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.

31. Chapter 31

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 31

Chancy Encounters, and Calypso Saves the Day—And her Sister—Again

Hotaru was the first one to wake up that morning, and she had quite a time figuring out how to get out of the waterbed without disturbing Haruka and Michiru. In the end, she managed success by a combination of creeping along an inch at a time and using her powers to keep the liquid-filled mattress from shifting around. That done, Hotaru headed for the bathroom to splash some water on her face, so she could wake up enough to go have breakfast.

Standing in front of the sink, Hotaru frowned at her reflection, which wasn't much more than a pair of dark eyes below dark, bed-frazzled hair.

*The major drawback to being young all the time,* she reflected sourly, *is that I have to be short, too.* She solved that problem easily enough, growing up to about fifteen years of age—her 'real' age, or close enough to it—and over five feet in height, rather than somewhere between three and four. Then she turned on the cold water.

When she stood up a moment later to study her dampened face in the mirror, Hotaru frowned once more. A white streak had appeared in her hair the last time she'd aged herself, and it was back again. She gave the dangling white lock an annoyed flick with one water-dripping finger.

"Been experimenting with hair dyes?" Haruka asked from the door.

"You're supposed to still be asleep," Hotaru replied.

"Sorry to disappoint," Haruka said, scratching at the front of her right shoulder through her nightshirt. "Seriously, though, what's with the hair?"

"Destiny, I suppose. It keeps showing up whenever I make myself older recently." Smiling, Hotaru half-turned and struck a pose with her hands on her hips, tilting her head at an angle that would show off the streak of white in her otherwise black hair. "Do you think the boys will like it?"

"You're adorable. Now go hog your own washroom." Haruka indicated the door on the far side of the bedroom with one thumb. Hotaru stuck out her tongue and then proceeded past her 'papa,' stopping just outside the bathroom door to look at Michiru, who was still asleep.

"Are you coming downstairs for breakfast?" Hotaru asked, glancing over her shoulder at Haruka. "Or...?"

"I think it'd be better if I stayed here," Haruka replied, also looking at Michiru. "After last night, I don't want her to wake up alone."

Hotaru gently touched Haruka's arm and then walked across the room as silently as she could. On her way down the hall and then the stairs, she thought about last night's battle with the Deep Ones, and its effect on Michiru.

According to Luna, Ami, and Calypso, the Deep Ones were native to Earth's oceans, a particularly nasty form of life that had been in existence long before humans. A race of powerful psychics and skilled magic-users who were also believed to possess extensive knowledge of biological engineering, the Deep Ones were not at all hesitant about using their abilities to exterminate other beings that trespassed into their undersea domains. They had only assaulted human settlements once in recorded history, early during the Atlantean era, but that one time had been a massive, bloody purge that claimed thousands of lives in the span of a single evening. Any number of legends about horrible monsters of the deep sea might have been the result of their handiwork as well.

As for the soul-deep terror Michiru had experienced at the mere sight of the creatures—it was apparently not an uncommon reaction among the Senshi of Neptune. Ami had mentioned something about the power and awareness of previous Senshi being passed on to their inheritors, a natural condition that the Nereids had taken advantage of in the birth-ritual for each new Mercury. If that was true, if Michiru was on some unconscious level in possession of the experiences of not only Larissa but every other Senshi of Neptune who had ever lived, then her fear of the Deep Ones made an unpleasant kind of sense. More than one of her ancient Atlantean predecessors had disappeared while investigating reports of monsters in the oceans of Earth, and most had never been seen again. The few that had been found afterwards were so horrifically scarred in both body and mind that for most, a quick death was the only humane option. It was entirely likely that the trail of such atrocities led back to the beginning, to the age before Atlantis, when the first generations of Senshi appeared and walked the Earth, in a time now forgotten.

Faced with a fear built up over hundreds of lifetimes, it was no wonder that Michiru could not stand the sight of the Deep Ones. Hotaru could understand that; she had her own demons to worry about, daimons and other horrors she knew only from dreams, but which must surely exist somewhere. The difference was, Saturn was able—and more than able—to fight back on an even footing with such monsters. They were as afraid of her as she was of them. Neptune had no such assurance.

"So then we'll give her one," Hotaru murmured. She nodded to herself, deciding that once she'd settled the growling beast which had replaced her stomach, and then grabbed a shower, she'd see about getting Michiru breakfast in bed. The white lock drew her attention with a bounce, and Hotaru turned it gleaming black with a slight frown and a mild application of her energies, then smiled and headed on down to the kitchen.

Upstairs, Haruka emerged from the washroom and returned to the bed. She spent a long moment standing at the bedside and watching Michiru's sleeping face, half-hidden by her long aquamarine hair. She was so peaceful, so beautiful that just looking at her made Haruka's heart ache. She tried to understand what she had ever done to earn the love of someone so special—in two lifetimes, no less—and could not come up with an answer.

A glimmer of blue light caught Haruka's attention, pulling her eyes away from their study of Michiru's face and settling them instead on the sun-lit glow of the Phoenix-under-water-under-glass, which sat on the vanity. *That* got a decidedly chilly look from the Senshi of the Sky. If not for the fact that it had belonged to Michiru's grandmother and was therefore well-nigh priceless to her partner, Haruka would have smashed the damned thing and scattered the remains the same day it had come out of storage. And this had been before last night, when the latest enemy commander let it slip to Mars and Pluto that he and his were on the lookout for the Phoenix. If that didn't somehow involve Usagi's little New Year's gift, this blue look-alike, and the yellow one that Mika girl apparently had, Haruka would sell her sword.

To say that Haruka was angry about having such danger-magnets so close to so many people she cared about was an understatement. She had been entertaining some notions of what she would like to do to Balance if she ever got her hands on him, and after last night, kicking his ass was about the most restrained thing on her list.

Any and all thoughts of viricide went out of Haruka's mind as Michiru stirred in her sleep. A frown creased her flawless face, and Michiru reached out towards the place where she knew Haruka ought to be, her hand moving forward in fitful, skittering motions. Not finding what she sought, Michiru's expression became strained, and an uneasy sound escaped her.

"No," Haruka whispered. She picked up the seeking hand and held it to her heart as she got back into the bed and slipped her other arm around Michiru, pulling them both close. "I'm here, Michi. Don't be afraid. I'm here, and they can't get you."

Still asleep, Michiru murmured wordlessly and relaxed. A few moments later, her mouth turned up in a tiny smile, and Haruka knew that the moment of fear had passed, that Michiru was dreaming peacefully again.

For her part, Haruka was content to lie there and watch that perfect face.

Waking up with a headache that put such complicated and vertical tasks as sitting up in bed well beyond her means, Minako was tempted to follow Usagi's example and snooze away the morning. It was the middle of spring break, she didn't have anywhere that she urgently needed to be, and her parents were surely both at work by this time, so nobody was around to chase her out of bed on general principle. Smiling, Minako rolled over onto her side and tried to go back to sleep.

Fifteen minutes later, she had discovered the critical flaw in her otherwise brilliant plan; the throbbing in her brain would not allow her to doze off. Grumbling and groaning, Minako forced herself to rise and face what was already promising to be a bad day. Sitting there with bleary eyes and a mountain of blankets wrapped around her, she yawned.

When her eyes opened again, a mug of steaming tea was hovering in front of them. Minako looked at the mug for a long moment before following the hand and arm holding it up to the face responsible.

"Don't talk," Artemis ordered. "Drink."

"Ummnhg," Minako replied, reaching out to accept the mug. Artemis considered the sleepy reaction and wisely held on to the handle as Minako drank. When the rim of the mug went down and her head came up, she took in a long breath through her nose and perked right up.

"Feel better?"

"Much, thank you." Minako pulled her hair back from her face and rubbed her neck above the collar of her pajamas before she slowly stretched, turning her head through a slow half-circle and then in the other direction, wincing several times along the way. "Tell me something, Artemis. How can my head still... erm... hurt as bad today as it did... ack... when I woke up last night?"

"By design, probably," Artemis said, setting the mug down on a low chest, amidst a row of assorted plushies. "I don't know if 'sadism' or 'thoroughness' is the more accurate term for it, but the Deep Ones would definitely want to make sure that anyone they set out to hurt kept on hurting for as long as possible."

"Terrific. I suppose that explains why I feel like a stiff this morning, too."

"It's 'feel as stiff as a board.' A stiff's a dead body."

"That would work too." Minako tilted her head back, and there was a slight pop in her neck. "Ow."

"Here," Artemis said, moving around behind her and sitting down on the mattress. "Let me do something before you hurt yourself."

"Huh?" Minako half-turned to look at Artemis as he pulled the blankets down from around her shoulders.

"Sit up straight," he answered, putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her about. He lightly poked her back, just between the shoulders, and Minako flinched as something that was already sore protested this additional abuse. "Hold still," Artemis said. His next touch was higher than the first, towards the base of her neck, and raised just as much complaint.

"While you—urk—break me in half? I don't think so."

"Trust me. I know what I'm doing."

Despite the uncomfortable prodding, Minako snorted in amusement. "Famous first words."

"'Last words,'" Artemis corrected, as he started to massage her shoulders.

"No, first words. There's an old American TV show where—erm—the lead actor says that in the opening credits. Something from the mid or late 80's..."

"Bit before your time, then, isn't it?"

"I was—ugh—little," Minako replied. "And you know what they... hm... say about foreign TV: it takes five years for... mmmm... anything to get across the ocean." There was a pause as Minako realized that her neck, shoulders, and upper back were feeling a lot better. Even her headache had diminished. Minako smiled and let out a relaxed sigh.

Then it happened. One of Artemis's fingers slipped across the collar of her pajama top and—just for an instant—brushed the skin of her neck. The touch was warm and light and not at all unpleasant, but Minako flinched away, suddenly feeling extremely uncomfortable.

"Artemis, stop. Stop." She pulled away from him and turned about where she sat, in the process twisting the blankets up into a protective cocoon again.

To his credit, Artemis had recognized the reaction for what it was, and immediately pulled his hands back. Now, he met Minako's gaze and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry. My fault."

"Yeah," she agreed, with an uneasy smile of her own. "Um... listen... I appreciate the help with my back and all, but... ah..."

"Say no more," Artemis replied, raising one hand, which he glanced at and quickly lowered. They sat there for a moment, Minako with the blankets curled around her shoulders, Artemis drumming his hands against his thighs, and both of them looking away at other parts of the room. "Ahem," Artemis continued, clearing his throat. "I'll just... go downstairs. You know. Breakfast."

"Breakfast." Minako nodded. "Right. Food is... good."

"Is toast okay? And cereal?"

"That'd be fine. In twenty minutes?"

"Twenty minutes," Artemis agreed, getting to his feet and backing towards the door. He turned to leave, then turned back. "Eh... did you want to keep the tea, or...?"

"That's okay. You can just leave it."

"Okay." Artemis hesitated on the verge of saying something else, closed his mouth, and reopened it. "Twenty minutes, then."

"Twenty minutes."

Artemis nodded and left the room. He was well down the hall before he started hitting himself in the head and calling himself an idiot, among other names in Japanese, English, Lunari, and his native Nekoron.

Back in the bedroom, Minako was doing pretty much the same thing to herself, albeit in fewer tongues.

The meeting which took place at Hikawa that morning was smaller than usual. Luna arrived first and alone, and spent the better part of a half hour talking to Rei before Saturn showed up via Dimension Door. She'd made a quick detour to pick up Makoto, and as the two of them stepped out of the overgrown and flower-scented apartment and into Rei's room, Saturn said that Haruka and Michiru would not be joining them for this meeting. Luna accepted that and in turn explained that Usagi and Setsuna both had appointments scheduled at the hospital. ChibiUsa had gone along to keep them company—and to help keep an eye on Usagi, just in case—so none of *them* would be coming, either.

Ami was already excused, of course, which left Luna and the three Senshi awaiting Minako and Artemis. It was another twenty minutes before Minako finally arrived, without Artemis, whom she claimed had taken off to get a cat's eye view of the city before she'd received the message about the impromptu meeting, and not returned by the time she left the house. Unlike with Saturn, Luna did not seem inclined to accept this story at face value. Perhaps this was because she knew Artemis, but it might also have been because Minako was not quite her normal smiling self today. They could all see something strained in her expression, but none of them brought it up.

For a time, they discussed what had happened last night, and what if anything they could do now that they knew their opponents were interested in Usagi's Phoenix, or that they were working with the Deep Ones. Rei felt profoundly uncomfortable for a lot of it, because the answers to these and all their other problems were somewhere inside the Book of Ages, but she had yet to get much of anything useful out of the leather-bound text. She was relieved when Minako turned the topic of discussion to last night's mana nexus, and demanded to know why something playing around with earth-energy would have affected her, Hotaru, Usagi, and ChibiUsa.

"It would have had to be something all four of us have in common," Hotaru said, startling them all. She was in her teenage form for once, having admitted earlier on that it wasn't as much fun being small if ChibiUsa and Michiru weren't around, but she'd been so quiet up to that point that the other three girls had hardly noticed the difference. "Something about our respective powers that would have left them and us open to a strong earth-elemental influence. I understand why that would work for Minako, since her powers are based on metals, which are minerals that mostly come from the earth, but I couldn't see how that would explain what happened to Usagi-chan and ChibiUsa, or myself. Our abilities come from other sources altogether, one of which is mainly positive energy, while the other is mainly negative." Realizing how the others were regarding her, Hotaru blushed and looked down at the tabletop in embarrassment, lamely adding, "Um... that was... just a guess..."

"Maybe so," Luna said, looking at Hotaru thoughtfully. "But it's also more or less what I came up with last night, at least with regards to Minako. I couldn't figure out why you or Usagi were being affected, either, at least until I stopped to consider that Minako's reaction was a sympathetic one, rather than direct."

"Come again?" Minako asked, confused.

"There are some very real mystical and material links between the elements of metal and earth," Luna explained, "but they're not the same thing. Think about what happened to Makoto on Monday night, or what happened to Setsuna when we had to confront that temporal nexus in the park, or how Ami, Michiru, and Haruka reacted to the one in January. In each case, they knew that the nexus was active, probably right from the very second it switched on. You didn't react that way last night because your connection to the nexus was different, and provoked a different reaction."

"Uh-huh," Minako said, nodding. Her eyes were starting to glaze over.

"So it would have affected the rest of us for a similar reason?" Hotaru ventured. "Because our powers have some sort of secondary link to earth?"

Luna nodded. "None of you can directly manipulate earth, not the way that Rei can influence fires or that Makoto draws on lightning, but you *can* alter what's there. Usagi and ChibiUsa can take energy and use it to purify or augment something that already exists, even to the point of creating new energy or matter, and you can do the opposite, manipulating any existing element right down to its destruction, if you so choose."

Hotaru frowned. "I should have thought of that."

"I think you had more personal matters to concern yourself with last night," Luna said gently, reaching out to pat Hotaru's hand with one paw. Hotaru gave her a small smile of gratitude.

"How *is* Michiru this morning?" Makoto asked.

"Tired, mostly. We got her to eat a little breakfast and have a bath earlier, but she went back to bed afterwards." Hotaru looked around at her friends. "I don't mean to sound rude, but... Haruka-papa told me to tell all of you that if you had any plans for dropping by in a massive cheerfest... well..."

"...she'd kick our butts out the front door so fast, we'd hit ourselves on the way in?" Minako finished.

"Something like that."

"Okay, no problem." Minako grinned. "Of course, you realize that Calypso will probably take that as a challenge."

"That's okay," Hotaru replied. "I think Haruka-papa was more worried about Michiru-mama having too many people to deal with at one time. Just one or two shouldn't be a problem." She looked around. "Where *is* Calypso, anyway?"

"You have to ask?" Makoto said, smiling faintly. "*I* may have balance problems and a potentially intelligent tree growing in my apartment, but after last night, I don't think Calypso trusts Ami-chan to tie her own shoes without help."

Hotaru laughed at that. The sound was no longer the high-pitched giggle of a small child, but the more refined chuckle of a young woman, and it took the others as much by surprise as Hotaru's peculiarly astute analysis of the mana nexus had.

"How old are you, Hotaru?" Rei asked suddenly.

Hotaru blinked. "Nani?"

Rei blushed; she hadn't completely meant to say that aloud, but now that it was out, she forged ahead. "What I mean is, you're six one minute, and sixteen the next. When you think of yourself, which is the real you? I'd like to know... if you don't mind..."

"I don't mind," Hotaru replied. She rolled her eyes roguishly, looking a lot like Haruka as she added, "And I can understand why you'd ask. But to be completely honest with you, Rei-chan... I'm not sure anymore. I know that I should be fifteen, but I *also* know that I should only be two or so, and that I *was* twenty-five once... and then there's Saturn." She looked down at her hands. "When I thought that all I could do was hurt things, or that I could only heal at the cost of exhausting myself... that was hard. Being a little girl again helped me cope with it; I could always run to Michiru and feel safe. Now that I know what I can *really* do, it's not my powers that frighten me so much as the responsibility I have to deal with. I get the choice of which side of Saturn to reveal—the hand that heals, or the hand that harms—and sometimes I still need help to deal with that." Hotaru closed her fists and looked up. "Does that make sense?"

"Yeah," Rei said. "It does." She recalled her prophetic dreams, and how many times she would have given almost anything to be able to give them up, and go back to being an innocent child. Makoto didn't say anything, but put one of her hands over Hotaru's smaller one and gave her a smile.

"I always figured you were doing it on purpose," Minako put in, idly twirling a lock of her hair around one finger. "Setting the rest of us up by acting all wide-eyed and innocent, just so you could come along with something Michiru might have said and watch us all flounder."

