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.

29. Chapter 29

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 29

Triple Play, or A Busy Knight In Tokyo

Makoto's apartment was faring a little better than some other residences during this evening's ongoing cycle of brownouts, blackouts, and burnouts. The girls had turned the lights off when they left, so none of the bulbs had been flash-fried by the shifting current, and while the VCR and radio clocks were blinking 12:00 in the most traditional annoying fashion, Calypso could fix that in seconds when they got home. The fridge was alternating between operation and dormancy every few minutes, but that wasn't nearly long enough for any of the contents to spoil.

The real problem was the new behavior of the young sapling. At about the same time that the power problems had started, the little tree's leaves had rustled silently, as though a faint breeze had blown through the room. This had been followed by an odd scratching sound, as though the roots were scraping against the inside of the large pot, and then a single low creak from the slender trunk. Silence had returned after that, but not stillness; the leaves of the tree continued to move, and they were being joined in that dance by the leaves and blossoms of the other plants in the living room.

If someone had been present and had looked at the dirt in all of the assorted pots, he or she would have noticed a number of small buds working their way up from the roots of each plant. The sight was nearly identical to time-lapse footage of sprouting seeds, but it begged the obvious question of what exactly would be the result of this curious spring.

Neptune, Uranus, Venus, and Artemis were standing together on the roof of a neighborhood convenience store about five blocks from the nexus which was the heart of tonight's disturbance. Saturn had not wanted to risk opening a dimension door in the middle of a residential area—particularly not with so much electrical energy in the air—and so, since teleporting would have left them briefly weakened and smack in the middle of what was so obviously a trap, they had run here from Hikawa, with Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Luna breaking off a few blocks back to circle around and come at the tower from a different direction.

"Well, there's definitely *somebody* up there," Venus said, "but I can't tell if it's my buddy from the last time or not. Uranus?"

"I don't think it's the same guy. Not unless he had a major change of wardrobe." Uranus had eyes like a hawk, and she was currently exercising that particular gift. "Whoever's up there is covered with armor; it's shining from all the light that artificial storm's giving off."

"The knight Ryo mentioned seeing?" Neptune suggested. She was standing over by the corner, keeping watch in case any units appeared and attacked.

"Maybe. It might also be one of those nth-generation super units Luna warned us about, but we won't know until we get closer." Uranus scratched her neck. "Personally, I'd rather it was the knight."

"Harboring a girlhood fantasy, are we?" Venus asked with an arch look.

"Hundreds," Uranus replied without a trace of embarrassment. "Come around some time and I'll let you in on a few of them." She winked while, behind her, Neptune's turned back stiffened noticeably.

"Do you have something in your eye?" Venus asked innocently.

"Could you take a look for me?"

"Sure." Stepping closer, Venus lifted her face and hand to mimic checking Uranus's eyes. Lips hardly moving, she murmured, "You are a terrible flirt, Haruka. You know that, right?"

"It's good for her," Uranus said in the same quiet tone. "And if you object so much, why are you helping me?"

"Maybe I'm just keeping in practice."

"Or maybe you want to steal a kiss," Uranus countered, smiling.

"Down, girl," Venus chided, putting her finger to the tip of Uranus's nose and pushing her back.

"How are the others doing?" Neptune asked then. She had not turned away from her vigil over their immediate surroundings, but from her timing—and the slightly peevish note in her voice—she seemed to have a pretty good idea of what was going on behind her back. Of course, Venus realized as she stepped away, Neptune *did* have the Mirror...

"I haven't seen them since they went behind that row of houses there a minute ago," Uranus replied casually, "but nothing's blown up yet, so they're probably doing okay." She looked down at Artemis, who was sitting behind Venus in his tiger/panther form, his forepaws up on the rim of the roof. "You're *sure* that letting Jupiter try to shut that thing down on her own is a good idea?"

"We don't have a lot of options," Artemis replied. "With all the electrical energy flying around, Venus can't use her Chain to cut this nexus down without the risk of creating a feedback loop in the process. Mars could burn it down, but she'd have to set fire to something else first to avoid the magic being soaked up by the nexus, and I doubt that whoever's up there would give her the time. That leaves us with going for the ley lines."

"It took three of us the last time we tried it that way," Uranus reminded him.

"That was a little different. There are only so many ley lines carrying the energy of one element in any given area; setting up a nexus to draw on multiple elements allows it to tap into more ley lines and makes it seem more powerful on the surface, but it also makes it more vulnerable to disruption. Trust me, it won't be any harder for Jupiter to shut down this nexus than it was for any one of you to neutralize the first one. With the Aegis helping, it'll actually be a lot easier for her."

"I don't think a tendency to make her pass out really qualifies as 'help.'"

Being able to feel a necklace as though it was part of your body was just plain weird.

Jupiter had been constantly *aware* of the Aegis since she'd found them, and that sense had grown clearer in the intervening days and weeks, as Luna and Artemis put her through a very careful series of exercises to help improve her control of the Weapon. Even so, she'd never suspected that she might start feeling as though the Aegis were physically joined to her.

Fortunately, that very disorienting sensation had ceased the moment she'd transformed. Jupiter was glad of that, for it would have been beyond weird and well into the realm of seriously freaky to be able to feel a cloud of sixteen free-floating high-voltage orbs as though *they* were all part of her body, and she had enough things to worry about at the moment.

"Clear," Mercury said, lowering the Caduceus and gesturing for the others to begin moving towards the next house. They were leap-frogging their way around the nexus, stopping behind cover so that Mercury could scan the vicinity for any sign of units without being spotted by anyone who might be on top of the nexus itself. The process was trickier than it might otherwise have been, thanks to the electromagnetic interference the tower was throwing out; the varying frequencies and intensities were making a mess of Mercury's attempts to scan at a distance, forcing them all to wait while the Caduceus sorted out the real information from the ghosts and echoes masking it.

"How are we doing?" Mars asked as she joined Mercury behind the wall, treading carefully to avoid stepping on someone's little garden.

"I think this ought to do it," Mercury replied, checking the map currently displayed on her visor. "We're far enough from the others to be out of the path of any response that comes from the nexus when they move in on it."

"Then do we tell them to go?" Jupiter asked, half-raising her communicator.

"Not just yet," Luna said, holding up a hand as she stood with her back to the wall and glanced quickly around the corner. Unlike Artemis, she had chosen to assume her hybrid form, a black-furred body as tall as Jupiter's and appearing just as strong, with the added bonus of short, sharp nails on the fingers and a cat's soft paws and retractable claws on the ends of the legs. Luna's head in this form had a cat's mobile ears and bewhiskered muzzle, all three of which were at work now, and her long tail was twitching in synchronous agitation.

"What is it?" Mars asked.

"We're being watched," Luna replied in a soft growl, the fur on the back of her neck rising visibly. "I think..."

The only way Jupiter could later describe what happened next was to say that the ground suddenly came to life and tried to knock them all down. One moment it was a patch of rich brown soil and a few small blades of grass, and the next it was a pillar of earth, rising up with explosive force in the very middle of the small group.

For all the speed of the attack, it didn't accomplish much. Luna leapt back and away with a dazzling combination of human agility and catlike reflexes, escaping the thrust of the hidden enemy with ease. Mars jumped clear as well, warned by the sudden twinge from her built-in warning system, and Mercury—responding to the bright red light on her visor—was not far behind her. That left Jupiter, who unlike her friends, didn't try to move away. Instead, she launched an attack, gathering up the energy for Sparkling Wide Pressure and then slamming it directly into the living dirt with both hands at point-blank range.

The unit—for she could recognize it as such, now that it was in the open— went flying away from Jupiter in a long, ungraceful arc, sailing past a hastily backpedaling Mercury before crashing heavily to the ground. Rather than flailing about in an attempt to stand, the creature's dirt-clod substance boiled up almost like water in a fountain, flowing from its supine position directly into an upright stance. Jupiter's hit had clearly staggered the unit, for its left arm was hanging low, but the right was up in an aggressive position, and the fingers curled and hardened into a claw as Jupiter followed up her electrical blast with a rushing bodycheck, the fingers of her trailing arm clutched around a piece of the Aegis.

The unit swung at her, its arm glancing off a narrow field of energy being generated between three of the green-glowing pink orbs, and then Jupiter smashed into the automaton's body, her shoulder protected by another force-barrier. Jupiter might not have mastered the Aegis, but she'd learned a *few* of their tricks, at least, and though the unit didn't go flying five feet this time, the collision did knock it back down. Instead of rising, the unit's body spread out in all directions along the ground, sending up a spray of dust as it began to sink into the dirt.

"Don't let it submerge again!" Luna called out, even as Jupiter sent several more spheres rushing forward to surround the unit and seize it with beams of force. There was no electrical sizzle or brilliant flash of light, but the artificial being halted half-in and half-out of the ground, thrashing about within the pale green radiance of five orbs. Gritting her teeth against the spreading ache in her fingers, Jupiter brought her hand up and caused the glowing spheres to shoot a meter into the air, then turned on her heel and brought her arm down, a motion which sent the orbs sailing over her head and down to the ground in front of her.

The effect of all this on the unit was rough, to say the least. It was yanked explosively from its semi-immersion in the soil, hurled into the air, and slammed back down to earth under a crushing field of green force. The thing tried to rise again, looking for a moment like a man struggling to stand under some incredible weight, and then the edge of the Frost Lancet cut through both the green light and its prisoner. There was an emerald flash as the Aegis scattered, and the unit writhed wildly under the cold blade, but Mercury ignored both the light and the lashing limbs and drove her Weapon deeper, very nearly pinning the unit to the earth.

With both hands on the grip and no small amount of effort, Mercury wrenched the Lancet up through the unit's body, to swing free with a spray of dirt and small stones torn from the innards of the unnatural creature. Even riven in half from the waist up, the unit did not quit; while the left half of its body scrabbled at the ground for balance, the right side—arm, leg, shattered head and all—moved like the fingers of a huge claw to grab at Mercury. This clumsy move was met by a blast of icy water, a Shine Aqua Illusion which Mercury had begun as soon as she had pulled the Caduceus free. The unit's substance simply sloughed away under the force of the sustained assault, leaving a small pile of frozen wet dirt on the ground and a great deal of icy spray on the wall of the house beyond.

Mercury had reversed her grip on the Caduceus and tucked it behind her arm to make it easier to maneuver during her attack. Correcting her hold now, she eyed the fallen enemy with a suitably cold look that also held a degree of chagrin. "I didn't pick it up," Mercury said in embarrassment. "Not a thing, until it was already attacking."

"Third-generation units are almost totally indistinguishable from mundane earth until they move," Luna said as she walked back over. "Even a standard scan from the Caduceus would miss it with all this interference."

"*You* noticed it," Mercury replied with a hint of annoyance.

"I have sharper senses in this form than you do," Luna countered, "plus more experience at sneaking around than you and your old self combined—and I still didn't notice the thing until we were standing right on top of it."

"I didn't pick up a thing until it attacked, either," Mars offered. This was true, and a phenomenon she had noticed in the past; when there was something major setting off her internal danger sense, lesser threats could sometimes slip by her, unnoticed in the psychic noise of the greater problem. "Did you, Jupiter?"

"Not from that," Jupiter said, her gaze fixed on the mana nexus. Even if it had been invisible, she felt certain that she would have been able to tell where the thing was. There was a massive concentration of electrical energy directly ahead, and her sense of it sent a shiver down Jupiter's spine.

The plant-like units, with their aura of almost-life, of nature twisted into unnatural *wrongness,* made Jupiter feel sick and sweaty whenever she was close to them. This feeling was certainly present now, telling her clearly that this nexus was fashioned from the same ugly, half-alive green material as its predecessors, but the *energy* of the nexus evoked a very different response. Whenever there was a thunderstorm, Makoto felt invigorated. She was perfectly content to sit back and enjoy the mix of gossip, idle chat, and attempts to coax Usagi out of hiding that typically filled stormy afternoons spent with her friends, but when she was alone in her apartment, Makoto liked to stand out on the balcony with her eyes closed, breathing and feeling the gathering energy in the air before the storm broke.

That same exhilaration was rushing through Jupiter now, but with it came an unfamiliar reaction from a deep corner of her mind, a blend of deep sadness and unsettling fear that she could not explain. It was as if part of her, on some instinctive level, recognized the danger posed by the nexus. Jupiter couldn't tell if the feeling was coming from her vague awareness of Amalthea's memories, from her weird connection to the Aegis, or from the core of her Senshi powers, but she knew she didn't like it, and she fully intended to deal with the thing that was making her feel this way.

As Jupiter looked towards the blazing peak of the nexus, she was aware that Mercury was looking at *her,* and that her friend's moment of mild self-recrimination had been replaced by sympathy. Mercury could recognize what Jupiter was feeling at the moment because she had been through it herself; at least as much as Luna's and Mars's attempts, that helped Mercury to get over her embarrassment at having missed the unit.

