening at that particular instant. *I work hard, I pay my taxes, I even do volunteer work at that children's shelter. So just once, why can't I have something _nice_ happen to me?*

This time, apparently, somebody _was_ listening. Somebody with a slightly twisted sense of humor.

Head down to help keep the sleet out of his face, Anon turned the next corner and ran smack into something, falling over backwards into the nearest snowbank. He looked up, half-ready to yell at whoever'd walked into him...

Anon wondered briefly if that blow to the head had jarred something loose in his brain; in his experience, beautiful blue-eyed young women did not typically run around in miniskirts during blizzards. Although he had to admit, it did look good on her. The wide visor was a nice touch, too; practical, but stylish.

Part of Anon's brain had, in fact, been jarred loose. This part, which dealt mostly with long-term memory, picked up immediately on who this young lady must be, and started raising nine kinds of neural stink to get Anon's attention. Unfortunately, the ruckus went unnoticed.

*Did she just say something?* "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I said, are you all right?"

"I was going to ask you that. Isn't it a bit cold to be wearing... well, that?"

The disjointed section of brain held up a chemically-induced flag which essentially read, 'Hey, nitwit!', but again, Anon failed to notice.

The woman laughed. "I'm fine. Cold doesn't bother me."

"I'd say not."

"Are you out here for any particular reason?"

"I'm trying to get to work," Anon said, shouting over a sudden blast of wind and pulling his fur-lined hood a little further forwards.

"In all _this?_" She seemed surprised. "Is it important?"

"Well, it's not an emergency yet, but it may be if this weather slows me down much longer. What about you? Same sort of situation?"

The cut-off region of grey matter started banging itself, lobe-first, against the nearest available wall—the inside of Anon's skull—in a fit of sheer, impotent frustration.

"Oh, definitely. Where are you headed?" Anon told her, and the young lady shook her head, dislodging snow from her hair. "I hate to say this, but you're headed the wrong way." She seemed to think something over for a minute. "I guess a little side trip can't hurt. Come on; I'll get you to where you're going." She took one of his thickly-gloved hands in her own and started off. Anon couldn't quite understand how she was able to run fast enough to pull him along at such a speed.

About two minutes later, they were at the entrance gate to the power plant, and the young blue-haired lady let go of Anon's hand.

"That was quick," he said, surprised. "You certainly have a good sense of direction."

For some reason, that made her laugh. "Comes with the job."

"Well, thanks."

"You're welcome." And she vanished into the snow. Anon shook his head and headed for the gate; the guard had come out of the security booth and was staring at him in astonishment.

"Something wrong, Kige-san?" Anon greeted the man.

"Uh, Syumo-san... was that who I think it was?"

Anon opened his mouth to ask what he meant by that, but at that moment, the connection between short and long-term memory was finally reestablished, and everything his brain had been trying to tell him came rushing forwards. All that came out of his mouth was a strangled wheeze.

Victorious at last, the little region of Anon's brain collapsed in utter exhaustion, suggesting to its neighbors that a good stiff drink would probably be in order.

The rest of the brain agreed.

Arriving at the door to Makoto's apartment, Mercury quickly looked around to make sure nobody was watching and then ducked inside, transforming back to Ami as she headed for the living room.

What she'd told the man was true; normal levels of cold really didn't bother her. Ami suspected that she could jump into the nearest river and then stand around in winds even colder than this for hours and not get sick.

That didn't mean she enjoyed being cold and wet. The switch back dealt with the damp, clinging layer of snow, and the considerably higher temperature of the apartment would quickly deal with the chill in her flesh.

Though in all honesty, the glare Michiru had fixed on her would probably have sufficed to deal with the snow and the chill on its own. While Michiru had many admirable traits and enviable talents, her ability to wait around for others was not among them; she had patience in abundance, but once she made up her mind to do something, Michiru did it. Anyone and anything that slowed her down did so at its own peril. She usually hid it better, but Ami guessed that Michiru's own disrupted weather-sense was making her edgier than normal. Ami wasn't exactly rolling in patience herself, at the moment.