"Well," Hotaru said, drawing the word out with a slow, impish grin, "there is *that* part of it, too..."

"See?" Minako said, slapping the table with one hand and pointing at Hotaru with the other. "How dishonest is that? She's evil, I tell you! Evil!"

"You're in no shape to talk," Makoto muttered.

"Are you incinerating that I've ever been anything less than totally honest?" Minako asked in tones of shock.

Rei and Makoto traded an amused glance and began citing examples. Between some of the situations they named and Minako's varyingly outraged, embarrassed, or good-humored reactions, it wasn't long before Hotaru was laughing again.

It had a nice sound to it.

Hospitals and their employees tend to be very busy even when there are no real emergencies in progress, so it was extraordinarily convenient that Setsuna's appointment with Doctor Mizuno had happened to coincide with Usagi's monthly checkup. It wouldn't have been quite so fortuitous if Mizuno-san hadn't pulled a string or two and had Ami assist her with Setsuna's physical exam. If not for that, ChibiUsa would have had to decide whether to stay with Setsuna or go with Usagi—a choice she would rather not make.

Setsuna's examination took longer than she or Ami would have thought, seeing as how the minor injuries she'd suffered in the attack on the mall the week before were well and truly healed. Ami suspected that her mother was being deliberately thorough, wrapping herself in professionalism so as to avoid making any further mistakes dealing with her patient. Ultimately, though, there were only so many times you could ask a healthy person to stretch this, bend that way, or breathe like so, and at last the doctor sighed.

"As far as I can tell, Setsuna, you're in perfect health."

"Doctors always seem to be disappointed when they say that to me," Setsuna replied, rebuttoning her violet blouse.

"On some level, I suppose we are," Mrs. Mizuno admitted, smiling faintly at Setsuna's lightly teasing tone. "We like to feel needed and important as much as the next person, but healthy people spoil that for us. Not that I want you to feel unwell," she added, her smile fading. "I mean..." She hesitated, clearly at a loss for words. "About last Wednesday... I just... I wanted to say again that I'm sorry."

"You already did," Setsuna replied.

"Yes, but... I should have... I..." Ami could not remember the last time she had seen her mother at such a loss for words, and from the look on her face, Rikou couldn't remember, either. "I should have been... more careful... about what I said. It might have come as less of a shock if I hadn't just blurted it out."

"Maybe," Setsuna said. She reached out and took the older woman's hand. "I don't think that there was an easy way for me to find out that I had a baby. I do know that I still would have wanted to be told." Setsuna's face—and her grip—became fierce as she added, "Easy or difficult, you told me one of the most important things about myself that I could have ever learned. *Thank you.* I won't forget it."

For a moment, Ami thought her mother was going to say something, but instead she met the intense look with a slow nod and wordlessly clasped her hands around Setsuna's. Then the moment passed, and both women went back to normal.

"Well, as I said, there's nothing wrong with you as far as I can tell. You didn't suffer any breaks, and the bruising has obviously healed."

"Does that mean I can stop moping around the house and go back to work?" Setsuna asked.

"There's no physical reason why not, but I still want you to talk to Kikukoe-san before you jump back into your job. I'm sure Ikuko-san does as well. Have you made an appointment yet?"

"I called a few days ago," Setsuna replied. "I have a meeting with her next Thursday."

"In that case, I advise you to get lots of sleep in the interim."

"Oh?"

"You may think you have some idea of what to expect after your sessions with Mayazaki-san earlier this year," Rikou replied clinically, "but Kikukoe-san isn't much like him. She's very good at getting people to talk about their problems, but her approach tends towards the emotional equivalent of high-impact aerobics. The first couple of sessions—and you *will* have several sessions, if I know Kikukoe-san—will most likely leave you feeling as if you'd just climbed a mountain."

"I see." Setsuna was beginning to look faintly worried, but also curious. Her mouth quirked slightly, and she added, "Are you speaking from observation, or firsthand experience?"

"Don't tease my mother, Meiou-san," Ami warned, "or I will have to hurt you."

"It's okay, Ami." Rikou smiled. "As it happens, I do have regular sessions with Kikukoe-san, about once a month. Twice if anything major comes up. Anything more than that would probably force me to take several sick days each month to recover." A puzzled frown appeared on Mizuno-san's normally unruffled face. "Psychiatry isn't supposed to work quite like that, as far as I understand it, but for some reason Kikukoe-san's approach gets excellent results."

"She sounds... interesting," Setsuna said.

"That's one word for it." The doctor shook her head. "But this is hardly the time or place for me to be discussing the professional behavior of a colleague." She glanced at the door. "Since the Tsukino ladies haven't come back down as yet, I think we can safely say that they're still on fourth with Miko-san. Ami can help you find them."

Setsuna and Ami both nodded, and Doctor Mizuno left the room. Ami held Setsuna's coat and purse until she had finished straightening her clothes, and then they exited as well.

"So we've established that I'm okay," Setsuna said in a quiet voice as they walked down the hall towards the elevator. "How are you feeling?"

"Better than I did last night," Ami replied. "Or when I woke up this morning."

"Bad?"

"Imagine a migraine headache in your entire body, and you'll have a close idea."

"The headache I can understand," Setsuna said. "But why would the rest of you hurt?"

*Residual psychokinetic energy,* Calypso put in silently. *A particular specialty of the Deep Ones. They fine-tune most of their psychic assaults to leave a small but persistent trace energy in their victim's nervous system. It builds up with every subsequent attack, increasing their effectiveness and the amount of pain they cause. I'm just glad Elder Lynara was so thorough in her medical studies; it would have taken days for that filth to cycle out of Ami's system on its own.*

Setsuna frowned and tried to focus her thoughts on a question. After all, when in Rome... *Are the rest of us in any danger from that?*

*I did what I could for the others last night,* Calypso replied, *but I'll check them again tonight to make sure they're clear. And you were never affected anyway.*

*?* Setsuna's response was more a wordless impulse of surprised curiosity than a coherent thought, but Calypso picked it up anyway.

*You get a lot of benefits from being the Senshi of Time, Setsuna. One of the big ones is that your body generates its own temporal field, which you can manipulate more or less at will. The field's part of what gives you your ability to see time, but it has a lot of other uses, too, and it gets much stronger when you transform. When you're attacked, the field focuses to slow down incoming matter and energy, and if you're hurt, it accelerates the natural healing process. The Deep Ones could only hit you with a fraction of their full power, and the bit that did get through was already cycled out of your system by the time we went back to Hikawa.*

*I did not know that,* Setsuna said.

*I could tell you some more, if you want.*

*Maybe later,* came Setsuna's reply. *Talking this way takes a little too much concentration for me to feel comfortable walking around at the same time.*

*You're doing just fine,* Ami assured her as they reached the elevators. She pressed the up button and stepped back to wait.

*Perhaps I am,* Setsuna said, *but I can't help feeling that my face must look like I'm hearing voices.* Calypso giggled, while Ami merely sighed and rolled her eyes. The elevator arrived a moment later, and the two Senshi stepped aboard, heading up to the fourth floor.

They had not even fully reached third when Ami felt Calypso shiver in agitation. "Caly?" she asked out loud. "What is it?"

*We're being watched.*

Proteus was in the middle of testing its new secondary armaments when the sensors in the hospital elevator shaft scanned the two occupants of the car. One segment of the entity's consciousness watched intently as a barrage of reddish energy bolts fired out from along the segmented armor of its back, scorching and scoring the far wall of the chamber with very satisfactory results. Another portion of Proteus's mind took note of the passengers in the elevator, and the data that the sensor was returning.

*Subject #117, Mizuno Ami. Infection level remains at 0%. Biosignature is slightly atypical against data compiled from previous scans. Six percent increase in latent energy levels.*

This was not an unusual reading. Whenever Proteus scanned a living being, it took note of a variety of factors, ranging from simple measurements of heat and body mass to considerably more complex analyses of magical forces. A slight change in any one of those sources could alter the final collective reading, and an increase such as this one generally meant that the being in question was just having a good day. Proteus adjusted its data to account for the new reading, and moved on to the second person in the elevator.

Its mind promptly exploded.

*TEMPORAL ENERGY FIELD DETECTED. BIOSIGNATURE CORRESPONDS TO SUBJECT #001, IDENTITY: LADY ATHENA OF HOUSE NELARA, SENSHI OF PLUTO. SYSTEM OVERRIDE ENGAGED, MAXIMUM PRIORITY PROTOCOL. CONTAIN AND CAPTURE SUBJECT BY ANY MEANS AVAILABLE. LIMIT OFFENSIVE ACTIONS TO NONLETHAL FORCE. COMMENCING SUB-UNIT REPROGRAMMING AND REDEPLOYMENT.*

Proteus had time to experience shock and surprise before this program -hardwired into its being at the time of its creation and forgotten during its climb to sentience—rose up from the most primitive levels of the entity's awareness and began to seize control of it once more.

The override program took stock of the available resources and began making adjustments that would allow it to pursue its primary objective with maximum efficiency. Numerous sub-functions were rewritten or entirely terminated, so that the awareness-fragments monitoring them could be rerouted to observe, analyze, and record events in the target area. This action had several immediate consequences:

In the tunnels beneath Tokyo and in several locations on the surface, rat-like creatures came to an abrupt and total halt, frozen into immobility as the mind directing their movements was withdrawn. This would result in the destruction of at least a dozen of the rat-units, courtesy of some indifferent cars and a few hungry and soon-to-be-disappointed cats;

In the city of Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido, a young woman named Yamada Mariko let out a strangled scream and began to claw frantically at the base of her neck, before abruptly collapsing. In spite of his shock, Mariko's older brother managed to catch her before she hit the ground, but he immediately had a struggle on his hands, as his sister's body thrashed in the grip of what looked like a violent seizure;

At various places across Tokyo, nearly two dozen men and women from different walks of life displayed behavior identical to that of the girl in Sapporo, sending those of their family and friends on hand to witness the frightening events rushing for the nearest phones;

Within Proteus's lair, around its nearly-completed and now totally-disabled new body, seven large pods shook and sloshed for a brief instant before settling back into silent immobility;

And in the park, a man fell off of a bench with a howl of agony, seconds before his body expanded into something that looked human, but was nonetheless sufficiently inhuman to make everyone who saw it turn and run for their lives. At the same time, a woman in a special observation room in the third floor of the Juuban Ward hospital miraculously woke from her weeks-long coma, seconds before her body was enveloped in green. Screams issued from beyond her room as the building itself seemed to come to life, plaster and wires exploding away ahead of throbbing, expanding sacs of slime-dripping horror.

None of these changes meant much to the smart-stupid awareness of the control program, but to Proteus, they represented an absolute disaster. Fighting to hold on to its sentience and quite possibly its very existence in the face of the relentless advance of the unthinking program, Proteus roared in frustrated rage.

After four years of life as a Senshi, Ami had learned a number of useful lessons. One of these was that elevators and other enclosed spaces were NOT her friends when it came to battles, and that they tended to get used as traps a great deal for this very reason. Another lesson had been how to *not* react to ambushes with the few seconds of disoriented surprise that would otherwise make them successful—and so when the elevator shuddered all around them in the wake of Calypso's warning, Ami was already well into her transformation. Setsuna quickly followed suit, her natural speed and reflexes making up for her inability to remember any similar lessons.

"We need to get out of here," Mercury said, a little needlessly, as the light of the metamorphosis faded. She paused and pressed her earring, sighing in relief as her visor shimmered into existence and activated, finally recovered from the damage Draco had inflicted earlier in the week. Calling up the Caduceus and locking her computer into position, she glanced at Pluto and then looked meaningfully at the ceiling.

"Got it," Pluto replied, raising her staff and thrusting it at one corner of the car. Crimson energy flashed as the Garnet Orb struck the plastic ceiling, and the emergency hatch blew open. The two Senshi started to move, but stopped short as a sparkling mist flowed down from Mercury's fuku and gathered around their feet.

*You go first, Mercury,* Calypso said. Her nebulous body was solidifying into a narrow square platform beneath their boots as she added, *I'll follow with Pluto.*

"Good thinking," Mercury agreed, summoning the Wingboots and the Frost Lancet in rapid succession and then shooting up through the opening in the roof. Pluto saw a flicker of movement across the dark elevator shaft, but whatever it was, it was far too slow. Mercury flew past it and whirled around in midair, inverting herself and reaching down with her Weapon to slash at her attacker. In the wake of the cut, something green and organic-looking fell through the hatch and landed at Pluto's feet, crumbling into dust.

*Units,* Calypso said, shimmering a small gap into herself so that the debris would fall through to the floor as she and Pluto ascended. *That would explain it.*

"Explain what?" Pluto asked as she cleared the car.

*What I sensed a moment ago was an active scanner of some kind, but I wasn't sure if it was an automated system or something that had a living mind behind it. Units are a bit of each, and also neither. It's a little hard to... LEFT AND DOWN!*

Pluto turned immediately, spinning her staff and driving the Garnet Orb at a coiling shadow. "STASIS BOLT!" Again, the Talisman unleashed a burst of temporal energy on impact, this time leaving a dull red glow around its target, a now-paralyzed length of biomatter.

"Are you okay, Calypso?"

*You didn't hit me,* the Nereid assured her passenger. *Now hold on; I'm going to get us clear of this.* She suited her actions to her words and sped up, lifting Pluto up to the fourth floor and then going one level higher for good measure. Mercury had already righted herself and joined them, looking down at the disabled elevator with open anger as her devices did their work.

"It's all over the third floor," she said in clipped tones. "Scattered clusters of biomatter and at least one unit... a lot of the patients are showing aberrant readings... damn it, why didn't I see any of this before?"

"Worry later," Pluto advised, as the elevator began to disappear beneath a growing mat of green. She took aim with her staff, gave Calypso enough time to shapeshift herself out of the line of fire, and then launched a Dead Scream into the expanding biomatter, killing it and doing a certain amount of collateral damage to the elevator and the surrounding shaft. "Can we deal with this ourselves, or do we get Usagi out first and then come back with reinforcements?"

"There are no traces of biomatter anywhere except on the third floor," Mercury replied. "If we move fast, we might be able to contain it, but I'm not sure how..." Her words trailed off as she looked sidelong at Pluto and the Garnet Orb.

*She's got a plan,* Calypso said to Pluto.

"What the hell is going on?!" Security shouted. "What tripped all the alarms?!"

"Multiple energy discharges have been picked up in the hospital, sir..."

"IN the hospital?!"

"...and we have reports of a major disturbance on the third floor, but the monitors in that area just went down, so we're unable to confirm..."

The Director swore and picked up the phone on his desk, hitting one of the speed-dial buttons. As soon as someone picked up, he started speaking. "Scramble Alpha and Beta Teams and put all sections on full alert. We've got intruders."

The life of a shapechanger is frequently not an easy one. In many ways, such a being suffers the same difficulties as a child whose parents come from two different ethnic backgrounds. Such a child has access to all the richness of culture and history that produced their parents, but must also deal with the often widely-different values of two worlds, and try to reconcile these ways within themselves—a task which seldom has any guarantee of success. Doubt, suspicion, and intolerance will all too often follow this child throughout life, assailing them from outside and from within because they are perceived, by others and by themselves, as not being wholly one thing or another.

For a being that is able to transform between two distinct physiologies, these problems take on a whole new intensity. A child of mixed heritage can have a pretty rough time dealing with two different ways of life, but whatever their differences, at least both cultures are *human* ways of life. When you're able to change your very *species* with little more than a thought, mere cultural differences tend to take a back seat to concerns of basic biology.

When Artemis had left the Aino residence that morning, he'd immediately gone cat, in part because he wouldn't draw nearly so much attention running around the city in this form, and in part because he'd hoped that resuming his feline form would help him shake off the very human difficulties that had been tailing him since that scene in Minako's room.

No such luck. Oh, his feline body certainly didn't have the same physiological reactions to Minako that his human form did, and that gave Artemis at least a little relief, but there were other things that made it just as difficult to be a cat around the girl. Like being able to pick up her scent from across a room, several minutes after she'd left it. Or recalling what a wonderfully soft and warm cushion she could be. Or knowing how useful her hands were for scratching where he could never properly reach, or just for rubbing his stomach.

As long as he'd believed himself to be just a cat—a handsome, intelligent, alien cat, to be certain—none of this had caused Artemis the least amount of concern, but since the reawakening of his shapechanging abilities, the knowledge had been distracting. To say the very least. It wasn't helping matters that Minako had grown up to be a near-perfect physical and mental reflection of Ishtar, who had been widely held to be the ideal of Venusian beauty, or that they'd gotten so close over the last four years. This whole buddy act Minako had concocted to tease her friends at school was only exacerbating the situation by putting them in close proximity, with Artemis in his human body.

It really, really, REALLY didn't help matters that he hadn't had sex in the last thousand years. To hell with the nine hundred and ninety-odd years of stasis; however you get there, once you've accepted the fact that you're ten centuries into the future, it starts to creep in just how MUCH time that truly is.

Artemis had wandered into the park with some vague notion of throwing himself into the lake to cool off, when he'd happened across an even quicker solution: the threat of imminent death.

The creature that came tearing down the park path was immediately recognizable as one of the half-human units, although like its predecessors, there were marked differences in its appearance. The first of these mutations had been a bizarre hodgepodge of man and vegetable (or fungus), whereas the next two, from what he'd been told, had a much more 'finished' look about them, a smoothness of shape and operation that had been lacking in the original.

