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.

13. Chapter 13

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 13

The Life of the Party, or Not Quite Out of the Woods Yet

There comes a time in any flow of tears beyond which it is simply impossible to continue, a point at which overworked tear ducts will not produce any further liquid without rest, when runny noses and half-choked throats force an end to sobbing, and the person crying just sits in the emotional fallout of whatever triggered the tears in the first place, feeling perfectly miserable.

Makoto had passed that point some time ago, and was now sitting with her back to the thick root of the enormous, ancient tree, hugging her knees to her chest and watching clouds drift by beyond the great canopy of leaves above.

If somebody asked her about her daughter's tendency to talk to the flowers in the little shop, Makoto's mother always said that it was just a game, something Makoto had done as a little girl, something she continued to do just to tease her. If they worried that Makoto seemed to spend all her time in the shop and not enough making friends, well, her mother would admit that sometimes she worried about that, too; then she would point out that everyone made friends in their own way, their own time.

And Makoto did have friends who weren't plants or her parents. Little Fuunnoko, Fuun-chan, or just 'Fun' to her friends, constantly getting into trouble even though it really wasn't ever her own fault, but always with a ready smile for everyone around her. Iki, quiet and gentle and as timid as a rabbit—one that didn't have odangos, anyway—and her twin brother, Senjiru, loud and fearless and short-tempered, and incredibly protective of his sister. Kiki, almost as wise for her age as Ami must have been and the closest thing Makoto had ever had to a big sister, even though Kiki was short and scrawny, plain on her best day, and defiantly proud of all three facts. And then there was Shinozaki, a friend from almost as far back as she could remember, so familiar as to be almost a brother and far more than a boyfriend, her personal guardian angel.

Her mother said it was just a game. She said friends would always be there for you. She said _she_ would always be there.

She was wrong, wrong, wrong. The Kinos died, and in that one terrible stroke, Makoto lost her family, her gift, and her friends. She wouldn't let herself hear the plants anymore because it reminded her too much of her mother, and her friends began to drift away:

Kiki, short, stick-like, and singularly unpretty, the only person other than her mother or father capable of calming Makoto down when she got angry. Her family moved away at the end of that same school year, less than two months after the plane crash, and Makoto never saw or heard from her again;

Fuunnoko, the eternal spark of good humor and bad timing. She became jealous as Makoto grew so tall and strong and _interesting,_ drawing the eyes and attention of half the boys in school, and the spark of humor in her eyes was replaced by a burning antagonism;

Senjiru, who had accepted her as an equal at an age when most boys didn't want anything to do with girls—and when most girls felt the same about the boys—who had played with her soccer and tag and a hundred games invented on the spot, but which always involved a lot of running, jumping, climbing, and shouting. He seemed to think that their long camaraderie was more than just friendship, and had been one of the first boys Makoto had fought to protect herself;

Iki, the shy, gentle girl Makoto had always looked out for, who had shared her interest in and care for plants. Already frightened by her longtime protector's growing tendency to resort to violence, Iki had been pushed completely away by Makoto's short-lived fight with Senjiru. In a voice that was nearly a scream, the loudest sound Makoto could ever remember hearing the normally soft-spoken girl make, Iki told her to stay away from them both.

In the end, only Shinozaki had been left, enduring black moods, intermittent fights, and even a few bouts of weeping. He stayed with her through everything, but even he changed, a little; he never said or did anything differently, but sometimes—just sometimes—Makoto caught a strange light in his eyes. It wasn't like the way other boys looked at her, the ones who were just drawn to her body. This was deeper, taking in everything she was or had been, a look that remembered the little girl with dirt under her fingernails and grass-stains on her feet, saw the fierce, lonely teenager in spirit as well as in body. The last time she had noticed it, Makoto had met the strange look, and seen deep in Shinozaki's eyes something that she didn't fully understand, something that was comforting but confusing, soothing and subtly frightening all at once; it was not the sort of look she wanted to see from someone who was almost her brother.

So she stopped looking. And after transferring to Juuban, she slowly managed to convince herself that it had just been a figment of her imagination, to forget the disturbing feelings that Shinozaki's quiet, serious expression had triggered in her own heart.

She thought about it now, though, it and everything else. Watching the clouds, Makoto sent out a sad, silent call to her mother, four and a half years in the past, thousands of years in the future. *You were wrong, Mama.*

"Was she, child?"

Makoto's bleary eyes fell on the old, white-haired dryad. "Stay out of my mind."

The dryad—she hadn't given her name yet, and Makoto didn't really want to ask—shook her head. "I don't think that's possible anymore, little one. As long as you believed you couldn't hear us, that kept us out. But after this morning, after everything that happened with Sasanna tore down the blocks you'd put up around yourself... I'm sorry, Makoto, but there's no going back." The old dryad hesitated, then asked, "Is it _really_ that bad for you, being able to hear them?"

"It isn't normal," Makoto said. The dryad snorted.

"Maybe not for humans, but it's beyond normal for my kind. And you're not exactly a normal human to begin with, are you?" Green-gold eyes narrowed. "What is it about this that's really bothering you?"

Makoto let out a single harsh laugh. "Why don't you just look around in my head like Sasanna did and find out for yourself?"

The dryad shook her head. "You really don't have any idea how it actually works, do you? Makoto, when you walk into a room full of people who are all talking at once, do you automatically understand every single thing that is being said? No, you don't; you know the words are there, but you have to pay attention to make any sort of sense out of them. It's the same thing with the mind-powers my kind possess."

"Then how did she know?" There was no need to name names.

"How do you pick out that one voice among a dozen?" The white-haired dryad shrugged. "In that same way as the mind can ignore other sounds to focus on just a few, _we_ can focus our minds upon the awareness of just one creature. It's not an easy thing for us to do with animal beings, because no matter how much we _look_ like you, we're still very much plants. That applies to how we think, as well."

"Plants _don't_ think," Makoto said. Then she stopped.

"You begin to see," the old dryad said with an approving smile. "Ordinary plants do not think because they _cannot_ think, only feel, so our mind-gift is attuned to emotion, not true thought. It works equally well for plant-creatures and animal-creatures in that respect, but we can only hear the thoughts of our sisters and brothers with any kind of clarity—and even then, it works more easily if we are close. For an animal creature, we must link to learn anything."

"Link?"

"A joining of minds. Our minds divide from our brother-selves when we awaken, and it is part of our being that we will eventually return to them. Out of that, we..."—she gestured with her hands, searching for a word—"we do not 'learn' so much as 'have' the ability to touch the awareness of another being, to blend the edges of our own mind with the other. Through that, we can perceive some of the thoughts of the other mind; things directed at us or charged with strong emotions are easy to see, whereas things that the mind wishes to remain hidden are very difficult to find."

Makoto shook her head at that statement. "I don't talk about... that... with my friends; I don't even think about it very often. So how did Sasanna find it so quickly?"

"Your _conscious_ mind does not think about it," the dryad corrected. "Are you so certain about the rest? I am very old," she admitted with a weary sigh, "and I have seen and endured my share of pain down the long turning of the seasons. I have seen brothers and sisters die before their time, and lost others to the final sleep; I have felt the pain of wounded plants and dying animals beyond counting. I've survived that pain, and eventually come to terms with even the worst of what I've seen."

"Is there a point to this?" Makoto asked bluntly.

"The point is that pain is a natural part of life, and that we have healing to match it and keep it in check. Healing of the body is easy; healing of the mind is more complex, and it requires many things." Her voice and eyes softened. "Child, if it hurts you so much to think about your parents even after so much time has passed, then you are still grieving, somewhere inside."

"It's been four years!" Makoto shouted, clenching her fists and looking away. In a lower voice, she asked, "Isn't that long enough?"

"For some people, perhaps. But you have been hiding from the pain, Makoto, ignoring it and driving it into the depths of your mind; you haven't allowed yourself to grieve properly, to let the pain go. You can't heal, can't stop hurting so much, until you do that."

"What are you, now, my psychiatrist?" The dryad's features became somewhat more wrinkled as she scrunched her face up in confusion over the reference.

*You are afraid.*

Hearing that disembodied voice for only the second time, Makoto jumped before turning her attention to the tree. "I am not afraid. I've handled small gangs and monsters and even dying; what makes you think I'm scared of a few silly plants?"

*It is not the plants themselves that you fear,* the tree's old-man voice replied. *You are afraid of the comfort of their presence. You fear that it will weaken your feelings for your mother and father; you fear that their dependence on you is a duty you will not be able to live up to.*

*GET OUT OF MY MIND!* Makoto screamed. Astonishingly, it seemed to work; the light sense of another awareness somewhere at the edge of her own faded. She imagined—or felt?—a strange, outwards-moving ripple in the greenery around her, as if the grasses, the bushes, the trees, and everything else were struggling for a brief moment to pull away. There was even a momentary shiver amongst the leaves of the great tree above her, or so it seemed.

"Now that will be _quite_ enough of that," the dryad said sharply. Makoto felt a much stronger sense of the old creature's mind then, an almost visible aura spreading out from inside the white-haired, brown-skinned head to soothe the agitated plant life. Something of the wave of pacifying emotions washed over Makoto herself, but she clung hard to her anger and refused to be calmed. The dryad cast an exasperated glance at Makoto, and the plants linked to her through the emotion-aura shivered again. "You're determined to make this difficult, aren't you, girl? We're trying to _help_ you, Makoto."

"I don't want any more 'help' from you—any of you. And I don't need it. I've learned to deal with my other powers, and I can deal with this, too. But that doesn't mean I have to like it, or use it." Makoto glared at the dryad and the tree, and added a quick look around at everything else that was even a little bit green. "Stay. Out. Of. My. Mind." She turned to walk away.

"Do you know what happened to the first sister who ever tried to live with another thinking race?" the old dryad asked conversationally.

In spite of herself, Makoto turned around. "What do you mean? I thought the only human you'd ever seen before us was that Adan guy."

For some reason, the dryad chuckled. "Yes, Adan was the first human we had ever met. But I wasn't talking about humans. You're not the first thinking animals to ever appear on this old planet, Makoto, not the first by a goodly measure. I doubt you'll be the last, either."

When Makoto didn't answer, the dryad told her story. "That first sister's name was Kureenia Fenar Marmosswyndwillow, and the creatures she tried to live with called themselves ukhtheee'Nkth't." The old dryad made a weird noise in the back of her throat and somewhere in her nose at the same time, a sound Makoto knew she couldn't have duplicated in ten thousand tries. "They looked very much like us—or you—but claimed they were descended from insects, which explained why some of the things about their culture, appearance, and language were so unusual. They'd known about our kind for a long time, and they were very happy to have Kureenia live in one of their hives, but about two months after she joined them, she fell into a very deep sleep and couldn't be woken. The ukhtheee'Nkth't got worried and took her back to her brother-self, and she recovered very quickly."

"What happened to her?"

"Our kind live in each others' minds as often as not," the old dryad said. "And we feel the emotions of everything around us. But most of what we live near are plants, or unintelligent animals, and every so often one or two thinking animals. The emotions of a thinking creature are much stronger and more complex than an unthinking one, and living among so many at once, Kureenia's own mind was overwhelmed; she couldn't think or feel for herself, and even came close to loosing touch with her brother-self before the ukhtheee'Nkth't brought her back to him. Once we'd figured out what had happened, of course, we developed a trick for keeping ourselves while among large groups."

The gold-flecked green eyes made Makoto shiver when they fell on her. "Your mind-powers are nearly as strong now as those belonging to a sister of Sasanna's age, but you don't have the slightest idea how to control them. It only took a colony of a few hundred other minds to overwhelm Kureenia, and what I hear in your thoughts of your world shows me a number of thinking minds to make that seem like a blade of grass next to a tree. Makoto, if you don't learn at least how to keep your own thoughts and emotions before you go home, your own powers could very easily kill you. Or worse; you could live, physically, while your mind plays out the composite thoughts and emotions of every thinking being around you. Would you like that, girl? To spend the rest of your life trapped in your own mind, surrounded by the emotions of others? Or perhaps as an out-of-control hurricane of madness, acting on every errant impulse that touches against your awareness?"

Numbly, Makoto shook her head.

"Then will you stop fighting us and let us at least tell you how to protect yourself?"

"How? How will you tell me? For all I know, my friends could arrive in the next hour, or the next week. There isn't enough time..."

"We teach in the same way that we remember," the dryad said. "We exchange memories. What one sister deems important, she passes on to all other sisters that she can reach, and they in turn share the knowledge with others, until all of our kind have learned it. The ocean"—she gestured to the east and west— "cuts us off from our sisters on the mainland in thought as well as body, but Kareenia's experience with the ukhtheee'Nkth't was from before the islands split away, and we have preserved it."

"I don't want you in my mind," Makoto replied.

"Stubborn," the dryad muttered, shaking her head. Her words and her smile had that oddly approving air Makoto had noticed before. "I will not be in your mind, Makoto; that is how one learns, by seeing the thoughts of another. _You_ are the one who is supposed to learn."

Her stomach flipped over. "I can't."

"You will see and take only what we wish you to see and take," the dryad said. "You will remember only what you choose to remember. And before you protest again, child, remember that this is part of what my kind are. The joining of minds does not bother us the way it bothers you."

"What... what do I... have to do?"

"Sitting down might help," the dryad said with a dry smile. She helped Makoto settle back down among the roots. "Now. Before we start, you need to understand that our memory-history isn't preserved by the sisters, but the brothers. An animal-type brain simply can't hold all the information, whereas the brothers are able to store the knowledge not only in their own minds, but within all the trees around them. I'm not going to explain how they do it—if you really want to know, you'll probably see it—but you do need to know that you'll be looking into my brother-self's awareness, not mine. This will go very quick if we only have to do it once, so keep at least part of you in contact with part of him, or you'll lose the connection and we'll have to try again."

Makoto placed one hand on a bump in the root to her right, and the sense of the tree's vast awareness returned. She drew away from it at first, and then, when it—when he—did not advance, pushed cautiously forward. There was a momentary sensation of some sort of dividing line being crossed, and Makoto caught a brief thought-glimpse of a connection between the mind ahead of her and the other one off to the side. Then she was in the tree's awareness.

Her own mind reeled as she came to understand just how far back this memory-history of the dryads reached. The thoughts of the insect-race, the ukhtheee'Nkth't, were from a time before the islands that were to become Japan had been separated from the mainland of Asia. The march of years from that point to her own was staggering, and it was nothing compared to the earliest, dimmest memories. A trumpeting bellow of an enormous, lizard-like creature rang in her mind and made her shiver in a remembered fear that wasn't her own.