"Welcome back." The impatience was strongly evident in those two words.

*I wonder how they managed to keep her here this long.* "Hello, Michiru. Sorry I took so long; I made a detour to help somebody who got lost in the snow."

"What's with the backpack?" Rei asked.

"Travel accommodations." Ami set the pack down and opened the top. "You okay in there, Luna?"

"Just fine." Luna sprang out, stretching. "Hello, girls. Where's Minako?"

"Would you believe we're not sure?" Makoto smiled ruefully. "I called her place twice; the phone was busy the first time, and the second time, her mother said she was actually outside somewhere. We tried her communicator a few times, but she either doesn't have it, can't hear it, or just isn't answering it."

Luna frowned. "I think we'd better find her. I wasn't able to figure a way past the problem with Ami's computer, so there's no way to be sure what we might be up against, and we might need all the extra firepower we can get."

"I can probably track her down," Ami said. "Assuming whatever's keeping me from identifying the source of this storm hasn't..."

The doorbell rang. Rei looked at the others.

"You don't suppose...?" From their expressions, they did suppose. Hotaru was the closest, so she got up and went to answer the door. When she returned a moment later, she was struggling not to laugh.

The bundle of clothes that accompanied her was identifiable as Minako only because they knew Usagi was at home, and it simply couldn't have been anyone else. A heavy, hooded winter jacket and matched snowpants bulged outwards on who knew how many internal layers; fingered mittens the size of boxing gloves nicely complemented the massive woolen socks; a thick, bright red scarf hid most of the face, and the blue ski mask handled the rest.

"Hi, guys." The voice was muffled about three times over, but it was definitely Minako. "Mako-chan, I got your message, but as you can see, it's kind of hard to get at my wrist like this." She lowered one arm, producing a slow, massive shift in the stacked fabric, to demonstrate the point.

"So instead of going inside your house, dressing down, and calling back," Haruka said slowly, "you decided to set out in the middle of what has to be the worst blizzard to hit this town in any of our lifetimes, crossed I don't know how many blocks..."

"Seven," Minako supplied helpfully.

"...with streets buried in snow almost up to your waist, to ask in person what the message was?"

"Hey, like they say, 'neither rain nor snow, rabid pitbulls nor feisty felines...'"

"Speaking of felines," Luna interrupted, "I assume Artemis is back at your place?"

"Oh no, he's right here." Minako turned—shuffled would probably be a better word—and called back into the front room. "Artemis, Luna wants to talk to you."

"I'm not coming in there."

"Quit being such a baby," Minako said heartlessly. After a moment, Artemis slunk into the living room.

Or rather, something that was vaguely cat-shaped slunk in. Like Minako, it was wrapped in layer upon layer of protective gear, pet sweaters and modified human winter gear all tucked and folded into something only Minako could have dreamed up. Even the tail had been given added defense against the elements, bound up in a coiled, many-colored scarf. The little red bow attached to the tip was the crowning touch.

"If anybody laughs," Artemis said in a dark, humorless tone, "if anyone so much as cracks a smile, I'm going to shred every stitch of clothing in her wardrobe, one seam at a time."

"So," Minako said, throwing back her hood and lifting off the ski mask, "what's up?"

"Why did you let her do that to you?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

The cats were sharing space in a slightly larger backpack, carried by Mercury as the assembled Senshi crossed the wintry streets to face whatever awaited them, literally, at the heart of the storm. They kept a close formation as they moved, with Mercury in the lead, keeping them on course by tracking the anomalous energy reading with her visor.

"Didn't you even _try_ to talk her into staying indoors?"

"I said I DON'T want to talk about it."

"Or at least not to use that ridiculous bow?"

"LUNA!"

They stopped moving, and the top of the pack opened up. Mars was looking in.

"We're here. And you've got to see this." The cats climbed out, balancing on Mercury's shoulders, and saw.