This new hybrid seemed to be yet another refinement, combining traits from the previous versions. By its size and shape, Artemis guessed it to be another 'male' unit, although its form was decidedly slimmed down compared to the last one. Its skin was different as well. Where its predecessors had been covered with the plant-like biomatter of first-generation units, this hybrid seemed to have been fashioned at least partly from the animal-like tissues used in the second generation. Green biomatter was present, stretched web-like over joints and along the limbs almost like some kind of clothing, but most of the flesh was a leathery brown. There were raised segments of whitish bone running along the forelegs and the backs of the arms, and the chest and shoulders bore plates of the same substance, seemingly fused into the green 'jacket' and the brown skin beneath. Short spikes adorned these sections, and the fingers ended in claws. There still wasn't much of a face beyond the sunken red pods that served as the eyes, but for whatever reason, the hybrid had hair, a long tangle of greenish-black vines that reminded Artemis of badly-kept dreadlocks.

Artemis had time to wonder if the person trapped inside this thing had been sporting that particular hairstyle, and then he was too busy jumping out of the hybrid's way to worry about it. Fortunately, the creature did not seem to consider cats worth worrying about. In point of fact, it wasn't shooting or slashing at anyone. It just bulldozed its way over and through whatever got in its path as it headed out of the park.

As soon as the thing was past, Artemis ducked behind a tree and transformed. That done, he ran in search of a payphone, digging into his pockets and praying that he had enough yen on him to make a call. Now would not be a great time to have to go on a hunt for other people's loose change.

Mercury's plan had been fairly simple.

From what the Caduceus had shown her, the units were concentrated in the third floor's central corridor, and spreading outwards. Neutralizing the central mass would greatly slow the progress of this infection, but the more aggressive procedures weren't an option. Too many people would have gotten hurt. Unable to see a way to immediately excise the source of the problem, Mercury opted for slowing it as long as possible—an operation for which she and Pluto were rather ideally suited.

They had teleported out of the elevator shaft and down to the stairwell on the other side of the building, well away from the built-up mass of biomatter that had already attacked them. Mercury opened the door, using a blast of Shabon Spray Freezing to make sure it stayed that way, and to put the nearest of the shapeless clusters of biomatter on ice before they could attack. After that, she'd relied mainly on the Frost Lancet to slice up anything that got close, while behind her, Pluto had bowed her head and gathered energy into the Garnet Orb. Thirty seconds later, at a silent signal from Calypso, Mercury dodged sharply to the left, allowing Pluto to unleash an impressively large Stasis Bolt down the length of the hall.

When they had blinked away the afterimage of the attack, the two Senshi found so many things paralyzed by that dull crimson glow that it momentarily appeared as if the very air had been affected. The residual ice of Mercury's attack had totally ceased melting and was now harder than steel, and all the biomatter in sight was similarly immobile. It wasn't dead by any means, but neither was it going to be causing them problems any time soon. Any actual units in the area had just lost three-fifths of their support, and without the energy of those sections to help power them, the expansion of the remaining clusters was going to be greatly slowed.

With the central corridor secured, Mercury's plan had called for her and Pluto to move inwards, stopping at each junction so that the Senshi of Time could send another paralytic attack surging down the side halls. Mercury led the way, relying on her visor, timely warnings from Calypso, and judicious use of the Frost Lancet to help her locate and hold back any counterattacks from the biomatter so that Pluto had enough time to strike. Some people were getting caught up in the Stasis Bolts, of course, but at least none of them were hurt in the process. From their training exercises, Mercury knew that all Pluto had to do to release a person caught in her immobilizing power was touch them with the Orb, but they had both reluctantly agreed that stopping to free everyone accidentally sent into stasis would take up too much time.

In hindsight, though, leaving those people in stasis might very well have been a good thing. The two Senshi had successfully worked their way through about half of the floor when they were jumped by six people in hospital gowns. Mercury had been expecting this since seeing the strange readings coming from a number of the people on this level, but neither the data from the Caduceus nor her previous experience with those under the control of monsters had fully prepared Mercury for the plague-like blotches of green covering the faces and arms of these unfortunates. It distracted her long enough for three of the zombified individuals to get close, throwing themselves straight at her. Mercury could easily have fought them off with the Frost Lancet, but instead she switched the icy blade off and used the Wingboots to levitate herself until she was laying on air, her back against the ceiling.

Her far less agile attackers collapsed in a pile below her and struggled to rise. Mercury put them down again as quickly and cleanly as possible, lowering herself within reach and using three carefully-controlled whacks with the butt of the Caduceus to club the trio into unconsciousness. The ones that had gone shambling after Pluto went down even faster, their ungainly motion making them easy targets for the blurring ends of her staff.

Pluto was just putting down the last of the six infected patients when ten people in black and grey came around the far corner. Their clothing was clearly body armor of some kind, several steps up from police riot gear, if not quite as flashy as something Batman might wear. Each suit included a face-concealing helmet with a wide silver visor across the front and a cluster of black plastic and red lights over the left ear. The padding, whatever it was made of, looked solid enough to offer some good defense, but clearly wasn't overly restrictive of movement. The speed at which the three leading figures were able to point their guns at the two Senshi was proof enough of that.

The guns got Mercury's and Pluto's *undivided* attention, although at first only for their sheer novelty value. As a rule, the Senshi simply did not encounter such weapons. For one thing, there are not many guns of any kind in general circulation in Japan, and for another, the offensive powers of most of the supernatural entities that the Senshi had to deal with made conventional ammunition look tame by comparison.

Upon closer inspection, however, it become obvious that the word 'conventional' did not apply to these particular weapons. Although small enough to be carried one-handed, the guns were heavily built, with thick blocks of electronic components where the chamber would have been in a normal gun, and a squared-off cartridge of some kind hung below the rectangular barrel. The whole effect vaguely reminded Mercury of the submachineguns that were so heavily cliched in action movies, but considering the oddly-shaped bore, she seriously doubted that these weapons were designed to use bullets. The recoil of firing one shell *that* wide would have snapped a normal person's wrist.

Whoever they were, the new arrivals took one look at the two armed Senshi and the six apparently harmless people scattered around them in various stages of unconsciousness, and then opened fire. Their weapons hummed noticeably before the air was split by high-pitched electrical whining and repeated bursts of... *something.* Mercury was a little too busy dodging the first volley and swooping around behind the corner to pay attention to what her visor and her sister were both trying to tell her about the projectiles, but from the lack of exploding plaster, she guessed that they didn't have the same impact force as bullets. That hypothesis was given extra weight when Pluto backed into her field of view a moment later, twirling her staff in front of her body to deflect the incoming shots—a feat that Mercury doubted even Pluto could have managed against a storm of lead.

As Pluto continued to step back, the Garnet Orb began to glow, transforming the staff into a crimson blur, and when she had cleared the corner and brought her weapon into line with the walls on either side, the Senshi of Time called out, "STASIS FIELD!" A new wall shimmered into existence, a molecule-thick sheet of immobilized air that thoroughly plugged the end of the corridor.

That done, Pluto lowered her staff and looked at Mercury. "Did I miss something?"

"If so, you're not the only one," Mercury replied. She had turned her attention to the dozen or so small, bullet-sized darts that littered the floor. The Caduceus had detected several bursts of electrical energy in this area; were those bulky handguns some kind of tazer? "I have no idea who those people are."

*I think I do,* Calypso put in. *They feel a great deal like the watchers I warned you about at Hinamatsuri, although I'm not entirely sure if they're the same ones or not. I can't quite read them.*

Pluto blinked. "What do you mean?"

*I mean I can sense their thoughts, but I can't really understand them. Something's interfering with me, and it's NOT this instant wall of yours.*

"I think it's their armor," Mercury said, checking her visor. "It's some kind of kevlar derivative, but it looks like a layer of electrical wiring has been worked into the material. Each of them is generating an appreciable electromagnetic field; not very intense, but it *would* be enough to confuse Caly."

*Thanks,* the Nereid said dryly.

"Sorry," Mercury apologized absently, as the Caduceus continued to scan. There were other matters that needed her immediate attention, but she just couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a good look at these strangers and their gear. Her curiosity turned out to be a good thing once again, because some of that gear was giving off radio waves, and something else was answering on the same frequency. Mercury went looking for the source of that other signal, and quickly tracked it back to one of ten more dark-armored figures who were on their way up one of the side stairwells.

"Whoever they are," Mercury said, "they've got friends."

"Then maybe we'd better call our own."

*And here you were, thinking telepathy was difficult,* Calypso teased Pluto, as Mercury flipped open her communicator. *There's hope for you -WATCH OUT/LOOK UP/BEHIND!*

In her haste to warn them, Calypso had compressed several related concepts into one burst of psychic speech. It most definitely startled Mercury and Pluto, but it did get them looking in exactly the right direction to see the cause for the Nereid's garbled alarm.

It was a woman, and her body was encased within a layer of the greenish biomatter of the units. Compared to the last three such half-breeds the Senshi had run into, this one was almost attractive. In terms of color and texture, the biomatter covering her was closer to one of Makoto's houseplants than the unwholesome, mildewy appearance the other units all seemed to share. The stuff had been fitted to the woman like a second skin, revealing as much about her body as it hid, and leaving her face and most of her hair exposed. A single line of gold snaked along the outer edge of each arm and leg like a vein or a piece of jewelry, coiling at the wrists and ankles and extending down to small red clusters set over her palms and heels. Five other 'veins' gripped her head like fingers, curving around the skull to terminate at the exposed skin of her forehead and cheeks. The woman's face was pretty, and her eyes were a pleasant shade of brown, but her expression was dreadful, devoid of any trace of thought or feeling.

She wasn't alone, either. Another five patients and two members of the hospital staff were standing around the unit in a defensive cluster, their faces and arms speckled with green. Pluto immediately lowered her staff to its firing position, but at the same moment, the unit seized one of her apparent slaves and held her fingers over the unresisting woman's throat.

Pluto froze. The first of these hybrids had been able to tear through concrete just by taking a step, and although this one was smaller and slighter than the rampaging man-weed that had nearly run the girls down on its way to the mall, it didn't take all that much strength to break a person's neck.

"Weapons," the unit said in a voice as flat as her expression. "Here. Now." The Senshi hesitated, and the hybrid tightened her grip. The hostage did not even struggle, but the color of her face was beginning to change around the spots of green. "Now."

*Do it,* Mercury's voice said inside Pluto's mind. Pluto glanced briefly at her arm, which Mercury was touching, and then did as she was instructed. Mercury followed suit, carefully setting down the Caduceus and giving it a hard push. Despite its shape, the winged Weapon slid quite smoothly across the floor, to lie next to Pluto's staff in front of the captured humans. The unit relaxed her grip just enough for her most immediate prisoner to breathe normally again, and then the entire group started forward at a walk.

*We need a new plan,* Pluto sent.

*Already done,* came the reply. *Don't look, but Caly rode the Caduceus over there. She's going to blast the unit psychically and pry her fingers away from that woman's throat before the mental shock wears off. We've got to put down as many of the others as we can before the unit recovers.*

*I might be able to use a Stasis Bolt,* Pluto returned uneasily, *but not on all of them at once.* Her thoughts briefly skirted the role of power-reservoir that the Garnet Orb played in her attacks. She only absolutely *needed* the Talisman for her most powerful techniques, but using it buffed up the others considerably.

*Okay then,* Mercury said. *You take the three on the left, I'll get the three on the right. Be ready for the unit.*

*Right.* Knowing that she would have to use a slightly different approach without her staff, Pluto cleared her mind of everything except the goal she wished to achieve, and the power she was going to use. Lacking long-term memories, she had to rely on her more recent training, pure instinct, and -if what Luna and Ami had said last night was correct—guidance from deep within, beyond consciousness and instinct alike.

Pluto had been keeping her eyes fixed on the unit this whole time, but she could clearly see the blue-tinted cloud of sparkling energy billowing up in the background. *She* didn't hear or feel a thing from Calypso, but the unit must have, because she suddenly staggered, her eyes going wide in the first real expression they'd seen on her previously blank face. As soon as that happened, Pluto moved.

She held her hands in front of her chest, slightly apart, and focused on the empty air between them. On the floor, the Garnet Orb pulsed once in a sympathetic reaction as the seemingly empty space began to fill with dark red energy, first forming a speck, then expanding rapidly into a sphere. Pluto turned her left side towards her targets and lowered her hands to her right hip, pulling her hands further away and curling her fingers so that the sphere stretched and then divided, infusing her hands with its energy. Then, calling out "STASIS BOLT!" she snapped her arms forwards, the left stretched out fully, the right half-folded against her body, and her palms held flat towards her targets. Two threads of energy burst from her hands and spiraled together in the air, forming the completed attack.

Pluto could see immediately the difference that using the Garnet Orb made with this attack. The Stasis Bolt was barely half the size of the ones she routinely unleashed while wielding her Talisman—enough to freeze one person in Time, perhaps, but certainly not to take on three at once. Grimacing, Pluto summoned up her strength and poured more energy into the assault, thrusting her hands farther forward and sending a surge of power racing down the coiled ends of the Stasis Bolt. When it struck home, the attack froze its first target and then broke around the man's body like a wave, sweeping over and past him to snare those who stood beyond.

This did not include the unit, unfortunately, who by now had recovered from Calypso's attack. Even without any hostages or cannon fodder to assist her against three-to-one odds, the transformed woman charged in anyway. Pluto wasn't really surprised, but she'd used up too much of her energy boosting the Stasis Bolt to risk another attack so soon. Given the close quarters and the fact that her staff was lying down the hall, there was little Pluto could do except meet the attack with her bare hands and hope for the best. She spared a moment to wonder if the temporal field that Calypso had mentioned in the elevator would help her out at all, and then the unit was on her.

The hybrid came in with her right hand drawn back for a massive blow. Unwilling to risk a block until she had a better idea of her opponent's strength, Pluto dodged the punch instead, then seized the unit's arm and hauled her forward in an over-the-hip throw. The hybrid went stumbling down the hall but managed to keep her footing, and she retaliated with a sweeping backhand blow. Pluto evaded a second time, stepping around behind the unit's arm and then once again grabbing her enemy and throwing her—this time, straight at the wall.

The unit was facing the wall when she hit, so Pluto got a good look at her back. The five veins that gripped the woman's head were actually the offshoots of a single line of gold than ran down her back, and to either side of this spinal reinforcement were odd clusters of biomatter that started just behind the woman's ears and extended past her shoulder blades. The coin-sized growths were a brilliant shade of violet, by far the brightest color any of the units had yet shown, and as their owner struck the wall, they quivered strangely.

She hadn't noticed it before, but as she saw that faint trembling in the biomatter, Pluto realized that the air around her smelled... good. It wasn't a strong fragrance, or one that she recognized exactly, it was just... good. The image her mind conjured up to accommodate the elusive odor was a summer picnic in a field of flowers, with fresh-baked bread and a fine wine close at hand, and someone special to share it all with, someone like... like...

Pluto abruptly backed away from the unit, shaking her head and trying not to breathe in any more of whatever it had just pumped out, but that was a losing battle. Once again she began to think of a summer day, when the air was just warm and humid enough to be pleasantly lazy, the kind of day when all you wanted to do was sit in the shade and rest your head on someone's shoulder... someone... like...

Again, the picture fell apart, and Pluto withdrew another step, this time squeezing her eyes tightly shut. And it happened again. Whether by chance or design, the unit's silent, invisible scent was making Pluto think longingly of the kind of quiet, peaceful days any sensible person would want to spend alone with that important *other* in their lives. It was a singularly ineffective tactic against Pluto, because she didn't *have* anyone like that. She might have started daydreaming about someone she knew of now, except that she knew she had been married—happily, from what the avatar of Life had said—so she should be spending a day like that with *him,* only she couldn't remember *his* face...

Yet again, Pluto shook her head and backed away, this time stumbling and falling to her knees. Vertigo gave her a moment of peculiar clarity, enough to realize that the unit was advancing towards her, and that Mercury was out cold on the floor, apparently overwhelmed by the unit's entrancing odor. As her vision blurred, Pluto also noted that the stuff was making her feel happy... and stupid... and sleepy...

*No you don't!* Pluto was trying to remember whose voice that was when she dimly sensed something large go flying past her and down the hall. Whatever it was, the object left a rush of cold, damp air in its wake. While not quite as good as a splash of water or a slap in the face, the chill moisture was enough to interfere with the unit's smell and the mental pictures it had been inspiring. A few moments later, Pluto was able to get up and look around.

For a moment, what she saw refused to make sense. There was no sign of the unit or Calypso, and Mercury lay facedown on the floor less than an arm's length away from Pluto. Beyond her stood the three people Pluto had put into stasis, and next to them lay four more unconscious humans—the 'rescued' prisoner, and the other three Mercury had said she'd deal with. There was not a trace of ice on them, nor was there anywhere near enough vapor in the air for Mercury to have used one of her attacks to disable the small group. They didn't bear any visible bruises, either, something Pluto found highly improbable considering the speed with which they must have been put down. She knew that Calypso could have knocked out the unit's hostage easily enough, but then what...

Calypso. The unit. The chemically-induced haze in Pluto's mind had cleared up enough for her to start thinking rationally again, and she quickly moved to Mercury and rolled her over. There was a happy little smile and a faint blush on the younger girl's face, evidence that the effects of the unit's gas were fairly consistent from person to person, and Pluto felt a stab of envy at the sight. Even *Mercury* had someone to dream about.

*Not NOW,* Pluto scolded herself, trampling down the feeling and giving Mercury a shake. "Mercury, wake up."

"Mmmm... Ryo?"

"Guess again," Pluto said. "Come on, Mercury."