*It's a dinosaur,* Makoto realized dumbly. *The dryads were alive THAT long ago?*

Not just the dryads, either. She saw other creatures of similar natures, beings born of natural materials that had somehow been infused with vast amounts of raw energy. A dryad-memory showed her a large tree suddenly uprooting itself and striding off on foot-like roots, and another let her behold a pile of rocks and dirt and a few flashing gems plodding along almost as if swimming through the soil beneath. Makoto felt more flashes of someone else's fear as the scum covering a half-dead lake erupted upwards in the manlike shape of a long-nosed, long-armed thing with sharp teeth and claws, as a raging volcano unleashed something that looked like a small, red-skinned reptile, but which burned hotter than lava. Makoto saw the ocean, saw a huge, amorphous shape out among the waves wrestling with a funnel cloud that seemed to possess arms and eyes. She saw another body of water, a small, ice-rimmed pool of pure, blue-white liquid at the base of a tiny waterfall in the middle of some ancient winter, and felt the surprise of another dryad as a tendril of the cold water coiled itself up from the pool and suddenly took on a solid shape that mimicked her own, only in shades of blue and white instead of green and brown. Makoto remembered cowering in fear within a tree—her tree—as something huge soared by overhead, one flap of its wings carrying the force of a hurricane, its roar as loud as a thunderbolt.

In the back of her mind, Makoto felt Amalthea sit up and take notice of those memories. Makoto wanted to turn around and ask her past self what they had been, why she reacted so strongly, but it was taking all of her concentration to keep from being swept away by the dryad history, and that didn't leave enough for a friendly chat with who she used to be.

And it _was_ hard, she realized, keeping anything she saw in her own mind. The old dryad had been right; there was just too much here for her brain to take in more than a little at once, let alone make any sense of it afterwards.

The memories were somehow aware of her as well, the fading echoes of the long-dead sisters of Sasanna and that old dryad who hadn't even mentioned her name, but whose mental presence was hovering not very far away, linked to the huge, patient intellect Makoto was stumbling around inside. The dead dryads seemed to get inside her head as much as she got into theirs, each in turn becoming aware of who, what, and where Makoto was, and what she was thinking. They were all startled to find that she was a human, and the echo of Amalthea was reacting to them in some way Makoto couldn't begin to understand, one past life acknowledging the presence of others. They laughed at things she had laughed at, approved silently of things she had done, scratched their nonexistent heads in perplexity over things they couldn't understand.

When it came to some of her thoughts-slash-memories-slash-dreams about boys, Makoto got the distinct impression that the minds around her were blushing furiously. A few quickly turned away, while others seemed fascinated.

One thing all the memory-ghosts did was to touch briefly against the deeply buried pain inside her mind and fall back, shaking at the intensity of the emotion surrounding it. But as they slipped away into the immense stretch of their history, each left a feeling of shared tears in Makoto's thoughts, grieving with her.

All the emotional tumult was wearing her down, making it harder and harder to concentrate. Worse, Makoto realized that another section of her mind, the part where the essence that was Jupiter rested when not in use, was reacting nearly as strongly as Amalthea, somehow sensing her distress and trying to protect her. It wasn't fully active yet, but it was getting there, and from the way the rush of dryad-ghosts slowed and stopped, she realized they were afraid of what might happen if that power was triggered while she was in here with them.

Makoto gritted her teeth and tried to focus on what the old dryad had been talking about. Kareenia and the ukhtheee'Nkth't, the shielding of the inner mind, the... there!

She grabbed hold of that information and felt almost as if it had been thrown to her by the ancient tree's awareness; he was worried about her power, too. After all, it was _his_ mind all this was taking place in.

With the knowledge in hand—or mind—Makoto turned and tried to will herself out of the tree's consciousness, but she had gone in so deeply that she didn't think...

Just like that, she was out, the mind-link dissolving into two separate awarenesses behind her. Makoto realized she was clutching at the root hard enough to make her fingers—or perhaps the root itself—creak from the strain. The old dryad was looking down at her with a very worried expression.

Makoto reached out and caught hold of the dryad, not in order to attack her, but to bury her own face in the creature's shoulder and start crying. The shock of this experience was far worse than the last one had been, and she needed to hold onto something—anything—that was alive and not made out of wood.

The old dryad seemed to understand, and held Makoto close, gently patting her back, not saying anything but letting all the peace and compassion she could muster flow out of her own mind to battle the girl's shock. When the tears subsided—again; what a lousy day this was turning out to be—and her breathing slowed to normal, Makoto sat up.

"You didn't... say anything... about the others," she said with an angry sniffle.

"I didn't know, child. I'm sorry, but I honestly didn't. We don't sense the awarenesses of our passed sisters and brothers when we search for knowledge, just the memories they left to us." The dryad tapped lightly on Makoto's forehead. "I think that's the problem, in there. You, or rather who you used to be."

Remembering the strange similarity between Amalthea and the dryad- memories, Makoto couldn't disagree. "I... I got it."

"I know. And that's the last time any of us will try something like that with you, Makoto; I promise. The shielding is the most important thing you have to know, whether you decide to explore your gift or not. Everything else, you can learn on your own." The dryad smiled and gave Makoto a motherly kiss on the forehead. "And I think we can trust your heart not to let your mind get carried away."

"Thank you."

"Now," the dryad said, rising and helping Makoto to do the same, "let's get you cleaned up and then get some food into you. You were in there for quite a while, and you used up a lot of energy; you'll probably need to sleep again for a bit to recover, but it's always easier to sleep when you're clean and have a full belly."

Glancing at the sky, Makoto could tell that the sun had moved somewhat since the last time she'd seen it; how many hours had she been in the tree's mind? As the old dryad said, the experience had left her worn out in more ways than one, and the offer of food, a shower, and sleep were very appealing. But there was one other thing she really wanted to know.

"What's your name?" she asked, following the dryad up the steps into her tree.

"Hmm? Oh. Tarnara. And this old stick," she added, drumming on the nearest patch of wood with her knuckles, "is Kardelbanbororootyn."

Makoto nodded. There was something about those names that sounded familiar, but she was too tired to recall what.

The inside of Kardelbanbororootyn was different from Sasanna's tree. The lowest floor was a chamber with a huge stump-table surrounded by a moss-covered bench, evidently a meeting place of some kind for the local dryads. The next floor held four of the vast beds and two separate bathroom chambers, obviously to accommodate Tarnara's guests after one of those meetings. Level three was more private, a single bed and bathroom sharing space with a much smaller table and the first actual chair Makoto had seen in this time, a great flowing mass of slightly-reclined, smooth-edged wood. All these levels were joined by stairs at the points of the compass, running from north to east between the first two levels, west to north between the second and third floors, and with a door in the south wall of the third chamber which Tarnara explained led to a platform high up among Kardelbanbororootyn's branches where she could watch the stars.

Makoto showered first, asking the tree for a blast of cold water at first so she'd be able to stay awake long enough to eat something. Then Tarnara had her brother-self assemble a green dress to replace the borrowed one Makoto had been wearing; the fabric felt very nice, and the fit was wonderful, but Makoto thought it would be a long time before she was able to remember the touch of those weaving vines without blushing. After that, the old dryad had her sit down long enough to empty two of the food-filled blooms that descended to the small table. When she started to yawn not long after, Makoto didn't bother to fight it, and drifted off to sleep among the moss cushions of the chair.

Hearing soft snores, Tarnara chuckled and retrieved a blanket from her bed, folding it over on itself three times before laying it over Makoto. Even then, the thing hung to the floor on either side of the chair.

"Burns and boring beetles," she muttered, "but she really does look like one of us, doesn't she, brother-self?"

*And yet she is not. No dryad could have done what she's done today.* The old tree's voice took on an amused note. *She's probably better suited for the task than we are, when you get right to the root of it.*

"She probably is," Tarnara agreed, "but I promised her we'd stay out of her mind, and I'm going to make sure that promise is kept. Between her little trip in your mind and that mess Sasanna managed to set off, I don't think she'll be able to handle any more mental shocks for a while. The others are just going to have to find another way." She made a frustrated noise. "Woodrot and blight, but I'd like to have a few words with that girl! What was she thinking?"

*She was probably scared. It comes with the glands.*

The dryad's eyes rolled. "Whereas you trees are always perfectly rational, is that it?" Her brother-self didn't reply, and Tarnara smiled briefly in triumph. "Have you been able to reach any of the others, Kard? Any at all?"

*No. Whatever the girl did has its limits. We are here, and can hear them, but they cannot hear us, or anything for quite some distance around us. Sasanna and the other human are on their way here now to find this one.*

"Good," Tarnara sighed. "I don't know about you, brother-self, but I'm very tired."

*I know, sister-self. I am weary as well.* The old voice took on the sound of a wry smile. *This hasn't exactly been the easiest day of our life, has it?*

"No," Tarnara agreed with a smile of her own. "No, it hasn't. But it's been more interesting than most of them." She looked at Makoto, brushing the girl's hair away from her face. "So much pain for one so young, and at the same time, so much power. And she hasn't even realized the full extent of it yet. And just think; there's nine more like her out there somewhere."

*Terrifying thought, isn't it?*

Medea inspected each of the guardsmen carefully as they stood at attention before the terminal. These lesser soldiers didn't wear the face-concealing mirror-masks of their counterparts in the Imperial Guard, something which Medea personally approved of; she hated not being able to see the faces of people she was talking to, particularly those subordinate to her. Although not trained to the pinnacle of near-perfection of the elite Imperials, each of these guards appeared to be adequate to the task. None of them tried to meet her gaze, but instead stood staring fixedly forward, reflecting a technique in which the user appeared to be oblivious to their surroundings but could in fact see everything ahead of them or to either side with remarkable clarity.

The only members of the party who didn't stand with that rigid attention and focused gaze were Lydia and the mage-inquisitor, who had given his name as Vaurinn. He did meet Medea's gaze briefly before bowing his head respectfully over one of the hand-salutes used by the various magical orders. Lydia kept her eyes on the ground the entire time.

All as it should be.

"Our destination," Medea said in a clear voice, "is the city of Khairoah, in northern Ahfaahri. The object of this mission is to track down and contain at least three, possibly four unauthorized time-travelers." She looked at each of the guards in turn. "We don't yet know for certain who or what we're dealing with, and their time of origin is likewise indeterminate, so the Emperor has authorized lethal sanction if it proves necessary to subdue the intruders. But let me make it clear; any man who takes action without express orders from myself or our mage-inquisitor will answer for it. Severely. Is that understood?"

The guards saluted as one, rumbling, "Yes, Lady!"

"Move out."

The guards marched forward into the terminal in a column, two abreast, vanishing in the steely light of the travel portal. Medea watched them, aware of a rustle behind her as Vaurinn moved forwards, the plain, silver-trimmed grey robes that marked him as a hand of the Emperor's justice hanging off his body in a curiously unnatural manner. He was a noble, of course, probably a younger son who'd sought by magic the fortune and power he would not have inherited by birth, and handsome enough, with short, dark hair and a matching beard, and eyes that hovered between brown and green, but as a rule, Medea didn't trust any wizard. Particularly not one with such a close connection to the Imperial Court.

"You have everything you will need?" she asked.

"Always, Lady Pluto. What I know I will need, and what I feel it is prudent to carry as a precaution, all within easy reach." Vaurinn watched the guards pass, and regarded Lydia with a curious interest as she followed the ten armed men into the portal and a quarter of the way around the planet. "If I may ask, Lady, why does your... young friend... accompany us? Is she to play some role in our task?"

"The girl is a slave of my household," Medea said. "Yes, she does possess some limited divinatory gifts which may be of use to us, but the main reason she is accompanying me is for her own health."

"Her... health?"

"It might be wise if you know," Medea added in a considering manner. "Like my own abilities, Lydia's gift is an hereditary one, which was what prompted my great-great-great-great-grandmother to acquire the family in the first place; she had hoped to locate her successor as Pluto with help from Lydia's ancestor, not realizing at the time that it would turn out to be her own daughter. We've kept the family's services over the years, so that we might study their powers and perhaps better understand our own."

Vaurinn nodded. "A wise choice. But I take it the girl has an... ailment... of some kind?"

"The divinatory power is passed on to the eldest child in each generation, but its nature changes each time. The first member of the family, for example, saw the future, but her daughter saw the past, and _her_ daughter in turn did not see anything, but would know immediately which choice was the best or worst for a given situation. Another was a minor prophet. Lydia sees past, present, and future at random, but she also suffers a severe psychological shock in the course of each vision. Sometimes she simply passes out, but on a few occasions she has become violent, towards herself as well as others." Medea reached up to tap the Garnet Orb. "For whatever reason, the presence of the Orb seems to prevent her more extreme reactions."

"I see. Should she suffer one of these... attacks when you are not immediately available, what measures are necessary to subdue her without overt harm?"

"A simple sleep spell will suffice. If it happens that I am not on hand, don't bother trying to locate me; I've long since taken the precaution of setting a warning spell to inform me when Lydia is overcome, and where she is at the time."

"You are more solicitous of your slave than most nobles would be, Lady. I am... moved."

Medea wished the man would stop leaving words to trail off like that. "Charity has nothing to do with it, mage-inquisitor. You're as fully versed in Imperial law as I am, and you know that a master is held responsible for the deeds or misdeeds of a slave. I told you, the girl can become violent; I'm protecting myself as much as I am her."

"Ah." Vaurinn glanced at the now-empty terminal. "Then might I suggest that we hurry to catch up? Just as a precaution, of course."

"Of course."

"Makoto?"

"Hmmm... Ami... I'm sorry... about before."

"Never mind that now. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I..." Makoto opened her eyes and blinked when she realized Ami and Sasanna were standing next to the chair, watching her. "Oh. You're here. I want to..."

"I need to..." Sasanna said at the same time. They both broke off and looked at each other, then both tried to speak again.

"Hold it," Ami said, stepping in and pointing to Sasanna. "You first." Despite the fact that she was armed—Makoto did a double-take, the assortment of wooden weapons the gentle dryad was carrying not having registered before— Sasanna seemed afraid.

"I need to apologize for what I did," she said quietly. "I did not stop to consider that you might have different views on it than my kind do. I should have asked, first, or not done it at all, and I'm very sorry that it—that I— hurt you, Makoto."

"I'm sorry, too, Sasanna. I know you didn't mean to hurt me... and I shouldn't have hit you. And Ami..."

"You already told me you were sorry," Ami reminded her briskly. "Now, do you think you can handle walking back to Sasanna's?"

"Sure, I... walk? Wait a minute, you mean you walked all the way here? Why didn't you transform? You could have carried Sasanna and still caught up with..."

"I can't transform, Mako-chan." Ami admitted it with surprising calm. "At least, not safely." She related what had happened and explained her theory that it had something to do with the mana nexus.

"Do you feel all right?" Makoto asked when Ami had finished.

"Mostly." She was scared, but dealing with it well enough that Makoto could hardly pick it up.

*Damn it,* Makoto thought, clueing in to what she was doing. *After all that crap I gave Tarnara about not wanting to use this, I go ahead and turn it loose on the first person I see.*

"Ami-chan," she said, getting up off the chair, "there's something I think you ought to know. I..."

