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.

11. Chapter 11

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

_…_…_…_…_…_…_

SAILOR MOON: MILLENNIALS

Chapter 11

Lost in Space-Time, or A Continual Continuum Discontinuity

Guard duty at the Royal Palace was considered something of a mixed bag by the soldiers of Crystal Tokyo. The hours were good, the pay was good, and the benefit of working in the most beautiful city ever built by human hands was a definite plus. The air was fresh—unlike a lot of the off-world colonies where it had to be recycled and always had the faint smell of whatever local atmosphere managed to whisk in—the people were friendly, and the floors didn't suddenly shift to odd angles like they did on ships in the fleet that had run into 'turbulence.'

On the other hand, the job also meant that you had to spend a lot of time dealing with members of the Royal Court. By and large, they were decent enough people, but they were also the sort of people used to getting their own way—members of this or that noble family; heads of assorted financial empires; senior members of the military hierarchy; various knights and dames of the realm; Senshi—which could make them annoyingly difficult to deal with. And there was always one intrigue or another in motion as the gathered notables amused themselves in between the performance of the duties that kept the realm running.

Case in point: Guardsman Matthew Creed, assigned to head up the morning watch on the palace's west gate, was less than ten minutes away from completing his shift, signing out for the day, and heading off to a quiet little restaurant on the bay. The food was good enough, but the real reason he spent so many of his off-hours at the place was a certain brown-eyed waitress who always kept a spare seat, a hot cup of coffee, and an extra smile waiting for him. Neri was her name, and he was just waiting until he could work up the courage to...

Matthew's mind drifted out of a fond, often-visited daydream as he spotted two figures approaching the gate. Most of the traffic into the palace was through the great main gates, in the south; west gate was used mainly by those few servants who lived outside the palace, or by people who wanted to come and go with a minimum of fuss and bother, but were usually trailed by a dozen or so attendants.

The figure in the back wasn't one Matthew recognized. A young blonde woman, and dressed something like a Senshi, but with a different uniform and a mask. Maybe a guest for some costume ball, although Matthew couldn't recall seeing any such event scheduled. The figure in the lead, though... _that_ one, he recognized.

"Princess," Matthew said, bowing. "Welcome home. We'd heard you'd be away on an extended tour of the outer world colonies for the next several months."

"I got bored," ChibiUsa replied, smiling broadly—and just a touch nervously. The flicker of uncertainty got Matthew's attention; the little Princess was infamous for always getting her own way with anyone except her mother or her guardians. She shouldn't have any reason at all to be nervous about talking to a lowly guardsman, and in point of fact, she shouldn't be using this side gate at all, unless...

"Run away again, have we, Princess?"

"What makes you say that?" she snapped, just a bit too quickly, a little too harsh. From the expression on her face, she realized the mistake the same second she made it, and she sighed. "No, I haven't run away. It might be easier if I had," she mumbled under her breath. "Can we go in, now? I have to talk to mother."

"Of course, Princess. Just as soon as we've cleared your... uh... guest... through security."

The Princess twitched. At any other time, Matthew would have been smiling to see that; the imperious little lady had made life difficult for any number of guards over the years, and had earned—royally earned—just a little of the nervousness she'd caused in so many others' lives. As it was, though, he started getting suspicious, and just a little worried.

"Do we have to... um, I mean, is it really..."

"I don't mind," the strange girl said in an eerily familiar voice. It occurred to Matthew, as she raised her hands to touch the colorless gem in her tiara, that the some of the symbols stitched into the young lady's almost-Senshi outfit were remarkably like... no, they were _exactly_ like... oh hell...

The mask melted away as the uniform redesigned itself into the more-than-familiar fuku of Venus, whose equally recognizable face smiled questioningly at Matthew and the other guards.

"Well?" she asked, crossing her arms and waiting.

"Uh, nothing, Lady Venus, nothing. Welcome back."

Venus nodded graciously, started to walk past, then turned and, right next to Matthew's ear but loud enough for the other three guards to hear as well, said, "Your name, sir?"

"Creed, milady. Guardsman Matthew Creed."

"Well, Guardsman Matthew Creed, let me say this: You didn't see us. We were never here. Kapeesh?"

"Yes ma'am. I mean, no ma'am. I mean..." Creed took a deep breath and nodded mutely. He even managed not to flinch when Venus patted him on the cheek.

"That goes for the rest of you, as well. Got it?" There was a chorus of 'yes ma'am!'-s, and Venus nodded. "Good. As you were." She and the Princess continued on into the palace, and Creed wasn't the only guard to exhale in relief.

"I thought she left for Mars the other day," one of the guards hissed softly.

"I think that's what we were supposed to think," his partner hissed back. "Where'd she get that other uniform, anyway?"

"_What_ other uniform?" Matthew said, pointedly reminding them they were to shut up about the whole incident.

Both men snapped to attention. "Nothing, sir." Creed nodded. Eight more minutes, and he could go see Neri, and try to relax. Just eight more minutes...

A short distance down the hall, unseen by the guards, the Princess was waving her arms and whispering shouts at her 'escort,' who was more or less ignoring her and staring at everything in sight as if she'd never seen any of it before. Both of them ducked a corner at the sound of approaching footsteps, and began to sneak around like (very badly) melodramaticized versions of the thieves, spies, assassins, and enemy soldiers that were never supposed to get inside the palace.

"You could at least tell me where we're going."

They had been walking in the same direction for nearly an hour. Pluto had insisted that Ryo take the lead, so that she could see anything that happened to him; every so often, she murmured a course correction as they stumbled along past mossy boulders and splintered logs, under a seemingly endless canopy of monstrously oversized trees. It was moderately warm and fantastically humid; Ryo had been left with the choice of removing his shirt or being steamed alive in it. His wool socks—a gift from his mother just this past Christmas—were now stuck through the belt loops on his pants, the legs of which he had rolled up to above his knees. And he was still sweating like a pig.

Pluto, on the other hand, looked as fresh as a daisy. To Ryo's mind, there was something distinctly unfair about that.

"And before you make any smart remarks," he added, "no, I haven't seen anything."

"The thought never crossed my mind," Pluto said calmly. Ryo couldn't see her face, and her voice was neutral enough that he couldn't be sure from the sound whether or not she was smiling. "To answer your question, if we stay on this heading at this speed for another five minutes and fifteen seconds, we'll meet Saturn."

Ryo stopped and turned around. He didn't have to say anything; the look was question enough.

"I think it has something to do with this," Pluto told him, hefting her staff slightly. "I've been dreaming about it every night for weeks, seeing it just float there in the mists, as if it were waiting for me. I've only transformed into this aspect of myself three times since my... injury... and it always felt as if I were missing something. But now that I have this back"— again, she raised the staff—"I feel... almost whole."

"I don't suppose it's telling you how to whip up a portal that'll get us and everyone else back to where we're supposed to be, is it?"

At that, Pluto did smile. "No. Nothing so grandiose. But it is..." She stopped and looked around suddenly as the ground began to shake, then darted forward, seized Ryo's arm with her free hand, and snapped, "MOVE!"

Ryo moved. Given their current location in history, the building thunder could mean one of two things; he wasn't really keen on meeting either option, but given a choice, he thought he'd prefer a geological event to the other, more likely cause.

Said cause exploded out from the trees to their right with a massive burst of cracking timber, the pounding of enormous feet, and ear-shattering bellows. Ryo caught a quick glimpse of six or seven heads on necks taller than the trees before the bodies attached to those necks and heads blocked out his vision. A foot large enough to flatten a car rose into the air, and Ryo could feel his eyes trying to squeeze shut and open as wide as possible at the same time, an attempt by warring factions of his subconscious to witness the impending horror and, simultaneously, to block it out.

Something pulled him forward just as that colossal leg came down. There was a blur of light and sound, and he fell—or was he knocked?—to the ground. No, not quite the ground; he was caught between something wooden and something else that wasn't quite so hard. The jarring impact ended the struggle in his subconscious in favor of the side that wanted to blot things out; his eyes snapped shut. The deafening noise had ceased entirely, but his eyes refused to open until the ground had stopped shaking.

Red eyes met his gaze. "All in one piece?" Pluto asked calmly.

"Uh... yeah." *She's not as heavy as she looks, she... oops.* That errant thought made Ryo blush from his chin to the roots of his hair; Pluto, getting to her feet and looking curiously at the air around them both, seemed not to notice. Ryo was extremely glad Ami wasn't around to see this. Then he frowned. Granted, he had no romantic interest in Pluto, and he was reasonably sure she had no such interest in him, but was he _that_ uninteresting that she found staring at empty _air_ to be more entertaining?

As it turned out, she was not looking at the air, but at a strange shimmer _in_ the air, a shifting sphere of darkly reddish light which surrounded them and something of the tree against which Pluto had thrown them both. The weird energy made it difficult to pick out details about their surroundings, but Ryo thought the area looked quite a bit... flatter than it had.

Ryo glanced at Pluto. "What did you do?"

"I'm not sure." She picked up a small stone and gave it an underhanded throw towards the barrier. The shifting weave of energy flashed more brightly where the rock hit it; the rock itself rebounded away silently, but as firmly as if it had struck a brick wall. Pluto considered the stone, then walked up to the barrier and rapped on it with her knuckles. Soundless pulses of pinkish energy accompanied each light impact, and her hand tingled oddly even through the glove, but that was all. No pain, no sense of heat or cold. Just immovability and that curious tingle. And, she realized, a slow, pulsing flicker in the orb on the head of her staff.

Pluto regarded the glowing depths of the orb for a long moment, then extended her staff headfirst towards the barrier and murmured one word: "Resume."

The orb glowed brightly, and the energy-substance of the barrier began to shift more rapidly; it became blurry, indistinct, and then vanished completely. The sounds of the jungle returned.

"It was air," Pluto said in a softly wondering tone. "Molecules of air, slowed down to such a degree that they wouldn't—couldn't—move more than a fraction of a millimeter in a century. A shield harder than wood or stone or steel, impervious to almost any force brought to bear on it because the air it was composed of simply couldn't be moved out of the way." Looking at the area around them, she added wryly, "Which was just as well for us."

The small herd of dinosaurs had produced a level of devastation Ryo had never witnessed, either in person or in one of his visions. Their passage had brushed aside branches and in some cases entire trees in a rain of splinters; their huge feet and immense mass had smashed the fallen wood into pulp. Ryo looked back at the tree Pluto had thrown him at and saw that it stood alone in the middle of a newly-cleared path as wide and as flat as any highway. A cloud of dust was visible in the distance in that direction, and a last, fading bellow came back to them. Looking in the other direction, the direction from which the herd had come, he saw nothing except an avenue of arboreal obliteration.

Pluto noticed him looking around and pointed at the pulverized soil. In addition to the multitude of flat footprints from the herd, Ryo could also pick out several imprints from a different kind of foot, a bit smaller than those of the huge sauropods, and with three widespread toes. The shallower imprint indicated a smaller creature or creatures, but each toe-mark was very clear, particularly the short, narrow tip. Ryo had seen enough dinosaur movies and nature documentaries to know that the current equivalent of two or three hungry lions were on the trail of a very large meal. Considering that those 'lions' were probably three stories tall and not too fussy about what they ate, Ryo wished them good hunting—somewhere else.

'Somewhere else,' he realized, was where they had been headed. "Uh, Pluto? You mentioned Saturn...?"

Pluto nodded and pointed into the jungle on one side of the newly-trampled trail. "Four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, provided nothing else happens."

"You mean you don't know? I mean, aren't you seeing all this?"

"Actually... no." Pluto coughed with a trace of embarrassment and raised her left hand; from that wrist, a small light on her communicator was blinking steadily at Ryo. "Our little trip through the Gate seems to have interfered with the communications side of things, but the homing beacons are still working."

Ryo looked at her for a moment, then shook his head and started off, counting silently to himself as he went. Four minutes and thirty seconds and a large section of jungle later, he started glancing around, and caught a metallic glimmer from somewhere further ahead.

Saturn emerged from the trees a moment later, looking thoroughly unimpressed with the universe in general, and her eyes widened slightly when she spotted the staff in Pluto's hand. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Turning to Ryo, Saturn had again started to say something when she blinked, as if only just seeing him; the corners of her mouth quirked up into a smile before she covered a giggle with her empty left hand.

"I'm happy that you're happy," Ryo told her. "Now, does either of you have the slightest idea how we can get back to our own time?"

Saturn shook her head. They both looked at Pluto—who was looking thoughtfully at both of them, and then at her own staff.

Mercury tried very hard not to stare at the room all around, but it was a losing battle. She had surreptitiously taken out her computer to scan the place—and its owner—and while she had yet to examine the readings, she imagined they'd be... quite remarkable.

For one thing, they were up a tree. Or perhaps _in_ the tree; it was hard to be sure, since all the walls and furniture appeared to have been grown where they stood, all smooth curves and knobs of the same huge piece of wood, with open spaces—half covered by rows of leafy vine—serving as windows. They had followed Sasanna through the forest to the base of a colossal tree which defied classification according to what knowledge Mercury had of botany; even Jupiter, with all her knowledge of plants, couldn't place the species. It was overgrown with enough moss, ivy, and fungus that it seemed like some jungle giant transplanted from the rainforest, and looking at it, the two Senshi had a vivid, momentary recollection of Ail and Ann and their enormous 'parent.' This tree was just as overgrown, but healthy where the alien tree had been twisted and dying, lush with green growth instead of black wither. And instead of the pervasive aura of fear they had fought as hard as animate roots and acidic sap, this arboreal titan exuded only a sense of great age and peace.

