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.

10. Chapter 10

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 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 10

Pause, Rewind, Replay, and Eject, or Currents in the River of Time

Emergency crews had been called in after the fight. Police had cordoned off the area and kept the crowds away while firemen and damage assessment specialists had gone over the wreckage, tallying up the end result and searching for any casualties. Fortunately, it appeared as though almost everyone in the area had gotten out in time, as only one man was carried out and loaded up into an ambulance.

Statements were taken from a dozen or so store employees who had taken cover behind their counters and desks or in back rooms, from a security guard who had been flushed into a corner when half the pipes in the building exploded, and from a few customers who had also opted to hide rather than risk getting crushed in the mass exodus. One of those, a tall, striking young woman with uncanny red eyes, had been the one to call for the ambulance after the ruckus had died down; she and her two companions had claimed not to have actually seen much after the skylight shattered, and the two men who took their statements had not pressed the issue.

The man who arrived some time later and began questioning the two policemen was not so understanding; he went over every detail, every question they had asked of each eyewitness, with an attitude that suggested they had been lax in their duties or were just plain incompetent. The pair were so busy being offended that they failed to notice the interrogative fellow's interest in the red-eyed woman, who was by now long gone.

On the other side of the cordoned-off area, nobody thought anything of a very official-looking woman who appeared with an order to transport any and all surveillance footage from the mall's security cameras to a secure location for proper examination. And they barely noticed the trio in grey coveralls who were walking around and poking into things; there were dozens of people like that on the scene, trying to figure out what had happened, although the others didn't have little clones of the Geiger-counter humming and beeping in their hands.

The fact that these five individuals arrived and left in the same grey, unmarked minivan went completely unnoticed with all the other vehicles from various agencies and television stations clogging up the parking lot.

The five unremarkable men and two similarly uncommonly ordinary women hanging around in long coats didn't occasion much comment either, even though they arrived and left in another unmarked van which was the twin of the first. But then again, nobody saw the curious, lightly armored uniforms or decidedly high-tech looking weapons hidden under the coats. And they certainly didn't see the bank of computers in the back of the van. People can be so unobservant at times.

The last group of unusual investigators also went unnoticed, but by the time they showed up, it was well past midnight. Pretty much everyone else had departed except for the mall's night security shift, and it wasn't like _they_ were kicking around on the roof, waiting for four figures in grey cloaks and mirror-faced helmets to step out of a circle which just suddenly appeared in mid-air.

The lead guardsman looked around, then indicated with a short wave of his firelance for two of the others to take up defensive positions around the portal while he and the fourth made a sweep of the area. That took little time at all, and the pair returned to the gate, the leader's helmet shifting very slightly as he gave the all-clear.

Cestus emerged from the portal and headed straight for the gaping hole in the roof, flanked by the leader and the fourth guardsman. He knelt beside the shattered side of the skylight, dark eyes intent on the area below. What he saw appeared to satisfy him, as he nodded sharply and began to rise, pausing when he spotted a tattered length of something fluttering in the night breeze, caught on the sharp end of a snapped-off metal rod. Cestus extended one hand, and the ragged thing flew easily into his grasp. He examined it closely for a moment, then ordered the guards back into the gateway; they obeyed without question, following him back through the portal.

The guardsman who had emerged first paused for a moment, lagging behind the others to look around at the vast city, extending in every direction almost as far as the eye could see. His face was hidden by the one-way material of his visor, but the shake of his head was unmistakable, both amazed and disbelieving. Then he too was gone.

Archon sat alone in his private chambers, thinking.

Cestus' examination of the battle site and discovery of the withered fragment of bioweave had confirmed that a unit had been involved in this latest incident, and that it had been terminated by the same unidentified force as the others. But all active units had been accounted for: the nexus sites were fully armed if not yet fully active, both first—and second-generation units functioning normally; the units stationed within Atlantis City were all where they were supposed to be; the watcher continued to perform its assigned tasks without flaw or failure. And no unauthorized units had been produced; the energy reserves remained as they should.

So where had the thing come from? What had created such an unusual mutation? Why had it been turned loose without a complete program? And how had the watcher missed it?

Archon had kept that little piece of information to himself. His knowledge of the rogue unit had come, not from the watcher, but from his apprentice, who had summoned him in an utter fury, believing he or someone else in Atlantis was meddling with her plans for revenge. She had not said how she knew, but in its blind rush from nowhere to its death site, the rogue had apparently come close to harming her enemy.

At another time, Archon would have chuckled over the irony; until such time as she was ready to strike in person, his apprentice would do everything in her power to make sure her victim remained in perfect health and safety, essentially becoming the best friend of the one she hated most. But news of a rogue had made such thoughts extraneous.

The watcher should have detected and reported the energy required to create even a lowly first-generation unit, or this curious variant. And yet it had not. That suggested that either the watcher itself was malfunctioning—not an unheard of thing; even Atlantean technomagical devices broke down from time to time—or that the creation of the rogue had been masked from the watcher's senses. Either way, it was clear to Archon that the watcher was no longer completely reliable. Until such time as the malfunction could be determined and corrected, or the masking technique penetrated, he thought it might be wise to... what was the saying his apprentice had used? Ah, yes. 'To take everything with a grain of salt.' Accept what is given, but do not accept that it is _all_ there is to be given.

Thinking about that, Archon remembered what else his student had said, something else he had chosen to hold back from Janus and the Lords for the moment: Senshi, the girl claimed, had been seen fighting the rogue.

After long minutes of consideration, Archon called forth a row of memory crystals from the unwalled void around him, selecting one before sending the others back into infinity. He activated the crystal floating between his hands and waited as an image began to take shape before him, the image of a very old man, his skin-and-bones body swallowed up by the gold-trimmed blue robes somewhat similar to the ones Archon wore. The top of the wizard's head was quite bald; his beard and what little hair remained on the rim of his scalp were thin, utterly white, and reached practically to his knees. His eyes were bright blue, far more alert and intelligent than might be expected for someone of such an advanced age, and his voice was surprisingly strong.

"Right, then," the old wizard said in a businesslike manner. "For the record, I am Vaurin Greymantle, Lord of the House of Istar, Magus Maximus of the Academy of Research under the Imperial Order of Mages, et cetera, et cetera, and this experiment is the ninth attempt..."

"Eighth," a female voice corrected.

"Eh? Oh, right. The _eighth_ attempt in a series of experiments aimed at greater understanding of the mystical energies generated by the stellar, planetary, and sub-planetary bodies. In particular, I..."

Somewhere, a throat cleared.

"...that is, 'we' hope to discover the means by which certain individuals are able to directly harness said energies, and to perhaps discover a means by which to eliminate the diminishing effect of distance upon their use. Such a development would greatly increase the range of application for planetary energy and could prove to have uses in such fields as..."

Somewhere, a throat cleared again.

"Right, right. It's in the memo. As the basis for our research, we are naturally employing the assistance of the Greater Senshi as primary subjects, keeping open the possibility of a follow-up study of the powers of the Lesser Senshi. Since they will naturally be the most likely to benefit from any positive results of these studies, they all have been most cooperative." The old man's eyes narrowed slightly. "I would like at this time to again express my disappointment with the decision of the Council of Lords to prohibit the participation of Lady Pluto in these experiments. As the only Senshi other than Saturn—who is of course not a safe subject for experimentation—whose powers are unaffected by her distance from her source, she would be of incalculable assistance in this endeavor. But we shall, as always, abide by the wisdom of Council." Greymantle added something under his breath which the magic of the crystal had failed to catch, but which likely wasn't too flattering of the 'wisdom of the Council.' Then he began.

"To reiterate: the reason for the gradual reduction of power a Senshi experiences as her distance from her source increases is due to the innate mundane and mystical radiation of that source. In some manner we still do not fully understand, a Senshi's body is able to absorb this radiation and store its energy for later use. Time does not appear to have any appreciable decaying effect on stored energy, regardless of distance, as demonstrated in an earlier test; Lady Neptune had been away from her world for three full weeks, making no use of her powers, and was an even match for Lady Mars, freshly arrived from _her_ world. The difficulty lies in regaining spent energy, because as a Senshi moves further away from her source, its radiation becomes more and more diffused into space. 'Recharging' is thus made slower and less efficient, hampering the effectiveness of a Senshi's power, as Lady Neptune's subsequent defeat by Lady Mars one week later proved. The position of other stellar bodies also appears to have an impact on the speed of recovery; a previous experiment showed Lady Jupiter able to regain spent energy more quickly than Lady Mercury, whose planet, though much nearer, was also on the far side of the Sun at the time, whereas space between Earth and Jupiter was relatively clear."

Greymantle continued to discuss variables and the like, but Archon had stopped listening and presently switched the memory crystal off; viewing the recording had confirmed his memory of the experiments the old wizard described, and of the final results.

Although a little erratic at times, Greymantle had been one of the best, practicing the art for close to a thousand years, a wizard with considerable power and the stylish flair and genius to back it up. His ultimate conclusion had been that because the power of Saturn naturally touched on all points in space and time, distance meant very little to it; the same held true with Pluto, thanks to the lingering effects of the Mobius Gate Project. A Senshi of either planet was therefore able to reach across the barriers and ignore the limitations suffered by her sisters, almost as if she were carrying her world around in one pocket wherever she went. Other Senshi had to gather energy as best they could, rather like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Which of course, is best done with a magnet.

And since he had never been granted Pluto's assistance, Greymantle had finally gone with the 'magnet' idea; a device with the capability of drawing in the unique radiation of a given source, bringing them into contact with their respective Senshi and thereby tremendously accelerating her recovery of energy. Simple enough in theory, but apparently impossible to pull off in reality; Greymantle had spent nearly twenty years working at it before he died, supposedly as a result of that ongoing experiment. It had been said that his final attempt to create the 'magnet' had instead turned into a short-lived pocket of antimatter, breach into nullspace, or some other equally destructive energy/substance/phenomenon. No one had tried again.

*Almost no one,* Archon corrected himself. Rumors had circulated for years that Greymantle's star student and research assistant—that was her voice speaking to the old man in the recording—had continued this and other of her master's most complex and seemingly impossible projects. But if Greymantle had been erratic, his apprentice was well and truly crazed. She was brilliant, no question, maybe as much of a genius as her master, but she took risks even he wouldn't have countenanced, fostered theories that were simply beyond belief, and was something of a political insurrectionist besides.

More than 'something;' in the end, she had been on the other side in the war which had sunk Atlantis and reshaped the world, if not the entire galaxy. Archon supposed the woman might have found a solution to the Senshi problem, assuming she'd survived the war and the inevitable chaos of the years that followed it; the bizarre energy the watcher kept reporting could very well be coming from one or more applications of that solution. But he wanted proof.

Archon shook his head. The Lords respected him, but if he went to them with this right now, they'd think he'd gone as crazy as Serenity.

But suppose—just suppose—she'd actually done it? What if his apprentice was correct, and there _were_ Senshi active on Earth today, Senshi who, thanks to the work of a long-dead genius and a long-dead, traitorous madwoman, could access most or even all of their power?

*Their powers were no greater than those of any competent wizard, and nothing at all beside the might of a true archmage.* Or so he'd told his apprentice only a few days ago. And in his day, on Earth, with their energies weakened by distance, that had certainly been true. But when not on Earth, when _not_ weakened by distance...