"What...?" Mercury murmured, opening her eyes and blinking blearily up through her visor. "Pluto? Ergh... what... wait," she added, looking around, "where's the unit?"

"Gone," Pluto replied. As Mercury considered the reply, her eyes widened slightly, then narrowed down to slits.

In a flat voice that said she already knew the answer, Mercury asked, "Where's Calypso?"

The meeting had well and truly devolved into a round of gossip. Rei found it rather appropriate that Hotaru, who spent so much time in the body of an elementary-level student, seemed to have the same avid interest in rumormongering as Minako did. This was not to suggest that Rei herself didn't enjoy it; it was just that these two were operating on a whole different level. Minako knew *everything* about *every* relationship that had been going on in her high school, up to and including how most of them were developing during the break, and Hotaru was absolutely devouring the details.

As she watched the two of them, Rei had to admit that she often felt intimidated by this small, beautiful, and almost insanely powerful girl. The images of the Messiah and the Silence still haunted her darker dreams from time to time, conflicting and meshing with visions of the innocent baby, the laughing child, and the dark-eyed, pure-hearted soldier who wielded so many powers. Healing. Shapeshifting. Undetectability. Teleportation. Holes in the fabric of reality. The strength to shield or shatter entire planets. Abilities that in combination would create an absolute nightmare for anything caught on the wrong side, and all of them concentrated within a single being.

Saturn was a tough act to follow if ever there was one, and all the more so for Rei because she didn't fully understand her. They seldom spent any time together that wasn't somehow Senshi-related, and when they did, ChibiUsa or Michiru were usually there to monopolize Hotaru's time. Hence that earlier, potentially embarrassing question about her age. If Rei knew for sure how old Hotaru wanted to be, she'd at least have an idea of how to address her, which was more than she'd had when she woke up this morning. But that idea had been a bust.

Hearing Hotaru laugh had helped, though. It was a pleasant reminder that there was another girl underneath all the mystery and power that was Saturn. A complicated girl, maybe, but still a very human one.

Their communicators beeped, interrupting Rei's thoughts and Minako's ongoing monologue. Makoto, who had been observing the whole scene with open amusement, was the first to answer the call.

"Mercury?" Makoto asked in surprise, her smile vanishing instantly at the sight of her friend in Senshi form, visor and all, and looking decidedly unhappy about something. "What..."

"Units have attacked the hospital." Rei felt her stomach fall into her toes. "Usagi's safe for now," Mercury continued. "Pluto and I have contained part of the problem... and Calypso is... 'helping'"—the girls couldn't understand why that word came out from between clenched teeth—"but we're having problems with people who are being controlled by these things, and there are soldiers of some kind running around as well..."

"Soldiers?" Minako interrupted. "From where?"

"I don't know," Mercury answered. "They didn't stop to introduce themselves before the shooting started."

"SHOOTING?!" Rei half-shouted.

"Nobody got hurt!" Mercury snapped. "They're using some sort of souped-up stun guns, and... oh, never mind. Just get here, FAST!"

"We can be there inside of a minute if you can give me a safe place to open a Door," Hotaru replied, shifting into Saturn in the middle of the sentence.

"There are too many people moving around inside the building for that to be safe," Mercury said. Behind her visor, her eyes looked upwards. "But my scans show that the roof is clear, including the helipad. The units have already gotten into one of the elevators," she added, "so you'll have to come down via the stairs. Usagi's on the fourth floor, and we're on the third. Try not to scare too many of the patients on your way in."

"Right." Saturn closed her communicator and looked around the room. "Rei-chan, do you mind?"

The ring of the phone cut Rei off before she had a chance to reply. Glowering at the device for a moment, she nodded for Saturn to go ahead and set up a Dimension Door, then stepped over and answered the phone. "Moshimoshi?"

"Rei!"

"Artemis? This isn't..."

"Rei, listen to me. I'm at the park. Get down here, and if any of the others are still there with you, bring them; I just had a run-in with one of those mutant units."

"Another one?" Rei blurted out. The remark drew the attention of the others, who had by now all transformed, and Rei silently mouthed the word 'unit' as they looked at her.

"Yeah, and... wait, what do you mean, 'another one?'" Practically dancing with impatience, Rei explained Mercury's call for help. She was answered by a low, frustrated growl. "It figures," Artemis said sourly. "This one was going in the general direction of the hospital, the last I saw of it."

"We'll keep our eyes open for it," Rei promised before hanging up. She transformed, and then summed up Artemis's warning as the five of them headed through Saturn's Door.

"Was he okay?" Venus asked quickly.

"He sounded okay," Mars replied.

"Good." More quietly, Venus added, "I can't let the big goofball out of my sight for five minutes when there's a monster on the loose, without him getting himself hurt."

"I'm sure he's fine," Luna said, her half-human, half-feline head surveying their surroundings. She, Mars, and Venus were standing next to the helipad; Saturn had closed the Dimension Door and gone over to open the door to the rear stairwell; and Jupiter was off to one side, her arms folded as she looked down at the streets, the Aegis circling about her in a series of slow orbits. Luna frowned at that, and Mars, noticing the reaction, felt the empty place where her stomach had been clench. She knew what had Luna concerned, and the solution was obvious, but...

Gathering her resolve, Mars said, "I'll make sure she stays up here, Luna." When Luna and Venus both looked at her, she made a face. They just HAD to make it harder than it already was. "We have at least one unit out here to worry about, and neither of us can really use our powers inside without risking a lot of damage, can we? If something goes wrong, there are a lot of people in there who might be too sick to move out of the way."

"That's very true," Luna agreed. She glanced over at Saturn, who had the door open and was waiting just inside for them. "Venus, let's get going." Venus nodded and, after sparing Mars a reassuring smile, headed for the stairs. Luna paused and rested one of her clawed hands on Mars's shoulder. "I'll keep her out of trouble, Rei."

"I know. Now go, before I change my mind." Holding tight to her determination, Mars very deliberately turned and walked over to join Jupiter, while Luna hurried to catch up with Venus and Saturn.

The stairs were oddly empty, considering that there was an emergency in the building, but then again, it was likely that most of the people aware of the situation were smack in the middle of it. When the small group reached the fourth floor, Luna stopped on the landing and became human. She appeared in a light grey dress this time, with a blue-black coat folded over one arm and a small, stylish purse in her other hand. Gesturing for Saturn and Venus to continue on, Luna quietly opened the door and slipped inside, looking cautiously about as she went.

"What I want to know," Venus said as she and Saturn headed down again, "is where she keeps coming up with those clothes. I mean, is that what her fur turns into, or is it something else?"

"I think she must have access to a subspace pocket," Saturn answered. "Clothes are one thing—I know *I* can make or alter them pretty easily—but she has to be keeping that knife somewhere secure. And she couldn't have just created Usagi's brooch or the henshin wands, or any of the other things she's handed out in the past, right?"

"Uh, yeah. Good point." *Subspace pocket?* Venus repeated silently, wondering if Saturn had just seen too much sci-fi, or if she actually knew what she was talking about. Venus dismissed the problem as they reached the third floor and found a more pressing matter waiting for them.

The door was jammed wide open, its hinges and frame locked in the edges of a broken carpet of ice which seemed to extend the length of the hallway beyond. There were thick patches of ice hanging from the walls and ceiling, and the fading threads of a bluish white mist hung in the air. Beyond the arctic decor, the place was simply a mess, littered with bits of plaster and tile, smashed glass, and the odd overturned gurney. The largest concentrations of ice encased unmoving masses of green, fungal matter, some of which were glowing a dull red even through the crystalline facets of their prisons. Something down the hall and off to one side or the other was making a racket; Venus and Saturn could pick out people yelling, the periodic buzz of Generic Energy Blasts, and every now and then a crash.

"Sounds like we got here just in time," Venus observed.

"Shall we?" Saturn asked.

"Just a sec." Venus raised her fingertips to her tiara and shifted into Sailor V, then summoned her stylized Love-V-Chain and converted it into its sword form, swinging it experimentally through the air. "Okay," she said. "All set. Let's... eh?" V stopped and looked down over the banister at the sudden sound of running footsteps on the staircase. There was a small crowd on its way UP, and from the sound of things, they were taking the stairs two at a time. "Now what?"

Ten figures in mostly-black body armor came around the corner and halted. There was a split-second delay as both sides stared at each other, and then the unknown soldiers raised some curious-looking guns, and fired. To V, the precise unity of their reactions clearly said that these G.I. Joe Blacks were well-trained, and viewed the Senshi as a threat—and they were very quick on the draw.

Saturn was faster. Even as V was gathering herself to try and jump out of the way, Saturn called out, "SILENT WALL!" cutting off the third-floor landing behind a curved barrier of dark energy. The electrified darts the black-garbed squad fired an instant later struck the outer edge of the Wall and bounced off, their charges dissipating on contact with only the tiniest bursts of light.

Unfortunately, Saturn's timing meant that V ended up crashing headfirst into the *inner* edge of the Wall. This collision didn't have any greater an effect on the barrier than did the impacts of the darts on the other side, but it did leave a dazed and groaning Sailor V sprawled out on the floor. Saturn had the decency to blush and murmur an apology for accidentally felling her ally, but she did so with her face split by a broad grin, while her shoulders bobbed with suppressed mirth. V was understandably less amused, and laying there on her side with one hand to her bruised head, she half-rolled over and glared up at Saturn to make that point abundantly clear.

Whatever V may have been about to say flew from her mind when an angry scream echoed down the frozen hall. She and Saturn spun to look, and saw a blur of movement as something... make that *two* somethings... or rather, something and *someone*... went flying across the corridor just a short distance down from where they were standing. Literally flying; the combatants were a good foot off the floor, and they tumbled around on empty air as they struggled with each other. One was a hybrid unit, sleek and female, and the other was Calypso. The two Senshi were quite certain about that, because it simply couldn't have been anyone else.

The Nereid's current form had clearly been 'inspired' by her sister's Senshi state, but Calypso had taken a few liberties. For one thing, her fuku covered her entire body. There were legs below the skirt, and close-fitted sleeves which tucked neatly beneath the tops of the elbow-length gloves. Calypso's neck and head were covered by the same white fabric, almost like she was wearing a hood, except that her hair seemed unimpeded by the stuff. The ribbons of the blue bow on Calypso's back were just as long and full as those on her sister's uniform, and the ubiquitous sailor-style collar was still in place. The only other real difference was the silvery mask that covered the front of Calypso's head, hiding her entire face from the ears forward behind smooth, featureless metal. Or perhaps ice. Whatever the case, the mask was fused to the material of Calypso's full-body fuku, and it included a visor exactly like Mercury's, the blue shading of which matched and hid the color of Calypso's eyes. Small wings like those on the Caduceus swept back from the corners of the visor, flanking the sides of the Nereid's head, and a recreation of the sign of Mercury shone over her forehead.

The bizarre spectacle flew out of sight down the side corridor, leaving a couple of confused Senshi to stare into the space where it had been.

"Was that...?" Saturn asked slowly.

"I think it was," V replied in the same tone. She immediately scrambled to her feet and ran down the hall after Saturn, both of them wondering just what in the world was going on.

Blocked by the Silent Wall, the Security squad doubled back to the second floor and cut across to another staircase. Their passage had the unavoidable effect of startling a number of people, and like the Senshi, all of these people asked themselves what exactly it was that they were seeing.

One person came up with an answer to that question, and a pair of eyes that had been glaring icy disapproval at the passing troopers became uneasy, before casting a worried glance at the ceiling.

ChibiUsa stood before the vending machines with an intense expression that suggested the fate of the world might depend upon which drink and/or snack she chose. In actuality, she was simply delaying the choice as long as possible so that she didn't have to watch the ultrasound. If it had been anyone other than Usagi in there, the procedure wouldn't have bothered ChibiUsa in the slightest, but 'uncomfortable' barely began to describe what she felt about the idea of seeing an image of herself up on that screen.

Finally deciding that she wasn't hungry, ChibiUsa settled for a can of orange pop. She was on her way back to the examination room when she noticed someone hanging around in the hall nearby. It took ChibiUsa a moment to recognize Luna's human form, and when she did, she frowned and hurried over to meet her.

"What are you doing here?" ChibiUsa asked quietly.

"Keeping watch," Luna replied, taking a seat in the small waiting area and picking up a magazine. Pretending to read the medical journal, Luna quickly filled ChibiUsa in on the situation downstairs, then asked, "Has there been any sign of activity up here?"

"Not that I'd noticed," ChibiUsa said, looking uneasily at the floor beneath her shoes. *Actually, that would explain the thumping I thought I heard a few minutes ago...* She glanced down the hall, and sure enough, there were three people standing near the elevators, shaking their heads in frustration at the hold-up.

"Which room is Usagi in?" Luna asked.

ChibiUsa pointed it out. "Luna, Miko-san already did most of the tests, and the ultrasound started just a minute ago. Once that's done..."

"Make an issue of the elevators being out," Luna advised. "Even if she wasn't pregnant, Usagi wouldn't walk down four flights of stairs without a convincing reason and a lot of pushing."

"Good thinking," ChibiUsa agreed. She made no move to reenter the room, however, earning an odd glance from Luna.

"Is something the matter?"

"No," ChibiUsa replied slowly. "It's just that... er... I'd rather wait out here until the ultrasound's done."

Luna considered that, then smiled sympathetically. "A bit like looking at baby pictures of yourself, is it?"

"Trust me, Luna. Baby pictures have got *nothing* on this."

Neither Jupiter nor Mars said a word as they stood on the hospital roof, watching the streets below for a sign of the unit Artemis had spotted. Mars was struggling to keep herself from abandoning this task, marching down those stairs, finding the odango-atama, and dragging her out of this building. Jupiter was holding down the nausea that came from sensing the mass of twisted biomatter inside the building. She was also thinking about the image of Mercury's face, framed by her visor, and what it meant for her, now that the device was restored and there was no further reason for Luna to delay the mind-probe she had proposed. On the one hand, Jupiter badly wanted to know what the Aegis were doing to her, but to have someone else inside her mind again, even Luna...

It was a blessing for both of them when the unit came close enough to set off Mars's danger sense and Jupiter's empathic connection to plants. At least this way they had something else to occupy their thoughts.

Even with the built-in magical mechanism that allowed the Senshi to make superhuman leaps and then land without breaking their legs—or a pair of stiletto heels—Mars wasn't keen on the idea of jumping off the top of the hospital. She immediately looked around for the fire escape, noting with bleak amusement what a fine irony it would make if she started throwing fireballs from the thing. Then, hearing an electric buzz, she looked over at Jupiter, and blinked.

The Senshi of Thunder had her hand around one of the four large Aegis-orbs, and six of the lesser spheres were hovering in a circular pattern just above the level of the roof, generating a softly humming disc of electric green energy between them. The disc did not sink or even so much as quiver when Jupiter stepped up onto it, although Mars faintly thought she heard the electric hum drop lower in pitch and grow ever so slightly in volume.

Jupiter looked at her. "Are you coming?"

Mars glanced uneasily at the 'platform' before walking towards it. She fully trusted Jupiter, but given what she knew about the Aegis—both from reading the Book of Ages and from her firsthand experiences—Mars still half-expected to get shocked as her foot came down atop the disc. This did not happen; the only reaction was another shift in the sound the disc was making.

"Hold on," Jupiter said, reaching out with her empty hand and catching Mars by the elbow.

The world lurched around Mars as the disc moved, and she automatically grabbed her friend's arm as they went buzzing neatly across the roof and over the side of the building. Once it was two or three meters out, the disc's sound changed again, and it began to descend, taking the two Senshi towards ground level at about the same speed as an elevator. Mars was wide-eyed the entire way down; she trusted Jupiter, but the Aegis were another story, and Mars wasn't sure her heart started beating again until they reached the surface.

"Neat trick," Mars managed to say as the disc beneath their feet winked out of existence.

"Thanks," Jupiter said, smiling as she released the orb from her hand. "It worked better than I expected." The implications of that earned her a wide-eyed stare from Mars, but Jupiter was already studying their surroundings, and frowning at what she saw.

They'd landed in the parking zone that adjoined the rear entrance to the ER, startling a couple of paramedics who appeared to have been taking their lunch break. Aside from those two and their ambulance, the lot was currently empty, but Jupiter knew it was still a bad place for a fight. It would turn into a disaster the instant another ambulance pulled up, and the concrete-encased block of not-so-quietly humming machinery standing off to one side might as well have had a giant target painted over it. Mars recognized the problems as well, and they moved out at once, in the hopes of intercepting the unit before it could reach this troublesome area.

"How do you want to handle this?" Jupiter asked as they ran down the street, drawing the usual mix of flinches, stares, and double-takes. "Should we try to take care of it ourselves, or just hold it until Saturn can arrive to separate the bio-junk from the person inside?"

"How long could you keep it caged with the Aegis?"

Jupiter made a face. "Not long. Maybe a minute—two, tops—but I don't think I'd be much use for a while afterwards. What about you? Could you stun it with your ofudas?"

Now it was Mars's turn to frown. "I don't know. My ofudas don't have much of an effect on a normal person unless they've been infected with some form of negative energy, and they don't seem to work on units at all."

"Well, let's give it a try. If it doesn't work, we've really only got one option left."

"Yeah," Mars agreed. "I guess so." Actually, there *was* one other possibility, but she was reluctant to bring it up, mainly because she wasn't certain if it would work or not.

