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.

33. Chapter 33

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 33

You Try to Take a Day Off, and Just Look At What Happens

Even setting aside its tremendous age and the fact that it had been built with equal measures of science and sorcery, there was no existing feat of architectural engineering anywhere on the planet that was quite like the Imperial City of Atlantis.

Essentially shaped like a gigantic disk, its outer edge rose higher off the ground than a hundred-story skyscraper, while the face was literally kilometers across. Most of the external surface was smooth and level, but the top of the city-structure was a series of circular elevations and depressions, arranged one within the next. These three thick rings were unbroken except at their north ends, where a relatively narrow 'valley' cut through them on its way to the circular mesa that formed the hub, and on their south sides, where the reverse was true and a wedge-shaped platform joined all the rings to the center.

Oceanic debris had covered the entire surface, but it was possible to see that the outermost and innermost edges of each of the three broad circles were covered by hundreds of once-beautiful mansions. The space in between these sub-structures formed another series of three rings, joined below and broken above, but whatever had been in that zone was long since gone, leaving only a flat surface buried in sand and the occasional deep-sea life-form.

Though it was trapped in darkness and half-covered by the liquid-pulverized dust of ages, the top level's likeness to the Imperial symbol would still have been immediately evident to any observer.

Before the Fall, this uppermost sector had been the home of the Great Houses. The center was the site of the palace and the mansions of the seven great families—Aquila, Draco, Imperator, Istar, Nyx, Stone, Triton—while each of the lesser Houses had its residence on the appropriate outer ring. The manors had the same kind of elegant sprawl that could be found in the private retreats of nobles from later empires, only with a far more vertical design; each house rose two or three floors from the surface of its respective ring, not counting towers, and then had five or more 'underground' levels. The empty space in the midst of the many homes had once been an enormous park-like landscape, and the deep channels between the larger segments had held a lake, which poured over the north side in a roaring waterfall. The entire sector had been shielded by a dome of energy, which could block out everything from sunlight and cold weather to a falling meteor or a determined assault by a fair-sized fleet. Like so much else in the city, that shield had been knocked out in the chaos of the Fall, and when Atlantis sank, the homes of the Lords were pulverized.

In hindsight, the shield's failure was for the best. The age-old city's architects had anticipated the need to physically seal off different sections of the arcology, and the moment the barrier fell, immense emergency doors locked into place at all levels. While the top sector was all but destroyed, the internal compartments survived the Fall and the subsequent millennia of crushing submersion more or less intact. Had the barrier been up, it might very well have been able to withstand the tremendous pressure of the icy depths—and then when it failed because of the steadily declining power, an unthinkable quantity of water would have hit the unprotected top of the city like a meteor.

Still, as she exited her quarters and moved quietly down the hall that night, Lady Istar could not help but reflect how much easier it would have been for her to make these trips to the Hall of Stars if she did not have to creep past the rooms of a dozen of her fellows. Her body's need for sleep had finally caught up with her a few days ago, and after two nights of forced absence, she was eager to return to her private project.

However, the lady was not in such a hurry that she forgot to keep her eyes, ears, and mind open. She was well past the last of the apartments when her telepathic sense alerted her to the presence of another mind, in the arboretum that was located just up ahead. Somewhat annoyed at the delay, Laraea paused and considered her options. Go back and risk being overheard, stay put and wait...

"Hello?" a boyish voice called out. "Is someone there?"

Laraea recognized the voice, and knew immediately she wasn't going to be able to get by undetected. She shook her head briefly and then moved forward into the chamber with the speaker, a pale young man in his mid-teens who wore a jet-black mantle trimmed in royal blue.

"Oh," the young lord said, his dark eyes blinking once. "Good evening, Lar -I mean, Lady Istar." He bowed once, quick and a bit unsteady.

"Good evening, Lord Nyx," Laraea replied with a more practiced nod. "Am I disturbing you?"

"No, no," Lord Nyx answered quickly. "I was just having trouble sleeping, so I decided to take a walk." He gestured towards the flowers that filled the room. The Lords adhered to a busy schedule these days, but they had a little spare time here and there, and some had taken up gardening in a handful of the city's many arboretums to help themselves cope with the difficult circumstances they were caught in.

"Our Lord Archmage had me working nights for the last couple of weeks," the youthful nobleman added. "I guess I'm not quite back on the regular sleeping clock yet. Um... and you?"

"A slight touch of insomnia," Lady Istar replied.

"I hope it passes."

"I'm sure it will. But thank you." Laraea couldn't help a small smile, and as soon as Lord Nyx saw it, he blushed and looked away.

Not yet sixteen at the time of the Fall, Erebus Nyx was by some nine or ten years the youngest of all the five hundred individuals that had returned to the lost city. He had inherited the slender, fine-featured physique which was one of the distinguishing traits of his House, and that combined with his age also made him one of the smallest of the Atlanteans. Even most of the women were taller or stronger, which set the young lord at an understandable disadvantage in any discussion, even before his relative lack of experience with court life could come into play. Given his age, size, and shy and introspective demeanor, many of the older Lords regarded Erebus as a little brother. Most of the Ladies, however, did not.

As a rule, the descendants of House Nyx were somewhere in the middle ground of good looks. Erebus's father had been fairly typical of the family line, but the woman he married was a renowned beauty, and while their son retained the jet-black hair and deep blue eyes of his father's blood, he took after his mother in almost every other respect. Far from being merely handsome, Erebus was beautiful; if he'd had four or five years to get used to court life and develop his confidence, he would have been an utter heartbreaker, but as it stood, he was absolutely no match for the young Ladies. Erebus tended to blush five or six times just trying to speak to a woman—very noticeable blushes, in light of his normally white skin—and the Ladies did their best to encourage such reactions. He was just so... cute.

Laraea was passingly fond of Erebus herself, but she made it a point never to go too far, or to let her guard down around him. As sweetly innocent as the young man was, he was still a Lord, in full command of his ancestral magic—and the power of House Nyx was the power of darkness. Erebus already had ten years' worth of study in the magics of the dark element; of all those in the city, only Archon came close to having such experience in dark magic, and the master mage did not have the boy-Lord's natural affinity. Under the right circumstances, shy young Erebus could become an exceptionally dangerous individual. Lady Istar would much prefer to be on his good side if that ever happened.

"What were you working on?" she inquired politely.

"Huh? O-oh. Master Archon had me cannibalizing the biomatter constructs we'd been using and converting them into a reserve of dark energy for the next mission. He would have done it himself, but he had his hands full overseeing the production of the new units and nexus."

Lady Istar frowned. "And that took you all of two weeks?"

"Oh, yes," Lord Nyx replied, nodding. "Elemental energy conversion can be very tricky. If you don't get everything just right, you can lose all the energy you're trying to acquire."

"So I've been given to understand," Laraea agreed. "I also happen to know that in the space of fourteen days—or nights—a mage with a reasonable amount of skill in dark magic could convert two or three thousand tons of raw material into energy."

"You... don't say." Erebus scratched the back of his head and, right on cue, blushed. "Two or three thousand tons?" he asked weakly.

"Yes." Suppressing an impulse to smile, Laraea added, "So why don't you go ahead and tell me what you were really doing."

"Um..." Lord Nyx glanced around, then turned back to Lady Istar and sheepishly asked, "Can you keep a secret?"

It was early on Saturday morning. The clock radio showed it to be a quarter to six, and the sky outside was still dominated by the sinking, not-quite-full moon and the stars. A faint violet-blue glow far out over the ocean was the only hint at the approaching dawn.

On the second floor of the Mizuno beach house, a bedroom door swung silently open as a little girl with blue hair crept out and peeked around.

Although she looked and felt and was intending to act like a preadolescent human female, Calypso had not truly taken on human form. Doing so would have activated her latent genetics, forcing her into her true human body—the one that looked almost exactly like Ami would have at any given age. Nobody with eyes would have believed that such a person was Michiru's cousin, least of all Rikou, so the Nereid was left with no option but to do this the tricky way.

Calypso had known before she started that keeping her real identity secret from Rikou would be a challenge, as she had been around the woman often enough to get a real appreciation of how sharp and observant she was, but posing as a human for the next few days without actually being one added a new level of trickiness to the affair. All possible hints of her nonhuman nature would have to be suppressed: no casual levitation; no blue-tinted blushing; no shapeshifting for the sake of momentary convenience. It would be quite a task.

Actually, Calypso was rather looking forward to it.

Right now, though, she was just making certain that everyone upstairs was still asleep before she headed to the kitchen for breakfast. The only traces of consciousness she detected were in Ami, and it was much too early for the Senshi to muster the suspicions she had been forming about her sister's "accidental" encounter with her mother. So instead of greeting the mental contact with irritation, Ami merely smiled, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Grinning, Calypso headed downstairs.