"Where did you get that dress?" Sasanna demanded in amazement.

Makoto looked down at the green dress, which up till now had been hidden by the large blanket. "Tarnara made it for me. Her tree did, actually. See, that's part of what..."

"Tarnara," Sasanna whispered, staggering backwards and sitting down heavily on the edge of the table. "That's... that's not possible."

"Up until this morning, girl, I would have agreed with you. But then, up until this morning, you wouldn't have been able to tell."

They all turned towards the old dryad, who stood before the door in the south wall. Sasanna let out a frightened squeak, dropping her spear as her hands flew to cover her mouth. The word "How?" got out around her fingers.

"You have your tall friend here to thank. She was upset enough by that little stunt of yours that when she sat down outside, all the noise in her head woke me up." Tarnara frowned at the younger dryad. "It wasn't a very polite wake-up call, but I'm more upset with you than I am with her. What were you thinking, girl? What were _any_ of you thinking? Did you even _stop_ to think, for that matter?"

"We did," Sasanna replied, straightening and calming slightly. She didn't say anything else, but Ami and Makoto looked from one dryad to the next and were certain that the conversation was still going on, just in a non-vocal way. Almost automatically, Makoto felt part of her mind reaching out towards the pair, and 'heard' their voices; the sense of Tarnara's tree was everywhere, and she could also feel a faint trace of Glossolyndaraberonasym, connected to this through Sasanna. The two trees seemed not to be aware of each other.

*...handled it badly,* Sasanna was saying in a very subdued voice, *but there's nothing I can do about it now.*

*Very true,* Tarnara agreed. *Fortunately for her, the girl let Kardelbanbororootyn show her what she needed to know to protect her mind. As for the rest of it, Sasanna, tell the others that you're going to have to find another way.*

*But...*

*I gave her my word that we'd stay out of her thoughts, Sasanna, and I'd be very disappointed if my sisters made me break a promise. You will tell them, won't you?*

*Yes.*

*Good.* Tarnara glanced at Makoto and Ami. *Was there something you two wanted?*

Makoto blushed, knowing the old dryad had likely spotted her the second she'd made contact. *Wait a minute... two?*

*Yes, two.* Makoto looked over at Ami, who had one hand on the nearest wall and a defensive look on her face.

*How did... WHEN did...* Makoto shook her head. *Did you...*

*I'm touching the tree and hearing through him, about two and a half hours ago, and I had no idea beforehand.* Ami rattled the answers off quickly and precisely. *Happy?*

An errant thought flashed through Makoto's mind, and she started giggling. *Poor Ryo-kun. He doesn't know what he's in for.*

*You just never mind about him,* Ami said, blushing. The girl's mental control was strong enough that the feelings rippling out of her mind were yanked back almost before they registered, but Makoto caught some very definite and recognizable emotions and started giggling anew. Poor Ryo, indeed.

*Two and a half hours,* Tarnara repeated, her eyes shifting back to Sasanna. The measurement of time didn't mean much to her, except that it had been not very long ago. *Why do I get the feeling you're somehow responsible for _this_ too, little sister?*

*I am,* Sasanna admitted with a sigh. *At least partly. I think I triggered something, or perhaps brought a little more than I intended when I pulled her consciousness back to the surface of her mind. Their minds are different from ours,* she added heatedly. *How was I supposed to know?*

Tarnara rubbed her forehead as if this whole business was giving her a headache, and the five-way mindlink changed a moment later as she dropped out of it. "Whatever Makoto did to wake us up is almost gone, Sasanna, and I'm just too tired to deal with any more surprises."

"'Whatever I did'?" Makoto said. "I don't understand."

The dryads exchanged a look. "I thought you told them," Tarnara said.

"I did, but only in passing." Sasanna drew herself up and looked at the girls. "Ami, Makoto, this is Tarnara Ferdel Auramyndoralla, the oldest of my sisters to ever live on this island."

"You said that yesterday afternoon," Ami said, slowly turning to stare at the old dryad. "But you... you're supposed to be..."

"We weren't dead," Tarnara replied. "Just very, very deeply asleep. We've always believed it was _possible_ for a sister and brother in the last sleep to be reawakened, but until Makoto came along, I don't recall ever hearing of it actually happening."

"Then the empathic blackout is..."

"...somehow connected to our reawakening," Tarnara finished, nodding. "Everything within the immediate reach of Kard's mind was turned towards him and I, blocking out our sisters and brothers, but I think it will go back to normal when we return to sleep. And that"—she yawned—"shouldn't be very much longer."

"But..." Sasanna began.

"We can't stay, girl. Our presence is disrupting the natural order of things, and we both know what that will lead to if it goes on for too long. And more than that..." Tarnara sighed. "It's been over two thousand turns since we sprouted, Sasanna, and we spent more than sixteen hundred of those awake. Kard and I are both tired; we need to rest."

*Although,* the old tree put in with a note of thanks Makoto felt was directed mostly to her, *to feel the wind, water, and sun again, to truly _know_ that we felt them... it has been good. Thank you for that, little one.*

"Yes," Tarnara said, walking over to embrace Makoto, "thank you, child. Interesting things are what we live for in the first place, and it has been _very_ interesting meeting you." Tarnara kissed her on the forehead again—she had to stand on her toes to do it—then looked Makoto squarely in the eyes. "Don't forget what we told you."

"I won't," Makoto promised. "And... thank you."

Tarnara nodded and moved to Ami. "You," she said in a clinical tone, "had best be careful about what you try to do with that." She tapped Ami's head meaningfully. "Our kind's abilities in the field of the mind are fairly limited, and there are things we either won't or can't do, but we've met other beings in the past who could and did. If you're anything like Makoto, I think you'll be strong enough to do those things my sisters and I can't—but don't let yourself get pulled into doing what we _won't._ You understand?"

Ami nodded solemnly, and Tarnara turned at last to Sasanna. "Well, little sister?"

"I don't want you to go again, eldest sister. We have your memories to guide us, but... it just hasn't been the same since you left us."

The old dryad's hard expression softened. "It's never easy, little sister, and it's never the same. But you should ask Makoto about what she saw when she went into Kard's mind, and then you'll know that even those of us that are gone are still with you." Tarnara looked at the girls for a moment. "If they ask, tell them what you can about their gifts. But just that. The rest will have to be done some other way. You'll keep my promise." It wasn't a question.

"I will," Sasanna nodded. "I think..." She stopped speaking, and there was a moment of intense rapport between the two dryads, too quick and brief for either Makoto or Ami to do more than recognize it before it was over. Tarnara nodded slowly.

"That might just work," she admitted. Sasanna was only a little shorter than Makoto, so Tarnara had to stand on her toes again to repeat the forehead- kiss. "It's your decision, sister. Good luck, whatever you choose. And good- bye."

"Good-bye, eldest sister and brother," Sasanna said in a solemn, formal voice. She was crying a little, but smiled through the tears as she added, "Again."

Tarnara shook her head and patted Sasanna's shoulder before making her way past the girls to settle back on the chair. She closed her eyes, smiled, and let out a long, steady breath.

That whisper of sound went on and on, and the old dryad's body settled into a stillness that was not quite death, but far more than sleep. As they watched, it sank into the wood of the chair, body and hair, dress and circlet, all of it silently and seamlessly vanishing into the substance of the tree.

*Good-bye, children.* All three of them heard the tree's final words very clearly.

Then it was silent, and Tarnara was gone. Again.

Sasanna looked at the now-empty chair for a long time. Then she brushed the tears from her face and looked at the two humans. "Let's go."

Even though neither of them could understand a single word the other said without Luna's interpretation, by the time Kaiya had to leave to make her own preparations for dinner, she and Usagi were already fast friends.

Luna had to admit that she liked the pale, sweet-natured girl too. Kaiya had a younger, more delicate version of her mother's beauty, but what lay behind the pretty face took after her father. Her entire conversation with Usagi had been a simple hour and a half of girl talk; not once had she tried to pry into Usagi's story, or even given the indication that she was fighting an impulse to do so.

Still, when Meria came back to announce that supper would begin in another hour, Luna redoubled her resolve to keep both eyes and ears open. There was no way to tell how large the Neraan household was, and if any other members of the family turned out to be like the Lady, this could easily turn into a very long and difficult night.

Artemis had returned from his walk his Akhmed a while back—with his tail up for some reason and a badly-hidden sparkle in his eye that would have had Luna's own tail twitching if she'd still possessed it—and quickly gave Luna a run-down on the night's menu, which she in turn drilled Usagi on for the next hour, trying to figure out what might have restored Artemis' good mood. Knowing him as she did, she didn't like some of the possibilities her mind came up with.

Ordinarily, that time would have been spent with Meria helping the two ladies dress and prepare, but as she had already demonstrated, Luna could alter her human form's hair and choice of garments with little more than a thought. In this case, she stuck with her sleeveless, narrow-skirts dress, upgrading the material to a finer, silk-like substance; she also added silver embroidery along the sides, but that was as far as she went. The silver crescent earrings and the polished tooth necklace were enough ornamentation, and Luna wasn't about to put her meehara down for an instant until they were out of this time.

That left Usagi to deal with, or so both Luna and Meria had assumed, right up until Usagi had pulled a familiar pen out of nowhere and waved it practically under Luna's nose while Meria was drawing another bath.

"Where did you get that?" Luna demanded.

"I took it back from ChibiUsa after she made her little trip to the hospital, remember? I've been keeping it on me since then to make sure she didn't go off and get herself into trouble."

Luna sighed. She was typically of the opinion that Usagi—either Usagi— and the Disguise Pen were about as safe a mixture as a barrel of gunpowder and a lit match, but in this case, she was almost glad to see the thing. She insisted on holding on to it until Usagi was out of the tub, though, then asked Meria whether or not the feast was going to be held indoors or out. When the girl said it would be at least partially outdoors, Luna told her to go fetch a light cloak in case Usagi needed it later in the evening. Once the maid was out of the way, Luna handed over the pen and told Usagi to get on with it.

She did that, raising the pen and calling out its activation phrase. Luna hid her face and Artemis fell over laughing when Usagi commanded the pen to make her look like "a glamorous high-society lady dressed for a formal evening dinner and dance, and never mind messing with the face, waistline, and hair or I'll find an automatic pencil sharpener and shove you in!"

That was _not_ the sort of command the pen had been programmed to receive, but for an inanimate magical object, the thing seemed to have a strong sense of self-preservation, because when the light show ended, the disguise it had created was clothes and accessories only, as requested. The gown was a modest one, shapely and stylish without calling too much attention to Usagi's figure or condition. It didn't have sleeves but included soft gloves which reached past the elbows. The dress was a soft, pinkish-white, the color changing a bit depending on the lighting, and the gloves were white; her engagement ring shone brightly, while a mix of diamonds and amethysts flashed at her throat. The pen had also added silver discs not entirely unlike the ornaments from Sailor Moon's uniform over Usagi's odangos, discs held in place by a short silver band hidden in her golden hair. Luna inhaled sharply when she saw what _else_ that band was holding in place; two short strings of pearls met at the middle of Usagi's forehead, ending at the inner curve of a gold crescent placed _exactly_ where the moon 'birthmark' would have appeared if Usagi had turned into Serenity.

Luna quickly flipped the golden moon up and sighed in relief to see nothing beneath. Usagi asked what she was so freaked about and then caught a look at herself in the mirror; the crescent made her eyes widen briefly, and she touched the discs in her hair with the air of someone who's the butt of a cosmic joke, but otherwise she thought the whole outfit rather nice. She definitely approved that her ring was in plain sight. The shoes, on inspection, were more like slippers than anything else, which Usagi also approved of, as heels in addition to the extra weight she was carrying around would have been pure murder.

There were a few moments of surprise when Meria came back with the requested cloak and found Usagi wearing a dress and jewelry that hadn't been there when she'd left, but the girl coped admirably and set about assisting with what little makeup Usagi chose to wear; the pen, likely choosing to err on the side of caution, had not provided any, but Meria knew what she was doing.

Looking at herself in the mirror, Usagi remembered the last time she'd gotten anywhere near this dressed up, as part of a night that had essentially been her good-bye to her Mamo-chan. She'd had to go over to Hikawa to get ready, of course; Rei had helped her plan and purchase everything, and the dress they had chosen—a deadly, slit-skirt number in a flame pattern of pure white, flashing gold, and fiery red, with matched stiletto-heeled shoes, black silk stockings, and a few other 'surprises' Usagi couldn't even think about without blushing—would have made even Ikuko lock her up every night for the next ten years. Kenji would have had a heart attack on the spot, and Luna probably wouldn't have been much better off.

The whole shopping list had depleted their combined allowances even with months of saving up beforehand, but Rei had helped out in several more important ways besides the money—which, with rather surprising and uncharacteristic generosity, she'd told Usagi to forget about paying her back. Several times during the afternoon, Usagi knew she would have given up on the whole idea if Rei hadn't been there to calm her down. And if she'd panicked, she never would have gotten to see the look on Mamoru's face when he arrived to pick her up; the two of them hadn't _quite_ done her up to kill, but Usagi figured Mamoru had been seriously wounded, if not maimed.

Remembering some of Rei's advice had been a big help later in the evening as well, at least until they got back to the apartment; Usagi had been on her own from that point, but she was... well, if not exactly proud, then at least pleased with the way things had turned out. She'd do it again in an instant and not change a thing. She _could_ do it again—eventually—since she still had the dress and everything else hidden _very_ carefully away under a floorboard at the shrine. She'd have to buy some new stockings, of course, and give the ensemble time to air out beforehand, but...

"Not tonight," Usagi admonished herself in a whisper.

*Not tonight,* the voice of Serenity repeated firmly. Then the princess giggled. *But not _too_ far in the future, right?*

*Definitely not,* Usagi agreed.

"'Not tonight,' what?" Luna asked suspiciously, her ears catching the faint words and her own eyes spotting something of the dreamy, sneaky look in Usagi's.

"Oh, nothing." Usagi smiled. "Quit frowning, Luna; you'll give yourself wrinkles, and we're going to be late."

Luna made a suspicious, catlike growl as they left the room.

Two guards escorted them to the dining hall, which as Luna had expected from her talk with Meria, included several doors opening into the large gardens behind the manor. A large table stood at the far side of the room, with places and chairs set for twenty or more people; about three times that number were moving about the room, not including the dozen or so guards stationed along the walls. More than half of them were wearing clothes of the same general quality and style as Meria's dress or the guard's uniforms, while the rest were done up on the same general scale as Usagi. A small group of three men and two women sat or stood in the corner to the left of the door, playing a 'modern' piece, slow and graceful, on a selection of instruments whose designs ranged from similar to the kinds Usagi had seen to completely unfamiliar.