When the unit ran into view a moment later, it was greeted head-on by a bolt of flaming lightning. An attack like that would have destroyed several first-generation units, but like its three predecessors, this creature was tougher than the average half-living automaton. While the green sections of its body were burning fitfully, the more animal flesh withstood the heat better; its leathery surface had only been lightly blackened, and the bony armor was even less damaged. Jupiter's half of the combination attack was more effective than Mars's flames, exploding in the mutant's face and blowing it back the way it had come.

Laying on its back on the sidewalk, the unit looked down over its body and spread its fingers to reveal the red palm-blasters that Pluto had described in the last two hybrids. Mars was about to jump clear when she felt the air around her tingle as Jupiter took hold of the Aegis again. The unit's two-handed counterattack streaked down the sidewalk and slammed ineffectually against the sizzling barrier that had snapped into existence between four of the hovering orbs. No sooner had the energy bursts hit than several more of the orbs flashed and fired tiny pulses of energy back at the unit, which scrambled out of the way as the blasts stitched the sidewalk.

*Careful, Jupiter,* Mars thought. She took her own advice and tracked the movements of the unit for a moment before letting fly with a second Fire Soul. Mars's attacks were not the most precise by nature, but she'd worked hard to make up for that, and although her cautious aim sent the bulk of the fireball crackling past the unit and up into the sky, she scored a glancing hit to its left shoulder. The mutant's response was a scattering of energy blasts, fired at random as it fell forward in the street and swept its undamaged arm towards the Senshi. Landing on its burnt shoulder, the unit bent sharply at the waist, curled its legs up and over its head, and rolled backwards, twisting through a remarkable display of flexibility to get back on its feet.

A collection of pink-bodied, green-tailed comets zipped past Mars to take up positions around the unit, which lashed out with its claws and a pair of whips that had unexpectedly emerged from its shoulders. The Aegis adjusted course in mid-flight, tiny targets made even harder to hit by reason of their speed and impossibly smooth maneuvering, and then a bolt of lightning flew from Jupiter's tiara, passing through several of the nearby spheres and branching out to hit those that surrounded the unit before flashing down into the creature from several directions. As the ugly body stiffened and jerked about under the second-long shock, Mars rushed at it.

"Jupiter!" she called out, producing an ofuda and raising it high enough for her friend to see. The Aegis immediately shoved themselves out of Mars's way, signaling Jupiter's understanding. Mars drove her hand down towards the unit an instant later, focusing her energy and calling out, "Evil spirits, be GONE!" as she thrust the ward against the creature's armored chest in a two-fingered strike.

At the moment of impact, Mars and the unit both froze.

When Mars touched the hybrid Samoru-unit, the word "ERROR" blew through the control program's limited awareness with all the force of a derailing bullet train. Suddenly deprived of the program's guidance, the biomatter clusters in the hospital went berserk, lashing out at everything and anything nearby, including each other.

In the middle of this confusion, Proteus struck back at the usurper of its body, its efforts fueled by a powerful new emotion: hatred.

Mars stood there, staring at the unit. She was aware of Jupiter calling to her, asking what was wrong, but she could not find the voice with which to reply, just as she could not muster the strength to pull back her arm.

When her hand and the ofuda had touched the hybrid's bony chest plate, Mars had suddenly found herself confronted by the image of a man. He was translucent, a ghost that occupied the same space as the unit—a living ghost, unless she missed her guess. This had to be the image of the person trapped inside the hybrid, and Mars could not pull her eyes away from the awful expression into which the poor soul's face was twisted. He was a prisoner within his own body, enslaved and *altered* into this horrible shape, and to judge by his features, he was fully aware of everything that had been done to him, everything that was still being done. And he could do nothing to stop it.

There was anger in that expression, but it was frustrated, buried beneath pains both current and remembered, and by fear of whoever or whatever had done this.

There was also a faint trace of hope. It had appeared just a moment after Mars touched the un... after she had touched the man. He was aware that Mars was responsible for whatever had stopped his stolen body, and she got the impression that he was looking back at her, reading her face in turn. The hope was a question, and Mars did her best to answer it.

"Yes," she said softly. "I can see you."

The look of hope flared, and the question changed.

"I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't."

The hope dimmed.

"We can still help you," Mars said. "A friend of mine can heal you. You just have to hold on..."

Despair. Weariness. He had been fighting this as hard as he could, since the beginning, to no avail. As soon as Mars withdrew, he would be trapped again.

"Don't give up!" Mars snapped. "Fight! Hold on!"

Refusal. He didn't believe there was anything more he could do. He was drawing back in on himself, giving up again, this time with the shattered remnants of that brief hope and all the bitterness that accompanied them crushing his spirit even further. In desperation, Mars focused her thoughts and her powers and pushed with her mind, trying to share her own strength.

The image of the man looked up in shock—and the arms of the unit moved, grabbing hold of Mars's outstretched arm, trapping her.

"Mars!"

"Stay back, Jupiter! Don't do anything!" Mars wasn't sure if Jupiter listened to her or not, but the unit was not suddenly torn away from her by gauntleted fists or a bolt of lightning.

She understood what had happened. The energy had gotten through, and it had done exactly what she intended, giving the man the strength to overcome the control that had stolen his body. But if she could do that so easily, she could clearly do more. They both knew it now.

"Let me go," Mars said in a controlled tone.

Refusal. A silent plea.

"I can't do any more than that without hurting you!"

Anguish.

"Please, you just have to hold on..."

Denial. Desperation. Mars watched in horror as one of the whip-tendrils on the unit's back rose up, its tip lengthening into a spear-like point and hardening into what looked like the same bone covering other parts of the biomatter. The weapon did not aim at Mars, but at the unit's head.

"NO! You can't do that!"

The ghostly face was resigned, but strangely at peace.

"STOP IT! If you just wait..."

The unit's head shook from side to side. He had this chance to be free; he would not waste it waiting. He could not afford to. The nightmare was too close, the chances that he would lose himself to it again too high. The image of the man looked at Mars. There was no anger directed at her; rather, there was thankfulness, and some sympathy. He seemed to understand why she was so unwilling to risk another person's life. So he would free himself.

Mars was the Soldier of Fire, and her guardian planet was the star of War. At the core of her being, she understood that Fire and War both required sacrifices: a flame needed fuel to burn; a war could not be fought without something being lost in the process, be it one's own life or the life of an enemy, and the innocence that was taken away forever when you killed. This man was now faced with a chance to slay an enemy that would otherwise overpower him, and he was seizing that opportunity, even if its cost was his own life.

Just as she would have done. Just as she had done in the past, both distant and recent, and just as she might do again some day, giving up her own life to destroy what threatened her friends and family.

"I'm sorry," Mars said, clenching the hand of her trapped arm into a fist. "But I can't let you do that... not when there's a chance that you might live." The unit looked down as Mars's hand glowed first red, then bright white, and when it looked up at her face and found that her eyes were full of the same fire, its hands involuntarily let go. Mars pushed forward, touching the tips of her luminous fingers to the ofuda on the unit's chest. "MARS CLEANSING FLAME!"

For Mars, Time seemed to slow to a crawl the moment she unleashed her power. The kanji on the ofuda flared with a brilliant white light that began in the center of each symbol and spread out in all directions with the speed of molasses. Where that light crossed from incandescent ink to unmarked paper, it became scarlet flame, burning away the bulk of the ward and leaving only the radiant characters limned down the unit's chest. As those flames spread out along the unit's skin and *inwards,* into its very being, Mars saw a slow-forming look of surprise on the nebulous human face, coupled with gratitude and then wiped away by mounting pain. The skin of biomatter twisted in places, bulged outwards, and then split apart as gouts of red and white fire blossomed from within the hybrid, giving rise to great fiery rifts in the brown and grey surface.

Mars stood there, her arm still extended and her face set, watching as her power took effect, and the faceless man-shape became a form of fire. The now-pure white symbols of her destroyed ward continued to shine above the mass of fire that was the chest, but everywhere else was a shifting mass of color, sometimes red, sometimes orange, sometimes white. The strange overlay of the human within the unit had vanished behind the inferno, making it impossible for Mars to be sure he was even still alive. She'd used this attack exactly twice before, and on both instances, it had consumed its targets utterly—but those had been daimons, and they had screamed. There was no scream this time.

She hoped that was a good sign.

A short distance away, Jupiter stared aghast at the pillar of fire that held a person somewhere inside of it, a person who her empathic sense informed her was in fantastic pain from the flames licking through every fiber of his being. She'd witnessed this sort of thing before, but dear god, had *everyone* they'd ever changed back from a monster or cleansed of dark energy had to endure THAT in the process? And if *not,* did that mean that Mars's attack was actually doing more harm than good? Jupiter'd had no idea that Mars could use her new trick to reverse transformations, and judging from her friend's seesawing emotional state, *she* wasn't fully confident of the procedure, either...

The kanji-of-light flared brightly and suddenly blew apart, scattering in all directions. The fire did likewise, as if the symbols had been the only thing holding it all together.

A man in his mid-to-late twenties stood in the middle of the street, facing Mars with wide eyes in a pale, shaken face. His arms were at his sides, fingers twitching, and every muscle in his body appeared to have been stretched taut. There was not the least trace of ash nor the slightest burn on him or his clothes, but his pallor revealed how much the Cleansing Flame had taken out of him.

"Really... should have listened... to you," he croaked, just before his legs gave out. Mars caught him and eased him to the ground.

"It's okay," she said, managing a reassuring smile. "I've got you."

"Thanks," the man whispered.

"How do you feel?"

"Like hell," he replied with a raspy chuckle. "Thirsty... tired... but I'm me... no more voice..."

"Voice?"

In spite of his condition, the man mustered enough strength to clench his teeth. "Proteus." There was fear in that one word, and hatred, and the effort of speaking it seemed to exhaust whatever reserves the Cleansing Flame had left the man. His slipped into unconsciousness between one breath and the next, his eyes closing and his head lolling to one side. Mars hastily checked his pulse and breathing, finding them to be weak but steady.

"He's okay," she said aloud, half to convince Jupiter, who had come up beside her, and half to convince herself. "Just exhausted."

"Did you know it was going to do that?" Jupiter asked.

"I... had a feeling it might," Mars replied. Cleansing Flame had obliterated two daimons, attacking them physically and spiritually, but humans were very rarely all good or all bad, and units—so far as Mars understood them—were neither. Even in combination, the two were nowhere near as steeped in negative energy as a daimon, so the final effect of her attack had not been as extreme. Or so she'd hoped when she unleashed it.

"But you didn't know for sure," Jupiter said, this time making a statement rather than asking a question.

"You saw what he was going to do."

"And more than saw," Jupiter answered, shivering a bit at the memory of the bleak resolve that had been running through the man's mind. "Okay. Let's head back to the hospital." She looked at the two of them and added, "Did you want me to get him?"

"Thanks, but I can manage. You'd better check in with Mercury and find out what the situation is."

Jupiter nodded. "Considering that she's got Pluto, Venus, and Saturn to back her up, though, I figure things must be pretty well under control by now."

Events on the third floor had turned into a disaster for all parties involved.

Proteus's forces were the most numerous, but they were also the weakest as individuals. Their only real chance for victory had been to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers, and now that the element of surprise had been lost and over half of the mind-controlled humans and the clusters of biomatter disabled, the ongoing fight was turning against those that remained. Proteus would have sacrificed the biomatter in a mass suicide assault so that it could slip as many of the potential human test subjects as possible off this level and out of the building, but the long-buried program that had seized control of the entity was too single-minded to think ahead in that fashion. It would use the resources it had and either succeed or fail by them, then make a report and wait for new orders. That was the nature of its programming.

The Security detachment was in a different quandary. Because they had been deployed in a hospital, the two ten-man squads now on the floor had only been issued light weapons, to keep the potential for collateral damage and civilian casualties to a minimum. Their next-generation tazer guns were of little use against the biomatter, and even the more conventional sidearms some of the soldiers carried had proved ineffective against their decentralized techno-organic targets. The troopers' knives—uncomplicated metal blades that the Security Director had adamantly insisted on including in the training programs and as standard armaments—were working much better, but couldn't really do any more than hold the regenerating enemy at bay, and this only because the control program wasn't interested in their owners. That opinion might change when the third squad and their complement of heavy weapons arrived, but first they had to get around the obstacles presented by the Senshi.

It was only natural that, since they were stronger than anyone or anything else on the floor, Mercury and Pluto were making the best progress. Their problem was the same as it had been at the start; they were trapped in a delaying action against a hostile force with vastly superior numbers, and they could not use their full strength for fear of harming innocents, leaving themselves at the questionable mercies of their mysterious opponents, or—worst of all—leaving Usagi unprotected, one floor above.

Having Calypso flying around in a wrestling match with that bloody unit wasn't making Mercury feel any better about the situation. *She* had always been the one who was supposed to fight, *not* her little sister, and the reasons for that were even stronger now than they had been in the Silver Millennium. But there wasn't anything she could do about it. Unless she assumed full human form, Calypso was immune to the hybrid's powerful pheromones, whereas Mercury and Pluto would start reliving their romantic daydreams the moment they got within range of the thing. All they could do was wait for help, and try not to breathe in too deeply on Caly's periodic fly-bys.

As if the endangerment of her sister wasn't bad enough, the ongoing decimation of her workplace was another reason for Mercury to hate this battle. Calypso and the unit were struggling back and forth across the level like a giant pinball, caroming off of the walls, floor, and ceiling and smashing into or through everything in their path before rebounding away to strike something else. Every new crash made Mercury flinch slightly and add another line to the reprimand she was mentally writing for a nice little chat with her sister.

So no, Mercury was definitely *not* enjoying this fight.

Calypso, on the other hand, was loving every second of it.

The Nereid was not by nature a violent being. She had tackled the unit in defense of Mercury and Pluto, and had only intended to help her sister and her friend by keeping the unfortunate mutant away from them until they'd had a chance to recover from its curious chemical emissions and come up with a plan to defeat it. The choice to take physical action necessitated a physical form, of course, and of the vast array of shapes into which Calypso could have reconfigured her molecules, the body of a Senshi seemed most appropriate—and Mercury's even more so. Most of the adjustments had been concessions to the fact that Calypso was *not* a Senshi, and that, lacking access to the same sources of power or the supplementary enchantments and instruments that had been provided to the Senshi over the millennia, she had to protect herself in other ways.

For one thing, while her assumed form *looked* human, its composition more closely resembled glacial ice. Human skin would have been impractical for such a form, not to mention easily damaged, and so Calypso had covered up all those places her sister's uniform normally left exposed. The mask served another purpose. Calypso could assume any human shape she wanted, but she was most comfortable in her 'natural' human body, the one whose appearance was well-nigh identical to Ami's. Since she could not reproduce the magical forces that masked the identities of the Senshi, the Nereid had been forced to employ a more material means of concealment for her face.

It was the realization that she could create and animate a form like this that was the source of Calypso's elation. Shifting one's molecular composition from rigid high-density ice to a far less inflexible crystalline structure with the kind of speed and accuracy required to engage in hand-to-hand combat would have been a challenge for an experienced Nereid elder, but Calypso was managing it. Not precisely with ease, but well enough to handle the unit, even in the face of all the distractions they kept running into. Literally running into, in the case of the walls. This crash-course that would have left a human battered, bruised, ensnared by a half-dozen grasping lengths of biomatter, and shocked into insensibility by the electric darts of the soldiers hardly registered on Calypso's body. The high-voltage darts were like so much popcorn to the Nereid, and the other blows were defeated by her alternately ice-hard and liquid-slick form.

This just left the unit. Had it been a true unit, Calypso suspected that -her sister's onetime assessment notwithstanding—she could have defeated it on her own. True, she did not have Mercury's ability to manipulate large quantities of mist and ice in her environment, but she could do with her own body as she wished. The difference between fingers and talons was minor, the difference between a hand and a sword-blade only slightly more pronounced, and Calypso could easily have slowed the motion of her molecules so as to make even the slightest touch cold enough to freeze the surface layers of biomatter, at which point she could have begun tearing it away in chunks. More powerful units might be able to withstand that, but not a mere first-generation design—and Calypso could deal with a hostile human even more easily, by the simple expedient of putting the person to sleep.

As a hybrid, however, the Nereid's opponent stalemated her. She had to restrict herself to punches, kicks, and flying bodyslams because anything more might have dealt lasting injury to the woman trapped within the biomatter. At the same time, the unintelligent green techno-organism formed a natural barrier against telepathy; it had taken a certain degree of effort for Calypso to penetrate that defense before, and as long as she was devoting so much of her awareness to controlling the motions and makeup of her body, she could not muster the psychic strength necessary to reach the hybrid's human core a second time. She could drop out of physical form... but then the unit would break away and go after Mercury and Pluto again.

All things considered, Calypso had to admit that it was probably for the best that Saturn and Sailor V showed up when they did.

"Calypso!" V called out. "What in the world are you doing?!"

"Helping," the Nereid replied as she twisted about in the air and slammed the unit against the corridor wall, hard enough to leave behind a faint imprint. The unit responded by tucking both legs up and kicking off from the vertical surface, hurling them both across the passageway and into the opposite wall. Again, the impact left behind visible scars, whereas neither of the airborne combatants seemed much affected.

"She calls this helping?" V murmured, taking in the depressions in the walls and the rest of the trail of destruction that Calypso and her dancing partner had left in their wake. Shaking her head, V glanced at Saturn. "Can you put a stop to that? Without hurting Calypso?"

"I'm... not sure," Saturn admitted with a frown. "Caly's said before that exposure to my powers would make her sick, but we never sat down and discussed just what would happen..."

"We'll have to schedule an annointment for you two to discuss the issue later," V said, half to herself. "But in the meantime, I guess it's up to me." She raised her sword and charged, crying out, "Sailor V to the rescue!"