A light was already on in the kitchen by the time she got there, and she entered the room to find Rei poking around in the pantry, her hair, the hem of her nightshirt, and the open ends of a housecoat all hanging about the backs of her knees as she reached up into one of the cupboards. Minako was sitting at the table, her head pillowed on her arms, seemingly asleep.

Without turning around, Rei said, "Good morning, Calypso."

"Good morning, Rei. How long did you know it was me?"

"Not until you hit the stairs. Even Luna can't walk on them without getting a creak out of the second and sixth steps."

"Ergh," Calypso replied, wrinkling her nose. "Missed something already. Well, I'll keep that in mind. Thank you for mentioning it."

"You're welcome." Rei pulled a box of cereal down and filled a bowl, then turned around and leaned back against the counter, eating the cereal dry. On her second crunchy spoonful, she noticed Calypso's curious stare, and matched it with a questioningly lifted eyebrow.

"Sorry," Calypso apologized. "It's just that Vestia would never have done anything like sit in the kitchen in her nightclothes and eat breakfast almost straight from the package."

Rei thought about that, and smiled around a mouthful of cornflakes at the thought.

"She would have died on the spot from pure embarrassment," the young priestess chuckled. "Although to be fair, I don't think I'd do much better if I walked into a place with twice the size and ten times the population of this house while I was wearing one of those sheer silk nighties Vestia always favored."

Calypso tilted her head, considering that statement. "You've been trying Vestia's suggestion about meditating to recover your memories?"

Rei made a face. "When I can find the time, yes. But that hasn't been easy to do recently. If I'm not training or in the middle of a fight or attending to my duties at the shrine, I'm poring over the Book trying to find answers about long-lost Weapons or what to do about a ghost that doesn't act like a normal ghost." Rei sighed and rubbed her eyes. "I don't suppose necromancy is among your many talents?" she asked with halfhearted good humor.

"Not really. I can *perceive* astral and elemental energies, so a ghost would normally show up very clearly to my senses. The trouble is that Tokyo is so thick with both kinds of energy that it's hard for me to perceive such things clearly. It doesn't help that your shrine is built right on top of a nexus; once I get beyond the light-spectrum and into the elemental, Hikawa is just a blob of white noise."

"So unless or until this restless spirit decides to show itself, you're as blind to it as the rest of us."

"That would appear to be the case." Calypso frowned. "What really puzzles me about your haunter is why Ami hasn't been able to detect it by now. I can understand how the strong fire energy centered on Hikawa might interfere with my senses or the water-based magic in Michiru's mirror, but the Caduceus is specifically designed to compensate for such situations. It's very peculiar for it to be confounded like this."

The Nereid shook her head and walked over to the counter. Hopping off the floor, she hauled herself up with her arms and stood on the counter to get a glass and a small bowl from the higher cupboard. She sat down next to the sink and proceeded to fill up the glass and rinse out the bowl, then set the bowl aside and scooted over.

"What *are* you doing?" Rei asked in confusion.

"The same as you. Getting breakfast." The index finger on Calypso's left hand had already thinned and extended into a flexible white cord, complete with a plug, which now snaked forward into the wall socket behind the toaster. Expecting to see a light show like the one the Nereid had put on while investigating the wiring in Michiru's living room those weeks earlier, Rei quickly made sure no part of her or her clothing was in contact with the girl-shape seated on the counter.

"You don't need to worry, Rei. I've done some fine tuning." There was not so much as a hint of a disruption in Calypso's adopted form as she raised her transformed finger and waggled it slightly at Rei. "Accommodating the design of the intended interface allows me to control the rate of energy intake and avoid any luminescent side effects while I feed. It's much more efficient and convenient this way."

"Don't use words like that at this hour," a muffled, bleary voice advised from between Minako's hair and arms.

"I'm sorry, Minako," Calypso said, not missing a beat. "I thought you were asleep."

"Hmmph." Blue eyes that were red around the edges became visible long enough to glare at Rei. "It'd be a nice change. Miss Talks-In-Her-Sleep over there kept me up half the night."

"I already said I was sorry," Rei replied in an irritated tone.

"Feh," came the response, as Minako's head sank back down atop her arms. "If it happens again tonight, I'm kicking you off the couch. Even a Love Goddess needs her beauty sleep. In fact"—she looked up again and pointed in Rei's general direction—"as the ranking officer here and as a divine being speaking to a miko, I *order* you to schedule some dreamless nights for yourself."

What might have been a vaguely humorous remark at a more decent hour fell completely flat in the kitchen air, sparking a frown from Rei and a near-automatic reaction from Calypso. The combination of her smaller-than-life perspective and the presence of the Senshi of Venus and Mars triggered memories of being in the same situation between Ishtar and Vestia, which in turn set off the anti-squabbling mechanism a much younger Nereid had developed for dealing with those two: talking her mouth off.

"You had a bad dream, Rei-chan?" The sweetly concerned little-girl voice worked on Rei exactly as it had on Vestia, pulling her attention from the annoying blonde at the table.

"No, not really a *bad* dream. Just a weird one." She glanced over at Minako. "Blame it on the company."

"I doubt that was it," Calypso said as a dark expression formed on Minako's hair-shadowed face. "Michiru had trouble sleeping last night as well. I seriously doubt Hotaru was the reason, and I wouldn't care to think that it was *my* fault."

"What's that about Michiru?" Minako asked, looking away from Rei with a slight furrow of worry on her brow. Calypso waved both hands reassuringly, her plug-finger tapping against the countertop in the process.

"It's okay. She wasn't having any nightmares or anything; I would have known. I think she was just having some trouble getting used to her new sleeping arrangements. She was fine after Hotaru-chan crawled into bed next to her."

"Awww." In spite of her dour and nigh-senseless mood, Minako smiled. "That's sweet." When Calypso covered a smile and a giggle, the blonde mustered the energy to inquire what was so funny.

"Oh, I was looking around last night to make sure everyone was resting comfortably. A while after Hotaru had snuggled up with Michiru, I checked in on Usagi and ChibiUsa, and they were doing the same thing, just with a lot more snoring. Then I checked Ami and Rikou, and *they'd* fallen asleep in *exactly* the same position. Granted, they were on different beds, but you could have taken Ami off that futon and put her right next to her mother with no problem."

The small sound of amusement that Minako was able to produce got cut short by her head's return trip to the cushion of her waiting arms.

"And on that note, I think it's time for you to go back to bed for a few hours." Unplugging her finger with a casual tug and shapeshifting it back into a normal human digit, Calypso slid down from the counter, marched over to Minako, and pulled imperiously at her pajama sleeve. "Come on. Up."

"Love to. Can't. Too tired."

"Yes, yes. Come on." In a process that bore some resemblance to an avalanche, Calypso dragged the much taller Minako off of her chair, somehow keeping the blonde on her own two feet and steering her towards the pull-out sofa in the living room.

Rei shook her head and finished off her cereal. She had just put the box away when Calypso returned.

"No trouble?" the priestess asked, putting her bowl next to the sink with Calypso's.

"Minako let me give her a little nudge," Calypso answered, tapping the side of her head by way of emphasis. She took up her glass and drank all the water in one long gulp. "She'll sleep for another two or three hours, as long as nobody makes too much noise in the interim." After looking at the dishes on the counter, Calypso quickly dug out a spoon from one of the drawers and put it in her bowl, completing her falsified evidence of a meal.

"I think we're safe there," Rei was saying. "Usagi and ChibiUsa probably won't wake up for at least that long, and the others a-" She broke off and yawned. "Excuse me."

"Am I going to have to put *you* back to bed as well?" Calypso asked with a grin.

"Little girls should be more respectful of their elders," Rei advised dryly. "And no. I'll finish waking up once I've gone through my morning meditation and exercises and had a shower." Closing her housecoat, Rei walked towards the hall. "I'm going to get started on that. If you need me, I'll be on the back porch."

"Um... Rei?"

Rei stopped and looked over her shoulder. "Yes?"

"Would you mind if I joined you this morning?" The expression of shy uncertainty added to the effectiveness of Calypso's childish disguise. "I'll understand if you'd prefer to be alone, of course, it's just that I've never seen an ocean sunrise before. Not on Earth."

"It's okay, Caly," Rei said, smiling. "I don't mind a little company. Just promise not to make too much noise, okay?"

"I promise."

The distant glow in the sky had added shades of red, rosy pink, and lighter blue, although the sun itself had yet to appear when Calypso stepped out onto the porch. Rei followed and folded her robe beneath her legs as she knelt on the wooden deck, facing the sunrise; Calypso picked a spot a short distance away and sat down to watch the dawn.