Wizards could take many roads to power, as many roads as there were schools of magic. Some focused on a single branch of the mystical arts, learning its secrets at the expense of others, gaining quickly in their power and the understanding of their chosen field. Others expanded their attentions to multiple schools, advancing much more slowly and not obtaining such a depth of expertise in any single field, but earning a versatility and overall grasp of magic their more specialized counterparts could not match. Those of this second type, those who possessed the mental strength and the magical power to attain control of all forms of magic, could become truly awesome forces—if they lived long enough. Archon was one such; given time, his apprentice might also rise to such power.

Senshi were different. Where a wizard studied the elements in order to master them, a Senshi _was_ her element. Even a novice Senshi just learning her powers possessed a greater affinity for and command over her element than most wizards could ever achieve. A fully trained and experienced Senshi, one at the height of her powers, could not be bested for control of her element. Matched, perhaps, depending on the strength of the individual and her opponent, but never OUT-matched. And woe to the spellcaster whose control was anything less than perfect when confronting such a Senshi with her own element.

How many of them were there, and which ones were they? The scrap of bioweave had been electrified, suggesting a Senshi of Jupiter, and Cestus had reported extensive water damage to the battle area, which would most likely be the work of a Senshi of Neptune. Two at least, perhaps three if a Senshi of Mercury had been involved, the residue of her powers masked by those of Neptune. And the mana nexus had been destroyed by three individuals working with water, ice, and wind... Uranus, as well?

Four. And if there were four of them in the same place, working together, it would be very unlikely for Venus and Mars _not_ to be there as well. Not when the Court was involved, not when _they_ had chosen to send Pluto to this city, at this time.

For all his power and knowledge, Archon's understanding of the Court was limited. The most basic thing to be remembered when dealing with them was that almost nothing the Court did was ever as simple as it appeared. A truth at the core of a lie, a stain of darkness on the purest light, method within madness, a universe unfolding into mirrors; that was their way, by nature and by necessity. And when they reached a decision as a whole, they never took sides. Or rather, they took all sides, equally.

Pluto's banishment to this city, bereft of her powers and her memories, seemingly alone against the gathered might of a reborn Atlantis, had seemed far too much of an advantage for Archon to accept. But if the other Senshi were _also_ present, also active... yes, that would be more like the Court. Chaos, for certain, would have loved such an arrangement, for it would throw an otherwise inevitable outcome into doubt. Balance would have insisted on it.

Archon felt a brief flicker of worry. The arrangement was exactly what the Court would have chosen, but it placed an amnesiac Pluto with no way to know what she was doing in close proximity to Uranus and Neptune. If they started mucking around with the Talismans and unleashed the Grail, they might just wake up Saturn... no, the Court would never allow that. Order might see the attraction of the rigid, unchanging Silence, but none of the others would agree to it, not even Death—for in a world totally without life, how can there ever be new death?

All six of the remaining Greater Senshi, then. Had they merely stumbled into their powers and been forced to learn alone, or had someone found and trained them properly? Archon would rather face six powerful but relatively unschooled Greater Senshi than six with the moderate strength and peerless skill he remembered. And even six like that would be preferable to six who possessed their full power—or whatever level of stable strength Serenity's work might have provided—and the skill to know what to do with it. Archon knew he might not have a choice in the matter.

He still needed evidence to truly convince Janus and the Lords, evidence to prove—or disprove; Archon had stopped believing in gods long ago, but he offered up a fervent prayer now that he might still find his suspicions to be wrong!—that the Senshi had returned as well. And he needed time to find that evidence. But if his apprentice was right, if the worst-case scenario was true and their unseen foe was indeed six powerful and skilled Senshi with custody of Pluto—however crippled she might be without her memories—then waiting could prove to be a deadly error.

How long could he keep silent? How many days—how many hours—could he afford to hold back what he knew, before it became too late to change anything?

"Seven?"

"Correct." Usagi grinned in triumph, a grin which faded away when Haruna moved on to part two of the question. They had been doing trigonometry for about a week now—and this particular question for what felt like hours, though in fact only about two minutes had gone by—and it was only with help from Ami and Luna that Usagi was understanding even a tenth of it. Just what the heck _was_ a cosine, _really?_

*At least we're out of those awful polynomials for a while,* Usagi thought, shuddering internally at a dream-image of an army of 'x equals this' and 'y equals that' joining ranks against her. She didn't even want to think about some of the things Ami had mentioned, just a few pages along in the book.

Realizing Haruna had just asked her for the other part of the answer, Usagi glanced quickly at her notes and said hesitantly, "Thirty-eight degrees?"

"Right again. Very good, Usagi."

Usagi sat back in her chair and glanced enviously at Ami and Ryo, both of whom were busily working through problems. Ryo was about five pages ahead of most of the rest of the class, Ami perhaps twice as far along as that—and complaining that she was still working to catch up for the time lost from her two day-sickness a week ago!—and yet either of them would be able to look up from their work and answer a question correctly when Haruna called on them. She didn't, usually; they both knew what they were doing, and Ami actually pointed out mistakes Haruna had made from time to time. Haruna also didn't ask Minako any questions in class, but that was just to spare herself a lot of aggravation; math wasn't Minako's forte. It wasn't exactly Usagi's best subject, either, but it _really_ wasn't Minako's.

Math and Minako and whatnot were forgotten as Usagi's attention went off on another tangent, fixing upon a slightly more important level of problem. Things had been quiet since the battle at the mall, but none of the Senshi were relaxing in the slightest; where their enemies were concerned, long silences always ended in bad news. The last break had thrown the mana nexus at them; what would follow this one?

The man who had been taken over by that weird green stuff was still in the hospital. Nothing about him was being said on the news, but ChibiUsa had stolen the disguise pen, turned herself into a nurse, and slipped into the building to check up on the poor fellow. Most of the older Senshi had been upset with her sudden independent action—Hotaru had seemed more disappointed that she hadn't been invited along than anything else—but they'd sat down and listened to what she had to say.

It turned out that the man had no identification on him, and all attempts to ID him had failed. More importantly, while his body had recovered, he had yet to regain consciousness; ChibiUsa had handed over a computer disk for Ami to puzzle over, then turned a sneaky smile on Setsuna and said that the disk had been 'borrowed' from Doctor Yotogi, who she _really_ ought to call. Setsuna had startled them all by seeming to give some serious thought to the matter.

From what the disk said, 'John Doe' apparently had a very low level of electrical activity in his brain, just enough in the right places to keep his body functioning. For all intents and purposes, the poor man was a vegetable, but there was no physical damage to account for his condition, despite the beating the creature he had been had taken from Neptune.

Michiru and Haruka had both reacted to that news with a touch of relief that Usagi, for one, had been glad to see. Not all that long ago, the two older girls would have been indifferent, at best—a monster was a monster, casualties of war, and all that—but associating with the Inner Senshi was clearly doing them some good. Michiru had noticed Usagi noticing and smiled faintly, rolling her eyes and sighing; Haruka turned red, embarrassed by her own admission of relief, before muttering something under her breath about 'getting soft' and then grunting slightly when Michiru planted an elbow in her ribs. She did that quite often, reacting to Haruka's more annoying remarks and actions almost without realizing it. Usagi thought it might be a useful thing to know when Mamoru finally came home, and started paying closer attention to see if she could figure out how to duplicate that instinctive-appearing response.

She was watching Setsuna a lot these days, too, but she seemed to be having no trouble adjusting to her new job. Usagi wasn't sure if that was normal or not for people suffering from amnesia, but then again, as far as Setsuna was concerned, 'normal' didn't really enter into things. Not usually, anyway; now it was almost as if she were trying to bury herself in normality. Kenji had, at Ikuko's insistence, dropped Setsuna off at the mall each morning for the first few days, and Hanna or Annah—again at Ikuko's request—had driven her home. Now, at her own insistence, Setsuna took the bus, walking for a few minutes with Usagi in the morning to reach the bus-stop, arriving home a little after three. And she usually spent a few hours each night working on something from the store, humming—actually humming!—an odd little tune as she cut this, stitched that, or sketched designs.

Usagi didn't recognize that tune, and the first time she'd asked about it, Setsuna had been startled to realize that she _was_ humming. The name of the tune, she didn't know, nor did she recall where she'd heard it, or even if it had any words. Once or twice, Usagi had overheard Setsuna singing faint snatches of it under her breath, not really words but musical nonetheless; Setsuna's singing voice might not have been as good as Rei's, but there was a sweet, haunting quality to the tune. Luna didn't recognize it, but said it sounded a little like old songs from the Moon Kingdom, though not entirely; after a while, Usagi got used to the song and quit wondering about it.

Rei was still stymied in her attempts to open the Book; in point of fact, she was getting a little snappish whenever Usagi tried to bring it up. She had also been talking to Minako and Artemis about something on more than one occasion, something none of them would even admit to discussing if Usagi tried to confront them about it. Usagi's first guess was that Rei might be asking the self-proclaimed 'Ai no Megami' on what to do about Yuuichirou, except that pigs would fly before Rei admitted she had any feelings for the guy, and she knew better than to talk to Minako about sensitive things like that anyway. Since both of them ignored her and she couldn't figure it out herself, Usagi turned to pestering Artemis. The white cat was a lousy liar; where the two girls flat-out ignored Usagi's questions, Artemis dodged them. Not particularly well, but Usagi still didn't know what was up. She resolved to sick Luna on Artemis for some answers at the earliest opportunity.

Aside from a faint pallor, Ami appeared to have fully recovered from her brief illness, although she was more bubbly these days than Usagi could remember seeing her, always smiling faintly and every so often breaking into a silly grin or a bout of giggles. Ryo probably had something to do with that—by now there wasn't a kid in school who hadn't clued in to the fact that he and Ami were, in their own quietly reserved way, 'an item'—although to the best of Usagi's knowledge, the two didn't even hold hands in public. And that included Makoto's apartment.

And speaking of Makoto, she had been drifting along in some sort of haze for the last few days. Not her usual kind of starry-eyed, fixated on the 'perfect' guy haze, either—thinking about it, Usagi realized that Makoto hadn't spaced out over a guy since before Christmas, now a month and more gone—but a quiet calm that rivaled even Rei's meditative trances. And she was always smiling when she looked at Ami and Ryo. Granted, most of the Senshi smiled more often when one of their number was happy, but Makoto seemed to be taking a much deeper satisfaction than that from the whole thing; even when she started arguing with Ami—which happened at least once every other day—Makoto had a look of absolute contentment in her eyes. What was up with that? The two of them had taken to shouting at each other nearly as loudly as Usagi did with Rei—or with Shingo, or ChibiUsa—and yet there were times when Usagi was sure they were both enjoying...

Usagi hit herself mentally and called herself nine different kinds of baka for not guessing sooner. They were arguing almost like sisters. Neither girl had ever had a sibling, nor had either of them ever lived with someone close to their own age, and now that they were living together, they were—just like family—trying to change things about each other that they had previously never even thought about, but which they now found 'annoying' or 'inconvenient' or 'foolish' thanks to the enforced close quarters and round-the-clock association. Domestic bliss wasn't exactly an accurate description for it, and Usagi wouldn't be surprised if Ami and Makoto tried to strangle each other before it was over, but she thought they were both enjoying the cohabitation more than they let on.

