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.

22. Chapter 22

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

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SAILOR MOON: MILLENNIALS

Chapter 22

Rumble in the Urban Jungle, and Ten Reasons Why The Senshi Don't Tell Each Other About Their Dates

The city, Proteus noted, was busy tonight.

Through its army of mutated rats, the entity had detected the arrival of the new nexus, the forces of Atlantis continuing their bid for control of this city's incredible energy. The rats had also detected a number of daimons, if not the portal Proteus knew must have been used to bring the creatures into this world from their own. The rats had been forced to defend themselves several times now, actually destroying two or three of the invaders—and losing twenty or thirty of their own number in the process. Given what little it knew about daimons, Proteus considered the losses rather light, and projected that these creatures must be serving much the same role for the nexus that the rats did for it; as scouts and as a self-defensive wave of expendable troops.

And they were definitely being spent. The Senshi were out in force, and some of the lesser daimons were even being beaten back by ordinary humans.

One of Proteus' rats watched from the alley beside a martial arts dojo as a man who must be an instructor took down a dog-sized thing of scales and claws with a series of expert maneuvers. The daimon got back up, of course, but it wasn't landing a blow on its agile opponent, and another few collisions with a wall or the pavement would be the end of it.

Elsewhere, several of the rats squeaked and scurried for cover as a matronly-looking woman armed with nothing but a battered frying pan and a furious roar chased several imp-like monsters past. There were three of the black-and-yellow stripe-skinned things, and while none was more than three feet tall, they had long claws and sharp teeth—and they ran for it anyway, their red eyes wide with surprise and fear. The woman caught up to the slowest of them and sent it caroming off the wall of a nearby building with one swing.

Out in the park, a solitary rat stretched the focusing powers of its augmented eyes to the limit to observe the effortless dismemberment of a serpentine daimon trio by the blonde Senshi with that frighteningly deadly sword.

Downtown, a pair of the mutant rats scaled the side of a building to get a better look at the mana nexus over the heads of the crowd—and to observe the two humans up on the roofline. One of them looked like a Senshi, but the other had to be an Atlantean; no ordinary person Proteus had scanned radiated energy like that.

*This ought to be interesting.*

After this 'Sailor V' introduced herself, Cestus was forced to take a moment and wonder just what in the world was going on here. Since when did ANY Senshi engage in such nonsensical chit-chat before a battle? Granted, the Senshi of Venus had always had a reputation for being somewhat fixated on romance, even when she wasn't a Venusian by birth, but this 'soldier of love and justice' bit was over the top even by those standards. Exactly what sort of training program had Athena put her new allies through? And why the mask and dual identity?

*Unless,* Cestus thought, narrowing his gaze, *this _isn't_ really a Senshi of Venus...* He couldn't think of any particular reason to have a fake Venus running around, but then again, he also didn't know very much about how the Senshi fit into this modern world, so there could be a reasonable explanation for it. Not that it mattered one way or the other; he knew of only three ways to test the identity of a Senshi, and since he didn't have another Senshi or a properly-trained mentalist on hand, that left the third choice.

Turning to one side and holding his right arm down and back behind his body, Cestus gathered his energies and then spun, the upwards sweep of his arm casting a crackling, vaguely star-shaped projectile straight at the woman. There was a thunderous detonation and a flash of blue-green light as the rooftop blew apart, but Cestus already had his eyes on the figure leaping to the left, clear of the blast. He flung another orb at her, and she shot it out of the air with a golden beam of energy.

*I know a Crescent Beam when I see one,* Cestus thought, jumping out of the path of the streaking force-bolt and watching the movements of his opponent very closely. *If she keeps going in that direction, she'll...* Cestus flung one hand forward, palm out, and shouted a word in Atlantean.

V heard something that sounded like "Trigger!" right before the rooftop she had been aiming for was pulverized inside an expanding dome of raw force. The blast caught her and flung her sidelong into the air some five stories above the street, thrashing her mercilessly in the process and blowing out windows in all directions. When the people below groaned and screamed, V couldn't help it; she looked down and gulped. If she fell from this height...

She twisted in mid-air as the rooftops on both sides of the street began to shoot past, ready to call for her Love-Me Chain so she could lasso something and stop her fall well short of street level, only to experience a moment of panic when she realized that the Chain might not come to Sailor V, who had always done most of her fighting up-close and personal. But if the Crescent Beam worked in both forms, then the Chain ought to... but if it didn't... but it should... *Oh, just hurry up and SHOOT, Minako!*

"LOVE-V-CHAIN!" The crowd on the street cheered and Cestus dodged as a length of glowing metal links shot out from the falling Senshi, extending with tremendous speed to lash around an outcropping on the nexus. Just shy of the third-floor level, V grabbed the other end of the Chain, looped it around her wrist several times, and suddenly felt her momentum reverse. She was flying up rather than falling down, the shining length of the Chain contracting with a rapid click-click-click-click-click as it pulled her to safety.

Or not-so-safety. V clenched her teeth and shuddered from head to toe as her opponent brought a length of crackling blue-green energy down on the Chain. It didn't break or even slow down, but a surge of electricity shot up and down the Chain, tiny bolts of blue and green dancing around the golden links—links, V noticed, that retained their overall heart-shape, but which were now stylized to suggest a 'V'-shape as well.

*Neat,* she thought absently, right before a second shock came coursing through the Chain. "That's enough of that!" V raised her free hand and pointed as she flew past her enemy. "CRESCENT BEAM!"

Cestus fell back, twisting his upper body to dodge the path of the Beam. Temporarily freed from his attacks, V focused on her ascent and, at a certain point, willed the Chain to stop pulling her up. She swung across the front of the nexus, tracked by every eye on the ground, then unlooped her wrist and let go of the Chain to flip over and land neatly on the next rooftop. She turned and frowned.

"I don't suppose you'd care to surrender?"

By way of an answer, Cestus shouted "Trigger!" a second time, and V raised her arms to protect her face as the world around her disappeared into a haze of blue-green light and suffocating pressure.

The thought, *Now would be a GREAT time to learn how to teleport!* flashed through her mind, but predictably, nothing happened, and the force of the blast sent her tumbling into the low wall at the far side of the roof. No question that it hurt, but she'd been through worse, so it was possible—if not exactly easy—for her to duck and roll as the scarred man unleashed a barrage of those star-like projectiles at her from his outstretched hand. He followed that up by conjuring a narrow, jagged blade of bluish energy in his hand and then leaping at her, bringing his arm across his body in preparation for a sidelong slash.

V saw him coming and pushed down with everything she had, flipping herself up, over, and around to land right behind. The instant her feet touched down, she went straight into a spin, locking her right forearm into the classic Sailor V Chop. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but she could have sworn that the large Venus symbol on the back of her glove flashed.

Cestus had started to turn the instant he realized that his wide, cement-rending slash had lost its target, but he was only halfway around when the blow took him high on the back, just short of the base of his neck. Staggered, the assassin fell to his knees, the fingers of his left hand twitching as the energy-blade fizzled out and vanished. His own training allowed him to push away the pain as easily as V had hers, and he brought his now-empty hand up at her stomach, fingers wide and gathering energy once again.

He didn't actually touch her, but the mass of energy gathering in his palm exploded like a thunderclap, doubling V up and hurling her back across the roof with terrific force. Cestus straightened and summoned his blade again, and then blinked. The woman was getting up.

*Not even Draco could shake off a hit like that so quickly,* Cestus said to himself. *Not out of his armor, at any rate... what exactly am I up against here?*

V was wondering something along those lines herself. *I know I'm tough, but I know I'm not THIS tough. That last one should have broken me in half...* She raised her arms, partly to be ready to fight, partly to look at her gloves a little more closely. The Venus symbols WERE glowing. *Is that it? Is this new uniform is protecting me somehow?*

"Still feeling lucky, Scratch?" V asked aloud. "Or would you like to take advantage of that surrender clause? Going once, going twice..."

"You talk too much," Cestus snapped. He raised his sword and swung it in her direction, the end blossoming into a snarling high-voltage lash.

"LOVE-V-CHAIN!"

V's counterattack blew right through the electric whip and kept on going; drawn by the electromagnetic power of the other weapon, the Chain spiraled down between the lines of energy to strike at Cestus's hand. He let go of his weapon and moved his hand to avoid the blow, then toppled backwards as V looped the Chain around his legs and pulled. Even as he fell, Cestus reached down and slapped his hands against his legs, sending a double-dose of energy snaking down the Chain to fry V again, but she gritted her teeth and quickly twisted the Chain to bind her opponent's high-voltage hands in place, then added more loops until he was bound from head to toe, at which point she released her grip on her weapon.

"You can try shocking _that_ if you like," she told him, "but I really don't advise it." Keeping one eye on the downed-but-not-out mystery man, V tapped her communicator. "This is Sailor V to Senshi, come in... ahhh!" A burst of static flared over the line. V tapped her communicator a few times, but the interference remained, and she glared at Cestus. It was either the invisibility barrier surrounding the nexus or those stupid energy bolts that had messed up her communicator, but either way it was his fault—and it left her unable to call for help.

*Which means, joy of joys, that it's up to little old ME to try and destroy this thing.* She looked up at the huge nexus, the upper pylons of which were beginning to glow in that familiar and unsettling way. *And if Luna and Artemis were right, if I shoot this thing, it'll absorb the energy and probably turn half the district into solid gold.*

V sighed and swore under her breath—in two languages at once—and then looked back at Cestus, who was trying to move and only succeeding in getting himself scraped by the pointy corners of the chain links. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back."

She scaled the nexus in four quick jumps, and then considered it. They were still making the things out of that ugly green fungus, so if Mars had been here, she could have lit a torch and then burned the nexus down. Luna, Artemis, Ami, or Neptune would have all had good ideas on what to do, and seeing as how it wasn't active yet, Saturn could have swung the Silence Glaive and chopped the whole nexus down. V felt just a little bit useless at that moment, and then she felt angry at herself for feeling useless.

*Girl, you are just as capable of solving this problem as any of the others! You ARE Sailor Venus; you ARE the leader of the Senshi of the Inner Solar System; and you ARE going to come up with a brilliant plan to cut this monster of a mold down to size, so quit complaining and do it already!*

*Hang on a second,* V thought, the sudden flash of inspiration derailing her earlier train of thought as she looked around at the nexus. The word 'cut' rang in her head like a great golden bell. It might actually work.

"LOVE-V-CHAIN!" Another Chain—or perhaps the same one as the one that was holding her prisoner of war down there—shimmered into existence, shooting out and twirling its way around several of the pillars on the uppermost level of the nexus. Two seconds later, the uprights were each sporting their own ring of golden links, almost like some bizarre Christmas decoration. V concentrated, and the sections of the Chain connecting the 'rings' disappeared; at the same time, the ends of the rings fused into each other.

"I hope this works," V murmured. It ought to; her Chain was created and moved by magic, but it was really still just a metal chain. "And I _really_ hope Mars doesn't get the idea that I've stolen one of her attacks." She took a deep breath and then called out the command she had in mind: "LOVE-V-CHAIN SONG!"

The golden rings began to spin around their respective pillars, the sharp tips of the 'V'-shaped hearts twisting to point in. Then green dust flew in every direction as the rings contracted; rather than the deafening chainsaw buzz V had been half-expecting to hear, the whirring weapons created a curious series of almost musical tones.

There was a snap as one of the narrower uprights succumbed to the attack, its upper length sliding, falling, and crashing down into the middle of the nexus. Two more of the pillars were shorn away, the chain-rings around each of them exploding into diminishing golden shards and doing even more damage on the way out. The nexus' dull glow had flickered when the first upright fell, and now it went out completely.

*It's working,* V thought. *I did it. All by myself. That was so... huh?* A crackling noise and the sudden high-pitched sound of something shattering interrupted her thoughts. *Damn! I almost forgot about him!*

Monsters had broken free from her Chain before, so V wasn't entirely surprised when she turned and had to duck the fist-sized ball of blue-green lightning that went crackling through the space where her head had been a second ago.