"Who's back there?" an unfamiliar voice called.

The three Senshi and their advisor traded a quick look and then silently scrambled behind the house, away from the voice. Luna pointed to a pair of second-story balconies adjoining unlit rooms, and the four of them leapt up and then ducked down as best they could. It took Jupiter a moment to get the Aegis to descend and darken themselves; they lay on the wooden porch around her like so many marbles and earned a brief look from Mars, who seemed to be trying to decide whether to smile at the current state of the mighty Weapon or be nervous about its proximity.

The man who came around the side of the house a moment later was moving slowly and peering around at the backyard very carefully. He seemed harmless enough, just a nervous resident investigating some unusual noise, but they could all sense something odd about him. Mercury noticed a lack of projected thoughts, something that her Nereid memories associated with a degree of mental focus that would be very uncommon in an average person. Jupiter, on the other hand, was alerted to the fact that despite the man's outward appearance of caution, there was no accompanying *inward* sense of caution—no fear. Mars just got a good old-fashioned bad vibe when she focused on the stranger, and Luna's heightened feline senses—all six of them—picked out things that even the three Senshi missed.

It was almost a dead giveaway when he hardly even glanced at the nexus, but they weren't fully sure until the man's left hand came around into their field of view and was revealed to be a thick, two-pronged claw of white bone rather than five fingers. Immediately, a black shadow flickered over the railing of the first balcony as Luna moved to dispatch the unit, her meehara a sliver of moonlight in her hand.

Perhaps alerted by that flash of light off the blade of the knife, the unit looked up and raised its right arm in time to protect its head; the dough-like flesh parted easily before the meehara's sharp edge, but sustained little real damage. Realizing this, Luna used the leverage of her weapon to pull the unit's blocking arm low so that she could slash its face with the claws of her free hand. Luna's claws were not nearly as effective as her knife, but they left four satisfactory scratches running across the unit's already-warping face, and one of these marks went right over its eyes.

Strictly speaking, the unit did not need eyes to function effectively, and by that reasoning, Luna's attack should not have impaired her foe. However, whether the unit *needed* eyes or not was quite besides the point; it had them, and its facsimiles of eyes were every bit as sensitive as the genuine article. With a strange, gurgling snarl, the unit fell back. Bone spikes erupted from its arms as it lashed out—blindly—at its assailant, but Luna was already well outside their reach.

"I've got this one," Mars said, standing up. "FIRE SOUL!"

"No, wait!" Luna raised her hand once more, but this time she moved too slowly. Left off-balance by its own clumsy attack and unable to see the incoming fireball, the unit was engulfed in brilliant red and orange flames—flames, Luna noted with a growling sigh, that were at least five times brighter and ten times larger than Jupiter's brief bursts of electricity, and which illuminated the entire area like a neon sign. Mars realized her error at once, and her face turned nearly as red as her flame, but there was nothing to do about it now except follow through on the attack and finish this enemy off.

The Fire Soul lacked the power to incinerate this generation of unit with the same ease it had demonstrated against the flammable first-generation types, but it was still enough to send the unit to its knees. Blinded, with most of its upper body withered and black and its skin cracked and flaking away in the aftermath of the intense heat, the unit simply could not offer any sort of defense as Mercury turned loose another blast of her Aqua Illusion and froze it where it knelt. Luna followed this up by rushing forward and bringing the hilt of her dagger down at the base of the unit's neck with both hands.

Superheated and flash-frozen, the unit shattered under the force of the blow, its right arm and a large chunk of its torso bursting into a hundred pieces. Luna stepped back and spun on one paw, delivering a solid kick that took the ice-encrusted head clean off what remained of the unit's shoulders. The unbalanced left arm fell away on its own a moment later, leaving the unit's legs and the lower third of its torso frozen to the grass.

Satisfied that this enemy was down for good, Luna turned and looked at the girls. Mercury already had her attention and the Caduceus directed towards the mana nexus, and Jupiter was reactivating the Aegis; Mars met Luna's gaze with her arms folded and the bright blush reduced to a light tint in her cheeks.

"The power of Mars isn't very well-suited to sneaking around at night unnoticed," Luna said with surprising calm.

"I'll try to stick with my ofudas and hand-to-hand skills if a situation like this comes up in the future," Mars promised. Luna nodded silently.

"In the meantime," Mercury said, "may I suggest that we all get ready for company?" She pointed towards the nexus, and more specifically at the small dark shape which was soaring in their direction and getting larger with every second.

There was a sudden flash of light from behind them, but when they spun to confront it, they found Uranus, Neptune, and Venus standing in the familiar teleport formation, with Artemis—back in his everyday cat-form—riding along on Venus's shoulders.

"We saw the flash and figured the original plan was moot," Uranus explained as she released Neptune's and Venus's hands. She glanced at Mars, but held any comments back for later.

"What do you have, Mercury?" Artemis asked as he hopped off of Venus and blinked back into his predatory form, his eyes fixed on the approaching enemy. It was close enough now for all of them to see the fiery colors of the heavy plate mail, if not the finer details of the work.

"That armor seems to be shielded," Mercury answered. Her visor was filled with an enhanced image of the knight and a great many boxed captions of information. "I can pick up human life signs and a high level of unspecified magical energy, but that's it. I wouldn't recommend punching him, though."

"I wasn't thinking of it," Uranus said as she summoned the Space Sword. She and the others fell silent then, as the flying knight came in for a landing at the rear of the yard. His descent was the slow, controlled sort of levitation they had seen many times before, but his gleaming armor was an entirely new feature, and one which presented a problem.

The rules were different when fighting with armor, as opposed to making do without. An armored enemy could afford to stand and take some blows, and would therefore move and react differently than a target whose only defense was getting out of the way of an attack, or one that could conjure magical shields. Discounting many monsters with naturally armored bodies, the Senshi had really only ever faced two opponents who wore armor. One had been Endymion, who hadn't precisely been an enemy even during his time under Beryl's control; the other was Galaxia, who most certainly hadn't needed the protection, and had likely worn her golden battle dress as more of a fashion statement than anything else. Neither of these cases had given the Senshi much helpful experience for dealing with other armor-clad warriors.

One thing they could infer was that if the knight needed his armor because he lacked the innate ability to command the force-fields and energy-deflecting powers past opponents had used, then getting him out of his heavy metal wardrobe would greatly reduce his ability to fight them. But how to get rid of the armor without seriously harming the man inside? Destroying dark spirits and unthinking machines was one thing, but killing a human was a whole other matter, and one which the Senshi were usually able to avoid. They had faced a number of human, once-human, or humanoid alien adversaries over the years, and while many of those people had died, the Senshi themselves had not been forced to kill more than a small handful. None of them were eager to see that change, even if it did always put them at something of a disadvantage, since most of their enemies had no compunctions about wiping the floor with the Senshi if they got the chance.

It never helped when the enemy looked like this knight, either. Taller than even Jupiter and Uranus, the dimensions of his armor and the strong line of his chin—the only part of him that was visible through the metal—suggested that he possessed the build to match his height. The armor's design only added to the trouble, with the dragon's head adorning the torso and the one forming the helm both appearing to glare fiercely, perhaps even intelligently, at those who stood before them. When people dressed in that sort of attire and carried weapons like the heavy-bladed sword in the knight's left hand, they were seldom interested in playing nice.

Therefore, when the warrior swept his sword-arm out to the side, crossed his right arm before his chest, and bowed from the waist, the Senshi were understandably caught off-guard. Mars, Mercury, and Neptune were all automatically returning the respectful salute with cautious bows of their own before they realized it, and Luna and Artemis both nodded slowly. Venus smiled and folded her arms, her head tilting unconsciously to the right as she studied the knight; Jupiter and Uranus merely stood their ground, Weapon and Talisman at the ready.

"Six Senshi," the knight said, his helmet turning slightly from side to side as he examined them. "Two with Talismans, two with Weapons... and two members of the Nekoron warrior societies, unless I miss my guess," he added, looking at Luna and Artemis closely and with interest. "You two are a long way from home. I wasn't aware that there had been any contact between Terra and Mau in this age."

Before any of the others had a chance to speak, Artemis rumbled, "Name yourself, warrior," in a formal tone that only Luna and Mercury recognized—and then only from another lifetime.

The knight seemed to recognize it as well, for he straightened and touched his blade to his right shoulder in another salute. "I am Mikhail, scion and Lord of House Draco of Atlantis, Lord High Defender and acting commander of the Order Aeterna, Lord General of the Imperial Legions, and champion of the Imperial Throne." He managed to get all of that out in one sentence, leaving the Senshi momentarily stunned and giving them a clue as to why *their* introductory speeches always seemed to throw their enemies into a mental stall. Draco barely paused for breath as he asked, "And you?"

Artemis stood up on his hind legs as he blinked into his hybrid form, a body somewhat taller and considerably heavier than Luna's, sporting a tufted mane about the head. "Artemis, of the Urrinn Pride of Clan Raharhaam, m'ram'ha of the Garheer, and Master of Arms to the Royal Family of the Moon." The heavy- bladed metal claws Artemis had used back in Atlantis were on his forearms now, and he crossed the s'srah before his chest, points curved over his shoulders as he returned the knight's original bow.

"Here goes the testosterone," Uranus said under her breath, bracing herself for an elbow in the ribs. Surprisingly, it didn't come; Neptune was smiling in amused agreement.

"The Moon?" Draco repeated, lowering his weapon. "Interesting." Although the Senshi couldn't see it through the visor of the dragon-helmet, Draco's eyes flickered briefly to the silver-capped black pearl in the hilt of Luna's knife. "And a m'ram'ha working alongside an elite of the Feri'al? Very interesting indeed. The last I had heard, your societies had been all but blood enemies for the better part of two millennia."

"Your information is more than a little out of date, Atlantean," Artemis said, pointedly ignoring the look Luna sent his way, "and we're not here to discuss ancient history. That nexus behind you is a device whose use has been forbidden for twenty centuries, and we intend to remove it."

"Then I fear we have a problem. I have been ordered to use every means at my command to defend the nexus. You will have to get past me to reach it."

"You may want to reconsider that," Uranus advised him, raising her voice. "Venus kicked your scarred friend's butt pretty easily, so I can't imagine that your chances against all of us would be very good."

Draco chuckled. His laughter, the Senshi noted, held an emotional warmth that their other enemies tended not to display. "Perhaps," he admitted. "And perhaps I might surprise you."

"Enough!" Jupiter snapped, her outburst punctuated by a brief flash and crackle from the Aegis. "Either put up, or shut up and get out of our way."

For the first time, Draco frowned. "I have no wish to needlessly pursue a battle with you," he said firmly, his voice cautious but unafraid, "but my orders are clear. Fight me if you feel you must, but I cannot allow you to pass."

"Your choice," Jupiter retorted angrily. In response to her emotional state, energy rippled through the Aegis and then fired out at Draco in the form of a minor lightning bolt.

There was a blur of white, gold, and black as Draco's sword came up into the path of the electrical discharge. The blast parted around the suddenly white-lined edge of the blade and sizzled past the knight's heavy shoulder plates. One arm of the forked beam hit the ground near the fence and left a patch of scorched grass; the other half of the bolt arced up over the top of the fence and fizzled out in the air.

As the sparks of Jupiter's attack faded, Draco raised his right arm and lay the flat of his sword across it, looking down the length of the weapon at Jupiter as he called out, "ICTUS!" There was a low-pitched hum and then a whine and a flash of light as a vaguely cone-shaped white projectile shot forth from the sword and hissed through the air. The Aegis came forward immediately, three of the smaller sections swatting the counterattack out of existence with another of the green barriers.

Draco was already set to fire another bolt at Jupiter, but golden force smashed across the back of his left gauntlet, a quick shot from Venus that spoiled the warrior's aim and sent his attack flying well over Jupiter's head. Draco recovered almost immediately, but had to forego launching another blast in order to use his weapon in the more traditional fashion, raising it to the level of his head to catch the Space Sword before its edge found his armor. The white edge of Draco's broadsword and the yellow blade of Uranus's Talisman connected with a violent hiss. Each warrior was using two hands in an attempt to push the other off balance, and though their weapons continued to spit sparks from their point of contact, neither gained any further distance.

Considering that Draco was probably half again as big as she was and could bring the weight of his sword and his mail to bear, Uranus wasn't so much impressed as she was reasonably satisfied by the knight's ability to match her strength for strength. She wasn't about to let him know that, of course. Faking a look of strained effort, Uranus allowed herself to be slowly pushed back and down until she was in a half-crouch and using the Space Sword's slender but nigh-indestructible blade to hold back Draco's heavy broadsword. Then she stood up, using the extra force to push her enemy's weapon away as she jumped back.

