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.

7. Chapter 7

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 7

Meetings and Greetings; or, Mother Knows Best…Sometimes Anyway

The feast was over, the tables cleared. Now, the Lords of Atlantis sat or stood about the grand chamber, some talking, others drinking, and a few remaining silent, all of them waiting for the arrival of their master and mistress, when the meeting would begin.

There was a curious feeling in the room that had only a little to do with the wine, a sense of rightness, of things being once again as they were meant to be.

Once, these assembled men and women, the heads of the most powerful and influential families of Atlantis, would have met to decide the fates of entire nations. They, like their ancestors before them, were the ruling class of the mightiest empire history had ever known, the most brilliantly shining jewel in the crown of human achievement. Their estates had covered the Earth and many other worlds while their fleets patrolled sea and sky and space, and their people had prospered upon the wealth and achievement of a hundred civilizations, all bound together under one rule. Theirs.

And then it had all been lost. The estates were overrun and the mighty fleets burned, as the people divided and fell upon one another in the chaos of a war that had reshaped the world. When it was over, the might of the empire had been broken, its holdings seized by rebels and self-proclaimed rulers or lost to the void. Atlantis itself, ancient heart of the empire, had been all but wiped from the face of the Earth; only a select few of its citizens, the best and the brightest, had been saved from the long night—and that sanctuary had been a prison, cut off from everything they were meant to rule.

Ten millennia of power, destroyed in the space of a year. Two thousand years of exile, while the homeworld remained in the grip of superstition, barbarism, and ignorance.

All because of one woman.

This was only the second meeting of the Lords since their return, and for many, it was a sign that things were at last beginning to return to the way they should be. The first meeting, grim and somber, held in darkened chambers where the air hung heavy with the dust of ages, had been an endless list of damage, losses, and outlines for repair. No more. The chambers were rich with light and energy, the scars of the ancient disaster erased, their former majesty restored. Much yet remained to be done before Atlantis was once again as it had been and should be, as they remembered it, but so too had much of the great city been restored; it was high time that the restoration of the empire also begin.

The massive double doors at the far end of the grand chamber opened on soundless hinges. Nine figures entered, the steady fall of heavy boots drawing the attention of the assembled Lords.

The two men in the lead were members of the Imperial Guard, as would be the two at the end of the small procession. Long silver robes, trimmed in the gold of the Imperial Throne, extended from the collar of the guards' expressionless helmets; in their right hands, each guard held a deadly spear-like weapon known as a firelance in a gauntleted grip of steel. They walked in step, were of the same height, and beneath the concealing robes, wore grey uniforms of a light but marvelously strong fabric which would protect them nearly as well as metal armor but still allow them a full range of movement. The guards were not, as some rumors suggested, all clones or members of the same carefully maintained bloodline—beneath their smoked-glass visors, each had a different face-but no one saw the face of an Imperial Guardsman while he was on duty; they saw only their own faces, cast back in distorted reflections by the flat, featureless visors.

Behind the guards came the richly robed, dark-eyed Archon, master archmage of Atlantis and chief advisor to the throne. It was difficult to tell whether Archon was walking on the crystalline floor or on a thin layer of empty air as he approached, the end of his sigil-inscribed robes flapping loosely as he moved, but no one cared to ask. Even among the Lords, who represented the greatest concentration of magical power in a people famous for their mastery of spells, Archon commanded great respect and even fear. The jagged white lines in his hair and beard were as striking as the thunderbolts his hands could conjure, his black, alien eyes more chilling than the deepest void of space.

After Archon came Janus, the Crowned Prince of Atlantis, the Lord of the Lords, and the future Emperor; with him, as ever, came Jenna, Imperial Princess, High Lady of the City, his twin sister. The Lords bowed, most out of genuine respect, some out of actual friendship, but none could deny a faint sense of unease at the unmistakable, unnatural division of the figure's features. No matter how many times one saw the gradually shifting blend of the two siblings, one never grew used to it. As much as Janus was Atlantis' hope for the future, he—they—were also the living reminder of its shame and defeat, for the treachery that had shattered the empire had also worked this disturbing fusion upon the imperial siblings, and twenty centuries of effort had failed to find a means of reversing it.

To Janus' right, there walked a tall young man with long, wild hair of a fiery red hue, held back from his face by a circlet of some silvery metal. There was something distinctly devious about his features, quick intelligence and sharp cunning in a combination which did not encourage trust, and this was enforced by the angry scar cutting across his face, beginning above the left eye and crossing the bridge of the nose to end on the opposite cheek. Whatever weapon had made the wound had just missed damaging his eyes, dark orbs which burned with the same cunning reflected on his face. He wore loose-fitting brown pants, the ends tucked behind the tops of sturdy boots and a wide black belt, and a sleeveless black vest. Three silver chains hung along the front of the vest, crisscrossing the man's trim, muscular chest, and silver studs adorned the knuckles of the fingerless gloves on his hands.

The being walking to Janus' left was virtually the exact opposite of her counterpart. Slender and graceful, she moved without any of the scarred man's obvious tension, her feet gliding across the floor in a manner even Archon's magic could have taken lessons from. Her face was exquisitely beautiful and appeared totally open, gentle and trusting, framed by long, blue-black hair. Gold and silver flashed at her ears, her throat, and here and there like tiny stars in the fall of her night-dark hair; her eyes were dark, liquid pools without bottoms. Her mask of gentle innocence was betrayed by the slow, provocative sway of her hips as she moved, by the shift and rustle of her dress, a silken, midnight-blue dream of form-fitting opaque folds, a skirt which somehow billowed outwards and clung to shapely legs all at once, and loosely flowing veils which, contrary to their name, hid nothing at all. Fashion designers would have killed for that dress, and models would have killed for the body beneath it; any Puritans in the audience would have _been_ killed just by looking at her.

Behind Janus, the scarred fighting man, and the sultry creature that looked just barely old enough to be considered a woman, there rose a mountainous shape of dark metal. Taller than the rest of the party by a head or more and nearly as broad as two of the guards, the mighty figure strode in slow, menacing silence, its glossy black armor making no sound except when one of the huge feet struck the floor. Strange bands of metal crisscrossed the armored body, running along shoulders and arms, torso and legs, with faint flickers of energy dancing beneath them, as if the armor were about to burst apart with a flood of energy, and the bands were the only things holding it together. The warrior bore no visible weapon, but the lack of armament hardly seemed a problem. Its face—if it possessed one—was unseen within the shadowy helm, but as with its lack of weapons, this deficiency did not impair the being in the slightest.

One thing all three figures had in common was a silver emblem, a series of seven rings, one inside the other, all the rings broken and connected to each other at regular intervals. The shape adorned the scarred man's chest in the form of a large tattoo; it gleamed on the beautiful woman's forehead, held in place by strings of tiny, winking jewels; it was fused directly into the menacing helm of the towering warrior.

And it was built directly into the floor upon which they and the others now stood.

As Janus strode to the gleaming, golden throne at the far end of the chamber, the Lords moved to stand over those seven rings. The largest circle held forty-nine men and women, while the one inside it held forty-two; each ring had seven fewer people standing over it until the smallest and innermost, which had only six, but sufficient space for one more. The other Lords glanced curiously at the empty space, as if someone were supposed to stand there, but remained silent for the moment.

While their master seated himself, the four guards took up their posts at the corners of the elevated section of floor upon which the throne stood. The scarred man stood to the left of the massive throne, the silent warrior to right; the woman settled herself on the wide right armrest, taking a posture which exposed a great deal of leg through slits in her skirt. Archon remained at the center of the chamber, within the innermost ring, his arms folded within the long sleeves of his robe.

"The Council of Lords of Atlantis is convened," Archon intoned solemnly. To anyone who might have been watching, it was immediately apparent that, with the possible exceptions of the faceless guards and the black knight, he was the oldest person in the room; of the just under two hundred men and women gathered around him, none could have been a day over thirty, and more than a few appeared not to have even reached twenty yet. Archon, by contrast, looked to be well on his way to fifty—and was in fact centuries older.

"Atlantis shall rise," two hundred voices replied.

"My Lords," Janus said, the male voice speaking in rich, clear tones, "less than a month has passed since our return to this world. In that time, a great deal has happened, and we have learned a number of things. In light of certain of our discoveries, and the impact they may have on our greater efforts to begin the Rise, I have decided to have Archon explain the current situation to you all. Archon."

Archon bowed his head. "As you will, my lord." With a gesture, Archon caused the lights of the vast, circular chamber to dim. In the air above the assembled Lords, an image of light appeared, a city built on a multitude of interconnected platforms. The spaces between those platforms was a perfect match for the symbol upon the floor.

"As you are already aware," Archon began, "the condition of the city upon our return was far worse than we had first anticipated. Protective and preservation spells throughout the city had inexplicably failed, leaving many buildings open to destruction by the elements. We have since learned that this city-wide failure of magic was not due to any inherent weakness in the spells, but to a shift in the availability of mana. Where Atlantis was once located above the largest focal point of the Earth's energy fields, it now sits in area virtually dead to magic."

"How long ago did the shift occur?" The speaking Lord was a tall, blue- haired youth. He wore a mantle which matched his blue-green eyes, and was one of the six Lords who stood in the innermost circle.

"By our best estimates, Lord Triton, it was not one shift, but a series of them. The first appears to have occurred perhaps half a century after the Fall; the most recent took place less than a year past. We are still trying to determine the nature of the shifts, but their final result is this." Archon gestured, and the image of the city was replaced by a glowing, turning image of the Earth. There was a faint murmur amongst the Lords as they got their first look at the world in over two thousand years. Lines of light appeared on the surface of the globe, turning and twisting randomly across the surface; a huge number of them met on the extreme eastern edge of the largest continent. "Whether by chance or by design, a city known to the people of this age as 'Tokyo' sits atop the new supernexus."

"Then the city must be taken," a slender woman in the inner circle said. She stood three places to the left of Lord Triton and wore a pale silver mantle which went rather well with her long white hair and sky-blue eyes.

"Lady Istar is correct," a third Lord said from Triton's right. This Lord was a tall, powerfully-built man with dusty blond hair and iron grey eyes, whose brown mantle did not hide his broad shoulders and thick chest. "I have checked regularly on our forces, Archon, so I know we possess sufficient units to mount a campaign against any one city. When does the attack begin?"

"It began the same night we returned," Archon replied. "It has since been called off." The Lords erupted into a chorus of surprised protests.

"Calm yourselves, my Lords." Magic enhanced Janus' level call for silence so that all in the room could hear it.

"My Prince," the muscular Lord protested, "what is going on? Why..."

Janus raised a hand. "Archon will explain everything, Lord Stone. All I ask is that you give him time to finish his report."

Stone bowed mutely, and Archon resumed. "Twelve first-generation units were dispatched to the target city. With the exception of the watcher unit and one other, all were collectors with orders to establish the stable sources of power we require to bring about the Rise. Two of those units were destroyed within the first twenty-four hours of the operation, and a third only a few days later. At that time, our Prince decided upon a new plan of action."