"Okay, wise guy! Round two, coming at ya! LOVE-V-CHAIN SONG!" A wide, rapidly-spinning chain ring went flying at the man, buzz-sawing its way through another lightning ball, absorbing the power, and then exploding into the roof beyond as its real target neatly sidestepped and unleashed a two-handed counterattack at V.

*Yes,* V thought absently, as she leapt clear of the jagged stroke of lightning, *I think Mars is _definitely_ going to want to have words with me about copyright infringement...*

Plants do not like fire, and daimons do not like things of positive spiritual power. This meant that Sailor Mars was just about the worst enemy a new forest of mobile plant-daimons could have—and as she suspected, the shambling humanoid weeds went up like torches with just a little effort on her part.

Mars had lost track of the number of Fire Souls she'd used in the last ten minutes. These daimons were so weak that even her simplest attack was sufficient to wipe out a cluster of them in one shot, but there were just so _many_ of them... if it hadn't been for the strenuous pace Luna and Artemis had been setting in training recently, Mars thought she might have collapsed by now from the effort of generating all those attacks—nearly every shot a hit, and every hit worth at least one kill.

It was too easy. Even with all the energy she'd had to use up, destroying these creatures was still too easy. Mars knew it, and she knew that somewhere out there was a mana nexus, hidden from her eyes and—since she wasn't feeling anything from it—probably not attuned to forces her gifts could detect. Her friends were out there as well, and all of these little beasts, wave after wave of them, were meant simply to slow them down. It was a simple, obvious plan—and it worked because the Senshi just couldn't take the chance of leaving even these puny monsters behind them. True, they were no threat to most adults or teenagers, but what about children? The infirm? The elderly? Not everyone's grandfather was a lifelong spiritualist, and not everyone's younger relations could turn into a superheroine-in-training.

And not all of these monsters were quite as puny as the rest.

Something that looked like a drab grey cloud floated into view up ahead, a thing whose huge, single eye said clearly that it was not a cloud, but whose lightning-like discharges might have created some argument over the matter. It was in the process of blasting apart a car, and a trail of burning wrecks leading back down the street said it had been a busy cloud-monster.

Mars let fly with a Fire Soul and lightning erupted from the eye, spearing the fireball in mid-flight and triggering an explosion from which the cloud- creature retreated. It unleashed more lightning at Mars, a sparkling webwork of energy which she had to jump high to avoid, and then a more focused bolt which she ripped apart with a Burning Mandala. The fiery rings slashed through the creature's floating body as well, creating great gaping rents which filled with short sparks of energy and were quickly sealed, leaving the daimon whole, but also a great deal smaller than before. It began to move for the nearest intact car, its underside glowing with energy, but when Mars got in its way, it backed off and headed for a different vehicle. Mars put herself in its path a second time, and again the strange being backed away, quivering with what she might have called frustration. It drifted towards the first car, then spat lightning at her the instant she moved—and again seemed to get smaller.

The play of lightning along the hood of that car and the line of destroyed vehicles made sense now; if using its attacks consumed so much of the creature's energy, it would naturally try to replenish itself by whatever means available. It had probably been a lot smaller and weaker when it first arrived, too, no more powerful or dangerous than all the rest—except when given time to build up its strength.

Mars backed off slowly, and then, when the creature headed for a car and was paying the least attention to her, she launched a Flame Sniper right through the middle of it. There was another explosion, and then no eyeball-cloud at all. One more down, kami alone knew how many more to go, and the nexus to worry about on top of that. Mars sighed... and had to catch her balance with help from the hood of the nearby car.

*Okay,* she admitted to herself, *that Flame Sniper might have been overdoing it just a little.* Mars mustered her strength to fight down the fatigue, focusing mostly on steadying her breathing, but the smell of smoke distracted her and drew her attention to the burning cars that the eye-cloud had left in its wake. If they continued to burn, the flames might spread, and with all the chaos caused by daimons running loose in the streets, firefighters would be a long time getting here to handle the problem.

Mars extended her arms and closed her eyes, focusing on her powers. The nearest fire roared to a furnace note, the flames rising higher and higher, and as the others began to swell up in turn, motes of intensely bright red light formed in the heart of each blaze. Like shooting stars, each of the tiny lights burst forth, streaking through the air towards Mars and pulling the dancing fires along behind them as searing tails. Her eyes closed, Mars could not see the light of her aura as it faded into existence, but she didn't have to see it to know it was there. The fire-lights struck her one after the other, each merging into her aura and suffusing it with new light and energy until it was almost twice as bright as before, and with each infusion Mars felt her diminished energy being replenished.

When the last of the fires had vanished, her aura disappeared as well, and Mars reopened her eyes. There was nothing she could do about the destroyed cars, but at least the fires couldn't spread now that she'd absorbed them. And the fatigue had lessened considerably.

*That trick just gets more useful every time I try it.* She shook her head. *Now if only the daimons were that easy to get rid of.*

Daimons were dropping like flies at a bug-zapper convention, and the reason was very simple:

Saturn was not in a good mood.

Uranus and Neptune recognized all the signs. Their foster-daughter was in full search-and-destroy mode, laying into daimons left, right, and center without so much as a word—to the monsters OR them—in between swings of the Silence Glaive. The ones that were smart enough to keep out of range of the deadly blade but still dumb enough to stay in her field of view were being popped out of existence by the narrow bolts of dark energy Saturn unleashed from her empty hand. Every time Saturn passed between either of them and the nearest strong light source, the light seemed to grow briefly dimmer, and there was a palpable sense of menace hanging around the little Senshi.

"All things considered, I'd say she's handling it pretty well this time." Uranus paused to fire a World Shaking at a crew of red-skinned imps, sending them flying like leaves in a hurricane. "You?"

"I think we may have to make room for one more in bed again tonight," Neptune replied. "No matter how well we do out here"—she spun and sent a Deep Submerge into a creeping mass of tiny black insects—"a lot of people are going to get hurt."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Uranus nodded towards a guy down the sidewalk who was wrestling with a skinny, grey-fleshed humanoid and actually seemed to be winning the match. Not far away from that, a policeman armed with a baton was successfully holding at bay a small group of squishing, foot-long, razor-toothed slugs. "This latest batch really isn't up to par."

"Maybe. But even so, Hotaru isn't going to take their being here well. At least," Neptune added, "not once she's calmed down." Saturn had just reduced the grey man-daimon and the slugs to powder with tiny force-bolts flicked from her fingertips, and she was moving on.

"Okay," Uranus agreed reluctantly, "but she sleeps on _your_ side this time."

Tonight was one of those nights where being about a foot taller than and twice as strong as a normal girl really came in handy; Jupiter couldn't seem to take three steps without finding another pint-sized monster to deal with, and while she had blasted some with lightning, she was dealing with most of them the old-fashioned way. She sort of had to, seeing as how Calypso was tagging along.

It hadn't been Jupiter's first choice on how to go into a battle, but she couldn't see any way around it. They had been in the middle of a conversation about dryads—about whom Caly knew quite a lot, if not enough to say for certain what the silver acorn Makoto had been given by Sasanna was—when Calypso had suddenly gone into a series of convulsive movements that reminded Makoto more of an epileptic seizure than of anything else. That sort of thing was bad enough to watch in a human, but coming from a being with a completely different kind of biology, it was worse. The Nereid hadn't even been able to speak telepathically for several seconds, and once she got her voice back—so to speak—the explanation that her body was reacting to a strong surge of negative energy didn't do anything to help Makoto relax. All Makoto had been able to do was hold her strange friend and try to talk to her while she struggled to get her body back under control.

Usagi's general call had arrived just as Caly was getting to her feet, and it took Makoto a second to realize that she heard two communicator beeps: one beep from her communicator, and one from a communicator—Ami's—that Calypso had been hiding under the sleeve of her dress. Caly explained that she had 'borrowed' it earlier on the grounds that nothing should be allowed to intrude on her sister's special night, and when they explained that to Usagi, she had not been at all amused. Under different circumstances, Usagi would have thought that sort of sweet, but not tonight. They had daimons to fight, LOTS of them, _and_ they had a mana nexus to track down and topple, but since none of them knew which restaurant Ami and Ryo had gone to—and since the Mercury Computer wouldn't function in communications mode unless Ami told it to do so—they were going to have to do the job without Mercury.

It wasn't Calypso's fault that someone had chosen this particular night to stage an invasion, of course, but she still felt pretty bad about the problem she had inadvertently created, and she had been extremely anxious to try and make up for it by helping Makoto track down daimons. She had handed over Ami's communicator, waited for Makoto to transform, and then turned herself into a slightly blue-tinted, vestlike overlay of Jupiter's fuku. And off they had gone.

As monster radar, Caly was flawless. Not only could she track daimons by their psychic presences, but their unnatural, vile energy stood out against the city like black beacons; even the unintelligent daimons did not escape her notice, and at the same time, their personal energies were nowhere near strong enough to affect the Nereid in the same manner as the surge of their arrival had.

But if the daimons' energy wasn't affecting Caly now, Jupiter's most certainly was. Every time she used an attack, there was a lot of excess electrical energy that normally got dispersed back into the air or the ground; now, most of that excess was going straight into Calypso. Not only did the tingling from that electrical buildup keep distracting Jupiter from business, but Caly seemed to be enjoying the impromptu meal just a little too much—and by the sixth Supreme Thunder, she was giving off some emotional impulses that were downright embarrassing. That was when Jupiter had shifted to hand-to-hand, spacing her electrical attacks out as much as she possibly could.

Calypso didn't seem to mind the sudden massive decrease in her food supply, but by that point she was quite literally drunk on the power she'd already absorbed anyway. At least, Jupiter _hoped_ it was intoxication she was sensing... no, best not to think about it too closely. Caly might overhear and try to explain.

*Did you say something, Mako-chan?* a drowsy thought-voice asked.

"No."

*Okay. The next nearest group of daimons is just over there behind that building. Here, I'll give you a hand.* Jupiter suddenly felt a strong tug from the 'vest', and there was a definite feeling of upwards movement as Calypso tried to pick her up and fly her over a three-story building.

"Uh, Caly, that's okay! I can get there myself! Really!"

*Okay.* The tug went away, and Jupiter's feet settled back to the ground. Calypso yawned. *I think I'm going to take a little nap now, Mako-chan. Can you track the rest of these monsters down by yourself?*

"Sure, Caly. I paid attention to what you were doing."

*Good. Wouldn't want you to get in trouble, too... mmmm...* The tingling feeling Jupiter was getting from the Nereid's body died down somewhat as Calypso's mental voice trailed off into noises of contentment, and then silence.

Jupiter decided that she and Ami needed to have a serious talk about Nereids after this was all over.

The daimon crept silently down the dark corridor of the sewer. A short and ugly parody of the human form, leather-skinned, taloned, and bristling with needle-like hairs, the creature peered cautiously over its shoulder at the darkness behind it. Darkness was good; it was the closest thing on Earth to the natural state of existence in the daimon dimension, the next best thing to being home.

Somehow, though, this darkness made the daimon edgy. Concepts such as 'safe' and 'comfort' are always relative at best where daimons are concerned, for their home plane is hostile almost beyond human comprehension, a place where even the land—or its nearest equivalent—is often the enemy. Still, darkness should have been familiar enough to the daimon for it not to watch its back any more than it usually would.

But there was something wrong with this darkness, something about it which caused the otherworldly little monster to question once again the wisdom of choosing to seek shelter in these tunnels. There was a stink here that had nothing to do with the sewage, the smell of a form of vileness the daimon could recognize as being in some ways kin to its own unnatural nature, and yet which was at the same time entirely different. The daimon did not like the scent, or the implication that it was not alone down here.

When the mass of rats came rushing out of the side tunnel a moment later, they did not find the daimon unprepared. Mutated teeth and claws were pitted against supernatural talons and spines, and although outnumbered a hundred to one, the daimon at times almost seemed to be winning.

Then the rats were joined by a mass of green tendrils, and the fight was swiftly over.