As soon as Uranus was clear, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter attacked together, combining Crescent Beam, Fire Soul, and Aegis-enhanced Supreme Thunder into a single high-energy blast. Mercury and Neptune did not join in, for there was already enough raw force in the strike to wipe out anything short of a sturdy daimon; anything more would have been sheer overkill until they had a better idea of Draco's ability to withstand their powers.

They got that information a split-second later, when the attack collided with a barrier of force surrounding Draco's body. The bulk of the energy was canceled out in a rippling flash, and although Venus's Crescent Beam pierced the shield and scored a direct hit against the ornate breastplate, the only visible effect was a brief shift in Draco's stance as the force of the shot knocked his upper body slightly back.

The knight's swordarm had dropped to his side as he adjusted his posture; he brought it and his blade around now in a wide, sweeping arc, this time shouting, "ARCUS!" and unleashing a whip-like length of that white force along the path the sword cut through the air. Everyone still on the ground got out of the way as the three-meter wide wave lashed across the length of the yard and hammered against the back wall of the house, leaving a definite dent in the siding. Landing atop the rail of the balcony where Mercury was still standing, Venus countered with another Crescent Beam, which once again either ignored or punched through Draco's shields, and again failed to even scratch his armor. On the other balcony, Jupiter let fly with Sparkling Wide Pressure, only to see it explode ineffectually against the knight's semi-visible shield.

"You can do better than that," Draco said critically, pointing his sword at Uranus one-handed and triggering its shooting power again. Neptune put herself in the way and sent the projectile flying back at its creator with Submarine Reflection, and triumph glowed briefly in her eyes when the redirected blast went right through Draco's forcefield.

"Mercury!" Neptune called, asking for confirmation.

"I see it," Mercury answered. "Stick with focused attacks! They can push through the shield!"

Uranus and Venus responded to that by combining Crescent Beam and Space Sword Blaster into a sliver of golden force that moved almost too quickly for the eye to follow. It crossed the field of Draco's barrier with no trouble and hit the knight's armor with an explosive report, blowing him backwards into the fence with the heavy crash of metal against stone.

Surprisingly—and a bit disturbingly—the knight was grinning as he regained his footing a moment later. "That's more like it!" Draco applauded, before sending a second whip-blast at them, this time angled up towards Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. They cleared it easily, but the wooden posts of the balconies and the glass doors beyond were crushed and blown to splinters, sending down a dangerous rain of jagged edges and piercing points which Uranus, Neptune, and the two cats had to do their best to dodge.

Venus got a clever idea then and sent her Chain snaking down at Draco before she had even hit the ground, trying to tangle up the sword and yank it from its master's grip. The shield did not materialize to block the Chain, and Draco's armor slowed his reactions just enough for the first part of Venus's tactic to go over perfectly, but when the Senshi of Love hit the ground and pulled, she was startled to discover that the knight didn't budge. She dug in her heels, but Draco maintained his balance and his one-handed grip.

"Guy weighs... a freaking ton!" Venus exclaimed through her teeth, looking at the others. "What are you waiting for? Get going!" Uranus, Neptune, and Artemis did not move to leave, but the others all took the opportunity and made a break for it. Draco watched them for just an instant before turning his attention to Venus.

"PULSO!" he cried, shooting his right arm forward as if throwing a punch. A wide blast of force much the size and shape of Draco's clenched fist flew from the knuckles of his gauntlet, catching Venus in the chest and smashing her backwards with sufficient force that the links of her Chain slipped through her fingers, shredding the material of her gloves. Not done yet, Draco aimed his still-entangled but otherwise released sword at the ground in front of Uranus and Neptune and called out, "ICTUS!" The shot sent a spray of dirt up into their faces, and in the moment that the two Senshi and Artemis turned their heads to protect their eyes, Draco whirled and launched into the air in pursuit of the others.

Laying stretched out on her back, eyes closed, Venus let out a soft but profound, "Ow." She started to lift her hands and then breathed out sharply through her nose as the movement caused the slashes along her palms to sting. When Venus opened her eyes, Neptune's worried face was looking down from the left; Venus waved up at her. "Uranus took off to be a hero, I see."

"Hai," Neptune said with a short-lived look of amusement. "How do you feel?"

"Like I was just punched in the chest," Venus replied, laughing and coughing simultaneously.

"Of course. Hold still." Neptune lightly probed Venus's collarbone with her fingertips, then checked the breastbone and ribs. At length, she looked up at Artemis, who had knelt to Venus's right.

"Nothing's broken as far as I can tell, but I'm not the medical authority that Mercury is, and that seemed like a fairly heavy blow."

"Try the Mirror," Artemis advised.

Neptune blinked. "Ara?"

"Just try it. Hold it up and angle it so that you can see Venus's reflection, and focus on the here and now. It'll start up with the usual metaphorical imagery if you let your mind wander."

Frowning, Neptune did as she was told. At first the reflection was totally normal, the same thing any other mirror would show, but then the glass filled with a swirl of faint blue light, and the image changed. Neptune's eyes widened as, in the reflection, Venus's skeleton was suddenly aglow with a golden light that was very similar to the light which surrounded her entire body. That light was, however, the *only* thing surrounding Venus's body, as if her entire fuku had just turned into pure energy—and not very opaque energy, at that. Neptune blushed and lost her focus, and the image vanished instantly, replaced by one of Venus with her head bowed and her right hand placed over her heart, a gold ring on her third finger. Neptune was immediately certain that it wasn't a wedding ring, but the vision faded before she could get a closer look.

"Well?" she heard Artemis ask. "Did it work?"

"It worked," Neptune said, not surprised that Artemis apparently hadn't seen anything other than a normal reflection. "Nothing's broken," she continued, helping Venus sit up, "although she'll have some spectacular bruises unless Saturn sees to her. And there are these," Neptune added, turning one of Venus's hands palm up and frowning at the lightly bleeding cut, "but they aren't deep."

"That's one less worry, then. Let's..." Artemis paused, his eyes sliding sideways just before he made a fantastic leap at something that had just slipped around the corner of the house. There was a flash of red light, the sound of something tearing, and then three soft thumps. Neptune turned around in time to see a first-generation unit laying in three pieces on the ground, one of its energy-spitting 'eyes' seeming to glare balefully up at Artemis and his heavy claws before its body crumbled away.

"I'll make a quick check of the area for any more of them," the half-man feline said. "You two head after the others."

"Be"—Artemis disappeared around the corner—"careful," Venus finished with a resigned shake of her head. Looking up at Neptune, she sat back, leaning lightly on her sore hands and smiling coyly. "Enjoy the show?"

"You noticed."

Venus tapped the side of her head. "Goddess of Love, remember? I pick up on all the emotional frequencies that have the slightest thing to do with the job, and you *did* like what you saw. Besides," she added in a less teasing tone, "you don't blush very often. Considering that you were looking at my reflection when it happened *and* that the Mirror can apparently see through things..." She shrugged.

"I'm sorry about that," Neptune apologized as she helped Venus stand up.

"That's okay. You couldn't have known what your Mirror was going to do, and I'm not embarrassed that you saw me naked and liked it. In fact, I'd be hurt if you *didn't* think I was attractive."

"I am partial to blondes," Neptune admitted with a small smile. "Particularly the ones who run track."

"Somehow I guessed that might be the case. And now you have something you can use to get back at Uranus for that bit on the roof. Come on," Venus said then, stretching as she turned towards the nexus and the brief flashes going off somewhere closer to it than she was. "We'd better catch up and see what sort of trouble the others have managed to get into without us."

Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury had been able to make good progress towards the nexus. Thanks to the mix of running and jumping from rooftop to rooftop that they had long since mastered, the three Senshi crossed the better part of a block in a hurry and without incident. Knowing that her hybrid body would have had difficulty keeping up with the superhuman speed and endurance of the Senshi, Luna had assumed her predatory form and matched their pace without too much trouble.

Then they heard the whining discharge of Draco's sword, and Mars let out a cry of pain as the blast caught her in the back just as she was about to jump down from another stone wall. Mars landed on her hands and tried to avoid any further harm by pushing herself into a forward roll, but her left shoulder hurt too much for her to maintain the handstand long enough, and she came crashing down in essentially the same position Venus had been blasted into a few moments before. It gave her the perfect view of the knight as he flew by overhead, by all appearances not giving her a second glance.

*His mistake,* Mars thought, raising her hands and summoning her powers. "MARS FLAME SNIPER!"

Whether he had been watching Mars or not, Draco certainly heard her, and he turned around in the air at the sound of her voice, raising his sword into the path of the blazing arrow just as it struck. Draco's shield did not materialize to defend him, and thanks to whatever magic was allowing him to fly, the force of the Flame Sniper threw the knight up into the air by another ten meters before he managed to regain control. Mars realized in dismay that her attack would have been far more effective if Draco had been standing on the ground when it hit him; as it was, most of the force spent itself in shoving him backwards, doing little if any real damage before Draco swept his sword and the remaining flame off to his left.

The effort hadn't been completely wasted, though. Hanging at an altitude equivalent to four stories in his gleaming armor, Draco made a very inviting target, and the other Senshi weren't about to pass up such an easy chance. The shield shimmered into view as a Supreme Thunder Dragon roared up and engulfed Draco from behind, just as a streaking yellow bolt slammed into his armored chest. The Dragon's explosion seemed to anchor Draco against the force of the other attack, but he emerged from both unscathed and flew down towards Jupiter and Mercury, firing blasts from his sword as he went.

Mars looked up as Uranus leapt over the wall and landed a short distance from her. "What is it going to take to crack this nut?" the tall Senshi muttered, speaking to herself before she saw Mars out of the corner of her eye. "You okay, Mars?"

"I've been better," Mars said as she sat up.

"Do you need a hand?"

"I've got her," Luna said, jumping down from the roof in panther-form and landing as a cat-woman. "Go!"

Uranus didn't need to be told twice; she was over the next fence and out of sight within two breaths. Mars could guess why. Except for that first shot from the Aegis, none of Jupiter's attacks had been able to penetrate their enemy's barrier, and trying to attack someone in armor with your hands and feet guaranteed nothing except bruised knuckles. She was at a terrible disadvantage against Draco, which meant that Mercury would very likely have to fight him head-on. Most of her powers were diffuse by their very nature, suggesting that Draco's shield would brush them aside, and if he could match Uranus for strength, Mercury wouldn't be able to hold Draco off with the Frost Lancet. Oak Evolution or Aqua Rhapsody might be able to punch through the knight's defenses, but if Jupiter and Mercury had to start throwing their strongest attacks at Draco, they'd exhaust themselves in short order. And they still had a nexus and who knew how many units to worry about.

As Luna reached down and took her hands, Mars gritted her teeth against the pain in her back and stood up. This fight was not going very well, and it got worse when two green shapes and a lone flesh-colored one came over the back wall of the yard and rushed towards her and Luna.

Jupiter's hand was starting to shake again, but she held on to the orb and sent the other pieces of the Aegis spiraling up to form their shields and intercept the blasts from Draco's sword. Mercury was off to her right, watching Draco closely and waiting for an opening. Just as the knight was about to land, Mercury tucked the Caduceus behind her arm and spun a Shine Aqua Illusion straight at him. The freezing liquid bypassed the shield and struck the warrior head-on, covering him in a layer of solid ice from helmed head to steel-toed boots.

"YES!" Jupiter exulted. "Nice shot, Mercury!"

But Mercury, watching through her visor, was already shaking her head. The lines of Draco's armor flashed red through the ice, triggering an explosion of flame that shattered his temporary prison and sent its melted fragments flying. A cloud of steam rushed off of Draco's shoulders as he brought his sword down in an overhand slash and unleashed another whip-snap of white force between the two Senshi, driving them away from each other, and he turned the blade to begin firing a succession of force-bolts at Mercury, tracking her movements with the point of his sword before each shot and advancing steadily as he fired.

Both Senshi understood what Draco was trying to do. Mercury and her computer played an important role that could not be easily assumed by any of the other Senshi, and because she was still one of the smallest members of the team in the purely physical sense, she could be more quickly overcome by injury. Jupiter immediately opened fire on Draco's half-turned back, taking a chance and calling on her Oak Evolution in the hopes of buying Mercury some room to breathe. The first of the high-energy bolts to strike Draco were not deflected by his shield, but Jupiter was dismayed to see that when those initial shots began exploding across the warrior's back, his protective barrier shimmered to life in time to catch the bulk of the barrage before it struck home. Draco was left nowhere near as damaged as he should have been, although he was staggered long enough for Mercury to flood the area with her Shabon Spray and disappear.

The typical reaction from monsters trapped in Mercury's blinding fog was to stumble around cluelessly, clawing or firing at the slightest hint of a target; Draco responded by flying straight into the air, out of the cloud, and turning through a slow circle above it. Failing to spot Mercury, Draco shrugged and took aim at Jupiter instead, preparing a new strafing run from above, but the impact of another Space Sword Blaster ruined that plan and sent the airborne warrior veering off course once more. Uranus hopped down from a nearby roof and landed next to Jupiter.