But it was more than that, Usagi realized with a bit of a shock. Makoto had lived alone for a long time; with her parents gone, the only other family she had ever mentioned was an uncle, a man who saw to it that she had enough money to support herself and otherwise left her alone. Makoto never complained about being on her own, and in fact often claimed to enjoy the sense of independence, but Usagi had to wonder.

Even if nobody had ever met him, Makoto's fixation on her old senpai was legendary, and yet since Ami had moved in with her, Makoto seemed to have completely forgotten the guy. She still commented on the particularly handsome or well-defined guys that passed through her field of view, but with a casually appreciative air that was nowhere near her usual level of wide-eyed interest, and she gave no indication at all that they reminded her of 'him.'

Had Makoto been drawn to one short-lived crush and brief relationship after another because she was still hooked on a guy she had never even dated? Or was the _idea_ of that crush just the excuse she used to hide from everyone, including herself, the fact that living alone for so long was... well, lonely? Was she trying to find romance, or reassurance? Someone to change her life, or merely someone to share it?

Given Makoto's recent behavior, Usagi thought she might be on to something here. But if that was the case, what would happen when Ami finally moved out? How would Makoto take living alone again after months of having _not_ been alone? What would she do? What would the rest of them _have_ to do because of it?

"Usagi!"

"Aaah!" She came out of her reverie with a jolt to find Minako standing in front of her. "What?"

"Class is over, silly." Minako glanced at her curiously. "Thinking deep thoughts, were we? Care to share?"

Usagi looked hastily around as they left the room. Ami, Ryo, and Makoto were all gone, on their way to other classes; seeing that no one nearby was paying any real to attention to either of them, Usagi briefly explained her thoughts. Minako listened attentively, an unusually intent expression on her face.

When Usagi finished, Minako nodded. "I've been wondering about that, too. Good to know I'm not the only one who pays attention."

"You knew?" Minako just gave her a suffering look. "Right, sorry, lost my head." Minako would fail to notice changes in somebody's romantic behavior the same day Rei admitted she liked Yuuichirou as more than 'just a friend;' it would be an even rarer day when Minako saw and didn't try to meddle. "So what do we do, O Mighty Goddess of Love?"

Minako drew herself up grandly, opened her mouth to proclaim some divinely convoluted wisdom... and then stopped as another girl rushed up. The girl, whom Usagi knew simply as Lala-chan, nodded politely to her and then turned to Minako.

"Mina-chan, I need to talk to you about something." Lala glanced apologetically at Usagi. "It's sort of personal."

"No problem," Minako said. "Just give me two minutes, Usagi-chan. Thanks." And she dragged Lala off a short distance and proceeded to listen to a hasty, mostly one-sided discussion. Usagi couldn't hear what Lala was saying, but she seemed very passionate about it; most of Minako's replies were the words, "He didn't," with subtle variations on the tone and inflection to indicate differing degrees of shock, outrage, or amusement. Finally, Lala stopped talking, and Minako began speaking quickly. Usagi didn't hear any of that, either, but Lala listened intently, nodding at several points, before smiling, hugging Minako, and running off the way she'd come.

"What are you doing?" Usagi asked flatly.

"Just answering the call of my divine office; Lala-chan's been having some problems with Daichi-kun. Now, about Ma-"

"Mina-chan?" They both turned to see another girl—Usagi didn't recognize her—with the same slightly apprehensive look Lala had worn.

Minako sighed. "Just a second, Usagi-chan. I'll be right back." It took longer than a second, of course, and was a virtual carbon-copy of the talk with Lala. Minako was shaking her head when she came back. "A Love Goddess' work is never done."

"All right," Usagi demanded, "_what's_ going on?"

Minako looked at her as if she were crazy. "They're asking me for advice."

"Why? You don't exactly have what I'd call the credentials for this job, Mina-chan. You've never had a steady boyfriend longer than ten seconds"—Minako gave her a hurt look—"and every time you've tried to fix Rei, Mako-chan, or Ami-chan up with somebody, it's turned into an absolute disaster."

"I've thought about that a few times myself," Minako admitted. "I'm usually dead on about these things, but the way..."

"'Usually'? You mean you've done this before?" Minako nodded. "For other people besides us?" Nod. "_Successfully?_" Minako nodded again, and Usagi took a deep breath. "Start at the beginning."

"It started about... oh, maybe six or seven months after I met Artemis. I could look at two people together, and I'd just know they were right for each other. Sort of a magnetic thing, you know?"

"What does _love_ have to do with _magnets?_"

"Metaphor, Usagi, metaphor. Attraction, magnetic; you see?" Usagi nodded dumbly, frightened to realize that it did make sense, and Minako went on. "I can usually get a good bead on how people feel about each other when they're together—whether it's friendship or physical attraction, something a little more than that, or actual love—and I'm pretty good at telling if two people who've never met are a good match or not. Heck, I even managed to fix Kasuri-chan and Tara-chan up"—Usagi blinked—"but whenever I try to help out one of the rest of you—pfft! I think it has something to do with our alignments." She stressed that last word. "They must get in the way somehow."

"Yeah, probably," Usagi agreed dazedly.

"You don't believe me?"

"No... I mean, yes... I mean, I believe you, it's just... well..." Usagi looked around and lowered her voice. "After hearing Luna go on about how elemental alignments were what allowed Ami-chan, Haruka, and Michiru to notice that mana nexus, I figured you'd—I don't know—end up as a walking metal detector, or something."

"Oh, I can do that, too." Minako grinned. "It comes in handy in chemistry class sometimes, but it's not _nearly_ as much fun as this. I used to just amuse myself pairing people off, and maybe slip some advice in every now and then if I saw someone having problems; a few people thought I was being nosy, of course, but some others listened, and when things started working out for them again, word got around. Hardly a day goes by anymore when someone _doesn't_ ask me for help. Not that I mind, of course."

Usagi's eyes narrowed with a close approximation of cunning. "Does this have anything to do with whatever you've been talking to Rei about for the last week?"

"Hmm? Rei-chan? You know as well as I do that I'm the last person she'd talk to if she were having relationship troubles, Usagi-chan. Now," she said seriously, "getting back to Mako-chan. You're probably right about everything— three years is a long time to stay hung up on a guy she hasn't seen in all that time, especially since she's admitted herself that he barely knew she existed— but I'm not sure there's much we can do. Mako-chan has to admit to herself what it is she really wants, first, and us barging in and trying to rearrange her life is only going to upset her."

"Not to mention the fact that she threatened to—how did she put it?—'kick your Love-God-Ass' the next time you tried to hook her up with someone," Usagi added.

"That too. But more than that..." Minako looked at her feet for a moment. "Makoto's happy right now, Usagi, happier than I've ever seen her for more than a few days at a time. I don't want to take that away from her; do you?" Usagi shook her head. "I didn't think so. So we'll let her be for now, but remember to keep our eyes open later. And hope she and Ami-chan don't kill each other in the meantime," Minako finished wryly.

"One more thing to worry about on top of everything else," Usagi groused. "And for my next trick, I will juggle a half-dozen chainsaws, blindfolded and with one hand tied behind my back..."

"Speaking of your back," Minako said abruptly, "how is it? Not wearing out yet from the extra weight?"

"No, I'm fine. Another benefit of Luna's training, I suppose, although I don't think this"—Usagi patted her belly—"was quite what she expected to be training me for."

"Not much of a threat to the human race," Minako agreed. "Of course, fourteen years down the drain, who knows what she may be capable of?"

ChibiUsa sat quietly in class and tried not to look bored out of her skull as Yarano-sensei droned on about cross-multiplying fractions. Looking bored, she knew, would only bring on a question, and if she didn't stop to think before she answered a question, her answer might clue her teachers in to the fact that she knew quite a bit more than she ought to.

Her formal education up to this point had been a series of private tutors—most of them Senshi—and half of the subject matter from those classes hadn't happened yet. Or it had yet to be discovered. Or it had been discovered, but it just wasn't accepted yet.

Math, for instance. Mercury handled most of her education in the sciences with help from a few specialists in various fields—genius aside, Mercury was trained as a doctor, not a mana physicist or quantum theorist—and the last homework assignment she'd given ChibiUsa had included math problems only the modern Ami or Michiru were likely to look at. ChibiUsa entertained daydreams of presenting some of _those_ problems to Yarano-sensei and watching the woman's jaw hit the floor, but such dreams never came to pass. It was just too dangerous.

ChibiUsa's first trip through time had been on a frantic quest for figures out of her mother's bedtime stories, to find the long-ago Senshi who had defeated the Dark Kingdom, who were led by Sailor Moon, who seemed to be able to do anything and possessed the ginzuishou ChibiUsa thought she'd lost or destroyed. She'd had no idea at the time that those Senshi were the same ones she saw every day, or that Sailor Moon was really her mother; her only thoughts had been to find someone who could save her mother from 'the bad people.'

But after all had been said and done, ChibiUsa had started to worry. Her mother's tales of Sailor Moon were all about battles against the Dark Kingdom or the two wandering aliens, Ail and Ann, and of the battles out of which Crystal Tokyo was born. The Queen had never mentioned the Dark Moon, and ChibiUsa wondered; was that because her mother had purposely kept quiet—or because she hadn't known? Had her going back in time changed not merely the future, but the past, and all of the history in between? Was she living in a world she'd stolen from some other ChibiUsa? Was she supposed to be... dead?

She had eventually gotten over the nervous suspicion, but then, during her second trip, when Senshi she had never heard of began to appear, ChibiUsa had become very, very afraid. She had not been able to corner Pluto and get a direct answer until much, much later; she hadn't wanted to ask the question, let alone risk hearing the answer. But after a horrible dream one night, back in her own bed, in her own time, a dream in which her father and all her friends seemed to die fighting other Senshi, and in which she herself vanished, ChibiUsa went looking for Pluto.

She asked first about the nightmare, about what it meant. Pluto told her it had been a brief flash, a reaction at a moment in time parallel to the instant Mamoru had been killed by Galaxia, an act which rippled through to the future and would have erased ChibiUsa from existence if Sailor Moon had not defeated Galaxia and set things right. Because she was sensitive to the event and the target of its ultimate effect, ChibiUsa had seen something of it in a dream—just as Usagi and the others had briefly seen _her_ in the past, pleading for help.

Galaxia. Evil Senshi. More stories she had never heard of before. ChibiUsa had taken a deep, frightened breath and asked her other question: Were the Dark Moon Family supposed to win?

Pluto said yes.

In the original timeline, the Senshi fought and defeated Beryl and healed the aliens, but the months in which ChibiUsa now knew they fought the Dark Moon had instead been relatively quiet, up until the coming of the Deathbusters. That battle had gone very differently, for it had been ChibiUsa's heart crystal that awakened Saturn—and it had been Hotaru's anger at what had been done to her friend that gave her the strength to defeat Mistress Nine from within. But without ChibiUsa, the Deathbusters had not found a heart crystal sufficient to their needs; instead, when the Senshi finally raided Professor Tomoe's lab, they found a little girl who seemed to be dead. And when Sailor Moon tried to heal her, her Grail-enhanced powers had awakened Saturn, under the full control of Mistress Nine. Even then, Hotaru might have been able to stop it, because she would never have allowed her father to die. But Tomoe Souichi was already dead, killed in the attack by Uranus and Neptune. Hotaru screamed at them in her mind—and Saturn killed them in reality, drawing on the power of the Grail within her. The rest of its power was still going into Sailor Moon, and the buildup between positive and negative forces caused a tremendous explosion.