Artemis had gone panther almost as soon as he and ChibiMoon were clear of Usagi's balcony. The change was partly because this larger, stronger, and more heavily-armed shape was better suited to taking on a city suddenly full of otherworldly monsters, but also because his human form was now his 'civilian' identity, and he had no built-in magic to keep people from connecting Arthur Knight with a white-haired man who spent his nights battling the armies of darkness.

If anything, that ridiculous name would only serve to convince people even faster.

Not surprisingly, the sudden appearance of a white-furred, half-ton jungle cat sent a lot of people running for cover, and ChibiMoon was halfway to giving herself a case of laryngitis from shouting at people that Artemis wasn't going to try and maul them. Considering the formerly-daimonic evidence to the contrary Artemis was leaving in his wake, nobody seemed all that inclined to believe ChibiMoon, and she finally gave up and concentrated on cleaning up those infrequent monsters that Artemis either didn't see or didn't get around to finishing off.

"Not using your teeth?" she asked, half-teasing.

"Not on your life," Artemis rumbled at her. "Do you have any idea how bad these sorts of things can taste? Not to mention the fact that they're almost always toxic in one way or another. Take that one there," he said, focusing on an amorphous, reddish-green slime that was oozing its way up a wall. "Can you tell me for one second that _you'd_ put something like that in your mouth?"

"Probably not," she admitted. "Unless it was a new Jello flavor, of course..." ChibiMoon sailed her tiara up at the slime, shearing it in two. She was a bit disconcerted to see that both halves got up after hitting the ground and then—with a VERY ugly burbling sound—rippled out until they were each as large as the original creature had been. She tried a Stardust attack then, blasting the slimes into a dozen or more fragments, some of which had the decency to shrivel up and fall to dust. The rest, unfortunately, re-enlarged themselves, leaving eight or nine blobs of goo that together could totally envelop a human—and seemed more than willing to give that trick a try, as they stopped sliming in the other direction and sprang at ChibiMoon instead.

"Wah!" Squish. "Whoa!" Spludge. "Yaaah!" Blort. ChibiMoon dodged as best she could, considering that she was getting mobbed from nine directions at once. "A little help would be great!"

"I'm a bit busy!" Artemis shot back, dancing around a volley of daimon spitballs to get his claws into the offender. He pounced, pinned the annoying little imp, and felt something snap right before the creature's body disintegrated. "Don't you have a Chibi-Crescent Moon Wand or something like that?"

"A Crescent WHAT?"

"I guess that means Neo-Queen Serenity still hasn't gotten around to replacing that thing," Artemis muttered.

Something dark and howling blasted down into the slime-creatures, vaporizing them en masse; ChibiMoon and Artemis automatically followed the flight path of the Dead Scream and spotted Pluto down the street, raising her staff from its firing position.

"Not that I'm not _really_ grateful that you're here," ChibiMoon said, "but weren't you supposed to stay behind to look after Usagi? In case anything got through?"

"They won't."

"How do you know..." Artemis felt silent as Pluto gave him an amused look and wiggled the fingers of her empty hand at him. "I forgot about that," he admitted. "You're sure, though?"

"All the probability lines for the next hour of her future are clear of daimons. But that having been said," Pluto added, turning to ChibiMoon, "Ikuko-chan will be looking in on her in another thirty-six minutes, so we'd better finish this business and get home quickly."

"Right." ChibiMoon looked around and pointed to a group of retreating shadows. "Thattaway."

"Just out of curiosity," Artemis said as they started towards the creatures, "did any of those 'probabilities' you mentioned happen to give you any idea as to where Venus is right now?"

"Sorry, no."

If V had been given the necessary time to think back, she would have been hard-pressed to remember the last fight that had given her this much trouble. Since she wasn't given that time, she was just hard-pressed.

It wasn't so much that this guy was incredibly strong. He was in sufficiently good physical condition to match a Senshi, which was really saying something, and V had to admit that his hand-to-hand skills were much better than her own. Uranus or Jupiter could have handled him, but she was only able to hold her own in their brief close-range encounters because of that unexpected protection her new uniform seemed to be granting her. V still didn't understand exactly what that was about. Every time she got hit, her mind registered the pain, but her body just seemed to shrug it off, and there was almost no pain _after_ each blow, as if the attacks weren't strong enough to cause actual injury.

Nor did it have to do with her opponent's powers. Again, he was pretty close to the Senshi level of expertise in this area, but all of the long-range attacks he'd displayed so far were based on lightning, which made them extremely easy for her to counter with her metal-based Crescent Beams. Whenever he shot something at her, V could send a Beam flying right through it, to absorb the electrical force and then keep on going, turning some of the guy's own power against him. If he'd set off another of those rooftop-demolishers, she might have been in trouble, but V had a hunch that those might have been some sort of trap or device rather than an immediately useful power. And on the rare occasions when she did take a hit, the resistance of her new uniform played in again, leaving the pain of the hit and almost no actual physical harm, even from attacks that were ripping holes in concrete.

No, the real problem V was facing here was the brain underneath that red hair. He seemed to be able to anticipate half the moves she made and be two steps into a countermove before she'd even realized that he knew. When she demonstrated the futility of his lightning blasts and explosive electrical orbs, he started setting off intensely bright flashes, trying to dazzle her eyes so he could get close and reverse the advantage once again. Every time she tried to get enough clearance to use an attack, V found that her adversary had disappeared—usually to reemerge from a shadowy spot not three feet away from where she was standing. When she hit him, he either shrugged it off and countered or disappeared to strike from a different angle; when he attacked, he didn't let up for an instant unless she managed to get out of his reach. And then he either sent energy bolts blasting her way or did that annoying vanishing trick and caught up with her once again.

And throughout all of that, he had not said a word. That was a REAL change, and it had thrown V seriously off-balance. Most of their past opponents hadn't exactly been what she'd call the sociable type, but you could always count on them to say something every now and then, even if it was just giving in to the understandable urge to gloat, boast, or indulge in a round of maniacal laughter when things were really going their way. But this guy? Ice cold, stone- faced, and almost utterly silent, if it hadn't been for those two brief lines earlier, V would have thought he was a mute or something. One with a very bad attitude and no sense of humor whatsoever.

*Some people just don't know when to lighten up—but then, I have to admit that if _I_ had a nasty scar like that, I'd probably be cranky, too. Although it does sort of look good on him...* V sighed and dodged another assault, an expanding wave of those explosive stars. *WHY do so many of the bad guys have to be CUTE, too?*

Cute or not, he was doing his best to kill her, and causing quite a lot of damage in the process. He almost seemed to have forgotten about the nexus entirely, and again, V was put off-balance. The Senshi almost never ran into someone who came at them with this kind of all-out assault right from the get-go. Their enemies had always been protective of their own skin, using expendable monsters to do all the real work and only taking the risk of a head-on confrontation when they finally got fed up with the Senshi always interfering—or when whoever gave them their marching orders got fed up with it, whichever came first.

By contrast, this guy really didn't seem to care if he made it out or not. If he'd been running true to form, then he would have teleported out as soon as V had destroyed the nexus...

*Wait a sec.* Risking a quick glance, V saw that the nexus was still standing. In spite of the mess she'd made by sawing into the upper section, the rest of the huge contraption hadn't fallen apart, and she realized with a shock that the thing was actually in _better_ shape than it had been a few minutes before; there had only been two spires left on it, but she counted three and two-quarters' worth of them now. The nexus was repairing itself, growing steadily back towards its point of activation—and Lightning Boy here was trying to keep her away from it.

*With extreme prejudice,* V added, hastily ducking a sweeping stroke of lightning.

*Something is different,* Cestus thought, narrowing his eyes as the strange Senshi evaded his attack and turned to launch an attack of her own back at him. He caught the look in her eyes, and in that brief instant, a lifetime's worth of skill and training warned him that she had figured out his game.

"LOVE-V-CHAIN SONG!" Cestus braced himself to leap out of the way, and then swore softly and feelingly when that accursed Chain reappeared, not to spin towards him, but to begin turning around its mistress in a narrow ring. She turned and headed for the nexus, the Chain spinning ceaselessly around her body, rising up to the level of her eyes and then falling to the level of her knees before rising again, and Cestus knew that any attack he launched to try and slow her would be intercepted by that whirling, singing length of metal.

Summoning his strength, the assassin was briefly surrounded by a field of crackling energy before he blinked out of existence, to reappear directly between V and the nexus, two slivers of lightning held like swords in either hand.

"You'll have to get by me first!" he shouted, bringing the weapons down against the shielding Chain, shattering it with a thunderous blast and a thousand crystalline tinkles. Although drained from the fighting and the hasty teleport, and now a bit shaken by the explosion, Cestus charged forward, weapons out. V lashed out with her Chain, but he was too quick, too close; the weapon gouged a narrow line through the rooftop, and the sizzling energy blades stabbed in at her, hissing violently. She leapt backwards and tried to snap the Chain around, but all that length of shining metal simply couldn't move precisely enough to catch an enemy this fast.

*Got to shorten the thing to a more manageable size,* she thought. *Scratch-resistant finish or not, I DON'T want to get slashed by those!*

Obeying her unspoken wishes, the Chain retracted from four meters or more down to just barely one, and V brought it across her body so fast that it almost seemed to go straight and solid, like a sword-

Flicker.

"For the hundredth time, Ishtar, keep your elbow UP when you do that! If your sword is angled like that when you try to parry, the enemy's weapon will slide down the blade and then right into your arm!"

"My ears are working perfectly fine, Ariel." Ishtar lowered her weapon and made a show of rubbing at one ear. "Honestly, when Evander said you were loud, I thought he meant in bed..."

"All right," Ariel snapped, blushing from her chin to the roots of her hair at the younger girl's words, "that does it!" She attacked anew, the Space Sword howling in a manner that suggested she really meant it this time. "And once I'm done kicking your sorry backside, I'm going to deal with that bastard brother of yours!"

"You know very well that he is NOT a bastard, and there is NOTHING wrong with my backside!" Ishtar shouted back, raising her weapon to protect her body and her voice to protect her pride. "VENUS WINK-"

Flicker.

"-CHAIN SWORD!"

There was an audible 'click' as the sections of the Chain lined up and fused together, the tip of each heart-shaped link fitting perfectly into the top of the next to form blade and grip. V raised the hollow 'sword' in front of her face, and the last heart-shape at the bottom of the handle began to glow and turn, triggering a flow of energy which cascaded down from the tip of the weapon. As the golden light passed, the sword was completed, the blade filling and the handle changing so as to perfectly match the grip of V's hand. When the lowest heart stopped turning, it had completely reversed from and become much less rigid in shape than before. Light flashed above the grip of the sword and then flowed outwards as a crescent-shaped hilt materialized, points up, as a small Venus symbol appeared across the guard, glowing briefly white and then becoming gold as the blade of the sword turned a steely grey.

Looking past the sword at her enemy, V smiled faintly and winked. Then she attacked. Blue-green lightning and gold-tinted steel collided with a great flash of energy, but the Sword fared much better than the Chain had earlier, and Cestus was forced to halt his rush, crossing his weapons above his head to catch and throw back V's downward slash—and then she struck his collarbone with the heel of her empty hand.

The assassin took the hit and fell back, bringing his arms down to cut a blazing electric 'X' through the air; V dropped into a crouch to avoid the suddenly-lengthened blades of the lightning-weapons and then sprang at her opponent, cutting outwards and upwards with her Sword in a long, swift arc as she moved.

Too far out of position to jump back, Cestus sidestepped the slash and tried to strike at V's exposed back, but her momentum carried her clear of his reach, and when her feet touched down, she immediately twisted, cutting a broad path through the air with her Sword in her left hand and firing a Crescent Beam from her right.

Cestus avoided the Sword simply by stepping back, and the shot was canceled out when it slammed into an energy barrier being generated between his blades, but the delay of that defense gave V time to catch her balance and set up for her next attack—although what that might be, she had no idea. So far three of her Venus attacks worked in V-Mode—if slightly modified—but she doubted that the Beam Shower would do the job, the Crescent Beam CERTAINLY wasn't enough, and it was pretty likely that she couldn't use the Chain _and_ the Sword at the same time. That left the Love and Beauty Shock... but somehow, V knew it wouldn't work.