Their timing was good. They had only been sitting there for five or six minutes before the edge of the daystar lifted above the sea, setting a sparkling fire loose along the surface of the waves. Clear of the interference in Tokyo, Calypso saw that piercing sliver of light surrounded by a radiant aura of incandescent white, smoldering red, and molten gold, elemental energy which threaded its way through the glowing aqua mist that filled the air above the ocean. Next to her, Rei's aura swelled up like a flame as her Senshi essence drew a little extra strength from the light and heat of the new day.

Had she come across another source of elemental fire that strong, Calypso would have taken flight in every sense of the word, but the sense of Rei's sharply focused mind negated any chance of danger. She was in total control of her power, and thus totally safe for even a creature possessing significant heat-sensitivity to be around.

Perhaps ten more minutes went by, unbroken by any sound except the slow rhythm of the wind and the waves, before Rei let out a slow breath and opened her eyes.

"Feel better?" Calypso asked.

"Yes, thank you."

"And the lack of a fire doesn't bother you?"

"Not really. It's definitely *different* without the fire, and being outdoors adds a certain degree of distraction I wouldn't have to worry about inside, but it's nothing I can't handle." Rei smiled again. "Besides, it's kind of nice to be outside for a change. Maybe not as warm as I'm used to," she added, shivering and drawing her housecoat more tightly shut as a breath of cool, moist sea air raised goosebumps along her arms and legs. "But really not that bad."

Calypso opened her mouth to say something, then turned towards the house, sensing minds that she had been too focused on Rei and the dawn to notice. "Ami, Rikou, and Setsuna are up."

"We'd better go back in and let them see us, then," Rei replied. "Coming?" she asked, holding out a hand. Keeping up appearances, Calypso slid her small hand around Rei's fingers and let her lead the way.

Unnoticed, the large raven that had been looking down from the roof this entire time now turned towards the heart of the seaside district and took wing, flying off in search of his breakfast.

It was nine o'clock, and Makoto was yawning and rubbing at her heavy-lidded eyes as she tipped the watering can over her flowers. After a solid ten hours of sleep, she wasn't really tired, but she wasn't completely awake yet, either; Hotaru had prodded her out of bed and through a Dimension Door only a few minutes earlier, before bouncing off to inflict a similar wake-up call upon Usagi and ChibiUsa.

*It ought to be illegal to get people out of bed before they're ready,* Makoto thought drowsily. *Or to enjoy it as much as that little rascal seems to.*

*...Makoto Makoto Makoto Makoto...*

"Oh hush," Makoto said, pulling her free hand away from the bunch of vines it had drifted towards. "And stop trying to cheer me up. I *want* to be grouchy right now."

The plants did not react to that declaration, as far as she could tell, and Makoto grunted in satisfaction and moved to water the next bloom, rubbing at a mild itch on her arm as she did so. She found it incomprehensible that the soft fabric of her pajamas would irritate her skin after a single night's rest, when the sixteen segments of the Aegis—hard, electrically-charged, and perpetually pressed against her throat and collarbone for the past few weeks—provoked no such reaction.

The water ran out before the plants' thirst did, so Makoto ambled over to the kitchen sink to refill the can, looking longingly in the direction of her bathroom as she waited. It was *so* tempting to have a shower right now, in the privacy of her own home rather than the crowded conditions of the beach house...

Shaking her head, Makoto shut off the tap and returned to finish giving her plants their morning drink. Despite her stated preference, she once again felt her grim funk slowly fade away in the face of the unthinking, unconditional affection coming from the overgrown flowers and the miniature tree.

"Disobedient little sprouts, aren't you?" she murmured, putting a hand on the base of the tree and smiling.

*...Makoto Makoto Makoto Makoto...*

"Makoto?"

"Huh—OW!" Makoto clenched her empty hand into a fist, then looked angrily at the small scratch across her index finger. "Dammit..."

"Sorry," Hotaru apologized, an embarrassed half-smile on her face as she stood in front of the Dimension Door.

"Not your fault," Makoto replied, sucking on the tiny cut. It was an absolutely pitiful injury compared to many she'd sustained, but like most tiny wounds, the sting was disproportionately large. Fixing the tree with a narrow gaze, Makoto murmured, "I wasn't asking for your help when I said I wanted to be in a grouchy mood, you know."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. I think I'm going to have to trim the thorns back."

"Oh. Okay. Here," Hotaru said, coming forward with her hands out. "Let me have a look at that for you."

"That's okay, Hotaru," Makoto replied, raising her arm in a gesture of polite refusal. "It's just a scratch. It'll heal fine on its own. I've stuck myself on thorns and splinters a few times before," she added, seeing that Hotaru was not totally convinced. "Trust me, I know what I'm talking about." Makoto went into the hall and put the emptied water can back in the closet, then returned. "Is the bathroom over there free?"

"Yes."

"Good." The tall brunette ruffled her hair with one hand and grimaced distastefully at the feel of it. "Because I need a shower."

They went through the Dimension Door and back into the den, coming out in a mildly claustrophobic space with a bookshelf to the left, a desk to the right, one of two blanket-covered sleeping mats right at their feet, and an apparently solid wall behind them.

"You're sure you want me to leave it open?" Hotaru asked as she stepped over the nearest mat, which happened to be Makoto's. "You know the Shield won't stop anything other than light and sound from going through."

"It's a better idea than the two of us trying to sneak up to this room two or three times every day without Rikou-san noticing. She's not the sort of person to go poking around in someone else's privacy, so as long as Setsuna and I remember to make our beds and handle our own laundry, she shouldn't have any reason to come in here."

Hotaru nodded. "Don't take too long in the shower," she advised. "Minako went jogging a little while ago. She'll probably want the bathroom when she gets back." She left the room, letting Makoto get on with her search for a change of clothes.

Back on the other side of the trans-spatial portal, Makoto's living room was quiet and still, disturbed only by the muffled sounds of traffic and the slam of a door closing in the next apartment. The beads of water she had sprinkled along the leaves and stems of her flowers gleamed in the sunlight passing through the window, a good substitute for the spring rain and morning dew that could not reach the plants indoors.

Many of those droplets slipped and fell to the floor as every last leaf in the room abruptly rustled. The sapling gave forth a slow, high-pitched creak, as if it were an old tree swaying in the breeze, and then a single tiny shoot emerged from the fringe of soil between the base of the sapling and the inner edge of the large flowerpot. The new growth shuddered to a halt a moment later, the tiny bud at its tip just barely out of the dirt.

In her room at the beach house, Makoto finished selecting her clothes for the day and headed for the bathroom, a towel in one hand and a bottle of shampoo in the other.

A male figure stood alone atop the hill, white hair dancing in the mid-morning breeze as he leaned on the low brick wall that separated those using the road and sidewalk from a long, tumbling slide to the ground below.

Behind him, a motorcycle that had zipped past a moment earlier now returned, the engine idling as the driver guided the machine to a stop alongside the wall.

"Come here often?" the helmeted biker asked casually, leaning one elbow on the stony divider.

"Not as often as you do," Artemis replied. "This makes the fifth time in the last two weeks, doesn't it?"

"Somewhere around there," Haruka agreed, pulling off her headgear and setting it on the wall. "Which begs the obvious question of how you knew that. Communicators?"

"And this." Artemis tapped his forehead, causing his crescent-moon marking to flicker into view and then fade out again. "It lets me access the resources of the Lunar Archive more or less at will, somewhat like Ami does with her computer."

"Handy."

"Very." They stood there for a time, listening to the sounds of the living city drift up on the breeze. "Is there some sort of significance to this place that makes you keep coming back to it?"

"Nah. Nothing deep, anyway. I like to find out-of-the-way places to sit and listen to the wind. This one just happens to be along one of my favorite driving routes." Haruka glanced over at Artemis. "Of course, if you've been having that giant computer track me, you already knew that."

"Everything but the part about the wind. I probably should have guessed that, though."

"Probably. So, we've established my motives pretty well; what brings you up here?"

"You did, actually." Turning away from the view, Artemis looked directly at Haruka. "Was there any particular reason why you decided to hang around town instead of staying at the beach? Or did you just do it to annoy Usagi and Minako?"

Haruka started to respond, then chuckled. "I didn't even think of that," she admitted, smiling in amusement. "But spoiling their first real shot at 'perfect attendance' for one of these getaways *would* get those two miffed, wouldn't it?"

"So you did have another reason."

"A few, actually."

"Care to talk about them?"

"No."

The transformed cat shrugged. "Fair enough." Haruka glanced at him, mildly surprised and quietly grateful that, where one of the girls—or Luna, for that matter—would most likely have pressed for an explanation, Artemis was willing to drop the subject.

They once again lapsed into silence.

"I'm assuming you've been left behind on these little excursions before," Haruka finally said.

"Plenty of times," Artemis agreed, nodding. "Frequently voluntarily. I don't really care for sand in my paws and fur."

"And what exactly does a cat do to pass all that time on his own?"

"Sleep. Eat. Read. Wander around and make sure the city isn't invaded while the girls are away." He paused. "Sleep some more. You?"