Mistress Nine, Hotaru, and the city of Tokyo ceased to exist. The ginzuishou reacted by trying to save Usagi and everyone she loved from the catastrophe, but it exhausted itself in doing so, and took centuries to recharge. Without the power of the crystal to sustain life, only the Senshi, their two feline advisors, and Mamoru had the strength to survive the long sleep. Waking hundreds of years later and piecing together what had happened, they grieved for their lost friends and families, and set about trying to make things better. They never spoke of what had happened to Tokyo; it hurt too much, and the Earth they had awakened in had enough hurt to go around.

Galaxia had come to Earth long ago and crushed it, leaving behind only a few remnants of civilization on a world poisoned by the corrupted force of the Grail and the wild energy of Saturn. Galaxia was long dead by the time the Senshi awoke, slain by the inexorable power of the Chaos-essence she had trapped within herself, and her great empire of worlds had collapsed, leaving Earth a primitive, savage world. Faced with that, the Senshi had no choice but to fight, and in fighting, they made enemies. Ultimately, Usagi—now Serenity—was able to pull together enough of the warring factions to begin building Crystal Tokyo, but, embittered by the long fighting, those who were to become the forebears of the Dark Moon Family refused to follow her. Serenity would not kill them, and she could not permit them to remain on Earth to attack her people, so instead she exiled them into space. Long years later, their descendants returned. And Crystal Tokyo fell.

Pluto explained that, had events gone along that course, ChibiUsa would not have been permitted to enter the Time Gate. Denied access to the past, Mercury would have seized on the idea of using the in-between place of the Time Gate as a staging area for the present, to slip away from the invasion and strike at the enemy from behind. Pluto would not have stopped the Senshi then, since they were not trying to use the Gate, and their sneak attack would have succeeded in destroying the Wise Man, far weaker in the future than in a past where he had the corrupted power of the ginzuishou within ChibiUsa to call upon—but still strong enough to kill the four Senshi even as he himself was destroyed. Without the Wise Man's corrupting influence, the more noble natures of certain members of the Dark Moon Family would have reasserted themselves. ChibiUsa herself would have eventually ended up married to Diamond, a marriage symbolic of the reunion between the light and dark sides of humanity, and the realm to follow would have been everything Crystal Tokyo had been and more—to everyone except her, with her parents and friends dead.

ChibiUsa had shivered hearing that. Not as bad in some ways as what she'd feared, but worse in others. Then she asked Pluto, if that was the way things were supposed to have gone, why had it been changed?

"You're the guardian of Time, Pu," she had said. "Why did you let it all change?"

Pluto had not answered her at first, instead looking off into the mists and speaking softly to herself. "I am charged with the protection of Time, the security of this device which has the power to alter and even undo the effects one of the fundamental forces of the universe. I can see the past, the passing present, and the unfixed future, and when you came here, I saw yours." Pluto had smiled sadly. "I am forbidden to interfere, but I gave up everything I loved for everything I believed in once, a long time ago, and you... you weren't even being given the choice. I wanted you to be happy, little one. The world you are in now _is_ your world, just rewritten a little better than before. The history I have told you is now just a fairy tale, and nothing more; the one Mars tells you is how it really happened. I expect I'll have to answer for that, someday," Pluto had added, with an almost fierce glance at the mists, "but I'd do it again."

And now it appeared as though Pluto's prediction had been correct, as if someone or something had indeed come to pass judgment on her. She was here, and ChibiUsa was here, and there was no one at the Time Gate to monitor their actions, to prevent or correct their mistakes. If they did something wrong and Crystal Tokyo ceased to exist, there was no way for them to know until it was too late. Except...

Glancing around, ChibiUsa pulled the thin chain hanging about her neck, drawing forth a tiny key, a near-replica of Pluto's staff, differing only in its size and in the single large crystal at its head. She thought about the key, about what it could do, about what she might be able to use it for.

She thought very, very hard.

Ami and Ryo looked up at the knock on the front door. Several books lay on the table before them, open to pages of equations and hard text.

"Expecting somebody?"

"No," Ami admitted, setting her notes aside and rising from couch. She opened the door and blinked in surprise. "ChibiUsa?"

"Hi, Ami-chan. I need..." ChibiUsa's eyes widened slightly when she spotted Ryo walking up behind Ami. "Oh. Uh, hi, Ryo-kun. Um... I can come back, if this is a bad time."

Ami blushed a little. "No, it's fine. Come in, come in. We were just going over some science problems. Did you want something to drink?"

"No," ChibiUsa declined, settling herself on the living room chair. "I'm not thirsty. But thanks. Is Mako-chan around?"

"She stepped out for a few minutes," Ami replied. "She wanted to see if she could get some spices she's been running low on." She and Ryo resumed their seats on the couch. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

ChibiUsa glanced at Ryo, then said under her breath, "I suppose it makes more sense for you to be here." She pulled out the key, slipping the chain off over her head and placing it on the table. "This is what I wanted to talk about, Ami-chan."

Ryo looked at the key, then at Ami's expression of startled recognition. "I take it this is the key that lets people travel through time?"

"Not exactly," ChibiUsa corrected. "It lets you go to the Time Gate, but whether or not you can travel through time depends on what Pu decides... decided..."

Ami picked the key up. "I seem to remember there being some rather pronounced... problems if you tried to use this thing at the wrong time."

"That was my fault," ChibiUsa admitted. "At least a little. You really have to concentrate to get this thing to work, and it needs a certain amount of energy; I kept trying to use it at less than full power, or when I wasn't thinking clearly. And Pu stopped me once or twice, because it wasn't safe for me to leave. I'm a lot better at controlling it than I was, and I haven't used it once since I arrived. And Pu is... she won't stop me—us—this time."

"Why do you want to use it?" Ami asked. "If what Luna said is true, the Gate can't be opened without Pluto's staff; all you'd be able to do is kick around in that place."

"I know." ChibiUsa was silent for a moment. "That place is... Pu said it was the present, the exact instant in time where past and future come together. I didn't really understand a lot of it; she was talking about stuff like 'universal variance equality' and 'sympathetic temporal alignments,' and it didn't make a lot of sense. But there's a trick she showed me; you can use that place to look into any other point in space and time. It's not easy, but I puzzled out how to do it." She smiled. "We might be able to learn something. Who we're up against, where they are, why Pu is... like she is."

"And?" Ami asked. "What else?"

"N-nothing," ChibiUsa said.

"Usagi-chan," Ami said gently, "I've been watching your mother for years. I know what to look for when she's trying to hide something, and I'm seeing all the same signs from you right now. Why do you want to go to the Time Gate?"

"I don't belong here," ChibiUsa whispered. "It was okay as long as Pu was there to keep an eye on things, but now every time I turn around I'm afraid that I'll say or do something and then get home and find out that it's all changed or that I might just..." With a visible effort, she got control of herself. "Maybe going to the Time Gate will tell us something useful about what's been done to Setsuna and maybe it won't, maybe it'll tell us something about whoever's behind these green fungus monsters and maybe it won't, but it's the only place I can stay without risking..."

"Except," Ryo pointed out, "that for all we know, you're supposed to be here right now, and shutting yourself away outside of Time could be the very thing that you're _not_ supposed to do."

ChibiUsa blinked. "You," she said flatly, "are not helping. At all. I had everything all worked out, and now... damn it." She laughed helplessly. "I never even thought of that!"

"Nobody can think of everything," Ami said simply. "But let's call the others and think this over a bit more before we give up on it." Her eyes glittered. "I'm not sure how the rest of them will feel, but I certainly wouldn't mind finding out who's responsible for what happened to my grandparents' house."

They met the next afternoon under the pretense of a massive weekend sleep-over at Michiru's house. Michiru and Haruka, for their parts, weren't entirely certain how they'd gotten talked into hosting this particular event, and spent much of the afternoon in a daze. The small mountain of sleeping bags, overnight kits, and junk food that gradually took shape in the living room likely didn't help, and Hotaru received—and ignored—a number of suspicious looks from her foster-family about the whole business.

The cats didn't have luggage, fortunately. Neither did Ryo, whose presence had been insisted on by Ami and ChibiUsa both; there had been a few knowing smiles—for Ami—and a few raised eyebrows—for ChibiUsa—about that, but the girls put Ryo to work anyway, helping move chairs and a couch or two as they tried to assemble a spot where all of them could sit and talk comfortably.

Michiru had watched the spectacle of her home being rearranged for a few minutes and then quickly departed, saying something about getting Makoto acquainted with the kitchen and the attached dining facilities.

"I'm not sure I'll ever get used to how big this place is," Makoto admitted, looking around the dining room, which appeared as though it could have held most of her apartment without complaint. Then she turned back to the kitchen with a very different expression. "But this, now... _this_ I like."

Michiru smiled. "One of the necessary evils of high society; if you throw a party, you have to have the facilities to cook enough to feed everybody. Even caterers can only do so much without a base of operations, and Mother did like to host parties." She ran a finger along the edge of a cutting board; it and everything else were clean and well-kept, but if Makoto was any judge of kitchens and their utensils, then none of the knife-marks on that board were recent. "Of course," Michiru added wistfully, "I haven't put most of this to use since my parents passed away, but I couldn't bring myself to get rid of any of it. Maybe someday..."

"Maybe someday," Makoto repeated softly. How many times had she used those words herself? "What were they like?"

"Father was an executive," Michiru replied, "a working man who made good; youngest vice-president in the history of the company at twenty-five, a seat on the board of directors before he was thirty. He was sort of plain, and he talked like he looked—straight to the point, no wasted words—but I used to think he was the most handsome man in the world when he smiled. Mother was an heiress, third-generation. She was a real lady, or at least as close as you can find these days; people used to say I looked like her. It wasn't quite an arranged marriage, but it came close." She smiled faintly. "They weren't in love in the strictest sense of the word, I suppose; certainly not like Usagi and Mamoru are. They treated the marriage as a business, and each other as partners, at least—friends or respected acquaintances, if not lovers—but I think they were happy. _I_ was happy. Yours?"

"High-school sweethearts," Makoto said. "Not the royal couple of the prom or anything like that, although I think Papa _was_ the captain of his soccer team. He and his brother owned a construction company together, and he coached at an athletics center in his spare time. Mama got a summer job at the flower shop when she was in high school because she and the owner's daughter were best friends, and she worked there full-time after she graduated. She loved flowers. It's a little odd," Makoto added, "but I don't really look like either of them. Mama had green eyes, but she and Papa both had very dark hair, and neither of them were as tall as I am now. I could look Mama in the eye by the time I was twelve, and I suppose I would have been as tall as Papa after another year or so if..." She broke off, brushing away tears and clearing her throat. "Sorry."

"Don't be. It's natural; we hurt, we cry."

"_You_ don't."

That provoked a sad smile. "I did all my crying a long time ago."

Makoto looked at Michiru in silence, then asked quietly, "How... how did it happen?"

"The official cause was a boating accident. Unofficially... that was the day I found out that I was Neptune. But I didn't find out in time to save my parents."

"A youma?"