The girl—the dryad, Mercury reminded herself, as impossible as that sounded—had proclaimed the strange tree to be her home, told them that its name was Glossolyndaraberonasym, and led them up a flight of stairs which curved around the trunk and emerged in the middle of a single large room, asking politely if they would like anything to drink, they must be thirsty after such a long journey...?

"Th-that would be n-nice," Jupiter stammered, still spooked by the thought that a silly childhood fantasy might actually... *No! It wasn't real!*

Sasanna nodded and moved over to a spot on one wall where a little knob of growth hung by itself. She retrieved a wide and deep wooden bowl from a shelf and held it under the knob, which almost immediately began to pour a bright, clear liquid. When the bowl was full, she drew it away. The flow ceased before her hand moved, and not so much as a drop of the sparkling stuff dripped from the knob.

"Part of our nature is to share," Sasanna explained, noting the expressions on their faces as she returned. "If one of my sisters were to visit me, we would share the same drink; the same if there were two visitors, or more. Does this... bother you?"

"We don't mind," Mercury said. It would have been rude to insult the customs of their curious hostess, and besides—although Kami alone knew what sort of microorganisms might be going on about their lives within a creature like this—she didn't really think it was possible for the two of them to catch anything while in Senshi form.

"Uh, yeah," Jupiter agreed. "Although, uh, I drink a lot." *She didn't touch anything except the bowl, but the taproot or whatever it is started and stopped at exactly the right time, almost as if she asked... no! Stop it! Plants can't talk! They can't!*

Sasanna smiled. "I thought you might; you must, to have grown so well." While Jupiter tried to figure that out, Sasanna guided them to a stump-like table in the center of the room. As with all the other furniture—'all' being a wide, curved bench/couch set into the wall, a divan near one window, and the shelves—the table was a piece of the great tree, quite immobile. A dozen cushions of soft green moss ringed it and made for quite comfortable seats as the three of them settled down. Sasanna took one side of the table; the two Senshi sat on the other.

Sasanna drank briefly from the bowl, then passed it to Mercury. "We call this sweetwater; our trees make it for us." She looked pointedly at the computer. "Glossolyndaraberonasym tells me that the strange thing in your hand has looked at us many times, and although he does not understand it, he thinks that it is remembering and thinking on what it sees. Is he correct?"

"It's called a computer," Mercury replied. "And yes, it does."

Sasanna nodded. "I do not know how sweetwater will taste to you, or even if it is safe for you to drink at all. Can your... computer?... tell you?"

"It can," Mercury admitted, raising her computer. "Water and sugar, trace amounts of chlorophyll. No harmful microorganisms. We can drink it, but there's only one way to tell what it tastes like." She raised the bowl and took a small drink. It was, as the name suggested, sweet—easily as sugary as any carbonated beverage in Mercury's experience, just without the bubbles—and with the faintest tang of what tasted like the scent of pine needles. "Not bad."

Jupiter was looking nervously at the seamlessly smooth walls of the room as she accepted the bowl from Mercury and sipped at its contents. Her attention rather sharply redirected itself to the bowl as the deliciously sweet liquid hit her taste buds; she took a second, much deeper drink, and was grinning widely when she lowered the bowl. "That," she said, "is good." As she passed the bowl on, she noticed that it was almost half-empty, and reddened in embarrassment. "Sorry about that."

Sasanna waved away the apology. "It is fine; there is plenty. Are you also hungry?"

"No," Jupiter replied. "We ate before we... uh, arrived."

"Ah." Sasanna took another drink. "Then we will tell each other our stories. Yours, I think, is more interesting, but I will go first so that you know me enough to tell me your story."

SASANNA'S TALE

The tree exists. It does not think, and is only remotely aware of its surroundings. It strives for nothing except rich soil, fresh water, bright sunlight upon its leaves, and room to grow. But as with all things, as a tree grows older, it changes.

The world is filled with energy of all kinds. Some is the gentle heat of the sun or the painful heat of deadly fire; some is the energy of the falling rain and the rushing rivers. There is the wind in the leaves, the slow turning of the land; there are many kinds of energy that can be seen at work, and just as many others that cannot. All living things absorb these energies. Some of them, they use to live, while others are merely there.

A tree, because it is so very large and lives for such a long time, absorbs much more energy than most other living things. As that energy increases, the tree thrives, grows tall and healthy; if it lives long enough, if it absorbs enough energy, then the tree changes in such a way that it becomes more than just a tree, more than just alive.

It becomes aware. It wakes up.

As the energy and awareness grow, the tree becomes able to recognize a certain thing about itself: it is both male and female. It has always been so, but for the first time, it KNOWS that it is. And it has also become aware of the fact that the animal creatures around it are somehow different from the vegetative state is has always known. The tree does not know how or why this is, but as its awareness grows, so does its desire to learn. So it divides itself.

The body of the tree, which has taken on traits of other plant species thanks to its absorption of their energies, houses the male half of the tree's awareness. This part gradually discovers that it can extend its awareness into other plants, feeling what they feel but are unable to KNOW that they feel. The aware tree learns, and grows wise from what it learns, slowly discovering how to change itself, adapt its shape.

The female half of the tree's awareness, infused by the energies of many animal creatures, leaves the tree and becomes a dryad, a blend of both plant and animal nature. She remains linked to her tree, unable to move beyond a certain distance without growing weak; if she is too far away for too long, she will die. But within that range, the dryad is free to do as she pleases. She watches the forest and its creatures, and because she is part plant and part animal, she is able to speak with beings of both worlds.

Both a dryad and her tree live for a very long time, but their numbers increase only very slowly, for dryads are created, not born. They are all female; without males of their own species, they cannot produce offspring. At the same time, a dryad's other-self, the male half within the tree, is no longer able to produce seeds; that part of its nature went into the dryad. Only through the long, slow process of growth, age, and energy can a new awareness be born within a tree.

So the dryad cares for the forest, for all its children, as if they were her own, the seeds her tree will never again produce, the children she herself will never have. Her other-self provides the food and shelter her more frail body requires, and she in turn tends to his immobile form—for if he dies, she also perishes. They speak to one another, and to the other dryads and waking trees in the region, sharing information, puzzling over strange things they have seen, or simply taking enjoyment in each other's conversation and company.

After a life several times longer than even a tree's, a dryad's partly animal body grows tired. Each day it is more difficult for her to muster the energy to awaken, and she begins to show signs of age. At the same time, her tree slowly finds it more difficult to awaken with each new spring and put forth his leaves. Eventually, a spring day will come when neither tree nor dryad awaken again, but choose instead to sink back into the peaceful unawareness from which they began. She fades away, and he goes into a deep, unbroken slumber. The tree may stand for another few centuries before it is overcome by the elements, but it is, once more, just a tree.

"This," Jupiter asked, briefly forgetting to be nervous as she looked around at the wooden room again, "is you?"

"Yes." Smiling, Sasanna laid a hand upon the table, a gesture of fond familiarity. "He is part of me, as I am part of him."

"And you're how old?"

"We were three hundred and four turns of the seasons old when we became as we are," Sasanna replied. "That was four hundred and nine turns ago. Tarnara Ferdel Auramyndoralla, the oldest of my sisters to ever live upon this island, was one thousand eight hundred and ninety-two turns of age when she and her other-self, Kardelbanbororootyn, finally entered into the long sleep. They had been awake for all but two hundred and eighty-six of those turns. Kardelbanbororootyn still stands, but he has not spoken in a hundred and nine turns."

"That's... incredible," Mercury said.

Sasanna shrugged. "It is what we are." She finished off the last of the sweetwater, then rose to refill the drinking-bowl. "So," she said as she returned, "I have told you my story. Will you now tell me yours?"

"We'll try," Jupiter said. "It's just that... uh..."

"It may be a little difficult for you to understand," Mercury said. She smiled a slightly crooked smile. "It's hard enough for _us_ to understand, sometimes."

"The best stories often are," Sasanna said.

It took hours to explain. Sasanna was a very patient audience, but finding a way to express things so that she—a magical half-plant entity with only limited knowledge of humans—could understand them proved very difficult. The Moon Kingdom, they described as 'a forest of people, destroyed by a terrible fire.' Their attempts to explain the concept of reincarnation degenerated into a round of 'like this' and 'sort of like that' and 'if you can picture,' and they weren't entirely sure Sasanna understood it any clearer at the end than at the beginning. She seemed absolutely enthralled when they touched on Ail and Ann—as Mercury had thought she might.

Thinking about it, Mercury began to understand why, out of all the planets the galaxy—the universe—must hold, those two had chosen Earth to try and revitalize their dying parent. Abundance of life was one thing, but if the planet had actually given rise to a species similar to their own at some point in its long past, a species that had, like themselves, been partly plant and partly animal, well...

It was well into the afternoon by the time they had finished—more or less—and Mercury concluded her effort to explain time-travel with a jaw-cracking yawn. "I'm sorry," she apologized sleepily.

"If I understand it correctly, it was night where you were before you came here, yes?" Sasanna smiled. "One of the things we have learned about since separating is the need for sleep—and I think you two are in particular need just now."

Jupiter giggled. "You can say that again." Mercury looked at her friend oddly. Something was not quite right about Jupiter's behavior. She had been jumpy the entire morning, but now she was smiling and chuckling for no apparent reason, and as she got to her feet, she seemed slightly unsteady. Mercury's gaze fell on the drinking bowl; it was empty, but Sasanna had refilled it a number of times during their conversation. Looking at it, Mercury felt several things fall into place.

"Jupiter," she began carefully, "how do you feel?"

"How do I feel?" Jupiter smiled vaguely. "Well, now that you mention it, I feel... I feel... I feel good, Mercury. I feel very, very... very, very, VERY, very..." She kept repeating that until she trailed off into giggles.

"You're drunk," Mercury said flatly.

"Impossible," Jupiter snapped, bringing her right hand down on the table with a thump. "I haven't touched a drop, ever! 'cept for a couple of recipes... and Usagi-chan's last birthday party"—Mercury remembered _that_ particular incident with a visible wince—"but that's the only... well, unless you count that egg nog at Christmas. And there was that one date I had with... um... whatshisname... Uredo-kun... but those are the only times! I'm sure!" She hiccupped again, and added, "I'm pretty sure." She moved off, counting on her fingers and mumbling to herself.

Mercury sighed. She had no idea who 'Uredo-kun' was; she doubted that she really wanted to know. "Sasanna, do you have a spare bed around here?"

"Only the one," the dryad responded, "in the upper chamber, but you may both use that, if you are tired; it is large enough."

Mercury shook her head. "No. We wouldn't want to push you out of your own bed."

For some reason, Sasanna laughed at that. "Come. We will put your tall sister to bed, and you will see what I mean." That was something Sasanna had decided on after hearing their story; since the Senshi all shared the same origins, the same purpose, then they—like the dryads, who considered each other family even though they were only very seldom related to each other—must be sisters. Mercury didn't argue with her; it was true enough.

Jupiter was sitting in a window, one leg up on the sill in front of her, arms locked around her knee, and head tilted back, eyes closed. She was humming a wordless and tuneless little ditty with a contented smile as the other two approached.

"Come on, Mako-chan," Mercury said. "Time for bed."

"I'm not sleepy," Jupiter replied, yawning as they got her down from the window. Mercury looped Jupiter's right arm around her own shoulders; Sasanna took the left, and between them, they started moving her along. "Really, Mercury, I'm fine. Good for hours yet."

"Uh-huh."

Moving slowly and with a fair number of pauses and redirections, Mercury and Sasanna managed to guide Jupiter to the set of stairs running along the wall of the chamber and on into the upper level of the great tree. The stairs weren't quite wide enough for the three of them to walk side-by-side—well, for two of them two walk, and the other to stagger—so Sasanna took the lead, hauling Jupiter forward, while Mercury pushed along after them both.

Halfway up, Jupiter leaned precipitously forward, staggering Sasanna and dragging Mercury off-balance. The look on Jupiter's face was confused, and her head moved as if trying to more clearly catch a sound that was on the edge of her hearing. "Sasanna, this is a very nice tree you have here, but does it have termites or something?"

"No." Sasanna sounded a little offended. "He is quite healthy. Why do you ask?"

"I keep hearing this noise. Scratchy, whispery, creaky." Jupiter kept up her search for another moment before shrugging dismissively. "Must be the wind."

"Must be," Mercury agreed. Even though she didn't hear a thing, Mercury knew from experience that disagreeing with Jupiter when she was drunk could be hazardous to your health.

"Sorry I mentioned termites," Jupiter added.

The apology seemed to do the trick; Sasanna's voice had returned to normal. "Thank you."

They reached the bedroom a few steps later, and Mercury stumbled on the last step. "I see what you meant about the bed."

This level of Sasanna's home was as large as the one below, but much of that space was taken up by a bell-shaped alcove in the 'wall' opposite the stairs. The alcove filled more than a third of the level, and was itself filled by the bed, a bulge of green larger than two or three king-sized mattresses. There were a dozen or so circular patches of ivy and moss on the alcove's walls, and a large cluster of some kind of fungus was fixed to the ceiling. The far wall of the mini-chamber had another of the circular windows in it, with small, leafy plants in full bloom clinging to the rim.

Mercury looked to the right of the alcove and saw a bowl-shaped depression in the floor, with a number of the knob-like growths reaching down from the ceiling like wooden stalactites. A small stump stood next to it, and close at hand was another of the knobs, hanging above a curved outgrowth about halfway up the wall. Moss was thick on the walls and floor in that part of the chamber, and there were more of the unexplained discs of fungus on the walls. After a moment of puzzled examination, Mercury smiled. The washroom, obviously.

The area to the left of the alcove connected to a circular doorway, which appeared to lead out into the branches. As with the windows downstairs, vines hung thickly from the frame, forming a flexible screen rather than an actual door. That part of the chamber was otherwise empty.