"No, wait!" Calypso's attempt at a warning came too late, as V rushed straight in at the two struggling figures. Calypso gritted her teeth and tried to think of something that would safely disable the unit before V was overcome by the hallucinogenic chemicals the thing was producing. She drew a blank.

"SAILOR V CHOP!" Calypso and the unit were both staggered as V brought the pommel of her sword down on the base of the hybrid's neck. The Nereid winced behind her mask, noting that the Senshi's position put her right in front of the clustered organs that were producing the unit's pleasantly debilitating odor.

*The chemical affected Mercury almost immediately. Pluto lasted a little longer... probably because the temporal field was protecting her, accelerating the molecular breakdown of the stuff or slowing the rate at which she inhaled it... so V will probably go down right about...*

"SAILOR V KICK!" Calypso blinked and dropped out of diagnostic mode as V spun on one foot and delivered a sidelong kick that tore the unit right out of her grasp. The hybrid stumbled to the right, leaning on the wall to regain her balance. "You're caught between a wall and a hard case now!" V exulted. She pointed the tip of her sword at the unit and called out, "LOVE-V-CHAIN!"

The blade instantly reverted to its original form, telescoping out from V's hand and twisting wildly in the narrow space between her and the unit. The hybrid tried to follow the motion of the Chain and evade it, but V whipped her arm back and forth several times in rapid succession, expertly looping her weapon over, behind, and around her enemy. Less than two seconds later, the hybrid toppled over, her arms and legs bound by what had to be ten meters' worth of gleaming gold links.

Calypso stood there on three inches of air, watching the whole thing with a dumbfounded expression. The Nereid could sense the chemical cloud in the air, its molecules bumping against and mixing with the outermost layer of her body moisture. This much of the stuff had been sufficient to knock out Mercury and severely disorient Pluto, and yet Sailor V was standing right in the middle of it without showing the least sign of silly-headed sleepiness.

"How are you..."

"Not now, Caly," V said, stepping back from the roped-and-chained unit and pushing the confused Nereid along ahead of her. "Saturn! Your turn!"

Saturn nodded and closed her eyes, fixing the image of what she wanted to do in her mind. The last time she had tried to heal one—or two—of these hybrids, something had ripped the minds of the human hosts out of their bodies. She was determined not to let that happen a second time, but the only way to be entirely sure it wouldn't was to speed up the healing process. A lot.

As had been demonstrated on any number of occasions, Saturn could be very quick when she needed to.

Holding the Silence Glaive upright, Saturn tilted back her head and turned her arms out at the elbows, reaching to both sides. The familiar violet-black light that made up most of her attacks shimmered ominously around the curved head of the Glaive, whereas its mistress's empty hand was outlined by the more gentle light that accompanied her healing touch. Opening her eyes, Saturn pulled the Glaive in front of her body and raised her other hand to touch the flat of the blade. There was a single pure note as the light of the Glaive changed from deadly near-black to soft violet, and Saturn smiled. Then she shifted her gaze to the tangled unit and lowered her weapon, her empty hand still held to the base of the twisted blade.

Still wearing that gentle smile, Saturn said, "SILENCE GLAIVE SALVATION!"

A broad stream of violet energy shot from one of the deadliest weapons in the known universe and struck the hybrid head-on, and the half-human creature stiffened for an instant as her face was flooded by surprise. Then the biomatter just died, curling up at the edges and falling away from its human host in crumbling grey pieces that decayed away to nothingness before they even hit the floor. V's Chain vanished as well, shining brighter and brighter until it transmuted back into pure golden energy and dispersed. All that remained was the now ex-unit, and—as was more or less standard procedure for a de-transformation—as soon as Saturn terminated her beam, the woman let out a sigh and collapsed on the floor, utterly exhausted.

What was *not* standard procedure was the fact that aside from a hospital identification bracelet, the woman wasn't wearing so much as a stitch of clothing. V considered that and looked up at Saturn with a raised eyebrow. While the younger Senshi blushed and stammered a defensive reply, V ducked into a nearby room, coming back a moment later with a white linen bedsheet, which she spread out over the unconscious woman and tucked beneath her as well.

"Calypso," V asked while she worked, "can you tell if she's... okay?"

"Her mind is intact," the Nereid replied. "I think she will be upset when she awakens, however."

V nodded. "Heaven knows she has a right to be."

"How did you do that?" Calypso finally managed to ask.

When Saturn did not reply, V realized the Nereid was addressing her, and looked up. "How'd I what? Beat her? Come on, Calypso; what did you think the point of all those nightly training sessions was, anyway?"

"That's not what I meant. Don't you feel... dizzy? Warm? Sleepy? Slightly aroused?" That last one made Saturn blush anew and cover her eyes in embarrassment. Even V blinked.

"Uh... no," she slowly replied. "Should I?"

"Evidently not," Calypso murmured. She shook her head. *I think I will have to discuss this with Mercury. Speaking of whom...* "We should get to Mercury and Pluto. She"—the Nereid nodded towards the unconscious ex-unit—"was not the only problem here, and we need to come up with a plan to deal with the others." As she spoke, Calypso moved over next to V and knelt beside her, reaching down to the woman. V stopped her with a touch, and a look that was a question all on its own.

"We cannot just leave her here," Calypso replied. "Whomever is responsible for the hybrids has already tried to cover their tracks by tearing away the minds of their victims. I don't want that to happen to her if I can help it, any more than you do."

V smiled approvingly. "Spoken like a Senshi. I guess I won't chew you up for impersonating us after all."

"Does that mean you'll help me deal with Mercury?" Calypso asked, her eyes gleaming hopefully behind her visor.

"Nope." The Nereid's shoulders slumped at the smiling response. "Are you sure you can carry our friend here?"

"Nanako," Calypso said absently.

"Eh?"

"It's her name. Kanegawa Nanako." The silver mask turned slightly blue as Calypso added, "I... heard it when Saturn turned her back. It... seemed important."

"It is," V said, putting a hand on the Nereid's shoulder. "Thank you for telling me. But," she added sternly, "I'm still not helping you get out of a scolding." Calypso sighed as V raised her communicator and switched it on. "Mercury, this is V. We've got your sister, and her little playmate too. Everything's cool."

"I'm glad to hear it," Mercury said, in a tone which made Calypso wince.

"Don't be too hard on her," Pluto's voice put in. "She saved both of us by going off like that."

"We'll have a nice long talk about it later," Mercury said. "Won't we, Calypso?"

"Yes, sister," the Nereid replied meekly.

"Good. Saturn, can you open a Dimension Door between your location and ours? We need to confer, and I don't think Pluto can afford to spend any more of her energy in a teleport."

"Not a problem." Saturn raised the Silence Glaive to slice open space-time. When the Dimension Door swirled open, V saw that Saturn had put it flush against the side of whatever passage Mercury and Pluto were in, so that she, Calypso, and the Nereid's unconscious passenger came out of the wall. Saturn followed a moment later, the Door snicking shut on her heels.

"Mars and Jupiter?" Mercury asked.

"Handling a friend of our friend here," V replied, lightly touching Nanako's head, which was pillowed against Calypso's shoulder.

"Okay." Knowing that the others would call if they felt they needed help, Mercury focused on the matter at hand. "Saturn, can you clear out the biomatter on this floor? From people as well as the building itself?"

"Easily. I used the same technique on her"—she nodded towards the ex-unit— "that I used to clear out all those buildings back in February. I just scaled it down. But that raises a question," Saturn added, looking at Calypso. "What will happen to *you* if I fill this floor with my energy?"

Calypso cringed. "Nothing pleasant."

"Which is why you're going back to the elevator with Mercury," Pluto said. "As long as Saturn keeps her powers confined to this floor, you can hover in the upper end of the shaft until it's safe to descend. I'll follow you once everything is clear. After all, we'll need to be properly 'rescued' when this is over, won't we?"

When Mercury nodded, Calypso silently assented to her sister's will and carefully handed Nanako over to V before moving over to stand in front of Mercury, her arms held behind her back and her head bowed. The Nereid's posture radiated humility and shame, and V suspected that she might even have been throwing out waves of mental apology. Whichever was the case, it worked; the hard look that Mercury started off with melted, and she put her arms around her sister.

"That's the second time, Caly," Mercury said in a thick voice.

"I know," Calypso answered, bowing her masked face against her sister's shoulder. "I'm sorry. But you needed my help."

"You aren't going to get off that easily," Mercury warned, pulling back to look Calypso in the eye. "You really scared me this time, and I have a lot of things to say about it. You're going to listen to them all, agreed?"

"Okay. Later," Calypso added.

"Later," Mercury agreed, taking her sister's hand before looking at the others. "After you're done, get yourselves out of here."

"Right after we find a doctor or something," V said with a look at Nanako. Mercury nodded.

"And the soldiers?" Saturn asked.

"I've got their radio frequency," Mercury replied. "This isn't the time or place for Twenty Questions, but when we're ready, I'll be able to find them. In the meantime, don't do anything to antagonize them. Despite appearances, they may be on our side."

"They have a funny way of showing it," V said, adjusting her hold on the sleeping woman as the two sisters disappeared in a flash of blue light.

"Here we go, then," Saturn said, raising the Silence Glaive.

"Before you do that," Pluto interrupted, "let me switch off the stasis fields I left laying around. It'll only take a moment, and it will make your job a bit easier—although you'll have to be quick. Not everything I paralyzed has a layer of Mercury's ice to keep it contained once the Stasis Bolts are removed."

"That's okay," Saturn said.

"Yeah," V agreed. "She's good at 'quick.' Instant cures, instant *walls*..." She glanced at Saturn, who blushed and smiled at the same time.

"I said I was sorry," Saturn mumbled, ignoring V's doubting expression. "Let's do this, Pluto."

"Of course." The two Senshi raised their weapons, closed their eyes, and took preparatory breaths.

"MO-" Pluto broke off after the first syllable as their communicators beeped collectively. The flicker from the Garnet Orb, as its power was first gathered and then abruptly halted on the verge of release, conveyed a sense of surprise.

"Could one of you get that?" V asked, shifting Nanako. "My hands are occupied."

Saturn sighed, lowered the Glaive, and switched on her communicator with her free hand.

"...is under control," Mercury was saying. "What about you two? Any problems?"

"No," Jupiter said in reply. "Actually, Mars managed to turn this one back."

"She did?" Saturn and Mercury said, both at the same time and in the same surprised voice.

"Yes, she did," Jupiter continued without missing a beat. "Gave me a bit of a scare right at first, though. I'll explain later. Do you need us to come up?"

"Oh, no," Saturn said. "I've just got a little clean-up to do. Can you and Mars meet me and V out back in around two minutes?"

"Got it." Jupiter's signal blipped out.

"Sorry about the delay, Mercury," Saturn apologized.

"No harm done." Mercury switched off her communicator as well, and Saturn looked up at Pluto.

"Let's try this again," the youngest Senshi said. The eldest nodded, and they resumed their ready stances.

This time, Pluto had barely opened her mouth when the interruption came, in the form of five large men in feature-concealing headgear and body armor. The Garnet Orb pulsed anew, it a manner that could only be described as annoyed, and it was echoed by a huff from Saturn as she turned and brought down the head of the Glaive, slamming a Silent Wall into existence right in front of the inconsiderate intruders.

Getting the message, Pluto did not wait for anything *else* to come along, and raised her staff. "MOBIUS SPIN!"

As the Garnet Orb sent ten thousand hair-thin lines of deep red energy out in all directions, Sailor V was heard to ask, "What, no poem?"

Not for the first time today, swearing became audible over Security's com channels to the squads on the third floor, as his people were suddenly struck or narrowly missed by a webwork of blood-red energy that radiated throughout the level. The brief bout of cursing quickly gave way to confusion, as nothing bad seemed to result from either a hit or a miss.

"Sir?" one of the squad leaders radioed in.

"Wait for it," the Director replied, unconsciously raising one hand. Sure enough, there came a burst of red as pulses shot along each of the innumerable laser-thin lines, passing harmlessly through everything in their path until they struck the shimmering energy fields that the Senshi had created about the level. The barriers, whatever they were, flickered and then flew to pieces, their essence scattering along the network of light and racing back towards its unseen point of origin, pulling the lines along with them.

The afterimage of the strange crimson grid was still hanging in the air when a wave of deep violet light swept across the monitors, blotting out everything in the field of view of the headsets. The eerie glow lasted only a moment before the screens were flooded with hissing static, as the feed from the cameras was cut off at the source. At the same time, the readings coming back from the sensors built into each Security trooper's body armor flatlined.

Not for the first time today, the syllables of a heartfelt curse echoed off the walls of the Director's office.

When Saturn lowered the Silence Glaive again, there was not a trace of biomatter anywhere in sight. V had been momentarily concerned when Pluto withdrew her paralyzing power and several nearby clusters of the stuff began to twitch and lash out, but the rotating beams Saturn had generated from between the blades of her Talisman dealt with that problem. The Salvation didn't repair the holes the biomatter had put into the walls during its explosive expansion, but V supposed you couldn't have everything.

Case in point: the normal walls had been left standing, but the Silent Wall that Saturn had placed to hold back the goon squad with the rudely-timed arrival had been stripped away by the Salvation. This left five armed men within easy shooting distance of the three Senshi. And Saturn's back was turned.

*CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK*

*CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK*

*CLICK* *CLICK*

*CLICK*

V could see the sweatdrops rolling off of those black headsets as the weapons refused to fire. One of the figures had raised a hand to the general location of his left ear instead of going for a weapon, probably to contact the rest of the mystery men for backup, but judging from the quick tap-tap-tapping of his finger, he wasn't having any better luck with his communications gear than his cohorts were with their guns.

The chorus of ineffectual trigger-pulling had drawn Saturn's attention as well, and she turned to confront the owners of the weapons. She didn't use any of her powers; she just put one hand on her hip, thumped the butt of the Silence Glaive on the floor, and looked at them, the exasperation plain on her face.

V had to give the boys credit. They didn't visibly flinch.

"Saturn," she said. "If one of them makes a funny move, send him to Mongolia."

"Understood."

"You, on the left," V said, glancing at the one who'd tried to radio for assistance. "Come here." When the man did not move, V drew herself up and barked, "NOW, soldier!"

He not only moved, he practically snapped to attention in the process. The other four also straightened noticeably, and from the subsequent shift in their postures, V guessed that they hadn't intended to do that.

*A good soldier will obey almost any command, provided it's delivered in a loud voice. I'm sure I heard that somewhere.* She stepped forward and, in the firmest and most no-nonsense voice she could muster, said, "This woman's been through a severe physical and emotional ordeal. She'll probably need professional care when she wakes up, and you're going to make sure she gets it. Agreed?" No response. "I asked you a question, mister!" V snapped.

"Yes, ma'am!" the figure replied, once again standing at attention, and then managing to look thoroughly annoyed with himself for having done it. V could hear the thought going through his head: You don't take orders from the enemy, stupid!

"We're not the bad guys here, Lieutenant," V said, picking the first military rank that popped into her head. "We would have turned the lot of you to dust if we were. Now hold out your arms—and mind where you put your hands." The man's arms came up slowly, and V passed the woman over as carefully as she could. The soldier grunted and shifted as her weight settled on him alone, and the silver visor turned slightly towards V, as if in surprise. She grinned slightly. "You realize of course, that if anything happens to her, I'll find you." There was a cautious nod. "Good. I'm glad we see eye-to-eye on this."

She backed away and indicated for Lieutenant Black to do the same. "And in the future, gentlemen," V said, placing a hand on Saturn's shoulder, "we prefer a verbal 'hello' as opposed to the projectile kind. Saturn, Pluto, let's go."

Dark red, darker violet, and bright orange light flooded the hall as the three Senshi disappeared.

Proteus was tired. Crushing the 'other' within its mind was perhaps the most strenuous task the entity had yet performed, and it had not come without a price. There was now a hole in its mind, a great void which began with the scan of Subject #117 at 11:46 am and ended at 12:03 pm.

The command protocols had been buried so deeply inside of Proteus that it hadn't been aware of them, but *something* had triggered them. It had something to do with the detailed bio-readings from the elevator, something to do with the other person who had been in there with Mizuno Ami. Proteus had tried to hold on to the data, tried to recall at least the face that had gone with those readings, but even thinking this far along the trail of events had stirred up the control program again. After suppressing it five times, Proteus had been left with no choice but to excise virtually all of the data associated with the damnable thing's period of activation. Aside from the fact that the program existed and had been triggered by a detailed bioscan of some unknown human—a not-so-subtle hint to avoid using such sensors in the future if at all possible—Proteus recalled nothing of the incident. It knew only of the cause, and the costs.

The self-inflicted lobotomy had been an extreme measure, but it was the only real guarantee the renegade unit had of holding on to its continued independent existence—and *that* had already been severely jeopardized by this morning's fiasco. Worse yet, Proteus's pool of potential test subjects had been reduced to seven. All the implanted humans on the surface at the time of the control program's activation had been deemed unnecessary impediments to the main operation, and cut from its control. The sub-units in the hospital had been destroyed, and both hybrids were gone as well. By far the most concerning development was that Nanako, Samoru, Mariko, and the others had retained their full memories, everything from the moment Proteus had taken them right up to the moment when its hold over them was terminated. Assuming the shock of the severance hadn't damaged them, they could very well know as much about Proteus as it knew about them. Which was to say, everything.

With a sound that approached a tired sigh, Proteus shifted its insectoid body and began to move out. The location of its one refuge had been compromised; a new one would have to be established.