"A lot more wandering, but otherwise, there hasn't been much difference so far." Eyeing Artemis speculatively, Haruka said, "Care to see what sort of diversion we can find?"

"Got anything particular in mind?"

"I thought I'd tear up the road a bit, maybe find some cute girls to flirt with. Go where the wind takes me, so to speak."

"Sounds like a plan." There was a blur as Artemis straightened up, plucking a sleek white helmet from empty air. It was thinner and less rounded than the riding helmets Haruka was familiar with, looking nearly as light as some of the headgear worn by skaters and bicycle-riders even with its face-masking front.

"Okay," she said, as Artemis pulled the thing on, somehow getting all his hair tucked away inside the helmet, "you're not going to tell me you went out and bought a helmet just on the off-chance that you'd need to ride."

"If there were helmets even half as effective as this available today, Luna and I would have had you all buy one for combat." At the press of a concealed switch on the side of the helmet, a crescent-shaped visor slid down to conceal the rest of Artemis's face behind silver-tinted translucency. "With this on, my head could take a direct hit from an artillery shell and not get scratched. Of course, without the rest of the armor, the force would rip my head off, but..." He shrugged.

"That better not be a comment on my driving skills," Haruka warned as she resettled her own helmet on her head.

"Wouldn't dream of it." Artemis produced a pair of white gloves and slipped them on as well, then tapped the side of his helmet twice more, causing it and the gloves to shift from bright white to soft black. Catching Haruka's look, he explained, "I might need to use it for real some time. No point taking chances."

"Sure you don't want to do any more accessorizing, Mister GQ?" Haruka asked as she guided her bike out from against the wall and turned it into the lane.

"No, the full suit's a bit much for this." The bike settled on its shocks as Artemis climbed on, and he looked down at it. "Are you sure that this thing can handle both of us? I'm a lot heavier than your usual passengers."

"Yeah, I noticed. I'm thinking it's too much tuna."

"There's no such thing."

"Uh-huh." Haruka flipped her own visor down and revved up the engine. "Just hang on, tubby tabby."

It was an informal and private meeting that took place in the royal quarters that afternoon. Talos stood watch in the hall with a pair of guardsmen, but most of the apartment was empty; Janus and Jenna were seated at the desk in the study, while Lady Istar stood calmly before them, weathering their perplexed double half-gaze with the same composure that she did everything else.

"Let me see if I understand correctly," the prince said as he bowed forward slightly and rubbed at his side of the shared visage's forehead. "We're in a state of the utmost emergency, with a bare minimum of manpower, resources, and time, and you're asking permission to send people to that city to conduct a long-term reconnaissance operation aimed at improving our *cultural, historical, and psychological* understanding of its people? And on this hypothetical mission, which would normally be undertaken by a group of specially-trained individuals from our sadly defunct intelligence service, you want to send Erebus Nyx?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

Janus stared at Lady Istar. It was Jenna who said, "If I didn't know you were serious, Laraea, I'd be laughing right now."

The Lady smiled briefly and explained. "Our information on this era is still very limited. We know what the planetary geography, ecology, and environment are like, and we have acquired significant data regarding the capabilities of prevailing scientific, mystical, and military institutions, but it's by no means complete. We also have extremely minimal information on the people themselves. It isn't a concern for us now, but what about *after* the Rise? When all is said and done, we will need the people of this world as much as we do the energy, if we're ever to reestablish the Empire. We dare not try to fight them; as superior as our capabilities are, we aren't invincible, and we're outnumbered by more than ten thousand to one. How many old powers like those of the Senshi still exist in the world, unknown to the general populace? How many new ones have developed? And how many of them will side against us if we try to conquer their world?"

"Your argument isn't without merit, Lady Istar," Janus replied, gesturing placatingly with his hand. "But why now? And why Nyx?"

"Several reasons. For one, Lord Nyx can be spared. His skills are only of moderate use in the repair effort, and for all his power and potential, he's still too inexperienced to send on an energy-gathering mission."

"But not too inexperienced to handle something as delicate as infiltrating a foreign society?" the prince asked skeptically.

"We have the resources to assist him in that respect, Your Highness. The watcher unit showed us how to manipulate this society's information systems without being detected, and Archon's apprentice could provide us with a firsthand insight into the culture. *She* is another reason why I suggest Lord Nyx. He is young enough that he could associate with the girl without drawing attention to himself." Laraea paused, smiled, and added, "No more than he normally does, at any rate."

Janus did not reply to that, but Jenna chuckled.

"Lord Nyx's age would give him another slight advantage," Lady Istar continued. "None of us have Japanese features, but if Lord Nyx were to make some errors early on, they might be excused due to his youth and obvious foreign origins. Any of the rest of us might be held to a different standard, due to our greater age."

"We could use disguises," Janus began, but almost immediately, the shared head from side-to-side.

"Not a good idea with a Mercury who has access to the Caduceus," Jenna said. "We'd have to forego mind-shields for the same reason, which means that whoever was sent would need to be able to conceal his or her mind from telepathic detection by other means."

"He or she would also have to be someone Your Highnesses could trust with knowledge of the Senshi," Lady Istar added. "That alone rules out most of the mentalists and the lesser Lords. Archon is too indispensable here, and Lilith... is Lilith, and unsuitable for different reasons. Lord Nyx is very nearly the only candidate left."

"We could just send you," Janus pointed out.

"Not on a long-term assignment," Jenna said firmly. Her brother blinked.

"You may have overlooked my family magic, Prince Janus," Laraea offered politely. "It has a history of restlessness, and I cannot control it when I sleep without the use of external magic."

"Ergh." Janus made a half grimace. "You're right, I did forget about that. But then, I never fully understood your House magic to begin with. Alright, so you can't conduct a long-term study on your own. I still don't see why Lord Nyx is so vital."

Lady Istar paused. "Truthfully, Your Highness... he is not utterly indispensable. I had been considering a mission of this sort for quite some time before I thought to include him. But I believe it would be beneficial to send Lord Nyx, for reasons besides his usefulness to the mission."

"And these are?"

"I... spoke with Erebus yesterday," Laraea said carefully. "And I consulted the duty roster afterwards. He is a Lord of the First Circle and arguably one of the most gifted among us, but he has not been assigned a significant task since our return, and it bothers him. A reconnaissance operation would not be overly significant for the Rise, per se, but it would prove invaluable *after.* That is the other reason I suggest this to you now, Your Highness. We have suffered some setbacks, and there is a certain collective concern as to whether or not we can achieve our goals. Sending Lord Nyx on this mission would allow him to contribute something and would also reassure the Lords that *you* believe we are still capable of completing the Rise on schedule."

Both twins sat in silence for a long moment. At last, Janus said, "When would you wish to begin?"

"As soon as possible, Your Highness. I would need to consult with Archon and his apprentice before I could form a reasonable plan."

"Very well, then, Lady Istar. Proceed with your preparations, and contact us again when you have a workable strategy."

Lady Istar nodded and, shortly thereafter, departed the Imperial quarters. Several minutes and several large hallways later, Lord Nyx appeared out of a side passage.

"How did it go?" the young man asked with quiet eagerness as he fell into step alongside her.

"Better than I had expected."

"Does that mean-"

"I still have information to obtain from Archon," Lady Istar said calmly, trying not to sound—or feel—too much like a cautionary older sister. "Their Highnesses will *consider* the mission when I present them with a more detailed outline. In the meantime, Lord Nyx, I would advise that you bring a stop to your extracurricular studies. It wouldn't do for someone to find you accessing data on that city *before* you've officially become aware of this potential operation."

The exuberant smile faded. "I understand," Lord Nyx said in a sober voice. "And thank you, Lady Istar."

Laraea nodded. They said nothing else, and the younger noble took a left at the next junction, while Lady Istar continued on ahead.

So far, so good. She had at least tentative approval for a scouting mission, and it seemed that no one was aware of her private studies or intense personal interest in the matter. Now she just had to find Archon when he had a spare moment and convince him to allow her to speak with his apprentice.

That, the Lady suspected, might take some doing.

On the whole, Rikou's day had been one of the most remarkable in her recent (and not-so recent) experience. She'd gone into this trip expecting a lot of awkward moments around her daughter's friends because of her "mom status," and the fact that she wasn't used to talking to people as herself instead of as a doctor, but things were working out surprisingly smoothly. Not that there weren't some awkward moments, but on the whole, they were far fewer than Rikou had been prepared for, and not nearly as embarrassing as she'd feared.

It helped that the girls themselves were so comfortable around each other. Even when Rei and Usagi bickered, when the others had to chase Ami away from her books, or when Minako said something that clearly stumped the lot of them; even at those times, the connections between the girls were almost tangible. Even though Rikou couldn't understand when or how such a diverse group of girls had become so close, it was clear that they *were* a group. She still had some rough spots to overcome with most of them as individuals, but as a whole, they had already accepted her.