Akhmed, Lund, and the house wizard were standing near the door when the ladies arrived; all three bowed. Akhmed wore the same outfit he had at the meeting that afternoon, plus a small ivory handle at his left hip that looked like the hilt of a knife or sword, but didn't appear to have a blade attached to it. Lund's clothes fell somewhere between the finery of the nobles and the functionality of the servants; the wizard wore his robes.

"La-Lady Usagi," Akhmed stammered, obviously more than a little overcome; Usagi didn't need Luna's translation to read his stunned features and decide that she _really_ liked this boy. "Welcome."

Usagi nodded and smiled at him, then accepted the greetings from the other two. The wizard, whose name she hadn't been told earlier, introduced himself as Erridar, and then spoke to Luna.

"My Lord has asked me to provide a translation spell for your mistress, should she wish one."

Luna really didn't want anyone talking to Usagi, but it would have been rude not to carry on even an inane conversation with some of the family members they hadn't been introduced to yet, so she repeated Erridar's statement for Usagi. The girl's briefly thoughtful expression told Luna and Artemis she was listening to Serenity's lifetime of advice before she nodded to accept the spell, which helped both cats to relax a little.

The diamonds in Usagi's necklace flickered when Erridar made a motion to release the magic, and Luna bit her lip; the ginzuishou was in that disguise, somewhere, and the diamonds were the most likely part of the whole thing to be reflecting it. If it decided it didn't like the spell...

There was a flicker in the diamonds, but nothing else. Luna let out a silent sigh of relief, then noticed Lund looking at Usagi with an odd expression. Why would he be startled?

"Thank you, Erridar," Usagi said, and the wizard bowed again. "Now, Akhmed, if you'll present Luna and I to your parents again, we can get on with the business of meeting the rest of your family."

Akhmed chuckled, made a motion with his hands, and started towards the center of the room. Usagi took a moment to square her shoulders before she and Luna followed, marching into the combined gazes of the Neraan family as if into battle.

"Any idea what had Lund spooked?" Usagi asked softly.

"Not entirely," Luna replied, not surprised that Usagi had noticed the strange, hasty look from the merchant's aide; the girl could be very clever when she cared to give it the effort.

"He's talking with the wizard," Artemis reported up to them. Luna glanced out of the lower corner of her eye and could just make out that one of her counterpart's ears was swiveled back towards the two men. "Something about magic reactions... energy... damn, lost it. Too much noise."

"The ginzuishou flickered when the spell arrived," Usagi told them. "I think it analyzed the magic to make sure it was safe. Do you think Lund might have seen that?"

"Anything's possible," Luna admitted. "We'll have to have a talk with him later."

In chambers of the palatial Imperial compound near the center of Khairoah, Medea looked up in surprise as the Orb atop her staff suddenly pulsed into life, glowing not with its usual blood-red fire, but a faded pink hue.

"Lady?" Vaurinn said curiously. "What does this mean?"

"Strong magic," she replied absently. "Not temporal-based by design, but powerful enough to adapt to that use. It set off a minor sympathetic reaction in the Orb."

"Our quarry?"

"Almost certainly." Medea looked into the Garnet Orb, then shook her head as its pale glow faded away. "It's gone again. Too fast to get a precise reading, but it's definitely somewhere in this city. To the north, I think." She looked at the wizard. "Have your spells turned up anything?"

"They may have. With your permission..." Medea waved her hand, and Vaurinn made a complicated gesture with his hands. A space on the floor about three paces to his left shone with blue light before a tall, thick-bodied man in slightly tattered and dusty clothes materialized, surrounded by a visible field of soft white light. He looked around nervously, in a way which suggested that he could neither see nor hear where he was and who might be there with him.

"His name is Tukkad."

That bit about walking into battle turned out to be a pretty close approximation as, for the next half hour, Usagi and her escorts drifted through the dining hall and out onto the balcony overlooking the gardens, meeting and greeting the members of the extended family and several other guests. The sharp claws and berserk charges of the enemies Usagi was used to facing were replaced by sharper looks and subtle body language; words of power and lethal projectile attacks surrendered their place to courtly, overblown speech laden with subtle slanders and hidden innuendoes.

Not having been informed—for obvious reasons—of the real reason for Usagi's presence—at least as far as the heads of the household knew it—the assembled nobles, semi-nobles, and low-born wealthy squared off against the strangers on every level to try and figure out who they were, or to simply size up their skill on the social battlefield:

"I hear you've recently arrived from a journey, my Lady; I'm something of a traveler myself. What made you decide to visit Earth, of all places?"

"A splendid dress, my Lady. I've heard how travel puts such a strain on the wardrobe, but I must say, you've coped admirably..."

"From Mau, you say? As it happens, my younger sister has long expressed a desire for a companion from that world. Tell me, my Lady, how exactly _does_ one go about obtaining the services of such a skilled guardian?"

"It's such a _shame_ that you couldn't bring your Lord to this evening's festivities, my dear..."

The wrong answer to any one question could have been a disaster, but with Serenity effectively riding shotgun, Usagi came up with the necessary counters, and scored a few points of her own:

"Just passing through the neighborhood, my Lord, though if the travel arrangements had been left up to me, I would have liked to have seen Saturn again. As a fellow traveler, I'm curious to know if you've ever been on one of the moons in time to see the effect of the Sun on the rings as you slide into the planet's shadow. You haven't? Oh, my Lord, you don't _know_ what you've missed..."

"This old thing? Well, you're right about what a journey does to convenience, but they always say that travel broadens your horizons, and I think a _few_ sacrifices are worth that, don't you?"

"Actually, my Lord, Luna and Artemis both really work for my mother, so I'm really the last person who could be any sort of authority on the matter. I _think_ that each society would have a different hiring policy, and... you didn't know? Yes, there are actually nine of them, all with their own codes of honor. I'd hate to imagine what some of them might do to someone who approached them the wrong way..."

"I know, my Lady, and I'm sure he would have loved to meet you as well. But please, introduce me to your son. The young man here? Oh, you mean he's _not_ your son; I'm sorry..."

And on like that.

Several of the men commented favorably on her hair, and Usagi noted with a repressed smile that, aside from a few streaks of grey and white, everyone else had hair that was at least brown, if not darker. None of the women mentioned it, even though most were eyeing her blonde head—odangos and all—with helpless envy; they were glancing at Luna's impossibly long blue-black tresses with very much the same air. Usagi felt a little smug about both facts.

Another thing she picked up was that a lot of people were discussing the weather. This wasn't entirely unusual, as the weather has likely been a safe topic for conversation since time immemorial. But rather than conducting pointless, harmless discussion, people seemed to be taking an active interest in the day's meteorological manifestations. Usagi glanced outside at one point and spotted some very lovely clouds, thin and tinted pink by the light of the slowly setting sun. Those clouds she could see appeared to have formed in a ring about the city, which struck her as rather peculiar.

"Atlanteans controlled the weather," Luna reminded her in an undertone. "Something must have gone wrong with whichever of the local mana nexi was set to atmospheric regulation."

"Do you suppose _we_ might have had something to do with it?" Usagi said, heeding a silent warning from Serenity to speak above a whisper; people who strained to hear whispers ignored the sort of low voice she was using just then.

"I hope not."

When the guests were finally called to their seats, Usagi found herself led to the far end of the table from Lord Neraan, a seat where everyone at the table could easily see her. She got the feeling that Lady Neraan might have had a hand in the seating arrangements, putting her and Luna—Artemis had eaten earlier and now sat curled up next to Usagi's chair—on display for the amusement of the gathered diners.

Kaiya, sitting to Usagi's right instead of by her mother at the other end of the table, was obviously having none of that. She had entered the hall late, wearing a rosy pink dress, pearl earrings, and a necklace of crisscrossing gold and silver mesh, politely and warmly greeted a few members of the crowd she knew, and then headed straight for Usagi. With Erridar's spell in effect, the girls had been able to take up their earlier conversation without Luna's efforts as a go-between—although they didn't exclude her—and as they and everyone else took their seats, Kaiya just settled down next to her friend, continuing the animated discussion and displacing all the guests on that side of the table one seat down.

Lady Neraan and a few of the other guests—particularly a young Lord who had been looking forward to engaging the lovely, pale heiress in a discussion of their own—were less than thrilled with Kaiya's decision to change seats. Lord Neraan, though, took one look at the vitality in his beloved daughter's face and signaled silently to his wife and the head of the servants to leave things as they were.

Between Artemis' earlier reconnaissance and the advice from three separate sources—Luna, Kaiya, and Serenity—Usagi was well-prepared to face the ordeal of a polite society dinner. She hoped. Her usual 'human vacuum' eating habits had to be put on hold, not merely for the sake of their cover but for personal pride; these people were staring at her quite enough as it was. Pleading a delicate stomach, she had the servants bring her only small portions at a time, and only one glass of wine; after an initial taste—slightly bitter—she let that sit except for a few toasts, and drank water the rest of the evening. Fortunately, while the food included a number of dishes that didn't have equivalents in twentieth century culture and therefore wouldn't translate out of Atlantean, Usagi thought most of it was delicious.

The meal itself was to last three hours, and even eating slowly and engaging in periodic conversation with the nearer guests, Usagi would find herself quite full by the end. Of course, there were interruptions which lengthened the actual time: three men and a woman dressed in robes similar to Erridar's, but more flamboyant, conjured up a variety of illusory entertainment; a pair of jugglers flipped balls, lit torches, and daggers towards the ceiling; the musicians played a variety of pieces Usagi assumed must be popular. While most of the guests seemed to ignore the wizards and the jugglers, a few slipped away from the table every now and then to dance.

It was about an hour into the meal when Akhmed appeared at the end of the table, bowed to the ladies, and asked Usagi if she'd care to dance. After a moment of careful thought, Usagi got an idea.

"I think I'll have to decline, Akhmed." She touched her belly and smiled apologetically. "Extra weight and all that. But why don't you take Luna out with you instead?"

Down on the floor, Artemis sat bolt upright, ears peaked and eyes wide with something that looked a little like fear.

"Usagi," Luna was saying cautiously, "I really don't think..."

"Oh, for once in your life, Luna, relax! Have a little fun!"

It seemed for a moment as if Luna was going to argue, but then for some reason, she smiled. "All right, Usagi. If you insist." She looked up at Akhmed. "I'm afraid I don't know very much about Atlantean dances, though. Would you mind if I taught you one from Mau, instead?"

Artemis made a choking noise. *I CAN'T have heard that right.*

"I'd be delighted," Akhmed replied.

Luna pushed back her chair and walked towards the center of the floor with Akhmed; watching them, Usagi almost didn't notice Artemis scramble up onto Luna's chair. "Artemis, what are you doing?"

"I must have eaten some bad tuna or something this afternoon," the white cat mumbled to himself. Luna was speaking with the musicians, tapping out a series of beats with her hands and getting a half-dozen slow nods of agreement. "This has got to be a hallucination."

Most of the guests looked up from their meals and conversations curiously as the music and the dance began. The tune was not one of the slow waltz-like pieces the musicians had been playing so far that evening; it centered around a series of three fast beats followed by four slow ones, with the other instruments playing low around the steady percussion of the hand-drum one of the men had produced.

This particular dance began with the participants facing each other, arms out to the sides and slightly forwards so that their hands just touched. Three long, quick steps to the right, then four short and slow steps to the left, each in time with the drum. The hands were also supposed to move; from the woman's point of view, the right hand moved in on the first step, the left moved in on the second, then both went out on the third step for a set of back-and-forth motions, her right hand pushing back _his_ left, then her left pushing back his right, ending with his arms pushing forwards as they returned to the start. The next set of steps were a reversal of the first—three to the left, four to the right, and the man was the one leading with the accompanying hand-movements—followed by a four fast beats of the drum in which the woman executed a quick spin, ending facing away from her partner, hands touching right to right and left to left instead of the opposite. They repeated the steps like that, and after the next spin, started over from the beginning.

Luna took it slow to begin with, giving Akhmed a few runs through to get the hang of the basic steps and letting the musicians familiarize themselves with the notes. She was pleased to find that the young man learned quickly—which was just as well for him—and the musicians knew what they were doing.

*So you want me to relax, do you, Usagi? Have a little fun, hmm?* Luna's smile then would not have looked out of place on a tiger. Pardon; a tigress.

Somewhere in the third cycle of the dance, Usagi frowned as she realized that something about the dance had changed. It wasn't going any faster or slower, and the actual steps were the same, but she was absolutely certain that a difference had appeared. Pinning it down took her a while, and when she had it figured out, Usagi couldn't help but blush.

Luna was... Usagi had no idea what to call it, actually. There were hip-swaying motions and rolls of the shoulders which started out subtle and got less so with each repetition of the basic pattern, making some very interesting things happen. When they were facing each other, each time Luna pushed her hands forward, she leaned just a bit closer to Akhmed, and each time _his_ hands moved forward, she leaned just a little further back. When she had her back to him, Luna didn't leave much room, and when she pushed his arms back, she leaned at the same time, in a manner that stretched her body out and suggested she intended to keep going.

It was one of those dances that it's just about impossible to keep from watching, and equally difficult to watch without going red in the face; there was a look in Luna's eyes that could have ignited cold rocks, and she turned it loose on everyone who made eye contact with her for even a fraction of a second. Most of the time, that was Akhmed, but to judge by the expression on his face, the poor boy wasn't sure whether Luna was going to kiss him, kill him, or just dance him into a quivering pile of jelly.

Usagi couldn't believe this black-haired dancer was actually the same person who scolded her for not paying attention to lessons on discipline and proper behavior, the same authoritarian, protocol-and-propriety-obsessed woman Serenity remembered from the Moon. Although, now that they thought about it, there had been a few times when Luna was in mid-rant that she'd suddenly demonstrated particularly in-depth knowledge of the topic at hand, almost as if she'd had first-hand experience with what she was denouncing...

The dance proceeded for about nine minutes, and only once in that time did Usagi manage to pull her eyes away for a quick look down at the table. Everyone was staring at Luna—everyone. The servants had frozen in the middle of their duties, and while the guards held to their straight-backed, forward-facing pose, their eyes were definitely busy. The guests whose chairs faced the wrong way had turned them around, and the ones on the other side were leaning to the left or the right so they could look around the others. Kaiya had a tremendous grin hanging crookedly off her face; she was enjoying the dance, no question, but she was enjoying what it was doing to her brother even more.

Looking at Kaiya, Usagi also looked past her, and caught a glimpse of Lund, at the other end of the table, looking back in their direction with a small smile.

*Well now,* Usagi thought. *I _know_ that smile's not for me...*

Usagi jumped in her seat and whipped her head around at the sound of a loud stomp; Luna had spun to face Akhmed again and brought her right foot down hard on the floor, signaling for the musicians to stop playing. The spin had tossed a lot of Luna's long, curiously lightweight hair up over her right arm so that it almost appeared to have grabbed hold of Akhmed. Her head turned to the left, allowing her to send a smoky-eyed look at the people seated near Usagi's end of the table; then she turned back to the right, her hair pulling away from Akhmed as she looked at Lord Neraan and the other high-ranking members of the family. Sheryndra, Luna was pleased to see, was gaping like a goldfish in an aquarium.