The Senshi were standing atop a moderately tall highrise, at that point where suburbs and urban center tended to overlap, all of them looking in at the heart of the city—and one building in particular, a skyscraper less than a block away, about which weird, blue-white energy danced and crackled. The sky overhead was thick with stormclouds, but also suffused with a brilliant glow from the twisting arcs of power. Strangely, there was no wind and far less snow here, at the heart of the disturbance, than in the rest of the city; much like the eye of a hurricane, the center of this unnatural storm was almost peaceful, surrounded by atmospheric fury.

"Luna," Artemis said, suddenly sounding very worried. "Look up there. On top of the building. Is that what I think it is?"

Luna looked. She was only half-surprised to note that the upper levels of the skyscraper had been taken over by more of the creeping green substance this newest enemy appeared to favor, four high spires of the stuff climbing above the roof while a dozen others projected out from the base, almost level with the roof. At the tips of the tallest spires, an orb of incandescent energy spun and sparkled, casting energy off in all directions and drawing it in from just as many places, multicolored lightning bolts flashing into and out of the sky.

She didn't know what the green stuff was, but she recognized the shape it had formed. It explained a lot of questions, but posed a lot more, and Luna knew she wasn't going to like the answers.

"It is, Artemis. And this has to be a trap of some kind."

"I must have missed something," Jupiter said. "How does looking at a piece of sculpted mold tell you this is a trap?"

"That's not a sculpture, Jupiter. It's called a mana nexus, and it's... well, for now, all you need to know is that it's not the sort of thing you build on a whim. One that size would have taken weeks to align properly, and whoever built it didn't leave it out in the open like that by accident. They had to know somebody would notice it once it was active; that entire building's probably filled with that green stuff."

"That's a _big_ building," Venus noted nervously.

"We had enough problems with one the size of a cafe," Mars said. "How do we deal with something _that_ size?"

"Invest in an industrial-strength weed-whacker?" Saturn supplied helpfully, hefting the Silence Glaive.

"Keep that idea in reserve," Luna advised. "There just might be another way. Mercury, Neptune, Uranus, you all said you could feel something wrong about this storm." The three Senshi nodded, and Luna looked at the others. "Did any of the rest of you notice anything strange about the weather?"

"Nope."

"No."

"Not a thing."

"Nada."

"Three against a nexus?" Artemis asked. "Luna, isn't that a little... dicey?"

"We've got to try and spread out the energy," Luna said. "If we just turn Saturn loose, the blast will probably wipe out everything within a block of that building."

"It's _that_ powerful?" Jupiter asked.

"Not by itself." Luna seemed to debate something. "I suppose you do need to know a little about this. The nexus is designed to pull in and concentrate energy. Whoever built it seems to have set it to draw purely on water, wind, and ice, but any other form of power that touches it will be absorbed as well, magnified, and then spit back out at about ten times its original strength."

Saturn immediately put the Glaive down.

"What does this have to do with us?" Uranus asked.

"There are two ways to shut down a mana nexus that you don't know how to control; you either throw enough power at it to overload the thing and then run like crazy when it explodes, or you take away the power it's drawing. You three can control the elements involved here, so I'm hoping you'll be able to overpower the nexus."

"They'd have to be spread out to do it," Artemis said, still sounding doubtful.

"Mercury, we'll need your computer to coordinate this; you've all got to be in just the right spot. And switch on your communicators, all of you. You'll need instructions. Jupiter, Neptune, go that way; Mars, Uranus, go there. We'll tell you when to stop."

It took about six minutes for the Senshi to get into positions that fit whatever plan Luna was operating by. Looking at her computer, Mercury saw that she, Neptune, and Uranus formed the points of a large, equilateral triangle, with the building at the exact center.

"That's good," Luna said. "Now everyone, listen carefully. Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, you're going to have to be ready to fight off anything that might come out of that building. Don't be flashy, and don't waste time—and whatever else you do, keep Mercury, Neptune, and Uranus clear of danger. They aren't going to be able to do anything to defend themselves once we get started."