The elevator had been dragged to a halt somewhat above the normal stopping point of the third floor, so Ami and Setsuna could have gotten themselves out of the car without too much trouble. Instead, they sat there for around a quarter of an hour, waiting for help to arrive from the outside. Ami put the time to good use, giving Calypso the first part of that promised scolding.

Setsuna was sitting close enough to catch the edges of the mostly one-sided telepathic discussion, and she spent a good part of the sixteen minute, thirty four second wait considering what it meant that Ami was this telepathically gifted in her civilian form, and how it related to those three curiously unconscious people back in the hallway. She used most of the rest of her time trying to guess, without benefit of the Garnet Orb or her prescient gift, who would open the door for them: hospital employees; search and rescue workers; or urban commandos. The voices that occasionally called in to them did not offer conclusive evidence for any one of the three.

Doctor Yotogi never even entered her mind until the doors rumbled open and revealed his face on the other side. "Hello, ladies. Fancy meeting you here."

"Hello, Yotogi-san," Setsuna replied. "Do you usually go around rescuing people trapped in elevators?"

"No," he replied, grunting as he pushed the door open wider, "this is definitely a first for me. I did rescue a cat from a tree once."

"Very decent of you," Ami said, moving towards the door and ducking to clear the frame, which had been shortened by about half a meter by the irregular stoppage of the car.

"Are you a cat person, Mizuno-san?" Lucas asked, taking her hands and helping her down.

"I don't have a cat of my own, if that's what you mean," Ami said, hopping down to the floor, "but I'm fond of them." She released Lucas's hands, dusted herself off, and turned to step away from the elevator so that Setsuna could get out. And she stopped, having come face-to-face with her mother. Rikou's facial expression was tightly controlled, but Ami—herself an adept at that particular skill—knew exactly how to read that look. There was more open concern in her mother's eyes than Ami had seen since New Year's Eve, worry that quickly gave way to relief as Rikou looked her daughter over and found everything to be in place.

"You're okay?" she asked, her voice even.

Ami nodded. "I'm fine, Mother. As well as I can be, considering." She glanced back at the elevator and the holes in the nearby walls, and Rikou nodded slowly. "And you?"

"I didn't even know there was something going on until we saw... well, soldiers... running through the halls downstairs. After that..." Something like a shiver went through the doctor, and Ami quite suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a crushing hug. Even as her arms moved to return the embrace, Ami was blinking in surprise.

"Mother?"

"I'm just glad that you're okay, Ami," Rikou said, the barely-repressed trembling in her body belying her calm, quiet tone of voice. She held Ami out at arm's length and looked her over a second time, brushing a strand of hair back from her face. "That's the second close call you've had with these... these *things*... and..." The doctor sighed and hugged her daughter again. "I'm just glad that you're okay."

"I'm glad, too," Ami said softly, once again matching the gesture.

*Now where have we seen this before?* Calypso asked dryly.

*Hush, Caly.*

"Ahem." Mother and daughter looked up at Setsuna, who was standing hunched-over in the shrunken elevator door. She smiled apologetically at them. "I'm terribly sorry to interrupt, but... may I come down, now?"

"Oh." Two cases of the famous Mizuno Blush broke out as Ami and Rikou stammered apologies and moved out of the way. In spite of all the visible damage to this part of the building, everyone nearby suddenly appeared to be smiling, or hiding smiles. Setsuna didn't bother to conceal hers.

Maybe that was why she slipped. She'd taken the precaution of removing her high-heeled shoes before jumping down from the elevator, but the combination of her stockinged feet and the smooth floor tiles was a bad one as far as friction or balance were concerned. With a startled yelp, the mighty Senshi of Time pitched forward—right into a pair of arms belonging to an equally-surprised young doctor.

To hear the girls go on about it, this was one of the classic techniques to meet guys, and under slightly different circumstances, Setsuna might have taken a moment to enjoy the feeling of someone else's arms supporting her, and being close to a warm body. Even the sense of humiliation wasn't entirely unbearable; it was the first time since her injury that Setsuna had felt such a degree of embarrassment, and that was another important memory to be treasured. However, the moment had come too soon after the encounter with the hybrid. Those painfully incomplete romantic daydreams were fresh in Setsuna's mind, and being this close to Lucas reminded her too strongly of what she did not have, what she had so completely lost and then been half-shown by the trickery of an uncaring enemy.

Almost unthinkingly, Setsuna lashed out, shoving Lucas back with a harsh, "NO!"

Fortunately, Setsuna was not in a clear enough mental state to strike with the full extent of her strength and training. Otherwise, the secret of her Senshi identity might have been put in jeopardy, not to mention what damage Lucas would have been in danger of sustaining. As it was, she managed to knock him off balance and send him staggering across the hall; the only thing that stopped him from hitting the floor was a fast grab at the reception desk.

In the moments immediately following Setsuna's outburst, the silence was so complete that the proverbial pin might have been too ashamed to break it. Ami got a clear sense that even Calypso was too startled for words. Then Setsuna folded her arms and briefly hid her reddened face behind her empty hand.

Looking up, she politely asked, "Are you okay, Yotogi-san?"

"I think I should be asking you that," Lucas replied, looking at her with wide but concerned eyes.

"I... I'm fine. I was just... startled." Setsuna sighed and then bowed to him. "I'm sorry that I struck you, Yotogi-san. I know you were only trying to help me."

"Setsuna, it's all right. I'm not hurt, and I'm not angry. A little surprised, yes, but not angry." Glancing at the battered elevator car, with holes in its walls where the biomatter had punched through, Lucas added, "I think I can see why you would have felt... threatened... like that."

Setsuna flinched. *Threatened. Good word.* "Even so, that doesn't excuse my behavior. Again, I apologize." She turned towards the stairs, then stopped and looked at Rikou. "Are Usagi and the others still upstairs, Mizuno-san?"

"Yes," Doctor Mizuno replied. "I spoke with... Ikuko..." Her voice trailed off as Setsuna walked away. Rikou blinked and then looked quickly at Ami, who nodded and hurried after her friend, understanding that her mother would want to talk to her about this afterwards.

Once she was on the landing and away from the door to the third floor's main ward, Setsuna sighed wearily and leaned heavily on the railing. To Ami, she said, "I suppose Yotogi-san and your mother think I'm suffering some sort of post-traumatic stress after running into more 'green monsters.'"

"I would expect so," Ami replied, giving Setsuna the physical space she seemed to need right now. "Would they be right?"

"Maybe a little. This *is* the fourth time these things have managed to find me, and I can't say I'm enjoying the attention." Setsuna looked up. "Ami, when this one... when it gassed us... you saw yourself with Ryo before you passed out, didn't you?"

"Yes," Ami replied, blushing faintly. "I take it that means that you saw... something similar?"

"Yes and no. I started to see places, and a person... but the images weren't real. They were jumbled scenes, like what I'd expect to see, and *he* wasn't even a real person. No face, no body. Just a feeling. But I *know* that I had someone once, and to have that... that *thing* playing with what memories I have, forcing me to think about one *more* memory that I've lost..."

Ami noticed how Setsuna's hand tightened around the railing as she spoke. "And when Lucas caught you..."

"He made himself a convenient target. Something else that reminded me—but something that I could hit." Setsuna sighed again, released the banister, and buried her face in her hands. "I feel like such an idiot."

"Displacing your anger is a perfectly normal human response to a difficult situation," Ami said, trying to sound supportive. Something occurred to her, and she hid a smile as she added, "Okay, so you made yourself look slightly crazed in front of an attractive man who seems to have a genuine interest in you, but that's no great difficulty. Minako and Usagi do it all the time."

"Ami," Setsuna said, groaning and weakly chuckling at the same time, "you're not helping."

"Sorry," Ami apologized, shrugging. She did not look or sound very sorry, though. "Now, put your shoes on and let's go find Usagi-chan. It's lunchtime, and after being poked, prodded, scanned, and then forced to sit around for twenty minutes, she's probably gotten hungry enough to start attacking the vending machines."

There was going to be a Senshi meeting tonight, of course. Too much had happened today for there *not* to be one. But with Usagi, ChibiUsa, Setsuna, Luna, and Ami and Calypso at the hospital, Haruka and Michiru back at the house, and Artemis off who-knows-where doing who-knows-what, the four Senshi who returned to Hikawa agreed to take a break.

Rei stayed at home to make a new attempt at deciphering the Book with Rooky's assistance, and Minako headed off to a track practice. By request, Hotaru dropped Makoto at her apartment, and then stayed for lunch. It was a toss-up as to what was the more intimidating part of that meal; watching Makoto eat like Usagi, or sitting there in the shadow of that bizarre young tree, which Hotaru would have sworn she could *hear* growing.

"Something wrong with the ramen, Hotaru?" Makoto asked between bites of her second serving.

"No, it's wonderful."

"Nicesh try," Makoto said, devouring another mouthful of the noodles. "It's instant ramen, Hotaru. Instant food can be many things, but even I can't make it *wonderful.*" She cleaned out her bowl and then set it down. "So what's bugging you?"

Wordlessly, Hotaru pointed over her shoulder at the sapling and the lesser plants that had intertwined with it. "The last time I was around a plant growing anywhere near this fast, there was a daimon involved. Not that I think there's anything like that going on here," she added, seeing the hurt look on Makoto's face. "It's just... have you given any thought to where you're going to plant it? Let alone how you're going to get it out of your apartment at its current size?"

"Have you been talking to Ami?" Makoto asked sourly.

"No, but I sort of figured she would have asked you about this by now." Hotaru turned her head to regard the tree, letting her eyes see its brilliant green and gold energy. "It's going to get a lot bigger, Makoto. Believe me; I can tell."

"I know," Makoto sighed. "And I believe you. I can feel it, too. I know that Ami's right, that I can't keep them here forever, but what am I supposed to do? I can't just go out and plant a tree in the middle of the city. Even in the park, I'd need to get a permit or something, and there'd be all kinds of questions..."

"Maybe not," Hotaru said. "If you found a place you liked, I could always set up a Silent Shield to hide it, like I do when we're training. Nobody would ever know the tree was there except for us. At least"—she looked up at the tree again—"not until it got a lot bigger. I could only make a Shield so big without moving out into the park myself. Still, it would give us some time."

"I... never thought of that." Makoto looked at the tree in silence for a few moments, then turned to Hotaru. "Hotaru... it's not just that I'm worried about someone asking questions. We both know that this isn't an ordinary tree. If it turns out that there really is a dryad in there somewhere, and she wakes up in the middle of the park, how would I know? How could I get to her before someone or something else did?"

"That part, I'm not so sure about," Hotaru admitted, scratching her head. "Offhand, I can think of about ten different things that could go wrong if I tried to leave a Dimension Door open between here and the park for you."

"I could probably add a few to that list," Makoto agreed. "Even so... I appreciate your offering to help, Hotaru. And I'll think about it." She looked at the tree again and quietly said, "I can't keep putting things off like this."

Hotaru suspected that Makoto was referring to the mental scan Luna would attempt tonight, as well as the tree, but she said nothing on either subject and went back to eating her ramen, being careful not to slurp.

Behind her, the tree continued to grow.

The Directors met briefly in the wake of the most recent incident, the perpetual gloom of their gathering place tinged with a sense of uncertainty.

Security began with a precise report on the actions of his forces, and a summary of everything that the men had witnessed during the brief foray. He made special emphasis of the fact that two of the Senshi had been spotted striking down unarmed civilians, and that they had left others trapped within paralyzing webs of energy, where they could have been attacked by anything that happened by. His monologue touched on the curious new Senshi that had been spotted flying around and generally trashing everything that got in her way while battling what was later confirmed to be a woman. The Director also described how that woman had been 'rescued' from the Senshi, and he did not omit the fact that the lieutenant in question had submitted himself for disciplinary action.

"You don't actually intend to follow through with that," Information said.

"Of course not. Lieutenant Tanaka's decision preserved the lives of his men and a civilian. Barring recommendations to the contrary from Sciences or Personnel, I'll give him a reprimand and a few days of restricted leave until he realizes on his own that he made the correct decision, then restore him to active duty."

"No objection here," Sciences replied calmly. "The lieutenant's medical examination turned up no trace of any potentially coercive or hallucinogenic compounds, and his brainwave patterns check out as normal."

"The psychological evaluation didn't reveal any problems either," Personnel added. "So far as I can tell, the lieutenant is an intelligent man in full command of his faculties, although he still can't explain how 'Sailor V' knew his rank, or how she was able to talk him and his men down so quickly and thoroughly."

"The presence of Saturn and Pluto *might* have had an impact on their judgment," Media said lightly. "Particularly since the majority of their equipment had just been destroyed."

"Disabled," Sciences interrupted coolly. "Not destroyed. The analyses are still proceeding, but so far as my people have been able to determine, none of the deactivated systems have suffered damage. They were merely drained of power—totally."

"What about the weapons?" Security asked. "Even the conventional gear seized up in the wake of that energy wave."

"Whatever the Senshi did to neutralize the electrical systems and high-energy weapons rendered the reactive materials in the other weapons chemically inactive. The substances involved seem to have been broken down at the molecular or even atomic level, and then re-bonded into inert compounds. What was gunpowder this morning is now just so much spent carbon, with no residual energy traces to suggest how the change was accomplished."

"As if it was done by magic," Media said.

"Quite."

"What about the young woman that was handed over to Lieutenant Tanaka?" Political asked. "Or the man the Senshi left with the paramedics? What's their condition?"

"Physically," Sciences reported, "they're as healthy as any of us. There were no traces of the contaminant in either of their systems, and the methods used to remove it have left no obvious damage, although the man was somewhat dehydrated initially. The state of their mental health is not quite so reassuring."

"I was under the impression that they'd retained their memories."

"They did," Personnel said, "but that's not an unmixed blessing. Sailor V wasn't kidding when she said the woman had suffered a severe emotional trauma; I would guess she has a complete recollection of everything that was done to her. The man as well. And before you say anything," she added, turning to the Information Director, "let me make it clear that neither of them is in any condition to answer questions just now. I will let you know when they are, and not a moment before."

Information held up his hands in a placating gesture. "Data-wise, there's not much more on these two than there was on the first three. The woman, Kanegawa Nanako, was admitted to the hospital near the end of February as a Jane Doe, after a pair of city maintenance workers found her in the tunnels. She'd been comatose in her room—on the third floor, of course—until today, and all attempts to uncover her records have turned up nothing. The same goes for the man—Fushi Samoru."

"In the final analysis," Security rumbled, "this morning's incident is looking less and less like it was directed at us. True, there's good a chance that whomever's responsible for this green contaminant has been aware of our existence ever since my teams destroyed that insectoid creature in the tunnels, but if they'd known the location of this base, I have to believe that they would have sent a considerably larger force to attack it."

"An infiltration, then?" Resources suggested.

"Unlikely, given the length of time for which Kanegawa was present in the hospital," Sciences answered. "Her room is at the center of the contaminated area, and preliminary damage assessments show heavy damage in the ventilation shafts adjoining that section of the hospital. Those vents lead straight down to our facility, and could have been used to access this base weeks ago without our realizing it. I have to conclude that she was sent to the hospital for another reason."

"I'm inclined to agree," Security said. He sounded a little disgruntled; understandable, since he and Sciences tended to be on opposite sides of the fence at most meetings. "The monitor station reported an energy surge just as the disturbance began, and analysis of that energy has matched it to the Senshi. The timing suggests that the Senshi arrived, were detected by the contaminant, and triggered a defensive action."

"Any theories as to what the original purpose of infesting the hospital with this substance might have been?" Political asked.

"Based on what we know about it and how it has been used in the past," Sciences said, "there is a possibility that Kanegawa was sent to spread the contaminant and infect others, but whatever the Senshi did to eradicate the substance has left no traces of it behind, either in the building or in those who were in the affected area."

"So we have no proof."

"At this time, no."

"Unless you count the Senshi's actions towards the patients," Information added. "It wouldn't be the first time they've taken steps to disable people who have been brought under the influence of a hostile force—Hinamatsuri being a recent example for which we have visual evidence." He seemed to add that as a reminder to Security, who shifted slightly in his chair, but said nothing.

"I'll bear that in mind when I meet with our supporters," Political said. "Are there any other details I should be aware of?"

"There is one thing," Information said. "Today's events have given us video evidence that Sailor V is alive and well, and working with the Senshi. We ought to make use of it."

"Making movies would seem to be *my* department," Media noted.

"That wasn't what I had in mind."

The use of magic, like most other things in life, requires regular practice if one expects to get any good at it. It is one of those arts in which, once the basics have been mastered, an adept can continue to advance at their own pace, without constant supervision and guidance from their master. This said, the knowledge of a more experienced wizard often comes in handy.

Archon's apprentice was currently faced with such a situation. For the last day or so, she had been dogged by the most persistent and peculiar sensation. It was not so much like she was being watched, but rather, as if she was being followed by a faint sound that was at the uppermost extremes of human hearing. Almost too high to notice, quite impossible to decipher, and extremely annoying. She'd made several attempts to banish the sound, but it always returned eventually, as insistent as ever.

Consulting with her books and the memory crystal had already told the young sorceress that the 'sound' was the result of a spell that, for all intents and purposes, was the magical, interdimensional equivalent of a beeper. She was, essentially, being paged from another universe.

This was not unheard of, or so the books claimed. A side-effect of working with summoning magic was that as a wizard called upon the creatures of one world, he or she tended to draw attention on that world. The end results of such attention could be good, as more intelligent and powerful beings sought out the wizard to offer their services, in exchange for an opportunity to venture into this world. On the other hand, this sort of thing could be very, very bad. There were a few extreme cases in which careless or overconfident would-be summoners struck a deal with the wrong sort of creature and found themselves summoned away instead, to disappear forever into the trackless infinity between realities.