Pushing back his chair and getting to his feet in silence, Lord Neraan regarded Luna for a moment with a blank, stern face. Then he broke into a very deliberate smile and began to clap, which triggered a round of applause from just about everyone in the room. Luna listened to it for a moment, then smiled mysteriously, nodded to Lord Neraan, and turned back to Akhmed.

"Try to relax your back next time," she advised.

Akhmed made a sound which wasn't really a word as Luna returned to her seat, the focus of all eyes, and purring in an extremely self-satisfied manner.

When dinner ended, the party spilled out into the gardens, now lit by drifting globes of light conjured by Erridar and the other wizards. Tables covered with tiny snack items and bottles of wine were set up for the convenience of the guests as they drifted about the bushes and blooms. Some sought company, others sought privacy, and more were curious simply to see the gardens.

"It's this way," Kaiya said, the hem of her dress whispering along over the stone path. She was leading Usagi, Luna, and Artemis to one of her favorite parts of the garden. Lund had come with them as a sort of counterbalance to Luna and Artemis being there, and Kaiya had also tried to bring Akhmed along, but he kept giving Luna the same sort of looks a trapped mouse gives a cat, so they finally sent him away to calm down.

"You said how much you loved roses," Kaiya continued, "and there's a very nice arrangement of them by the north wall. Papa had the first planted for Mama when they were married, and he's added a small bush every year for their anniversary. Of course, they're not quite as nice at night as they are during the day, but you can come back out here tomorrow to see them."

Usagi nodded and made a polite sound of agreement, but her attention was mostly on Lund. She might not have Minako's 'love radar,' but there was—at least to her mind—no mistaking the way Lund's eyes followed Kaiya when he thought no one was looking.

"Here we are," Kaiya said, pointing to a patch of moonlight-drenched bushes set near the ivy-covered stone wall which ringed the gardens. There were, as she had said, quite a number of bushes—Usagi counted twenty-five, but it was hard to tell if that was accurate or not in the pale moonlight—the largest in the center of a pattern that had gradually expanded over the years. Circles within circles linked by criss-crossing lines, and with plenty of room left to add more bushes. Small white flowers bloomed near the base of each bush.

"They're very lovely," Usagi said honestly. Kaiya smiled.

"This one's my favorite," she noted, pointing to a bush that was located between the central section and outer ring of the pattern. "It's the bush Papa had planted the year I was born; they waited until my actual birthday to put it in, so it's been here as long as I have. Maybe it's just my ego talking, but I think it's the prettiest one here, don't you?"

"Wellllll"—Usagi drew the word out reluctantly—"I don't know. I personally think that _this_ one over here..." Kaiya made a hurt noise. "I'm only teasing, Kaiya. Your rosebush is beautiful." Usagi smiled a little sadly. "I was given a rosebush for my birthday, once. I always thought they were the most wonderful flowers in our entire garden."

Kaiya smiled, then shivered as a faint gust of wind blew over the wall. "Brrr... I should have brought a cloak."

"Here," Lund said immediately, unfastening his own short cape and draping it over her. Having been tailored for his height and shoulders, the cape covered Kaiya quite thoroughly.

"Thank you, Lund. That was very sweet of you." Kaiya stood up and kissed him on the cheek, which startled Lund more than a little.

"We... should get back to the manor before you catch a cold," he said, tripping over the words a little. Kaiya nodded and glanced at Usagi and her escorts.

"Coming?"

"You go on," Usagi said. "We'll find our way back." She grinned mischievously. "Although if you decide to run off and elope with Lund, I won't tell anyone."

Lund looked up, the corner of his mouth twitching as he tried to protest. Kaiya giggled as she half-led, half-dragged him off.

"What was that about?" Artemis asked curiously.

"He's in love with her," Luna said, using a tone of voice which considered her counterpart to be an idiot for not noticing.

"And I'm pretty sure she knows it," Usagi added. Then she sighed. "What's wrong with her, Luna? It's not cold out here at all, but Kaiya wasn't just shivering for show. Everyone keeps looking at her oddly, and she looks... almost like Hotaru used to."

"She's dying, Usagi. And those"—Luna pointed towards some of the brighter lights in the city—"are why. Mana nexi drain energy from the planet, but people are a _part_ of the planet, and when the drain on the world reaches a certain point, it starts affecting people. All forms of life carry certain amounts of the various elemental forces in their bodies, and we _need_ those energies to live. Those with lower levels of the assorted forces are affected sooner, getting weaker and weaker until..." Luna shook her head. "Judging by the signs, I'd say Kaiya's losing earth energy."

"Because she's so small?"

"Partly. Have you noticed how she seems to drift everywhere, almost as if she's floating? Well, that's a trait of elemental air, which is traditionally opposed to earth; when one weakens, the other automatically gets stronger."

"How long do you suppose she has?"

"I'm not an expert, but from what I remember studying, people who suffered from this ailment didn't usually make it to their sixteenth birthday. None ever lived past twenty."

"Kaiya's almost seventeen now," Usagi said quietly. "That's not fair, Luna."

"I know. But there's nothing we can do about it. Nobody in this time's realized what the problem is, and you can't use the ginzuishou in your condition, particularly not _here._ And even if you could, saving Kaiya would change the course of history."

"I know, I know. I have to accept that we can't do anything, but that doesn't mean I have to like it." Usagi rubbed her shoulders through the light cloak Luna had insisted she put on when they came outside. "Let's go back. It's not as warm out here as I thought."

Luna hesitated, then put her arm around Usagi's shoulders and started to purr soothingly as they walked. Usagi smiled.

"We used to take walks like this on the Moon, when Serenity-mama was busy," Usagi reminisced. "You know, Luna," she said after a long, reflective silence, "I don't think I ever thanked you."

"For what?"

"Everything. The training, the lessons, all of it. I know I haven't always been the best student or Senshi"—Luna bit her tongue to stop a reply—"but you never gave up on me; you've tried to keep me out of trouble, but you let me do things in my own time, my own way. You only had to be my teacher, but you chose to be my friend, too." Usagi hugged her. "Thank you."

Returning the hug, Luna simply said, "I promised your mother I'd look after you."

Usagi giggled. "That must have been _some_ promise. How did you ever manage to put up with me? With _any_ of us? Particularly considering all the grief we gave you back on the Moon?"

Luna couldn't help but wince. Her duties on the Moon had included the education of the Princess and her attendants—the Senshi, and a few of her favorite ladies-in-waiting—in the proper social graces. Simple enough in theory, but in practice, with that bunch for students...

Martians were renowned for their strictly proper society, and Vestia had been receiving lessons in etiquette from harsher teachers than Luna practically since the cradle, so she hadn't been a problem except on those occasions when her temper flared up—usually because one or more of the other girls wasn't paying attention. Periodically, Luna had even placed Vestia in charge of a few of the other students so that she herself could focus more attention on the rest.

At the other end of the scale was Ishtar, sun-haired, sun-bronzed, slender, smiling, and almost perpetually in a state of—what was by standards anywhere other than on Venus—half-dress. It wasn't that she had been immoral; honesty, faithfulness, compassion, and generosity were sacred virtues in the Venusian religion, and Ishtar would have been deeply hurt by any suggestion that she hadn't lived up to those standards. Nor did it have to do with an overblown ego; Ishtar knew she was beautiful, but she hadn't flaunted it, and she had forever been complimenting the other girls on their better attributes. It wasn't even a lack of civility, for the Venusian society had been as old and as complex as any other, with as many rules and customs. It just hadn't had much use for clothes.

Vestia had considered Ishtar a walking disgrace on the best of days, and Ishtar had in turn thought that her fellow Senshi needed to loosen up; they squared off at least twice a month for nearly ten years, each on a holy crusade to reform the other. Vestia tried to chaperone Ishtar, scaring away any number of past or potential liaisons with that menacing glare Rei still possessed today; Ishtar countered by describing any number of those young men in precise detail, trying to get Vestia to notice them but more frequently just sending the girl into a flame-faced retreat. Vestia enlisted Mercury's help to play havoc with the climate in Ishtar's quarters, hoping to make the tropical native cold enough to put something on; Ishtar spent several nights sharing quarters with Serenity or Amalthea, and then retaliated by modifying every dress in Vestia's wardrobe to Venusian standards. They quoted scriptures back and forth, they shouted at each other, they made threats. Luna thought they had both enjoyed themselves immensely.

Ishtar once tried to sneak a handsome young fellow into Vestia's bedchamber; they both left less than half a step ahead of Vestia, who had wielded her honor blade with one hand, a fiery lash in the other, and screamed bloody murder while chasing her 'friend' clear across the palace. Vestia, though, had been running through the halls in her nightdress—a pale red thing of sandworm silk—past any number of startled guardsmen and young nobles, so Luna figured that round went to Ishtar.

Amalthea, Serenity herself, and the assorted lesser ladies hadn't been quite so extreme in either direction. Amma listened, but since Jovians didn't pay much attention to social rank, she seldom put anything she learned to use. Serenity was something like her modern incarnation in that, while she was a decent student in the classroom, she never studied outside of it. Then there was Mercury, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of Luna's lessons but who, in typical Nereid fashion, got the facts absolutely perfect while missing the point entirely.

"Patience, persistence, and a lot of delegating responsibility," Luna said in answer to Usagi's question. "And it didn't hurt that I had Ariel around to help keep the rest of you in line."

Usagi nodded. Ariel, Haruka's past life, had been fourteen when Serenity and her guardians started being born, the oldest of that generation of Senshi except for Pluto—of course—and perhaps Mercury; who could ever tell, with Nereids, just how old one of them was? With over a decade and a half of Senshi experience under her belt by the time the rest had started their training, Ariel had been a combination of teacher and surrogate mother for the younger girls. Only Pluto and Saturn had been stronger, and even Amalthea had looked up to her. Figuratively speaking, of course, since Amma had been taller at age fifteen than Ariel was at twenty-nine.

"Of course," Luna added, "Ariel had her hands full looking after Larissa, or I would have handed two or three of the others over to her entirely so I could have focused on _you_ a bit better."

Usagi started to protest, and then halted as something tickled her memory. Larissa was Michiru's past life, and at five years younger than even Amalthea, she had been the baby of the Senshi. A very precocious baby, fluent in three languages by the time she was five, learning the use of her powers by age nine, and smarter than anybody other than Mercury, Pluto, and perhaps the Queen. And yet she'd somehow managed to flood the palace basements when she was twelve. Ariel had scolded her daughter very severely for th...

Usagi's mind stalled. "Her _DAUGHTER_?!" she blurted out.

"You didn't remember?" Luna asked in surprise.

"But they're... I mean, Haruka and Michiru... they are... but they _were_..."

"Remember your lessons, Princess." Luna's recitory manner stirred up Serenity's memories again. "'The universe recycles everything within itself. Dying stars expend energy and substance which give rise to new stars and new planets; the death and consumption of one life form allows others to live and grow. The matter which is swallowed into the oblivion of a black hole is transfigured into purest elemental energy, which seeps back into the ley lines; even souls are reused, passed from one life to another.'"

"'The soul is both a single thing and a composite of lesser ones. Male and female, parent and child, plant and animal, consciousness and instinct, good and evil; the soul is all of these together and yet none of them at all. Ever curious, ever changing, the soul passes from life to life on a journey to understand itself, becoming many things in order to explore all aspects of its existence. The soul may divide itself or merge with others; it may walk alone or travel alongside other souls it has met before and will meet again, other souls to which ties of love or shackles of hate have bound it.'" Luna finished quoting and opened her eyes. "A little preachy, but it gets the message across. It doesn't matter _now_ who or what Haruka and Michiru _were,_ Usagi; they love each other, and their souls are just finding different ways to explore and express what that means."

"Well... yeah, but..." Usagi gave it up; this sort of metaphysical spiritual babble was out of her league. "If I end up coming back as Mamoru's mother or something in a future life," she said with a warning glance up at the stars, "then SOMEBODY is going to pay DEARLY for it."

"Consider the universe forewarned," Luna murmured. Usagi shot her an indignant look, couldn't hold it, and they both started laughing. Artemis rolled his eyes.

Their shared good mood dissolved as the general stillness of the night air was broken by the sounding of a gong somewhere in the manor. Usagi and her guardians looked up at the unexpected noise, frowning in different degrees.

"What is it, Luna?"

"I'm not sure, but we'd better get back inside."

Medea was not by nature a patient woman. When she wanted something, she wanted it _now;_ when she gave an order, she expected it to be carried out immediately. But she'd had to wait today, for hours on end, while her subordinates canvassed the city.

Her interviews of the three duty-wizards and the supervisor from the mana reactor had taken forever, but they had repeated their written statements almost verbatim, and Vaurinn's magic had confirmed the truth of their words. As if anyone would dare lie to _her._

The story told by Vaurinn's petty thug, of a golden-haired girl and a demon cat, was the sort of thing most people would have dismissed as being born from the bottom of his last mug of ale. After Tukkad had given the location of the small oasis, however, Medea was inclined to believe him, for it lay almost at the heart of the region where the Gate had opened. Again, Vaurinn's magic proved the man was not lying, and the girl's pregnancy would immediately explain why Medea had been unable to get an exact count of the travelers.

Then it had been a long, interminable wait as Vaurinn questioned the commanders of the city watch, finally learning that the young man, Akhmed of House Neraan, had returned to the city just that morning, in the company of several merchants and their guards. There was no word of a pale foreign girl with golden hair; the only woman in the group had been pale, but with extremely dark hair and a proud demeanor. But she had been riding with a smaller figure in a cloak and hood. And the Neraan estate was to the north, the same direction suggested by the reaction of the Garnet Orb.

Now, standing in the front hall of that manor, Medea was again being forced to wait as Vaurinn spoke with his counterpart, the house wizard. Curiously enough, now that she was sure she had located her quarry, waiting was no trouble at all.

Luna's heart sank when the red-haired woman entered the hall, a familiar staff in her hand and an equally familiar symbol clearly visible upon her robe. The presence of the two wizards at her left hand only made things worse. Even a Senshi of Pluto would miss the ginzuishou as long as it stayed dormant, but Lund had seen its presence, had spoken to Erridar about it at least once, and now that the house wizard had been questioned by his colleague...

"I'd heard a rumor that a Senshi was in the city," one of the nearby guests said quietly to his neighbor. "What do you suppose could be important enough to bring Lady Pluto herself all the way from the Great City?"

"And with a mage-inquisitor, no less," the neighbor agreed.