"The more I hear of this plan of yours, Luna, the less I like it."

"Sorry, Uranus, but we don't have much choice. You and Neptune get your Talismans out; their presence will help you focus your thoughts and handle the energy better. And maybe," she added doubtfully, with a worried glance, "take some of the pressure off of Mercury."

"I'll be fine, Luna."

Luna didn't seem convinced. "I want the three of you to gather up as much energy as you think you can safely carry, just like you were preparing for an attack. Don't let it go; just hold it steady." Luna waited for several moments, watching Mercury closely as she concentrated on the building force. "All right. Now, while you keep the level of energy constant, push out with your thoughts. You each know the different forces you're tapping; picture them as lines in the ground and in the air. Picture them in your thoughts, and use your power to find them."

This was something of a challenge. The pressure of holding the gathered power, while not painful, was a slight strain against the mind, making the sort of mental exercise Luna was describing difficult. Slowly, the three Senshi began to feel a strange sort of thrumming around them, like the vibration of a drum being constantly struck. Each became acutely aware of her own heartbeat, pulsing in its own rhythm, as well as the weird feeling of the energy hanging in their minds, bodies, and some other distant place. Each Senshi could almost see cords of energy winding through the ground, climbing up into themselves and into the huge swirl of power atop the skyscraper, while funnels of similar force reached down out of the clouds.

"Do you see it?" Mercury nodded, unable to spare enough attention to form words. "Good," Luna said. "Now, I want you to reach out with your own energy and connect to all the cords you see linked to the nexus. Take it slowly; you may feel a little strange the first few times."

'Strange' didn't come close. When Mercury touched the nearest of the glowing lines, the energy in her mind was suddenly siphoned away, draining out so quickly that she could actually feel a slithering in her mind, her body. It reminded her very much of the reaction produced by someone drawing their nails across a blackboard, except that now it went on and on and on. The lines that connected only to her restored the lost energy as quickly as it was drained, so the flow didn't stop, but this also meant that the unpleasant reaction went on as well.

Gritting her teeth, Mercury reached for a second line; the flow slowed briefly and then resumed, neither stronger nor weaker than with just one line. Linking to the third line was easier, and the fourth, easier still. Soon, she had completed this stage of the task.

"How do you feel?" Luna asked.

"Queasy," Mercury admitted. "Sort of hot and cold at the same time."

"I feel like every hurricane ever spawned is running loose in my blood," Uranus said, breathing heavily. "Neptune?"

"I'm going to need a bath when this is over," her partner replied. "Kamis, this feels awful."

"Hold on, all of you. We're at the worst part. You can all feel the flow of energy going into the nexus, right?" There was a chorus of 'yes'-es, and Luna took a deep breath. "Okay. When I tell you, focus everything you can, all the energy and willpower you can hold onto, and pull away from the nexus _without_ breaking contact with it. You have to do this all at once, and you can't stop until the nexus shuts down. Understood?"

"On three," Neptune said.

"Right. One... two... three!"

They pulled. The flow dragged to a halt, started to reverse, energy now flowing from the nexus into and through the Senshi, and from there, back into the air and the dirt and wherever else it came from.

The nexus went berserk. Lightning shot out in wide swathes, trailing fiery sparks as they cut through the sky in mind-jarring thunderclaps. The previously calm eye of the storm exploded in winds that screamed in a hundred different directions, blowing icy daggers and red-hot gouts of steam ahead of them. The building shook and rattled and rang like the world's largest tuning fork, and the smooth sphere of energy at its peak became a shifting, amorphous blob, out of control.

"If they didn't know we were here before," Artemis shouted over the chaos, "they do now!"

"Ya think?" Venus shouted back.