The Lords listened in silence as Archon described the traps, some nodding in agreement. There were more startled outbursts when he related the relative ease with which their unseen enemy had apparently destroyed the mana nexus.

"That, my Lords, is where we now stand," Archon finished. "Seven trap sites remain in operation, and each has been supplied with a second-generation unit to back up the existing forces already in place. As each trap is sprung, the watcher will further alter the remaining ones to better meet the capabilities of our opponents, but considering the speed with which the previous units were destroyed, I expect it will take a great deal more to defeat this enemy."

"Is Lord Draco's absence connected to these events?" This was one of the younger Lords, another member of the innermost circle despite the fact that he was shorter than any of the other five. Black-haired, dark-eyed, and wearing a black mantle, the boyish Lord stood to the left of the empty space.

Upon the throne, Janus smiled. "No, Lord Nyx. Lord Draco was dispatched on a recon mission several weeks back, and has been out of contact since his departure. He will return in a few days." Janus chuckled, a curious blend of masculine and feminine laughter. "Though the current situation has nothing to do with his absence, I would expect Lord Draco will take steps to remedy that as soon as he has made his report." Knowing their absent comrade as they did, a few of the other Lords laughed briefly.

"At any rate," the imperial figure said, switching into Jenna's soft voice, "you are all now aware of our situation. The watcher unit has been busy collecting all available information on the current state of the world, which comes to a total far larger than we could hope to relate here. All its files will be made available on request for those of you who wish to study them. And we do encourage that," a suddenly dual voice emphasized, brother and sister speaking as one. "The global shift of mana energy is but one of the changes that have taken place since our entrapment, and it may be the least of those changes. It would do us all good to understand how they may affect the Rise." Janus looked as if one or both of its sides were about to say something else, but paused, hearing a soft chime only those grouped about the throne could detect. "And now, I must ask that you return to your efforts, my Lords. Though we have secured some energy, we are still far from total success. After you have studied our new records, ideas on how to turn the information to our advantage should be submitted to Archon. You will be advised of any further developments as they occur. Atlantis shall rise."

"The Lords shall rule," came the reply. The various Lords began to exit the chamber, some in silence, others speaking in small groups.

"One of those 'further developments' you mentioned?" a soft, amused voice whispered to Janus' right.

"Yes. Draco has returned ahead of schedule." Out of the corner of the female eye, Janus saw its scarred advisor frown darkly.

"I don't like this. Draco being late is one thing, especially since he stops to fight something almost every time he turns around. But for him to return early..."

"Cestus," the beautiful woman said, sighing, "don't you _ever_ lighten up? In all my life, I've never met anyone who worries as much as you do."

"In all your life," the scarred man repeated, sneering. "How many years would that be today, Lillith? Sixteen, seventeen? What will it be tomorrow? Twenty-two? Twelve, perhaps?"

"I don't see how that's any of your business," she said distantly, turning away from him with a faintly musical tinkle echoing from her ornate earrings. Cestus made a sound of disgust.

"Quiet," Janus ordered tersely. "Both of you."

An armored figure had just entered the hall. It was taller and broader than the guards, less so than the silent knight standing beside the throne. The armor it wore was a combination of fiery red and bright gold, plain white and smoky black, the final effect being that the figure appeared to be aflame as it walked. The armor was worked so that it seemed made of scales, and a huge, horned, reptilian face glared out at the world from the breastplate, with clawed highlights adorning the bracers at wrist and ankle. A second dragon's head rested atop the clawlike shoulder guards, ruby-bright eyes flashing from its sides and finely wrought horns rising in a crowning crest as the fanged mouth snarled silently at the world. A long cloak—black on the outside, red on the inside—trailed behind the warrior as he approached, leaving a broad-bladed shortsword visible on his left hip, a longer sword sheathed on his right; both weapons and their scabbards were worked in gold and jewels.

The magnificent warrior strode up to the base of the dais, sank to one knee, and saluted with one fist over his heart. "My Prince, my Princess. As ordered, I have returned."

"Rise, Lord Draco, and present your report."

"Good news for a change, my Prince. Despite the state of affairs in the city on our return, the holding spells remained intact. Only one had been broken for any length of time, and it was restored almost immediately thereafter."

"Which one?" Janus asked quickly.

"The Seal of Mer, my Prince. I cannot be sure what happened, but it was some time ago, and the damage appears to have been contained. Whatever the case, the seal is as strong now as it ever was."

Janus let out a relieved breath. "Good, good. I was half-afraid that... well, never mind. Well done, Lord Draco."

"I live but to serve, my Prince, my Princess. Will you require anything further of me?"

Janus thought for a moment. "Not at the moment, Draco, however... I would suggest that, after you've rested, you review the information gathered by the watcher these last few weeks. I think you may find it interesting."

It was difficult to tell since his face was hidden, but Draco appeared intrigued. "As you say, my Prince." He saluted again and withdrew.

"Welcome back, everyone," the principal said. "I'm glad to see you managed to—ahem—'weather' yesterday's little storm without too much trouble."

A lot of the students groaned good-naturedly. Principal Hashido had a tendency to crack wise when he was put in front of a microphone, but since he was widely accepted to be the best high school principal in the district, they let him get away with it. Besides, sometimes he was actually funny.

"Still, in light of the storm, there have been some problems reported in the last couple of hours. Mostly, it's because of all the runoff from the melted snow—leaks in some ceilings, no back pressure in some washrooms, too _much_ pressure in others, that sort of thing. The janitors are working to get things under control, but I thought it'd be more sporting if you'd been warned ahead of time. So if you start hearing strange noises coming from the walls, feel free to step out into the hallway until they pass—unless you're near the music room, of course. I understand Kakura-sensei will be putting the brass band through their paces again today." A few of the students laughed. "And speaking of high notes," Hashido went on, "we've come to the last part of this assembly..."

A well-nigh universal cheer went up. Hashido cleared his throat. Twice.

"Yes, I know, you can't _wait_ to get to class..."—there was a dead silence here—"...so I'll just get this over with. The second-year class is getting a new student today, a mister Urawa Ryo, who some of you may remember from..."

"WELCOME BACK, RYO-KUN!" a pair of loud, female voices shouted from somewhere in the middle of the crowd, evoking a fair bit of laughter. At the front of the gym, Ryo sighed, rolled his eyes and waved politely.

"Ah yes," Hashido said. "I understand you've met Usagi-chan and Mina-chan before, correct?" Ryo shrugged, and Hashido nodded somberly. "My condolences," he added, speaking into the microphone.

"HEY!"

Usagi waited at the gym exit after most of the other students had left. When the teachers started to come out, she spared a deadly glance for Principal Hashido and then turned her attention to her real target. "Haruna-sensei," she said, "could I talk to you for a minute?"

"It'll have to be while we walk," Haruna said, starting down the hall. "And if this is about the paper I assigned last week..."

"It's not," Usagi promised, waiting until they were out of earshot. "I thought you should know that Ami-chan and Mako-chan aren't going to be in today. Maybe not tomorrow, either."

"Are they sick?"

"Ami is. Mako-chan's staying home to look after her, just in case."

"It's _that_ serious?" Haruna asked, a little worried. "What has she got?"

"We're not really sure," Usagi admitted. "She sort of collapsed a little before lunch yesterday, and she's been running a fever since then. Mako-chan called Ami's mother in to have a look, and she said that whatever it is should pass in a day or so. Mizuno-san didn't really say what the problem was, but I think she thought it was an allergic reaction to something. The rest of us are heading over to Makoto's place after school to see how Ami's doing, so Minako and I are picking up any homework either of them might have."

"Are you sure that's a good idea? Going over, I mean," Haruna added, aware of how her question might sound. "You really can't afford to get sick right now."

"Mizuno-san said that since Mako-chan wasn't sick, she didn't think whatever Ami has is catching, so it wouldn't be a problem if we visited." *Besides,* Usagi added silently, *we _know_ it isn't a virus or anything like that. That's about _all_ we know, but still...*

"All right," Haruna agreed. "I know how Ami likes to keep ahead of the class, so I'll put together an outline of everything we'll be covering in history and math for the next week or so, and I'll have a talk with her other teachers at lunch and see if they can give you the same."

"Thanks, sensei. I appreciate it. So will Ami-chan."

Haruna smiled. "Have that report in tomorrow and we'll call it even."

Usagi groaned.

It was lunchtime.

In the cafeteria, Usagi and Minako had claimed the table they occasionally shared with Ami and Makoto—when Ami wasn't busy in the library or computer room, that is, and when neither Minako nor Makoto was stalk... ahem, introducing herself to the object of her latest crush. Naru and Umino sometimes joined them, but more often found a quiet spot somewhere out of the way, and today was evidently one of those days. Usagi recalled hearing Umino mention something about a new book on the life cycle of lower-order annelids—whatever those were—and silently wished Naru the patience, strength, and wisdom she would need in order to not strangle her boyfriend.

Minako was up at the counter, in the middle of a heated and only half-understood argument with one of the cafeteria ladies, with most of the cafeteria looking on in breathless awe. Since Minako had mentioned 'needing dough' and about a half-dozen other food-and-money-related misquotes, the audience assumed she was upset about the increased price of the cafeteria's cookies.

Oblivious to the proceedings, Usagi was just about to take a bite out of her sandwich when a shadow moved between her and the window.

"Mind if I join you, Usagi-chan?" the shadow asked.

"Hey, Ryo-kun. Go ahead and pull up a seat." Suspecting that a conversation was in the works, Usagi took a smaller bite of sandwich than she had originally planned. "Enjoying your first day back?"

"Aside from this morning's little... greeting? More or less, yes."

"Spoilsport." They both looked up as a round of cheering and applause went up from near the counter, where a heavily-breathing Minako had apparently won the argument. Smiling as she bowed to the onlookers, Minako collected three cookies and returned to her seat, leaving a tired wreck of a woman at the cash register.

"Victory," Minako said, dropping into the chair opposite Usagi and flashing a smile. "Can you believe they actually thought they could get away with that?"

"The horror," Usagi murmured.

Ryo cleared his throat, and Minako looked at him. "Hi, Ryo-kun. Cookie? They're chocolate chip, today and Thursday."

"Uh, thanks." Ryo took the cookie, but didn't eat it. "Look, I've been meaning to talk to you two since first period ended. Why is Ami laying on Mako-chan's living room couch looking like she's about to be sick?"

Minako glowered suspiciously. "Have you been spying on them?"

"In a manner of speaking," Ryo said dryly, "yes." He tapped his forehead to emphasize the point.

"Oh. Right. I forgot about that." Another dark look crossed her face. "Have you ever spied on _me?_"

"Would I do something like that?" Ryo asked, smiling innocently. Minako gave him an answering look that said if he had, Ami was going to have to look for a new boyfriend. Ryo's smile slipped.

Usagi looked around cautiously. "There was a bit of trouble yesterday," she began. "More of those green things showed up downtown. They'd turned a building into some kind of device, which was responsible for the storm, and Mercury collapsed when she, Neptune, and Uranus shut the thing down."

"Is she all right?" Ryo asked quickly.