Being Sailor V felt different that being Sailor Venus. There was a greater sense of security—partly from the mask, partly from the fact that EVERYBODY loved Sailor V, and partly from this unexpected ability to ignore damage—but she didn't feel quite as _strong._ V guessed that the energy which had protected her against each attack was being drawn from the same place as all the rest of her Senshi abilities, so as long as that protection and the Sword were both up and working, she wouldn't have enough power to gear up for her best move. She didn't know how to shut down that defense, and she might not have enough energy even if she sent the Sword away—and as it stood, she needed both of those powers to deal with this maniac.

And speaking of the maniac, he had just unloaded a mother of a thunderbolt at her while she was off wool-knitting. Seeing it far too late to try and dodge, V raised her arms and hoped it wouldn't hurt too much when it hit...

It hit. And it didn't just hurt, it HURT. The initial impact was bad enough, but the pain just kept on going and going and going; V was half-expecting to see a fluffy pink rabbit with a drum go by, but after several seconds three things occurred to her. The first thought was that the pain was getting semi-manageable even as it continued; the second was that not even Jupiter could keep on shocking something at this intensity for very long, maybe not even as long as it had been going on; and the third thing—a moment or two later—was the realization that her opponent WASN'T blasting her anymore. Rather, he was staring at her, his weapons lowered in involuntary amazement.

V looked down at herself and saw that her entire body was outlined with the violently crackling force of that thunderbolt, and that the light wasn't diminishing. The Venus symbols all over her uniform were shining, the brooch that held her compact the most brilliantly.

*What the-*

Flicker.

"YIIIIIIIIOWWWWWWWWCH!" Ishtar withdrew her freezing hands from the shifting, radiant cloud and hugged them to her chest, humming loudly to stop herself from swearing or crying—the former because it would get her in trouble if Luna happened to be in earshot, and the latter because if she tried to brush away tears, her icy hands would freeze the tears and get stuck to her face.

*I told you it would probably hurt,* a gentle voice said from somewhere inside the blue mist.

"That... wasn't... a PROBABLY... and why... why do my arms... feel cold now... too?"

*Because this test isn't over yet.* The vapor rippled out of the space of air between Ishtar and a row of targets on the far side of the practice room. *The rest is up to you, Ishtar. It's no different from the way you usually do things; just remember to focus on the cold you're feeling as well as on the energy you put into the attack. Gather, aim, and release.*

Ishtar did that as best she could, firing a Crescent Beam at one of the targets. It came out with a halo of bluish energy that wasn't at all normal, and when it hit the target, it left an ice-rimmed hole rather to the left of the bullseye.

*Well,* the mental voice said, *you certainly need to work on your aim*— the mists descended and coalesced into Mercury's human form—"but on the whole, I think you did well. Now here. Let me see your hands." Mercury took Ishtar's gloved hands between her own and concentrated; there was a soft blue glow, and what was left of the cold, numb feeling quickly receded from Ishtar's fingers. "There. All better. Want to try again?"

"Nuh-uh. Not right now." Ishtar shook her head quickly and emphatically, rubbing her hands together even though they really weren't cold anymore and dropping back to her normal form. Only about three months past her thirteenth birthday, Ishtar wasn't very far into puberty or the associated growth spurts, but she was still an incredibly beautiful child, and almost impossibly cute in the white dress Princess Serenity had given her when she arrived—to match similar dresses given to Amalthea and Vestia, naturally. Of course, Ishtar had had the gown altered a bit to match her personal tastes—shortening the skirt up to her knees, dropping the back to practically nothing, and removing the arms entirely to get maximum range of movement and cool air flow—so she didn't quite match Serenity or the other two new Senshi when they all got together and wore the dresses, but she was still cute.

And now she was cute and confused. Ishtar looked at her hands and then at the target, frowning. "Mercury, how come I can do that? Borrow other elements, I mean."

"Because you're a very friendly and honest girl and we all know you'll give them back?"

Ishtar smiled, but stamped her foot. "Mercuryyyyy..."

"Just a guess." Mercury sat down and hovered a short distance in the air, her eyes closed as she tapped her lips in a pose of deep thinking she was fond of. "It would probably take a fully-trained Senshi of Venus to give you the complete details," she said at last, opening her eyes and looking at Ishtar, "but as I understand it, it has to do with the nature of metal, and your command over it. Metal can absorb numerous kinds of energy without experiencing any real change to itself. Make it hot or cold, expose it to electricity or solar radiation or just physical force, dump it in the ocean or leave it exposed to the air; until you go past certain limits, which are often very great limits, the metal really doesn't change. And it's a very good conductor of energy. Are you following me so far?"

Ishtar nodded.

"Good. Now, since your Senshi powers are drawn from the element of metal, you have—or will eventually acquire—traits of metal, and one of those traits is the tendency—or ability, in your case—to absorb and retain energy. Just like metal, if you're exposed to heat or cold or some other form of energy, you can—with practice—tap into that energy to a certain extent and change the nature of your attacks. Absorb cold, and you can charge your attacks with it to freeze things; absorb heat, and you could melt things. But since you yourself can't naturally tap into other elements, you have to have someone else do it for you. In a real fight, that would usually mean letting yourself be hit by an attack."

"But... that would... that would _hurt_," Ishtar objected. "Really hurt."

"I know." Mercury sighed and floated over to hug the young girl. "But it's important, too, Ishtar. This is one of the greatest powers Venus possesses, because it lets her turn an enemy's own strength back against them. Most of the rest of us can only manage that against creatures who draw on our specific element, or on ones we're able to trick into doing something foolish like shooting at each other. A Senshi of Neptune can reflect an attack with her Mirror, but she doesn't get a lot of control over it, and she has to use up a pretty sizable amount of her own energy in the process. Saturn... well, Saturn is Saturn, and can pretty much do whatever she needs to in order to get the job done, but she'd have to use her powers to some extent as well. If she's advanced far enough in her training, a Senshi of Venus doesn't have to do anything but _be_ Venus, and this ability will still work. It's one of the reasons Venus is the commander of the Inner Senshi, or the Senshi as a whole during times of war."

"Really?" Ishtar exclaimed, backing up to get a good look at Mercury's face. "I get to be the leader?"

Once again, Mercury sighed, this time a good deal more theatrically. "Yes, you get to be the leader. Eventually. If you're good. And if we get desperate," she added.

"Mercury!" The Nereid smiled and tapped the end of Ishtar's cute little nose, and Ishtar made a face at her, then smiled for a moment. Then the smile just sort of drained away, and she looked at the floor. "Mercury, I... I'm not very good... with pain, I mean... how... how am I supposed to handle it?"

"Well, for starters, you can practice with that power regularly and get used to absorbing small levels of power, like what we just did. You'll eventually build up a tolerance for it, so it won't hurt as much. But it _will_ always hurt a little, more so when you try to absorb a lot of energy."

"And... and how would I deal with that?"

Mercury smiled. "Think about what your mother would say if we went to Venus right now and asked her, 'what is the best way you know to deal with pain?' Any ideas as to what sort of answer she'd give you?"

Ishtar looked at Mercury like she was crazy. "She'd say love, of course. That's almost always the best... oh." She became thoughtfully silent. "So you're saying... if I go and use this power someday, and it hurts, I should... remind myself that I can take a little pain... as long as it's for the people I love? Is that right?"

"You're the Venusian; you tell me."

Ishtar thought about it, and her expression of extreme seriousness transformed her cuteness into a brief moment of truly stunning beauty. "Yes. Yes, that's what I should do. I don't like to fight, but I'll fight for my friends and my family, and... um..." She thought hard, evidently believing something more was required. "And... I know! I won't just fight for justice, I'll fight for LOVE and justice! Not just my love for the people I know, but for the sake of all love, everywhere! Sailor Venus, the indestructible Golden Soldier of Love! HA!"

There was nothing mimicked about the suddenly wide-eyed and worried look on Mercury's face.

Flicker.

*And so the legend began,* V thought, smiling to herself. *I've got to see about getting in touch with my inner child more often... but for right now...* She turned her attention to her current situation and struggled against the conflicting energy—and the pain—to raise her right arm. *Focus, just like Mercury said... and then let it go...* "Let's see how you like it, pal! CRESCENT BEAM!"

When V fired, she dumped all the electrical force into the one shot; the blast of the thunder knocked her back to the edge of her current rooftop and left a profound ringing in her ears. The pain had gone away, though—and so had her enemy. She vaguely recalled seeing his eyes go wide and those electric knives come up, projecting their defensive field, a split second before the massive thunderbolt blew into them. There was a jagged-edged gap on the other side of the roof where the man had been standing, the area now blackened and charred and ringed by debris.

V looked at her finger, then at the damage it had wrought, blinking in awe. "Smoked 'im," she said quietly. She lowered her Sword and turned to face the nexus, then spent three or four seconds sorting out the multiple images swimming around in front of her eyes. "Whoa... head rush, head rush... ack..." She sent her weapon away and pressed her hands to the sides of her head until the throbbing stopped.

*Now this is the point,* she thought, *where Artemis would tell me to quit standing around wasting time with needless theatrics and to just get the job done. Then I'd threaten to throw him off the side of the roof, and he'd make some remark about cats always landing on their feet, and I'd threaten to tie his paws together, and he'd ask with what, and I'd try to think about it and start to feel better because I wasn't paying attention to the pain anymore... and it's worked again.* She straightened up and took a deep, relaxing breath.

She murmured a brief thank-you to Artemis before fixing her attention squarely on the nexus. *I think I've got just enough left to take that sucker down... so let's get buzzy...* "LOVE-V-CHAIN—TIMES TWO!"

She extended both arms, and lengths of golden Chain shot out, flying wide of the nexus and then swinging around to meet on the far side. V couldn't see it, of course, but she felt the instant when the two sections touched and joined into one huge Chain; she brought her hands together and linked the remaining ends with a brief flash of golden light and a bell-like ringing, completing the massive loop.

"Here we go. LOVE-V-CHAIN SONG!"

With a musical hum, the huge Chain circle began to turn, all the links twisting to point in at their target as they spun around it in a rapidly- accelerating and rapidly-shrinking orbit. Still not fully active and already using up a large amount of what little energy it possessed in order to regenerate its earlier damage, the nexus could do nothing to resist the cutting Chain, and green-grey dust flew in all directions as the huge Atlantean device was steadily sawed through. The Chain disappeared from sight, sinking further and further into the green trunk of the nexus. Several moments passed before V felt—and then saw the effects of—the Chain's shrapnel-like explosion, ripping holes in the already-battered nexus.

There was a momentary silence. Then, with the same rippling crackle that an enormous tree makes when it falls, the nexus fell in on itself, sending a huge plume of dust into the air. Spent energy flashed within the boiling cloud, which was carried high on a sudden updraft of wind and dispersed with greater- than-natural speed. True to form, the toppling sections of the massive machine shattered or exploded into nothingness long before reaching the crowd on the ground.

V watched it all with a weary but satisfied smile, then raised her communicator. "Usagi-chan? You there?"

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!" Usagi shrieked.

"Just doing my job, Princess. You can tell the others that the latest nexus is down for keeps. If they look up quick, they'll probably be able to see what's left of the smoke."

The silence was dumbfounded. "You... took out a nexus... by yourself?" Pause. "What's that sound?"

Hearing it as well, V looked around, then peered over the edge of the roof and smiled. "Oh, that's just a small portion of the populace showing their gratitude and appreciation for Sailor V." She waved down at the cheering, clapping crowd.

Then shadows dropped out of the night sky all around her and became the Senshi, plus tiger-mode Artemis. A moment later, blue mist flowed off of Jupiter and solidified into a yawning, stretching Nereid, who looked around, noticed all the grim folding of arms and disapproving stares being directed at V, and followed suit. The effect was only slightly spoiled as Calypso floated over to rest her chin on Jupiter's shoulder and whisper, "Why are we angry with her?"

"Venus?" Usagi's voice came. "What's going on now?"

"Just a prelude to a little shop talk, Princess," Neptune replied. "Feel free to pitch in at any time."