Explosions reached them from somewhere near the base of the building. As Luna had predicted, a shambling, manlike mass of green had emerged to investigate the disturbance that was tearing its home apart; Jupiter and Mars tag-teamed the creature, stunning it with electrified fireballs before Jupiter lifted and hurled it bodily back through the front door, a sweeping gout of flames hot on its heels.

Another of the creatures appeared almost directly in front of the three Senshi, its shoulders bristling with masses of the red eye-beads. Venus remembered the streaking red energy beams those 'eyes' could launch, and threw herself at the thing before it could open fire, curling up in midair to form a living cannonball and ruin the enemy's balance.

The trick worked, but Venus had forgotten the springy, almost elastic nature of these creatures; it staggered backwards while she was sent in the other direction, landing roughly on the rooftop. Venus recovered instantly and sprang away as the thing's shoulders erupted in a wall of artillery-like fire, countering the barrage with a Beam Shower at the peak of her jump to keep its attention off Mercury.

Venus cursed when she saw a third creature leap up from somewhere below, with bits and pieces of what looked like an office supply room and a photocopier sticking to it. Saturn saw it as well and attacked, bringing her weapon around in a wide, whistling arc at the same moment as a jet of high-velocity paper burst from the creature's midsection.

Even when propelled to a degree of speed that rivaled a bullet, ordinary paper was no match for the Silence Glaive. The blade cut through the barrage and continued on its way as a rain of paper fell to either side. Already at the extreme edge of her reach, Saturn made a clumsy sort of half-jump forwards, gritting her teeth as she fought momentum to bring the Glaive back around for another slice.

Someone using an ordinary polearm probably would have missed, but the Silence Glaive was about as far from 'ordinary' as it was possible to get. Responding to its little mistress' commands, the short, scythelike head flipped over in midswing and flew forwards with an almost banshee-like howl. The green substance of the creature split cleanly as the impossibly sharp blade passed through it, a black and silver blur which left two halves and a bit of arm to fall separately to the roof.

Neither Venus nor Saturn were prepared to see the green, half-alive stuff suddenly wither up, turn first blue, then purple, and finally black, and crumble away to dust. Even the other creature stopped and stared as its comrade was consumed—which proved to be a mistake, as a crackling thunderbolt took it from behind, setting off some sort of chain reaction in its shoulders which obliterated the thing in a reddish series of explosions.

"It's going!" Luna shouted, and they all looked up to see the towering spires of the nexus losing their shape as the energy which had powered the construct dissipated. In seconds, it was gone, and a huge mass of green broke away, falling towards the streets below and breaking up into nothingness long before it hit.

"We did it," Neptune said wearily.

"Hoo-ray for our side," Uranus groaned. "I feel like I could sleep for a week."

"Are you all right?" Luna asked quickly.

"We're fine, Luna," Neptune replied. "Just very, very tired."

"I've got some coffee back at my place that'll wake you up again," Jupiter promised. "And since the storm's gone, I can head back now and have it ready by the time the rest of you get there."

"Sounds like a plan," Uranus agreed. "I prefer mine with sugar and cream."

"Black, here," Neptune said. "And make it strong, would you?"

"Sure thing. What about you, Mercury?"

The only answer was the slush-muffled sound of Mercury's body collapsing on the roof.

Janus read the report a third time.

"They successfully jammed the nexus' energy flow with only three individuals, destroyed the test units, and collapsed the entire structure. In less than ten minutes." The male voice listed off the points of the report in a flat, angry tone.

"Yes, my Prince," Archon replied.

"Three weeks of work to produce, ten minutes to destroy." Janus steepled its fingers and looked at Archon through the floating words. "And we didn't get any positive identification on whoever was responsible for it?"

"No, my Prince. The plan called for our enemies to enter the main structure; all the watcher's monitoring sensors were concentrated there, with nothing left to survey the exterior."

"I see." There was a long silence. Finally, Janus nodded, sighing. "Very well. A design flaw we can easily correct; have the watcher expand its surveillance perimeter at the remaining test sites by... three hundred percent."