"Mercury?" Uranus asked with a glance at the mist. Jupiter nodded. "Come on, then," Uranus said, heading for the fogbank. "We need to regroup."

You did not enter a Shabon Spray and find Mercury; either she found you, or you just got lost in the fog. Uranus was only three strides in, and Jupiter had just crossed the edge when Mercury appeared to their right, her visor alive with shifting data.

"There are seven units closing on our position," she said quickly. "Three more have attacked Luna and Mars, and Artemis is dealing with number eleven."

"I only saw four," Uranus said. "What about Neptune and Venus?"

"They're about to meet up with Luna and Mars, but I'm reading another five units moving towards them from the north."

"Our Tin Man out there brought a regular army with him," Uranus muttered. "Right, then. Hold on." She dismissed the Space Sword, caught Mercury's right arm and Jupiter's left, and then concentrated and began to glow. Before either of the others had a chance to blink, their auras flared in response—as did the Aegis—and the fog around them blipped out, to be replaced by a sidewalk beneath their feet, a street behind them, and a vaguely familiar garden wall in front. There were roaring flames on the other side of that wall.

"Find out where he is," Uranus said, releasing her hold and springing over the wall, summoning the Space Sword in midair. Thanks to the post-teleport daze, it took Mercury a moment to begin scanning again. She immediately picked up the other Senshi, plus the pair of units—make that one unit—that Luna and Mars were fighting on the other side of the wall, and the five that were closing in from the north.

Jupiter noticed these as well, for they were all plant-based, and as they appeared down the street, she sent Supreme Thunder surging towards them. The shambling green automatons dodged, only to be caught by surprise as the five sections of the Aegis that had been carried along within the thunderbolt caused it to fork out in five different directions, each arm spearing one unit. Two of Jupiter's targets fell and did not rise again, and the three survivors were swept away by a Beam Shower before they could do more than get back on their malformed feet.

"Haven't you managed to get any farther than this?" Venus asked as she and Neptune leapt down from the roof where they had been standing.

"Our friend in the armor makes for an effective roadblock," Mercury replied. "How are you feeling?"

"Very sore," Venus admitted, lightly patting her midsection, "but nothing's broken."

"I guess the bone in her head isn't the only one that's hard as a rock," Uranus observed as she came around the corner with Luna and Mars.

"Exactly," Venus agreed. Then she frowned. "Wait a minute..."

Uranus didn't give her that time. "Where's Draco, Mercury?"

"I've got an intermittent trace of him near the nexus. I'd say that when the three of us teleported, he assumed we were going to attack the nexus, and he fell back to protect it."

"And the units?"

"Jupiter and Venus just dealt with five of them," Mercury noted, checking her visor. "The other seven are right where we were and have stopped moving... no, they're coming back this way."

"Good," Uranus said. "I've got an idea."

"Oh dear," Neptune sighed.

The flash of lightning down in a street was not enough to make Draco leave the nexus unguarded again, but when it was accompanied by a red burst of flame, he took to the air.

However unlikely it might have seemed, it was clear from the reports that it only took one Senshi to destroy even an active nexus, if it was the right Senshi. Uranus, Neptune, and Mercury had been able to work together to neutralize the first nexus because it had been drawing on several elements, but Athena had destroyed the temporal nexus on her own, or at least with no more help than the Garnet Orb. Draco had no doubt that this new Jupiter—armed as she was with the Aegis—could destroy this nexus single-handedly, and Mars could simply set fire to the techno-organic mechanism. As long as those two were held off, there was really nothing the others could do except let the nexus run.

The thought of the Aegis made Draco shake his head. Cestus was likely to explode when he found out about it, but more importantly, the presence of the Weapon pointed to a direct if distant link between these Senshi and Serenity. That was one more wedge between them, one more argument to make any chance of an alliance or cease-fire even more unlikely.

The Aegis also added a note of urgency to Draco's defense of the nexus. He had already seen one woman die from using the Weapon; he had no wish to witness such an event a second time.

As he closed in, Draco could see that his opponents had managed to completely regroup, and were in the process of eliminating one of the teams of units that he had dispatched to engage them. A quick check of the display system within his helm confirmed that of the forty-five units he had begun with, twenty had been destroyed, most of them first-generation types. Draco still had fourteen of those, plus another seven second-generation and four third- generation units, but the timer that had been steadily counting down at the corner of his right eye told him that he also had seven minutes left before he could allow the Senshi to destroy the nexus.

Draco briefly regretted not taking the opportunity to fire on Uranus, Jupiter, and Mercury while they had been hiding within the Shabon Spray, but he'd had no way to guess where they might be, and considering that he had been restricting his sword's projectiles to their stunning force, such an attack would not have been particularly effective. He shrugged that concern aside and focused on his defense as the Senshi began firing.

Venus led the attack, launching three Crescent Beams at Draco in quick succession as he flew closer. He managed to dodge the first; the second one scored a direct hit against his breastplate. The projectile did not penetrate, and Draco was able to get his flight back under control in time to take only a glancing blow to the shoulder from the last Beam as he landed and counterattacked with a sidelong sweep of the force-lash. Splinters flew from the trunk of a nearby tree, and windows in the wall of the house beyond shattered at the touch of the semisolid energy, but the Senshi evaded easily.

A series of eight flaming rings shot down at Draco next. He was startled when the scattered barrage failed to trigger his body shield; evidently each ring was composed of such tightly condensed fire-energy as to be indistinguishable from solid matter. Draco's armor had been specially designed and enchanted to ward off heat, but by the time the last of the rings had hit him and expired along the metal plates of his armor in a gout of flame, he most definitely felt a few degrees warmer. He raised his sword and sent a stream of bolts at the Senshi, aiming more to scatter them than to inflict any real damage, and Neptune moved right into the path of the attack, using her Mirror and a great sweep of blue energy to reflect no less than three of the shots back at their creator. Two of them missed, but the third—by luck or skill—scored a direct hit on Draco's helmet, right between the crystal lenses that covered his eyes. He had to take a step back to steady himself and shake his head once to clear out the ringing.

Then there was a much louder ringing as something hit him from behind, something slower but considerably larger than the projectiles that the Senshi had been pelting him with throughout this battle. Draco started to turn, but when his arms encountered resistance, he realized that someone had him in the beginning of a full nelson. Coming from a Senshi, the move would have disabled him in no time if not for his armor, the simple bulk of which preventing the hold from being complete, or even very effective.

At least, that was what Draco thought until a bright yellow light flared from the gloved forearms he could just see out of the corners of his visor. The world blurred around him in a most disconcerting manner that he recognized instantly, and when it came back, Draco had no idea where he was. The pressure on his arms was gone at once, and he turned to find Uranus standing some distance behind him. Around them rose an open-aired structure that bore a resemblance to a stadium, large in size if not nearly so grandly built as the ones Draco remembered from the last days of Atlantis's glory. The center of the place was a massive oval track; the two warriors were standing on the grassy island in the center. The place was dark and utterly deserted, lit only by the stars and a distant haze—very distant—that suggested the location of the city where they had been a moment before.

In spite of his situation—or rather, because of it—Draco threw back his head and laughed. "Brilliant!" he exclaimed. "We must be a hundred miles from the city."

"Not quite so far," Uranus replied, pulling her glowing blade from the empty air, "but all the same, I'm glad you liked our little surprise."

"Oh, indeed," Draco said, still chuckling as Uranus attacked. He let her come, parried the first two strikes to measure their force and confirm his suspicion. When he felt certain that the expression the light of the Space Sword was revealing on Uranus's face was weariness, Draco turned his third parry into a setup for a fast punch to his opponent's midsection. The weight of his armor added to the impact, and Uranus, drained from the effort of teleporting Draco this far on top of everything else she'd already done in the last twenty minutes, was no longer fast enough to avoid the blow. She doubled over as the air flew out of her lungs, and then toppled to the ground, gasping for breath. The Space Sword fell next to her, sliding point-first into the ground almost up to its hilt.

Although he hated to leave a promising duel half-done, Draco had a mission to complete, and checked the timer again. Four minutes and forty-five seconds left. He had a pretty good idea of what he would find upon returning to the nexus, but he went ahead and teleported back to it anyway.

Uranus watched as her opponent disappeared in a haze of red, and let out a long, wheezing sigh when he was gone. Neptune had not been happy about the idea of letting her carry Draco clear out of the city without at least one of the other Senshi going along as backup, but considering how much of a struggle she had faced just getting herself and her unwilling passenger out to the racetrack -the first remote, unpopulated place that had come to her mind—Uranus knew that she would have been left completely exhausted if someone else had come with her. Not that she was in much better shape now, of course...

Groaning, Uranus managed to push herself into a sitting position. At least she'd been right about Draco. Honor was not a high priority for the majority of the enemies the Senshi faced, but after the way Draco had behaved during his introduction, he seemed to be one of the exceptions to the rule. Just as any other opponent Uranus could think of wouldn't have hesitated to kick her while she was down, it didn't seem to have occurred to Draco at all. Knowing that might be useful in the future, but right now, all Uranus wanted to do was go home and collapse.

She switched on her communicator. "Saturn? Be a considerate daughter and open up a door to the racetrack, will you? Somewhere out on the track itself, preferably."

"What?" Saturn's startled voice came back. "Uranus? What do you want a door out there for?"

"So I can come home, of course," Uranus said patiently.

"What?" Saturn repeated. "What are you doing at the track? Why aren't you—oh, never mind." Five seconds later, Uranus heard the distinctive sound of the Silence Glaive tearing through space and time, and a dimension door opened up at the starting line. Saturn stepped through and looked around, then marched over to Uranus. "What have you done to yourself this time?" the little Senshi asked, sounding more like the parent than the child. "And where are the others?"

Off in the direction of the city's dim glow, a brilliant flash suddenly lit up the night sky, followed several seconds later by a heavy rumble.

"Does that answer your question?" Uranus asked.

When Draco rematerialized atop the nexus, things were more or less as he'd feared they would be. He could see Jupiter standing atop a roof less than half a block from the base of the tower, both of her hands glowing with the emerald radiance of the Aegis. Linked by an electric chain that started and ended with the orbs in Jupiter's hands, the remaining fourteen spheres had formed a great circle around the nexus, and each was drawing other lines of energy into its own radiant core. Draco could see that the nexus had already been weakened; the storm at the focal point was shifting even more wildly than before, looking now like a caged beast struggling to break free of its prison, and the spires were trembling as they tried to contain the force.

The remaining units had attempted to respond, but the other Senshi and their allies were getting in the way. Mercury, Venus, and the two Nekoron were all employing blades of one style or another while Mars simply shot flames at any unit she saw. Neptune was standing watch near Jupiter, waiting patiently with her Mirror in case anything got past the others.

Draco was smiling as he shook his head, unable to deny his admiration for their teamwork. They had completely fooled him with that teleport-trap, and now there was nothing he could do to stop the nexus from being destroyed.

"Time to save what can be saved," Draco said to himself, checking the display. Seven first-generation and two second-generation units had either been destroyed in his brief absence or were engaged right now. He ordered those and all the remaining first-generation units to pursue the hopeless attack, and then activated the escape command in the other automatons, sending them to ground until Archon's mysterious protegee could retrieve them.

That done, Draco adjusted the teleportation system in his armor and jumped to the nearest of the two remaining nexi, to await the next move in the game. When he saw the flash of the first tower's destruction, the timer was at 4:20. Not his best showing, but not entirely unsalvageable, either. Like his Prince, Draco had no real talent for the mathematics of geomancy and mana physics, but Princess Jenna did, and she had given him enough information to formulate several contingency plans.

With the premature destruction of the first nexus, one of those plans took effect and reset the mission timer to six minutes. Draco nodded. It would depend on how the Senshi chose to cover the distance between their current location and the two remaining nexi, but unless they teleported in, Draco knew he could manage a six minute delay without difficulty. On foot in this city, even the Senshi would have difficulty covering the distance between the two sites in that time, and...

The sides of his visor began to flash red, a silent warning that his armor's sensors had detected something dangerous. Spinning towards the source of the reading, Draco watched in surprise as three stone figures mounted on the side of a nearby building were infused with a strange dark energy and suddenly came to life. They had been gargoyles before; now they were saurian daimons, an identical trio of slate-skinned, bat-winged monsters that resembled small, lanky dragons.

Draco raised his sword, the edges of the blade glowing intensely red as he prepared to blast the monsters into oblivion the moment they showed the slightest hint of interest in the nexus. The tower might have been invisible to the unaided *human* eye, but Draco had his doubts as to how effective the cloak would be against the supernatural senses of a daimon.

To the Atlantean knight's amazement, the three creatures did not so much as glance in his direction. Instead, they took to the air and flew *away* from the tower, swooping past the downtown skyscrapers with grating cries and slow, creaking flaps of their stony wings.