"Luna said she'd need a few days of rest, but that she'd be back to normal afterwards. In the meantime, though, she's going to be pretty sick. That's why Mako-chan stayed home. We're heading over to check on Ami after school; you're welcome to join us."

Although he didn't visibly relax, Ryo smiled gratefully, and handed the cookie over to Usagi. She took a bite, then made a face. "That's the worst chocolate chip cookie I've ever tasted."

"A steady diet of what Mako-chan and your mother cook has spoiled you," Ryo said. "Cafeteria food is never what you'd call gourmet, and it's certainly not up to their level."

"That's still no excuse. Pardon me for a minute, will you?" Usagi got up and headed for the counter to give the cafeteria workers a piece of her mind.

The lady at the register never knew what hit her.

Ami had reached a decision.

It was not a choice she made lightly, though her head certainly felt light at the moment, nor was it one made in haste. Quite the contrary; she'd had several hours of enforced bedrest—couchrest?—to think things over. Somewhere in her examination of all of the facts and the subsequent analysis of the examination, it had occurred to Ami that her final decision was not merely the right choice, but the only choice, the obvious choice—so blindingly obvious, in fact, so immediately apparent that she couldn't imagine why she hadn't thought of it before.

Oh well. The important thing was that she had seen her way through the problem calmly, rationally, and patiently. All logical possibilities had been given equal consideration, all leaps of intuition carefully backed up with justifying facts, and all the facts confirmed beyond any doubt. Ami had her answer to the current situation, and it was simple:

Makoto had to die.

That, her fever-fogged brain rationalized, would solve everything quite nicely. Once Makoto was out of the picture, she'd stop checking Ami's temperature, quit making her drink glasses of juice and heated broth, wouldn't keep tucking the blankets up and telling her not to do anything to tire herself out; essentially, Ami would be left to die in peace, rather than this eternal-seeming torture. Asking Makoto to leave her alone hadn't worked, and the odds of her stopping of her own free will were so incredibly small as to be almost nil, so that left only one solution.

It was her own fault, really. Ami held no malice towards her friend and current roommate, despite the considerable and steadily building list of Makoto's shortcomings, but if the girl refused to acknowledge the simple, logical truth and leave Ami alone, she would pay for it.

*As soon as I remember how to stand up,* Ami thought. *And walk. And once I've figured out a way to kill her that won't bring my lunch back up. Ulp.*

As soon as that thought went through her mind, Ami felt lunch start to move again. The memory of how to walk—how to _run,_ in fact—came back to her in a green flash of nausea; a set of precise orders on what to do next accompanied the revelation, as did an extremely graphic image of what would happen if she didn't hurry.

She hurried.

Somewhere in the middle of bringing up what felt like everything she'd ever eaten, Ami noticed a gentle hand patting her back, heard a soft, angelic voice murmuring half-heard words of sympathy and encouragement. The unhesitating support was so touching that she could have cried—but she was too busy.

An eternity later, when there was finally nothing left to come up, Ami reached up for the flush handle in a slow, rather mechanical fashion—the fashion of a mechanism badly in need of a tune-up. The mate to that gentle hand beat her to it, and Ami, feeling another rush of boundless gratitude, turned and buried her face in the nearest available shoulder.

"Mako-chan," she whispered tearfully, the rawness of her throat making the words difficult, "you're my only friend." *Not like the rest of those traitors, who go off to school and leave me here to suffer. Not like that smug, heartless, inhuman beast Ryo, who _says_ he loves me and then disappears for weeks at a time without so much as a phonecall to tell whether or not I'm even ALIVE.*

Ami tried to get up, but her legs felt like the muscles had liquefied, like her knees had been fused to the tiled floor. Again, the hands came to her rescue, helping her stand and walk—stagger—to the sink to clean her face and get a glass of water to wash that taste out of her mouth. That awful, burning, acidic vile bitterhothalfdigested... oh god.

Ami looked around carefully. The precise, geometric landscape of the realm greeted her gaze in every direction, everything laid out on a grid of black and white squares around the central keep. The knights of the realm, arrayed on horseback, dipped their pennant-strewn lances in salute as her eyes passed; the bishops and generals lowered their gazes deferentially, respecting her proven strategic ability far more than any inherited right of command; even the lowly foot soldiers paused in their ceaseless drilling to salute smartly, with a ready willingness to obey that bordered on reverence.

All appeared to be as it should, yet she knew the seeming peace was a false one. The hated enemy, the dread menace, the Black Army, was on the move once again, pushing all resistance before them and leaving destruction in their wake; it fell to her, as it had many times in the past and would again in the future, to rally the force which would turn back their advance. No airy ballrooms or sparkling gardens for this queen, no lacy dresses or glowing jewels. Her gowns were of steel, her crown a battle-scarred helmet; her only ball was the grand dance of move and ploy and countermove, her only garden, the garden of war.

Her only love, a participant of that dance, a white bloom in that deadly, thorn-riddled garden where all was black despair and red fury.

Peerless in battle but gentle as a soft summer wind, a mind that rivaled her own and yet remained truer than the most faithful hunting hound, wise beyond his years and with courage enough for ten men, the White Knight rode at the head of her armies in every battle. He bore her standard into the field, carried her voice to the warriors, held her heart in his hand. It was said that young maidens across the land wept at the memory of his deep, reflective eyes and calm, serious face—wept once for the beauty of the man, whom any one of them would have traded her soul to have as her own, and then again for the pain mirrored in those eyes, the enduring knowledge that the one he truly loved was forever denied to him.

"Let our queen marry," the people cried. "Let her have a king at last."

"Not while there is still danger to the land," she always replied. "Not until the Black Army is forever defeated can I set down weapons of war."

"Let us take up the burden in your place," her allies said. "The armies of red and gold, of green and silver, will hold back the darkness. Let the warriors of the Blue Queen rejoice with their loved ones, as the land shares in the happiness of its queen."

"You need me," she always reminded them. "I will not abandon you."

*Let me be free,* her heart whispered.

*I have a duty,* she whispered back. *It must be followed.*

Duty pulled her one way, desire, another; love pulled equally alongside each.

Stalemate.

"Ryo."

Makoto sighed, removed the cotton cloth, and carefully laid the back of her hand against Ami's forehead. Feeling the dull heat beyond the dry flesh, she replaced the original cloth with a fresh one, cool and damp. Ami stirred slightly, making a wordless, mewling noise in the back of her throat. Again, Makoto sighed.

Of the last twenty-four hours, Ami had been semiconscious or totally unconscious for perhaps fourteen. Almost none of that had been sleep—not the restful kind, anyway, not with that fever—and much of the rest of the time, she was getting sick.

Makoto did not like problems she couldn't solve, and she was not emotionally constructed to handle waiting or reflection very well. Hers was a competitive nature, sometimes—frequently—to the point of aggression; her head knew that 'losing' was different from 'not winning' or 'not winning just yet,' but somebody had apparently neglected to pass that on to the rest of her. Long used to being physically strong almost to point of invincibility, at least among mere mortals, Makoto had little concept of being physically helpless. But when she was confronted by a problem that main strength—strength of body or strength of will, it was all the same in the end—couldn't solve, then she got an idea of what the feeling was like.

She didn't like it. Helplessness made her frustrated, and frustration made her angry. And when she got angry, the fights started.

Right now, Makoto felt helpless, _and_ frustrated, _and_ angry. And more than anything, she felt scared.

"Come on, Ami," she said softly, taking her friend's hand.

Setsuna felt like she was going to crawl out of her skin.

Ikuko hadn't lied about the store; it was quite close, quite small, and aside from the two of them, its cashier, and a handful of intermittent customers, quite empty. The fact that the city's youth were still in school, and most of its adults still at work, meant that the streets and sidewalks were almost—but not entirely—empty while they walked to the store.

Even so, just getting beyond the front yard was something of a victory for Setsuna. It hadn't helped that some maniac with a heavy foot on the gas had started squealing their tires the moment she started to step past the gate. Or that, halfway down the block, the biggest dog she could remember seeing got up and started barking at them through a gate that suddenly seemed much too low and flimsy and not nearly locked enough. Or that the sky, which until about ten seconds ago had been bright and clear, suddenly looked like it was gearing up for another snowstorm. Or that...

Setsuna shook her head, banishing the imagined worries. Ikuko was right; she'd been cooped up inside—first at the hospital, then at the Tsukino home—for too long. She knew she was going to have enough of a fight keeping her fear of crowds under rein; she didn't need to pile a case of agoraphobia on top of it.

She looked up from the half-full basket she carried; apparently, this place was too small to rate actual shopping carts. "What else did we need?"

"Another jar of peanut butter, two cartons of milk, and of course, a box or two of that lemon tea you liked so much," Ikuko said, shifting her own basket. "I'll get the rest if you get the milk."

"Freezer?" Setsuna asked. Like almost everything else, shopping was a new experience for her. Setsuna found that she was rather enjoying it, although a part of her felt a little guilty that she was living on someone else's generosity.

Ikuko smiled. "See how easy it is?"

"Yes. A couple more trips like this, and I'll be ready for the mall." Setsuna tried to laugh, but it came out a little shaky, and Ikuko noticed easily.

"Don't push yourself too hard, dear. One thing at a time."

Setsuna nodded and went in search of the milk. She was on her way back from the freezer section at the rear of the store when it occurred to her that she had crossed the length of the place on her own without once stopping to worry about running into someone. And she realized that there were three or four people besides Ikuko that she might have run into—total strangers.

*I _knew_ they were there,* she realized, *and it didn't bother me.* A tiny smile of triumph worked its way onto her lips. *Maybe I'm doing better than I thought.*

A very Minako-esque cry of victory formed in her mind. *Malls of the world, beware!*

The others had decided it would be best to arrive at Makoto's place in a group, so they were gathering at Usagi's to drop off their books and other unnecessary weight, and to pick up Setsuna; ChibiUsa was getting a lift with the Outers. It would have been very nice to think that all this organization was out of concern for Ami, but in reality, there was some serious Senshi business that needed to be discussed where everyone could hear it, and soon—and this afterschool visit was as good a time as any.

It was a simple plan, a good plan—as Minako had put it, the plan gave 'something to everyone for double or nothing'—and of course, since it was Usagi's idea in the first place, everyone seemed to be conspiring against her to ruin it.

The first indication of trouble had arisen the night before, when she'd called to tell the Outers to be there, and received a vague reply of 'we'll stop by if we have the time,' from Haruka. At first, Usagi had figured Haruka was just being difficult to tease her, but in light of later events, she was strongly inclined to reconsider.

Item Two on the Let's Ruin Usagi's Idea list was when Luna failed to appear during the entire walk home, even though Artemis appeared on schedule, hopping up to his favorite perch on Minako's shoulders.

Something had been not quite right ever since the battle at the skyscraper. Luna, it seemed, wanted to forget that yesterday had ever happened, to imagine that the glitch in Ami's computer and the huge moss-thing were all figments of shared imagination. Despite the impact of the previous day, Luna absolutely refused to talk to Usagi about it, and had raised the most astonishing ruckus of protest when she found out about the meeting. Usagi wasn't sure what half of the words Luna had thrown at her meant, but if the other half were anything to go by, she was better off not knowing. Curiously, some of the untranslatables sounded familiar, in that half-remembered fashion which suggested to Usagi that the words and phrases were of Moon Kingdom origin.