The apprentice had only been in contact with one other world, and its denizens were surely "the wrong sort." Complicating matters was the fact that a normal daimon could not have mustered the energy to even attempt a spell like this. Whatever was trying to get her attention was a cut or three above the typical snarling beast of daimonic existence, which only made it that much more of a potential problem.

The girl would have liked to get in touch with Archon and hear his advice, but that was not possible. Although it had ended on a bad note, last night's energy-gathering mission had otherwise gone exceptionally well, and that meant that Archon's other duties would once again require his full attention. That was a disappointment—and more so, in light of today's development—but the girl had understood from the beginning that Archon had taken on the task of instructing her as something of a hobby. This 'Rise' that he periodically spoke of clearly took precedence.

Since her teacher was unavailable, and her own magic not yet sufficient to block out the noise, there was nothing left but to answer the call and see who wanted what with her. She'd never get to sleep otherwise.

There was no way she was going to use her own apartment for this one. Summoning a minor daimon was one thing, but this entity had already proven itself capable of penetrating the dimensional barriers, even if in just this minor way. If the girl was leery about letting an assassin like Cestus know where she lived, she wasn't about to allow a daimon that knowledge. Fortunately, she knew of a place that would be eminently suited to her needs. She gathered the implements she would need and threw on her cloak and reflective mask, then picked up Archon's 'pager' and activated the teleportation spell within it.

She rematerialized in the middle of a large vacant lot, her back to the chain-link fence which blocked off access to the street, and her face towards the dark waters of the bay. There was a nearly full moon tonight, which made it easy to pick out the details of the debris piled across the place. There was a wide hole in the center of the lot, an inverted hemisphere gouged into the concrete by what looked to have been intense heat and crushing pressure. Most of the rubble was piled around that, and it was especially thick over the collapsed entrance of a series of formerly-subterranean passages and chambers, now shattered and flooded.

Space was at a premium in any major city, and even more so in Japan. A vacant lot would not normally stand undeveloped for long, but it had been two years and more since this devastation had occurred, and no one had even attempted to clear away the wreckage. The girl seriously doubted that anyone ever would. Some things left a mark so powerful that even those without magical training or ability would sense it, and instinctively shy away. Seldom-told stories whispered that this lot was haunted, or cursed; the sorceress didn't know about any ghosts, but the part about a curse was accurate enough.

She didn't know for certain what had happened here. She hadn't been present to witness it, and Archon had been close-mouthed about his own suspicions. What the girl did know was that the event had involved a hideous level of energy, something sufficiently powerful that the local ley lines had *bent* around it, almost as if trying to avoid the cause of the disaster. The result was a mana-dead zone, a place from which no life or magic could be drawn. Either could be taken into it, but what lay within the zone offered no energy or sustenance. Natural creatures instinctively shied away from such places, and as for the unnatural creatures...

Picking a spot at the edge of the dead zone, the apprentice used her pager to inscribe the strongest warding circle she could command into the ground. As she considered the glowing white shape, the girl smiled wryly. The 'circle' was actually two such shapes formed of many interwoven sigils and glyphs; one was placed solidly above a ley line, the other wholly within the dead zone, and both of them joined together in a figure-eight. Viewed from the side, the design suggested a mobius, the symbol of infinity.

*How very appropriate,* the apprentice thought, her smile vanishing as she took her place inside one of the circles and began the summoning. The symbols around her glowed more brightly as she called up energy from the ley line, and the radiance spread into the other half of the design, rising from the second circle as a translucent wall of light. The ground within the base of that wall turned steadily darker until it became the familiar black void, spilling its cold, evil energy into the world.

This was why she'd chosen the dead zone. The essence of the daimons and their realm tended to persist in this world for some time after the fact, and if this creature was skilled enough to reach into this world on its own, it might be able to use those lingering traces as reference points towards some future mischief. The nullity of the dead zone would prevent that; even the ley line the girl was tapping to generate her circle was too far away to be reached from the forming portal, and without immediate access to that kind of power, there would be nothing the daimon could do. Nothing beyond the minor scale of what it had already done, at any rate.

That annoying hum had not faded at the girl intoned the words of the spell. Instead, it lowered in pitch, slipping steadily into the audible range. It grew to a susurration as the passage widened, and when jets of shadow burst up from the narrow abyss, it became a murmur, punctuated by brief snatches of sharper sound. At the moment in which the portal fully opened, the noise ceased—and no daimon appeared.

*That* was unexpected. Most daimons were willing to leap headlong into this world and start taking things apart. The girl could feel this one lurking in the in-between place her spell had created, but it gave no indication of wishing to advance any farther at this time. She could have compelled it to appear, but she chose not to, instead waiting to see which of them would speak first.

-Interesting,—the daimon finally said. Its voice, like those of all the others, was an eerie mental whisper that betrayed no hint of gender.—The others did not mention that you were so patient.-

"None of your predecessors have been in any position to judge me," the girl replied.

-Perhaps. The fact that a number of them have met their end while under your control says much, however.-

"Yes, it does. Mainly, it says that I need to locate more effective warriors."

The unearthly being chuckled.—That is one possibility.-

"Can I assume that there is a reason why you have been attempting to contact me?"

-I believe we are in a position to assist one another.-

"Oh? How so?"

-You have just expressed your dissatisfaction with the quality of the daimons who have answered your summons. I can arrange for those "more effective warriors" you mentioned to be ready and waiting whenever you open a portal. I also know of a few tricks you can use to extend their usefulness, provided your magic is sufficient...-

The wizardess spoke a syllable and made a hooking gesture with her right hand, and a low hiss escaped from the pit of shadows as the wall of light twisted. "Is that 'sufficient' enough for you?" she asked calmly.

-Yesss,—the dark voice rasped.—That will do very well...—The girl nodded and relaxed her fingers, ending the little addition.

"Now tell me," she said, "what do you stand to gain by fulfilling this oh-so-generous offer? I refuse to accept that it's simply to allow yourself and a few... associates the pleasure of visiting Earth, while your rivals are shut out."

-You summoned three of us across a few of your nights ago. One was utterly slain, the other two defeated and banished. One of the survivors is an old acquaintance of mine, and while in your world, he discovered something that is... of interest to me.-

"And now you wish to come across and get it, is that it?"

-Not just yet,—the daimon replied.—There are preparations I must make first, details I must know and difficulties that need to be overcome.-

"Not the least of which is actually crossing into this world."

-Quite true. Only a human can open that door to me. Luckily, you are in the right place, with the necessary skills, while I am in a position to make myself indispensable to you.-

The apprentice quirked an eyebrow. "I'd hardly go that far."

-Oh no?—came the smug-sounding reply.—I offer you a supply of skilled, intelligent warriors ready to answer your call at a moment's notice. I can also arrange for your summons to be answered by a trickle of unknowns, possibly useful, possibly useless, and all of them already worn down by the struggle to reach you through me and those who choose to ally themselves with me.-

"Don't make threats you can't back," the girl snapped, twisting her hand in a subtly different motion from the last. The wall began to flicker. "I can leave you locked where you are, between your world and this one, unable to interfere with me in either of them."

-And what will that gain you?—the daimon returned.—I will escape a trap such as this eventually, and you do not have the power to destroy me entirely; slay me here or in your world, and my essence will escape to my own place. Even if you manage to trap me in your realm, you will be back where you started, with an uncertain and ever-dwindling pool of servants to draw from.-

After a long pause, the girl spread her fingers and uttered a soft word, causing the flashing wall to go back to its stable glow. "You're more clever than the others, at least. Very well, daimon; I'll consider your offer. But if we're going to be... associates... I'll have to call you something. Do you have a name? One that I can pronounce without cracking my jaw?"

-As a matter of fact, I do.—The voice changed during those words, losing something of its otherworldly echo and taking on almost human tones.—But it is not customary to give a name without receiving one in return.-

"You may call me Opala," the young apprentice replied, feeling a slight tingle of pleasure at using the pseudonym Archon had given her.

-A pretty name,—the daimon murmured, in what was now surely a female voice.—Even if it is not your true one.-

The shadow that had been lurking just below the level of the breach since its opening rose, already coalescing into a material form as it left its own reality behind. The shape was that of a beautiful woman in a tight-fitting black vest, miniskirt, and boots, a woman whose pale face was crowned with a fall of black hair and two delicate jewel-like horns. The black bat's wings rising from her shoulders were currently folded in and around her body to avoid contact with the glimmering wall of the summoning circle, and her eyes were a dark blue virtually indistinguishable from black.

"And I am Illecebra," the daimon said, her voice soft and sultry.

Saturn rubbed at her arm, feeling a slight chill. It was a fairly unremarkable sensation, given the design of the Senshi fuku, but she had trouble dismissing the creeping tingle as just a mundane draft.

Then again, she did have some things on her mind that might explain it. For the first time since these regular meetings of all the Senshi had begun, Uranus and Neptune were not present. Michiru had been up and around this afternoon when Hotaru returned from her lunch with Makoto, but where she was normally warm and serene, there had been a decided pensiveness about her manner. She also did not seem to have the energy she usually possessed, and had gone back to bed at about seven. After a full day of worrying, Haruka had been too tired to put up more than a few feeble arguments before acceding to Hotaru's 'suggestion' that she go get some sleep, too, and that was simply not like her.

The brief stop at Makoto's apartment hadn't improved Saturn's mood much. Despite a lingering tension between them, Ami and Calypso appeared to have had their 'talk' and settled matters, but Makoto was distracted and nervous. And upon arriving at Hikawa, yet another problem showed up, in the form of a deliberate and utterly inexplicable distance—emotional and physical—between Artemis and Minako. They sat on other ends of the room, doing their best not to speak to or look at one another, and constantly looked hastily away whenever they made eye contact—which was about every ten seconds. By the time the discussion of the day's events had ended, Artemis and Minako had turned so many times that Saturn was privately amazed that their heads hadn't come unscrewed.

Now she was sitting in Rei's room, the Silence Glaive resting across her lap as she watched Makoto and Luna sitting face-to-face, eyes closed and foreheads joined by a beam of soft golden light as Luna tried to search Makoto's memories for clues about the behavior of the Aegis. The operative word in that was 'tried;' Luna had made four unsuccessful attempts over the last half hour, and she did not appear to be having any better luck on her fifth go-round.

The problem, Saturn suspected, lay half with Makoto and half with the Aegis. Makoto was uncomfortable with the idea of someone poking around inside her head, and while she had consciously rationalized and accepted the need for it, her *subconscious* mind was putting up more of a fight. The Aegis were picking up on that. With her sight firmly in the life-force spectrum, Saturn could see the jagged arcs of electric energy that were dancing around Makoto's bright green aura. The energy was particularly concentrated around her head, forming a web of light which Luna seemed unable to penetrate.

Nor was Luna the only one being confounded. Mercury sat nearby, observing the procedure through her visor and the Caduceus, monitoring brainwave activity and energy levels to try and find a vulnerable pattern in the Aegis's field, or to get an early warning of a more aggressive defense by the Weapon. Saturn was secretly doing that as well, and getting nowhere. The only good thing so far was that she had not been forced to take steps to prevent the Aegis from electrocuting anyone. Yet.

At length, the mind-linking beam faded out. When Makoto opened her eyes, they were apologetic and frustrated; Luna's were just weary.

"Nothing?" Mercury asked, lowering the Caduceus.

"That, and a headache," Luna replied, pinching the bridge of her nose and growling faintly. "No, no," she added, waving off Saturn's hand. "Save your energy. It'll be better to let this run its course."

"I'm sorry," Makoto said. "I really tried that time, but..."

"If it's *this* uncomfortable for you, Mako-chan," Mercury began.

Makoto shook her head. "It's not that. I just can't clear my mind this way anymore, not since this thing in my head switched on. If I concentrate on blocking out your emotions—and those from the others, and what I feel from the trees and plants around here—it defeats the whole purpose of meditation. But if I *don't* shut you all out, my mind starts to wander anyway." She sighed. "To tell you the truth, I was never very good at this stuff to begin with. I always had better luck clearing my mind in a fight."

"Could we try something like that instead?" Saturn suggested, looking at Luna. "If Mako-chan were to spar with Artemis for a while..."

"It might do *him* some good," Luna said, alluding to her counterpart's earlier behavior, "but I couldn't get a fix on Makoto if she was moving around like that."

"Oh." Saturn pondered the problem anew. "What about Caly? Could she do it?"

"Caly could pick out the thoughts of one person in a crowd of a thousand, if she had to," Mercury said, "but she's too sensitive to the Aegis to do something like this. Besides, there are some very real differences in the way Caly thinks and what she can sense or feel, as compared to a human, and Makoto would be empathically aware of most of them. That could be very uncomfortable for her, which would make the Aegis try harder to defend her."

Saturn frowned. "Well, if not Calypso, then what about *you,* Mercury? Could you do this?"

"I... *should* be able to," Mercury admitted. "Eventually. But my mental abilities are still too rusty to attempt something like this just now." Something in her reply made Saturn doubtful.

"There's no need to push so much, Saturn," Luna said. "I honestly didn't expect it to go any faster than this."

"Sorry," Saturn apologized. "It's just that we have all these problems, and I'm too impatient to wait around for them to be fixed. I want to wave my hand and have it all done." She waved one hand and then shrugged. "I guess being Saturn has spoiled me a bit in that sense."

"I wouldn't worry about that very much," Makoto said grimly. "You're not the *only* one who wants this over with."

"On that note," Luna said, sitting up, "let's try again, shall we?"

The vacant, debris-choked lot was devoid of life once more, and the bare stones betrayed no hint of the meeting that had occurred there just a short time ago. It had not gone unnoticed, however, and now the two witnesses were discussing what they had seen.

"Well?" the first woman grated, sitting back in her chair. She was surrounded by a horde of battered electronics, most of which appeared to have been assembled by hand or seriously modified after purchase. Aside from some scattered lights on the equipment and the glow of a few monitors, the room was dark.

"There... there were no indications of any mechanical support," came the second woman's reply. Her timid voice was tinny with static. "She must have been using magic."

"Oh really?" was the sarcastic response. "And what was it that tipped you off? The fact that it takes a warehouse's worth of specialized technology to open a portal? Or the way she dematerialized afterwards?" The woman in the chair shook her head, muttering, "Idiot. What else?"

"The daimon itself gave off readings consistent with a Class Four, possibly a Class Five. That could have been due to interference from the portal's radiation..."

"I doubt it. What about the girl?"

"The sensors couldn't get a lock on her." The answering silence was deadly, and she hastened to explain. "I accounted for the portal and the natural deadening effect of the area, but there were at least six kinds of energy that don't correspond to anything in our files blocking the scans. They completely obscured her life-signs, and between them and her clothing, her physical profile was impossible to..."

"Quit babbling!" The nervous woman shut up immediately. "Better. Now, I want you to write up a program for the sensors. Something that can compensate for whatever blocked them this time and find out who our little mystery woman is, if she ever comes back. Can you do that much?"

"I... yes, if I narrow the scanning area and increase the frequency of..."

"I didn't ask for a dissertation!" the first woman snapped. "God, why can't you ever just be quiet and do as you're told?"

"I'm sorry," the other woman whispered miserably.

"SHUT UP, MIMETE!"

_…_…_

SAILOR SAYS:

(Zoom in on Hikawa. Rei is sitting in the fire room, meditating; Yuuichirou is carrying out heavy manual labor off to one side; and Grandpa is nowhere to be seen. Camera zooms in on a tree where the four crows are perched, on different branches. Rooky looks up.)

Rooky (deep, serious voice): Today's episode revolves around a series of coincidental encounters which have potentially far-ranging impact. Setsuna, Ami, and Calypso ran into Proteus's sensor and set off a chain reaction that ended up with the mutant unit's existence and identity finally slipping out. The finally-named apprentice met up with a nasty little daimon from five thousand years ago, at a spot which has a history of daimonic activity, and managed to get herself spied upon in the process. Artemis and Minako are having trouble with being a little too close, and Setsuna experienced something similar with Lucas.

Rooky: These events are examples of how even small, seemingly unimportant things can turn out to have a much larger effect on our lives. (pauses) Actually, none of them are really that small to begin with, but the point is, it's not wise to dismiss things out of hand. What may seem at the time to be trivial, coincidental, or—to use the vernacular—to be a done deal may in fact be something entirely different and of far greater importance in the long run. Then again, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a cigar...

(Thrax leans over and bops Rooky on the head with his beak.)

Rooky: Awp! (rubs his head with one wing, glancing at the larger bird) Okay, okay, I'll stop now... all you had to do was ask...

(Fade to black)

22/09/02

Okay, the real moral of this episode is that the writer needs to read a LOT less online fanfiction during his normally-scheduled writing hours! BIG apologies go out to the entire fan community for the delay. ^^;

Yes, a new attack for Saturn. I know she's got a healing "attack" or two in the manga, but I have no clue what they look like, and I simply cannot make sense of the names, so...

Two notes on words that I can think of that might have confused or annoyed people:

Viricide: This little exercise in hyperbole is a totally made-up word (so far as I know) intended to mean "the murder of a power." I didn't want to use "deicide" (killing of a god) because Balance isn't a god.

Opala: An altered form of opal. Since it's Sailor Moon tradition for the bad guys to have the names of minerals or gemstones, I figured what the heck. It's also an appropriate name for this girl for a few other reasons, but I'll let you guys puzzle them out for yourselves. ^_^

Upcoming:
- Senshi spring break beach trip.

And done