After a spectacular display of electrical pyrotechnics and violent tremors, the entire nexus was blown to kingdom come in a huge burst of ball lightning. The entire upper third of the tower was consumed outright by the destructive sphere, and the rest crumbled before the shockwave of the thunder.

As soon as the tower was gone, Jupiter dropped the two pink spheres she had been holding and fell to her hands and knees, breathing heavily. The Aegis had been able to draw on the enormous energy of the nexus and spare her the effort of powering them, so she didn't feel hurt or numb like the last time she had used the Weapon to such a high degree, but she was still tired, and her head was pounding. After a moment, she realized that the latter was not a symptom of fatigue, and groaned.

"No..."

"Jupiter?" Neptune knelt down next to her. "Makoto, are you all right?"

"I'm not... I'm not hurt," Jupiter said, sitting up. "But I can still feel... it feels like there's another nexus out there."

"Another one?" Neptune echoed, blinking and looking up at Mercury, who scowled and started scanning in all directions.

"We've been had," the Water Senshi reported a moment later in a sour tone. "The jamming field's completely gone, and I can read *two* more nexi out there now. One of them is thirteen blocks away from us, and the other's two more blocks beyond that." Mercury was about to say something further when the data on her visor abruptly changed. As her eyes followed the lines of text, the rest of Mercury's face became grim.

"Do I even want to know?" Venus asked.

"No, I would imagine you don't. But that doesn't change the fact that there are three daimons coming this way. They'll be here in another seventy seconds."

"You were right," Venus observed wryly. "I didn't want to know." She looked around at their group; Jupiter was by far the weariest after that battle, but none of the others was exactly looking at her or his best, either. "If the lot of us were all rested and fresh as muffins, this might not be an issue, but with the way things are, *can* we fight that many daimons at once?"

"'Daisies,'" Artemis corrected absently, as he, Luna, Mercury, and Neptune traded long looks.

The stone daimons flew in low, croaking to one another as the scent of magic grew stronger. The power that had brought them across from their world had shackled them, binding their wills so that it was impossible for them to prey upon the helpless humans whose scents filled the air to an overpowering degree. Instead, they were being driven to seek out and attack the source of this magic. It had a human smell to it as well. Female, in fact.

Two of the creatures chuckled horribly in anticipation of what was to come, but the third, older than its comrades, did not join in their vile mirth. One of its counterparts drifted over to utter a questioning screech at the apparent lack of eagerness; the elder daimon responded with a backstroke from its talons and a warning hiss for the other to leave it alone.

This particular daimon sometimes went by the name Brakareshkla, and although it was far from attaining the tremendous power enjoyed by the lords of its kind, it nonetheless held a certain degree of respect amongst the denizens of its world. Not because it was old, but because it was a survivor. Through just the right mix of strength, cunning, and luck, Brakareshkla had managed to hold its place in the chaotic hierarchy of the daimon realm for several thousand years, weathering challenges and treacheries and disasters beyond number without suffering any great loss. In its time, Brakareshkla had witnessed the rise and fall of daimon lords; it had taken part in the long-ago invasion of this world; and it had survived the apocalyptic counterattack by Saturn, in which the daimon realm had been virtually emptied of its denizens.

Something about this scent reminded the daimon very strongly of that ancient campaign, and that made it cautious. The only laws in the daimon realm were the whims of its lords and the rule of ambition and chaos, but after Saturn had used the accursed Grail to wipe out all but one in a thousand of their kind, the daimons had been naturally leery of returning to this world, even in its modern, magic-poor era. The legions of Pharaoh 90 had chosen to disregard that ancient superstition in a bid for vengeance and power, and most of them had therefore perished along with their master. A number of others had been summoned across more recently; many of these had also been obliterated, and others returned with warnings of the defenders waiting on the other side—the ancient enemies, the Senshi, were present in force, the Destroyer among them.

Given a choice, Brakareshkla would have denied the summons and remained in its own realm, but it had not been allowed that option; the magic compelled appearance and obedience, and so the daimon had no choice but to make the journey and do its best to survive.

That imperative met its first challenge when the three flying monsters left the region of the tall structures and began to pass over many small ones, closing in on the source of the magical scent. They reached an area where the air was suddenly thick with the residue of some powerful event, a magic strong enough that even its fading odor blocked the supernatural senses of the daimons' assumed forms. With their noses blocked and no sign of their quarry evident, the two younger beasts hissed in frustration; Brakareshkla, on the other hand, immediately turned and began to climb away from the area. Just in time.

A spray of blue-white bubbles swarmed up towards the daimons and exploded into a thick, freezing mist. The cold was so intense that ice began to form over the monsters' bodies, hampering the function of their wings and increasing their already considerable weight. Brakareshkla had pulled up quickly enough to clear the fog, and one of its companions limped out a moment later, its body thick with icicles, but the third fell out from the bottom of the cloud, struggling angrily to break the ice that had immobilized its wings. The daimon did not see the orb of blue force surging up behind it until it was far too late, and the creature's cry of surprised rage was swallowed up as the magic exploded around it. The frozen stone of its surrogate body blew away in great chunks and countless tiny shards, taking the daimon's left wing off at the shoulder and dooming it to a fast, devastating plunge to the surface. Impact shattered it entirely.

Brakareshkla had already traced the freezing mist and the deadly sphere to their source on a nearby roof, where two female humans in slightly different blue uniforms stood side by side. The daimon's eyes narrowed suspiciously at the sight of the pair.

Enraged by the ease with which the two humans had destroyed the first daimon, Brakareshkla's remaining companion roared in challenge and swooped down at them, only to be shot out of the air by a downpour of flaming red and gold beams that shattered its wings and left holes along its back. The diving daimon screamed in fury and crashed heavily atop another roof, where it struggled to rise and attack anew, spurred on as much by the magic that had summoned it as by its own rage and bloodlust.

Something red dashed forward from concealment and struck the fallen daimon on the back. It was another Senshi, and though her attack had appeared to be nothing more than a one-handed thrust, its effect on the daimon was incredible. Brakareshkla hissed and propelled itself backwards as the other monster let out a long, piercing shriek and was consumed from within by red and white flames. The elder daimon had witnessed the death of other daimons many times, both in the casual destruction of their mortal forms and the far more permanent death caused by the obliteration of their essences, and it had heard many different kinds of agony from daimon and mortal alike. Though it had heard this particular scream only once before, Brakareshkla recognized it immediately.

Ignoring its doomed ally, Brakareshkla flew towards the first two Senshi as quickly as it could. The taller of the pair stepped forward and unleashed her attack a second time, but the daimon just bent its long neck back to shield its head and flew straight into the blast. Unprepared for the daimon's apparent suicide maneuver, the Senshi were slow to jump clear as it emerged on the other side, allowing Brakareshkla enough time to reach out and catch the smaller of the two by one foot, dragging her back down as it crash-landed on the roof. Part of the structure groaned and then gave way, and the daimon's heavy body sank up to its waist.

Trying to figure out how to use this unexpected development, Brakareshkla was caught off guard as a sharp blue blade sliced away its claw and a good part of the adjoining forearm. Snarling in pain, the daimon nonetheless realized its opportunity and struck, extending its long but relatively thin neck so that it could strike at the Senshi with its toothy stone snout. Even with the awkward weight of the claw still curled around her leg, the human dodged, and Brakareshkla's head blew through the roof so deeply that it became stuck.

A moment later, the daimon felt an icy sensation along the middle of its neck, and hissed in relief as the magic binding it to this body and this plane were severed along with its head.

Mercury was breathing heavily as she watched the daimon's body flicker and shift from a rocky mini-dragon into a lifeless stone gargoyle, its body in one hole and its head in another. The hand shifted shape and fell away from around her ankle, clattering noisily away along the roof and over the edge, but Mercury continued to look at the remains of the body.

That had been too easy. Mercury could accept the quick destruction of the first daimon; Neptune and *Uranus* had long ago shown themselves capable of wiping out such creatures in one combination attack, and Mercury knew from experience that her powers and Neptune's tended to be naturally synergistic. The speed with which Mars and Venus had dispatched the second creature was a little surprising, but this was only the second time Mars had ever used that Cleansing Flame technique; maybe it really was that powerful, or perhaps something about it was particularly suited to neutralizing daimons.

Defeating one daimon without injury was good planning; two was that and a healthy dose of luck. Getting three of them without anyone taking so much as a scratch in return... that was a small miracle, and downright suspicious as far as Mercury was concerned.

But she had no time to dwell on it just now. Between getting themselves in position for the ambush and then pulling it off, the Senshi had lost almost two whole minutes because of the daimons. The Senshi could cover ground at a considerable pace, but thanks to the combination of distance and the steady rise of the 'landscape' from homes and stores to apartments and skyscrapers, Mercury estimated that they might need as much as ten minutes to reach the nearer of the two nexi on foot.

"Then we'd better huff and puff," Venus said when Mercury repeated her conclusion to the others. Artemis was blurring into catshape at that particular moment, and the Senshi took off at a run in the next, so he wasn't able to properly voice his disagreement with the latest Minakoism.

As they ran, the group naturally spread out according to their personal speed and endurance. The cats took the lead, followed not too distantly by Jupiter and Venus, while the other three trailed a little farther behind.

"It's times like this that I *really* envy the rest of you those shoes and boots," Mars said, half to herself.

"So I've noticed." Neptune glanced at her friend's stiletto-heeled shoes. "Your feet must hurt something awful after a run like this."

"It helps that we heal up a bit when we change back. And besides, it's not like I've got a lot of choice in the matter, is it?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Neptune replied. When Mars looked at her curiously, Neptune added, "I doubt that I can do anything about your shoes, but I know a few things that might help make your feet feel better. We'll talk later, all right?"

"All right," Mars agreed.

The white car had come to another screeching halt, this time on a stretch of road between the residential ward and the downtown area.

"They're *gone*?" the driver grated in her rough voice. "Are you sure about that?"

"All three source signals have disappeared," her companion replied in tones of relief. "All that's left is the normal residual radiation."

"How could those annoying little girls beat *three* daimons in under three minutes when it used to take them twice that long to handle just *one*?!"

"Nearly all of our information on the Senshi is two years old," came the cautious response. "They could easily have gotten stronger in..."

"Well, obviously!" the driver snapped. She might have said more, but the shout had aggravated whatever injuries in her throat distorted her voice so severely, and she was reduced to a coughing fit for several moments. When the raspy hacking had ceased, the driver sat back in her seat and breathed slowly, the sound a rattle in her throat.

"Are... are you all right?" the other woman asked.

"Of course I'm not all right," the driver replied, her voice lowered to a harsh whisper. "You know that perfectly well. Stop wasting my time with stupid questions to which you already know the answers."

"I'm sorry."

"And don't lie to me, either. Just shut up and figure out where the remains of the daimons are so I can collect a sample."

"Security's responding on line three, ma'am."

"Patch him through," Sciences replied. "And stop calling me that."

"Yes ma'am." The Director sighed wearily and pinched the bridge of her nose to stave off the headache she felt forming.

"Make it quick," her counterpart said brusquely, his voice coming through the speakerphone on Sciences's desk.

*And speaking of headaches,* Sciences thought with a mental sigh. "Have I caught you at a bad moment?"

"Every squad I have is still on high alert thanks to that signal blackout," Security said. "Whatever it is that you have to say, say it."

Sciences gave the phone a look that would have frozen hot water before replying. "The two class fives and the class six that we detected a few minutes ago were just neutralized. Based on the nature of the energy discharges we picked up in their area, the Senshi appear to have been responsible."

There was a moment of silence. "And the electrical interference?" Security asked in a more reasonable tone.

"It was reduced after the explosion, but not entirely negated. Based on our calculations, it would appear that two more of those energy-collecting towers are still active. They're being shielded from view as nearly as we can tell, but I'm sending their most likely coordinates to you now."

"What about the Senshi?" Security asked. "Any further sign of them or where they're headed?"

"Nothing conclusive."

"Guess." The word had the snap of an order, and Sciences entertained a brief vision of defying the laws of physics and reaching through the phone line to strangle her obsessively military-minded colleague.

"I don't make guesses," she said coldly, before hitting the hang-up button and going back to studying this evening's data. As it happened, the information on her screen showed one thing that *might* have been a clue as to the Senshi's movements. While the analytical part of her mind said that further proof was needed to confirm or deny that, the Sciences Director might even have given the data to Security if not for his aggravating manner. She realized that it was a petty form of revenge, but petty suited her just fine where that overbearing generalissimo was concerned. Perhaps it would teach him the value of better manners. Or perhaps not.

The clue in question was this: once the first tower had been destroyed, the network had started reading a faint electromagnetic signature not far from where the structure had stood. The anomalous reading had moved towards the other towers, pausing in the area where the three newly-appeared creatures had been destroyed, and then continuing on, to disappear from their sensors once inside the energy fields being generated by the two remaining towers.