"As I told you, my sisters and I share everything. We can go several days without sleep, and we usually return directly to our trees after visiting each other, but sometimes—particularly in the winter—one or more of us will be unable to get home for a few days. So we make sure that we have room. Now," Sasanna added, looking at Jupiter, who had fallen asleep on her feet and was snoring softly, "let us see to your sister."

Mars looked out of the mouth of the cave she, Uranus, and Neptune had taken shelter in, and sighed. Night had come on quickly, or perhaps it had been well underway when they'd arrived, but this place—this time, she corrected herself—didn't get any prettier in darkness. The dust and rocks remained dusty and rocky, and the low-hanging clouds were as thick as they had been during the day. She caught only brief glimpses of the stars—not enough to recognize anything—and saw nothing at all of the moon.

*Gone,* she thought bleakly, *just like Usagi.* She sighed and went back inside.

Uranus and Neptune sat on either side of a fire, a fire that was hovering a short distance above the stony surface and burning without fuel. Mars looked at it and focused slightly, and the flame burned a little higher, a little brighter.

Learning she could do something like this had been a bit of a surprise, although now that she thought about it, the ability to call up and sustain a campfire-sized blaze made perfect sense given the other, more spectacular tricks she could pull off with fire. It was tiring, though; the flame might not be burning wood or gas or anything like that, but she was sustaining it on her own force of will, and that was slowly but surely beginning to run down.

Mars turned to the small hollow at one side of the cave and filled her hands from the water within. The cave had been dry as a bone when they found it, but that was no more of a problem for Neptune than sustaining a fuelless fire was for Mars. She drank some of the water in her hands and used the rest to clean the dust from her face. Then she joined the others around the fire.

"Any sign of them?" Neptune asked.

Mars shook her head. "It looks like they didn't follow us."

"Smart move on their part," Uranus said, with a grin that did not mean she was amused.

'Them' was a group of eight ragged, rag-wearing, hungry-looking men who had appeared out of the dust and stones as if from nowhere, wielding an assortment of weapons which ranged from moderately advanced to positively primitive; one had been carrying a reasonably rust-free handgun, while the rest made do with wooden or metallic clubs and a variety of sharp things that could only loosely be called knives. From the way they had looked at the three girls and then grinned at each other, Mars was guessing food had not been foremost on their minds.

Very little except running had been on their minds once it was all over. Uranus and Neptune had not been gentle, and Mars, for once, had no disagreements with the older girls' methods; she'd been the one to deal with the gunman, reducing his weapon to a red-hot puddle of twisted slag in a single gout of fire when he'd started to raise it after seeing four of his compatriots go down. The Senshi hadn't used their powers at all up to that point, and it pretty much broke the nerve of the men who were still standing. The girls had let them run, left the ones who were unconscious as they lay, and headed off in a different direction, finding the cave along the way.

The problems of immediate safety and shelter solved, they were left with only a few hundred or so more to deal with, not the least of which was that the cave showed signs of occupancy. The blackened patch of stone on the floor and the smoke stains on the ceiling had nothing to do with Mars's dancing flame, and there was a small stash of assorted items further on, including a medium-sized barrel of water. Not the sort of thing someone would leave behind, given the arid environment outside, so they sat and waited for the owner or owners of the cave to come back, and hoped they hadn't already met them. They needed to know where they were, _when_ they were, where to find food, what had happened... so many questions.

After a time, they heard voices outside, three or four of them, engaged in conversation.

"...never seems to get any better," a rough man's voice said. "In the last three years, I could count the number of times I've seen the sun or the moon—clearly, without clouds all over either of 'em—on one hand."

"You'd have to," another man said in a tone that suggested a smile, "considering that you've only _got_ the one hand to work with..."

"Mind how you speak to your elders, boy," the rough voice replied. "Particularly _this_ one, or you'll find out just how useful this hook of mine actually is when I use it to pick out your... eh? Heads up, lads, there's someone in the cave." There was a round of low curses that the Senshi couldn't hear, and then the rough voice called out, "Who's in there?"

"Strangers," Neptune called back. "We don't mean you any harm, whoever you are; we were looking for a place to spend the night and found this cave by accident."

"It's a woman," a third man muttered. "Where'd a woman come from, all the way out here?"

"Excuse me?" That was a woman's voice. This couldn't be the group from before.

"Quiet!" the rough-voiced man snapped. "Right, miss. I'm going to have to ask you and whoever else is in there with you to come out, one at a time, leaving whatever weapons you've got behind. Nothing personal, you understand, but these are nervous times."

"I understand. I'll come out first." Neptune glared fiercely at Uranus when she started to object, then nodded intently at the Space Sword; after a moment, Uranus sent it away, but she didn't look at all happy about doing so. Neptune gave her a slightly nervous smile, then got up and walked—slowly—to the front of the cave. She paused, took a deep breath, and then stepped outside with her hands in the air.

She saw five figures—no, seven; there were two others half-hidden higher up among the rocks on either side of the little cul-de-sac cliff that housed the cave. Both of those appeared to be carrying bows, and the rest were armed with a similar mix of weapons as the earlier group; metal gleamed here and there in the light of the lanterns two of them held, but none of that was part of a gun. Neptune didn't relax, though. Clubs and knives and arrows might be crude compared to bullets, and they were certainly nothing at all next to what some monsters packed, but they were still dangerous, and Saturn's healing powers were very far away. Neptune spared herself an instant to worry as she thought about Hotaru, then focused firmly on her own situation.

"Move away from the mouth of the cave," the rough-voiced leader said. "Slowly. Keep your hands where we can see them." Neptune did that, stopping a few paces away from the group on the ground. There were two men besides the leader—whose left arm ended in a nasty sort of metal prong instead of a hand—and two women; definitely not the same bunch as earlier, but Neptune still didn't relax.

"Nice outfit," the woman on the left murmured. She sounded like the one who'd spoken earlier.

"I sort of like it," a man replied with a smile. He was the one who'd been surprised to hear a woman's voice; the two women of the group gave him a flat look.

"_Will_ you two shut up?" the leader demanded. "Okay, girl. I'd like to know where in blazes you came from, but right now, I'll settle for knowing how many friends you've got in there."

"Only two. Did you want me to call the next one out?"

"You do that. But tell them both to take it slow and easy."

Neptune nodded and turned back to the cave. "You're next, Uranus. Come out, but don't make any sudden moves." There was a pause in which nothing seemed to happen, and then Uranus appeared in the mouth of the cave. The look she gave the seven men and women was undisguisedly hostile; the look she gave Neptune wasn't much better.

"And now the other one, miss, if you would."

"Your turn, Mars. Leave the Book."

"What's a book?" That was the younger man, the one who'd teased the leader about his missing hand. He was waved to silence by that ugly prong as the leader strained to hear Mars's reply.

"I'm going to put the fire out first, if that's okay with you."

"Good girl," Neptune said under her breath before looking at the hook- handed man. "Is that okay with you?"

He nodded. "Have her light a torch, first, so we can see her when she comes out." Neptune relayed that, and soon Mars had joined her friends. The leader looked them over carefully, a decidedly neutral sort of inspection. "Well," he said at last, "I'm not sure what to make of you three. Where'd you say you came from?"

"We didn't say," Neptune answered. "But if it makes a difference, we walked here from that general direction." She nodded towards the dark dust plain.

"The badlands? Three of you, alone, dressed like _that?_" The woman who hadn't spoken until now snorted.

"We don't get many visitors from _that_ direction," the leader said calmly. "Most of those who do drop by aren't exactly what you'd call friendly, or particularly interested in conversation. And clothes aside, I don't think I've ever heard of a woman coming out of the badlands in one piece, let alone three women together."

"You have now," Uranus said flatly. "I don't appreciate people who call my friends liars."

"And I don't appreciate people who lie," the leader said in an equally flat tone. He held up his amputated arm. "I lost this fifteen years back, trying to cross that little slice of hell with fifty damned good men and women around me. Twenty-two of 'em never came back, and the rest of us only made it because we had the good sense to turn around. Six more died anyway, and nobody got out with a scar of some sort. And you three expect me to believe you got through without a scratch? Try again, girls. There are things out there that'd eat the lot of you for lunch without so much as..."

Mars forgot about the man's words as a warning shot through her mind. She turned her head to look out of the small valley and caught a glimpse of something just beyond the edge of the torchlight and the two lanterns. It was silhouetted against the dull grey of the dust plain, black except for glowing red eyes. Three eyes.

The man with the hook followed her sudden movement and spotted the shape. He shouted a warning at the same moment as a hissing roar erupted from the shape. The creature, whatever it was, leapt forward; the archers fired their arrows at it while the others drew whatever weapons they had.

They were only slightly less surprised than the three-eyed creature about what happened next.

The lizard paced around the base of the tree, sniffing at the roots, at the trunk, and at the air with a persistence Ryo didn't particularly enjoy seeing. It wasn't a very large creature, as far as dinosaurs went—three meters at most from its nose to the tip of its tail, half that at the hip at best, and not particularly muscular—but neither was it the only one of its kind he'd seen since he, Pluto, and Saturn had taken refuge up this tree. The creatures blended well with the foliage and were constantly moving around, so it was hard to get an exact count, but Ryo could see no less than seven of them poking around below.

The lizard-pack had shown up not long after Saturn, moving along just at the edge of vision and doing its collective best to stay out of sight; a popped-up head here, a rustle in the bushes there, now and then a short, barking hiss from one member to another. All in all, they looked and acted like the less-vicious cousins of the CGI raptors so popular in late twentieth century media, minus the sickle-claws on their hind legs. Ryo had been trying very hard to shake that idea, but with little success.

More than the fact that there was an unknown number of large reptiles following them, those brief, weird calls worried Ryo. They were never quite the same, and listening to the creatures now, he could hear clicking noises and more barking sounds, going back and forth from one reptile to the next. The idea of being hunted wasn't very appealing, but it was preferable to the idea of being hunted by creatures intelligent enough to communicate with each other.

That seemed to be what was happening, though. Shortly after the humans had gone up the tree—Saturn and Pluto easily carrying Ryo in a vertical jump equivalent to clearing a two-story building—a dozen or so of the lizards had appeared, looked at the tree, and started clicking at each other. Then the largest of them had moved forward, sniffing cautiously as it did so, made a complete circuit of the tree, and looked up at the three figures in the branches before barking back at the others. The leader's gaze had been far too knowing, and the reaction of the rest of its pack to that one call had been to spread out and surround the tree on all sides.

Ryo shook his head. "Are you sure this is going to work, Pluto?"

"Not entirely sure, no." She was sitting at ease on a branch thicker around than a lot of trees Ryo had seen back in Tokyo. He himself was sitting at the base of that branch, his back to the massive trunk; Saturn was to his right, sitting cross-legged at a V-shaped joint between two smaller branches, with the Silence Glaive resting across her knees and her eyes on the lizards.

"It may not work at all," Pluto went on. "But given our current circumstances, what do we have to lose by trying?"

"Did you want a complete list?" Ryo grunted as Saturn poked him in the ribs with the butt-end of her weapon. "Okay, okay." He took a moment to collect his thoughts, then fixed his eyes on the orb atop Pluto's staff, and concentrated.

The irony was more than a little painful, but for someone suffering from amnesia, Pluto had an excellent memory. Furthermore, she had kept her eyes and ears open over the past month, absorbing every scrap of information she could find as she continued to try and rebuild something of what she had lost. Now, some of what she could remember had given her an idea.

The planet Saturn, according to Luna, was a shifting nexus of different dimensions, and it had once been used to travel across great distances in space. A study of its properties had led to the development of the Time Gate. A previous Senshi of Saturn had chased daimons into their own dimension; even if Hotaru had never done it, _Saturn_ could travel across space. And with her staff and the Garnet Orb, Pluto could manipulate time. Between them, the two Senshi just might be able to fashion a way to move through space AND time.

They had no idea where in space and time their friends were, no idea where and when they had to go to find everyone. But they did have Ryo. The Garnet Orb was supposed to give Pluto greater control over and range with her power; it _had_ allowed her to raise a shield of super-slowed air without even thinking. The orb's powers, whatever they were, related to time; Ryo's visions had been enhanced in the misty moment of the Time Gate, a place where Pluto was—supposedly—all but invincible. If the orb improved Pluto's focus, might it not do the same for Ryo?

It was certainly doing _something,_ its pulsing, almost blood-red glow getting steadily stronger as Ryo looked at it. Looking into the orb, Pluto could see images taking shape. As the glow became brighter, the images grew more distinct:

Ami and Makoto, first, talking with an odd-appearing but lovely girl, in a house that appeared to be entirely made of wood. Both Senshi wore sleeveless dresses that were modified from the white one the stranger wore, Makoto's in emerald green, Ami's in a brilliant blue...

They saw Usagi next, riding awkwardly on a horse at night, across a land that was all moonlit sand and low, tough scrub. Artemis was perched in front of her on the horse's shoulders, and a beautiful dark-haired girl none of them recognized sat behind Usagi. A dark-skinned young man in strange clothes led the horse...

Then ChibiUsa, wearing a white gown Pluto and Ryo had never seen before—but which Saturn recognized in a flicker of memory that was partly Hotaru's and partly someone else's—and Venus, both of them surrounded by... Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn? And a tall and handsome man in something that looked a little bit like a tuxedo—a silver one, trimmed with gold—and a woman just as tall as the man, exceptionally beautiful, with a very, very familiar hairstyle. None of them looked particularly happy...