Usagi didn't know which part shocked her more: the fact that such words even existed during what was supposed to have been the highest point of human culture; the fact that Luna seemed to know them backwards and forwards; or the fact that she herself could recognize, _from prior experience,_ a mass of words and expressions that princesses aren't supposed to know. Usagi suspected that Luna's uncharacteristic refusal to discuss things she ordinarily wouldn't have shut up about—to say nothing of her sudden fit of lunar profanities—had something to do with the security lockout that had appeared on the screen of the Mercury Computer, and the line of thought this eventually led her down was even more depressing.

Item Three came when Rei failed to meet them at the same street corner where the walking distance between Juuban High and T*A was least, and Item Four was when a now thoroughly-disgruntled Usagi, a blissfully cheery Minako, one nervous Artemis, and a Ryo whose silence absolutely _screamed_ the need to see Ami arrived at the Tsukino household and found it utterly, totally empty of any life larger than bacteria. A Post-It note slapped to the fridge, a place Usagi was guaranteed to look, told them that Ikuko and Setsuna were still out shopping.

And Item Five was the long, slow waiting for people—and cats—to start returning. By the time Ikuko and Setsuna appeared, side-by-side and each carrying a shopping bag, Usagi had twisted her ring so many times and with such force that the base of that finger was raw and red and probably in real danger of bruising.

"Welcome home," she snapped tartly.

Ikuko smiled as if nothing was wrong. "Good afternoon, dear. How was school?" Not waiting for an answer, Ikuko glanced into the living room, receiving an enthusiastic smile-and-wave combo from Minako, a polite nod from Ryo. "Hello, Mina-chan. Hello, Urawa-san. Welcome back."

"Thank you, Tsukino-san. Do you need a hand with any of that?"

"No, that's all right; we've got it." Ikuko headed into the kitchen to unpack; after nodding her own greeting to Minako, Ryo, and Artemis, Setsuna followed. "Usagi, are your brother or cousin home yet?"

"Haven't seen either of them," Usagi replied. "ChibiUsa was going over to Hotaru-chan's, remember?"

"And they'll meet you at Mako-chan's; yes, I remember." Over the sound of a box of something being set down, they heard Ikuko say, "Where _has_ that boy gotten himself to?"

"Someplace dark and crawling with bugs, I hope," Usagi muttered before raising her voice. "Mom, did you let Luna out when you left? I've looked all over, and she doesn't seem to be around."

There was a pause in the shuffling of groceries. "No," Ikuko said, sounding faintly puzzled, "now that you mention it, I'm quite sure Luna was still inside when we went out. Did you look under the beds and in the closets?"

Several minutes later, a housewide sweep had turned up no more sign of Luna than a few stray hairs.

"I always said Luna was a smart cat," Ikuko said, "I guess I never realized just how smart. I can't imagine how she got out of here."

Seated on the living room couch, Artemis made a faint coughing sound, a not-so-subtle suggestion that _he_ could probably come up with a few ideas. Setsuna and the girls ignored him on principle, Ikuko asked Minako briefly if Artemis had a problem with hairballs, and Ryo just shook his head.

There was a knock at the door. Ikuko was the closest, so she answered it, and found Rei standing on the doorstep.

"Hello, Rei-chan. By any chance, have you seen Luna? She seems to have run off and hidden somewhere."

"Sorry, no," Rei replied. "I haven't seen Luna at all today. But I did find something else that belongs to you, Tsukino-san." Rei reached to her left and hauled the something—make that, the someone—into view. Shingo's hair was more unruly than usual, and his clothes were damp and slightly muddy from a tumble through some snowbank or other.

"Who have you been fighting with?" Ikuko said flatly.

"Hi, mom." Shingo grinned sheepishly. "A couple of the guys thought it might be funny to set up a snowball ambush in the schoolyard after last bell today. I guess things got a little out of control. It's nothing, really." Shingo tried to sell the story with his best smile, but Ikuko obviously wasn't buying it.

"Go get cleaned up," she ordered. "You can finish unpacking the groceries for me when you get back down, and then, young man, we are going to have a long talk about this sort of thing."

Shingo knew better than to argue with his mother. Sighing bitterly in a futile attempt to earn sympathy points, he left his boots outside; Ikuko would see to it that he scraped every last fleck of mud off before she allowed those boots back in the house. Then Shingo put away his winter jacket, hung his head, and slunk upstairs. He was rather good at slinking by now; with the equivalent of three sisters in the house and a half-dozen more wandering the city, it was a rare day indeed when Shingo could get in trouble _without_ getting in trouble.

Usagi ignored the opportunity to nag her brother in favor of an even better opportunity to nag Rei for being late. On some level, a part of Usagi realized that she had to get this building moodiness out of her system before they saw Ami, and fighting with Rei was the perfect means to do that. Besides, after all the times Rei had chewed Usagi out for not getting to meetings on time, she richly deserved it.

"Where have you been?"

"I got held up at a school council meeting," Rei said. "I _do_ have a life at school that involves more than eating, falling asleep, and getting in trouble -unlike some people I could name."

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Would you like me to spell it out? I'll even use small words, just for you."

They were well into the dagger eyes and flaming auras part of the argument when the others herded them out of the house. Setsuna was halfway out the door when Ikuko stopped her.

"Remember what I said, Setsuna-chan. One thing at a time."

"I remember. It helps when there are people I know around." Setsuna smiled. "I'll be fine... Ikuko-mama."

Startled, Ikuko blinked. Then she started to laugh. "Oh no you don't. I already have three children in this house, thank you very much, and you're too old to start being the fourth."

Setsuna shrugged. "Had to try. Is 'Ikuko-chan' better?"

"Much." Ikuko hugged the younger woman. "Now get going."

Minako knocked on the door, the others crowding around her. There was a long wait, and then the door slid quietly open. Minako opened her mouth to gush her usual cheery greeting, and the words died on her lips.

"Mako-chan," she said instead, "you look like hell."

Makoto smiled wearily and ushered them in, looking a little less worn out. But only a little. It wasn't simply that her clothes were rumpled and stained, or that several strands of hair had pulled loose from her trademark ponytail, or even that her face looked like she hadn't slept in a week. There was a kind of exhaustion in how she moved, slower and less certain than usual, that was even more disturbing than the lack of neatness. Ami might be the one who was sick, but her illness was taking its toll on Makoto as well.

"Bad day?" Rei asked quietly.

"You don't want to know," Makoto said. She absently brushed some of those strands of hair out of her eyes, seeming not to notice when they fell right back down. "I was just about to make some tea and a little chicken soup for when Ami-chan wakes up. Did anybody want any?"

"We don't want to spoil our dinners," Rei said quickly, noticing the gleam in Usagi's eyes that the mention of food always set off, "but some tea would be nice. Did you need any help?"

"No, I can get it. Make yourselves at home, but keep the noise down." She looked quite pointedly at Usagi and Rei, the sort of gaze that spoke eloquently of pain. "I mean it."

Heeding Makoto's advice, the others kept quiet as they made their way into the living room. From Ryo's vision, they expected to find Ami resting on the couch, but she wasn't there.

"Bedroom," Ryo mumbled cryptically, turning to head down the hall to Ami's room when Makoto's voice drifted in from the kitchen.

"And stay out of her room, all of you." Again, there was that unspoken implication that anybody who disobeyed was going to get hurt. Ryo paused in midstep, wrestling internally with a number of conflicting impulses. Evidently, love won out over self-preservation, as he shook his head and continued down the hall.

For once, his prescient ability seemed to be working in his favor, giving him all the information he wanted. Ryo stepped over a floorboard that would have creaked, another that would have groaned, and turned the handle on Ami's door very slowly to avoid the squeaky rattle. The hinges were well-oiled, fortunately, and the door swung open soundlessly; Ryo closed it behind him, carefully settling the wood to avoid a slam, and releasing the doorknob as slowly as he had turned it. Then he paused for a moment to consult with his gift, received a vision of Makoto serving tea to the others, and grinned in triumph. Safe! Then he turned to Ami.

His earlier vision had shown a very sick girl; this one appeared to have recovered a little. Her face was a great deal paler than Ryo could ever remember seeing it, to the point where even her lips seemed a bit white; Ami's pallor and peaceful expression brought to mind the old fairy tales of princesses locked in glass coffins or spells of sleeping death, waiting a kiss to waken them.

Thinking about that, it occurred to Ryo that, in two years of what he hoped was at least a moderately serious relationship, he and Ami hadn't actually kissed. He supposed the long-distance aspect of their relationship was to blame; both of them were somewhat reserved, and the fact that they saw each other maybe twice a month made things go even slower. Not that he'd minded waiting—well, maybe a little. Maybe a lot, in fact, but in Ryo's opinion, the wait was worth it. And he suspected that Ami was just as glad not to have a romance to divide her attention whenever Senshi business came up.

*We missed a lot of opportunities just because we're both a little shy about this sort of thing,* Ryo thought, *and we lost more chances because I wasn't here, or because she had to help save the world—again. But I'm here _now._ Maybe this'll give us a chance to make up for lost time... guess we'll have to wait and see.*

Kneeling next to mattress, Ryo realized that this was another of those 'opportunities,' but for one thing, he didn't see much point in trying to kiss Ami if she wasn't awake. Too easy. And she looked so perfect just sleeping there—*Blue pajamas,* Ryo noted, smiling. *Of course.*—that he couldn't bring himself to spoil the image. Oh well.

Perfection shifted slightly, yawning and opening her eyes to examine the room. She had been having the most unusual dreams, and it was hard to tell whether this was reality or just a fever-inspired hallucination. "Ryo-kun? Is that you?"

"I think so. But then again, I might also be a figment of your imagination that just happens to look like your handsome, talented, loving, bril..."

Even though her own experience in these matters was admittedly limited, years of listening to her friends talk about boys, and of watching how Usagi dealt with Mamoru, told Ami exactly what to do in this situation. She brought a pillow around and whacked the 'figment' soundly across the head in the middle of the word 'brilliant.' It was a nice, down-filled pillow, soft and fluffy and surprisingly heavy.

"Patient," Ryo added, earning another whack.

"...modest..." WHACK.

"...mmph-phmmph..." WHACK.

"...pheh, that tastes aw..." WHACK.

"Hey, what was that..." WHACK.

"Cut that out!" WHOOSH. "Ha! You mis..." WHACK. THUNK.

Ami leaned forward to regard the figure lying on the floor. "Had enough?" she inquired politely, holding the pillow at the ready.

"Just for that," Ryo groaned, "I don't think I'm going to kiss you after all." Ami raised an eyebrow and hefted the pillow again, and Ryo quickly waved his hands to fend off the attack. "Okay, okay!" Then he looked up. "Does that mean you _want_ me to kiss you?"