A detailed analysis of the energy signature had not been possible, given its faint nature and the sorry state of the sensor network, but they did have some preliminary readings. The Director was entering those into the files now, checking against their records of past incidents. After a few minutes, the system brought up three close matches: the unexplained EMP that had hit the city last Sunday afternoon; a minor reading from Monday evening; and, most recently, the brief fight between Sailor Jupiter and the creature that had appeared in the park during the Doll's Festival.

A few quick keystrokes brought up the footage Security's teams had recorded in the park, and Sciences watched very closely from start to finish, ignoring nothing. She lingered over the images of Sailor Mercury for quite some time, using an editing program to freeze the scene and then zoom in on the caduceus-shaped device in the Senshi's hands, but after a time the Director skipped ahead to the next sequence. When she paused the playback again, it was to magnify and enhance a shot of Jupiter and the collection of peculiar glowing spheres that were following her around.

The Sciences Director looked at that shot for some time before picking up her phone and dialing. She needed more information from the archives than her terminal could conveniently access, and she could use a second opinion. Fortunately, she could get both by talking to one person.

Even with the ongoing electrical difficulties, the streets of Tokyo were busy at night. In the absence of reliable lights, most of the major intersections had police officers stationed to help direct the traffic, and while it only stood to reason that accidents would be unavoidable, they were surprisingly few and relatively minor in nature. Alerted by experience and instinct that it was another one of *those* nights, everyone was driving at a snail's pace and keeping their eyes and ears open.

Stuck in one lane of currently immobile traffic, Anon was idly drumming his fingers on the top of the steering wheel as he waited for one of the policemen out in the intersection to signal and get the vehicles ahead of him moving. He had turned off his radio because all the stations were jammed up with static; he might have listened to a cassette tape or a CD, except that he had neither in the car. Most of his temporary neighbors appeared to have been more foresighted, and the slow (as in nonexistent) pace of the traffic treated everyone to the mingled strains of everything from Mozart to J-Pop, even though none of the players were turned up especially loud.

Anon glanced at the passing pedestrians and was half-tempted to get out and join them. It surely had to beat being stuck like this.

Just as this thought entered Anon's mind, he heard a loud female voice call out, "Excuse us! Coming through on official business!" in authoritarian tones. And the crowd on the sidewalk parted to let whomever it was go by.

It was several someones, actually, and a few things besides, all of them moving at high speed. In the lead was a young blonde woman in a blue miniskirt, sleeveless white blouse, and mask, who called out for people to move aside and apologized for the necessity as she went by. Close behind her were a pair of enormous cats, one black and the other white, and after them came a taller woman with an auburn ponytail, a short-skirted uniform that was green and pink, and a focused, angry expression that got as many people out of her way as the cats and the first runner combined. Behind *her* was what looked like a cloud of miniature green stars connected by periodic bolts of lightning, and after *these* came three more women. One wore red and had long black hair, while another wore blue of nearly the same shade as her hair. Anon had no trouble recognizing the third as the helpful young lady from the day of the snowstorm, although this time she was carrying an ornate short staff or baton of some kind.

This very peculiar procession went through the intersection and turned to pass down the line of waiting cars, everyone except the two cats and the tall, angry woman—and the floating, glowing stones, of course—making repeated apologies to the people they passed. Then they turned again and began disappearing into an empty side street. The one with the visor and rod was the last, and she took a moment to bow towards the people staring at her. This included the officers who had been directing the traffic, and who were now standing out in the street looking as startled as everyone else.

"Gomen nasai," the girl apologized meekly, and such was the expression of humility on her face that quite a number of people returned the bow and made reassuring comments. Smiling gratefully, the young lady turned to follow her friends, and happened to spot Anon staring at her from his car. She blinked in surprise and waved slightly; he waved back, rather uncertainly, and then she was gone.

*On second thought, maybe I'd be better off if I just stayed in the car...*

Moving around the downtown district in Senshi form was not something the girls had all that much experience with. Most of the time, their battles were fought in Tokyo's residential wards, or in the adjacent areas where there was a great deal of room to maneuver and the buildings seldom exceeded three floors. Their usual tactic of getting around in those areas was to stick to the back alleys and side streets, take the rooftops when it was convenient, and generally stay out of sight.

For downtown, they typically stayed in civilian form, catching a bus or a train to their destination and transforming on site, but this approach was not an option because of the havoc the two towers were still playing with anything electrical in about a ten-block radius. The 'rooftops' were out as well, for Draco might see them, and even Neptune was visibly spooked by the idea of trying to race along and leap over wide city streets some forty stories in the air.

So the Senshi took to the streets, dealing with the reactions of the populace as best they could and sticking to the less-traveled routes as much as possible. After a quick discussion, Luna and Artemis had opted to remain in tiger form, to avoid casting suspicion on their day-to-day shapes. A pair of half-ton jungle cats were much less likely to draw unwanted attention on to their everyday bodies, although this had the unfortunate side-effect of scaring the wits out of just about every person who saw them.

Which was why Venus had switched identities and now led the charge. The other Senshi had been reluctant to agree to the move, but Sailor V did have a better public image than her friends, and her presence at the front of the line ought to be enough to keep at least some people from running blindly for their lives when Luna and Artemis went by. With luck, the apologies the girls were dropping in all directions would take care of the rest.

*That just leaves us two nexi, an unknown number of units, and one magical knight to worry about,* Mercury thought with a sigh. They had made better time than she'd hoped, crossing ten blocks in under seven minutes even with all the enforced twists and turns, but that still left another minute and a half before Jupiter would be close enough to begin shutting the second nexus down. That would take another two or three minutes, and then they would have to get to the last tower and repeat the process—and none of this was taking into account the time they'd lose because of Draco and whatever reinforcements he still had to draw upon.

Mercury didn't know very much about the sciences or the sorcery involved in the mana nexi, but the Caduceus had allowed her to get a very good idea of their power-producing capabilities. Just those three towers could have met the electrical needs of the entire city of Tokyo, indefinitely, and still had some energy left over. The amount of power they would have been able to gather over the last half hour was a little frightening, all the more so since there was no way to be certain what it would end up being used for.

"Somehow," Mercury said to herself, "I doubt that the end goal of all this is just to run someone's lightbulbs."

"What was that, Mercury?" Neptune asked as they ran down a remarkably empty sidewalk.

"Just thinking out loud," Mercury apologized as she checked her readings. "We only have another two blocks to go, so we should expect to see more resistance soon."

Neptune nodded. "Even so, I can't say I'm entirely surprised that we've managed to get this far uncontested. They wouldn't have left these other sites defenseless, but losing thirty or so units and three daimons still must have put a serious dent in their ranks." There was concern in Neptune's voice as she said that, and Mercury didn't need her telepathic abilities to guess why. They hadn't come through the fight without their own force being lessened.

"How exactly are we going to handle this nexus?" Mars asked from beyond Neptune. "You said it was on top of a building, right?"

"A ten-story office building, yes, surrounded by taller buildings on most sides. Since we're staying at ground level and the nexus is ten levels up, Jupiter will have to move in closer to affect it, but its height isn't the real problem. We have to take out the cloaking shield, or we won't be able to tell what we're dealing with." Mercury scanned the area again, checking the positions and sizes of the buildings. "Mars, you go on ahead with the others and make sure they all stop in another block or so. I'll get Neptune in position to bring down the shield; when you see a blue flash, that'll be your cue to move in with Jupiter."

Mars nodded and hurried after Jupiter, V, and the two cats while Mercury and Neptune slowed to a halt. Neptune held out her hands, but Mercury shook her head and waved them away.

"We're *not* going to teleport?" Neptune asked with some surprise.

"I've teleported once already tonight," Mercury reminded her, "and we've still got two nexi to deal with." Standing with her heels together and both hands around the grip of the Caduceus, Mercury bowed her head and concentrated. "WINGBOOTS."

The jewel atop the Caduceus glowed; the jewel in Mercury's tiara glowed; and small jets of mist were suddenly swirling around her boots. The tiny cloudlets rose up, thickened, and then solidified into a quartet of pristine white wings. Each wing was about the size of Mercury's hand, and they extended seamlessly from the material of her boots, just above the ankles. With her feet held together, the wings on the insides of Mercury's boots were raised up and pressed together, but the ones on the outer face lowered until they were halfway between her leg and the ground. At this point, the wings flapped once, scattering the last traces of the mist and easily lifting Mercury off the ground, to hover ten centimeters or so in the air.

Raising her head after a quick glance and satisfied nod at the change in her footwear and altitude, Mercury held out her right hand and gestured for Neptune to come closer. Neptune was blinking at the small wings.

"I've... seen those before." A fairly clear memory of Mercury and Calypso taking her—taking Larissa—flying passed briefly through Neptune's mind. She looked up and almost said something, then shook her head and stepped close enough to put her left foot down atop Mercury's right. Although Mercury did not descend under the extra weight, it still took a moment for them to settle into a reasonable position, with Neptune essentially standing on Mercury's foot and keeping her balance only with both arms around her friend's neck.

"This was certainly easier when I was smaller," Neptune noted with a nervous glance at the ground. Mercury gave her a quick look and then smiled and hugged her with one arm.

"I won't drop you, Michiru. Just don't look down, and don't let go."

Neptune was too well-mannered to give the obvious reply, but her wry, Uranus-like glance said, "Well, duh," as clearly as words. Then the wings flapped once and locked into a downward position, sending the two Senshi into the air faster than an elevator would have carried them.

"Why wings?" Neptune asked, carefully keeping her eyes up. "You could levitate freely as a Nereid, couldn't you?"

"Yes," Mercury answered, "but my Senshi form was still essentially human. If any Mercury wanted to fight in the air, she needed the Wingboots to keep herself aloft."

"And how long have you known?"

"Since the Blue Hall, technically. You?"

"Uranus had a flashback during our fight in the park, and remembered that she used to be able to fly. On her planet, at least. You happened to be in that memory. Fighting tempests?" Neptune supplied.

"I remember," Mercury said, shaking her head in amusement. "Ariel was the only human crazy enough to go flying through the skies of one of the gas giants without some kind of gravity harness. Thankfully, she calmed down after you were... introduced." Neptune caught the slip and frowned, wondering what the reason for it was. She started to ask, but Mercury continued on, saying, "I don't recall that Larissa was ever that fond of heights."

At the mention of heights, Neptune immediately started to look down, but she shut her eyes before they had been able to see more than the five or six floors they had just passed. "I'd say your memory is fairly accurate in that regard," she said, raising her head before she reopened her eyes. She wasn't particularly afraid of heights, but they had just come even with the roof of several nearby buildings, which put them a good twenty stories up; they were still climbing, and the toe of Mercury's boot was the only thing keeping Neptune from falling. Neptune risked a look around and saw a taller building about thirty floors high. "That one?"

"Yes," Mercury replied. "You'll have a clear line of fire at the nexus from the roof, and we're far enough away that anything coming out to say hello won't reach you before you've finished disabling the nexus's shield."

"Good." Again, Neptune glanced around out of the corners of her eyes. "I *really* don't fancy the idea of fighting on such a small area at this altitude when I can't fly or teleport."

"I'm not very keen on it myself," Mercury admitted as they reached their destination and landed neatly atop the high roof. As soon as Neptune had disembarked, Mercury took to the air again, although not very high. "If they send units, I'll go ahead and run interference while you hit them from here, but if Draco shows up again, I'll teleport us down to the others. I'm not so confident of my flying that I want to try a high-speed chase with a passenger just yet."

"The passenger approves wholeheartedly," Neptune said as she summoned the Aqua Mirror and searched quickly for the tower. While she was doing that, Mercury activated the microphone in her headset and contacted the others.

"We're hiding in an alley about half a block from the building you said the nexus is on," Sailor V reported quietly. "Luna and Mars are talking fast to keep Jupiter from flying off the planet."

"'Handle,'" came Artemis's voice.

"You haven't forgotten the teleport range on that necklace of hers already, have you, Artemis?" V asked. Mercury rolled her eyes at that and nodded to Neptune, who bowed her head and envisioned the waves. The energy came to her faster this time, now that she understood what she was doing and what would happen.

"SUBMARINE REFLECTION REVELATION!"

The whirlpool-like beam of energy swirled out across the two blocks remaining between Neptune and her target, passing between and over a series of buildings that it lit up with the shimmering radiance of an underwater light. The Revelation did not hit a wide bubble of energy, but Mercury—watching through her visor—saw something man-sized and metallic pass through the narrow cloaking field in an attempt to intercept the attack, and there was a faint flash which Mercury knew had to be Draco's body shield surging back to life. Either he could activate that barrier at will, or Neptune's illusion-shattering power had more of a kick to it than any of them had guessed.