Michiru shook her head. "I don't know what it was, but it wasn't like anything I've seen since. Something dredged up from the bottom of the sea and the bottom of a nightmare in one, all squid-like tentacles and rubbery flesh beneath plates of armor and horn, and all of it dripping seawater and slime. It tore the boat apart like it was paper, and it dragged me—all of us—underwater. Just when I thought I was dead, there was a flash of blue light, something small and hard in my hand, and words in my head. It couldn't hold on to me after I'd transformed. I don't think it liked that." She smiled grimly. "I don't think it liked it when the gas engine in the yacht blew up, either."

"I did things that day I've never been able to do since," Michiru continued. "I was breathing water like air, moving through it like a torpedo, standing on the surface, shaping it into weapons of all kinds. I did... something... there was a whirlpool, a current pulling the creature out to sea and down, down... then it felt like something bent, or twisted, and it was gone. I could only find Mother, and she was hurt so badly I couldn't bear to leave her, even to try and find Father. She didn't recognize me until I changed back. For all that she was the one hurt, dying, I did all the crying, and she did all the comforting. We floated on what was left of the yacht for almost an hour before the harbor patrol found us. She didn't make it back to shore. It was more than a month before I stopped crying myself to sleep, and almost a year before I could go near a boat again." She looked at Makoto. "I guess you'd understand that, though, wouldn't you?"

There was a momentary silence. "It doesn't get any easier, does it?" Makoto said. It was more a statement than a question.

"Sometimes it's not so bad," Michiru replied, looking meaningfully through a succession of doorways, to the room where Haruka was either helping to move things or arguing to keep things where they were. "As long as you're not alone. But I guess you'd understand that, too, wouldn't you?"

There was another brief silence, broken by a muffled thud and a loud yelp from the distance. Michiru winced at the thud and then glanced towards the source of the disturbance, frowning. "I'd better go check on that before Haruka decides to throw something at someone. I'm not sure what I was thinking, leaving that bunch unsupervised in my own house, and besides,"—she looked around at the kitchen—"you probably know more about most of the things in here than I do."

"Probably," Makoto agreed. "Michiru?"

The older girl paused and looked back. "Yes?"

"Thank you for telling me; I know it can't have been easy."

"It helps to talk about these things, or so I've heard; thanks for listening." She put a hand on Makoto's shoulder. "If you ever want to talk... about your parents, I mean..."

"Maybe," Makoto said, smiling a little. "Someday." Michiru smiled back and gave the other girl's shoulder a gentle squeeze before leaving for the front room.

Makoto stood there for a while, thinking about things with a detached clarity that surprised her. Her parents had been killed in a plane crash; Michiru's had been killed by a monster. She never got to say goodbye; Michiru got to watch as her mother died. And who, Makoto thought, was to say which of the two experiences was worse?

She realized something else, too. Knowing that someone else understood what it felt like to lose loved ones—that someone _really_ understood—somehow made her feel a little less lonely.

With that in mind, Makoto turned to the kitchen. Ami's explanation had—as usual—been a little hard to follow, but if they were going to go storming off through Time, best to do it with full stomachs. Dark memories were banished as she got to work.

They gathered in the rearranged living room after dinner, the girls taking a moment to slip out of sight, clean up, and transform. Mercury staggered briefly as her uniform warped into existence, then quickly looked around to make sure no one had been on-hand to see. This was another reason she wanted to visit the Time Gate, to perhaps find a solution to whatever was wrong with her.

"Is everyone ready?" ChibiMoon asked, looking around. The others nodded, including Usagi and Ryo. As was becoming custom, there had been a few moments spent fighting over whether it was safe for any non-Senshi to make this trip, after quite a few minutes spent asking whether or not it was safe even for the _Senshi._ ChibiMoon had explained that the trick Pluto had showed her of observing time required a lot of precise mental control; Luna certainly had that, and every extra pair of eyes looking for answers would help. Then too, in a place from which it was naturally possible to see all points in Time as past AND future, Ryo's ability to see the future would probably have some enhanced effect. And with so many of them going, it was really much safer to bring Usagi along—just in case. Mars, although not happy about dragging Usagi into potential trouble yet again, was bringing the Book as well—just in case.

"Okay," ChibiMoon said. "Here we go."

"Do you think maybe we ought to nail down everything in the room before we try?" Venus asked. "You know, just in case?"

"I know what I'm doing, Venus," ChibiMoon replied a bit sharply. She was getting awfully sick of that phrase, and she held up the key before anybody else could say it again, or make any other smart remarks. "CRYSTAL KEY: ACTIVATE!"

The transparent stone at the head of the key flashed, shooting a hair-thin line of reddish energy from each of its many facets. The beams missed the gathered travelers entirely and seemed to impact on the interior surface of a large, invisible sphere around them, reflecting off in different directions. The lines crisscrossed empty space at incredible speed, filling the air until every point along that unseen, immaterial globe had been defined, and not once did the beams strike anyone. When the sphere was complete, the dancing lines of energy reflected one last time, rebounding back into the crystal, each one striking the exact same facet from which it had begun. The heart of the crystal flared with brilliant white light.

The world blinked out.

Ryo's sneeze carried him clear off his feet. After a moment of sniffing and rubbing at his eyes, he looked around; had there been a floor, his jaw would have hit it.

The place was an empty void. Thick, grey-white mist reached in every direction for as far as the eye could see. More disturbing was the fact that everyone was standing upright at different angles, like one of those bizarre paintings with stairs leading along a ceiling and doors in the floor. Usagi appeared to be standing on her head, except that her hair and clothes all fell in the direction that was _up_ to Ryo, making him wonder if _he_ wasn't the one who'd gotten inverted.

"Everybody here?" ChibiMoon asked, looking about and counting heads as she tucked the no-longer-glowing key away again. "Okay, then. This'll probably go easier if we're at the Gate itself. Gives you a reference point in all this... well, whatever it is. This way."

"No," Pluto said suddenly. The others turned to look at her, pointing past Venus. "There." Sure enough, the dark, rectangular shadow of something very large was visible through the cloaking mists, the two narrow ends level with the angle of 'ground' that Pluto appeared to be standing on. Ryo swallowed; he'd only glanced in that direction briefly, but he was sure there hadn't been anything there. Pluto started towards it, and the others fell into line behind her.

They stopped a moment later as bootheels began clicking on a solid surface, where before there had only been mist. Shapes were suddenly all around them; not appearing gradually from the mists or flickering into existence, just _there._

Mars launched a Burning Mandala before anybody else had time to do more than stop and blink. The fiery rings hit one of the shapes and deflected away, their energy dissipating into the mists, but none of the large objects moved.

"Calm down," they heard Usagi say. "Everyone, relax."

"What _are_ they?" Saturn asked curiously.

"I don't know," ChibiMoon admitted. "I've never seen anything... there never IS anything here, except the Time Gate."

Six tall podiums to their right faced off against a wide gallery on the opposite side. Venus, at the back of the group, turned and jumped in surprise when she saw a seventh, larger podium looming up behind her. The most distant podium appeared to be made of some sort of grey stone, or perhaps metal; edges that might once have been sharp as razors were now dull and pitted with a reddish discoloration that might have been rust. The next box looked to have been formed from the swirling mists, drifting within a loosely-defined limit in a slow, random pattern; the stand beside it was black, but in different degrees, as if it had been made from shadows. The fourth podium was white marble, once pristine and finely-carved, but now stained and chipped. A tangle of plant life, half of it overgrown and half of it dead, formed the next seat, and the last member of the row was a pile of broken, dusty-looking rocks.

*Not rocks,* Ryo realized a moment later, recognizing a shape or two from biology class. He glanced quickly at Mercury, and knew from the look in her eyes that she'd also recognized the 'rocks' for what they were. They joined hands and held on very tight. Saturn, Ryo noticed, cast a quick glance at the sixth podium and then walked a little closer to Neptune and Uranus. It was hard to tell whether she was seeking protection or moving to be in place to provide it if the owner of the grim seat appeared.

The gallery was wooden, the same sort of high-quality work gone halfway to ruin as was to be found on the row of podiums. It had only three seats in it, shapeless masses of dust which might once have been cushions. The largest podium, the one behind Venus, appeared to be made of opaque glass or crystal; unlike the rest, it was in good repair, the sides smooth and clear and uncracked, but it too had no occupant. The empty seats were more disturbing than the idea of them being occupied; if there had been occupants, the Senshi could have dealt with them, but with all the seats empty, it felt almost as if one—or all—of those places might suddenly be filled the moment their eyes left it.

Pluto had ignored the appearance of the seats and walked right up to the Gate. She extended one hand to touch the massive, ornately carved door at about the level of her shoulder, then leaned forward so that her forehead touched the cool material in some form of communion.

"Pu?" ChibiMoon asked nervously.

"Can't you hear it?" Pluto said softly.

The others looked at each other, tilting their heads to catch a sound. "Hear what?" Venus finally demanded.

"Inside the Gate. The flow of Time. A symphony of seconds and centuries." They all stared at her. Ryo started to turn one ear towards the Gate, thinking that he almost could hear a faint swell of sound, then shook his head.

"I didn't like this place much the first time," Mars said shortly, "and I like it even less now. Let's do what we came to do and then get out of here."

ChibiMoon nodded. "Good idea. Everyone, listen carefully; you have to picture the place and time you want to see, get it fixed firmly in your head. Detail is important; the more precise the image is, the more likely you are to get a window." ChibiMoon looked down at a spot on the floor with an expression of intense concentration. Part of the solid-seeming greyness between the seats began to swirl away from an emptiness—no, an image. It was blurry at first, distorted and shifting, but then it sharpened into clarity, showing all of them standing in Michiru's living room, being surrounded by the light of the key. After a moment, the image was swallowed by the mist again.

"Neat trick," Uranus admitted. "Any particular reason why you wanted to see that again?"

"It's probably the furthest point along in time that you'll be able to see," ChibiMoon explained. "Pu said that looking into the past, however distant, is easier for most people than looking into the future, because the past is considered to be fixed, unchanging, while the future is fluid. Looking into a different location in the present is about midway. I could look into any instant between the point where we left Tokyo and the point where I left home, but I probably couldn't see beyond that instant. And I'm not going to try to look into the future," she finished. Noting the looks some of them gave her, she added, "I promised Mama I wouldn't tell you about your futures. I'm not going to show them to you, either." Then she smiled a very cunning smile. "That's what Ryo-kun is here for."

They all turned their attention to Ryo. He sighed. "I should start charging you people for these visions."

"What exactly are you doing?" Uranus asked as Ryo sat down on the 'floor' and then lay back, arms behind his head as if he were in a grassy field, watching the clouds. Mercury knelt to his right, computer out and visor on.

"We think his being here will enhance Ryo-kun's ability to see the future," Mercury explained. "But his visions have a history of bringing on headaches; the clearer or more urgent the vision, the more intense the pain gets, and there have been occasions when it was enough to make him black out."

"This way," Ryo added without breaking his gaze away from the endless mist above, "at least I won't risk hitting my head falling."

Mercury pulled at a corner of her computer, and a small piece of the frame appeared to come off between her fingers. She put the 'spot' on Ryo's forehead, and the center of it began to blink softly; so did the section of the computer it had been removed from. Jupiter glanced over her shoulder and saw that the screen had been filled with the sort of futuristic diagrams one expects to find in the Sick Bay of the starship Enterprise.

"If you pull a humming salt-shaker out of that thing," Venus started to say.