V looked at her friends and gave a faltering laugh. *Hooo-boy...*

His name was Tanaka Ken, and he had one of those faces everybody immediately trusts. Serious without being stern, handsome without being pop-star gorgeous, and aged without being old, he was the ideal anchor for the evening news.

"Good evening. In our top story tonight, emergency services citywide were almost overwhelmed by widespread reports of vandalism, assault, looting, and fires. Although no concrete evidence has been obtained to confirm it, eyewitness accounts taken from hundreds of citizens agree that the perpetrators of the apparent riots were a collection of non-human creatures; the most common descriptions were 'monsters' or 'devils,' although there have been numerous reports that the mysterious Sailor Senshi were present as well. A number of people also claim to have seen the famous Sailor V, who according to Interpol records was killed in an explosion over three years ago; this has led to serious questioning as to whether or not tonight's incidents may have been the result of some publicity stunt gone out of control. Officials are also checking thoroughly to rule out the possible use of any hallucinogenic agents. We now go to our field reporter Kurima Reiko, live at the scene—Reiko?"

"Thank you, Ken." The picture changed to show one of the station's better-known reporters, a woman who had the same sort of newsworthy face as her counterpart; pretty without being beautiful, determined without being overly tough, and smart without being dangerously intelligent. At least at the first glance. "I'm standing outside what was, by all indications, the center of the disturbance. Police and fire officials have cordoned off the area and called in specialists to assess the structural state of several of the buildings you can see nearby; they are warning everyone to keep back from those buildings, but if we can cut to our helicopter camera"—she paused for a moment as her image on the screen was shrunk down to make room for the image of several rooftops, as well as the feed from the newsroom with Ken—"there, you can see the extent of the damage and the reason for the police concerns."

"Quite a lot of damage to the roof levels," Ken agreed. The tops of at least five buildings in the area were motley collections of rubble, blast craters, and clinging char. "Any word yet on what might have caused it?"

"Well, Ken, concerns over the stability of those buildings have kept the police from getting bomb squad experts up to examine things as of yet, but everyone we've talked to so far seems to agree that this is where the alleged fight involving Sailor V took place. Accounts describe the appearance of some sort of tower on top of that building, which was almost immediately followed by the initial attack of the 'creatures,' and then a running confrontation between Sailor V and an unknown man who seems to have been in charge of whatever was taking place. Interestingly enough, Ken, we've spoken to some city workers on the scene, and it seems that there may have been an unexplained drain on the city's power grid beginning at approximately 6:48, which is roughly the same time witnesses say the 'tower' appeared. There hasn't been any official word on that, though."

"We're still waiting for an announcement about all of this from city hall and the Diet on this end as well," Ken said. "Now, Reiko, obviously there are a lot of stories floating around about the possible connection between the highly-publicized and well-known Sailor V and the much more reclusive Sailor Senshi. On the one hand, we have a single woman whose existence has been confirmed internationally, if never fully explained, and on the other, we have nearly a dozen extremely similar individuals of almost supernatural capabilities, none of whom have ever been confirmed to be in contact with any level of law enforcement. Does anything you've been told tonight seem to confirm or deny that apparent connection?"

"If you're asking for directions to their secret hideout, Ken, I'm going to have to disappoint you—and probably a few million of our viewers as well—but there is a definite consensus here that several of the Sailor Senshi _did_ arrive at the scene shortly after the battle between Sailor V and her unidentified opponent ended in the destruction of the tower. They left the area as a group, although that apparently followed a heated argument of some sort-"

"I've heard enough," Security said sharply, hitting a button and switching off the monitor.

"Better get used to it," Media advised. "It's likely to be the story of the month. And don't give me that look," he added, even though it was still too dark in this room to make out any kind of facial expression. "There's nothing that could have stopped this story from getting out, and I've already got people in place to handle it. You heard that little snippet about hallucinogenics, right? With just a few pieces of 'hard evidence' from Resources, I can have the news off poking their noses into political and religious extremist groups inside of a week."

"You'll have that evidence," Resources promised.

"Besides," Media continued, "I thought you'd have been pleased that your own people performed so well. How many of those things did they take out, in addition to the thirty or so prisoners our esteemed lady colleague from Sciences is checking over right now? And all of that without one injury on our side, or any mention of their presence in the news, I might add."

Security grunted and seemed a bit pacified. "I still think someone in your department dropped the ball on this."

"Let's reserve judgment on that for now," Information said. "Political is meeting with our representatives in the Diet right now, and it's a safe bet they'll want to see our reports as of an hour ago, so I suggest we all tend to our own business. Seeing as how everyone in Sciences is a bit occupied at the moment, I'll handle their end."

"Is it entirely a good idea to try and hold those things?" Personnel asked. "Aside from the fact that they're hideous little monsters, I was always under the impression that the Senshi were rather good at tracking them down."

"That's why we're holding them in the outlying labs rather than in the main complex," Information replied. "The technicians have set up energy fields which they think should counteract the energy signals of the creatures and mask them against detection, but we likely won't know for sure if they work until the labs are invaded—or not."

"That's a comforting thought."

Ami was having one of the best nights of her life.

The restaurant had been a good choice on Ryo's part. It was just classy enough to have the right atmosphere for a dinner date, but not so formal as to be uncomfortable or overpriced, and the clientele was a reassuring mix of families, groups of friends, and one or two couples like themselves. It was small enough to have a homey feel, but large enough that they could get a place to sit and not be crowded by the other patrons, and the food, a curious mix of traditional and modern dishes from all over the world, was very good. Ami thought she ought to see about bringing her friends here some time; Usagi would love it for sure, and Makoto would probably want to meet the cook and exchange recipes.

She had Ryo had talked during that leisurely, hour-long dinner, talked about anything and everything EXCEPT for Senshi business and Ryo's visions. They talked about Ryo's parents, who were getting more overt in their 'hints' that they wanted to meet Ami, and now possibly her mother as well; they talked about the courses they would be taking over the next year, which would be their last in high school; they talked about plans for the spring break, and here Ami had to put her foot down and tell Ryo he wasn't allowed to go up to her aunt's beach house at the end of March, because—by long-standing Senshi tradition—it was Girls Only.

They talked so much that Ami started to wonder if she was coming down with some kind of Minako virus. First it had been the phonecalls; then it was the uncontrollable bouts of giggling; and now it was the non-stop chatting. If she started lapsing into mangled catch phrases from pop culture...

After dinner, they went for a walk. There was just enough springtime in the air tonight to keep the temperature reasonable, and the city was remarkably quiet for just past eight on a Saturday night. Traffic was next to nonexistent, and there seemed to be fewer pedestrians than usual as well.

Perhaps the lone exception to the overall scarcity of people on the streets this night was the group of eight—or two groups of four, depending on how you looked at it—that seemed to be tailing Ami and Ryo. There was an extraordinarily handsome fellow with long white hair that was mostly tucked up under an old Giants baseball cap—a cap pulled WAY down over his face—who walked arm-in-arm with a lovely blonde woman wearing something that looked like the fedora and trenchcoat combination favored by private investigators in all the old movies. Right behind those two were a delicate-seeming young lady with hair like a waterfall, eyes like still ponds, and a champion-level glomp on the arm of the tall and profoundly uncomfortable-looking young man next to her, a fellow with brilliantly green eyes, a long brown ponytail, and the periodic habit of twitching one shoulder or his neck as if something about his clothes wasn't sitting right.

A group very similar to these four had gone into the same restaurant as Ami and Ryo about thirty-five minutes ago and ordered a fairly light meal, then hung around finishing their tea or coffee for a few minutes before hurriedly following the two lovebirds out—the two girls all but dragging their dates, although the blonde seemed to have considerably more trouble.

The other four shadows hadn't arrived until both groups had been walking for several minutes. This bunch consisted of a nice young couple and a pair of younger girls whose respective features each seemed to be color-inverted from the other's, the one on the left being pink-haired, the one on the right being black-haired. They had briefly moved to catch up with the other group, the pink-haired girl passing off a small pen to the blonde in the process, and then they had fallen back a bit. It was only right at this point that the blonde girl acquired her trenchcoat and fedora getup; prior to that, she had been wearing much more conventional clothes and had a considerably different hairstyle.

Oddly enough, Ami and Ryo didn't notice that they were being followed, even by such a strange mix of people. But then as they say, love is often blind—and once the lovebirds got to the park, all the trees gave enough cover for their unnoticed shadows to hide behind that even a love with 20/20 eyes and a pair of military-issue night vision goggles would have its work cut out for it trying to find them.

"Honestly," Michiru said at this point, "this is really quite enough. Let's give them at least a _little_ privacy..."

"You were the one who suggested that we make a sweep of the city for any leftover daimons," Haruka replied. "Can we help it if the last leg of the patrol route happens to go this way?"

"That is the single lamest excuse you've ever tried to foist off on me, Haruka. We should go."

"And miss the best part?"

"This _is_ Ami we're talking about," Michiru noted with a mix of amusement—for Ami—and irritation—for Haruka.

"Yeah, but her boyfriend's up to something."

"How would you know?"

"It may surprise you to learn that after impersonating a guy for all these years, I've acquired a fairly good understanding of how the other side thinks and acts—and right now there is _definitely_ a plan unfolding in Ryo's mind. I don't know _what_ it is, exactly, but it's there. Now hush, Michi; you're making it hard for me to hear." Michiru folded her arms and gave Haruka a dangerous look, but Haruka—her eyes aimed up ahead—just waved one hand back at her. "Yeah, yeah. Later."

ChibiUsa and Hotaru turned around to shush the two of them, and a little further along, Calypso appeared from the other side of a tree and waved one finger in stern, silent admonishment before vanishing out of sight again.

Haruka was not the only one to think Ryo was up to something. Even at this distance, Calypso could pick up errant thoughts of careful calculation; Makoto could feel his anticipatory nervousness; and Minako knew that the 'love vibe' was just right for a move on Ryo's part. If Rei hadn't gone home to make sure that her grandfather, Yuuichirou, and the four crows were all okay, she probably would have picked up something as well. Truth be told, Ami herself was aware that there was some ulterior motive in her boyfriend's choice of destination—but she was content to enjoy the walk and let him surprise her with the details in his own good time.

"Quiet night," Ryo said.

"Yes, it is."

"And you're not too cold?"

"It's not that bad out. Besides," she added, smiling, "I have this nice boyfriend to help keep me warm."

"Do I know him?"

Ami gave him a dry look and then shook her head. "I think that the next time there's a Senshi meeting, I'm going to leave you at home. Haruka's warped sense of humor seems to be catching."

"Better that than Mina-chan's vocabulary."

"Have you been reading my mind?" Ami asked suspiciously. "I was thinking something like that myself earlier."

For quite some time, Ryo frowned. "No," he said at last, "I don't think I was. How about you? Can you read anything from me?"

Ami concentrated on him, and there was a subtle change in the feel of the mindlink as her developing mental powers went to work. "You're thinking about something in the inner pocket of your jacket," she said confidently. Then Ami frowned. "You know my birthday isn't until September, Ryo-kun."

"I know, but it's still a special occasion, right?" He dug out a small box and flipped it open to reveal a pair of silver earrings, simple teardrop-shapes only about half as long as Ami's little finger, each with a small blue stone set into the broad end. The gems glowed softly in the light from the nearby park lamps. "I... um... I saw them at Osa-P yesterday, and I went back to buy them after I left Michiru's. It... occurred to me, while we were at the mall yesterday... let's just say I sort of felt like I owed you for the birthdays, holidays, and possible dates I missed in the past. All the things I could have done, but didn't."

"What is he saying?" Michiru whispered.

"I thought you were leaving," Haruka replied.

"Shut up, Haruka," Michiru said absently.

"Shhh!" ChibiUsa and Hotaru repeated.

"I should have at least _tried_ to get in touch with you after I knew for certain that you and the other girls were back as the Senshi," Ryo was continuing, "but I didn't, and... well, I just wanted to say I'm sorry for that. Really sorry, especially after seeing how happy you were yesterday, and then again tonight. And I know we've had this discussion before; it just sort of came back really strong yesterday, so I had to find some way to get it off my chest."