And lastly Mars, Uranus, and Neptune. Wherever and whenever they were, it was dusty and drab, a landscape of faded browns and greys. Mars had the Book tucked under one arm, and the mysterious tome was still unopened as the three Senshi walked into a camp of some sort, with people staring at them openly from all sides...

The images faded, and Ryo blinked, signaling the end of the vision.

"You okay?" Saturn asked.

"I'm fine." He blinked again and added wonderingly, "I _am_ fine. That didn't hurt at all." Then he laughed. "And it worked, too, the first time and without a hitch."

"I didn't see Luna," Pluto said.

"I know," Ryo admitted, "and that worries me a little. But... I get a sense of people when I see them, something that isn't just visual recognition. A feeling, in here." He tapped the side of his head. "It's all jumbled together, but I'm sure Luna _was_ in one of those visions. I can't tell which, though."

"As long as we know she's all right." Saturn looked at Pluto. "So what now?"

"We go after them, if you're ready. Are you?"

Saturn got to her feet, nodding. "I... think so." She couldn't quite keep the uncertainty out of her words as she and Pluto stood side-by-side on the large branch. Pluto noticed.

"I'll be right here, Firefly."

"I know. Thanks." Saturn wasn't quite sure whether she took Pluto's hand or Pluto took hers, but she was grateful for that reminder that at least one friend was with her. This was not going to be fun.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and turned her senses inwards, seeking the sealed-off mental corner where she kept her power. It was easy enough to find, and once she had, Saturn took a long look at it; she could not actually see anything, but her mind's eye created the image of a cage of gleaming silver bars, within which floated a dark mist, a violet-glowing black mass of slowly shifting energy. When she had let it loose earlier, the power had been dispersed throughout her entire being, a second skin curling almost protectively around her, cloaking her in raw, dark force; when she had shoved it back into its cage, the power had formed smoky claws and hooked tentacles and snatched at the bars, rattled them fiercely while something at its heart snarled in frustration at being bound again. It had calmed down now, but with most of her power concentrated and sealed away as it was, Saturn thought it looked darker. More dangerous.

She hesitated as it became aware of her, a ripple passing through the cloud as short streamers drifted between the bars before being pulled back. The power itself wasn't conscious or alive—it just _was_—but sometimes she thought that if it had been either, it wouldn't be too impressed with her. Saturn took another steadying breath, slid aside the locked barriers of will she had placed around her power, and let it out.

It poured free, through the mental image of the open cage door, through the bars of that cage, out above the top and down through the floor. The silver cage vanished in a swirling flood of energy; Saturn let it wash over her, let it fill every part of her. Her skin froze, her blood boiled, and her bones crackled with force. If she opened her eyes now, they would be blazing with dark light; if she spoke, her words would echo with barely restrained power. She knew immediately that, if she chose, she could lay waste to everything in sight, carve out a massive swathe of obliteration a mile or more across. And this wasn't even half of her full strength. This wasn't even close to half.

But it was enough. With the power came vague, half-formed memories of another time, another place, another person. Saturn didn't know for certain how her friends perceived their past lives, but when she looked into hers, she seldom saw very much. Oh, the memories were there, and if she didn't try to force it, the information she needed from them at any given moment would ride forward on a wave of dark force. But they always went back the same way, pushed into that little corner alongside her power. Remembering without the power was difficult at best. All she really knew for certain about her past life was that her name—possibly a real name, possibly an adopted pseudonym—had been Pandora, and she had been one of the few active Senshi of Saturn. The last, until Tomoe Hotaru. And she had known how to use her powers.

Acting more on instinct than conscious thought, Saturn raised the Silence Glaive above her head; to her left, Pluto did the same with her staff. The hooked silver blade of the Glaive began to radiate waves of dark, violet energy, and as those waves washed over Pluto, the Garnet Orb came to life in a flare of bloody light. Wind began to swirl around them, and bolts of energy curved out wildly, forming a sphere that was partly swirling lines of red, partly jagged slashes of violet. It was still the middle of the day, the sun bright overhead, but it was suddenly very dark around that single tree. Ryo shielded his eyes, and the lizards screamed.

And just like that, the light and the three humans were gone, taking the energy and most of the tree with them. The lizards fled into the jungle.

All but the leader. It looked at the shorn-off trunk of the mighty tree, the smoking holes that had been gouged into the ground by errant bolts of force. Moving carefully around those small, black-hot pits, the creature reached what had, until only seconds before, been the end of the branch on which the humans had been standing. It still looked like wood, but it was black as night, at once shiny and dark under the sun. The lizard picked up the leafless black branch in its forearms; it did not feel quite like wood. One end came to a flat tip, the point where the outer edge of the sphere of force had cut the stick free from its parent. The other end divided into three irregular and unequal prongs, one smooth-sided and going to a point, the next short and blunted, and the last a twisty, gnarled twig.

The pack-leader looked at the strange thing for a long time, so intent on the object that it failed to notice the approach of a hungry predator a good ten times its own size until the beast was right on top of it. Then it was too late to do anything except scream.

The hunting carnosaur drew back with a snort as the triple-pointed head of the black stick flew up towards it. The smaller reptile stared at it, then glanced at the object in its claws; if it had lips, they would have curved into a smile. Instead, the man-sized creature opened its jaws wide and let out an echoing call of triumph, thrusting the twisted branch skywards. The blackened wood appeared to flash.

The big predator watched for a moment. Then, for the second time that day, it turned away from what should have been an easy meal and lumbered off in search of something else. If it had been intelligent enough to be suspicious, the dinosaur would have begun to think this was one of those days when it just couldn't win. When it came upon the steaming, half-eaten carcasses of a pair of unlucky sauropods—brought down an hour or so earlier by three of its smaller relatives, who had eaten their fill and now moved on—the hungry beast chased off the lesser scavengers that had begun to cluster around and licked its chops. The day was looking up.

Behind it, the stick-bearing reptile had already vanished into the trees.

Venus sat in a small, well-appointed room that had no windows, no telephone, no television, and only one door, which was locked about nine different ways _and_ had a pair of rather cute guards on the other side. At least, she thought they were cute; she'd been shoved into this room so fast that she'd only been able to catch a quick glance at the two. Maybe, as the old saying went, there really was something about a man in a uniform...

Oh well. If she was under arrest, she could have done a lot worse; aside from the lack of much of anything to do, this was a very nice little chamber. Nothing at all like those gloomy, drafty tower chambers described in most medieval-setting stories; certainly a far cry better than police holding cells in her own time, at least if the TV shows had the details right. And it wasn't the Black Hole of Calculator, by any means. Or was it Car-Cutter? Cow-Cudda? Something like that.

*It could be a lot worse,* she told herself. *At least I know who the judge and jury are likely to be.*

She wondered where ChibiUsa had gotten to. They'd been sneaking around through every side passage and secondary staircase in this place when they'd almost literally bumped into Jupiter, who had taken one look at them and gotten a very strange expression on her face. Things had happened _very_ fast after that, and the last Venus had seen of her pink-haired companion, they were hustling the girl off in one direction under heavy guard. Venus herself had been going in the other direction at the time, blindfolded and surrounded by guards who were under strict orders not to say a word to her for any reason whatsoever, and she'd been turned around so many times that she no longer had any clue as to where she might be.

Venus yawned, then shrugged and lay down on the bed. It had been a long day at home, and a few hours here hadn't made her any less tired. Might as well get some sleep while she had the chance; ChibiUsa could handle the rest of it. It _was_ her home, after all.

She was about halfway to sleep when the door slid open and Jupiter stepped into the room, still wearing that peculiar look. Venus returned a look of her own, a wordless, one eyebrow raised 'well?' she and Mako-chan had been using on each other for years. Jupiter responded with the 'well what?' face, the same eyebrow raised at a slightly different angle, then held out the blindfold again.

"I believe a last cigarette is traditional," Venus said, taking the cloth.

"You. Don't. Smoke." Jupiter clamped her jaw shut.

Venus grinned. "Are you speaking past tense, or current?"

"Just put the blindfold on, Venus. This mess is going to be hard enough to untangle as it is without you seeing anything _else_ you're not supposed to."

"Okay." Venus slipped the blindfold over her eyes, made sure it was tight, and kept her eyes shut for good measure. "Just understand that if I knock any priceless artifacts over, it's your fault." She tugged the blindfold one more time, then nodded. "Right. Take me to your leader."

Sitting on the rim of the alcove, Sasanna looked at the two figures sleeping in her bed. *How very strange they are,* she thought. *So very much like us, and yet so very much unlike us.*

She looked at Mer... no, her name was Ami when she was like this. It had been beyond odd to watch the reversal of their transformation, to see them turn from one thing to another so quickly and easily. Sasanna thought they both looked different like this. Younger, that was it. They looked younger.

She looked across the alcove at Ami, who wore a faded green gown from one of the moss-lined holding chambers surrounding the bed. Sasanna was not entirely clear on the details behind human sleeping customs, but she had been happy to help as she could. The girl was curled around one of the moss-stuffed pillows, clutching at it in fact, and murmuring words the dryad could not quite hear. One came through very clearly—Ryo something—in a tone that was equally longing and frightened.

*Poor little sapling,* Sasanna thought. *So far from the soil that she knows, alone in her mind.* The dryad made a motion with one hand, and a vine reached up from the substance of the mattress, its tip glowing dully as it touched Ami's forehead. The murmurs faded, the tension left her. *Sleep, my wise young friend. Forget dreams for a time and sleep in peace.*

The vine ceased to glow and withdrew as Sasanna turned to Makoto, who lay within arm's reach on the huge mattress. Moonlight streaming through the window passed through the leaves of her plants, and the resulting light lent a faintly green cast to Makoto's face. Sasanna and Ami had managed to get the girl into another spare gown; between that and the light, and with her hair unbound, covering her ears, she looked very much like a sleeping dryad.

Sasanna hesitated, then extended one hand, gently touching the tips of her fingers to Makoto's forehead. She had to know. The dryad closed her eyes and pushed delicately forward with her mind.

*Can you hear me, Makoto? Can you hear us?*

Makoto shifted in her sleep. Sasanna caught blurred images of things she did not fully understand, things she guessed to be part of the strange world- yet-to-be from which her guests originated. Her mind could not hold the more bizarre images, but she saw faces, faces for which Makoto felt many things. Different for each, but for all there was a sense of devotion, trust, friendship. And the dryad saw images of plants, heard echoes in Makoto's awareness that had originated from those plants.

*Yes,* Sasanna said to herself. *The plants of her time reach out to her, even if she is not aware of it. They hear her, call to her, as do we. But why does she not answer?*

Sasanna pushed deeper, and then paused, startled, as her mind encountered something vast and powerful, a force that sizzled in her consciousness like fire and was filled with the low rumble of distant thunder. Immense energy filled Makoto's body and mind, more than the dryad had ever encountered in any one creature before, more than even her own dear other-self had taken in over the turns of their life. She froze, afraid that if she tried to push past, she might trigger some defense.

The sense of the building storm passed. Either it had not detected her presence, or it knew she was there, and just did not see her as a threat. Breathing a sigh of relief, Sasanna continued on. The sense of Makoto's presence was all around her, now, blending together every side of her existence in a ceaselessly shifting jumble. Strength and gentleness, fierce devotion and stubborn will—oh, she had spirit, this one! She had... shame? Why was she ashamed of... her height? Her body? What was this?

*No, what was THAT?* Sasanna broke off in search of a brief flicker of something that did not feel right. There it was. Hidden behind bright smiles and gruff toughness... loneliness? And it led to something else, something buried very deeply. Sasanna followed the trail down into Makoto's mind, down towards the source of everything. It was close now, it was...

A scream erupted in Sasanna's mind, paralyzing thought, shattering will. Loss/pain/grief/rage, it all tore through the gentle dryad's defenses in a wave. Overwhelmed, Sasanna's awareness grabbed desperately at her only lifeline, the eternally present sense of her other-self, Glossolyndaraberonasym. Her mind seized the bond between dryad and tree and held on for everything she was worth as it pulled her back to her own body.

The rejoining between mind and body was not gentle; Sasanna shook and fell backwards with a barely-stifled sob as her body registered what her awareness had encountered.

*Are you whole, little sister-self?*

*Glossolyndaraberonasym? Is that... you?*

*Who else would it be?* The mind-voice of the mighty old tree held a touch of amusement.

*Where are the others?*

*Our brothers have decided to break off contact for now,* he said gently. *When we realized what was happening to you, they knew they must shield their own sister-selves as best they could. They asked me to convey their apologies for asking this of you.*

*We had to know,* Sasanna replied.

*And do we?*

*We do.* Sasanna shivered. *Oh, brother-self, I haven't felt so much pain since the last time one of our sisters lost her tree. She seems as strong as the tallest tree on the surface, but inside, she feels like a sapling whose roots have been torn out. How can she stand feeling like that? How can...*

*Sasanna! Stop it! You're hurting yourself!*

Sasanna felt a sharp pain in her right hand and realized she was biting it to keep from screaming. The physical pain stabilized her against the remembered pain; she focused on the marks on the back of her hand, on the dull throb as reddish-clear liquid spread and oozed to a slow stop, and felt herself calming down, regaining control.

*Are you all right?*

*I am, brother-self.* She smiled ruefully. *My hand hurts, though.*

Glossolyndaraberonasym chose not to answer that. *What did you learn?*

*Makoto has the potential to speak to us, brother-self; she remembers doing so when she was a sapl... a child. She spoke to plants and heard them speak to her when she was younger, but she has since convinced herself that it was her imagination. She does not hear us or speak to us because she does not want to.*

The tree hesitated briefly, then asked the question. *Why?*

Sasanna showed him the memory that had been at the heart of the maelstrom.