"It's a remote sensor," Mercury explained without looking up. "It gathers information specific to its program and the subject, rather than picking up everything in the vicinity like the computer or visor normally do. It lets me get a more precise reading, but it also dumps all of the computer's processing power onto the single task, so I don't bother with it very often."

"Not really a good idea in a battle situation," Neptune agreed.

"Pulse, respiration, blood pressure, neural activity..." Mercury paused. "Luna, there are some readings here I don't understand."

"Let me see." Luna hopped down from Usagi's arms and trotted over. She looked at the screen. "That information grouped together in the lower left?" Mercury nodded. "Don't worry about it; those are old Moon Kingdom terminology. They have to do with the subject's latent magical energies; the current level of power, the projected safe maximum, the projected maximum, special variant conditions, that sort of thing. See that reading coming off the frontal lobe? That's the physical traces in Ryo's brain that account for or were caused by his future sight."

Mercury nodded slowly. "And then this," she said, pointing at a notation coming from near Ryo's heart, "must be..."

"Exactly," Luna said. "It's a fairly simple system to read; I'll explain it all later, if you want." Luna didn't added that the reading labeled as 'SLE' -Subject Latent Energy—was unusually high for a human. Almost three times the average for a normal person in the old Moon Kingdom, if she recalled the figures correctly. Luna remembered what Queen Serenity had said about the old palace sensors registering the last trace of the youma energy within Ryo's body, but she hadn't expected the reading to be quite _that_ high. Then again, any one of those _particular_ youma had been enough to give four Senshi at once a rough time; it only made sense that the residual trace for one of them would be fairly steep.

"Then we're ready." She took Ryo's near hand. "You can begin any time, Ryo-kun."

Ryo didn't reply, instead letting his gaze fix on a point somewhere in or beyond the slowly swirling mist above him. He tried what ChibiUsa had described, picturing a specific place—the apartment where his family lived—and a specific time—breakfast tomorrow—and focused all his thoughts on putting as much detail into the image as possible. But no spiraling hole appeared in the mists. After a moment, he changed tactics, trying what he always did when attempting to force a vision; the image of place and time fell away, but the staring into space and the sharp focus of will remained. Funny, but that sound Pluto had been talking about seemed to be...

His eyes widened as something like a choir of a thousand pipe organs simultaneously hitting the lowest possible note went off in his head. Had such a sound actually _been_ a sound, it would have blown out his eardrums and likely turned his brain to paste; as it was, he thought the second part of that equation was coming along just wonderfully.

Even Pluto looked up in surprise as an image appeared above them all. The mists around it did not swirl or churn or flow away; they were ripped apart by the edge of the vision-window, which expanded outwards with a speed similar to the shock wave of an explosion. And, like an explosion, the image changed rapidly:

Saturn, trudging through what looked like a jungle, clearing a path for herself by lopping vines and branches off with the Silence Glaive as she walked and wearing an absolutely disgusted expression. A shadow of some sort fell across her from behind, and...

Shingo was walking down a street somewhere in Tokyo, with snow all around but not particularly thick. Three boys his own age appeared in front of him, saying something. Shingo's face darkened, and he said something back, then swung at the lead boy with his fist...

All the girls except Setsuna and ChibiUsa were standing in an airport lobby, and Mamoru was coming down an escalator. Usagi, much slimmer than she currently was, leapt and tackled her fiancee, literally knocking him off his feet. Kneeling over Mamoru with a triumphant smile, she looked up in shock as shadowy figures appeared...

A man in strange, dark robes inset with many symbols walked slowly through a darkened room, his back to them. He stopped suddenly and turned, revealing a hard face. Jagged lines of white raced through his black hair and beard like lightning bolts, and his utterly black eyes widened in shock as if he could actually see them watching him...

Rei kicked open a burning door and looked into a room that was engulfed in smoke and flame, shouting a word—a name?—that was lost in the roar of the fire. She had her transformation pen in hand and seemed about to raise it when she looked up and saw...

Ami was wandering amidst jewel-like pillars and shallow pools of pale water in a cavern filled with sparkling blue-white mist. The mist rippled as if a wind had stirred it, and Ami stopped, startled, as...

Jupiter pounded fiercely against a wall of glass which glowed dully and somehow resisted her blows. In a reflection on the glass and in Jupiter's eyes, they saw a light came on in the otherwise dark area beyond the glass, saw a figure step into the light, saw Jupiter's eyes go wide...

Uranus was fighting a creature that looked like a man made of stone, faceless and powerful, her sword flashing and slicing chips of rock away as the thing sought to pound her with huge fists. A massive beam of white-hot energy shot out of nowhere, ripping the stone creature from its feet and throwing it back twenty feet or more. Uranus turned towards the source of the beam as a brilliant white light illuminated her features...

Venus rolled to one side as a leathery, three-clawed foot crushed the rocky ground where she had been, then flipped to her feet and away as a reddish beam shot at her, leaving a black patch on the ground. She turned around to face whatever was attacking her, just in time to see a sawtooth-edged, bone-white blade plunging in at her stomach...

The vision-window shattered abruptly, and the fragments were immediately swallowed up by the mist. The Senshi heard Ryo groan softly; Mercury had discarded the computer and put her free hand to his forehead. Her other hand remained tightly locked with his.

"Remind me not to try that again, will you, Ami-chan?"

Mercury smiled. "How's your head feel?"

"About the same as always." Ryo started to sit up, then fell back as a wave of dizziness hit him. "Forget I said that."

Saturn, a little shaken by the images, knelt down to Ryo's left and extended a hand glowing with pale purple light to his forehead. The dull throbbing in Ryo's head went away immediately as Saturn's gloved fingers brushed against his skin, and he felt quite good all over, every dull ache or mild soreness gone.

"Is it always that bad?" she asked softly as Ryo got to his feet.

"The headaches? No."

"I wasn't asking about the headaches."

"I know."

"So," Venus was saying, "I've got five deer that say Mister Black Eyes and Big Robes is a villain. Any takers?"

"'Bucks,'" Artemis corrected patiently, "not 'deer.' Money, not animals."

"Dough, a deer, what's the difference?" Venus paused. There was a song in that, somewhere, she was sure of it. She shook her head. "So, if Ryo-kun's had his turn, who's up"—a window was already swirling open, and her last word trailed off, losing its interrogative note—"next."

They turned and saw Pluto, her eyes firmly fixed on the growing image and burning with a fierce inner light. Usagi remembered her friend's near-desperate eagerness on the Moon, when she'd looked at the old device connected to the computer and asked if Serenity could have done anything to help her. The look in Pluto's eyes now was still eager, but not in the same way. It was a little vicious, but Usagi couldn't figure out why.

The image that took shape was the instant on New Year's Eve in which the first fungus-creature had fired its devastating blast at the Mizuno house. Then the scene began to play itself backwards: the surging beam of greenish energy the Inner Senshi and the cats remembered was sucked back into the toaster; the light on the creature's head winked out; it turned back to the four Senshi in the snowbank, and energies formed between them, half zipping into the creature, the other half flying back towards the Senshi and disappearing.

"You didn't say we could do that," Saturn said to ChibiMoon.

"I didn't think we _could._"

Pluto continued to push back through the event, rewinding it to the point where she had first seen the creature burst from the house across the street. And then she went further than that, somehow zooming the image in to follow the entity's movements inside the house. It raced backwards through the living room, righting and reassembling overturned or shattered furniture; in the kitchen, it spat out all the devices in its body to their original places and dwindled into a much smaller form, a greenish orb similar to the one that had been left behind by the monster at the Cafe. A jagged hole of black energy appeared in the air above the ball, which shot up into it, the gateway closing and leaving the house as it had been.

And still Pluto followed the thing. After a moment of blurry distortion, the image cleared and showed a huge chamber of unfamiliar design. The walls were high and hidden in shadow, and large devices loomed all about. The only clear details were of a spherical object at the center of the scene, sort of a room- within-the-room with walls of glass and complex carvings on the floor. At its heart was the ball of green, discharging—absorbing, really, since this was all being shown to them in reverse—sparks of energy. The energy vanished, and the glow within the glass-walled area faded.

Then a figure drifted through the only opening in that transparent wall. It was the black-eyed man in robes, and the image froze as soon as his face became clear.

"I told you," Venus said.

"Where is he?" Mercury demanded sharply. Everyone except Pluto looked at her, slightly startled, and Usagi suddenly figured out what that eagerness in Pluto's eyes was; Mercury had the same look. Usagi decided she wouldn't want to be in the robed man's shoes when her two friends caught up with him.

The image was changing again, the point of view pulling away from the robed man, passing rapidly through a succession of many walls. When the scene emerged into corridors or rooms, there was very little light, and after a certain point, no light at all.

"It's underground," Luna said after a moment. "Or underwater. Somewhere very deep in either case. Go back—or forward—would you, Pluto?" The image remained dark a moment longer, then brightened—a little—as it moved back into an area of light. Eventually, the black-eyed man reappeared, unmoving. Luna frowned. "That's what I thought. Whoever that man is, those markings on his clothes were in common use by practitioners of magic back in the Silver Millennium or earlier periods of history."

"Looks like an archmage," Artemis noted. "Or at least, he thinks he is. Pluto, can you zoom in on the area of his robes just over his heart? If he's true to the old fashion, there should be a symbol there to show his allegiance." Pluto obliged, spinning the image and moving it closer.

A series of seven silver circles was plainly visible on the front of the wizard's dark mantle, broken circles which were connected to each other by a seemingly random pattern of short lines. The cats stared at it, eyes wide, ears and tails drooping.

"Oh no." Luna buried her face in her paws. "Tell me I didn't see that."

"Seven broken and interjoined rings... deep underground or underwater... magical rites and devices which were outlawed two thousand years ago..." Artemis shook his head. "It has to be, Luna. Too much of it fits."

"Would one of you please start making sense?" Mars demanded.

"Where is he?" Mercury repeated.

"He's in Atlantis," Luna said.

"And we are in big trouble," Artemis added.

-Indeed you are-

The voice was incredibly cold, a hissing whisper heard more in the head than in the ears. To Ryo, it was the mind-voice of the youma Zoicite had turned him into; to ChibiMoon, it was the voice of the Wise Man; Saturn heard it as Mistress Nine. It was a different voice to each of them, but always of the same kind. Dark. Frightening. Seductive.

Evil.

As the podiums had suddenly appeared without actually appearing, now they were restored from their assorted states of decay, and—for the most part—occupied. A faceless being in stark grey robes sat in the first box, radiating an aura of authority and control; next to it was a thing which blurred from form to formlessness to what looked mostly like a dog in robes, with corn growing out of its ears. Third was a black shadow, a hole in reality, within which floated two blood-red eyes; the fourth box remained empty, while the fifth held a being half-plant, half-animal, somewhat human, and seemingly female. Three women sat in the gallery; the one in the middle looked almost exactly like Pluto—but somehow not quite—another looked much younger, and the third, much older. A very plain, ordinary-looking man sat in the tallest podium, watching them with grey eyes. The box to his right, the last of the row of six, also held a figure, but after one glance at it, everyone averted their eyes. Almost everyone.

"You," Saturn whispered, staring at the black shroud, the bony hands, the apparently empty hood. The blood had completely drained from her face, and her eyes were shining with violet energy.

"You," Uranus hissed, looking up at the very ordinary, very average man, with his hair that was not grey due to age.