Ami looked at him, then at the earrings. "Ryo..." She sighed and reached out to close the box, briefly covering his hands with her own. Then she took a step forward, put her hands up to Ryo's head, and pulled him down for a very long kiss.

Minako just barely held herself back from cheering, and there were a lot of wide eyes and smiles among the shadows beneath the trees.

"Ryo-kun seems to suffer from a chronic case of shock every time Ami-chan does that to him," ChibiUsa noted. "Do you suppose it's a good sign or a bad one?"

"What _I_ want to know is where Ami learned how to kiss like that at all," Haruka said. "_I_ can't, and I've got way more experience at it than she does. Is she channeling her old life or something?"

"You're jealous," Michiru said in amusement.

"I am no such thing!"

"Liar."

"Shhh!"

Up ahead, the kiss had ended, although Ami had not let go of Ryo's head. "Consider all your past transgressions forgiven," Ami said, blushing only very slightly, "and don't bring them up again, because I'm getting a little annoyed at having to straighten you out over them every month or so. Okay? I don't need _things_ from you, Ryo; I just need _you._"

"Okay," Ryo agreed. "Uh... does... that mean I should take the earrings back to Osa-P, then?"

"Of course not," Ami said, smiling and taking the box from him. She studied the earrings once more, then exchanged them for the plain blue ones she had been wearing and put the box in her purse. "I said I didn't _need_ things from you, not that I didn't _want_ or wouldn't accept them. And these are very beautiful. Thank you." She kissed him again, this time just on the cheek.

"You're... welcome. Um... shall we go?" He held out his hand, Ami took it, and they walked away. Behind them, there was stillness for several minutes before the other Senshi began emerging from the trees.

"You're right," Hotaru said to ChibiUsa. "There was a definite delay in Ryo-kun's reaction after she kissed him."

"He's just a bit nervous, that's all," Minako said. "I've seen it before a hundred times. Once he's gotten used to the idea of steady dating, it won't be so bad—although I have to admit, Ami-chan _does_ seem to have a knack for surprising him." She smiled. "That's good in a relationship. After all, variety is the Sprite of life."

"That's 'spice,' not 'Sprite,'" Artemis corrected, "and will you lose the Humphrey Bogart getup before someone sees you?"

"No. Now come on, before they get-"

"I think we've done enough prying into their private lives for one night," Michiru interrupted.

"I agree one hundred percent," Artemis replied instantly.

"Okay then," Minako said, not missing a beat. "You two can leave together, I'll borrow Haruka for a while, and the rest of us will go on. I think that's a fair exchange; don't you?"

"Think again," Makoto said, with a meaningful glance at Calypso. The Nereid blinked for several confused moments before her mouth formed an "O" of understanding and the illusion of the tall guy with the ponytail fell apart. Freed of the image, Makoto shifted her shoulders again, this time in relief as opposed to discomfort. "Caly and I have to get back to the apartment before Ami- chan and Ryo do, and I've still got a little shopping to take care of while I'm out. And besides," she added, yawning, "I'm tired."

Haruka looked at Makoto with a puzzled frown, then shook her head as if dismissing something.

"And I have to be home soon, too," ChibiUsa added. "Setsuna told me I only had until nine before Ikuko came upstairs again and looked in on us. So I've got... um..."—she stopped and stole a quick peek at her watch—"about half an hour left."

"If ChibiUsa's not going to stay," Hotaru put in, "then I'm going home as well. With Caly leaving anyway, that means you won't have anyone to hide you from any telepathic sweep Ami-chan might happen to send your way, Mina-chan—and since you have to give the Pen back to ChibiUsa, Ami and Ryo could spot you visually anyway."

"But..."

"No buts, Minako," Artemis said firmly.

Minako looked around at all of them and, finding no supporters, sighed and gave in. She was well aware that she'd already pushed the limits of her friends' trust with all her solo stunts tonight, and she really didn't want to give them any further reason to be upset with her. Not that she was sorry about having tailed Ami and Ryo and then not telling the others where they were during a potential emergency, or about having encouraged Calypso yesterday to the act of swiping Ami's communicator tonight—this had come out during the brief dinner, neither pleasing nor particularly surprising Artemis and Makoto. Minako wasn't even all that sorry about running off to a fight without waiting for backup.

No doubt she'd be singing a different tune if she'd lost the fight at the nexus, but she hadn't lost, and she'd learned some useful things about her own powers, so all in all, Minako was ready to consider this night a big success. Even if pretty well all of her friends were annoyed with her. And even if Scarface had disappeared without a trace, an almost certain sign that he wasn't dead, but had simply retreated after her little return-to-sender move with the lightning bolt. Saturn hadn't been able to find any Bits of Blown-Up Bad Guy to indicate that they wouldn't be seeing that spiky hair and spiral-tattooed chest-and-vest combo again in the future.

Even so, the satisfaction of not one but two jobs well done—the fight and the date—more than made up for the problems.

*And it doesn't hurt that Sailor V is now officially back in the saddle,* Minako thought, smiling as Hotaru became Saturn and opened up a dimension door.

"_That_ is your apprentice's idea of keeping daimons under control?"

Archon and Cestus stood side-by-side before the displeasure of the Imperial Throne, the archmage with his usual unruffled calm, the assassin with the lingering traces of injury and weariness that even an hour in the Halls of Healing hadn't been completely able to remove. On the Throne, Janus and Jenna were both seriously put out by this latest failure, and Lilith—today with rich brown hair, soft blue eyes, and the trim physique of a dancer or gymnast, wrapped up in blue silk and silver ribbons—was making no attempt to hide her glee at Cestus's defeat. Lord Draco stood to the right and front of the high seat, frowning beneath his ornate helm and absently tracing the designs of his sword with one finger; the huge black knight was as impassively silent as ever, oblivious to the proceedings.

"We expected a force of perhaps six or seven daimons at most, Archon, _not_ an army of over five hundred of the things! Would you care to explain the reasoning here? Because quite frankly, it escapes us." The twins were speaking in unison again, as they often did when angered.

"It was a security precaution, your Highness. My student is quite capable of summoning and controlling two or three of the higher-class daimons typically called forth in these spells, but it would have required upwards of five such creatures to pose any sort of threat to an expanded force of Senshi. The girl could not have called that many daimons at one time without invariably losing control of one or more of them, and our situation is already difficult enough without adding the presence of free-willed daimons to complicate matters. The current unrest and confusion in the daimon dimension only prevent them from taking an interest in _our_ world for as long as _they_ are in _theirs._ Once brought over to our plane, they would have nothing to lose and everything to gain by pursuing their own agendas—and I do not need to remind you of the talent these creatures have for manipulating others into doing their work for them."

"So instead of a half-dozen or more potential renegades, you chose instead to have your apprentice turn loose an army of the things which were _already_ completely out of control?"

"I had her summon as many of the lower-class daimons as she could. If not as individually powerful, they were still just as effective for the purpose of distraction as higher types would have been, and perhaps even more so, since they covered considerably more ground all at once and forced the Senshi to spread out to deal with them. Only one Senshi reached the nexus, after all. We also do not have to be concerned with future daimon interference in our plans after this event, since none of the ones summoned were sufficiently intelligent _and_ powerful to be of consequence—had any of them survived."

Janus and Jenna looked at their sorcerous advisor for several long moments, then turned to Cestus. "And you, Cestus. Is there anything you wish to add to your report?"

"No, Highness. All the facts are in my report; I await your judgment for my failure."

"And what a _spectacular_ failure it was," Lilith murmured through a cutting smile. "Losing to a Senshi of Jupiter would make sense—after all, it's happened before—but to be overpowered by a sweet little Senshi of Venus, well..."

Cestus glared at the woman, his hands clenching into fists, but said nothing further. Janus looked towards his other advisor. "Your thoughts on Cestus's performance, Lord Draco?"

"Unsuccessful," the gleaming warrior replied, "but informative. Venus's powers of damage-resistance and energy-absorption were not nearly as developed in our day as they seem to be now, and we can assume that the same holds true for other Senshi and their respective powers. We already knew the Senshi of this era are stronger than the ones we remember, but we didn't know exactly what forms that improved strength might take—and since Cestus's training and combat style rely heavily on knowing the capabilities of the enemy beforehand, it was the lack of information, as much as anything else, which defeated him."

Janus nodded. "Our conclusion was much the same. Very well. Tonight's affair was a failure, gentlemen, and it sets us back even further, but no additional action will be taken at this time. We have neither the resources, nor the time, nor the inclination for it. I do expect better results in the future, however. Understood?"

Both men bowed.

"Good. You're dismissed."

Rei sat at the table in her room reading a book. It was not the Book; that was on the table in front of her, laying open while she waited patiently with paper and pencil for Rooky to finish his latest 'worm-hunt'. The book Rei was reading was one she had picked up from the public library a few days ago, a work of pseudo-fact and semi-fiction on the supernatural. Even though Rei generally didn't go in for ghost stories all that much anymore—a side-effect of having to deal with things in the real world which were a lot worse than ghosts—but she wasn't reading for entertainment; she wanted information.

Rei had the sneaking suspicion that Hikawa might be haunted.

At first, it had just been that incident where the Book had somehow moved itself from the floor to the table, something she could have easily accepted as being just part of the artifact�s inherent weirdness. The uneasy dreams, too, she would have been content to chalk up to the presence of the Book and her own ambivalent feelings towards it. But after Rooky's speech on Monday about 'something not-here', about doors that were apparently closing themselves, about the eerie feeling all four birds seemed to be sharing...

That was one reason she had been in such a rush to get home last night. She had no idea whether the bizarre energy involved in bringing hideous alien monsters from any number of other worlds would have any kind of effect on a ghost, but on the off chance that it might, she had to be here. Between Mars and her own spiritual gifts, she was the best equipped to deal with it. Her grandfather had a lot more experience with this sort of thing, of course; they seldom admitted it in public these days, but there were still plenty of people around who believed in spirits of one kind or another, and Rei had seen the old man called upon every now and then to help someone deal with a problem from 'the other side.' But Grandpa was old, his spiritual talents built up and then inevitably worn down over the course of a lifetime—and Yuuichirou had about the same level of spiritual power as a wad of used chewing gum—so Rei knew it was just best if she was here.

Nothing had happened, though. In fact, aside from the way her grandfather had made his usual circuit of the grounds with a frown and many careful looks into shadowy places—something Rei knew he only did when he had one of those 'odd' feelings—neither he nor Yuuichirou had been aware of the daimon riot until Yuuichirou came back with the newspaper this morning. The headline had been 'V FOR VICTORY OR VEILED HOAX?' with a file photo of Sailor V and a HUGE article taking up most of the front page, and several additional sections inside. Rei read it for all of three minutes before giving up in disgust; the words 'publicity stunt' and 'hallucinations' had been prominent, while the phrases 'government conspiracy' and 'alien invasion' were cleverly hinted at throughout. It was insane to imagine that someone with that sort of juvenile mentality wrote for a major newspaper.

She figured that Minako was going to eat up every word of it.

"Cawp?"

Rei looked away from her book to see Rooky's head sticking up out of the pages of the Book as if from a small body of water. It wasn't much of a surprise: sometimes he came out of the Book like this, walking steadily up as if on stairs; sometimes he rose up as though on an elevator; there were other times when he'd shot out on the wing, and once he'd just appeared next to it. There was never any way to tell, really, so Rei had stopped wondering about it.

"Hello, Rooky. Did it go well?"

"Awp. Rooky's sorry, pretty Rei-di." He did indeed look sorry as he shuffled up out of the Book, hunched over on himself. "Glowing worms hide. Rooky looks for glowing worms called 'armory' and 'arsenal,' but can't find. Rooky's sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Rei said, brushing the back of the scraggly little crow's head. "I know you tried."

"Rooky tries again? Tries for the pretty Rei-di?"