Plants do not have parents in the sense that most animals do. Seeds are cast off to fall where they may, and if they take root close to home, the parent competes as fiercely with its offspring for food and water and sunlight as it does against any other plant. The concept of a 'family' is therefore meaningless in the botanical world, except as a scientific term for classifying different species.

Dryads and their trees, on the other hand, have a sense of family. There is no real equivalent in human existence for the bond between a dryad and her tree, but they also share emotional ties to other dryads and other trees, ties of trust, respect, and affection. Their shared origin makes them family even if their ancestry is wholly separate, hence the use of the term 'sister' towards other dryads, and 'brother' towards the waking trees.

A great, rustling sigh rattled through Glossolyndaraberonasym's branches as he absorbed the information Sasanna had gained. *So,* he said at last. *Her family was taken from her. It is very sad, Sasanna, but it does not explain why she has blocked us out.*

*There was a strong association in Makoto's mind between plants and her mother, brother-self. I think her mother cared for flowers in some fashion; the child remembers speaking to many of them, but many of the times that she did so were in her mother's presence. It was a game to both of them.*

*And when her mother died... yes, I understand now.* The tree considered the situation with a slow, patient intellect honed by centuries of life and learning. *You were in her mind, sister-self, so you must tell me; can she be made to hear us again?*

*Perhaps,* Sasanna admitted. *I like her, brother-self. I don't want to hurt her, but anything we try _will_ hurt her. Can't we just let it go?*

*You know better than that,* Glossolyndaraberonasym chided her. *Neither of them knew what you were when you met; this tells us that our kind is either very scarce or completely lost in their world-yet-to-be. Neither is acceptable; our promises cannot be kept if none remain to remember those promises. This girl may be our only chance.*

*I know.* Sasanna sighed. *I will speak to her tomorrow.*

*Speak with both of them,* Glossolyndaraberonasym advised. *It is easier to face fear when you are not alone, and even if we cannot hear her thoughts, this girl Ami seems to have a worthy enough mind. For an animal creature. If she can be made to understand, she will know better than you how to convince Makoto.*

Sasanna hid a mind-smile. The brothers were always a little smug about the fact that they had the deep-rooted wisdom of centuries to draw upon, experience no animal creature lived long enough to obtain. Glossolyndaraberonasym's assessment of Ami's intellect was high praise indeed; even most dryads were considered a little 'silly' by their trees. Of course, a lot of dryads considered their brothers to be stuffy, intractable, overbearing... ah, the things we put up with out of love.

*I heard that.*

Sasanna did something that was the mental equivalent of sticking out her tongue, then got up and dusted herself off. She looked back into the alcove-bed, and gently patted Makoto's nearest shoulder.

"Sleep well, almost-sister. I think tomorrow will not be easy. For either of us."

Then she went back downstairs.

The council of elders listened quietly as Beradi made his report. When the one-handed man had finished, the six men and three women sitting before him in a semicircle looked at each other.

"Beradi," one of the men said carefully, "you're the best fighter, hunter, and tracker in the tribe. There isn't a person in this camp who doesn't owe you their life or the life of someone they care about, one way or another." He was a skin-and-bones skeleton of a man, utterly bald and with dark brown eyes.

"But you think I've been out in the sun too long, right, Haran? Just come out and say it, man; you can't hurt my feelings by being honest. I saw it with my own eyes, and _I'm_ still having trouble believing it, but that three-eyed body we brought back is as solid as proof gets."

"Is it at all possible that it was a trick of some sort?" Another man, older than Haran—or made to look so by the whisps of his grey hair and beard— and missing his left leg below the knee, he still looked tougher than anyone there except Beradi. A worn wooden crutch lay next to him. "We've both seen the badlands, Beradi; you know as well as I do that anything's possible out there."

"I do, Kado. I do. I remember the thing that took your leg, and the one that took my hand; what they did, how they moved. The beast was definitely one of those. But these three girls?" Beradi shook his head. "I'm not sure how to explain it, Kado, but trying to picture them as being something out of the badlands... it just doesn't sit right."

"Perhaps they are not from the badlands," one of the women said, a lined faced not hiding the faded traces of youthful beauty, "but they are still dangerous, yes?"

"No question about that, Ari." Beradi tapped his hook with his good hand. "The thing that cost me my hand took down two men and had a belly full of blades before it finally died; the one that got Kado didn't go down until it had a forest of arrows in its back and a knife through its ears. Usually takes at least a half-dozen well-armed and experienced fighters to kill just one of those monsters, and odds are you'll lose two or even three of your people—or bits of 'em—in the bargain. Those three girls took that critter out as easy as if it was a rat they were slinging stones at, without getting a scratch in return. And _how_ they did it..." Beradi shook his head.

"Dangerous people bring trouble we don't need," Ari said. "Should we try to drive them out? Or will they go if we ask?"

"They might leave, Ari, and they might not. As for driving them out..." Beradi shook his head again, more firmly than before. "With the way they move, even if we had a working gun in the camp, I don't think it'd be enough to stop one of them, let alone all three. But more than that, if it comes down to asking them to leave, I'm honestly not sure I'll be able to do it."

"What do you mean?"

"They said they were strangers, and lost. Tough as they are, they wouldn't last too long out there without some place to find food and water. I just couldn't do it."

"It has never been the custom of this tribe to send people who have done us no harm away to die," one of the men agreed softly.

"The tribe has never encountered people who can throw fire from their hands or call a sword out of thin air before, either."

"What are their names, Beradi?" The soft voice belonged to the oldest of the elders, a woman just as skinny as Haran and almost as bald. Her skin was as wrinkled as a raisin, spotted with grey and brown, and her eyes, once blue, were covered by white film. "Their names, boy; answer me."

Beradi's mouth twitched—this was the only person in the camp who could call him 'boy' and mean it, let alone get away with it—but he answered respectfully. "I don't think the names they gave me were their real names, Naruno, but they call themselves Mars, Uranus, and Neptune."

The old woman's indrawn breath rattled through her six remaining teeth with a hiss. "Bring them, Beradi. Bring them here now."

"Do you need anything? Food, water?" The young man glanced at Neptune's skirt and added, "There are spare blankets, if you're cold."

"No, I'm fine. We're fine. Thank you. I just wanted to see if the stars or the moon had come out." Neptune sighed and let the tent flap fall.

"Problem?" Uranus asked from where she sat, on a plain, worn-looking rug on a floor that was otherwise all sand. The small fire burning at the center of the little shelter reflected off her sword as she tried to polish out a greenish-black stain on the blade.

"No. Not really. I just wish they'd stop trying to wait on us hand and foot every time we so much as glance outside."

"This from the girl who grew up in a household full of servants."

"We had two maids, a butler, and a man who tended the yard; I hardly think that constitutes a 'household full of servants.' And I did my own chores, thank you very much."

"Mmmm. What about you?" Uranus asked, turning to Mars. "Any thoughts on the whole 'waited-on hand-and-foot' business?"

"I prefer to carry my own weight," Mars said absently. "Grandpa insisted on it when I went to live with him, and I'm used to it by now." Mars sat cross- legged on one of the three small cots that filled most of the tent, staring down at the Book in her lap while lightly tracing the symbols on the cover with her fingers. She looked up at the sounds of gravel crunching under booted footsteps outside.

"Beradi," one of the two young men on guard said respectfully. Neptune thought it was the one she'd spoken to a moment before. "Have the elders reached a decision?"

"Not yet, Rama. Not yet. They want to meet our guests in person."

"Is it really necessary, Beradi? I don't mean to tell the elders their business, but it's getting very late, and we have no way of knowing how far these three have come to reach us."

"It's necessary, Rama. Don't worry; they're tougher than they look."

"The elders or our guests?" the other guard asked. Beradi just chuckled and pulled aside the tent flap.

"Ladies, the elders will see you now." He glanced at Uranus and Rei. "You can bring the book if you want, but the sword has to stay here."

Uranus smiled at him and sent the Space Sword back into its pocket dimension before she stood up. Beradi's expression shifted a little when the golden weapon vanished into nowhere, but he said nothing as they exited the tent.

The young guard—Rama—shrugged off his cloak and offered it to Neptune. "It's a long walk to the elders' tent," he explained, "and it's chilly tonight."

Neptune resisted the urge to sigh. She could tolerate the chill at the bottom of the sea for hours; a little walk in cold wind wasn't going to affect her. But, she reminded herself, he was just being polite. She accepted the heavy cloak with a gracious "Thank you," and held it closed as they walked off. Her look clearly dared the others to make a comment.

Uranus fought down a snicker, and Mars rolled her eyes. Beradi just kept walking.

Mars had always thought her grandfather was the oldest man she'd ever seen. She wasn't sure how old; even in her earliest memories, he was the same crazy, leathery, more-than-slightly perverse old fool waiting for her back at Hikawa now. Maybe Grandpa was the oldest _man_ she'd ever seen, but Mars suspected the title of oldest _human_ would have to go to Naruno. She had to fight an urge to kneel when she and the others were introduced; her sixth sense worked as well on 'ordinary' humans as it did on Senshi or monsters, and the wrinkled, withered old body before her radiated a powerful aura. That strength of spirit must have faded with time, as her body weakened from age, but if so, Mars could scarcely imagine what the woman must have been like in her youth.

Respect wasn't the only thing she felt, though. There was another disturbing quality about Naruno that Mars couldn't put her finger on. Not a bad thing, by any means, but... it was right on the edge of her mind, but Mars just couldn't figure out what it was.

"Mars, Uranus, and Neptune," the old woman lisped. "Old names, those. Old back before the fall of the great cities, even back before the building of the cities, if the stories I remember are true. Names of gods, a long time forgotten, given to stars by those who came later."

"Not stars," Neptune corrected. "Planets."

"Ah, planets, is it?" Naruno seemed pleased for some reason. "There were... how many? Six, seven?"

"Nine, counting Earth."

"Yes, nine. And the moons. Mustn't forget the moons. Too many to remember conveniently, but they're still there." She chuckled, a wheezy, rattling noise. "Mars; an old god of war, of fire and destruction. Beradi says one of you used fire on the beast you killed. Uranus; an old god of the wind, of the sky and the endless heavens beyond. Beradi mentioned a sword, too, howling like the cold wind in winter. Neptune; an old god of the water, of the deep sea. Beradi didn't mention water."

"Is there a point to this?" Uranus demanded.

Rather disconcertingly, Naruno looked straight at her. "Always is, girl. Always is. You know how old I am? Care to guess? No? I'll tell you; a hundred and thirty-six, plus a few moons. My old gran had that beat by two years when we buried her; I was ten at the time. Gran was twenty-two when she buried _her_ gran, and always said the old woman was past a hundred and fifty. Shouldn't be possible, these days, to live so long." Her voice fell. "Not always a good thing to, either; see too much, hear too much, hurt too much. I won't mind when my time's up."

Naruno shook her head and went on. "There was a story my old mama and gran used to tell me. They said they got it from gran's gran, who said she got it from her mama way back when, before the cities fell. Interesting story. Probably not much like the way gran's gran heard it anymore, but still interesting. Not a lot like the other stories we have of the cities, either; told it to my kids, but they didn't tell it to their kids, and wouldn't let me tell it, either. Said it was silly nonsense, the cities were never like that." She barked a laugh. "But since none of us have ever lived in a city, who's to say these days what was and what wasn't, eh?"

"Well, according to gran's gran's mama, there was a city called 'Toko' or 'Tuko' or some such. Big. Lots of people. Creatures, too, supposedly, a lot like the ones we've got now, but smart. Organized. Always causing problems, hurting people for reasons nobody ever quite knew. Story goes that there were people— women—getting in their way all the time. They had names like the planets, too, could do strange things people aren't supposed to be able to do. They and the monsters were around for a while; gran had lots of stories about them. Then one day they were gone, just like that. Nobody saw the women again, and the monsters stayed away for a long time, until after the cities crumbled."

"Thing is," Naruno added, "and this is something mama and gran swore has been kept the same for as long as the family's had this story, that before the women left, one of 'em told a very old, very close friend they'd be back. Supposedly, the 'friend' was the mama of gran's gran. A lot of stories end like that, heroes going off and promising to come back, but most storytellers got better sense'n to try to claim one of the people in the story is an old family member. But there it is."

"What were the names?" Mars asked quietly. *It can't be. What are the odds that... there's just no way!* But looking at this ancient woman, Mars had a terrible suspicion that it could be, and was. She took a very firm grip on the Book. She didn't want to drop it.

"Well, the woman in question was supposed to be the leader; Moon, she called herself. I always thought that was odd, with the rest of 'em named for planets, but gran and mama said that was the way it was. Her other name, though, the one her friend knew her by until she went away at the very end, was Usagi. The name of gran's gran's mama, now, that sort of got handed down over the years; easier to remember since we were all named for her. Changed a bit each time, but originally, it was..."

"Naru," Mars said. "Osaka Naru." She closed her eyes, covered her face with one hand, and shook her head.

Naruno's unseeing eyes blinked. "It was. Well, damn. So I was right, was I? Imagine that. Guess old gran knew what she was talking about after all."

Uranus and Neptune looked at each other, and at Mars. Then Uranus frowned. "Naru? Wait, you mean that skinny redhead who always gets stuck in the middle of at least three attacks every six months? The one who's dating that guy with the oversized novelty glasses?" Some of the elders looked up at that, clearly startled and more than a little suspicious about Uranus' use of the present tense with regards to a woman dead for almost four centuries.

"Not now, Haruka," Neptune whispered. "Mars," she went on, still keeping her voice down, "are you okay?"