Ami thought about it. "It's probably better if you don't," she admitted. "I don't feel very kissable right now."

"You _look_ kissable." He said it with such sincerity that Ami blushed.

There was a moment of silence, and then Ami looked around. "Could you hand me that dressing gown?"

Ryo retrieved it. "It's not _that_ cold."

"Tell that to Mako-chan," Ami said dryly, throwing the thing on over her pajamas and tying it shut. She got to her feet, but quickly sat back down again as her brain tried to settle into her stomach, which in turn tried to... she pushed the image out of her mind and waved Ryo away. "I can do this. Just give me a minute."

"Not a chance," Ryo said, helping her stand. "I see you walking down _that_ hall in _that_ dressing gown, and leaning substantially on a shoulder that I'm rather attached to." Ami glared at him, and Ryo shrugged. "We can go now, or we can wait for the next ten minutes while you stagger around, Ami-chan, but like it or not, you're not leaving this room completely under your own power."

There wasn't much she could say to that. Although Ryo sometimes misinterpreted or misplaced the timing of the events in his visions, anything he actually _saw_ happening would happen just as he saw it. As long as he stuck purely to that, he was always right; it was when he tried to predict what would happen after the events shown in the vision that Ryo started getting into trouble. Ami had argued him out of a few such misconceptions before, but she really didn't feel up to it just now, so she gave in and let him help her out of the room.

*This is kind of nice,* she admitted to herself. Not that she wanted to make a habit of being too weak to stand, but having Ryo help her for a change, instead of the other way around, was sort of... pleasant. A little distracting, too, since their proximity was telling Ami some _very_ interesting things about Ryo as they walked. *I didn't think his shoulders were so... I mean, his hands are very... oh bother.* She was blushing again.

"Ami-chan? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she lied. Well, half-lied. "What are you asking me for, anyway? Didn't your vision tell you whether we'd reach the living room without me falling over?"

"Oh, well, uh..." For some reason, Ryo was suddenly trying to look away. "That is, it..."

Something suspicious flashed through Ami's mind. "You didn't actually have a vision, did you? You just let me _think_ that you did, didn't you?"

"Uh, well, um, you see, I..." Ryo tried backing up, but Ami was advancing on him at the same time, and it really is very hard to get away from someone whose shoulders you happen to have one arm around. Then his heel caught on the edge of a slightly elevated floorboard; in trying to back away from Ami while helping her stand, Ryo was too far off-balance to catch himself, and he fell over backwards. With a yelp of surprise, Ami fell with him.

Drawn by the yelp and the successive thud, a number of heads poked around the corner at the end of the hall, looking on in shared confusion at the scene on the floor. Ryo was pinned beneath Ami, desperately trying to breathe between explosive bouts of laughter as he attempted to fend off her fingers, which were poking him repeatedly in every sensitive spot Ami could think of—which was quite a few—while she called him some extremely complicated names.

"Are they always this friendly?" ChibiUsa asked curiously. Ami looked up, and so did Ryo—only upside-down. On seeing the rest of the Senshi gathered at the end of the hall, watching with a variety of expressions, both of them turned absolutely scarlet.

"Not usually," Minako replied. "I'm sure we're going to love hearing their excuse. At least, I know _I_ am."

If it was at all possible, Ami turned even redder.

The excuse took about fifteen minutes, and the light soup which Makoto and Michiru insisted that Ami eat took about seven more. And then there were the bowls of Jello that Makoto had made for the rest of them to snack on. Then they got down to business. Or tried to. With Luna absent, they had to fall back on Artemis for information, and there were some serious doubts as to whether or not the usually happy-go-lucky furball could deliver.

For once, he surprised them.

"A mana nexus isn't a machine in the modern sense of the word. It doesn't contain any mechanisms, and it doesn't operate according to the laws of science. Not as you know them, anyway." Artemis paused. "I guess the best way to describe a nexus is as the magical equivalent of a nuclear reactor; very complex, provides a lot of power, and has some very nasty consequences attached if it ever blows up."

"How does it work?" Michiru asked.

"I don't know the exact details, but it's sort of like... no, actually, it's more like... do you know what ley lines are?" There was a round of headshakes and confused looks, but Ami, Michiru, and Haruka were frowning thoughtfully.

"When she was telling us how to shut that thing down," Haruka said slowly, "Luna said to visualize lines of energy. I saw a few at first, but then a lot more than I was thinking of started to appear. They were coming up out of the ground and down from the air. Is that what you mean?"

"That's them," Artemis confirmed. "The ley lines are conduits of elemental energy, and they extend all over the world; if you tap into that energy, you can use it. That's what you're doing when you use your powers as Senshi; you take a little of your own energy and link into the greater energy of the ley lines. That's why Mars can summon fire out of thin air, for example; the energy is generated in other places—forest fires, volcanoes, sunlight, even the body heat of animals and people—but the ley lines carry it all over the world, waiting for somebody to use it." Artemis frowned. "Of course, it's also the presence of high concentrations of energy that cause or create things like fires in the first place, and the whole process sort of loops in on itself to... oh, never mind. You don't need to know all that right now. The ley lines carry energy, and the untapped energy is referred to as 'mana.'"

"And how does this fit in with a mana nexus?" Michiru asked.

"Well, the _original_ meaning for 'mana nexus' was a place in the natural world where a number of ley lines came very close together—they don't actually ever touch—giving the surrounding area was a major boost of available magic energy. The more lines there were in a nexus, the more places you could reach to gain energy. Originally, only intelligent beings with a certain kind of training could tap into the ley lines, but somebody eventually figured out how to build a device which could draw out mana energy without any effort. The best place to build those devices was over a nexus, so they were named accordingly." Artemis scratched behind his ear.

"I don't get it," Makoto objected. "Why would Luna get so worked up over something like this? Somebody bad wants to collect a lot of energy; so what? We've been there before."

"Not like this, you haven't. You see, you may _use_ elemental power as Senshi, but the basic part of your powers comes from _you,_ not the world around you. You need the right combination of spiritual, mental, and physical discipline in order to tap into mana in the first place; as you increase your own energy, you can do more with the power you're able to harness, but the power doesn't need _you._ It's always there, whether you are or not. No direction, no intent, no morality; just raw force. That's why it was so hard for the three of you to shut down that nexus. You weren't fighting its mind or programming, because it doesn't have either; you were fighting the basic elemental force that was running the thing."

"Is that why I feel so...?" Ami asked, not bothering to finish the question.

Artemis nodded. "You were dealing with more undirected power than you were used to. Haruka and Michiru handled it better because they're older, with more accumulated strength and internal energy, and because they had their Talismans to help focus and direct the power."

"And my whole body _still_ feels like one giant bruise," Haruka chuckled ruefully.

"All of this is very interesting," Minako said, in a tone which wasn't even remotely interested, "but it still doesn't explain why Luna tripped out on us."

"'Skipped' out," Artemis grumbled, "and I was getting to that, if you'll just wait. Mana nexi were in common use for a long time, well before the Silver Millennium, because the power they generated could be used for all sorts of things. Set up one nexus to harness electrical energy, and you could power a modern city; set up another to harness fire, and you could keep it warm."

"Or use wind and water to control the weather," Rei noted.

"Exactly. Dozens of different variations were created, but the basic design remained the same; take mana energy from the environment and put it into use. Nobody ever thought there'd be a problem, because all they were doing was tapping what was naturally present, and nothing was being damaged. At least, that's what everyone thought." Artemis sighed. "One mana nexus by itself isn't a problem. Even ten, or a hundred, are reasonably safe, because the power they draw off has time to diffuse into the environment and be cycled back into the ley lines, where it can be used again. But when you have a hundred thousand nexi running at full power, all the time, all over the planet, there just isn't enough power to go around. Things just started to shut down."

"How do you 'shut down' a planet?" Makoto asked, frowning.

"Think about it," Ami said. "Water energy is being drained off, so lakes and oceans start to dry up. Earth energy that should be sustaining plants is instead being used to prevent earthquakes, so forests and all the animals in them start to die. Fire energy is being used to heat cities while the rest of the world gets colder, and air energy that should be circulating fresh air is being used to prevent storm winds, so the atmosphere starts to stagnate." *It's not even a remotely scientific explanation,* she admitted to herself, *but then, this isn't science.*

"And the energy of the planet's magnetic field is being used to power those cities," Artemis added, "so the field itself fluctuates, and lethal doses of solar radiation start to get through. Of course, this is assuming that the drain on earth and fire energies doesn't shut down the movement of the molten core which creates that field in the meantime. Without power to maintain themselves, the ley lines fall apart, which means there's nowhere for the energy to return, so it gets concentrated into small areas that keep on shrinking, consuming themselves from the inside. And eventually, when the last bit of power is used up, the last ley lines vanish, and all the power that would normally seep back into them just sort of drifts off into eternity instead, leaving a dead planet behind. That's not even the worst of it, though."

"It gets _worse?_" Usagi protested.

"Considerably. Do you remember what I said on New Year's? About how there were other civilizations on Earth a long time before the Moon Kingdom and all the other ones we knew about?"

"I remember," Rei said. "You mentioned something about ruins left behind in other parts of the solar system."

Artemis nodded. "When the ley lines began to fade out, it got harder to use magic in certain areas of the world, and in some places, it was downright impossible. That meant that existing magic, whether spells, abilities, or devices, stopped working in those areas. And when that happened, people found out that those lost civilizations had left behind other things besides ruins. 'Imprisoned' is probably a better term than 'left behind,' but the 'things' part is pretty accurate. They were sealed beneath the surface in cells that were virtually indestructible—virtually, because they were powered by magic. When magic started to fade, the cells began to fail, and some of those things got loose."

"What sort of 'things' are we talking about, here?" Michiru asked.

"You really don't want to know, believe me." Artemis shuddered. "I saw a picture of one once, and that was enough to give me nightmares for a month. Suffice to say, they were big, ugly, and powerful, and they were _extremely_ cranky about having been locked up for who knows how long, so they took out their frustration on whatever happened to be handy. Eventually, they were all either destroyed or sealed back up."

"And people stopped using mana nexi?" Ami guessed.

"No. At the time, everyone thought the monsters had been the cause of the drain. It was a handy excuse so they wouldn't have to consider the possibility that their own inventions were the problem, and the fact that the planet started to recover afterwards made it seem like they were right." Artemis shook his head. "What was actually going on was that so many people had died, and so many nexi had been destroyed, that the drain on the ley lines was low enough for them to actually recover. It took centuries of rebuilding before the drain increased to the danger point again, but when it did, one of the old beasts got loose and went on the usual rampage. After it had been stopped, some people started putting two and two together without getting five." Artemis stopped suddenly and looked suspiciously at Minako.

"What? What did I do?"

"I've been hanging around you too long," Artemis said sourly. "I'm starting to talk like you do." He shook his head. "At any rate, once the connection between the nexi and the global drain was realized, it was inevitable that they'd be removed, but the change took a long time, because a lot of people never admitted the problem, and others didn't want to give up the comfort a nexus could afford. When the Moon Kingdom was founded, the original Serenity passed a decree prohibiting the construction or use of mana nexi, and it was during the reign of Serenity VII that the last nexus was destroyed. The designs for them were classified by the Silver Council in the early years of what was eventually to become the Silver Millennium, and the rest, as they say, is history."