"You," Usagi said flatly, her eyes on the incessantly shifting thing in the second box. It looked at her, then suddenly seemed to be wearing her hairstyle.

"You," Pluto said in shock, unable to pull her gaze from the three images of herself.

-The event has been as it was intended—The second figure was the source of the dark voice.—The conditions have been met; I exercise my right-

"The conditions have been met," the grey man agreed. He looked at the three women who were not quite Pluto and nodded, and they in turn nodded back, turning to look at the Senshi.

*Not at us,* Usagi realized after a moment. *Past us. But there's nothing there except... oh no.*

There was a tremendous sound as the Time Gate swung open, revealing the swirling flow of Time itself. In the same instant that the great doors parted, a tremendous roaring wind pulled at the Senshi and their three friends, dragging them towards the Gate. Pluto, near the back, was sucked in almost immediately; Uranus and Neptune followed a moment later, and Artemis flew in on their heels, with Venus right on _his_ heels as she tried desperately to catch him. Lacking the strength of the Senshi, Ryo was next, and Mercury jumped in after him.

Saturn had driven the Silence Glaive into the shifting substance of the mists as an anchor, and now looked back helplessly as ChibiMoon also vanished into the Gate. Just ahead of her, Mars and Jupiter had dragged Usagi to the ground; the low position reduced the pull of the wind, and their combined weight seemed to be enough to hold them in place. Luna was hanging on by her claws, though, and when the shoulder of Usagi's shirt tore, she was pulled away. Usagi tried to reach for her, but the shift made Mars lose her hold on the Book, which also flew back, and when _she_ reached for the Book, she leaned up too far, and was thrown after it.

Jupiter tried to keep Usagi pinned down, hunching down over the smaller girl so as to put her full weight as well as her strength into the effort. But for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and by pushing Usagi down, Jupiter pushed herself up, just a little. It was a little too far, and the inexorable force of the Gate caught her, dragged her slowly upright and then violently backwards. She collided with Saturn, and for a moment, it looked as if they both might hold steady. Then the Silence Glaive, rocked loose by the impact, emerged from the mists beneath, and both Senshi were blown into the Gate.

That left Usagi, hanging on to a surface that wasn't really there by dint of her fingernails and sheer furious determination. She actually managed to drag herself forward a bare fraction of an inch. Then she paused. Several inches. A slip backwards. Another pause. Another fraction.

She glared up at the seated figures, and her eyes said that if she ever got her hands on any of them, what Mercury and Pluto were planning for the man with black eyes was going to seem pleasant by comparison.

Then even Usagi was overpowered, sucked into the swirling vortex of color and sound beyond the Time Gate. As the currents within what her mind could only describe as a corridor carried her away, Usagi looked back at the rapidly fading mass of the Gate, which was slowly swinging shut. She could just make out a figure, a shape that wasn't a shape but seemed to be wearing her hairstyle.

"dEBT rePAiD," she heard a bizarre voice say. A limb that could only be loosely described as an arm moved, throwing something in after her—after all of them—just as the Time Gate crashed shut, something which flashed and flickered as it spun end over end towards her.

Pluto's staff.

Mars woke up with a start, for a brief second not knowing where she was, hoping against hope to look around and find that it had all been a dream.

No such luck. She was sitting in a rocky field somewhere, all grey dust and stark stones. The sky overhead was thick with clouds, very low and very dark, sooty black clouds which did not look like they promised rain. Spaces in between the clouds were not the familiar blue of a daytime sky or the equally familiar star-specked black of night, but a dull grey hue very similar to the dust and stones all around her.

She could still breathe, and although the chill air held a decidedly musty odor, it did not appear to be threatening to crush her from pressure. Nor was the gravity unusual; she felt no lighter or heavier than she normally did.

*That means I may still be on Earth. But where? And _when?_*

"That's what we were wondering," a familiar voice said from behind her. Mars turned, startled, and let out a relieved sigh when she saw Uranus and Neptune, both a little dusty but both very definitely here.

"I think you dropped this," Neptune added politely, handing over the Book, which was no dirtier than it had been, and still firmly sealed shut.

"Thank you," Mars said, taking the Book and looking around. "Any ideas about this place?"

"None. We've only been here about two minutes, and nothing looks familiar." Neptune raised her wrist and pressed a button on her communicator. It beeped twice, and was answered by identical beeps from Mars' and Uranus' own communicators. After a moment, Neptune sighed. "And unless Ami's boyfriend or the cats are out there, it appears we're the only ones who ended up here."

"Wherever _here_ is," Uranus said. "And whenever."

Mars hugged the Book close as she looked out at the blasted landscape. *Usagi, where are you?*

Jupiter came to with a vicious pounding in her head. She was laying on a bed of sweet-smelling grass and perhaps a few small flowers, looking up at a brilliant blue sky through which a flock of birds flapped in shifting formation.

"Good morning."

"Hello, Mercury," Jupiter said, without rising. The grass was very soft, for one thing, and she didn't really feel like looking around, for another. "Do you have any idea where we are or what time it is?"

"Actually, yes. I did a scan of the area with my computer, and it matches the geography of Tokyo to within a reasonable margin of error. There's no city, though, just a lot of fields and trees. And judging by the angle of the sun, my computer says it's 8:24am, local time. Probably early summer."

"And the year?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, but since there isn't a city—or a settlement of any kind within a hundred kilometers—it's probably somewhere in the past." There was a pause, after which Mercury added, in a soft, sad voice, "We're the only ones here."

"Not exactly," a strange, melodious voice said. Jupiter was on her feet in an instant, turning with Mercury to face the source of that unfamiliar voice, raising her arms into a ready stance in case it proved hostile.

A girl not much older than themselves stood at the edge of a nearby group of trees. She was a little shorter than Jupiter, very slender, and wore a loose-fitting, sleeveless, low-necked dress of some pale green material, belted at the waist with a silver thread, but her feet were bare. Hair of a brilliant emerald green hue was worn in a short-cut style that framed her face with two inward-curving tails, and her pale skin held a faintly greenish cast. Wide, deeply brown eyes regarded them both curiously.

"Who are you?" the girl asked. Her ears, Jupiter noticed as the stranger turned her head slightly, came to very definite points. She also had a third tail in her hair, at the back, much longer and straighter than the two to the sides.

"Who are you?" Jupiter countered.

"I am Sasanna Teol Hydarallanallen," the girl—or whatever she was— replied, seemingly unbothered by the blunt counter-question. "Who are you?"

Mercury's mother had raised her to be polite, so she responded. "My name is Mercury; this is Jupiter."

The girl—Sasanna Teohwhatever she called herself—looked at them, lips moving as she silently repeated their names. Her expression seemed vaguely puzzled. "Those are not your real names," she said. "At least, they are not your only names."

"No," Mercury admitted, "they're not our only names. But they'll do."

Sasanna looked at her, then at Jupiter. "Your name is Kino Makoto. Mako-chan?" She pronounced it 'Keenoh Mahkohdoh,' but Jupiter blinked anyway. And then she blinked again when the girl added, her face even more puzzled, "Amma? Amalthea?" She pronounced those 'Ah-mah' and 'Ahmahltheehah.' "How many names do you have?"

"H-how did you know that?" Jupiter asked in a shaken voice.

Sasanna seemed startled. "The trees told me, of course. I can hear them, and they can hear you, a little. Do you not hear them?"

"The trees told..." Jupiter repeated slowly.

"What _are_ you?" Mercury demanded.

The girl paused, frowning as she thought. "My kind," she said at length, "do not have a name for ourselves. We are what we are, no more, no less. But there was..." She looked back at the trees, and Jupiter thought she heard a sighing rustle. Goosebumps ran up her arms.

*Just the wind. Just wind in the leaves. Plants can't talk. I used to imagine my plants could answer when I talked to them, but they couldn't, they can't, they don't... do they?*

"Ah," Sasanna said, nodding as she turned back to them, "yes. Whilowhorlowillowander reminds me of the man who spoke with Rheanna Diema Dwaenonymmossifer many seasons ago. His word for our kind was 'dryads.' Have you given us another name since then?"

"Ohhhhhh," ChibiMoon groaned, "my head."

"Your head and mine both," Venus replied. "Owowowowow... wow!"

ChibiMoon's head shot up to look at whatever had made Venus give that wondrous and suddenly pain-free exclamation, just in case it was a 'wow' inspired by something like a huge explosion or their being lost in a place where all the usual laws of reality had been stood on their ear.

After a moment to look around, she sincerely wished it had been either of those two. What she was seeing was much, much worse. Terrible. Disastrous on a scale that absolutely refused to register in her mind.

They were standing in a garden of some kind, filled with many lovely plants and pieces of sculpture that fell into varying categories of size, style, and physical composition. None of that was what bothered ChibiMoon; it was the huge, gleaming silver-white shape taking up much of the skyline like a mountain which scared her.

"I'm home," she announced weakly. Venus looked over sharply, a little concerned by the sound of ChibiMoon's voice as she added, "Mother is going to kill me."

Akhmed looked around at the campsite and nodded in satisfaction. Finding this little oasis, so close to home, had been a welcome surprise indeed. Instead of riding the rest of the night and arriving tired and dry and dusty at midday, he and his horse could take their ease this evening and well into tomorrow, then ride out in the early evening and be back well before midnight. He could afford to waste the day; good old Mahdib had made excellent time for him.

The horse, wrapped in a spare blanket for warmth in the night air, was taking a well-deserved drink from the cool water of the pool just then, and shortly turned his attention to some low-growing scrub around its edges. Not exactly the sweet hay and sweeter apples the family typically served him, Akhmed thought with a smile, but the reedy little grasses were apparently satisfactory to sate the loyal horse's hunger this evening.

Or maybe not so satisfactory. Mahdib suddenly looked up from his dinner and whickered softly, a note which made Akhmed reach for his dagger as his eyes scanned the area. The old horse had good ears and good instincts, and if he had heard... ah, there, just coming over the lip of the high, dusty hill that hid this place. A bandit? A fellow traveler?

A girl, on foot. Akhmed stared, stunned. She was young, probably no older than his little sister Kaiya, and wearing strange clothes. The light of the full moon made every detail very clear, if slightly lacking in color. Her hair was done up in a style as strange as her clothes, and though he couldn't be sure of its color, he knew it was far, far more pale than that of any woman he had ever seen or heard of. Her face was also pale and very pretty, though she looked as if she'd been crying; as she got closer, Akhmed could see that her eyes were a brilliant blue, slightly rimmed with the red residue of tears, but there was nothing of weakness in them that he could see.

She was also very pregnant, and that decided Akhmed.

"You, girl! Are you lost? Hurt? Come down to the camp; I will not harm you, I swear." The girl hesitated, looking at him, then called down to him, words in a language Akhmed had never heard before. He shook his head. "I can't understand you. Please, come down. The desert is not safe at night." He gestured with his hands, and she walked closer, slowly.

It was then that Akhmed saw the cats. One blue-black, the other white, and both with strange crescent marks on their foreheads, they moved along to either side of the strange girl. The way they looked at him and at the area all around reminded him of old soldiers and caravan guards he had met from time to time, sizing up unfamiliar ground for enemies and dangerous or defensible positions.