"I'm fine." *At least that explains what was bugging me; she looked familiar.* "Naru was... _is_ the odango-atama's friend, not mine." *The mother of the grandmother of the grandmother of a woman who's over a hundred and thirty?* "I'm starting to understand what Usagi must have gone through when she found out ChibiUsa was her daughter."

"Just a bit strange?" Uranus said.

"'Strange' doesn't even start to describe it." Mars shook her head and looked at her friends. "You do realize where we are, don't you?" It was an utterly ridiculous question, but under the circumstances, it was the best she could come up with.

"Oh yeah," Uranus replied with a twisted smile. She raised her left hand, fingers forward, until it was just below the level of her eyes and said, "Up to here. So. You're the one people go to for answers; Neptune's the brain. What do we do now?"

Neptune and Mars exchanged a look. "We talk very, very fast," Neptune said.

"And pray very, very hard," Mars finished.

Princesses are not supposed to chew their nails, but the temptation to do so was particularly strong in ChibiUsa at the moment. She kept her hands clasped behind her back and hoped she wasn't cutting off the circulation to her fingers by squeezing them too tightly.

She was in her quarters, looking out over the city from the balcony and wondering whether or not she was going to see the whole city suddenly flicker and vanish. With Venus here, in the future, and the rest of the Senshi scattered who knew where in space and time, it was a very real possibility.

"If you're waiting to see the fabric of the universe unwind," a voice said, "I think you're in for a bit of a disappointment."

ChibiUsa gulped, turned, and gave her best curtsey. "Your Majesty."

"Nice try, dear, but it's a little late to start earning brownie points with formality. Now stand up straight."

"Yes, Mother."

"That's better. And stop pouting," the queen added.

ChibiUsa looked up. Jupiter had told her that Serenity was hearing appeals in the royal court when she and Venus dropped in, and that meant formal attire; formal crown, robes of state, scepter, everything. The Princess had been expecting an equally formal audience, hence her choice to change into her best gown. But her mother must have literally flown out of her things, because she was only wearing one of her white gowns. She'd even discarded the lighter circlet she usually wore in place of the heavy crown. That could be good news, or bad news.

"Before you say anything else," Serenity ordered, "the key."

"Yes, Mother." ChibiUsa drew the crystal key out from the neck of her gown, slipped the chain off over her head, and meekly handed it over. "I suppose this means I won't be going back...?"

"Let's review, shall we?" The queen started ticking items off on her fingers. "You went back in time. You endangered the course of our history by bringing your friends to the Time Gate. They've been scattered up and down the length of Time, doing who knows what kind of damage, and at a point when there is no Guardian to prevent or correct their mistakes. _And_ you brought Venus with you, someone who has events in her life that haven't yet taken place, but which _must_ take place if our history is to remain intact." She looked up from her hand to her daughter. "Did I leave anything out?"

"I... um... I sort of told Hotaru-chan... a few things. Not about herself," ChibiUsa added hastily, as a flinty quality entered her mother's eyes. "Just about me, what it's like being a princess, what I have to do. And a little of what the other Senshi are like. But that was it. And what are you going to do about it?" ChibiUsa snapped. "You were there, Mother; you and all the rest went right along with my suggestion! You can't punish me now for what you agreed to then!"

"Can't I?" ChibiUsa felt her stomach turn to ice at those words. "Where the laws of Time are concerned, dear, the term 'retroactive' takes on a whole new meaning. And not even a queen is above the law. I could probably plead ignorance of the facts and mental imbalance due to my condition at the time; you, on the other hand, were in perfectly normal health, and knew _exactly_ what you were getting into." Serenity maintained the stern mask for another moment, then relaxed. "Fortunately for you, Saturn knew enough to keep her mouth shut. Everything else was supposed to happen."

"WHAT?! You...!" ChibiUsa spun around for a second to compose herself. When she turned back, she said, "I'm not in trouble?"

"No. We know exactly where each of the Senshi were sent, what they did there, and what effect it all had. If you look at it in a certain light, your little 'mistake' saved our future."

"I don't follow you."

"It has to do with the changes Pluto made to the timeline," Serenity explained. "The things the Senshi have done in those past locations were the last things that _had_ to be done to ensure that _this_ Crystal Tokyo is the definite future."

ChibiUsa was stunned. "But... in the past, there are monsters popping up all over the place, Setsuna's lost her memory, someone's bringing daimons back..."

"I know. I remember. And it brings us to a choice you have to make, Usagi."

"A choice?"

"Yes. Pluto and Saturn found a way to combine their powers and travel through time in order to retrieve the other Senshi; putting it simply, Saturn provides the power, and Pluto navigates. Ryo was with them, and they were all in the most distant past, so he was able to look ahead of the time he was in and see where and when we all were. They're coming here first, and..."

"Here? Why? This is the safest place in the world! Shouldn't they be finding the rest of you first?"

"Think about it," Serenity suggested. "Pluto is supposed to know what happens already. Ryo sees the future all the time. Bringing Saturn was unavoidable, but they won't be here long enough to see anything dangerous, and she's already proven—or will prove—that she knows how to keep a secret. But what about the others? The more people there are who see things they aren't supposed to, the more likely it is that someone will slip up..."

"Oh."

"And we really have to get Venus out of here, anyway," Serenity added wryly. "She's too unpredictable for anyone's peace of mind. That's probably why she wound up here with you instead of some other period in history; at least _we_ could keep her out of trouble." The queen shook her head with a fond smile. "But as I was saying, you have a choice. When Pluto and the others arrive, you can go back with them. Or you can stay here."

"Now listen carefully before you say anything," Serenity said, cutting her daughter off at the first preparatory breath of speech. "I told you that everything Crystal Tokyo needs to be done has been done; what's going on in the past will not _prevent_ this future, no matter how it turns out, but it might _change_ certain parts of it. And that's where your choice comes in."

The queen's tone took on a lecturing quality. "Pluto has made a lot of decisions in her life, Usagi, and she was allowed to become the Guardian of Time because her choices balanced each other out. She was born with some control over Time, and proved through her choices that she could do what had to be done instead of what seemed right, better, or easier. Her choice to help you changed that balance, and everything that's happened to her was able to happen because of that change. Don't blame yourself; it would have happened to her anyway. It had to."

"In the past that I remember, Setsuna survived, but she never regained her memories, and she chose to remain behind when the rest of us went to sleep. If you choose to stay here, that's what will happen to her. I have it on the best possible authority that she'll have a very long and happy life before she dies—quietly, in her sleep. And the next time we see a Senshi of Pluto, it'll be someone else."

"And if I do go back?" ChibiUsa asked.

Serenity frowned. "Then it gets risky. You _may_ be able to help Setsuna remember herself completely, but you'll also be putting your own life in danger in the process. And there are no guarantees about this part, because you'll be changing history again. Setsuna might be able to redeem herself and resume as the Guardian of Time, and she might not; she might regain her memories and still choose to stay in the past, or she might remain as she is but decide to come with you—or us—to this time. Or none of those. And..." The queen hesitated. "And there's a chance you might not come home."

ChibiUsa was silent. "There are only three more things I'm allowed to tell you," her mother said. "One is that if you choose to go back, you can't take the key with you; you'll be there until someone takes you to the Time Gate and opens it for you. The second is that time will pass equally on both sides of the Gate; for each day you spend in the past, one day will go by here. It's been like that since you left to visit Hotaru."

"I know," ChibiUsa said, glancing at her desk, a large piece of translucent crystal with a control board and a currently opaque monitor built into the top. "I checked the calendar. And the third thing?"

"The third thing... do you remember that vision Setsuna and Ryo had in the hospital? About Hotaru having a daughter?"

ChibiUsa nodded. "Yes, I remember. Hard to forget, considering that Ryo-kun nearly had a seizure at the time." They both chuckled at the memory. Then ChibiUsa brushed a strand of hair out of her face and added, "They said the other girl in it was probably mine."

The queen nodded. "If you stay here, she will be. If you go and manage to come home, she will be. If you go and don't come back, she'll be mine." Serenity took her daughter's hand and placed it over her belly. "And I'm one month pregnant."

They were both silent for a very long time. Then ChibiUsa spoke. "I have to go back, Mama. Pluto did all this for me, and it isn't fair that she should get punished just for being nice to me. Even if... even if it is dangerous, I can't leave her like that. I won't." ChibiUsa looked up at her mother. "You understand, don't you?"

"I understand," Serenity replied, drawing her daughter into an almost fierce hug. "I knew you'd make the right decision, Usagi, and I'm very, very proud of you."

"Thanks, Usagi-mama."

"You're welcome, Usagi-chan."

After a moment, ChibiUsa asked a question. "What's her name?"

"Who?"

"Her," ChibiUsa said, pointing. "You said the past will change. Maybe I'll come back, and maybe I won't, but if I had just one more reason to try, it could make all the difference. Have you and Papa decided on a name yet?"

"Oh." Serenity blushed, suddenly looking as if she were sixteen again. "Actually... um... I haven't told him yet."

"AGAIN?!" ChibiUsa got up and started making a great many wild gestures. "Mother, what _is_ it with you? You could have called him when you were carrying me, and you didn't. You knew about Phoebe and Phoebus for six weeks, and you didn't tell him. I thought for sure he was going to have a heart attack when he got back from that conference at Neptune and found out about Selene and Serena— FOUR months along! What's he going to react like back _then_ when you..." She stopped then, as one of the images from Ryo's multi-vision at the Time Gate came back to her. All the Senshi except Pluto waiting to greet Mamoru as he got off the plane, and a slimmed-down Usagi in the lead... "You _did_ tell him about me, didn't you? _BEFORE_ I was actually born?"

Elbow on the armrest of her chair, chin resting on that hand, Serenity smiled. "I guess you'll just have to wait and see, won't you?"

ChibiUsa glared at her. "You scheming sneak."

"Don't take that tone with me, you spoiled brat," Serenity retorted immediately, getting to her feet.

"Loudmouthed glory-hound!"

"Annoying spore!"

"Oh yeah?" ChibiUsa pulled down one eyelid and stuck out her tongue. "Biiii!"

"Yeah!" Serenity duplicated the gesture. "Nyah!"

"Mom?" Still making faces, they both turned towards the door, where a sturdy boy of about eight stood half-in, half-out of the room. He had sandy blond hair and sun-darkened skin; eyes of a similar golden brown hue as his hair were looking curiously at Serenity. "Why are you in here? And why are you making faces at..." Then the boy noticed the other figure standing behind his mother, and his eyes lit up. "Usagi! You're home!" He leaned back into the hall and yelled, "Hey, everyone! Usagi's back! She's home!"

"Phoebus!" Serenity snapped immediately. "What have I told you about shouting in the halls?"

"Awww, m-o-m..." The whine, the hands clasped behind the back, the little dig at the ground with the right foot... it was almost pure Shingo, though ChibiUsa personally thought it was much cuter coming from an eight year-old.

While Serenity scolded her son, a girl who was a more delicate and fair-haired version of him entered the room. Right behind her came a pair of six year-old girls with sky-blue eyes and blonde curls that were closer to white than gold. With a lot of delighted squeals and almost no pause, the three girls slipped past their beleaguered brother, ignored their mother's half-shouted reprimands about screaming, and charged at their older sister. Predictably, they didn't trip over their own feet until they were close enough to drag ChibiUsa down with them.

Near the door, Serenity broke into a smile that was just a little teary-eyed. Behind her, Phoebus sighed the sort of exasperated sigh that is the sole province of much set-upon older brothers and moved to try and pull apart the pile that was his sisters. He only needed about three seconds to hug ChibiUsa, but if he didn't get the others off her, he'd never get the chance.

At the bottom of the pile, ChibiUsa laughed and tried very, very hard not to start crying. Leaving—even to try and save Setsuna—was going to be a lot harder than she'd thought.

The trip through Time via Saturn and Pluto express was nothing at all like traveling through the Time Gate.

Imagine for a moment that Time is a river. It flows endlessly from somewhere that doesn't precisely exist, to another somewhere that is just as unreal. It moves in one direction, and is always changing.

History, now, is a wheel next to that river, being pushed along in an endless cycle by the water. The part of the wheel that is in the river at any given moment is the present; the rest of it, the part that is out of the water, is either the past or the future, depending on how one chooses to look at it. The part that has just left the water is the past, and the part that is on its way into the water is the future. Eventually, the past becomes the future. Or perhaps more accurately, the future repeats the past.

But the wheel, too, is always changing; it wears down from the action of the water and is forever being put back up again by an army of innumerable tiny, industrious creatures living in it. Since they can't see the entire wheel, the creatures can't rebuild it exactly as it was, and some of the little buggers are so confused from all the turning around and around and around and around... ahem, from the endless revolutions of the wheel that they actually do more damage than help; but in general, the creatures keep the wheel going.

The 'creatures' are the timeless souls of all those forms of life intelligent enough to recognize the passage of Time, which includes most humans, a surprising number of the so-called 'animal' species that dwell on Earth, and several thousand species whose very existences the majority of the human race currently has no clue about whatsoever. That ignorance can be a grievous loss or an unparalleled blessing, depending on which alien species you're talking about—but that is a tale for another time.

The Time Gate, as has already been mentioned, exists in the very instant of the present, where past and future merge; in the terms of the picture provided above, it's right at the point where the wheel and the water touch. Using the Gate, one is effectively jumping off the wheel and standing in the river until the moment intended as the destination comes around, at which point one jumps back on. Traveling into the future is easy, since it is done naturally, and all the Gate has to do is speed the process up; going into the past is a little trickier since it involves—to extend the metaphor—pushing back the wheel and reversing the flow of the river. Both goals are accomplished by the use of a Mobius Loop, a device/condition/quality in which Time is funneled back into itself, but since the workings of such an effect are beyond the grasp of anyone who hasn't spent at least a hundred years or so in devoted study of the sometimes quirky nature of Time, they won't be gone into here.