"That was quite a story," Setsuna murmured. "But why would Luna be so upset about it?"

"It hardly sounded like you let any state secrets slip," Minako added.

"I didn't, but she would have. You see, Luna had better security clearance than I did because she worked with the Queen and the Princess more closely. Part of the security measures put in place for things like mana nexi was a geas not to-"

"A what?" Haruka asked.

"Geas. It's a type of magic, sort of like a really powerful post-hypnotic suggestion. In this case, people with high-level clearance were spelled so they literally _couldn't_ talk about what they knew except under very specific circumstances—meetings of the Silver Council or really extreme emergencies, for the most part. I didn't have that kind of clearance."

"Then how did you know all this?" Hotaru asked.

"He's a Grade-A sneak," Minako said, "that's how."

"Basically true," Artemis admitted, totally unashamed. "I had enough clearance to know a few things, and I heard other things from time to time that I wasn't really supposed to. And the library in the Royal Palace had a _lot_ of books, let me tell you. After a while, it all just jelled together."

"Speaking of things jelling," Hotaru asked, looking up at Makoto. "Is there any of that Jello left?"

"Help yourself."

Hotaru grinned. "I intend to."

Hotaru was trying to decide whether she wanted lime or strawberry when she heard a faint knock at the door. Glancing into the living room, she saw that the others were arguing about something and hadn't heard the knock, so she headed for the front door.

There was a stranger standing on the doorstep, a fellow of about medium height whom she didn't recognize. He wasn't particularly handsome, but his grey eyes were sort of striking, and his hair—also grey—made him seem older than his face might have suggested. He had a black cat curled up in his arm, a cat who-

"Luna!" Luna made a faint meow, and Hotaru looked up at the man.

"Tsukino Usagi?" he asked.

"No, I'm Tomoe Hotaru. Usagi-chan's inside. Where did... I mean, how did you..."

He smiled faintly and indicated the Department of Animal Control insignia on his jacket. "I found her getting chased by a rather nasty dog in the park." He tapped Luna's black collar, half-hidden under her fur, which had Usagi's address and phone number on it. "When I called, a lady named Ikuko answered, and when I told her where I was, she told me that her daughter was visiting a friend in the area. It was on my way home, so I offered to drop the cat off. I understand Usagi-san has been worried about her."

"She has, and she'll be glad to see her," Hotaru said, taking Luna. "Thank you very much."

"All part of the job, Tomoe-san. Have a nice day." The fellow tipped his hat and headed back down the stairs, whistling an odd tune Hotaru didn't recognize.

"Where have you been?" Hotaru asked as soon as she was sure the grey-haired man was out of earshot.

"Getting chased by a pitbull the size of a bear," Luna said. "Could you tell me if... has Artemis... did he..."

"He told us," Hotaru said, surprised by just how difficult it was for Luna to ask. Evidently, that was one whammy of a spell.

"Where have you been?" Usagi asked a moment later.

"I already asked that," Hotaru said. "A man from Animal Control found her in the park, being chased by a dog. He called your place, your mother told him where you were, and he swung by."

"That was nice of him," Minako noted. "Was he cute, too?"

"He was a little too old for you, Mina-chan. At least," Hotaru amended, "I think he was. It was sort of hard to tell; he had grey hair, but he wasn't that old."

Haruka looked up sharply, her eyes narrowing as the image of the mysteriously helpful airline attendant in Berlin floated out of the back of her mind.

"Well," Usagi was saying, "Artemis explained about why you couldn't tell us anything, so I guess I can forgive you. But why did you take off like that? You could have just sat here and kept quiet."

"Actually, I couldn't. Part of the geas is... the nature of the spell..." Luna was once again fighting to get the words out.

"It's one of the conditions of the geas," Artemis said quickly. "Compulsion to avoid situations where the blocked topic is being discussed." Luna exhaled and gave him a grateful look.

"I think we're going to have to do something about that," Ami said. "We can't really afford to have you start stuttering in the middle of a battle."

"Good point," Rei agreed. "Is there any way to remove the geas?" She barely stumbled over the word at all.

Artemis shook his head. "The geas was designed to stand up to every sort of mental probing known. There are ways to get by its defenses and remove the whole thing, but I don't know what they are."

"And I can't tell you what they are," Luna added. "Besides, this level of geas is the equivalent of a royal decree; it takes another royal decree to countermand it."

"I could do that," Usagi said.

"No, you couldn't. You may be a queen in another thousand years, but that's Crystal Tokyo; as far as the Moon Kingdom is concerned, you'll always be a princess. That goes for their magic, too."

"Oh." Usagi frowned, then sighed. "Well, I guess there's only one solution; we're going to have to go to the Moon."

"Exactly," Luna said, "there's no way to..." She broke off in mid-sentence with a curious kind of choked snort when she realized what Usagi had said. "Excuse me?!"

"Oh, come on," Usagi said. "It's not like it'd be the first time. And Queen Serenity's still up there, remember?"

"You're in no condition to..." Luna started to say.

"Oh, bother that." 'Bother' wasn't actually the word Usagi used. "We already know that we can teleport with a few passengers, and ChibiUsa can fill in for me. And if we bring the Outers along as well, there'll be plenty of extra power. I won't have to _do_ anything."

"That's not the point," Luna said, although it was in fact the point she had been about to make. "Teleporting is _dangerous,_ Usagi. You break every molecule in your body down into energy, shoot it somewhere else, then reassemble it. Your baby's still growing right now, and if something gets misplaced in the teleport..."

"Actually," ChibiUsa broke in, "she'll be fine. We will, I mean. What I mean to say is..." She stopped and took a breath before trying again. "Teleporting isn't any more dangerous for a pregnant woman than for anybody else, as long as nothing interferes with the trip."

"How do you know that?" Luna asked.

"Well, there was this time about... two years ago, I think, when M-mmph!" She clapped her hands over her mouth, cutting off the name at the last possible second.

"Good recovery," Hotaru said dryly, nudging her friend in the ribs. Then she leaned towards the others and, in an intentionally loud whisper, said, "It's one of those things she's not supposed to tell us about."

"We sort of guessed that," Setsuna whispered back. "ChibiUsa?"

"Mmph?"

"I take it you were going to say that one of us had, or rather, _will_ have, the occasion to teleport while she is... expecting? And nothing bad happens as a result?" ChibiUsa nodded, making a nonverbal sound of agreement. "Good."

"Well," Usagi said triumphantly. "Problem solved. Do we leave right now or wait until after dinner?"

It took them almost an hour to actually get underway.

The first delay was due to the fact that, for a variety of reasons, Setsuna hadn't transformed into Pluto once since her arrival; as they had coached her through the change from her Senshi self into her civilian identity, so too now did the girls have to lead Setsuna through the process of the transformation. As Haruka pointed out—before Michiru smacked her across the back of the head—it went a lot easier if you didn't stop to consider that, magic or not, what you were effectively doing was taking off all your clothes in public. Naturally, this not only made things even more difficult for Setsuna, but it made some of the other girls stop in the middle of transforming.

Ryo left the room rather quickly at that point, and after several moments of being stared at, Artemis followed him.

The second delay was when Ami tried to transform and nearly blacked out, dropping her pen and the magic swirling around it as a sharp pain lanced through her head. The energy dissipated in a most unexpected way when it hit the floor, leaving everything in the room dusted with a light layer of frost. Makoto—or Jupiter, by that point—was understandably not too thrilled about what the sudden burst of cold was going to do to her plants, but they were all more immediately concerned about Ami.

"You're still recovering from the overload," Luna explained. "I was afraid this might happen, but there was no way to be sure just how bad it was until you actually tried to transform. You'll still be able to become Mercury," she added quickly, seeing the horrified expression that was starting to build on Ami's face. "It'll just take a few days for your body to get its strength back and cycle the con... the infe..." Again, the geas intruded. "It'll pass," Luna finished lamely.

"Can we teleport without Mercury?" Mars asked.

Luna looked at Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Pluto, and ChibiMoon. "I think you'll manage."

There was yet another delay when ChibiUsa transformed. Venus had said to Mars, during their search of the airport some weeks before, that she wouldn't have been surprised to learn that their time-traveling friend could turn into a full-fledged Sailor Moon rather than the cutesy and essentially useless ChibiMoon they all remembered. This more or less proved to be the case, as ChibiUsa disappeared and was replaced by someone with pink hair, red eyes, and an almost exact replica of the original Sailor Moon fuku—right down to the specifics of the flashy light show and the post-transformation pose.

The other Senshi expected that Usagi, who was fiercely protective of her alter-ego and everything that went with it, would explode on learning about this 'impostor.' They were more than a little surprised when, instead of going up in a mushroom cloud of righteous indignation, Usagi calmly complimented 'Sailor Moon' on her outfit, and then asked whether she had her tiara throw down or not.

"Luna keeps telling me I drift a little to the left in practice drills," she admitted with a grimace.

"I had the same problem," Usagi commiserated. "It's hard to get that thing to go where you want, isn't it?"

"I _know._ And when you've got to take airspeed and direction and all that into account..."

"Oh, don't get me started. There was this one time that I..."

"IF you two don't mind," Luna interrupted.

"She's right," Usagi said. "We can compare notes later."

"Right."

They called Ryo and Artemis back in and did their best to gather into something that loosely resembled the usual circle of five the Inner Senshi used when group-teleporting. It was necessary to make some adjustments to account for the increased number of travelers, of course, and a few more to account for the rather limited space in the living room. And there was one more little delay.

"Will you STOP doing that?" Mars demanded of Venus, who had discovered that it was possible for her to go from one Senshi identity to the other simply by touching the index fingers of both hands to the gemstone in her tiara. Sailor V's mask would then flow out from under the tiara while the rest of her uniform underwent the various cosmetic changes—symbols, stitching, and so on—that distinguished Sailor Venus from the 'new and improved Sailor V.' The problem was that Venus seemed unable to stick with one guise, and was switching her appearance around every twenty seconds or so—and it was _really_ getting on Mars' nerves.

"I just want to look my best," Sailor V said. "We _are_ going to visit a queen, after all."

"Uh, V," Jupiter said, "I don't think there are going to be many of your fans on the Moon."

Sailor V frowned. "I guess you're right. Nuts." And she shifted back to Venus.

They all closed their eyes—the Senshi because it helped them concentrate, the rest because, as Artemis said, you _really_ didn't want to see what the rest of the universe looked like while you were being turned inside out and backwards.

Makoto's apartment filled with multicolored light...

In a room that was several blocks away and a few stories down from the apartment, a man fell off his chair as alarms began to go wild all around him. A dozen monitors were showing sine-wave patterns the size of mountains while devices similar to odometers—similar in appearance, if not actual function—racked up several thousand 'miles' in a few seconds of operation.

The man grabbed a telephone from his desk and pushed one of only three buttons on it before shouting into the receiver. "This is monitor six to control! Control, come in!"