Usagi, Minako, and ChibiUsa were no problem. It was impossible not to like Usagi when you spent a lot of time around her, and the other two were similar, while being completely different. Rikou suspected ChibiUsa was quite a bit wiser than her cousin had been at the same age, and certainly, she had a more mature bearing. In her case, though, the maturity was a well-rehearsed act put on by the girl beneath, a girl much more like Usagi than she evidently wanted to let on; when Usagi acted mature... well, it wasn't even an act. She just did it. Minako was somewhere in between the two, swinging from the energetic matchmaker to the calmer advisor, serious even when she was at her craziest.

Dealing with Makoto was also exceptionally easy, due no doubt to the fact that Rikou had had so much contact with her since Ami moved into the apartment with her. Rei was more difficult; she had a lot of the same pride and forcefulness as Makoto, and without as much common ground or experience with Rikou. The doctor could tell that the young priestess was used to keeping people at arm's length, whether in her capacity as a spiritual advisor or in more personal dealings. She did the same thing herself, wielding her professional demeanor almost like a shield to maintain her privacy, and she was aware how difficult it was to set aside such defensive habits and let people get close.

In another time and place, Rikou would have been sorely tempted to take Rei aside and advise her on the kind of life she could expect if she kept pushing people away, but the first evening made it clear that someone else had beaten her to it. Rikou was glad to see that; she just regretted that she had to *hear* it as well.

Kari and Hotaru were delightful, smiling and bouncing around the house all day playing games, sometimes just on their own but far more often with someone (or several someones) they'd dragged into it. They also sat quietly (most frequently with Michiru) and talked seriously, or listened patiently, displaying a maturity well beyond their years. Rikou had seen such behavior many times during her years in the pediatrics ward, from children who had been through events children shouldn't have to worry about—and she'd seen it at home during the last portion of her marriage and the years that followed. She knew the source of Hotaru's accelerated emotional maturity; the disaster at the Mugen Academy had been all over the news, and the doctor had had a passing familiarity with the place and its owner/headmaster, as she'd considered enrolling Ami there some years ago. Kari's grown-up behavior was harder to pin down, though it was entirely possible that she had some of the same sensitivities as her older cousin. Rikou did not pry; she was just happy to see that, whatever their troubles, both girls were coping well.

That line of thought could also be applied to Setsuna, who seemed to be perfectly at ease despite everything she had been through in the past few months. Rikou was glad to hear it, but she was also on edge around the woman, fearful of making a second mistake like the one that had pushed Setsuna into her brief depression those weeks ago. If not for that overlarge hurdle, Rikou thought she could really enjoy Setsuna's company, but neither of them seemed entirely sure how to go about getting past that. Rikou's social life had been rather curtailed over the last several years, and Setsuna had even less experience to draw on. Having the other girls around to act as go-betweens and conversation starters helped immensely.

Right now, they were sitting in the living room, watching as Minako pressed Setsuna for details on her "situation" with the handsome young Doctor Yotogi, despite repeated objections that there was no such situation.

"Now, come on, Setsuna," Minako said patiently. "I remember the way he was looking at you that day you checked out. And Ami told us all about how he's been asking after you. You can't tell me that there isn't *something* there."

"I can, in fact," Setsuna replied. She was bearing up well under the pressure, looking no more than mildly flustered where most people would have been reduced to stammering admittals—or tears—by Minako's insistent prodding.

"What, not even after he rescued you from that fall out of the elevator?"

"Minako, I made a fool of myself, and I nearly knocked him through a wall doing it." Setsuna's voice was almost plaintive. "I'd hardly call that a good basis for any kind of relationship."

"Depends on the relationship," Minako said. "Some guys go for strong women-"

"Be sure to send one my way when you find him," Makoto put in.

"-and more to the point, Yotogi-san was a gentleman about the whole thing. He's good-looking, he's smart, he's got a good job, and it's clear he's interested in you."

"Maybe," Setsuna answered steadily. "Minako, Lucas is very nice, but-"

"You used his given name," the blonde pointed out. As Setsuna finally lost her composure and started to blush, Minako grinned and added, "Now, why would you do something like that?"

"Okay, Minako," Hotaru interrupted, "that's enough." The little girl was sitting between Setsuna and the blonde, and she now poked Minako in the ribs. "Stop picking on Setsuna-mama, or I'll whomp you even faster the next time we play."

Minako's eyelid twitched. Hotaru had trounced her repeatedly in a series of Tournament Fighter Gods IV bouts this afternoon, defeating her favorite fighter—the Love Goddess, naturally—at least once with every character in the game. And that included a Love Goddess versus Love Goddess matchup, which Minako was still struggling to understand.

"I thought Michiru was your mother, Hotaru," Rikou said.

"She is." Hotaru looked across the room to where Calypso had claimed Michiru's lap half an hour ago. "But Setsuna is too, and right now I think I love her more, because she doesn't let certain nasty sneaky people take her away from me."

"You are just a sore loser, Hotaru," Caly replied, deliberately snuggling closer to Michiru, who sighed and looked disapprovingly at both girls.

"Am not," Hotaru protested.

"Are too."

"Stop that, Kari," Michiru chided.

"She started it."

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

Smiling, Rikou glanced at Ami. "And to think, you used to be sad about not having a brother or sister."

"I'm much wiser now," Ami said.

Calypso started to say something, then humphed and hunched down to pout. Across the room, Hotaru stuck out her tongue, until Setsuna tapped her on the head as a mild reproof.

"Take note, Usagi," Rikou said with a wry look at both little girls. "You may want to stop after one. Large families are nice, but there's something to be said for a small family as well. At the very least, you get more sleep."

"That would be important," Rei noted blandly.

"I'd have to talk about that with Mamo-chan," Usagi replied, after looking darkly at Rei. "I think, though, that it'll be a while before I want to go through *this* again." She put a hand on her stomach.

*Yes,* ChibiUsa thought, pressing her lips together to hide a smile as she thought about her mother's second pregnancy, some seven years—and over nine centuries—in the future. *Quite a while.*

"There are times when I wish I could just get it over with," Usagi continued, twisting her engagement ring as she spoke. "Only... well..."

"Nervous?" Rikou guessed. The blonde nodded.

"What's it like?" Usagi asked quietly. "I mean... I've asked Mom what it was like for *her* when Shingo and I were born, and she always says it wasn't difficult... but I asked Dad about it, too, and he got this funny look and mumbled something about car insurance and being thankful for the drugs."

"Ah." Rikou's mouth quivered in a small, quick smile, and she looked around the room to see that the girls were all either trading nervous glances or watching her. "Well..." She paused and glanced at Setsuna.

"It's alright," the younger woman said. "I'd like to hear it myself, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind." Rikou sat back on the couch. "But my recollection is a little fuzzy. I'd seen my sister go through a long and difficult delivery a couple of years earlier, and I decided then and there that I wasn't going through with a clear head if I could help it."

"It hurts that much?" Minako asked.

"Anyone who claims it doesn't hurt is either lying or has no idea what they're talking about," Rikou answered, "but it all depends. Some women are well suited to childbirth and have a relatively quick and easy time; others go through a lot of difficulty. My sister was in labor for almost six hours that time. My mother claimed that was normal for the women in our family, and I swear they were positively annoyed with me when my delivery lasted a little less than an hour."

The other girls all looked at Ami, who was blushing. "That's our Ami-chan," Minako said with a faint grin. "Always getting things done in a fraction of the time everybody else needs."

"Minako," Ami objected. Her mother chuckled.

"Considering how soon she was crawling, walking, and reading, her father used to joke that she must have been terribly bored, being shut up in a small space with nothing to do for nine months."

"Maybe that's why they kick," Usagi said. "Boredom."

"That or as a comment on diet," Rikou agreed. "I had to give up seafood when I was carrying Ami; it always started her kicking."

"Usagi doesn't seem to have that problem," Rei said. Shrugging, she added, "I guess the poor kid inherited her appetite."

"Now listen here, you mean old—hmmnph fumh mmph!" Usagi glared at ChibiUsa, whose hand was planted firmly across her mouth.

"I think it's time for *some* of us to go to bed," the younger girl said.

"That's a good idea," Calypso agreed with a nod. "You go ahead and take her upstairs."

"I believe ChibiUsa meant more than just Usagi," Michiru said.

"Oh, that's okay. I'm not tired. You aren't, are you, Hotaru?"

"Nope." Hotaru smiled, the short exchange of angry words from a few moments ago seemingly forgotten.

Makoto yawned suddenly. Hotaru looked at her sourly just before, as a result of their oft-contagious nature, she also broke into a yawn. Usagi and Minako followed suit, and ChibiUsa seemed to be struggling to keep her mouth shut.