Suffice to say, the Time Gate turns the full force of Time Itself against the full force of Time Itself. The wheel stops, perfectly still, and the slightest amount of force in either direction is enough to break the deadlock and move it. Simple willpower will do the trick, so anyone who can reach the Time Gate can go zipping off through the far ends of history—which is why most people aren't permitted to even know that it exists, and why Pluto is supposed to drive off the rest.

The two Senshi and Ryo, unable to use the Gate thanks to the Court and Pluto's ongoing amnesia, have instead effectively jumped right into the river that is Time; they are, in essence, swimming along through the current and trying to reach the wheel. The most obvious risk is that they could easily be swept away by the river and lost somewhere—or nowhere, again depending on how you look at it—in Time.

A less-apparent problem is that, although going into the future is—by means of a tachyon field and a sub-quantum matter/energy flux that Pluto and Saturn are producing—turning out to be quite simple, going into the past will shortly prove to be a hell of a lot harder.

As the weird lights and sounds faded, Ryo sneezed, sniffed, and announced, "We're here."

Pluto's and Saturn's eyes blinked open. 'Here' was an unfamiliar room with high walls of a shimmering blue-white material that didn't quite look like glass, a more familiar floor of ceramic tiles, and a few pieces of furniture whose composition ranged from wooden to more of that odd crystalline material.

There were a half-dozen or so women and one man standing at the other end of the chamber, with ChibiUsa and Venus in front of them. They all looked extremely familiar, of course. After a moment, Ryo realized most of the female members of that group were looking at him oddly, with smiles that ranged from mildly amused to speculatively mischievous.

*Oh. Right. The clothes.* Ryo did his best to appear indifferent to the attention as he pulled his shirt back on and rolled down his pant legs, but he was pretty certain the spectacular heat in his face gave him away. Mercury—who seemed somewhat taller than he remembered—blushed nearly as outrageously when Jupiter nudged her in the ribs and winked. The two Saturns, meanwhile, were looking at each other with a commendable calmness.

"You," Pluto said immediately, pointing straight at Venus. Pluto's finger moved to indicate a spot on the floor just in front of herself. "Here. NOW."

Venus tried to grin, then sheepishly bowed her head and walked to the designated spot, muttering about the injustice of it all, being locked up and treated like a common criminal when she hadn't DONE anything wrong... ChibiUsa came with her.

"I'm going back, too," the girl said firmly. Pluto and the three displaced past-personages looked at her, then at the queen, who nodded.

"Stay close," the younger Saturn said as she and Pluto again joined hands and raised their weapons.

Reddish-violet energy swirled up around them; through it, Ryo caught a glimpse of Mercury pulling out her computer and switching on her visor with a very familiar look of fascination. Most of the others just stood there and stared, but the queen—*Hard to believe that's Usagi*—raised one hand in a gesture of farewell, which ChibiUsa returned.

There were unshed tears in both of their eyes, and as the world blipped out, Ryo suddenly felt extremely worried.

Rei, Haruka, and Michiru had been living with the tribe of survivors for almost a month before their friends appeared.

It'd taken quite a bit of that fast talking Neptune had mentioned to convince the elders that they weren't all-powerful deities, vengeful spirits, or legendary heroes returned from the past, but just travelers lost in time. They hadn't come to save humanity. They couldn't get rid of the monsters. They had no idea where a truly safe haven might be. They couldn't wave their hands and make everything right with the world; they had enough trouble just adjusting to the lack of indoor plumbing.

But they did what they could to make life a little easier in this harsh wreck of a world. All of them patrolled frequently, of course, several hours each day and night, and they found trouble more often than not, but they helped out in other ways, too.

Water was difficult to find, and many of the meager streams and shallow pools of this time were contaminated with scum or age-old but still deadly chemicals. Neptune solved that problem easily, drawing gallon after gallon of fresh, pure water from the air to fill the storage barrels. The construction of a particularly massive underground tank had been started shortly after the Senshi's arrival, and once it was complete, she filled it with enough drinkable water to last for years. She conducted a similar ritual in the tribe's well- protected fields each day, providing water to animals and plants that desperately needed it. She was glad to help, but found the gratitude of so many people more than a little embarrassing.

Haruka spent a lot of her time teaching people how to fight more effectively, whether with their hands and feet or makeshift weapons. She also worked quite closely with the tribe's collection of blacksmiths, tinkers, and would-be scientists; her experience with technology was mostly oriented towards vehicular mechanics, but even that was more than they had, and she probably prevented a dozen or more disasters just by being on hand to shout "Don't do that!" or "Not like that!" or "RUN!" She had spent some time in the fields as well at first, breaking apart the well-nigh perpetual cloud cover with her control over wind, but the effort involved in moving that much air had worn her out after just a few days.

Rei devoted a large amount of effort to teaching people—adults as often as children—how to read and write, skills which only a few had even heard of, let alone possessed. She also made prodigious use of her visionary abilities during those three and a half weeks, once to track down a patrol whose return was five days overdue, another time to locate a boy who had fallen into a sinkhole and broken his leg while chasing a runaway cow, and then again, and then _again_... Rei also picked up a few 'apprentices' along the way: a boy no older than six; a pair of girls barely into their teens; and a young woman only a few years older than herself. All four of them possessed mental abilities somewhat similar to her own, and she taught them as much as she could. Most of her effort was focused on the woman, Katina, who would have to take over the role of teacher once Rei left.

Even in this harsh a world, life was not all endless toil and thankless struggle. Children still played strange games; people still sang songs and danced from time to time; young couples still fell in love. The three Senshi had no problems dealing with the first two. All children played strange games, and every few nights, Michiru and Rei would hold most of the tribe spellbound with duets, Michiru playing a borrowed, surprisingly well-maintained fiddle, Rei using her powerful voice. Haruka occasionally missed her piano during these mini-concerts, but kept amused by parodying some of the songs Rei sang, to the absolute delight of everybody except Rei herself. The dances—an odd but interesting mix of formal ballroom and informal folk styles—didn't go over too badly, either.

The most popular of those was a massive free-for-all involving fifty or more people, paired off according to height so that the tallest couple stood in the middle of a broad spiral, each successive pair getting a little shorter. There was a series of ten steps, at which point the dance called for a most peculiar exchange of partners; the tallest of a given pair would move outwards one space on the spiral, while the shorter would move inwards one space, at which point the ten steps were repeated. After just one pass, children wound up dancing with adults, women with women, men with men, and it only got more complicated and confusing as people kept moving up and down the spiral, always according to whether they were taller or shorter than their current partner. The dance—called, appropriately enough, Mad Spiral—usually ended when the two end couples—the tallest and the shortest—linked up again on the other side of the chain, but getting there could take an hour or more, depending on who was dancing.

Most of the other dances weren't nearly so complex, although the fact that Haruka consistently—and successfully—tried to lead caused some problems now and then. But by and large, the night-time celebrations were no trouble, and a lot of fun.

Where the three Senshi kept having trouble was the bit about people falling in love.

A lot of it probably had to do with the miniskirts, but Michiru absolutely devastated the unmarried young men no matter what she was wearing. They were forever going out of their way to be helpful to her, particularly the guard, Rama, who had given her his cloak that first night. No matter how many times Michiru tried to politely get the point that she wasn't interested across, Rama was constantly on hand to see if she needed something, to stand guard on the tent that had been set aside for her, or to provide an escort when she made her daily circuit of the fields. Haruka teased Michiru about the business with Rama mercilessly, and was no less amused by the attention she picked up herself. These people had given up a great many social prejudices in order to survive, and they'd been hardened by their tough existence, but despite that—or maybe because of it—there was still a clearly visible distinction between men and women. *Uranus* was obviously female, but *Haruka,* as always, blurred that line for all she was worth, earning some considering glances from men and women alike—all of them puzzled—and loving every second of it.

Rei was not particularly aware of the fact that she was having an only slightly less overwhelming impact on members of the male population than Michiru. From school, she was used to people taking notice of her; from Yuuichirou, she had built up a tolerance for male foolishness; and from her long ago, not-quite relationship with Mamoru, she had learned to get over her own silly crushes. But between the effort she put into teaching her various students, making patrols, and trying to figure out how to open that damned annoying Book of Ages, she didn't have the time to deal properly with her admirers. For that, as Yuuichirou could have told them, they should be eternally grateful.

Neptune was just finishing up a morning's work in the fields—with Rama keeping close by, of course—when a boy from the main settlement came running up at top speed. Neptune caught him just before he ran into her.

"What is it, Lumo?"

"West field," the lad said between gasps for air. "Scouts saw... weird light... sent me... find you..."

Neptune looked towards the north pass, the only gap in the mountain range which separated this little community from the badlands, then to the west field. Most of the monsters in this time were bizarre mutations of familiar animals, fighting with tooth and claw, but a few had demonstrated energy manipulation powers. Whatever Lumo was talking about couldn't have come through the pass; there were enough traps and people in defensive positions up there to stop an army, and she would have heard the warning horns even at this distance. But the possibility that something might have found a way to reach the settlement from another side wasn't a reassuring one, particularly since Mars and Uranus had both gone out on patrol that morning, and weren't due back for another hour at least.

Neptune handed Lumo over to Rama with a curt instruction to look after him before taking off at top speed. Ground that it had taken her half an hour to walk across flew by in hardly more than a minute—Lumo must have run flat-out to reach her so quickly—and she was moving along the cliff ridge above the village shortly after that. She caught up with a group of twenty heavily-armed men and women at the edge of the empty west field, which was too rocky for crops and cattle alike. Beradi was leading.

"Lumo found you, I see," he said in greeting. "Haven't seen anything since the initial flash. Weird, that; just lasted a second, a lot of red and violet streaks."

"Are there any passes to the west?" Neptune asked.

"Not for nine days' walk," Beradi replied, "and you hit the sea after that. I suppose something could have swum around, though. Hang on." He pointed to a gap between two large rocks, where something that flashed in the light of the partly-obscured sun was waving back and forth. It was too far to make out the exact shape, but the thing was definitely metal. "Who goes there?" Beradi hollered.

"We come in peace," a voice yelled back. Neptune's eyes widened a moment before she broke into a wide grin.

"You can put your weapons down, Beradi. They're friends."

Saturn flew into Uranus' arms the moment she and Mars got back to the village, and the blonde Senshi had a nervous moment of trying to juggle her enthusiastic adopted daughter and the gleaming length of the Silence Glaive.

"Air," Uranus croaked. "Air."

Pluto smiled wearily at the display, and at the only slightly-less exuberant greeting Venus was giving Mars.

"You don't look so good," Neptune said from Pluto's left.

"We hit a bit of a snag on our way here," Pluto explained. "Bringing ourselves and three passengers back to this point from Crystal Tokyo was harder than moving to Crystal Tokyo from about eighty million years in the past with just one other person."

"Was it the extra people," Neptune asked, "or the direction of the trip?"

"A little bit of each, I think, but mostly the latter. Skipping over six hundred years should have been a piece of cake compared to crossing eighty million." Pluto yawned. "I think I could sleep for a week."

"You could, you know. If we can travel through time..."

"No," ChibiUsa said immediately. "We have to find the others and get back to Tokyo as fast as possible. Mama told me before I left that Time was going to move at the same rate in the past as it did in the future; I think that for every minute we spend on our way home, a minute will have gone by there, too."

"You're sure?" Neptune asked in a sinking voice. "We've already been here nearly a month as it is. Does that mean a month's going to have gone by when we get back to Tokyo?"

ChibiUsa opened her mouth to respond, but closed it again and looked pleadingly at Pluto, who merely shook her head. "I have no idea. I hope not." She closed her eyes and murmured, "God, I hope not. I've lost enough time already."

Quite a few members of the tribe were gathering around to watch the reunion. There were smiles, but also some sad looks as they realized that their three friends would be leaving. Beradi looked around and shook his head.

"I realize this might not be the best time," the one-handed man said to Neptune, "but you have to know by now that these sentimentalists are going to want to throw you a good-bye party."

Neptune sighed. "I wish we could stay, Beradi, I really do. But our other friends may be in trouble, and we've got to find them. More than that, we've got to get home."

Beradi nodded. "Still, if you could spare just one hou... hey!" He directed that at Saturn, who had come over from hugging Uranus to yank curiously at his replacement 'hand.' ChibiUsa smothered an outburst of giggles as Beradi pulled his hook out of Saturn's reach and readjusted it. "Do you mind, girl?"

Saturn looked at him for a moment, then turned a slow gaze at the people gathered all around. Some of them backed up a step or two when they spotted the eerie violet glow in her eyes. "May I see your arm for a moment?"

Beradi looked for a moment as if he were going to say something, but the weird light in Saturn's eyes stopped him, and he raised his stump-ended left arm. Saturn took it in both hands and examined it closely.

"Hotaru," Neptune said, knowing immediately what the girl was about to try. She didn't get any further than that.

Energy swirled out from between Saturn's gloved fingers. She was no longer holding Beradi's arm, but when he tried to pull it out of the spherical web of dark, sizzling threads, it didn't budge. He roared wordlessly as the hook rusted solid, bent in on itself, and crumbled away into flakes that were gone before they hit the ground. Then the anger faded away as the most peculiar look crossed the tough man's face; he looked like he was trying to hold in a laugh.

"Damned thing itches worse than if I'd stuck it in fireweed!" he snapped.

"Stop being such a baby," Saturn said in a heartless sort of voice. Beradi's eyes bulged, and whatever else he had been about to say jammed in his throat; ChibiUsa doubled over, compressed snorts of laughter getting past the hand she held over her mouth.