Luna ignored them and silently counted heads. Ten soldiers in all, plus the past-Pluto and the new wizard. Not good odds, and worse if the house guards were ordered in as well. Who was the girl, though? She couldn't be an apprentice, or she would have been wearing the robes of a junior wizard or Senshi-in-training. Instead, she was dressed not much differently than the servants, and from the way she stood, eyes downcast and near at hand to the Senshi, that was what she appeared to be—a very frightened servant, perhaps even a slave, judging from the fearful way she looked at everything except her mistress.

Lord Neraan and his brother were greeting the new arrival with a number of hasty bows; she ignored them and made a slow survey of the room, her eyes stopping when they reach Usagi and Luna. The crowd parted as the head of her staff lowered to point at the pair, the Orb atop it flickering once.

"Who is that?" Pluto asked in a clear, quiet voice which somehow carried to every ear in the room.

"Steady, Luna," Usagi murmured, getting a firm grip on her friend's arm.

"The young lady's name is Usagi, Lady Medea," Lord Neraan replied a bit uncertainly. "She is..."

"She is under arrest," Medea said flatly, "as is her companion. Guards, take them. And the cat, as well. Vaurinn, search them for items of magic; anything you find is to be handed over to me immediately."

Luna's eyes widened, but not nearly as much as the wizard's. "Lady, that is highly... irregular. By law, seized magic is to be held by an appointed member of my Order until..."

"I am aware of the authority the law gives you, mage-inquisitor. MY authority supersedes it where matters of temporal security are concerned, and is backed by the personal command of Emperor himself. Now follow my orders—and HIS—and secure that device of theirs before they have a chance to use it."

"I don't think so," Usagi said flatly, getting the undivided attention of everyone in the room.

"By what right do you dare to challenge the authority of the Emperor?" Medea said.

"By the same authority that empowers your office, Senshi of Pluto. What I carry is not of this time and must remain unknown to it, else the flow of history will be invariably disrupted." Usagi was rapidly slipping into full Serenity-mode, face calm and commanding. Her words were translating into Atlantean through Erridar's still-functional spell, but looking closely, Luna could just make out that her lips were no longer moving in the Japanese that was Usagi's native language, and were instead shaping the musical syllables of High Lunari, the speech of kings and queens that Serenity had been raised to use.

"We have attempted to remain uninvolved with the events of this era since our arrival," Usagi continued. "If you deem it necessary to protect the timeline by placing us in isolation, I will not resist, but you will _not,_ for any reason, convince me to relinquish my property."

Medea was taken aback by the sudden iron authority, to say nothing of how someone so young could possibly understand so much about _her_ duties, but she recovered immediately. "You refuse to obey?"

"If you insist on trying to seize what is not yours to take, then yes, I do."

"Then I have no choice." Medea smiled coldly. "Guards, kill them."

Lord Neraan's protests were ignored as the ten soldiers drew their swords and advanced, guests melting aside in all directions. Luna drew her own weapon and set herself between Usagi and the guards, but the meehara was a tiny fang against even one of the approaching swords. She could get two, three, perhaps four if she was lucky...

The deathly silence of the chamber was broken by a tiger-like roar from a human throat, and suddenly a young man with long white hair was in the middle of the guards, the claw-like blades in his hands tearing into them with whirlwind speed and surgical precision. Caught by surprise, three guards went down in that initial attack: the sword-arm of the first hung limp and useless by his side, shoulder and elbow ripped and torn; the second had been struck in the throat by an elbow and now lay on the floor, gasping for breath; the third had dropped his weapon with a roar of pain to clutch at the bloody ruin of his face.

A sword flashed out at the attacker, who spun and snared the blade inside the curve of his triple-bladed claw, using its momentum and his own to hurl the hostile weapon clear of his body even as he knocked the guard's feet out from under him with a sweeping kick. Luna got a good look at the face under all that white hair, and blinked in wonder.

"Artemis?" In spite of the situation, Luna had to smile. *I didn't remember him being quite this handsome.* "Behind you!" she called out suddenly, seeing the man with the mangled arm coming up with a knife in his left hand.

Artemis either heard the warning or knew the man was there, because he turned to meet the attack. His s'srah weren't designed to block attacks so much as redirect them; the downward curve of the claws, as already shown, was good for catching large blades, and the short, forward-facing spikes on the undersides prevented other weapons from sliding up into the hand holding the s'srah.

There were spikes on the back of the s'srah as well, sloping out to points along the line of the knuckles, and Artemis used those now, angling his left arm to catch the stabbing knife on the top of his claws, where it rode along the back of the s'srah and was deflected wide by the outwards-oriented points. He kept moving that arm forward as well, cutting into the guard's wrist with the defensive spikes, and when the guard shifted his arm away from the stinging slice, Artemis turned his forearm and pulled back, ripping open the guard's arm from elbow to wrist with his claw. The man dropped the knife and pulled back all of one step before Artemis struck him across the sides of his helmed head with both weapon-bearing fists, producing a sound not unlike a rung bell and sending the guard to the floor in a heap.

"Protect Usagi!" Artemis shouted at her, turning, leaping, and driving both feet into the face of another opponent.

"Don't try to tell me my job!" Luna shouted back, side-stepping a lunge from the nearest guard and then bringing her meehara across the backs of his knees, sending him to the floor with a scream and a crash. Luna insured that he wouldn't be getting up again for a while by striking her free hand hard into his neck, just under the rim of his helmet; the man stiffened briefly and then sprawled out, and Luna turned her attention to other matters.

Two more guards were advancing on Usagi, one uninjured, the other the one with the mauled face, glaring out through his right eye. Luna launched herself at the nearest with a hiss, ducking the sweep of his sword and bringing her weapon up point-first, below the edge of his mail vest, to probe around somewhere in his belly. Every instinct and ounce of training told Luna to finish the attack, to stab deeper and find a kidney, or the bottom of a lung, or something to make the kill; instead she dove to the left, dragging the point and razor edge of the meehara along the man's belly and shifting the curved weapon out at the end as she moved clear of the man and the horrible mess that came sliding out of his opened belly.

It wasn't a fatal move—not immediately, anyway; a man could live for hours with his innards exposed like that—but it was painful, and as he dropped his sword to try and hold back some of those other things, it certainly put him out of the fight.

Scarface, meanwhile, had slipped around the short, ugly encounter in an attempt to get to Usagi. In desperation, Luna lashed him across the shoulders; his mail defeated the edge of her blade, but the impact got his attention, and when he turned around, Luna blocked his return blow—she had to hold the meehara with both hands to halt the heavier blade—and then unleashed a special trick of her warrior society on him, the crescent on her forehead flashing brightly. Mindshock, this was called, a quick, short-range psychic attack which took advantage of the inherent mental powers of some Nekoron females—of whom Luna was one—to momentarily stun an enemy. It didn't work on most monsters, whose minds were shielded by the thick evil power which had created them, but ordinary humans were another story.

The guard's open eye went unfocused, and the weight of the sword eased slightly as every nerve in his body received a burst of confused data from his brain. Luna pushed the sword away, reversed her grip on her meehara, and drove the pearled end of the grip into the man's exposed throat, sending him to the floor with a choking gurgle. While he was down, she cut the straps holding his helmet in place, lifted it off his head, and then brought the back of it solidly down on his skull. He'd be asleep for hours, but again, he'd survive. Luna looked up quickly, made sure Usagi was okay, then searched for Artemis.

He was halfway across the chamber, fighting five guards at once. *Show-off,* she thought, somewhere between affectionate and irritated. Feri'al trained for stealth and speed, not direct combat; the slender, curved-blade meehara wasn't suited for the kind of heavy sword-parrying she'd had to use it for with that last guard. Garheer, on the other hand, trained to excel in melee, as Artemis was clearly demonstrating. There were two other guards down in addition to Luna's three, and none of the ones standing were uninjured. Artemis wasn't fighting them one at a time for any longer than three or four seconds, jumping around like a psychotic rabbit and lashing out at whatever got in range, inexorably crippling the five remaining guards.

*Make that four,* Luna corrected herself, watching one of the men fall. She knew she really ought to help Artemis—or do something about that Senshi!—but for a moment she couldn't help but lose herself in the sheer martial beauty of the moment, watching him at work. It was another dance, very different from the one she'd turned loose on Akhmed tonight, but it was no less stirring.

Luna wasted another moment in a speculative smile that had nothing to do with the fight as she recalled that the Garheer trained for stamina, too, then sized up the rest of the room.

None of the guests were getting anywhere near them, and while the house guards had taken up defensive positions around the room, they too were holding in place, looking to their Lord for instructions. The Atlantean Senshi, Medea, was watching with mounting anger that Luna found understandable, considering that her side was getting soundly beaten. But neither she nor the wizards had made a move yet.

"Enough!" Medea shouted as the seventh of her soldiers went down. She raised her staff in one hand, spun it around to the side of her body for a moment, and then leveled it at Artemis with both hands, shouting, "STASIS BOLT!"

The Garnet Orb flared brightly, discharging a bolt of blood-red energy at Artemis. He dodged it easily, leaping high and kicking out to either side to get his legs clear—incidentally nailing one of the three remaining guards in the face even as they pulled back—but as the beam shot down to the floor in an apparent miss, Medea didn't seem disappointed. The floor tiles beneath Artemis, Luna and Usagi realized, were glowing brightly with the same dark-hued light of the orb. Artemis saw it, too, but he was in mid-air and had no way to stop himself from landing.

The instant before Artemis' feet hit, Medea pulled her staff back in the same manner as a fisherman does his line and called out the concluding word of her attack: "SNARE!"

Artemis' reactions were honed to split-second precision, and he was tensing to rebound off the dangerous floor while still in mid-air, but he still had to touch the floor for a moment to jump, and against Pluto, whose timing was by nature almost always perfect, even split-second reflexes were too slow. A dozen rings of red energy burst forth from the floor and rippled up around him, some expanding and others contracting to fit the general outline of his body; Artemis stopped moving in a half-crouch, caught by the magical paralysis with his knees half-bent in preparation for a leap to safety that would now never be.

Medea smiled a chilling smile, raising her staff again. Usagi and Luna couldn't make out what she said next, but they didn't have to; they recognized the glowing mist which began to emanate from the Garnet Orb.

The Dead Scream howled through the air and blew Artemis clear across the room, hurling him into the far wall with a sickening crunch. It was obvious as he slid to the floor that the paralysis of the other attack had worn off—either because it had been stripped away by the Dead Scream or because Medea had stopped concentrating on it—but the loss was hardly an issue now.

It took Artemis a moment to figure out what had happened as, from his point of view, time had almost totally stopped when the red rings appeared. One instant he was over there, and the next, he was hitting the wall. He told himself to ignore the pain, but his body clearly had its own ideas, and refused to even consider trying to get up.

Something rolled him over, and Artemis found himself looking up into the worried eyes of a dark-haired angel... Luna. He tried to grin at her, but it came out a little crooked.

"How'd I do?"

"You were wonderful, Artemis." Luna smiled back. "For a Garheer, anyway."

"Ingrate," he retorted, laughing and then groaning as his ribs complained about the treatment they'd just received. His gaze shifted, looking past Luna, and he hissed, "Usagi!"

Luna turned quickly and then jumped, pushing Usagi down as another Dead Scream tore across the hall, missing them both and blasting out a large piece of the wall in a spray of stone shrapnel instead. A piece of that explosion struck Luna across the back of the head, and Usagi felt her go limp. She rolled out from beneath, got to her knees, then turned Luna over. Eyes closed and face relaxed, she might have been asleep, but when Usagi pulled her hand away from the back of her friend's neck, there was blood on her fingers.

"Luna? Luna!"

"Don't waste time with tears," Medea advised in a voice of ice. "You'll be joining her soon enough."

Even she drew back uncertainly, though, when Usagi's head snapped around, the depths of her eyes blazing with pure white light. She gently set Luna down before standing and holding her hands in front of her heart. In the flash which followed, her disguise melted away into the familiar comfort of Serenity's simple white gown; the golden crescent hanging from her hair dissolved into the air to reveal the even more golden mark on her forehead, and the diamonds flared brilliantly before exploding into a spherical aura of white force. Between her hands, at the very heart of the sudden magical manifestation, the ginzuishou floated and flickered with the silvery-white light of its full awakening.

Near one corner, Lund shielded his eyes, his magical sight blinded by the awesome intensity of the tiny crystal's energy. On the other end of the hall, the Garnet Orb surged with energy of its own, and the chamber was suddenly a contrast between white and red light, flickering and dancing along the walls in chaotic patterns.

Serenity and Usagi were once again equally sharing control of their body, seeing through the same eyes, speaking with the same voice, and for once, thinking the same thoughts. They might have been the same soul, but there was a world—several worlds, and entire centuries—of difference between the mind of an interplanetary Princess and a schoolgirl-turned-superheroine. Serenity was the one who knew everything about magic, but Usagi was the one who knew how to fight, even if she didn't always want to, and one or the other of them would take charge as the situation demanded.

Right now, Serenity wanted to fight as much as Usagi did. They were both furious over what this past-Pluto had done to Luna and Artemis, and that blurred the line between their usually semi-separate awarenesses.

But they didn't attack. They couldn't. The ginzuishou would at least try to do whatever they asked it to, but using it was difficult, draining, and ultimately deadly if carried on for too long. They could have both lived with that, but there was another presence besides the Princess and the schoolgirl and the strange awareness of the crystal, a tiny, quiet voice they knew had been there all along but had never heard until now.

Still growing in her mother's womb, ChibiUsa woke up for the first time and was frightened.

Instinct took over, and the portion of this gestalt that was Usagi turned its attention inward, reaching through the power of the crystal to the mind of her unborn daughter, whispering quietly for her not to be afraid. Most of her awareness fixed on that task, but a little turned back to Serenity.

*We can't do this. Not this way.*

*uSe tHE cRYSTAl!*

Serenity and Usagi blinked in unison, and the living heart of the crystal pulsed; they knew that warped disjunction of a voice.

*Do NoT aTTack tHe foGgY lOnDoN MOrnINg womAn!* Chaos continued. *coLLEct CaLl oUT to yOUr fRIenDS! Bring them TO yoU! tHEy WiLL fiGht for FiVe Six, PIck Up STIckS yOu! lOOk! inSIde the cRysTAl! sEE AnD rEMEMber!*

Neither of them trusted Chaos even slightly, but one or both of them couldn't help but reach out to the crystal and look around at what it remembered doing in the past. There was a brief image of a young-seeming blonde woman in silver armor with a crown built into her helmet, standing on a battlefield surrounded by many strange and hideous things. By the hair, the crown, and the flashing crystal in her hands, the woman was one of the Queens of the Moon; the night sky overhead was filled by a colossal yellow-orange planet with immense rings, against which at least four moons were visible.