The latter proved to be the case, as Draco was sent flying backwards on the crest of the Revelation, to vanish through the wall of invisibility a moment before it bent and crackled under the pressure of the assault. Neptune's eyes widened in brief surprise and then narrowed in determination as the barrier resisted her attack with considerably more success than the last one, its green surface scattering blue energy in all directions even as the assault continued. She realized at once that even if the same system was creating this cloak, its narrower area of effect made it much more energy-efficient than the bubble-field she had previously knocked down. That meant it could focus more energy on any given point without hindering its own operation.

*Very well, let's see how it holds up when it has to reinforce a larger area...* Maintaining the Revelation, Neptune slowly pulled the Aqua Mirror back towards herself, causing the beam to swirl larger until the mouth of the energy- whirlpool had become broad enough to completely swallow a house. Rather than being deflected away, blue energy was now spreading along the face of the shield like a flood on an open plain.

The shield fell apart like a sand castle caught in a tidal wave, and the nexus shimmered into view, its peak crowned with a storm of electrical force. Neptune ceased the Revelation at once and lowered her Mirror. Mercury noticed that while her friend was not quite so severely drained as she had been after her previous use of this long-lasting attack, she was still in need of at least a brief rest.

It seemed that she was to be denied that reprieve. Through her visor, Mercury could see that the collision with the Revelation had slammed Draco into the side of the tower, hard enough to crush the organic matter behind him and leave the knight hanging from an imprint in the shape of his own armor. He could not simply fly out of the undignified position without the nexus absorbing at least some of the energy, but pulling free the old fashioned way was no great task for Draco. He kicked himself away from the tower and began to descend, flying towards the street below with his sword raised.

Mercury and Neptune winced in unison. They joined hands and began the teleport almost before Mercury completed her landing atop the roof.

When they blinked back into the world, the two Senshi were standing together in front of the building upon which the nexus had been planted. There were a number of people standing around, most of them still staring up at the massive green tower which had suddenly appeared from empty air, and at the gleaming figure that was rushing down from the alien construct. Relatively few heads turned towards the flash of blue light that had accompanied the teleport, and even fewer noticed the three Senshi and two giant cats racing up the street. At least until V launched a Crescent Beam at Draco. *Then* people looked around, put two and two together, and quickly cleared out from what they now recognized as a soon-to-be battlefield.

Draco swung wide of the Crescent Beam and returned a series of force bolts, blasting cracks into the pavement as V and the others with her dodged. Although his attacks were not striking the intended targets, Draco kept up the barrage, forcing the three Senshi and the two cats into purely defensive action and leaving them no time to shoot back.

A Deep Submerge exploded against the warrior's right flank, triggering his shield and blowing him sideways with a great crash of breaking glass as he flew through a large window on the third floor. Neptune had enough time to make a face at the damage before Draco came flying back out and directed his empty hand at the two Water Senshi. "PULSO!"

Neptune raised her Mirror and deflected the fist-sized projectile back at its creator, but Draco had been waiting for the move and unleashed his sword's force-lash, which blew the returned blast out of existence and then raced on towards the ground. Mercury and Neptune evaded it easily enough, leaping away in different directions as the heavy white force smacked loudly against the street, but they were both taken by surprise when Draco swung his blade sideways and the lash stayed in existence. Neptune was caught off-guard and sent rolling along the street by the crushing blow, sliding to a rough stop several feet from where she had been standing. She managed to hold on to her Mirror and raised it to ward off any additional attacks, but her other hand was covering much of the right side of her face, and her left eye was half-closed in pain.

It had been Draco's intent to follow up the attack with something to make sure that Neptune stayed out of the rest of the fight, but he suddenly had his hands full dealing with Mercury and the glowing blue blade at the head of the Caduceus. Draco could quickly tell that Mercury was neither as quick nor as skilled with her Weapon as Uranus was with the Space Sword, but with three more Senshi and two Nekoron behind his back, she didn't need to be either. The knight parried a two-handed overhand blow with only one hand on his own sword, and turned just far enough to extend his empty right hand towards Mercury's allies. Spreading his fingers, Draco called out, "DISPERGO!"

The command sent a wide wave of force sweeping down the street towards the Senshi. Carrying the force of a very strong but also very brief wind, Draco knew it would only buy him a few seconds at best. He also knew that would be enough. Returning his full attention to Mercury, who he had seen pulling back from the corner of his left eye even as he launched the delaying attack at her friends, Draco quickly read her posture and surmised that her next strike would be a wide slash to drive him away and buy back the few seconds he had just earned. Rather than raise his sword to intercept the Frost Lancet, Draco let Mercury make her attack and stepped back.

Despite the similarities, Draco's golden plate mail was not the encumbering steel of the medieval knights of Europe; it was a product of high technology and high magic, incredibly durable and yet lightweight alloys fused together by powerful enchantments which bore most of the suit's weight, leaving the occupant with an only slightly reduced range and speed of movement. As he stepped back with both legs braced, Draco put his weight on his right foot and turned a full circle, bringing his left leg up and around in a sudden kick that Mercury would not have thought possible for a man in such massively ornamented armor.

As real as it was, Mercury's disbelief didn't stop Draco's steel-clad foot from smashing into the side of her head. There was a loud crack and burst of blue energy as Mercury's headset—visor, microphone, earpiece and all—shattered under the force of the kick. The device dematerialized into a spray of mist and trailed from Mercury's head as she collapsed, sprawling out facedown and unconscious on the asphalt.

Violent heat exploded against Draco's back with a thunderous report, knocking him down on one knee for a brief instant before he was able to recover. He took the blast to be a sign that the three standing Senshi disapproved of his treatment of their friends, and on that assumption murmured the command word for the force-lash before spinning around on his knee. Several car windshields and windows were left spiderwebbed or outright shattered by the move, and as his sword reached the end of its arc, Draco raised his right arm to launch another broad wave of power. The two cats had jumped high to evade the lash and were now sent tumbling backwards by the follow-up, but the Senshi braced themselves and withstood the pressure. Then Sailor V went flying sidelong into Mars, caught by the backswing of the force-lash that she had not been able to see clearly with her arms up and her eyes closed against the fake wind. The attack would have done more damage except for Jupiter, who had raised a shield that cut the sweeping strike decidedly short.

V was back on her feet a moment later with just a quick shake of her head to clear the stars, but Mars was slower to recover. Crossing his right arm under his still-extended left, Draco threw another energy-punch at the staggered pair. V put herself right in its path to shield Mars, but the end result of that bit of heroism was that instead of one Senshi being knocked flat, two of them wound up groaning in a pile together. That left Jupiter, who curled her hands into fists and glared pure murder at Draco as he went into a ready stance, waiting for her to make the next move.

Only there weren't any moves left. She'd already thrown every attack she knew at Draco, to no effect, and she couldn't risk trying the full power of the Aegis, not when there were still two mana nexi that she had to get rid of. And Jupiter seriously doubted that even she could punch through armor that had repeatedly managed to stand up against bullet-force impacts without suffering so much as a scratch. Around her, the Aegis sizzled with an electric reflection of her frustrated anger and spat a coiling bolt of lightning at Draco, a weak discharge that the knight's body shield absorbed easily.

"We both know that isn't going to work," Draco said mildly. Jupiter could sense the man's confidence, his certainty that he had won the fight, that she could not touch him and that the others were of no further consequence...

Jupiter's eyes flicked briefly to her left, where V and Mars had managed to separate with some help from Artemis, but were still too dazed to lend any assistance in the fight. Then she looked past Draco, to Neptune, who was on her feet but far from steady, and also without an attack capable of getting through Draco's defenses. Finally, Jupiter looked down at Mercury, who lay off to the right.

Since her rediscovery of her ability to sense emotions, Jupiter had lived with sudden flashes of insight into other people's feelings, unexpected shifts in her own mood, and a faint but constant background noise created by several million feeling individuals living together in the same relatively small area. Ami's presence had been part of it from the beginning, registering strongly when they were talking and fading away as they moved apart or fell asleep. When Draco's metal boot had struck the side of Mercury's head, though, Jupiter's impression of her had winked out, and it had not returned. Too deep into unconsciousness to dream, Mercury was simply not there as far as Jupiter's empathic sense was concerned.

Jupiter seized two of the large orbs, her fingers clenching around them so hard that her hands shook as she held them apart. The spheres glowed brightly as the rod in her tiara extended and began to gather energy from the sky.

"SUPREME..." Twin tongues of electricity surged out from the antenna and down into the two sections of the Aegis, and their connections to the other spheres flared as energy rapidly collected. Guided by the pull on the two orbs, Jupiter raised her hands until they were nearly as far above her head as she could reach, at which point she let go and allowed them to drift higher and farther apart.

"...THUNDER..." A much larger bolt of crackling energy coursed down into Jupiter's tiara, but instead of discharging forwards, it shot up towards the Aegis into two narrow streams that passed directly through Jupiter's palms and out the backs of her hands. It hurt incredibly, but Jupiter held the pose as each orb fired a beam of energy forwards and backwards, each line connecting with its opposite to form a narrow, meter-long electric diamond in the air.

"...JAVELIN!" There was a crackle as a sliver of intensely green light flashed into being between the long ends of the energy-diamond, and in the instant that it formed, Jupiter brought her arms down sharply. The high-energy needle shot forward with such incredible speed that it seemed to just appear in Draco's arm, impaling his left shoulder through the front of his armor and emerging out the back with no sign of holes.

Draco did not have the breath to shout as the Javelin's impact hurled him ten meters down the street, but as soon as he had recovered from the hit and the tumble, the knight roared in pain, for the electric spear was still jammed through his wildly convulsing arm. With a tremendous effort of will, Draco clenched his jaw shut and reached up with his working hand to seize the radiant length of energy protruding from his shoulder. He took one deep breath and then slowly pulled the Javelin out, gritting his teeth so hard it seemed a miracle that they did not break. Free of Draco's body, the gleaming bolt disintegrated as if the flesh and steel around it had been all that held it together. The blast knocked Draco over sideways and rolled him into the other lane with a great clattering of metal, and it took a long moment for him to stagger as far as his knees.

Instead of a hole, Jupiter's attack had left two smoking black burns on either side of Draco's shoulder. Below those marks, his arm hung limp at his side. His sword had fallen from his fingers in the initial impact and now lay on the street, well out of reach, and the four conscious Senshi were all back on their feet, ready to continue the fight.

Injured, disarmed, and breathing heavily, Draco smiled that disturbingly admiring smile and shook his head. "Nicely done," he said around gasps for air, looking first at Jupiter and then down at his arm. "I... will admit... I am impressed."

"There's plenty more where that came from," Jupiter growled.

"I believe you." Draco reached across his body and awkwardly lifted his left arm, and the back of the gauntlet slid open to reveal a collection of small glowing buttons not too unlike those in Mercury's Computer or the Caduceus.

The Senshi looked up as a low thrumming sound began to reverberate from the nexus, growing steadily louder with each passing second. Motes of energy appeared rapidly along the surface of the twisted tower until it was completely alight, and then it simply vanished.

"It's... it's gone," Jupiter stammered, blinking in surprise. "They're *both*..." The electrical forces spitting between the hovering pieces of the Aegis diminished to a calm glow of green light as Jupiter lowered her confused gaze from the roof to Draco. "You're... giving up?"

"Call it a strategic withdrawal," the knight replied, carefully lowering his left arm and forcing himself to his feet. He swayed briefly, then held forth his right hand and called out, "Return!"

The Senshi gave a collective start as Draco's sword suddenly flew through the air to its master's waiting hand, but he did not attempt to attack. Sheathing the blade with an ease that suggested he could wield it as well with his right hand as with his left, Draco repeated the crossed-arm bow he had originally greeted the Senshi with. "Until we meet again, ladies."

"Don't hurry back on our account," V said as the armored figure vanished in a flash of red energy. As soon as Draco was completely gone, V dropped the tough act and folded her arms tightly and yet loosely around her sore torso, chanting, "Owowowowowowow," in a low mantra of pain.

"Sometimes I wonder if getting caught by that grenade back in London didn't turn you into some sort of masochist," Artemis scolded. "You could have dodged that last shot of his instead of jumping right into it."

"I could have," V agreed in a pained voice, noting in passing that Artemis's feline features and sharp teeth were admirably suited to scowling. "But then he would have flattened Mars. I had to help."

"Oh, yeah," Mars said. "You were a *big* help in that regard."

V chuckled weakly, scratching the back of her head while keeping her other hand pressed firmly to her bruised stomach. "Yeah, sorry about that. I'll try to push you out of the way next time."

"Preferably not into a wall," Mars replied wearily as they joined the others. Luna had transformed into her demihuman form and carefully turned Mercury over, and Neptune was kneeling next to them, holding her Mirror rather close to Mercury's face and studying the reflection carefully. Jupiter stood a short distance away, looking down at the other three with her arms folded and the Aegis hovering behind her.