"If you want to. Let's see..." She looked at the list Artemis had given her and noted once again with a trace of disgruntlement that the items she had 'found' so far and crossed off the list were scattered all over the place. She tried time and again to search through the Book in alphabetical order, but the thing seemed to have a sense of humor nearly as bad as Haruka's. If Rei told Rooky to look for the word 'air,' for example, he'd certainly find it, but quite probably as 'airy' or 'bairn' or 'hair.' If he did find a reference to a Weapon—which was easier for the ones like the Caduceus, whose names couldn't be confused easily—more often than not it was as part of a description of the Weapon being used by one of the Senshi.

Under other circumstances, reading about the exploits of her Senshi predecessors would have struck Rei as a terrific way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but right now it was just one more thing getting in the way of the job she had to finish. She couldn't skip ahead, either, because the Book moved at its own pace, and she might miss something important if she tried.

"'Aegis,'" Rei said, reading from the top of the list. "'Major Weapon, specific to Jupiter. Sixteen separate orbs of crystalline or possibly ceramic design, solid but lightweight, pink in color and lit from within by green light when active. Design is symbolic of the sixteen moons of Jupiter, with four of the orbs being twice the size of the others; sections function as focal points and amplifiers for electrical energy.' Mako-chan would love that," Rei sighed. "Too bad we can't seem to find any 'Aegis' in here"—she tapped the Book— "except for the one in Greek mythology. I wonder exactly how much of their culture was inspired by Atlantis or the Moon Kingdom, anyway?"

She moved down the list and picked the next item at random. "'Warding Stones: Minor devices, nonspecific. Small crystal discs roughly the same width as a hundred-yen piece, smooth and rounded, colorless when inactive. Create protective shields at a range of up to two meters from the stone. Occasionally destroyed and replaced; eighteen remaining at last inventory.' I can think of any number of times when something like that would have come in handy. Too bad they've probably all been broken."

Rei flipped back a bit. "'Aqua Trident: Major Weapon, specific to Neptune.'" She rolled her eyes. "_Big_ surprise, there."

She kept on reading for several more minutes, not noticing that the symbols on the two exposed pages of the Book were beginning to act strangely. Instead of sinking back into the paper, the marks were twisting and changing in color, going from one thing to another, and the end results were starting to look a lot like columns of finely-drawn kanji characters. The pages were rapidly filling up with intelligible words, and when some of the symbols began to sink, they stopped—or were stopped—and moved back into place.

Rei didn't see it. Rooky, on the other hand, most definitely took notice as one of the nearer symbols began to flash and flicker through the entire visible spectrum like an exploding strobelight factory.

"Awp?" the crow said, moving to investigate. Rei looked up at the noise and immediately spotted the flashing symbol—and then she saw the rest of it:

THE AEGIS ARE ON GANYMEDE, BUT MAKOTO MUST GO AFTER THEM ALONE; ASK AMI AND CALYPSO ABOUT THE FURIES IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY. HOTARU SHOULD OPEN A DIMENSION DOOR TO THE OLD JOVIAN COLONY OF ALTARGREN. MAKOTO WILL BE ABLE TO SENSE THE GENERAL LOCATION OF THE AEGIS FROM THERE, BUT SHE SHOULD BE READY FOR TROUBLE, AND SHE MUST NOT USE THE AEGIS UNTIL SHE IS BACK ON EARTH.

"Okay," Minako said over the communicator. "Do I even have to ask the obvious questions?"

"The Aegis are one of the Weapons of Jupiter," Artemis said, and he quickly rattled off a description that was nearly word-for-word what he'd written on the list Rei had in her room.

"That sounds familiar," Makoto said. "Were those the things being used by the Senshi of Jupiter that Merlin showed us? The bracelets?"

"That was them," Artemis confirmed, "although they aren't actually bracelets. Each orb is physically separate from the rest, and they can all function independently, though of course they're more powerful and versatile when used together. I'm not really sure how they could have wound up on Ganymede, though; they were in semi-permanent lockdown on the Moon for decades."

"Why?" Makoto asked.

"Because they were _dangerous,_ Mako-chan," Luna replied. "The Aegis were created by Serenity I, and they were based on the same work which allowed her to make the ginzuishou, so in certain respects, each orb is like a small, early version of the crystal, but tuned to Jupiter's electrical power instead of spiritual power. Even all sixteen of them together aren't nearly as powerful as the ginzuishou, of course; at best, they can double or maybe triple the power of the Senshi-"

"TRIPLE?!"

"-but the problem is that they don't have a lot of the safeguards that are built into the ginzuishou's design. You've seen repeatedly how much it takes out of Usagi to use the crystal; the Aegis may not be as powerful, but their effect on a Senshi of Jupiter is just as bad. I know of four Jupiters who were killed outright while using the Aegis, and all of those who actually tried probably had their lives shortened to some degree."

"Is this your way of encouraging me to go find this thing, Luna? Because if it is, it's not working."

"They're too dangerous to leave laying around," Artemis said, "even all the way out on Ganymede. You don't have to use them, but if they're here—or locked up on the Moon again—we can at least be sure they're not going to get picked up by anyone or anything that might happen to wander by."

"If they're that much trouble," Haruka put in, "then maybe we should send some help with her to make sure the job gets done."

"Not a chance," Luna said flatly. "If the Furies are still up there, then Makoto and Hotaru are the only ones who'd be safe—and if we send anyone out, we'll need Saturn to stay here and hold that Shield of hers so nothing gets back in unannounced."

"Which brings us to the next question," Minako prompted. "Ami-chan? Wait, does Caly still have her communicator?"

"No," Ami said in a level voice, "she doesn't. We had a talk about that last night—and you should have known better than to suggest it to her, Minako."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time, and if we _hadn't_ gone through with it, you never would have finished that date. Tell me straight that you're _not_ happy you got to spend the whole night with Ryo without any interruptions."

Ami was silent. "You're welcome," Minako said. "Now spill. What's the deal with these 'Furies,' and how come you and Caly know it?"

"Because they used to be Nereids," Calypso replied sadly. "When we first left Earth, some of us moved to Jupiter, but at the time we didn't fully understand what effect living under its electromagnetic field would have on us. After a few generations, some were... changed..."

She fell silent, and Ami took over. "The Furies are so supercharged with electrical energy that their touch alone could be deadly to a normal human, and they had a tendency to go into a swarming behavior around other forms of life— something to do with the electrical energy of our brains interfering with their energies, or so the theory went. Mako-chan will be safe because she channels the energy of Jupiter, and that same energy covers all of the moons; she'll just disappear into the background and be ignored by the Furies. The rest of us would be almost certain to get attacked."

"Of course," Artemis added, "that's also the reason why you can't risk using the Aegis until you get back here. They were designed to harness the power of the planet's electromagnetic field, and if you tried using them for the first time while you were _inside_ that field, you'd get fried for sure."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Makoto sighed. "Well, if I'm going, I might as well go now. Hotaru-chan?"

"I can find Jupiter easily enough," Hotaru replied, "but it might take me a few days to locate a specific city on one of the moons if I have to go searching blind. Ami-chan, do you have the coordinates in your computer?"

"Just a minute... Altargren... yes, here they are."

"Good," Saturn's voice said. "Then I won't have to waste time." There was a pause of several seconds before they all felt something pass around and through them in a rippling, unseen wave.

"Was that what I think it was?" ChibiUsa asked. "Hotaru, are you all right?"

"I'm okay. And the Shield's up and working. I'd like to give it about an hour to settle in before we do anything else, okay, Mako-chan?"

"Fine by me. That gives me time to have lunch."

"I thought you wanted to hold off on using the Shield for a while yet," Michiru pointed out.

"That was before they dumped all those daimons on us last night. I've had my fill of unannounced visits, Michiru-mama."

"Speaking of things unannounced," Minako interrupted, "what sort of stones were in those earrings that Ryo-kun gave you, Ami-chan?"

"Oh, those were sapphires. I was sort of... wait, how did you know about those? I didn't... tell..." The blush was actually audible. "Y-you... you _spied_ on us?"

"'Spying' is such an ugly word, Ami-chan. And it was only for a little while. We just wanted to make sure everything was going well after that mess we went through with the daimons, and we left once we were sure you two were okay."

"When was that?" Ami asked in a small voice.

"Right after that kiss," Haruka said. There was a squeak on the other end of the line.

"What was it like?" ChibiUsa asked.

"None of your business!"

"O Contrail," Minako said, "it's very much our business. It's a time-honored tradition called 'kiss and tell'—now fork over the details, girl."

"Well," Calypso began, "for starters, she seems to think very highly of Ryo's..."

"CALY!"

During the Silver Millennium, Altargren had been the largest settlement on the moon of Ganymede, on any of the moons inhabited by the Jovian tribes. It was the closest thing to a capital city in Jupiter's miniature system, the major center of trade and travel between all the moons and the inner system. Farmers from the outlying districts had moved their legendary harvests to the city alongside the caravans of the miners and the loggers and the ice merchants, all of them going to do business with each other and with their visiting rivals. Ships would arrive at the port and unload endless streams of Nereid-made crystalwork and Venusian medicines, Martian silks and Lunar books, and passengers from the worlds of the inner system; the ships would leave just as heavy as when they landed, but with entirely different cargoes. One such ship had once taken a young Amalthea into the stars for the first time in her life, starting her on her journey to the Moon.

Like all the other settlements on the Jovian moons, Altargren had been centered around one thing: maintaining the environment. The heart of the city was dominated by the great pyramid which housed the mechanisms of the atmospheric shield, the great energy barrier which protected everything for hundreds of kilometers around from the ravages of the airless void that had been Ganymede's natural state. The shields amplified the light of the distant sun and regulated the temperature; they held in the precious air and water that sustained all life on the surface; they resisted the spectacular electrical storms that periodically swept all the moons. It was only during those storms that the shields became visible, lit up in awesome displays as the lightning danced along their outer surface, but if you never saw them otherwise, you always knew the shields were there.

At the base of the shield complex, there had stood the lesser but no less important reservoirs of the local irrigation system, six large and heavily reinforced domes topped by the curved, half-shell mass of the city windtraps. Each 'trap constantly siphoned off water vapor from the air and fed it back into the huge underground tanks, which in turn fed the network of tunnels and pipes that spiderwebbed out from the city in all directions, carrying the water to nourish the fields. 'Fields' was a loose term for it, of course, since the typical Jovian farm raised its own plantation of hardwood trees and decorative blossoms alongside the food crops—which, under Jupiter's influence, had a tendency to transform even the best-tended 'field' into a veritable jungle all by themselves. The presence of the livestock only added to the impression of out-of-control bounty, particularly since they benefited from Jupiter's energy as well and grew to the same extremes of size as the plants, if not quite as quickly.

The task of maintaining order under such circumstances was a tall order even at the best of times. The shields never wavered, but the irrigation system was not so resilient, and pipes were often snapped by the twisting roots of the prodigiously-growing plants. The periodic moonquakes took their toll as well, and in the outlying districts where the potency of the shields was reduced, freak lightning strikes and the attentions of local wildlife—creatures every bit as overgrown as the farm beasts, and often nasty of temperament—contributed some damage as well. Creatures native to the cold and blackness that reigned outside the shields sometimes made their way inside to raid and wreak havoc, and there was always the remote but still real threat of darker and deadlier beings than even these, things from the deep void of space beyond the moons and the planets and the solar system itself.

Fortunately, the Jovians were well-suited to the demands of their world. Like their crops and livestock and unfriendly neighbors, the immense and ever-present force of Jupiter had reshaped the descendants of those humans who originally settled its moons. Early childhood was relatively normal, but puberty set in early and with a vengeance; the old saying about how children grow like weeds applied in spades to the Jovians, who usually got started at age ten and didn't stop growing for the next five years. It was a rare Jovian who didn't top six feet, and every last one of them had the muscle to match their height.

The elemental influence of Jupiter extended to the mind as well as the body. Makoto was gifted with empathic abilities and a rapport with plants because Amalthea had possessed the same kinds of abilities, but neither of them had these powers because they were Jupiter. Being born as a Senshi had only enhanced the aspects of Amalthea's Jovian heritage; it had not created them. Jupiter itself had done that, changing her ancestors over thousands of years and causing the development of a variety of traits and abilities, the best of which were all reflected in the Senshi of Jupiter, but which could be found in her people to a lesser degree.