*Serenity III,* the Princess said immediately. *The Saturn War.*

Pages of history books she herself had never seen flipped across Usagi's mind's eye. The many moons of Saturn, bathed by the strange radiation of their parent planet's weird dimension-warping nature, had long been inhabited by many vile beings of darkness. Those creatures had been held in check by the mighty armies and sorcerers of Atlantis, but when the cruel empire fell apart, the equally cruel monsters rose from their hiding places to attack humanity. They had been the bitterest enemies of the scattered Jovian tribes, raiding the lunar colonies at regular intervals and periodically attacking the inner planets as well. A three-year concerted effort by an alliance of nearly two dozen nations had finally cleansed the threat, and Serenity herself had taken part in several battles, the energy of the ginzuishou buffering her troops against the dark powers of their foes.

In the projected memory, they saw the warrior-queen raise the crystal and call out. There was a bright flash which drove the massed monsters back, and Serenity was suddenly no longer alone, but flanked by four women in similar armor, in shades of blue, gold, red, and green, launching familiar attacks into the dark shapes all around. And the Queen continued to wield the crystal, protecting her Senshi against the counterattacks of the wounded horde without the slightest trace of fatigue.

As the image faded, Serenity and Usagi were both left stunned. Not from learning that the ginzuishou could summon the Senshi, but that Chaos had told them about it.

*WE knOw ManY THinGs,* Chaos said in a humble-proud chorus. *wE knOw ThAt thE suMMonInG pOwer OF the CRYSTaL wIll nOt bE daNGeROuS for you To usE. we know why TOAst aLwaYS lanDs buTTeR-siDe dOwn, and WhY CATS alWayS lANd oN theIr Feet. WE kNOW wHAT the WOrDs OF LoUIe-louIE REallY aRE, thAt the ULtiMatE aNSwer is FOrtY-tWO, aNd THat lAst yeAR'S total RAInFall iN tOkyO wAs exACTly EQuaL to tHe TImE-RemaINing bOnUS sCOre youR bRoThER GOT on LEVEl thRee of hIs SaiLOr v gAMe laST wEek.*

*Why are you helping us?*

Serenity and Usagi shivered as, for a brief instant, the fractured awareness of Chaos solidified into one focused mind, one will, almost defying its own nature to speak clearly with a single voice.

*I owed you a debt. Now it is paid in full.*

Then it shattered into madness again and was gone.

*Do we trust it?* Serenity asked.

*Do we have a choice?* Usagi replied, relaxing the mental shields she had willed into existence around the still-unformed mind of her daughter when she first sensed Chaos. *Watch closely, little one. You'll have to know how to do this for yourself one day.*

There was a brief pause when the three minds reached out for the crystal, as it responded to the presence of the last and least with a weirdly beautiful series of tinkling flashes and sighing chimes, evoking a sense of delight the from infant intellect. It obviously liked her and wanted to get to know her better.

*It was YOU?* Usagi demanded of the crystalline consciousness, recognizing the strange 'music' that had been haunting her dreams on and off for the last five months.

There was a guilty-sounding warble in the shimmering song, and the reflected and refracted red light spilling out of the Garnet Orb made the ginzuishou appear as if it were blushing.

*We'll talk about this later,* Usagi promised, triggering another warble.

During this internal conference, the force-bubble being projected by the ginzuishou had absorbed a dozen combined assaults from Medea and Vaurinn with no more effect than a slight rippling where the various bolts, beams, cones, and spheres of assorted magical elements impacted against it. Erridar stood quietly to one side, watching but not uttering so much as the first syllable to the simplest spells he knew. He was a capable enough wizard, but the level of raw power being loosed here was simply beyond him.

Usagi raised her hands above her head and looked up into the incandescent heart of the crystal, calling out in a clear, commanding voice. Erridar felt a brief surge of silly pride as his translation spell, somehow still functional even with all the mystical chaos flying around it, cast words that were undoubtedly being said in a language that wouldn't exist for several thousand years into understandable Atlantean:

"Guardians! Awaken! Across space and time, hear my call! To me!"

Medea looked up in horror as the Garnet Orb flared nearly as brightly as the tiny crystal, seconds before pure white light filled the room with blinding intensity, swallowing her terrified scream.

In the city beyond the manor, four tall, complex towers topped by large bodies of shifting light suddenly rattled as if in the grip of an earthquake. Green fireballs and bolts of lightning-like energy exploded out of the straining structures as every magical light in the city surged into brilliance. In the sky, the odd ring of clouds began to spin and swirl around the common center of the four towers as the winds inexplicably grew stronger, almost as if the jagged arms of power clawing their way up into the night were feeding the power of nature.

They walked back to Glossolyndaraberonasym in near-silence. Weighed down by the emotions left over from the strange meeting with her sister, Sasanna didn't feel like talking, and was in any case too busy mentally explaining to several hundred dryads and their trees what had just happened. Makoto, meanwhile, was trying to get a grip on the new and yet familiar sensation of feeling not only the unthinking presence of the plants, but the living minds around her as well. Ami spent most of the walk trying to batter down the blocks in her mind that were preventing her from remembering her past life.

It was extremely important that she remember. She had been relieved to discover that her unlooked-for mental ability was a passive sort of thing: she had only been able to hear the dryads' silent conversation by touching the tree and focusing on the task; walking along through the forest, the only thing she picked up from Makoto or Sasanna was the certainty that she could close her eyes, spin around in circles for a while, and still be able to point directly at them. No thoughts came through, and the only emotions she felt were her own, as they applied to her relationship with each individual.

That was at least a little reassuring. Ami did not _want_ to be able to read minds, but Tarnara had implied that she would eventually be able to do a lot more than that, and if she couldn't push through the barriers in her head and _remember,_ she was going to have to relearn everything from scratch, with no way to know what was dangerous, whether to herself or to another person. The only people she could think of in her own time who might be able to help were Luna and Rei, but their gifts were somewhat limited; 'send-only' in Luna's case, and 'receive-only' in Rei's, and she didn't even receive thoughts, just images and information. There would only be so much either of them could do to help her.

*Not to mention the fact that Rei-chan might get it into her head to try and make _me_ into a miko when she finds out I can sort of read minds.* The thought started out with a touch of humor and ended on a shiver that was a little afraid and very uncertain. What exactly _were_ the others going to do when they learned about what this trip through time had done to her? Or Makoto, for that matter?

"I've been worrying about that myself."

Ami looked behind her. "Don't do that, Mako-chan."

"Sorry," Makoto apologized immediately. "It's just really hard to tell the difference between something being _said_ and something being _thought_ with a lot of emotion behind it." She frowned. "I thought I might be able to handle this better if I concentrated on what it was like before—when I was little, I mean—but it doesn't seem to be helping much."

"You'll get the hang of it. If Rei-chan, Ryo-kun, and Setsuna-san are any indications of what having ESP is like, then it's safe to say it takes willpower and courage to deal with it, and I know you've got plenty of both."

Makoto didn't reply for a moment. "Ami-chan?"

"Yes?"

"If you... when we get home, if you decide you want to move out, I won't hold it against you."

"What in the world are you... no, wait. Let me guess. You're worried that I'm still angry with you for hitting me, right? And now that your brain's basically been rewired, you're equally concerned about accidentally picking up things I'd like to keep private. Is that it?"

"Pretty much." Makoto looked at her. "Are you reading my mind?"

"It only seems to work like that if I can touch somebody. At least for right now. Mako-chan, I'll admit that I wasn't happy with you, but it wasn't like you were trying to hit me on purpose. And with everything else you've had to go through today, I can forgive you for getting a little careless."

"Thanks, Ami-chan."

"I wasn't finished," Ami said. "Makoto, if you can hit _me_ when you're angry, after everything we've been through together, what's to stop you from hitting someone you don't know well enough to care about? What could you do to someone you really _didn't_ like? I know you never really hurt anybody when you used to get into fights, but you're a lot stronger now; what happens if you lose your temper again like you did this morning?"

"I can handle it."

"No, actually, I don't think you can." Ami waited for a moment before quietly saying, "I know you think you're handling losing your parents, Mako-chan, but you're not. You're hiding from the pain, and instead of going away, it's festering inside of you. I know because I did the same thing when my parents divorced; I tried to ignore it, I blamed myself, I blamed them, I hated my mother because she'd made my father leave, I hated Father for leaving at all. I even tried to run away." Makoto looked at her, and Ami smiled faintly. "Yes, even I've committed a few acts of rebellion in my time. I took too long planning it, though, and Mother caught me in the middle of packing. Can you believe she wasn't even angry? She actually said she was impressed that I'd taken so much care in thinking things through. We had a long talk that night, and the next, and for most of the nights that month. Mother even called Father over a few times." A strange smile formed on her lips. "It'd been such a long time since I'd heard them sit down and talk in each other's presence without sniping at each other or arguing. I thought at first maybe I could get them back together, the right way this time."

"Ami..."

"It didn't take long for me to realize what a mistake that was," Ami continued. "They were both so much more at ease like that than I'd ever seen them when they were still married. Maybe they weren't exactly happy, but they were both content. It... hurt when I realized that, but once I did, I stopped being so angry with them. Or myself." Ami coughed and brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. At least, Makoto _thought_ it was hair. "What I'm trying to say is that talking about what had happened made it easier to put away all the pain that went with it."

"I had this discussion with Tarnara, Ami. I had it with my uncle when he sent me to see that counselor, and I had it with Tsuta-san every time I saw her. I spent six months going to see that woman, every other day at five for one hour, and do you know what? One minute of fighting that pretty-boy Zoicite made me feel better than ninety-odd hours of therapy."

"I wasn't going to suggest you go to a psychiatrist, Mako-chan, just that you talk to somebody about it. I don't think you're going to be able to hide from the pain anymore, not if you're walking around with other people's emotions crowding your own, and if you don't get a grip on it, it's going to get away from you again." Ami shifted her jaw, still a little stiff from the 'accident.' "Next time, I may not be around to stop you."

Makoto rubbed at her right arm. "I'll think about it." There was a long silence, and then she added, "So you're not going to move out?"

"I already said I wasn't." She smiled. "We budding mind-readers have to stick together, right? And besides, the only places I could go are Rei-chan's or Mina-chan's. I'd rather not risk seeing what hangs around inside Mina-chan's head, and I'm pretty sure Rei-chan's going to try and draft both of us into service at the temple as it is when she finds out what we've learned. Red's not really my color, so I'd rather not give her any more of an edge than I have to; she's a hard person to say no to."

"If you say so. Personally, I thought you looked sort of cute in that spare robe of hers the last time we helped out at Hikawa." Makoto pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Speaking of cute... you're sure you can only pick up thoughts when you touch somebody?"

"For now, at least. From what Tarnara said, I think we can expect that to change, eventually—but what does that have to do with cute?"

"Well, if Ryo-kun sees you in that dress, he's not going to be able to keep his hands off..."

Ami slugged Makoto in the shoulder before she had a chance to finish the sentence, and they started arguing heatedly. Up ahead, Sasanna heard the noise and felt the conflicting waves of irritation, faked anger, and very real affection flowing out from the pair, and smiled briefly, reassured by the speed with which the sisters were healing the breach that had begun to form between them. Then she went back to the conference being held in the collective minds of the dryads and their trees.

The three travelers reached Sasanna's tree with several hours left before sunset, and they spent all that time and much of the following night talking. The girls wanted to know what they could about what was happening to their minds, and Sasanna had questions of her own for Makoto about what had happened with Tarnara, but it took a while for the discussion to really get underway. Sasanna was nervous about giving further offense, and Makoto, picking up on that, became edgy herself; they both talked to Ami more than to each other, and tended to start in surprise if they forgot themselves enough to make eye contact or address each other directly.

The addition of Glossolyndaraberonasym to the talk was very helpful, since as long as Ami kept one hand or bare foot touching a piece of the tree, she could hear him as well as the others, and the steady, businesslike manner and voice of her brother-self helped to calm Sasanna immensely. And as the conversation progressed and Makoto learned more, she started to relax as well.

The extrasensory ability to perceive thought is a very difficult, very powerful, and very rare gift, and most beings who have it have it only imperfectly—like the dryads, for instance, who require direct physical contact to employ their telepathic abilities on a non-dryad. All this was probably just as well since, as Makoto had already demonstrated, most thinking beings aren't comfortable with the idea that another awareness can poke around inside their thoughts at will, and tend to take steps to prevent or gain revenge for such actions.

Empathy, the ability to perceive emotion, is another story. Most living creatures have what can be considered crude empathic abilities of one form or another. A human, for example, can learn to pick out the feelings of another human based on facial expression, vocal intonations, body language, and their own intuition. Other creatures have similar skills, and plants—as the dryads had already explained a number of times—do it too.

Properly speaking, though, real empathy is not just perceiving emotion, but perceiving it _correctly._ A person can conceal surprise or act angry when they're really feeling quite calm, and members of different species misread each other's emotional states and intentions all the time. Cats, intelligent or otherwise, are masters of this particular art of emotional misdirection. A true empath, though, can tell what someone else's real emotional state is as soon as they stop to think about it, and even a brief thought isn't required with very strong emotions, which jump right out of the mind in question and demand to be paid proper attention by any empath in range.

This emotion-reception, the girls realized immediately, was likely to be one of Makoto's biggest problems, and not just for what it would do to her everyday life. Sensing the emotions of other people and then dealing with them was going to be a challenge, no question, but sensing the emotions of some of the monstrous, supernatural creatures the Senshi routinely confronted could be physically dangerous.

Sasanna understood that, and much of what she tried to explain to the girls that night and over the course of the next week centered around a sort of psychic kung fu, a series of thought-blocks and emotion barriers to withstand and repel attacks against the mind.

They all knew that sooner or later, the other Senshi would arrive to retrieve their friends, and the sooner that happened, the less time Makoto would have to learn. And time to learn was something she needed; Tarnara's promise bound Sasanna to stay out of Makoto's mind, thereby forcing her to try and teach by trial and error and experience rather than simply implanting the needed memories. She couldn't give the information directly to Ami, either, because _she_ might in turn pass it on to Makoto, and that would have broken Tarnara's word.

Besides, as Sasanna rather bluntly informed Ami the first night, however developed her mind might be in other ways, in _this_ way it was essentially the mind of a child. Makoto had several years of experience from her childhood to call on and could access some of what Amalthea had known, so she at least made some progress, albeit in fits and starts. Ami's mind had only started to awaken—that was how Sasanna put it, drawing on the dryad term for the beginning of their conscious, separate existence as sister-self and brother-self—so she wasn't strong enough to learn a great number of things, and had no idea where to begin for most of the rest. Then too, her mind-powers, whatever their nature, weren't like those Makoto and the dryads shared; what they practiced would at best be half-effective for her, which was in many ways worse than nothing because she'd have to unlearn it later.

Ami had to agree with the dryad's view, although it stung her pride that she was, for the first time in her life, being told there was a lesson she couldn't learn. She talked with the tree instead or went to bed at a reasonable hour while the other two stayed up half the night, doing nothing much more visible than squint at each other for several hours before climbing up the stairs for bed.