"How is she?" V asked.

"She'll certainly have a headache when she comes to," Neptune said, lowering her Mirror, "but nothing's broken as far as I can tell. I'd guess that her visor absorbed most of the force of the kick before it shattered. Is that going to be a problem?" she asked Luna.

Luna shook her head. "Not for more than a day or two. There are self-repair systems or enchantments built into just about every piece of equipment you girls use, and this level of damage is well within their ability to handle."

"Mercury will be glad to hear that," V said. "How are you holding up, Jupiter?"

"I'm okay." Mars privately doubted that claim, for while Jupiter looked more or less fine, she was keeping both hands tucked out of sight beneath her arms. It was plain that none of the others really believed Jupiter either, but V nodded and spoke before anyone could call Jupiter on the truth of her words.

"In that case, let's get Saturn on the trumpet-"

"'Horn.'"

"-and have her pick us up," V continued, as if she hadn't heard her feline companion's correction. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm too beat to run all the way home while fending off the fans." She glanced meaningfully in the direction of the crowd that had scattered at the beginning of the fight, and which was now creeping back.

Saturn wasted little time in arriving. Neptune had no sooner assured her that it was safe to leave Usagi and the others alone for a few moments than her face disappeared from the communicator display and a burst of violet energy appeared on the sidewalk. The lights that had been shining steadily since the removal of the nexus flickered briefly again even as the energy coalesced into Saturn, who looked at her friends with open concern before she turned around and cut a dimension door into the air. Luna and Neptune carried Mercury through first, Luna holding the Caduceus in one hand, and they were followed closely by V, Mars, and Artemis. Jupiter was on the door's threshold when Saturn stopped her with a touch on the arm and a wordless look at her concealed hands. After a moment, Jupiter held out her left hand.

Great rough-edged holes had been burned into Jupiter's glove where the lightning had passed through her hand, black-rimmed gaps that reached from her knuckles almost to her wrist. The skin beneath the glove was unmarked, but it was very, very pale, and she could not hold her hand steady. Saturn sighed and let Jupiter go through the door, stepping back to make way for the Aegis, which she glared at angrily.

With everyone else safely home, Saturn took a moment to look around at the damage the fight had left behind. Then she turned and stepped through the portal as well, willing it shut behind her.

The Sciences Director was working in her office, typing busily away at her computer when someone knocked on the door. "Come in," she said in clipped tones, not looking away from the monitor.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," Information said as he entered the room. Sciences detected enough emotion in her associate's normally imperturbable voice to make his apology genuine, which for him was saying quite a lot. "I would have gotten back to you sooner," the man continued, "but it's been one of those nights."

"So I've heard. I've received more reports in the last hour than most of the past week. You?"

"The Senshi cut quite a path through downtown this evening," Information said as he took a seat. "At last count, my people had confirmed in excess of five hundred calls to the police, officials at various levels of the government, and an entire host of news agencies."

"Media and his people must be pulling their hair out in desperation by now."

"I wouldn't be surprised." He took a plastic case out of a pocket and slid it across the desk. "There's the files you wanted. Everything we had on electromagnetic anomalies before tonight, cross-referenced against the appearances of the Senshi and hostiles, plus all the analyses your teams have done."

Sciences accepted the case and the disc within. "You've examined the data, of course."

"Of course. Are you actually planning to build a Senshi-specific tracking device, or just considering the notion?"

"It's just a theory at the moment. Security will likely be demanding something of the sort at our next meeting, but I need to be sure that this mobile anomaly really has something to do with the Senshi before I try to build a scanner to track it down."

"In that case, you may want to take a look at this." Information handed over another disc, and at Science's inquisitive look, explained. "One of Security's teams was fortunate enough to get in visual range of this evening's final incident, and they recorded several things I think you'll want to see."

Sciences regarded the disc in her hand for a moment and then loaded it into her computer and opened the only file on it, filling her monitor with the playback of a battle between several of the Senshi and a lone figure in elaborate and archaic bodyarmor, as seen from one of the personal recorders issued to the Security teams. The man or woman who had been using this recorder had done so from a distance, making excellent use of the zoom controls and tracking the movements of the combatants with commendable skill, so it helped make up for the lack of sound.

The reactions from the lady Director were more expressive than verbal as she studied the fight. Her eyes narrowed intently when Mercury, Neptune, and Jupiter were in focus with their respective devices. Then her eyes rolled above a wry smile when the camera filled with the image of Sailor V; she could imagine some uses Media would make of that footage once he'd seen it. She winced sympathetically when Mercury was kicked in the head—regardless of what the Senshi really were, that still had to hurt—and blinked as Jupiter responded to that with a massive burst of energy from the strange spheres orbiting her.

When Saturn appeared and proceeded to cut open a hole in space, Sciences gave a start of surprise and sat forward in her chair, pausing the recording in order to take a closer look at the square-shaped impossibility.

"Good lord."

"I thought that might get your attention."

The actual process of healing only took a few moments, but Saturn was kept busy for the better part of an hour thanks to her insistence on fussing over and scolding each of her patients in turn. She wasn't the only one: Calypso was literally hovering over Ami, hugging her one minute and arguing with her the next; Artemis and Minako had carried on their debate from the street almost without pause; and even Haruka and Michiru had briefly traded accusing glances when each of them saw that the other had managed to get herself hurt.

Eventually, though, everyone calmed down. The advancing hour helped, as did the extensive physical exertion most of them had been through—and this included Usagi, who had taken the opportunity presented by the absence of most of the other Senshi to devour what remained of Makoto's cake. She was snoozing on one end of the couch now, a bit of frosting dotting the corner of her mouth.

"Usagi," Haruka said, gently shaking the girl's shoulder. "Come on, Full Moon. Time to get up and go to bed."

"Hmnph," Usagi replied. "Goway."

"Usagi," Haruka repeated, shaking her a little less gently.

"Lemmee sleep. Thassan order." Haruka raised an eyebrow at that.

"I'll do it," Luna offered.

"No, no," Haruka declined with a wave. "I can do this. You and Rei do it all the time, so it can't be that hard." Luna gave Haruka a dry glance which she didn't notice. "Where is Rei, anyways?"

"She and Michiru are upstairs," Calypso said. "I overheard them saying something about a footbath."

Haruka blinked and looked up at the Nereid, then at the ceiling. She took in a breath and opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head and went back to trying to move Usagi.

"Come on," Saturn said, smiling at Calypso and Ami. "I'd better get you home before you have her doing something silly like listening at the door."

"Would I do that?" Calypso asked innocently.

"Yes." Saturn was not the only one to say it, and Calypso folded her arms with an insulted 'hmmph' and a toss of her head as Saturn proceeded to open a dimension door back to Makoto's apartment. As soon as the door was open, Calypso's head turned, her pouty routine falling away into an open-mouthed look of surprise. Behind her, Makoto stared wide-eyed at the dark room on the other side of the portal.

"Caly?" Ami asked. "What is it?" Makoto was already striding through the door, going straight to the nearest lamp. When the light clicked on a moment later, they could all clearly see what Calypso and Makoto had picked up from the start.

The sapling had been busy over the last two hours. It had put out roots, long creepers that had reached blindly across the room towards the other plants and buried their seeking tips deep into the pots of soil. The connection appeared to have been mutually beneficial for all parties involved; the young tree was now well over a meter tall, but Makoto's other plants had also grown noticeably, sending fine vine-like networks of their own roots back along the thicker ones of the tree. Some of the roots were now decorated in places by tiny blossoms, and the slender trunk of the sapling was entwined within a layer of vines that climbed up into its leafy crown before erupting in blooms.

Makoto extended a trembling hand to touch the nearest of the flowers, then froze as the leaves of the plant *waved* at her, reaching towards the warmth of her presence, the light of the lamp, and the nourishing energy of the Aegis all at the same time.

*Makoto,* a tiny voice seemed to whisper.

"Makoto?"

"Wh-what?" Becoming aware of a hand on her arm, Makoto looked up and found two almost-identical faces looking at her in concern. "Ami? Caly? What..."

"You weren't answering us," Ami said. "Are you all right?"

Makoto looked from Ami to the plants and back again. "What do you think?" she asked with a wearily amused smile.

"Greenhouses come to mind," Haruka said, before bending forward and closing her eyes as she breathed in the scent of one of the blossoms. "Although," she added, some of the customary hardness fading from her features, "as far as pushy houseguests go, you could do a lot worse."

Ami and Calypso glanced suspiciously at Haruka, but couldn't tell what the source of her smile was—teasing them or enjoying the flowers. Ami sighed and rubbed at her forehead. "I'm too tired to deal with this right now. Would you mind, Caly?"

"You go get ready for bed," Calypso said. "I'll help Mako-chan figure out..." The Nereid paused and gestured with her hands as she looked at the plants. "Well, something," she finished.

Ami smiled at her sister, then said good-night to her friends and headed down the hall to the bathroom.

"All right," Saturn said, turning to the crowd that had stepped through the dimension door into Makoto's living room to see and smell the strange flowers. "Everyone out. Go on." She started using the blunt end of the Silence Glaive to prod her friends back the way they had come. "Let these three have some peace and quiet. Ami-chan has to work in the morning."

"Okay, okay," Artemis said, falling back. "Just watch where you point that thing."

"Scaredy cat," Minako teased. "She's not even using the *sharp* end..."

"Then why aren't you still smelling the roses?"

"I think it might be better if I stayed here tonight," Luna said as Minako and Artemis started to argue in Michiru's living room.

"You'll have to sleep on the couch," Makoto replied, making a face as she realized how silly it was to say that to a cat. Luckily, Saturn, Luna, and Calypso were the only ones still in the room; Haruka had gone to try and wake up Usagi again, and so was out of hearing.

"Okay, then," Saturn said as she stepped back through the dimension door.

Saturn was just closing the gateway when, from behind her, Makoto, Luna, and Calypso hear Usagi yawn and ask sleepily, "Why do I smell flowers?"

_…_…_

SAILOR SAYS:

(The scene is the balcony outside the master bedroom of the Tsukino home. Saturn is just stepping out through the door and sliding it quietly shut behind her, waving good-night to the trio settling down to sleep. Or, in Usagi's case, already snoring. Saturn alights to the roof and settles down on a semi-comfortable spot for her turn at the night watch, laying the Silence Glaive across her lap.)

Saturn (looking up): Shhh. We'll have to do this very quietly to keep from disturbing the others.

(Below, the bedroom window fills with flickering light as the ginzuishou and the Phoenix Egg begin their nightly glowing session.)

Saturn: This episode was another of the "we gots a big fight so we don't need no steenkin' moral" episodes that the author seems to be so fond of, so as usual, it falls to the cast of the post-episode moral instruction sequence to make up a lesson on the spot. Being as I am the *entire* cast of this sequence, I've decided to go with 'persistence' as tonight's theme.

(The two crystalline objects/entities are now emitting faint music in addition to light. The tune seems to be 'Safety Dance', by Men Without Hats.)

Saturn: When you're persistent, you can really accomplish things. No matter what obstacles life hands you, if you keep at whatever it is you're doing, sooner or later you'll succeed. Our enemies proved this tonight by finally managing to pull off a clear victory, and we tend to demonstrate the principle ourselves by fighting what always seems to be a hopeless rearguard action, only to pull off a miracle and save the world at the last second. With a lot of help from Usagi, of course.

(The Phoenix has left its Egg and begun dancing around the room, clapping its wings together at the appropriate points in the song. The ginzuishou, meanwhile, has turned into the heart of a laser light show which for some reason includes the dancing hologram of a short man in a jester's cap, carrying a mandolin.)

Saturn (oblivious to the scene below): The flip side of the coin is that while persistence is guaranteed to pay off, it may do so too late to do you much good. The others fought their way through a series of enemies and obstacles and only managed to come away with a draw, and *that* because Mako-chan lucked into a new attack and fried the enemy commander. (She sighs.) I guess we'll be in for another stepping up in the training after this...

(Finally noticing the song and dance number, Saturn opens a hole in the roof and glares down at the Phoenix Egg and the ginzuishou. The two crystals sweatdrop, there is a flicker, and everything in the room goes back to normal. Saturn continues to look down suspiciously for several very long minutes before closing the hole again. Scene fades to black with her muttering to herself.)

06/04/02 (Revised, 22/08/02)

Lots of Weapons and powers and stuff involved in this one. Special thanks to the manga/anime character 'Locke the Superman' for the laser spear technique that was the direct inspiration for the formation-slash-summoning sequence of the Thunder Javelin. Although I can't recall the names involved, the usual legal stuff and disclaimers most likely apply, yadda yadda yadda.

In future episodes, expect to see:
-One or two of these annoyingly mysterious faces revealed;
-A Senshi spring break beach trip; and, by popular request,
-A cameo appearance by everyone's favorite tuxedo-wearing rose-flinger!