"Makoto," Hotaru complained, rubbing her eyes. "Why did you have to do that? Now I *am* tired..."

The next minute involved a lot of people getting up and helping others who were suddenly too tired to do so on their own. By dint of clinging pleading and sleepy-eyed looks, Hotaru managed to convince Setsuna to carry her upstairs; Calypso immediately repeated the process with Michiru.

"You know you two are getting much too big for this," Michiru said as she carried the Nereid's light-as-air body to the foot of the staircase. Hotaru and Calypso both put on a great show of being half-asleep and did not respond.

Usagi looked around hopefully.

"For-GET it," Rei said witheringly, even as she—with assistance from ChibiUsa—helped the disappointed blonde stand and start towards the stairs. Makoto was right behind them, covering another yawn, and Minako disappeared in the direction of the downstairs bathroom. Since Luna had dashed up the stairs ahead of Setsuna, Ami and Rikou were left with a few moments of privacy.

"First-day thoughts?" Ami asked her mother.

"I find myself deeply thankful that this place has two bathrooms," Rikou answered humorously. Her smile turned wistful. "But truthfully, Ami... I envy you. I could never have done something like this at your age."

Ami reached over and settled her free hand over her mother's. "I couldn't have done it either, kaasan. Not without Usagi."

"I know." Rikou looked wryly at her daughter. "You're aware that your grades dropped almost five whole points right around the time that you met her? And then there was that study program in Germany that you passed up..."

"I had my reasons," Ami protested. "And it's not like my marks have gone downhill."

"Such a sensitive girl," Rikou teased. "But seriously, Ami, we both know that if it wasn't for your friends, your grades would be higher than they are. You'd be in your second year of that pre-med course, or another just like it, well on your way to a doctorate—and you wouldn't be as happy as you are now, would you?"

Ami blushed and looked away. "No, kaasan," she admitted softly. "I don't think I would."

"That's why I never made a fuss about it. Even I have to admit that I'd rather see my little girl doing well and being happy than doing exceptionally and being alone." Rikou laughed softly and ruffled her daughter's hair. "We're two of a kind, Ami, both too busy using our heads to pay attention to our hearts. We both needed to find someone who thought the other way to see what a mistake that was; I'm just glad that you chose better than I did."

"How so?"

"You're braver than I am, Ami. I could never open up as fully to as many people as you have these last few years; where you're able to draw support from all your friends, I tried to rely on just one person."

"Father?" Ami guessed quietly. Rikou smiled and brushed a few strands of hair away from Ami's face, looking pleased at her perception. Then she sighed.

"I wish you could have seen us as we were back then, Ami, instead of how we were later on. You wouldn't have recognized your foolish old workaholic mother, skipping classes to sit in the sun and listen to a handsome young man painting stories about the clouds, sneaking around the dorms after lights out..." Rikou chuckled wickedly. "You know, dear, if not for the vigilance of a certain dorm mother, you might have *had* that brother or sister."

"Mother," Ami protested, blushing.

"What? You don't believe that your old mother used to be just as young and beautiful as you are now?"

Ami blushed again. "Kaasan... you're embarrassing me."

"You'll have to work on that, dear. If just being paid an honest compliment embarrasses you, you're going to have an exceptionally difficult time getting serious with Ryo."

"Mother..." Ami put her now-scarlet face in her hands, then took Rikou's arm and stood up. "That's it. I'm putting you to bed before Minako comes back and hears any of this."

"I'm just saying..."

"I know what you're saying, Mother. It's what *she'll* start saying that worries me."

When they were partway up the stairs and out of sight of the ground floor hall that led to the washroom, Minako emerged from around the corner, one finger pressed thoughtfully to a broad smile.

The plants had been oddly quiet as Makoto watered and tended to them this evening. Her sense of them seemed muted, and when she'd placed her hand on the smooth bark of the sapling, the usual greeting of happy singsong nonsense had been reduced to a wordless murmur. She couldn't explain it, though she was positive that there was nothing wrong with the plants in the context of their health, and when she finally returned to the beach through the Dimension Door, she'd done so with a touch of confusion and an inexplicable sense of guilt that made her dreams that night restless ones.

While Makoto was turning over and making faint noises in her sleep, back in her apartment, her plants were exhibiting very similar behavior. Not long after she had gone, the tiny bud which had developed earlier that day began to grow anew, and at a rate unequaled by anything the strange sapling had yet demonstrated; instead of days' worth of growth taking place in a night, it was weeks of development crammed into the same span of time, almost as if the days of quiescence had merely been the tree's way of gathering its energy for this new massive effort.

Over the next several hours, the plants shifted and rustled in their pots as that single pod grew larger and larger, weighing down its gradually lengthening stem until it reached the floor. Petals began to fall from some of the smaller blossoms, while here and there among the thick growth, a leaf or twiglet would shrivel, wither, and crumble to dust. And all the while, the bud continued to grow. Within half an hour, it was the size of a fat strawberry; thirty minutes later, a perfectly rounded growth as big as a grapefruit was sitting on the floorboards. By the end of the second hour, it had achieved the bulk of a healthy watermelon, and the floor around it was littered with dead foliage and dust. The third hour passed, and a green ovoid more than a meter long now lay between the half-withered network of flowers and the back of the couch. It was at this point, when the growth was nearly as thick around the middle as it was long and had mass enough to rival some of the largest pumpkins, that it finally stopped expanding.

But the development continued. When midnight crept by, mottled spots of paler green had appeared up and down the oblong shape, and by one in the morning, most of the fruit (or vegetable) had turned a deep, rich red, with just a lingering trace of green near its stem. It also rocked slightly at irregular moments, the heavy back-and-forth movement suggesting the presence of liquid inside the giant growth. One last crinkled flower broke loose from its bowed and shrunken parent, and then the greenery—or brownery—that remained to the plants ceased to fall.

Instead, it was the enormous pod which began to wither. Its scarlet hue did not fade, but the smooth surface roughened and shrank, revealing a dozen wrinkled seams that had not been visible earlier. This seemed to restore a measure of vitality to the drained tree and the adjoining flowers, for where leaves and blooms had been lost, half a hundred tiny new buds now emerged.

The pod had not dwindled very far when, with a wet squelch, it split apart along its many seams, rocking back onto its stem as its sides opened up like a huge flower.

Curled up on the sticky pink center of the exposed interior was a small creature that looked a great deal like a human girl, only with elongated points atop her earlobes, a faint greenish hue to her skin, and a trail of darker green along her spine. She was about as tall a four year-old, or would be when she stood up, but there was something subtly off about the size and proportion of her body; as tiny as she was and as childlike as her face appeared, her unclothed body looked closer to the age of ten than to four. She was covered from head to toe in a layer of fruity-smelling colorless fluid that was particularly thick on her emerald hair, rendered a darker shade than would be normal because of the sticky stain.

She lay there for a moment, eyes closed, just breathing. Then a shiver raised goosebumps along her body, and her eyes opened to reveal rich brown irises. The child did not move again for some time, not until another shiver raced across her skin. She sat up and looked around at the darkened room with unmistakable confusion, then lowered her gaze to study herself. She raised a hand to sniff at the substance that covered it, and did not seem to find the fluid objectionable or worthy of closer study. Her hands lowered to the pink, liquid-saturated core beneath her, and this prompted several moments of tactile inspection of the squishy center, fluid-dripping smooth interior, and dry, rough exterior of her birth-vessel. It all seemed to perplex her to no end.

A third shiver ended the little one's examination of the opened pod and convinced her to get to her feet, but she stumbled and dropped to her hands and knees, voicing a whimper of pain as the fleshy cord that still connected her to the heart of the pod tore free from her stomach. She rolled onto her side and huddled up again, trembling and crying softly, her legs pulled tightly against her belly until the sting lessened. In due course, and much more cautiously than before, she made a second attempt to rise, one hand staying pressed against her sore stomach. The newborn was on her knees when she noticed that she had dried off significantly, and she glanced curiously at the still-damp center of the pod and the small puddles on the floor around it. The sight only held her attention for an instant before she looked more closely at what stood behind the ruptured globe.

"Aa!" With a musical cry of delight, the child scrambled to her feet, stumbled over the petals of the pod, and wrapped her small arms around the trunk of the sapling. She stayed like that for a very long while, kneeling on the floorboards with her face pressed to the bark of the tree, eyes closed above a blissful smile.

This time it was a creaky rustle from the tree that stirred the girl to movement instead of a chill from the air. She looked up with a pout, seeming less eager than ever to move, but the sound repeated. The child made another tiny noise, this time of disappointment, before she acceded to the third and most insistent hissing shake of the tree and got to her feet. She glanced around again, her gaze passing the rectangular space of the Dimension Door twice before—guided by another sound from the tree—she looked more closely. A few uncertain steps carried her halfway to the Door, and she paused, seeming to listen. Two more steps, another moment of waiting, and then she smiled again, as broadly as before, and scampered over.