Armed with those abilities, the Jovians went about the business of living. They tended their fields with patience and perseverance, wrestling with the wild plants as often as the oversized livestock. When the irrigation system broke down, they fixed the damage and fed water ice from the mines into the reservoirs to make up for whatever had been lost in the breach. Under the watchful eyes of their parents and neighbors, children played in the fields almost from infancy, growing up—and up, and up—and gradually gaining the same nearly instinctive understanding of nature that their elders possessed. Wherever a hand was needed, it was given, regardless of the task; neighbors worked each other's fields in one capacity or another nearly every day, particularly the sorely-pressed teachers of the outdoor schools, who constantly had to stop class and hunt for their students among the ten thousand or so possible hiding places offered by the landscape. The only people in the system more openly friendly with each other were the Venusians—who, it must be said, had even the Jovians beat by a pretty fair margin—and despite the potential for violence allowed by their sheer size, there were no people less threatening in word or deed than the Jovians.

Unless you somehow managed to get one of them mad, that is. The monsters who periodically attacked the more remote farms and villages saw their share of angry Jovians, and it is probably sufficient to say that for many of the monsters, one such encounter was enough.

For thousands of years, this was more or less the situation on the sixteen moons. So what if the environment was artificial? It was home. If some aspects of the prevailing lifestyle seemed a bit rough compared to the splendor of Atlantis, well, that was true enough—but it was a life without the endless scheming of the great and often equally petty rulers, a life free of the squabbling between different families and the vying for power and position. In later years, it was also a life safe from the strange diseases and blights which appeared on so many of the worlds in the Atlantean empire, for while there were mana nexi powering the cities and villages, their effects were minimal; Jupiter's energy was just that strong. Some of the villages had become villas in those later times, and they had the normal complement of lords and ladies to dwell in them; while he was acting in his official capacity, a Jovian lord could play politics with the best of them, but a visitor arriving unannounced at his home would most likely find the "lord" out in the fields with the "peasants," and usually much happier than when stuck in some stuffy council chamber debating the letter of the law.

All of this and more was going through Jupiter's mind as she waited for Saturn to finish opening the dimension door to a place Ami had said would put them just outside Altargren. She wondered what—if anything—was left now of the world she half-remembered, a world she had only seen through another girl's eyes, but which she still felt such a profound connection to.

On the other side of the door, everything was rock and ice. There were no preserved buildings like on Mercury, nor even any ruins, just a plain of hard stone coated by a layer of frosty dust. Looking through the door with a sudden sick emptiness in her stomach, Jupiter's first impression was that of a night in some arctic wasteland. But there was no air on the other side of that opening in space, and it was much further from the sun, which meant it would be far, far colder than anywhere on Earth.

"I can feel it from here," Calypso sighed. She was sitting with Ami on the other side of the room, and she was leaning, almost unconsciously, towards the door, her eyes closed in an expression of pleasure. All three Senshi looked at the Nereid as she let out a long, pleasurable sigh, Saturn and Jupiter blinking in surprise, Ami reddening with a trace of embarrassment.

"Cut that out, Caly."

"Can't you feel it, sister?"

"No, I can't. Now quit it!"

Calypso sighed and reopened her eyes. She regarded the door with a look of longing, then shook her head and settled back, leaning against Ami. "Just feeling that energy, I can understand why we tried to settle there once. Even knowing what it did to some of us, I still want to go."

"You'd bring every Fury within a hundred kilometers straight to you, Caly—and some of them can teleport, remember."

"I know, I know. But still..." Calypso sighed again and snuggled closer to her sister, fighting off one kind of need with another.

"When this is all over," Jupiter said, looking squarely at Ami, "we're going to have to talk about that." She'd meant to do it last night or this morning, but she'd fallen asleep well before Ami got home, and stayed that way until well after Ami had already gotten up.

Ami obviously understood what 'that' was, because she nodded; Saturn just as obviously didn't understand, but she didn't ask. "Ready to go have a look around at the old neighborhood, Jupiter?"

"No," Jupiter replied honestly, "but here I go anyway." She took a deep breath and stepped through.

In the middle of crossing the barely-noticeable threshold of the dimension door, Jupiter felt a slight change in the nature of her own energy, a familiar sensation which told her that her power was shielding her against the cold void that surrounded Ganymede. She could also feel a tingle over every inch of her body, and this she recognized as the energy of Jupiter, an electrical field so strong that it blanketed all of the planet's moons.

That helped, a little. The people and their homes were gone, the plants and the animals were gone, and even the air was gone, but the familiar feel of that energy reassured Jupiter a little. Not everything had been lost; this much was still the same.

Something else had not changed, either. She looked around at the sky and could see many tiny stars, as well as the sun, much smaller here than it appeared from Earth. She could see several of the other moons hanging in the void, their cratered surfaces stirring recognition—and right there, standing between the field of near moons and the backdrop of stars, was the planet. Her planet. Its huge face still shifted and danced with the ceaseless passage of storms that could swallow the Earth whole and barely notice; its presence was inescapable, and the single storm, the vast patch of red clouds, was like an unblinking eye staring out at the universe, seeing you and ignoring you in the same age-old glance.

Standing a little taller under that awesome gaze, Jupiter smiled. "Hello, old friend. I'm back."

From the other side of the door, Saturn looked at her strangely. "Um... Jupiter? I hate to interrupt, but... was Rei's message right? Can you tell where the Aegis is?"

Breaking off her study of the sky, Jupiter closed her eyes and concentrated, and almost immediately she became aware of a presence off in _that_ direction, something that was like a concentration of the already-potent energy all around her. "I've got it," she said, pointing towards a not-too-distant mountain. She looked at the shape of it closely and felt Amma's memories stir. "I think that's the mountain where they built the docks."

Saturn leaned to one side to get a glimpse of the mountain, then nodded. "Got it. Come on back, and I'll put you a bit closer."

Jupiter moved back through the door and stood clear as Saturn closed it and opened another in its place. The mountain was much closer this time, rising up in front of them. A neat series of obviously artificial openings were lined up along the face of the slope above, and despite the crumbling decay of ten centuries, they still looked very much like the airplane hangars that were their modern incarnations on Earth.

"It's definitely up there," Jupiter said with a nod.

"A lot of other things could be up there, too," Ami cautioned her. "Remember what the Book said and be careful, okay?"

"I will. You're going to leave this door here, Saturn?"

"Uh-huh. It's not as convenient as having me along to open one wherever you need it, but I suppose it's the best we can do. If you get in some kind of trouble, just call; we can send Uranus through to teleport to you and then teleport both of you back here and out of danger."

"I'll keep that in mind. Just don't let anything else through while I'm gone." She walked through the door and headed for the mountain at an easy run.

It wasn't going to be particularly difficult to make the ascent. Any paths that had led up to the wide, man-made caves were long since gone, but climbing wasn't all that hard for someone with Senshi strength and endurance. And thanks to the vast flood of unseen energy radiating out from her much-nearer namesake, Jupiter felt like she could climb right to the top of this mountain and then tackle its next two cousins. Several times during the ascent, she stopped to look at the surrounding landscape, trying to get some hint of what might have happened to destroy Altargren and not leave any except those man-made caves behind. What she could see of the surface didn't really suggest anything, and after a while, she stopped looking.

No Furies or any other sort of creature appeared, and ten uneventful minutes later found her standing on the floor of one of the lower chambers. It was twice as big as any soccer field, about half that in width, and the roof was five stories high if it was an inch; Jupiter looked across to a broad, down-sloping ramp at the far end of the room. It led into an equally wide tunnel, and Amma's memories suggested that the whole construct was intended to house vessels for long-term maintenance, freeing up space in the main hangar. The sense of the Aegis—if that was what it was—was coming from down that ramp, and Jupiter followed it without hesitation. It was darker down here, the reflected light of her planet not penetrating into the tunnel, but Jupiter could see well enough; she'd brought a flashlight.

The tunnel was wide enough for four fully-loaded semis to have driven down side-by-side and still have room, but it struck Jupiter as being cluttered. Cranes and cables hung from the ceiling in places, and ancient crates were pilled along the walls. At one point, she found the half-completed or half- shattered hull of what looked like an old sailing ship and had to stop for several moments just to look at its elegant lines, letting her imagination and her half-complete memories fill in the missing details.

Then the smell reached her. It was a dry, metallic odor with faint touches of electric ozone at the edges, and for some reason, it made Jupiter nervous. She stopped walking and bit her lower lip, thinking. Ami and Caly had described the Furies as cloudlike masses of red lightning; she hadn't seen one yet, but could that electric smell be coming from one of them? She continued on, more slowly than before.

At the end of the tunnel, she stopped and stared. A massive hole had been dug here, a much cruder extension of the tunnel's length which looked more like a natural formation than an artificial construction. It moved even further into the mountain, and the air—there was actually air!—the air at its mouth was thick, warm, and rich with that weird smell.

Jupiter was seized by a sudden urge to turn around and walk away. It was pretty obvious that the tunnel had been dug out by something, and it was still wide enough around for those four semis to drive through, each with an extra trailer stacked on top of it. She was _not_ at all eager to meet something that felt it needed that level of space for comfortable movement.

But it wasn't in Jupiter to run from most things, and the faint presence she had been following was a great deal stronger now. She shone the flashlight down the length of the tunnel and saw that it ended in a chamber somewhat further on, and had no other passages connecting to it, so she stepped into the rough-walled section and continued on, halting once more at the edge of the next chamber. While the ceiling of the place was about as high as that of the abandoned hangar back at the front, the volume was probably only about half of the hangar's—but all of it had apparently torn out of the stones by some enormous thing.

The thing in question was sitting across the chamber on a wide shelf of stone, and while Jupiter could only see its front end, it still looked quite capable of having done all the stone-tearing necessary to fashion this place. Its two forelimbs were as thick as treetrunks and ended in sturdy talons that looked like they would be equally useful as either feet or hands. The torso from which those arms—or feet—extended looked like a small mountain, a mountain of silver-green armor plating which rose and fell almost imperceptibly as the creature breathed, a mountain blanketed by the wide, almost batlike wings that hung from its shoulders. Even though it was reclining, the creature's neck rose up to a height that would have enabled it to peek through third—or fourth-floor windows back in Tokyo. Its head, adorned by a backswept crest of horns, was currently pointed downwards so that the silver-blue eyes above the muzzle and the powerful jaw could stare at Jupiter in a form of surprise that only an intelligent creature could pull off.

It was, in no uncertain terms, a dragon.

_…_…_

SAILOR SAYS:

(Artemis is sitting at a table, eating a plate of tuna casserole.)

Artemis: Not bad... though why they spoil the tuna with this pasta stuff is beyond me... oh, hi. Just a second. (takes a quick bite of his meal and gulps it down) Okay.

Artemis: The obvious choice for a moral in this episode is that our girls are a nosy bunch, and they get into more trouble just by being nosy than by any action of their enemies. There's also something to be said for the practice of secrecy with regards to any personal event of a potentially romantic nature... (shakes his head and goes back to the casserole)

05/05/01 (Revised, 15/08/02)

Yes, a dragon. I like dragons, and that one's been planned for quite some time.

I hope everyone enjoyed the scenes from the date. I know I had some fun writing them. I paused once or twice to wonder if Michiru would really sink to that level, but I took comfort in the fact that Haruka would in an instant, if only to get something to tease Ami with later—and Hotaru would be right there alongside ChibiUsa, who is the biggest snoop in existence after her mother.

Now watch how this episode probably doesn't get posted until Mother's Day because I'm writing it up late and sending it in at the last possible second...

*insert revision comments*

The big changes here were made at the end. I wasn't completely happy with my meager description of life on Jupiter's moons, or of the dragon, but that's what happens when you're down to the wire on a deadline. Consider me happier now, and resolute not to let that happen again. ^_^

Up next:
-Dragon! BIG dragon!;
-Spring break gets into gear;
-and hey! It's finally March!