That first night, Ami learned yet another wonderful, potentially mortifying thing about dryads. They didn't snore—or at least, Sasanna didn't, although Makoto certainly made up for it—but neither did they wear anything to bed. Given the summer climate, Makoto had reverted to her usual sleeping attire, which was to say, next to nothing. Granted, the bed was large enough to hold them and two or three others and still not get crowded, but Ami hoped that their friends didn't suddenly materialize in the next room some night in the near future; the chances for an embarrassing misunderstanding of their sleeping arrangements were just too much.

Of course, they didn't spend the entire week talking or conducting staring matches. Quite a number of dryads came by each day, all of them curious to meet and talk with the two humans. Most of the dryads were somewhere around Ami's height, some shorter and some taller, but few were as tall as Sasanna, and none were as tall as Makoto. As Sasanna had said, dryad skin tones were mostly leaf-green or bark-brown, with one or two cases of wood-white; their hair was generally in shades of green or brown as well, though the girls did meet a few redheads and two dryads with hair that was the sort of golden hue one might find in a wheat field. Eye color went all over the spectrum.

Even with all the obvious differences, there were four things the dryads all had in common. The slightly pointed ears were a universal trait, as were the faint flowery scents they all seemed to exude in lieu of perspiration. Ami asked about that and learned that each dryad could produce a number of different and rather delightful fragrances at will, including some which started her computer bleeping about allergens, psychoactive compounds, and a few other things which made her ask them very quickly to stop. The third trait was the most obvious one; every last dryad, short or tall, slim or strong, was undeniably female and quite beautiful.

There were several times during those seven days that Ami found herself thankful that Ryo wasn't around, especially since a number of the dryads expressed some curiosity about human males. Nothing even she would consider improper; more like the sort of detached amusement a professional scientist would display when discussing a theory about an alien life-form. Even so, Ami couldn't help but wonder what their reactions might be if an example of 'the theory' had been on hand for what her mind could only shiver and then go ahead and label as 'experimentation.'

The fourth thing all the dryads had in common was a little less apparent; Ami didn't notice it until the third day, when the stream of visitors had ebbed to the point where she had a moment to glance outside and see Sasanna at the edge of her little clearing, talking quietly with a fiery red-head named Yurea, who was speaking loudly—not quite loudly enough to hear from that distance—and waving her arms around. Yurea seemed angry, though her agitation might have had something to do with the patch of healing moss covering most of the right side of her face.

Red-haired, well-built in every sense of words, nearly as tall as Makoto, and wearing a short vest and skirt combination rather than the long dress or tunics her sisters favored, Yurea gave the impression of an amazon, and she had proved it by taking the humans hunting. She'd actually gotten into a knock-down, roll-around fight with Makoto after the girl had let a deer-like animal get away, and that fight was the reason for the bruise which the healing moss was working to remove. Ami didn't think that was why Yurea was all-but yelling at Sasanna; she didn't seem to be displaying focused anger so much as she did a general sense of just being upset. Sasanna, on the other hand, was unusually subdued.

Frowning, Ami went back through the visits of the past few days and noted that Sasanna had disappeared a number of times; she kept her eyes open in the following days and spotted their hostess talking to other dryads with that same quiet demeanor. Most of the other dryads were nearly as upset as Yurea, and Ami wondered if Sasanna was getting in trouble because of everything that had happened with Makoto and Tarnara. It didn't quite seem like that, though.

At last, eight days after their arrival, Makoto and Ami were sitting with Sasanna and picking through the last wreckage of breakfast when a curious sensation skittered along the edges of all their minds. Sasanna paled.

"I believe your friends have found you at last," she announced in an unsteady voice, a moment before their communicators beeped. Ami tried to open a line to the others, but got nothing, so she pulled out her computer and started scanning.

Makoto, meanwhile, was looking at Sasanna. "Are you okay?"

"Just... unsettled. We can feel your friends as we felt you when you first arrived, and some of them—their powers—are a little disturbing. We can feel something with them, as well, not a mind or even a form of life, but still very much there."

"That would probably be the Book," Ami guessed. "Don't worry. It's not dangerous." She sighed and then stood up. "I guess we'd better go and get changed, Mako-chan. They'll be here in about ten minutes."

"Wait," Sasanna said quietly.

"What is it?"

The dryad hesitated. "My sisters and I can't travel like you and yours do, so we really only know one kind of goodbye. And in this case, it is very much that sort of goodbye, because we know none of us or our sisters yet to be will exist in your world. So I hope you will understand when I say I do not want to stay and watch you leave."

"I do," Makoto said. "I'm not very fond of good-byes myself."

Sasanna smiled, then got to her feet and kissed Ami's forehead before hugging her. "Goodbye, Ami. I know you will find yourself again, but I hope it will not take you too long."

*Thank you,* Ami said, returning the hug. Sasanna's mind gave a little impulse before she moved on to Makoto and repeated the farewell gesture.

"You'll look after them for us?" the dryad asked.

"I'll try my best," Makoto replied. "I'm only one person, and I have other duties, but I promise, I'll do what I can."

"That is all anyone can do," Sasanna said. She startled both girls then by leaning forward and kissing Makoto lightly on the lips before hugging her a second time. "Thank you, sister. Be well."

Then she left the room, moving quickly down the stairs without looking back.

"Ami, she was... she was about to cry." Makoto looked at the stairs worriedly. "Maybe we ought to go after her."

*It is alright,* Glossolyndaraberonasym said calmly. *You both have things you need to attend to—and I can help her with this better than you can.*

"You're sure?" Makoto asked aloud.

*I am.* The tree paused. *I may be a bit busy for the next little while, so if I do not have a chance later to say it, I will now. Goodbye, both of you. You have been very good company.*

"You too," Makoto replied.

"Likewise." Ami's mouth twisted. "And again, I'm sorry about that indoor blizzard."

The tree chuckled. *Not a problem. Life is a learning experience, and _that_ was very educational.* The weird, creaky mind-laugh sounded a second time, and then he fell silent.

Outside, Sasanna sat quietly next to her brother-self's trunk as he extended his own farewell to the girls. She didn't have to ask when he was finished, but she did anyway.

*Yes,* Glossolyndaraberonasym replied. *They are both concerned about you, sister-self. Particularly Makoto. I had to talk fast to stop them from following you.*

*I know, and I'm sorry, but this isn't easy, brother-self.*

*You're sure you still want to go through with it?*

Sasanna nodded with an almost fierce expression. *Yes. I just need a little time, that's all.*

*We have a little time, sister-self. A little. Take as much of it as you feel you need.*

Leaning against the comfortable moss-covered bark, the dryad did that. She noticed a small flower near her feet, a fragile, pale pink blossom atop a stem that seemed just a little too frail to bear its weight. Sasanna reached down and cupped her hands about the tiny flower, and suddenly it wasn't quite so frail, the delicate stem straightening as the drooping petals shimmered with a strange, internal light. It continued to glow for several moments after the dryad withdrew her hands, and she smiled.

"THAT is a BIG tree."

Venus' semi-awed statement, coming on the heels of a complete circuit of the thing, was really unnecessary, but everyone was too busy looking at the colossal achievement of soil, sun, water, and greenery to talk to her about it. She and Mars both remembered the last tree of this size they'd encountered, and looked around carefully for signs of unfriendly animation from this one.

"Are those stairs?" ChibiUsa asked with a puzzled frown.

"You know," Uranus admitted, "they _do_ sort of look it. And those holes up higher could almost be windows. You don't suppose somebody actually lives inside it, do you?"

"One way to find out," Venus said, raising her face. "Ami-chan? Mako-chan? Are you in there?"

"Just a minute," Ami's voice called down to them. She didn't _quite_ fly into Ryo's arms when she got to the ground, but there was a lot of relieved hugging on either side before they quickly pulled apart and looked around, blushing. Uranus opened her mouth to say something, and Neptune promptly clapped a hand over her partner's face to keep her quiet.

"What's in those?" Saturn asked, indicating the tied-off bundles both Ami and Makoto were carrying.

"Some gifts from our hostess," Ami replied. Glossolyndaraberonasym had made two additional dresses for Ami while they all slept that first night, then taken measurements for Makoto the next day and put together a few for her. After a long conversation, he had also added a more comfortable nightgown for Ami; all of those were now carefully folded up and tied together.

"The girl with the pointed ears?" Ryo asked.

Ami nodded and quickly explained Sasanna's background and absence, then asked how the others had managed to reach this point in the past. When Pluto got around to explaining how tiring the whole trick was, Ami pulled out her computer again and carefully scanned both Pluto and Saturn for signs of injury.

"Nothing that I can find except fatigue," she reported. "I suppose that means you're okay, but I wish I could get a more detailed scan."

"What about that little doohickey you used on Ryo-kun?" Venus asked. "You know." She poked a finger at her own forehead and made little beeping noises. ChibiUsa and Saturn collapsed against each other at the sight, laughing helplessly.

"It links in with my visor," Ami said shortly, fighting giggles of her own. "I'd need to transform to use it."

"Well, then, transform."

"I can't."

_That_ dried up the humor very quickly and set off another round of explanations. Saturn immediately wanted to heal her, but Ami refused to let her try until they'd at least had the opportunity to consult with Luna and Artemis about what might be wrong. It had been a sudden rush of energy which caused her particular ailment, after all, and there was no telling what Saturn's energy might set off if proper precautions weren't taken beforehand. Saturn was a little upset by that decision, but she certainly didn't want to be responsible for reducing Ami to a vegetative state for the rest of her life, so she let the idea drop.

"Time to go, then," she announced, reaching out for Pluto's hand and tensing herself for what was likely going to be a moderately painful task.

*Wait.*

Only Makoto heard the voice, but they all heard the cracking, creaking noise which followed it as the trunk of the great tree divided near its base, roots and bark pulling apart to reveal a small and very dark space beyond. Out of that opening came a thin vine, weighed down at its tip by a small object. Mars raised one hand to blast the thing, but Makoto caught her wrist and pushed it aside, then stepped forward as the vine came to a halt in front of her, giving her a clear look at what it was carrying.

It looked a lot like an acorn—a silver one, to be sure, but an acorn nonetheless—and from a certain angle, it also appeared a little bit like a heart. Makoto looked at it, then at the tree.

*I thought Sasanna said you couldn't produce seeds.*

Ignoring her question, the vine pushed forward insistently. *Take it, sister. Take it and care for it, and as it grows, remember us.*

Makoto frowned. She was sure there was something going on here, but she reached out and carefully snapped the base of the acorn from the vine, which withdrew as soon as she had the curious farewell gift in her hand. It wasn't very large, but it was much heavier than it ought to be, and it didn't feel exactly like wood. She looked up again as the hole in the trunk creaked shut.

*Thank you,* the tree said. Then it fell silent again. Makoto looked at the acorn in her hand and wondered what it meant.

"Mako-chan?"

"What? Oh, Mars. Sorry." Makoto tucked the strange gift into a pocket in her blouse and then turned to the others. "So what's the holdup? Are we going or what?"

Some of the others looked at her curiously, but Pluto and Saturn joined hands again and gestured for the rest to gather around as they began to combine their powers once more.

"You might want to brace yourselves," Venus warned Ami and Makoto. "This isn't quite the same as teleporting, and..." She broke off and looked up—they all did—as a sun-bright burst of red light exploded out of the Garnet Orb.

"Pu?" ChibiUsa asked nervously. "What's going on?"

"I don't..."

The Orb flared before Pluto had a chance to finish her confused sentence, and the coiling red energy was sucked back into the stone, dragging along with it the violet-hued web of black Saturn had been generating. The very heart of the Orb was no longer shining with red light, but a sheer white that should have been blinding—and yet they could all look at it without the slightest discomfort.

Out of that light came a familiar voice:

"Guardians! Awaken! Across space and time, hear my call! To me!"

Eight beams of pure white shot out of the center of the Garnet Orb, each striking one of the Senshi. And they _were_ the Senshi; the instant the beams touched Ami and Makoto, Mercury and Jupiter appeared in their places, both looking extremely surprised. The stone set in each Senshi's tiara began to glow brightly, and they were all surrounded by their familiar auras; realizing what was coming next, Mercury grabbed hold of Ryo, and Saturn caught ChibiUsa's arm right before they all disintegrated into energy and were swallowed by the white light, flying across several thousand miles and even more years to answer the call of their endangered Princess.

It was late. The moon hung low in the sky, its soft light obscured but not entirely impeded by the trees.

A change had come over the mighty tree standing at the center of its private glade. For one thing, it seemed smaller now than it had. The mosses and ivy were thinning out, and many of the leaves had fallen from its branches, either to lay in a thick carpet upon the roots and soil, or to drift away on the wind. Inside, the floors were littered by bits and pieces of withered lichen, and the once-luminous fungi fixed to the ceilings had ceased to glow. Every so often, the otherwise empty rooms were filled with the faint sounds of wood creaking in the wind.

Outside, near the base of the tree, a single flower bloomed alone atop a low mound of grassy earth, its tiny pink petals open to the night sky. Captured moonlight gleamed in the tiny droplets of water that had collected on the petals in the cool night air and were periodically falling to the ground.

As the tiny flower cried, across the forest, so did the dryads.

SAILOR SAYS:

(The screen is filled with static. When it clears, Balance is sitting behind a desk, dressed up like a TV anchorman.)

Balance: Due to circumstances beyond our control, the prerecorded 'Sailor Says' segment for this episode has been accidentally destroyed.

(Insert a shot of Saturn watching the video, shaking her head, and then taking the Silence Glaive to the tape in a major editing spree.)

Balance: And, as all the usual participants in the filming of said segment are currently: A) unconscious; B) standing in the middle of a massive temporal anomaly; or C) zipping across the space-time continuum; it has been decided to forego this episode's moral instruction entirely. (leans in towards the camera) Besides, the author couldn't think of a suitable moral, and he really wanted to get this episode out to the public before it got any larger. (sits back) Thank you, and good-day.

26/08/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

I knew it! I KNEW I wouldn't be able to get them home! Hahahaha... ahem.

Some of you may be confused/concerned/whatever with what I'm doing with Ami and Makoto. For starters, I've read once or twice that, in the manga, Makoto is gifted with rudimentary empathic abilities; she smokes, too, from what I understand, but I've got no plans in that direction. (Do you honestly believe Luna would let any of them get away with it? Didn't think so.) I've never heard it even suggested that Ami might be a mind-reader—even a short-range one—but there is a reason for it. I'm not about to tell you what it is HERE, of course; you'll just have to stay tuned for future developments. ;)

The point is, one of the requirements for a good story is character growth, and in my opinion, just adding a dozen or so new attacks and/or transformations doesn't really meet that goal. This is not to say that I'm NOT going to add new attacks and/or transformations—you've seen a few already!—just that things ARE going to happen to really change the girls' lives, everyday as well as Senshi.

Next time:
-More fun in the Atlantean Age;
-This time for sure, they're going home!