She hesitated at the threshold of the unnatural passage, fear of its strangeness warring with her desire to cross over for a moment before she poked a finger through to test it. The poking examination was repeated, then expanded to include her whole hand, and then most of her arm. By now reassured that it was safe, she stepped through.

Dizziness overwhelmed the little one as soon as she was across, and she fell over backwards into the room where she had started, her legs still extended through the Door before she hurriedly pulled them back. She sat there for several seconds and watched the hole in the wall with deep suspicion before, in a burst of cleverness, she chose to crawl back through. The disorientation hit her again, but it wasn't nearly so bad now that she expected it and was low enough to avoid vertigo.

She did not bother to stand once she was through, for the object of her search was right in front of her—a large, dark shape!

...

Wait.

That wasn't quite right.

Frowning, the girl reached over and gave the object a push with one tiny hand. Then another. She pulled back her arm quickly as the big thing turned over, revealing Makoto's sleeping face and her left shoulder. Smiling anew, the child moved forward and put her hand over Makoto's, half-hidden beneath the blanket.

No response.

This wasn't right, either, and the little one was starting to look a bit vexed as she reached out to give Makoto's shoulder a determined shake. Again, Makoto moved, sighing in her sleep and rolling up onto her side.

That appeared to satisfy the child. She pulled the covers back and slipped up next to Makoto. The futon was not especially large, and Makoto was a fairly big person, but this didn't trouble the little girl. She just snuggled close against Makoto and dragged her right arm down into a hug.

Brown eyes flew open wide, and the child flinched away as the back of her shoulder touched something that was hot and cool, soft and hard all at once. Turning herself over, she stared at the tiny pink spheres clustered between Makoto's neck and the material of her pajamas and the mattress. As cautiously as she had tested the Door, the girl now tapped at the Aegis. The green glow of the Weapon was reflected in the child's fascinated eyes, and she studied them for several minutes before a yawn overtook her. She turned her back on the luminous spheres and resumed her original position, yawning one more time and then closing her eyes. She was soon fast asleep.

Makoto's arm tightened around the tiny body resting beside her, and both she and the child smiled contentedly.

It was late. And it was early. The clock radio showed 3:58am, and Usagi, ChibiUsa, and Luna were all sound asleep in the master bedroom of the Mizuno beach house. Future-mother, future-daughter, and feline shared the bed, and the cat was so calm and still that an observer might have concluded her to have been struck deaf or utterly dead by the storm of snoring the room's other two occupants had been raising earlier. Surely no living creature could sleep in the face of such discordancy while its hearing remained intact.

The truth of the matter was simply that Luna had long since grown accustomed to even the worst of her charge's nocturnal noises. Ten thousand of those twin-throated thunders would not disturb her rest, but she would snap into wakefulness at the slightest whisper of a noise that did not belong in the room.

There were, however, some things that even Luna's sharp ears could not hope to detect.

"Princess..."

ChibiUsa was dreaming about a picnic in Crystal Tokyo, a memory of an actual event from a year in her past. Claiming frustration with the constant 'royal treatment,' her mother had gathered up the family and herded them into the palace gardens for a few hours of getting more or less away from it all. Her Majesty's idea of family included not only her husband and children but all seven Senshi, their families, several other close friends from the royal court, and *their* families besides. If someone happened to be talking to one of those people when the Queen passed the message along, she invited them, too. By the time everyone was lounging on the lawns or getting lost in the hedge maze, Serenity had pretty well depopulated the higher levels of her own government, leaving the lower-ranking officials to wonder where their superiors had gotten to and generally bringing all other business in the palace to a grinding halt.

All in all, it had been a good day, and ChibiUsa was enjoying this recollection of it.

"Princess..."

She just wished she could place that voice. It sounded familiar, but she'd swear it wasn't one she'd heard at the picnic, or at any other time in her recent past. ChibiUsa's sleeping face creased in a slight frown, as did the face of her dream-self. That ChibiUsa wore a rosy pink dress in the style she had inherited from her mother, and she was moving slowly through the maze in search of the source of that voice.

"Princess..." It seemed to be coming from the center of the maze. ChibiUsa walked a little faster and began making turns, trying to recall the fastest way to the center of the leafy labyrinth. Since she was in a dream, the shape of the garden did not conform to her memories, and she was soon quite lost.

"Princess..." the gentle voice called again. The voice didn't sound as if its owner was in any kind of rush, but neither did it sound any closer than before, and ChibiUsa began to worry that she would not find the unknown person in time. That thought bothered her greatly.

"I'll be right there!" her dream-self called back as she increased her pace once again. The hedges whispered all around her, as if her words had stirred up a light wind, and when ChibiUsa turned the next corner, she suddenly found herself at the heart of the maze.

Even asleep, ChibiUsa noticed three things very clearly. First and foremost, the center of the maze was not as she remembered it. Instead of low benches, there was a colonnade of tall marble pillars along either side of a broad path. Rather than the crystal fountain with the symbols of the Moon and the nine planets set into the bowl, there was a large pond with marble fountains out over its surface at either end, and white lilies floating calmly on the surface. The rosebushes were not where they belonged, and they were accompanied by many other plants that should not have been there at all. The hedge walls of the maze had been replaced by tall trees, their dark green leaves spreading out near the base of the trunk and narrowing steadily towards the top without looking as if they had been trimmed back. And rather than the 30th century skyline of Crystal Tokyo, the only building ChibiUsa could see was at the far end of the pillar-lined path, a beautiful white structure that most closely resembled an ancient Greek temple.

The second thing ChibiUsa realized was that despite the change in scenery -and it was definitely a change; she turned about and saw that the garden maze she'd just stepped out of had instead become a path into a forest—she was still alone. Wherever she had ended up, there was no one else around except for some songbirds, and they didn't appear to be taking any notice of her.

The final thing ChibiUsa noticed was the incredible realism of this dream. She could feel the gentle breeze and the soft fabric of her dress, and the faint scents of the flowers and the grass were as clear as the crystal-blue water. The blurring that normally hung around at the edge of her vision in her dreams was gone, allowing her to see everything with perfect clarity, and everything she looked at was incredibly beautiful. Each stone in the path, every blade of grass, the clouds in the sky; they were all different, and each of them was as perfect as the next.

ChibiUsa was familiar with this phenomenon, and although she didn't quite recognize her surroundings, she suspected that she had in fact been here before. As for the voice...

There was no noise or flicker of movement to betray it, but between one moment and the next, a presence appeared behind her, one that was readily apparent to her dream-senses. ChibiUsa closed her eyes and bowed her head. "Hello, Helios."

"Hello, Princess. It's good to see you again."

"Thank you." She opened her eyes and studied the fantastic dreamscape before her. "This is Elysium, isn't it?"

"Of course." His tone was one of mild amusement. "After all, I promised to show it to you when the damage caused by the Dead Moon Circus had healed. What do you think?"

"It's beautiful," ChibiUsa replied honestly. "Everything is so bright and alive... and peaceful."

"I'm glad you like it." There was a pause, filled only by the bubbling of the fountains and the song of distant birds. Then Helios asked, "Is there something wrong, Princess?"

"No," ChibiUsa said softly, clasping her hands together in front of her body. "Nothing's wrong."

"Then why won't you look at me?"

ChibiUsa stood mute, biting her lip and squeezing her eyes shut.

It was hard for the future princess to describe her feelings towards Helios. On the one hand, as Pegasus, he had been her secret companion for all those weeks, someone wise and understanding to talk to when she was confused or lonely. He had been both a powerful ally and an endangered friend, wrapped up in an air of magic, mystery, and wonder. The reality of Helios was... different. He was no less magical, no less a friend, but compared to the form of the ethereal stallion, Helios's true body was... real. Not a dream, not like the warm, almost-solid feeling radiated by Pegasus, but *really* real. Alive. During her last stay in this era, that reality had been confusing for ChibiUsa. She had been just old enough at the time to appreciate that her special, gentle friend was a handsome young man, and to understand what it might mean that she noticed that about him. Now she was older, and understood a little better—and part of her was disturbed by that.

ChibiUsa did not turn around now because she did not know which Helios she wanted to see more, the beautiful winged horse or the handsome young protector of the dream-realm. She did not want to speak because she could not think of how to explain this to him. But she owed it to him to at least try.

"It... it's been a long time, Helios," ChibiUsa began uncertainly. "I... I don't..." Her voice faltered.

"You don't what?"

"I... I went home, Helios. For years. I grew up, and I... I never saw you again. I didn't know what that meant, if you were choosing to stay away, or if you *couldn't* find me... if something had happened to you... or to me..."

"Ah," Helios said softly, his gentle voice touched with a sympathy that made ChibiUsa want to smile from relief that he understood, and a sadness that made her want to cry in shame for hurting him. "I see."