"The watcher will require at least another week of effort to achieve that much of an increase," Archon said mildly.

"The traps are useless if they gain us no useful information," Janus said. "And besides, that gives you another week in which to produce a few more second- generation units to man the test sites. Are the prototypes operating as expected?"

"Yes, your Highness. Recycling the first-generation units worked better than I had anticipated, most likely because of the energy they had collected. We should have a sufficient force to place one second-grade unit at each test site, and still maintain a small force here."

"Good. I was getting tired of seeing these shambling mounds of fungus everywhere I went." Janus' female voice had taken over. "Do you think it might be possible to go a step further and produce a third-generation unit?"

"Perhaps, but that would be the limit of the materials. There is only so much we can do without a stable power source." Archon looked up at the lights in the throne room, which were considerably brighter now than they had been just a day before. "At least the nexus was not a total loss; it gave us enough reserve power to operate the atmospheric systems for the next few months, and it still produced quite an impressive storm."

"That it did." Janus breathed in the air, savoring the fact that the dry staleness which had permeated it since their return was gone now. "The abundance of energy at the supernexus seems to enhance the performance of the design considerably. That bodes well for our other nexi, does it not?"

"Even if they are all destroyed as soon after activation as the first," Archon said, calculating mystical variables, "I expect we will receive enough power to approach perhaps fifty percent of the city's normal capacity. That in itself would keep us going for the next year, but if we are fortunate enough to reach _sixty_ percent, the mana reactors could be triggered."

"And with the reactors operational," Janus finished, "the Rise will become reality. Excellent, Archon. Excellent." The blended face broke into a smile—one half stunningly handsome, the other stunningly beautiful. Taken together, they were frightening. "Send word to prepare for a feast, Archon. We feel like celebrating our recent good fortune."

"As you wish."

"And tell the Council of Lords that there will be a meeting afterwards. I believe it's high time we stopped laying low and got down to some serious business."

SAILOR SAYS:

(Makoto and Rei are sitting on high stools behind a counter, with two cups of hot chocolate in front of them.)

Makoto: How could that guy _not_ have known who Mercury was?

Rei: You read the script, didn't you? He got hit in the head. Usagi's living proof of what that can do to a person.

Usagi (leaning in from the right): I heard that.

Rei: You were supposed to.

(A door bursts open somewhere off-camera, and a snow-covered Ryo rushes in from the left.)

Ryo (gasping for breath): I got here as fast as I could. Where's Ami?! Is she alright?!

Makoto (getting to her feet): What are you doing here? You're not supposed to come back until at least the next episode!

Ryo: Do you think I CARE about continuity right now? Tell me where Ami is, or I'll... I'll... um... I'll see something really unpleasant and not warn you about it! (thinks to himself: *As if THAT wasn't the lamest threat in history. I really need to learn telekinesis or something.*)

Usagi: Well, since you asked SO nicely... come on, Romeo. (she leads him off- camera, leaning back in briefly) And you two, get on with the moral already.

Makoto: What _is_ the moral, anyway?

Rei: I personally think it has something to do with the way the world throws all kinds of signals at you when something important happens, and how most people can be totally oblivious to what it's trying to tell them. That guy with the head injury is an example; Ami-chan, Michiru, and Haruka were examples of people who paid attention and were able to do something besides standing around and watching the fireworks.

Makoto: Not bad. More hot chocolate?

Rei: Thanks. Got any marshmallows?

(Fade to black)

27/04/00 (Revised as of 15/08/02)

Wow. This is one of the longer episodes, and yet it took me the least amount of time to write. I've found my muse, and it's either serious sleep deprivation, too many hours of television, or WATCHING THOSE THREE EPISODES OF GUNDAM WING THIS PAST MONDAY!

Ahem. A serious injection of fresh story material always does this sort of thing to me.

Next up:
-A search for answers leads to a field trip which is quite literally out of this world; and
-February looms on the horizon (at last!)

And maybe one or two other things I'm still toying with.