"This is control, what... Monitor six, what's going on? It sounds like you've got a whole fire brigade in there!"

"The detection system just picked up a whopper of a power spike, control. Multiple source signals, energy vectors all over the charts... I don't think we've got anything like this on record."

"Hang on, monitor six. We're sending a team up. Keep the system recording as long as you can."

"Will do, control."

Proteus was not much better prepared for the energy surge than 'monitor six.' Those of its sensory clusters located near the source curled up and blacked out from the energy overload, and its entire network shorted out.

Around the city, eight men and women with little star-shaped devices stuck to their necks—devices made of green, mosslike matter—suddenly stumbled and looked around as if waking up from a dream. The moment of confusion passed as Proteus restored the functioning of its network, and what had been a roar of pain in their minds returned to the quiet presence it had been since New Year's Eve.

The spell-constructed image hovering in the air before her wavered suddenly. The girl half-turned as a sense of... something... brushed against the edges of the defensive spells Archon had taught her, spells which wrapped her home in layers of enshrouding energy and allowed her to practice in secret.

The sudden feeling had something to do with magic, of that she was certain, but not hers. It had been too brief a sensation for her to identify the source, but somehow, she knew that Archon was not responsible. If he were to test her, there would not be that feeling of... leaving?

That bothered her. Someone was using magic. But if not her, or her teacher, then who?

Anon looked up at the dimming sky. It was going to be a pretty night, he suspected; the stars were beginning to appear, and the moon, though a few days past full waxing, was still bright in the sky. And with the color panorama being provided by the setting sun, well...

He blinked as a streak of light cut across the heavens, something VERY bright and moving VERY fast. There was an old superstition that shooting stars were omens of disaster, but somehow, looking at this one, Anon didn't feel the slightest bit afraid. He watched the comet—it had to be a comet, since it was moving away, not falling down and burning up in the atmosphere—for a minute or so before it disappeared into the light of the low-hanging moon.

Anon was on his way back inside when he recalled something from a science class taken a number of years ago; regardless of which way they are moving, comets' tails always project _away_ from the sun, whose heat and solar wind are what create them in the first place.

This comet's tail had been pointing in the wrong direction.

Ryo had, in his admittedly short lifetime, spent many hours dealing with the sensation of space and time intruding itself upon his awareness. He had once been briefly metamorphosed into something with a body the size of a tank and a heart colder than ice, and had also been imprisoned alongside four other people and one cat in a chunk of crystal less than half the size of his hand.

Even with all that, being disassembled into his component atoms, then having said atoms shot through a void of about 385,000 kilometers, to be reassembled on the surface of a celestial body where the specter of explosive decompression raised its ugly head—well, this was a new experience for him, and his body had to find some way of expressing its reaction.

He sneezed.

"Gesundheit," Venus said from across the circle.

Ryo sneezed a second time. "You can say that again."

"I don't think I can, actually." Venus looked around as Ryo sneezed a third time. "Do you suppose he's allergic to moon dust?"

"If he is, he's in big trouble." Jupiter made a meaningful sort of nod at the surrounding dust plain.

Ryo took a seat on a nearby boulder and concentrated on the twitch in his nostrils—specifically, on getting it to go away. At some point, he noticed that there were grooves in the boulder, grooves which felt unusually even and regular. Looking down, Ryo saw he was actually sitting on a piece of a toppled column, first cousin of the pillars he had seen in Greece. Looking up, and then around, he saw quite a few other bits of debris decorating what should have been a completely empty landscape.

"Can somebody explain to me why no astronomers or astronauts have ever thrown a fit about finding thousand year-old ruins on the Moon?"

"They didn't see them," Luna replied. "See that haze in the sky?" They looked up—Ryo noted that, unlike images from the various moon landings, the lunar sky in this area was a faint blue rather than pitch black, but he let it pass without comment—and saw what Luna was talking about; the distant Earth seemed a little blurry around the edges, and a similar sort of rainbow-shift distortion appeared when they looked out at the line along the horizon where the endless sky touched the dusty lunar surface.

"What's left of the royal palace is surrounded by a force field," Artemis explained. "It's a combination of atmospheric shield and what modern techno-babble would refer to as a cloaking device; it lets _us_ move around freely up here and keeps everyone else on Earth from seeing things they're not ready to deal with just yet."

"Ah." Ryo glanced around with something close to devious twinkling in his eye. "Isn't there supposed to be a rabbit up here somewhere?"

"You just never mind about the rabbit," Usagi warned him, walking off towards the largest concentration of rubble.

"I tried that one the last time we were here," Jupiter explained.

They followed Usagi into what had once been the heart of the longest age of peace in human history. The Inner Senshi had been here once before, and very little had changed from what they remembered; as Ami could have explained, the lack of weather, plant life, or geological activity means that the Moon doesn't change much when left to itself. The toppled pillars and shattered blocks were still covered with the same layer of fine dust, no more and no less, but they did not find their own footprints; nobody except Ami and Luna stopped to wonder about that, and they both realized that this was another, admittedly minor result of that annoying time loop.

They were all fairly quiet as they walked. There was something about this place that was reminiscent of the air in an empty church, something equal parts peace, sanctity, and the faint sense of being watched. The Senshi and the two cats were also reliving flashes of their former lives, brief bursts of bittersweet recognition for this or that upright column or misplaced stone rising up in their minds, wistful ghosts that almost seemed to reconstruct the ruined splendor of a time long since past. Pluto and ChibiMoon were not experiencing this reverie—the one because she could not remember, the other because she had never belonged to the age from which the ruins and their attending phantoms dated—but they also felt a kinship with the dead land.

Ryo was also quiet, but for different reasons. Rather than peace, he felt unease; he felt the sanctity of this place not as he would on walking into a church, but as if he were violating a grave, and the sensation of watchful eyes was not that of the gaze of a benevolent spirit, but of a thousand creeping things hiding among the shadows.

Up ahead, Usagi stopped, standing before a relatively dust-free section of floor, on which a large and intricate image had been carved. "We're here," she announced.

"What is that?" Neptune asked, pointing at the symbol. "It looks familiar."

Luna said a word that wasn't Japanese or English or any other language any of them could speak, but which sounded familiar. "That's what we called them; there isn't a word today which could describe them completely. They were sort of like phone booths, information desks, and public Internet access all in one; if you were in a hurry and had the right clearance, you could use them to teleport, too." Luna stood over the symbol and said another word. The raised lines briefly glowed with blue-white light, but nothing else happened.

"Let me try," Usagi said, moving into the circle with Luna. "Do I have to say anything?"

"The computer won't give you access unless you use the correct commands," Luna admitted, "but we're not trying to talk to the computer here. Just call Queen Serenity; she'll recognize you even if the computer doesn't."

Usagi nodded. "Queen Serenity." There was a pause, but nothing happened. "Hello?" Another silence. Usagi thought for a moment, then smiled. "Mother."

That got a few raised eyebrows, but it worked. The symbol glowed again, more brightly than when Luna had activated it, and a pillar of light and shadow rose up into the air. There was a sudden flash, and everyone averted their eyes. When they looked back, there was a silence.

Usagi and Luna had vanished.

They were standing in a room which appeared to be made entirely of crystals and light. The floor on which they stood was a raised balcony, glossy smooth panels of shimmering white surrounded by a low wall of blunted crystal prongs, from which they looked out into the cavernous main chamber. The balcony was the only level space; everywhere else was glowing, multicolored masses of crystal, some larger than Usagi, others smaller than her little finger, all of them protruding from the walls and ceiling at odd angles. Arcs of energy danced between certain of the gleaming structures, and a faint hum filled the air.

"Where are we?" Usagi asked, somewhat nervously. She blinked as she realized that her voice sounded different; after a moment, she also realized that her everyday clothes had been replaced by the flowing white gown of her alter ego, the Moon Princess. *So much for not transforming,* she thought absently. Worried, she touched one hand to the swell of her belly, but in the same instant she knew that, somehow, everything was all right.

"Do not be afraid, dear one," a familiar voice said behind her. Usagi/Serenity turned.

"Hello, mother." She/they were still nervous, but for entirely different reasons. Two entirely separate lives were coiling around each other in the same head, one the life of a not-so-ordinary teenage schoolgirl, the other the life of a long-dead princess; the situation which faced her/them now evoked very similar and yet very different responses.

Usagi was a little nervous about speaking to someone who was most definitely, but not quite completely, dead. Moreover, it was never easy for her to deal with the fact that this dead woman was, or had been, her mother; to Usagi, mother had always been Ikuko, the housewife. She was uncomfortable appearing before such a flawlessly beautiful woman in her current condition—at five months, there was no hiding the obvious, not even in the loosely-gathered gown she was wearing—and just a touch scared about being whisked away from her friends to some place she didn't recognize.

Serenity, on the other hand, had no trouble dealing with the fact that this was her mother, or that she was dead; being technically dead herself, the Moon Princess held a different view on the matter than the latest incarnation of her spirit. The room that Usagi found strange and unfamiliar, Serenity recognized immediately as being somewhere in the vast computer complex buried beneath the palace; the humming crystals and dancing energy all around were the mechanisms and memory banks of that very device. What bothered Serenity was that there were very strict rules for princesses, and her current condition violated more than one of those rules. She was terribly afraid that her mother would be disappointed in her.

There was no disappointment evident on the dead Queen's face, just the same gentle smile she always seemed to have—'always' being a grand total of two times 'in the flesh,' plus a few half-complete dreams and other bits of memory.

"Do not be afraid," Serenity repeated gently. "You are safe here." The Queen looked down. "Hello, Luna."

"Your Majesty," Luna replied, bowing her head. "If I may ask, why did you not respond when I accessed the computer? And why bring us here?"

"The computer detected a source of negative energy in your vicinity," Serenity replied. "I couldn't be sure whether it was safe to speak to you all or not." She turned to Usagi. "I knew you would speak to me when Luna failed; that gave me the opportunity to bring you here, where the faculties of the computer and what powers I have left are at their strongest. When you passed through the transit beam, I was able to access your memories and determine why you had come." The smile took on a hint of understanding. "You should know by now, dear one, there is nothing you could ever do that will make me ashamed of you."

Usagi/Serenity felt her/their heart leap. Before she/they could think, she/they were moving forward to wrap her/their arms around the Queen. It occurred to both sides at the last second that the Queen was just a disembodied spirit inhabiting a projected image of her long-dead body; there would be nothing to hug.

Imagine her/their surprise when Queen Serenity turned out to be as solid and as warm as anyone still breathing, and returned the embrace.

"I told you," the Queen said, responding to the question before it could be asked, "this is where I have the most power. The computer has enough energy to project a solid hologram when there is need. And there was a need," Serenity added in a thick voice. "I have missed you, little moonchild."

"Mother," Usagi/Serenity said, both sides fully comfortable with the word, both on the verge of tears.

Luna looked away, brushing aside tears of her own.

After a very long time, mother and daughter pulled apart. "As much as I might wish otherwise," Serenity said, "time moves ahead without pause. And we have a great deal to do."