The girl and her cats stopped a short distance away, and she bowed slightly, smiling nervously; Akhmed returned the greeting and the smile. She said something, but Akhmed again shook his head. "I can't understand you. And you probably can't understand me, can you?" After he stopped speaking, the girl frowned, made a sort of cupping gesture at her ear, and shook her head. Akhmed sighed. "I thought not. Will you come sit by the fire?" He motioned towards the fire, and the girl nodded, rubbing her arms in the chilly night air.

She sat down on a low stone next to the fire, and Akhmed fetched the other blanket from inside his tent, offering it to her. After a moment, she accepted it and wrapped it around her shoulders, saying something and smiling. She picked up the black cat and held it close; the white cat sat a little closer to the fire.

"My name is Akhmed," he said after a moment. He repeated his name, tapping himself on the chest.

"Usagi," the girl said, pointing to herself. Then she pointed at the cats, in turn, and named them "Luna," and "Artemis." Then they sat there for a time, a thousand things to say, but no way to say them. Akhmed offered the girl some food and water, which she accepted, but he wasn't exactly sure what to do next.

"Ho, the camp!" Akhmed looked up at the hill again, startled. Three men had appeared there, and moonlight flashed on blades at their hips. Without thinking, Akhmed put himself between the girl and the three newcomers; when they got closer, he cursed silently. He knew the man in front, but not by choice.

"Hello, Akhmed," the tall, scar-faced leader said pleasantly. "Imnho sent us to find you."

"Hello, Tukkad," Akhmed replied. "I'm surprised to hear Imnho is so concerned for my well-being."

"Oh, he could care less about you," Tukkad admitted, "but those documents you're carrying for your father? Those, Imnho cares about a great deal. He's paying us well to see that they reach him intact. You, he wasn't so specific about, but if you'll just hand over those letters—and anything valuable you might be carrying—I could see my way to..."

"Akhmed?"

"What's this?" Tukkad asked, barking out a harsh laugh. "Akhmed, you sneaky devil! What have you been up... to." Tukkad's eyes widened as Usagi moved out from behind Akhmed.

"Hair like gold," one of his companions muttered.

"Where," Tukkad asked in awe, "did you find a slave girl like that? What did she _cost?_" He shook his head, realizing he was asking questions of a man he'd been hired to rob, if not outright kill. "No matter. I don't think you deserve anything that pretty, Akhmed. Hand her over with the documents, and you can go."

"Not a chance."

Tukkad shrugged. "Suit yourself." He and his companions drew their weapons, took a step forward... and hesitated as a low, thunderous growl filled the night air. Akhmed saw that the three thugs were staring at something behind him, something that was probably the source of that growling noise. It was a noise Akhmed remembered hearing once or twice, and the memory of what made a sound like that made him start to sweat. Behind him, Mahdib snorted fearfully.

"A demon!" the second of Tukkad's men shrieked, turning to run. He got about five steps before the other man caught up and passed him, running flat-out. They both vanished over the hill, long cloaks flapping behind them, leaving Tukkad alone, pale, and shaking violently.

A huge blue-black panther walked into Akhmed's field of vision, moving slowly around Usagi and coming to a halt in front of Tukkad. The beast's shoulder cleared the level of Akhmed's waist, and it was easily as long as he was tall. It was certainly far more powerful, probably stronger than he and Tukkad put together, and it was undeniably better armed. *A beast that size must have claws the size of daggers,* Akhmed thought uneasily. *And its teeth... gods, its teeth!*

Tukkad apparently reached the same conclusions, because his face went whiter than the moon overhead, and his shaking increased to the point where he could hardly stand. The huge feline just stood there, looking at him; it growled sharply once, and Tukkad turned and ran for his life, screaming at the top of his lungs.

The panther watched him run, then turned back to face the humans, and Akhmed saw immediately that it bore a crescent on its forehead. He realized that Usagi was holding on to his arm, but not in a way that suggested she was afraid and seeking comfort; it was more like she was trying to comfort him.

The beast's eyes blinked, and then its entire form blinked as well. Instead of a cat, another young woman stood before Akhmed, a little taller and a little older than Usagi, with very long and extremely dark hair, the same shade as the fur of the panther had been. She was as fair-skinned as Usagi, though they otherwise looked nothing alike, and wore a white dress of a style that was as different from Usagi's clothing as from what Akhmed was familiar with. Her eyes were the eyes of the panther—and, Akhmed realized dully, of the little black cat as well.

"We need to talk." Akhmed heard a faint thump behind him following the woman's words, and turned; so did Usagi, looking a little confused until she spotted the source of the sound. Then she broke into giggles.

The white cat had passed out.

It wasn't possible to have a headache anywhere other than in your head, but having said that, the pain that had taken up residence in the rest of Ryo's body felt agonizingly similar to the intracranial overpressure he felt after a particularly intense vision.

The pain, he thought, had only a little to do with whatever had happened at the Time Gate. Wherever and whenever he had landed, it felt... odd. The air was warm, humid, and somehow heavy, as if the atmosphere were a little thicker here. He could see a lot of green, and there was a pervasive smell he didn't recognize. There were also weird sounds off in the distance, sounds he didn't recognize any better than the smell, and liked even less.

Getting up and looking around, he saw plants of all kinds, growing thicker and taller than anything he had ever seen.

*Saturn might be around here somewhere,* he thought immediately, recalling the vision of her wandering around through a jungle. Some of the plants from that vision looked a lot like the plants that were growing around here. He would rather have been here with Ami-chan, but he supposed he could do worse than be stuck to tag along behind the second most powerful Senshi in existence. All he had to do now was...

"Welcome back." Turning, Ryo saw Pluto sitting on the rim of a jagged tree stump about twice as thick across as she was tall. A tall, oddly-shaped staff was leaning against her left shoulder, both her hands wrapped around it.

"That must have been some tree," Ryo said.

Pluto smiled. "Yes, it was. How do you feel?"

"Sore. Tired. Hot. A little stifled. You?"

"About the same."

Ryo looked around, but they seemed to be alone. He wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that; since that bizarre vision back in the hospital, being around Pluto always made him just a little nervous. "Any idea where or when we ended up?"

"The where, I'm not sure of, except that I'm sure we're still on Earth." Pluto paused, getting to her feet with a little help from the staff. "As for when..."—she looked out at the thickly growing trees—"don't ask me how or why, but I think this is ninety million BC. Give or take a century or two, either way."

Ryo stared at her.

Saturn was, in a word, pissed.

Being lost in space and time, ripped away from one's friends and family, and left to wander blindly through a stinking, sweltering jungle will do that to most people, even those whose natures are not typically angry ones. Of course, most people are not Saturn.

Saturn's power was a dark and sometimes terrible one, and she kept it firmly locked away in a mental cage, behind barriers of willpower in the furthest corner of her mind, only letting it out for brief periods, and always under the tightest reins she could devise. When she got angry, those barriers buckled, and the power rattled around in its cage, almost as if it was eager to get out and do some damage—which it might very well be. Usually, whenever this happened, Saturn clamped down on her power and her temper, hard.

Right now, though, she let the power rage and rattle and surge to its satisfaction. Her mood was dark, and for once, it suited her to have that purple-black energy roiling and gnashing in her brain, blood, and bones.

She slashed through vines, leaves, low-hanging branches, and even the occasional tree or stone as she walked along, not really knowing where she was going and well beyond caring in any event. The Silence Glaive lived up to its name, moving through the air without even a whisper of sound, and its typically gleaming blade was unusually dull, as if the weapon itself could sense its mistress' dark mood and was doing everything it could to be as inoffensive as possible.

Saturn was deep enough in her personal darkness that she failed to notice the steady series of thudding footsteps and crunching foliage coming up from behind her. But she did notice when a huge shadow suddenly appeared, swallowing her own shadow. She turned around.

It was big and scaly, with a hide that ranged from olive green to dull brown depending on where one looked. Two small eyes looked down at her from either side of a head that was a good six meters in the air, and the mouth of that head, when it opened, was filled with a forest of gleaming teeth—and a breath that stank of rotten meat. The beast lowered its head to snap up the little morsel before it...

...and drew back with a snort as something flashed up into view.

"Don't. Even. Think. About. It."

As a group, dinosaurs have long been famous for having some of the smallest brain-to-body mass ratios ever to evolve in the animal kingdom. It is important to remember, however, that just because they were unintelligent is not immediate grounds to dismiss them as stupid. A species—or a group of species—does not get to rule the world for several hundred million years by being stupid; nature has spent far too much time cultivating the fine quality of instinct to permit it. It is also important to remember that animals in the modern world are well-known for their ability to perceive things that humans either can't or won't acknowledge as being there.

This particular carnosaur—a cousin of the infamous tyrannosaurs—was hungry, and its powerfully keen snout told it there was meat right in front of it. At the same time, however, that nose was picking up other scents: a cold, flat odor it had never encountered before; another smell which it associated with the last time it had run into a fellow predator; and a scent that said 'danger' to the beast's small brain as clearly as would the smell of smoke or the rumble of thunder.

After a moment, the huge beast turned away and lumbered off in search of something else to snack on. Once it was out of sight, Saturn went back to chopping a path through the trees.

She didn't notice the small eyes watching her from the shadows of the foliage all around.

SAILOR SAYS:

(The room is empty. Shingo pokes his head in from the left and looks around, then flashes a V-sign at the screen and grins.)

Shingo: All right, looks like it's my turn. That odango-atama does this all the time, so it can't be _that_ hard... um...

Voice Off-Screen: Psst! (Hands a sheet of paper to Shingo and motions for him to read it.)

Shingo: Hey, thanks! Okay, let's see... Today's moral is that the future is shaped by events in the past, and... (Shingo frowns and looks more closely at the sheet of paper) Wait a minute, that's the same moral they used in Episode Eight!

Off-Screen: Huh? Let me see that. (Shingo hands the paper back, and there is a brief pause.) Damn. Sorry kid; I guess you're on your own.

Shingo: Great. (Thinks hard.) Well, except for the fact that they really ought to make sure ahead of time that there's going to be somebody on hand to do these things, I haven't got any ideas.

Off-Screen: Plan ahead. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Yeah, I think that'll do.

Shingo (frowning): Isn't that what they said in Episode Nine?

Off-Screen: Uh, no. _That_ moral was about how you can't hope to plan for everything; _this_ moral is about how you shouldn't leave things to chance if you can help it.

Shingo (still frowning): I think I want to talk to the author.

Off-Screen: He's busy. (Cut to a scene of the Judge, locked in a tiny room with a computer, typing away with a glazed expression.)

Shingo: Oh. (Looks around as the screen gets dim.) Are there any video games in here?

Off-Screen: No.

14/07/00 (Revised as of 15/08/02)

(Best zombie voice) Must... write... stories! (Shakes self out of typing trance.)

Sorry for the delay; I try for a bi-weekly 'publication,' but ran into some trouble getting this one off the ground. Ah well.

I went traipsing off into the nether reaches of time mainly because it occured to me that I hadn't done much with ChibiUsa yet, and she deserved a chance to show that—in this story, anyway—her 'spore' personality is more or less a thing of the past. Although, as this episode has shown, the 'past' can be a subjective thing...

I also realized that her possession of that little key left a MAJOR potential plot gap. And we couldn't have one of those, now, could we? Of course, NOW I have to figure out how to... well, that's my problem, isn't it?

Next time (and in several times at once!):
-the Senshi struggle not to do anything that might unravel the fabric of history as they know—or don't know—it, and;
-Venus is introduced to Crystal Tokyo, sort of.