Saturn's gaze narrowed, and the energy hissing between her hands began to take on an indefinite shape. Very suddenly, she moved her fingers, a quick, flexing motion that pulled them slightly apart; the web of energy collapsed and was gone.

Anybody close enough to see gasped in astonishment as Beradi held up a left arm that ended in a whole, callused hand, the perfect mate to his right. He flexed the fingers, even struck them across his knee; the grin on his face just kept growing.

Saturn smiled.

It was about three hours later.

The settlement was in the middle of perhaps the largest party its inhabitants had ever thrown. Everyone who wasn't needed on guard duty was singing, dancing, preparing or eating food; those who were on duty traded posts every half-hour so that they could all enjoy the sudden celebration.

This was also one of the strangest parties the tribe had ever held. It was supposed to have been a farewell for three friends, but it was turning into the biggest revel any of them could remember. Formerly stiff-jointed greybeards danced with the spry ease of their long-faded youth; a little boy who had been in bed most of the week with a fever was up and as energetic as any of his friends; old veterans like Beradi laughed and showed off to each other the hands, feet, or even the odd eye that they had not possessed scant hours ago.

Saturn sat at the edge of the village square, watching with her dark, too-wise eyes as a Mad Spiral formed up. She smiled as, near the center of the pattern, Uranus and Neptune and three tall young men tried to explain the steps of the dance to Pluto. She laughed as, further down the spiral, Venus tried to improvise a few steps of her own.

ChibiUsa sat down next to her friend. "How did you do that, Hotaru? I've seen you heal before, and I know how much it takes out of you. How did you manage to heal all these people?"

"I realized something about my power when we came forward," Saturn replied. "I move things, ChibiUsa. That's all I do. I can take a solid object and scatter it into a billion pieces, or I can take those same pieces and put them back together. With inanimate objects, it doesn't really make much difference whether they're in one piece or a billion, because they're still there. Living beings are a little trickier. Take them apart, and the energy inside that _makes_ them alive escapes, or gets shut down; even if you put the body back together, the energy isn't there anymore. Usagi can restore that energy, create it over again, if she has to; I can't. But while the body still contains its energy, is still alive, I can _move_ the energy around, gather it from all parts of the body and send it where it's needed to heal. That was the mistake I always made before."

ChibiUsa blinked. "I don't follow you."

"I always tried to use just my own energy," Saturn explained. "Healing wore me out so much because I was projecting _my_ life-force into someone else's body. When I try it that way, not all of the energy gets there—it must disperse into the environment or something like that—so I have to use a lot to get even a small effect. As Michiru-mama would say, it's inefficient. This way, I'm just moving around the natural healing force in a person's body. And it's so easy," she added in a wondrous voice.

They both looked up as a shadow appeared. Beradi. "Enjoying the festivities?"

Saturn smiled. "Very much."

"Your tall friend with the red eyes said you'll be leaving after this next dance. Before you go, there's someone I'd like you to meet. If you don't mind."

Saturn and ChibiUsa watched as a small procession approached, four young men carrying a small litter, on which rested a very, very old woman. She was obviously blind, and grumbling under what breath she had about being carried around like a sack of potatoes as they carefully set her down.

"This is Naruno," Beradi said. "We would have brought her out to you earlier, but it's not safe to move her very much any more, and with all the people that were coming and going, we decided it was safer to wait. I was thinking... well, if you can give me back a hand and other people back lost legs or eyes, is there something you can do for her?"

"Foolish boy," the old woman croaked. "I told you, I don't want any miracles for myself. I'm used to how I am, now, and it's not like I'm going to be here all that much longer anyway."

Saturn looked at Naruno, let her eyes shift into the dark glow that accompanied her life-vision. She saw a faded blue-gold flicker around the stick- thin body, and sighed. "She's too weak, Beradi. Her body... there's just not enough strength left in it to hold together if I start tampering with things."

"Wait," ChibiUsa said. "Saturn, you said you could move energy from yourself into someone else. I know you couldn't heal her by yourself, but what if... Usagi and the others combine their energies all the time when there's a big fight. Could you use some of the life-force of people here to..."

"I can't do that!" Saturn gasped, horrified at the thought. It was exactly the same sort of thing that monster after monster had done in Tokyo. Just thinking about doing it made her feel ill.

"I don't mean steal it," ChibiUsa said soothingly, knowing exactly how her friend would feel. "Beradi, how many of your people do you think would be willing to help us try to heal Naruno?"

"Now just a minute," the old woman rasped.

"Probably quite a few," Beradi said, ignoring the elder. "But what exactly can we do that you lot can't?"

"Saturn's just one person, but there are dozens of you. She and Naruno don't have enough energy between them to do much, but if enough of your people will agree to let Saturn borrow a little of their energy, she might be able to do something."

"Can I talk to you for a second?" Saturn grabbed ChibiUsa's sleeve and dragged her aside. "What are you doing?!" she hissed. "I can't take away people's energy, ChibiUsa, not even to help an old woman! I won't do it!"

"You won't be _taking_ it," ChibiUsa said. "We'll explain it so that they understand what we're doing, and if they agree, they'll be _giving_ you the energy, freely." ChibiUsa looked at her friend. "It isn't using other people's energy to do things that makes our enemies monsters, Hotaru. They're monsters because they take without asking; we're going to ask first, and only go ahead with it if people agree."

The question of personal choice was such a slim difference—but, Saturn had to admit, an important one. She nodded. "All right."

The music and dances had stopped as most of the people gathered around; men and women and children, even Ryo and the other Senshi, nearly the entire population filled the square. Saturn looked around at the crowd and gulped. Usagi did this sort of thing all the time; how hard could it be?

*Pretty damn hard,* she told herself. With the ginzuishou as a focus, Usagi could create and amplify energy on an immense scale; the power of Saturn could shift energy, relocate or scatter it, but not create it. This might be very hard, indeed.

Naruno was frowning as Saturn knelt down next to her. "You're going to go ahead with this no matter what I say, aren't you?"

"We'll put the matter to a vote," Beradi said, looking back at the crowd. "All those in favor of doing whatever the hell it is we're about to do, say 'Aye!'"

"Aye!"

"All opposed?"

Silence. Naruno grunted. "Fine. Get on with it, then."

Saturn sighed and laid the Silence Glaive across her knees, putting one hand over the old woman's heart as she looked around at the crowd. "Everyone listen carefully." Her voice was not that loud, but her power carried the words clearly to every ear. "Try to focus your thoughts on Naruno. Just her, not anything else. I'll do the rest. You may suddenly feel a little tired, but try to ignore it; it won't hurt you, and it won't last long." Saturn closed her eyes and opened her mind.

She envisioned the life-energy all around her as spots of light, a subtly different color for each individual person. The light coming from the other Senshi was particularly bright; the light coming from Ryo had a curiously dark outer edge that she still couldn't understand. But no matter.

She reached out with her power, picturing coiling arcs of violet-black light expanding out to touch all those colors, a huge web of dark energy centered over the faded light in front of her. Very slowly, the web began to hum, each light shooting a tiny pulse of itself into the pattern, all of them racing to the center to gather in a bright white orb. Saturn tried to even out the flow so that she was draining a proportionate amount from each person, making them all equally tired, instead of taking the same level of energy and thus risking damage to the weaker members of the link. Then she focused on the power ball, willed it to sink into Naruno's body. It did so, and all the successive pulses of life-force followed it.

With her eyes closed, Saturn couldn't see what was happening, but those nearest to the center could and did. The web and lights Saturn had pictured in her mind had appeared in reality, surrounding each person with an individual aura. Naruno's body blazed with light. Skin shifted, losing its many sags and wrinkles; the discolored spots shrank, faded, and were gone as a healthy pink tint began to build. With each pulse of energy, her body was a little less frail. New hair grew from her almost-bald scalp at a tremendous pace, first white, then darkening steadily to grey, brown, and finally stopping at a burnished red. Her remaining teeth straightened as new ones slowly emerged from her gums. The white film that had clouded her eyes grew more and more colorless until it was transparent, and flowed down the sides of her face as nothing more than tears, leaving functional blue eyes behind.

Other things were happening, too, inside, where only Saturn could see them. Veins and arteries that had been on the verge of collapse shivered and strengthened; the old, faltering heart behind them grew slightly larger, its rhythm steadying and each beat louder. Worn out tissues renewed themselves as crooked, crumbling bones straightened and solidified.

When the aura in front of her was as bright as any of the others around her, Saturn stopped the flow, sent the remaining energy back to where it had come from, once again doing her best to divide the force equally. As the last of it trickled away, she recalled her own power and opened her eyes.

By looks alone, the woman in front of her couldn't have been more than twenty years old. The traces that had made Mars so uneasy at their first meeting, those age-faded qualities inherited from Naru, were far more recognizable now that Naruno was closer to the age of the girl the Senshi knew. She looked down at herself, running smooth-skinned, straight-knuckled hands down a healthy, whole body.

"My goodness," she murmured, in a smooth voice that was no longer harsh or scratchy. After a moment, she started to laugh, grabbing hold of Saturn in a powerful hug, laughing until she cried. "I never thought... I would never have asked... oh, thank you, thank you, thank you."

Someone tapped Saturn on the shoulder. She looked up and saw Pluto and the others standing close at hand. "It's time to go," Pluto said. Saturn nodded.

"Everyone stand back," Venus warned, "unless you want to end up being yanked along through another dimension, a dimension of sights and sounds you probably don't want to see or hear."

Mars, Uranus, and Neptune were saying their good-byes. Mars hugged Katina and wished her good luck, telling each of the three children to listen to their new teacher before tucking the Book under one arm and joining the other Senshi. Uranus shook hands—left hands—with Beradi and a number of the other soldiers, giving the disaster-prone band of tinkers a last look and a resigned sigh in passing.

Neptune's farewells took a bit longer, since just about everyone in the village wanted to hug her, to thank her for the precious gift of the water. The last to approach her was Rama. After a brief and formal embrace, Neptune paused, shrugged, seized the astonished young man by the shoulders, and dragged him into what was easily the most profound kiss of his life. A lot of the villagers blinked; so did most of the Senshi. When Neptune finally let go, she smiled faintly at Rama and then walked back to her friends.

She stopped in front of Uranus, put her hands on and her hips, and said, "Well?" in a challenging voice.

"I didn't say anything," the taller girl replied.

"Good."

Pluto and Saturn were already well into their routine. As the swirling energy built to a peak, Uranus glanced sidelong at her partner and grinned. "Of course, you must realize that you've probably just destroyed that poor man's entire future romantic life."

They blipped out before Neptune could respond with anything more than a flat look.

When reality came back, they were standing in a forest. Ryo sneezed as soon as the laws of nature had reasserted themselves. Pluto leaned heavily on her staff, and Saturn would have fallen over completely if ChibiUsa and Uranus hadn't caught her.

"That hurt," Saturn whimpered.

Mars looked around at the trees. "Where and when are we?"

"We're about forty thousand years ahead of Tokyo," Pluto replied wearily. "Mercury and Jupiter are here."

"What about Usagi? And Luna and Artemis," Mars added, somewhat belatedly.

"Usagi and Artemis are about thirty-five thousand years after this point; Luna's either with them or here with the other two. And I brought us here first," Pluto said before anyone could ask, "because these jumps are getting harder to make the more people we have or the further back we try to go. From here, we can slide forward to find Usagi, and then to our own time." She raised her communicator and activated the homing device. Eight beeps went off; one for each Senshi with her, and one for Mercury and Jupiter.

"Venus to Mercury, Venus to Jupiter. Ami-chan, Mako-chan, are you there?" Venus paused. "Come on, you two, wake up!"

"They can't hear you," Pluto said. "The jumping through Time has done something to our communicators, and I don't know how to fix them."

"Oh. Then I guess we start walking." Venus set off her own homing device, then pointed. "That way." She started off without looking back; the others exchanged wry looks, recalling the line about fools rushing in, but followed her anyway.

SAILOR SAYS:

(Fade in on Queen Serenity—the dead one, on the Moon)

Her Majesty: In light of the difficulties with the last episode's moral, and since the Senshi are still unavailable to do this segment, the author's asked me to stand in. Young Shingo, as I understand it, is otherwise occupied.

(Cut to a scene of Shingo playing 'Sailor Moon: Revenge of the Phantom Senshi')

Shingo: Yeah! Take that, you ugly mutants! Man, this is so cool! Hey, no fair trying to sneak up behind me! Eat this! Hahahaha! What?! Where'd that come from?! No fair! Arrrrrrggggghhhh...

(Fade back to Serenity)

Her Majesty: Must be genetic... oh well. On with the segment. After a great deal of careful thought and re-reading, the author—who you must understand is interested mainly in a good story, and doesn't usually have any moral instruction in mind when he sets out to write—has decided to cast this episode's moral under the category of 'acceptance.' In the past, Ami and Makoto are accepted as friends by a creature who hardly knows them and isn't even the same species; in the future, Rei, Michiru, and Haruka are given a similar degree of trust, despite some initial uncertainties. Give people a chance, no matter how different or strange they are, and you may be surprised; refuse to let them get close, and you're alone forever.

Off-Screen Voice: And cut! Right, thanks, Your Majesty.

Her Majesty: Anytime. (She fades out. Change scene to Shingo's room, where Serenity has reappeared, and is learning how to play video games. Scene fades out with Shingo cheering her on through a barrage of phantom menaces.)

23/07/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

A full-length episode in one week... wow.

Still to come:
-Makoto learns a whole new meaning to the phrase 'tree-hugging';
-The Senshi go in search of their absent leader and advisors; and
-Our heroines—and taggers-along—finally get home. After a few wrong turns on the highway of Time, that is...