Usagi nodded. Somewhere during that hug, the barriers between schoolgirl and princess had gone away; 'they' were 'she' now. "You said something about negative energy."

"The one you call Ryo."

Usagi and Luna both blinked. "Ryo? But he's not... I mean, he _was,_ but I..."

"I know. The computer was not programmed to discern between passive and active forms of dark energy; it picked up the last traces of the shadow within your friend and assumed him to be a threat. An error which I was, fortunately, able to correct before any harm came to him." The Queen smiled ruefully. "Some of the defenses of this place are still in operation, even after all this time, and they might have reacted against the young man. That will not happen, now."

"Ami will be glad to hear that."

Serenity smiled. "I imagine so. Now, as to the matter which brought you here..." She turned and passed one hand over a nearby podium. Several crystals near the ceiling resonated a higher note than their neighbors, at which point several of the panels in the floor began to rise. When the column was at a height slightly more than Serenity's, one side vanished in a haze of lines, leaving behind a human-shaped space. "This is something I should have done a long time ago," Serenity admitted. "Luna, step into it."

Usagi glanced at the space, which could have held some monsters she'd met and still have room to spare. "Isn't it a bit big for a cat?"

"Yes, it is. But that's not a problem, since Luna can..." Serenity stopped short, looking first at her daughter, then down at her former advisor with something very close to chagrin written across her normally unruffled features. "Oh dear. You don't remember, do you?"

Luna affected a look of injured pride. "My memory, Majesty, is as impeccable now as it has ever been."

"Yeah, right." Usagi glanced wryly at Serenity. "This from the furball who invented Sailor Moon because she couldn't remember who I really was."

"U-SA-GI..."

"Prolonged cold sleep can do odd things to long-term memory," Serenity said. "Just a moment." She tapped several facets of a different crystal console, producing a much lower hum from somewhere in the vast chamber. Serenity glanced at Luna out of the corner of one eye. "Don't move."

"What..." Three whitish beams slammed into each other overhead and were funneled downwards as a single flow of energy, which swept down around Luna before she had a chance to look up or finish the word, let alone the question. When beams terminated a second later, Usagi's jaw hit the floor.

A young, beautiful girl stood where Luna had been, wrapped in a blue and silver gown of a strange design. Her hair was very dark and very long, reaching down her back almost to her knees. Usagi knew from personal experience that long hair, while potentially glamorous, is also heavy; and yet, when the girl moved her head, it was as if her hair had no weight to it at all. The girl's skin, in contrast to her hair, was pale and unblemished; except for the golden crescent on her forehead, its soft, porcelain-white hue was suffused pink with a faint glow of vitality. Wide, expressive eyes nearly as dark as her hair were currently engaged in a startled examination of her upraised hands; those eyes were too old and wise for that young face, and yet they belonged there. There was also something unmistakably feline in the shape of her eyes and half-hidden ears, in the grace with which she moved.

"Oh my." She touched her face, exploring the shape of cheeks, chin, and lips. "Oh dear."

Usagi turned to Serenity. "How did you do that? It took the Grail to transform Luna the last time, and Mistress Nine _broke_ it afterwards."

Serenity smiled. "Shapeshifting magic is not so difficult, dear one, and it does not require the power of something like the Grail. As for it _breaking,_ the Grail cannot be destroyed so easily. It came to you because the world needed you, and you needed its power; it left you because you also had to be free to grow into your own strength. As for the transformation... do you remember your lessons?"

Usagi frowned. Serenity was trying to recall something; it was on the edge of her thoughts, the tip of her tongue...

Seeing her daughter at a loss, the Queen explained. "Luna's people, the Nekoron, are a race of shapeshifters. Their natural form is that of the small cat, but they may freely choose the form which best suits their needs, feline or humanoid." Serenity crossed the chamber and took Luna's hands between her own, pulling them away from the frightened girl's face.

"Please," Luna said. Usagi was shocked to see her friend was actually crying. "Change me back. I can't... I don't..."

"I will change you back," Serenity promised. "But you have to wear this shape for a few minutes."

"I... I can't!"

"There's nothing wrong with it," Usagi observed, trying not to be jealous. It was hard to see how there could be anything _less_ wrong with Luna's form.

"You don't understand," Luna whispered. "This isn't me."

"No, Luna," Serenity corrected firmly, "this _is_ you. As much as are fur and whiskers and claws, this also is a part of you. The ability is in your blood, and even if you cannot remember how to make the change now, it _will_ come back to you. You can choose not to look like this, if that is what you want, but don't ignore it. Don't ever ignore it." The stern gaze melted into a gentle smile. "Some of the happiest times I can remember were when you wore this form. Do you remember the dances at the Harvest Festival, the year we first met? That poor captain who danced six turns straight to keep you all to himself?"

"He couldn't even dance that well," Luna noted absently. "But I'm surprised you noticed me at all; as I recall, you spent most of the evening draped on the arm of that..." Luna stopped speaking and looked up sharply. "I can... I can remember."

"I think," Serenity said, "that because you were locked in one form for so long, and because you therefore assumed that you had never been anything else but a cat, your memories of times when you were most definitely not a cat were suppressed or altered. Now that you know the truth..." She trailed off and smiled. "Is it so bad, now?"

"N-no," Luna stammered, managing a return smile which became reminiscent as more memories flooded into her mind, clearer and brighter now than they had been on the surface. She looked down at the gown she was wearing and sighed. "This is one of yours, isn't it? I remember you wearing it for that Midsummer Ball, when Lord Europa's oldest boy got drunk and crashed into the chandelier while trying to fly around the room."

"The Europas always did know how to have a party. And he was even cute when they picked him out of the wreckage. Loud, too." Both women giggled—Usagi blinked; Luna _never_ giggled—recalling a shared memory.

"Whose arm?" Usagi asked curiously.

Serenity seemed startled. "What?"

"Whose arm was it? The one that you spent the evening on, I mean."

Usagi had never imagined that someone like Queen Serenity could ever look embarrassed, but the proof was right there in front of her, big as life and twice as red. Luna hid a smile.

"Never mind," she mumbled. "The geas, remember?"

As Luna stepped into the aperture, it occurred to Usagi that her friend and her mother had been more than just subject and ruler; to judge by the giggling, they had been friends.

*Of course,* the whispering voice of her past self told her. *Mother was a princess once, too, and a princess's closest friends are most often her ladies- in-waiting and handmaidens. Luna came to the Moon as the daughter of the ambassador of Mau, and stayed as one of Mother's attendants. She was a year or two younger than Mother then, I think, but they were always very close.* Serenity looked out through Usagi's eyes and sighed. *This must be difficult for her. For Mother, too, but she's had time to grow used to it. Luna isn't so lucky.*

*We'll look after her,* Usagi whispered back.

There was silence as the closet-device did its work, noiseless arcs of energy flicking out from its sides to touch Luna's head. After a time, the lights died, and Luna stepped out of the space; the pillar began to sink back into the floor.

"It is done," Serenity said simply. "Are you sure you want me to turn you back, Luna?"

"Yes," Luna replied. "I'm... I'm just not ready for this." She made an all-inclusive motion with her hands, indicating not only the human shape, but everything that went with it. Then she smiled—smirked, actually. "Besides, I like the idea of leaving Artemis completely in the dark for a while."

"You're terrible," Serenity laughed, embracing Luna. Then she sighed. "And now it is time for you two to go back, before the Senshi start digging to find you or do something equally foolish."

"So soon?" Usagi asked.

"Yes." The dead Queen brushed a lock of hair out of her daughter's face before hugging her again. Her tears were only simulations of the real thing, copies made of light and shadow, but the emotion behind them was real enough. Her voice, though, revealed no hint of just how much this was hurting her. "I do not know what is coming, dear one, but I know that it will be very dangerous, for you personally, for your Senshi, and for many others. The best I can do to help you is to help them, but I am not sure if it will be enough."

"It is," Usagi said. "It will be." The world was disappearing into white light, taking Queen Serenity with it; Usagi could feel the outline of the woman fading... faded... gone... "Mother?"

"I'm right here, dear one," the Queen's voice whispered. "I told you once, I will always be where you can find me when you need me."

"I remember," Usagi said. The voice was growing fainter as the light carried her up. Back to the surface, to her friends. "Good-bye, Mother. I love you."

"I love you, too... Usagi."

SAILOR SAYS:

(Artemis is alone on the set.)

Artemis (teary-eyed): Geez, I'm so choked up over that last act... if Luna sees me like this, I'm never going to hear the end of it. (blows his nose) Oh, hi. Ahem. Excuse me. Okay, I'm better now. Right. Usagi's not doing this because... well, you've probably got a pretty good idea why. Anyway, the moral for this episode is... uh... I had it a second ago...

(Spotlight falls on him, Jeopardy music playing the background.)

Artemis: A-ha! (80's pop band appears on screen, replacing the Jeopardy theme with a few bars of 'Take On Me.' Artemis ignores them.) Today's moral is a lesson in family. What makes a family? Is it just a question of birth and blood, or can sweat and tears play a part as well? (pauses) I have _really_ got to spend some time away from Minako...

(Luna pops up, in feline form.)

Luna: The concept my linguistically challenged counterpart is blundering his way towards is that 'family' can mean many things. It doesn't just have to be people you're related to; indeed, there are plenty of people you could ask who wouldn't include all their relatives into their idea of what a family is. Friends are as much—if not more—a part of family as people you're just related to, and even enemies can be considered 'family;' their impact on your life shapes you as much as the influence of your friends and relations, and sometimes even more.

Artemis: And that impact's usually traveling at sonic speed... but we'll save that one for another day.

(The author walks in from stage left, apparently imitating Tuxedo Kamen, sans cape and mask.)

Artemis: What's with you?

the Judge: Believe it or not, I've got a date.

Artemis: Who with? (Luna blushes and looks away for some reason, but Artemis fails to notice)

the Judge: Somebody worth the effort. I might introduce you. At some point. (Luna quickly trots off screen) Well, I have to go, or I'll be late. Thanks for filling in for Usagi.

Artemis: Anytime. (the author leaves) That's weird; where'd Luna go?

14/05/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

And before you say it, no, I don't actually have a date with Luna. Mind you, I wouldn't complain if it actually happened. All that and looks, too... quite a girl... I mean, cat... I mean...

Where was I?

Oh yes. This one made quite the little foray into Kleenex territory towards the end, didn't it? That was at least semi-intentional; Sailor Moon was the first animated series that actually managed to inspire some deeply serious emotion in me. Even in dub, watching Naru bawl over Nephrite was _painful;_ I shudder to think of what that must have done to some of the Japanese viewers the first time the episode aired. And then there was the one where Usagi and Mamoru split up, and she goes and just _dies_ in that phonebooth... yikes.

Well, up next:
-Some answers, but also some new questions;
-The start of the obligatory 'power-up' part of the story—I know, I know, but whatcha gonna do about it?

I don't _think_ you'll need Kleenex for the next one, but if you found it necessary this time, it might be a good idea to lay in a store for future episodes.

And kudos to anyone who knows the joke about the rabbit. Ciao.