They stood there, silent. Even the birds and the water seemed to have quieted themselves. "Is it my fault?" ChibiUsa whispered into that waiting hush. "Did I do something wrong—did I change too much for you to find me?"

A familiar warmth brushed against her cheek, and in spite of everything, ChibiUsa pressed against the horse's long nose, drawing reassurance from the contact. "You did nothing wrong, my brave little Princess," Helios replied. "Growing up didn't change you as much as you fear—or else I wouldn't have been able to find you tonight."

Holding the head of the majestic creature that was her friend, ChibiUsa reluctantly pulled away and looked into his great shining eyes. "Then... why..."

"I can't say for certain why you never saw me in your own era," Helios admitted. "Time works differently in Elysium than in the real world, but even for me, the age of Crystal Tokyo still lies far in the future. You know better than most just how much can happen in such a span of time."

"And now?"

"There *are* two of you, ChibiUsa," Helios pointed out, his voice now mildly embarrassed. "In some ways, your unborn self is even more real to me than you are, because she is not only real, but a dream—her mother's dream of love and hope for the future. You are that dream realized. It took me some time to notice the difference. I'm sorry."

"No," ChibiUsa said. "I'm sorry. For doubting you. For doubting myself. I should know better." She smiled as Helios gave her another gentle nudge.

"I knew it!" a new voice said suddenly. ChibiUsa gasped in sudden fright and jumped, forcing Helios to brace himself as she clung to his neck. "She hasn't been here five minutes, and he's already sneaking kisses!"

Blushing, ChibiUsa released Helios and stepped back, marking in passing the reddening of his equine face as she whirled to confront the new speaker.

A trio of flamboyantly-dressed figures faced her. The first was a tall blond man in a white shirt and black-and-yellow tights, and he was leaning against one of the nearer trees, grinning. In the branches above him sat a man dressed mostly in faded violet, and whose hair was a vibrant red; he was *not* grinning, but rather sat with his arms folded and his shoulders hunched in a pose of disappointment. The third member of the group wore a blue costume with rounded sleeves and legs, and sat next to the shore of the pool, one hand trailing in the water and the other propping up a feminine face that was every bit as glum as that of the red-haired man.

"Come on," Tigerseye said, reaching up and tugging on one of Hawkseye's hanging feet. "I won the bet, now pay up."

"Oh, fine," Hawkseye replied grouchily, pulling his foot free. He fished something small and glittering out of his vest and flipped it down to Tigerseye, who caught the object easily.

"You too, Fish," Tigerseye added, holding out his other hand. Fisheye's response was an inaudible mumble and a throwing motion that sent a spray of glittering water arcing through the air towards Tigerseye. ChibiUsa thought she saw another of the small shining items amidst the jewel-like droplets, but Tiger's empty hand closed around the thing before she could be sure, and her attention was on other matters anyway.

"What are you three doing here?" ChibiUsa demanded hotly.

"Eh?" Tigerseye asked, glancing up as he pocketed his winnings. "Oh, don't mind us. Go on with what you were doing."

"Not until you answer my question."

"We live here now, remember?" Hawkseye said whimsically. "Thanks to you and your friends and Helios here."

"I know that," ChibiUsa replied impatiently. "I meant, what are you doing *here,* as in here and now?"

"Oh." Hawk's position on the branch changed, and he fell off it backwards, the curl of his legs spinning him around and into an aerial somersault before he landed next to Tigerseye. "Just catching the best show in town -and laying a few friendly wagers on its outcome."

"But like I said," Tigerseye added quickly, "don't mind us. We aren't even here, so you can do what you like." He and Hawkseye grinned wickedly, and ChibiUsa felt her blush deepen even as she glared daggers at the pair.

"Cut that out, you two," Fisheye said. "You've already killed the mood; there's no need to mangle it."

Hawkseye and Tigerseye looked at each other in puzzlement, clearly not understanding what their counterpart was talking about. Eyes rolling upwards, Fish sighed.

"Now what's *that* supposed to mean?" Tigerseye demanded.

"Just that you two still have a lot to learn about romance."

"Tch," Hawkseye tched, leaning towards Tigerseye and sticking a thumb in Fisheye's direction. "This coming from the cold fish."

"Hey!" Fisheye protested, slapping the surface of the water with one hand.

"Ahem," Helios interrupted, tapping his right front hoof on the path with a clear *clip-clop* to break up the building argument. The Trio glanced at him and fell silent, all of them now looking grumpy. "Thank you."

ChibiUsa looked at Helios. "Are they always like this?" she asked, proud of the level, controlled tone she was able to manage.

"Elysium has certainly been more... lively... since they came, but don't let their antics mislead you. The realm would not have recovered from Nehelenia's assault so fully and quickly without their assistance. Come. I'll show you." Helios turned and began walking towards the temple-like building; after casting a doubtful glance at the sulking Trio, ChibiUsa followed him.

It was an unusual walk. Elysium was an unspoiled arboreal paradise that just happened to include the architecture of some bygone civilization. Every body of water enclosed at least one exquisite marble fountain, each of them different, and the trees shared space with graceful columns and lifelike statues, some of them arranged in rows while others stood alone. There were animals, as well. Tiny birds with bright plumage were singing from many of the trees, and fish with jewel-like scales swam in the ponds and streams, some of them leaping up from the water to investigate the travelers. ChibiUsa had no name for the adorable little furballs that rolled out from behind one statue to cluster around her, nosing curiously at her dress and looking up with large, liquid eyes. Not long after the small creatures had scurried into the bushes, ChibiUsa and Helios passed a majestic white stag with tall antlers of a golden brown. As they walked by the small field where it stood, the stag bowed its head with regal grace; Helios responded in kind, and ChibiUsa returned her most formal curtsey, feeling that anything less might have been an insult to such a noble creature.

A short time later, they reached their destination. Looking more closely, ChibiUsa decided that 'temple' was a good description for the complex. Like everything else she had seen, the buildings were made of pure white marble, cut and raised according to some ancient school of architecture and yet looking freshly-built. Combined with Elysium's air of peace and harmony, that timeless appearance created a sense of sanctity which would have done well at Hikawa or any other holy place ChibiUsa had ever seen.

What interested her the most were the rosebushes. A thick ring of them surrounded the entire temple, growing right up to its foundation on all sides, except for where the path led up to the stairs. The leaves of the bushes were a deep emerald green, making the roses themselves stand out all the more spectacularly.

"Your father's ancestors planted them here long ago," Helios said, noticing the direction of ChibiUsa's gaze. "The roses symbolized their love for the beauty of Elysium, and their oath to guard it."

ChibiUsa bowed her head to smell the roses, being careful to keep her hands clear of the very realistic thorns. She knew a thing or two about such plants; it was in her blood. The princess smiled at the fragrance of the roses, but as she stood, a sigh escaped her lips.

"It's all so wonderful, Helios... but..."

"...but you want to know the other reason I brought you here tonight," Helios finished. Even though her back was to him, ChibiUsa could hear the sound of the smile in his voice. "I was wondering how much longer you'd be able to restrain yourself from asking."

"I've had a few years to practice my ladylike virtues," ChibiUsa said lightly, turning around. "Is this something I ought to be sitting down to hear?"

"That might be best," Helios agreed, stepping off the path and half-extending his wings as he lowered himself to the grass outside the ring of roses. ChibiUsa sat down in front of him, folding her dress beneath her legs.

Helios thought for a moment before asking, "How much has your father told you about Elysium, Princess?"

"He said there were some things he couldn't tell me until I was older—some tradition he decided he wanted to uphold—but he told me everything else."

"Then you already know where we are."

ChibiUsa nodded. "The layer of reality shaped by the mental and emotional energy of living beings—the Astral Plane."

"That's right. Every thought and emotion experienced in the real world leaves an echo on this plane, and when they are strong enough, or repeated often enough, those thoughts and feelings take on astral forms that will persist for a time even after their creator stops generating them. These forms eventually fade, unless they find others that they can merge with, in which case they will go on for a longer time."

"That's about what Father told me," ChibiUsa said. "He said that the reason part of the Astral Plane looks like Earth all the time is because every creature that's alive on the planet recognizes its surroundings in some way, and that carries over into this plane. If one person sees a particular wall just once, it doesn't do much, but if he sees the wall every day of his life..." She let it trail off meaningfully.

"Exactly so," Helios said, nodding. "Elysium formed in the same manner many millennia ago, as people's most beautiful and vivid dreams achieved astral form and then merged with each other, and it has continued to grow. Nor is Elysium the only dream-realm."

That made ChibiUsa blink. "There are others?"

"Many others, Princess. Each of them is different, formed from a certain kind of dream. Look. I'll show you." He turned his head to the left, and ChibiUsa followed suit. Helios's golden horn glowed a little more brightly than normal, and the air in front of them shimmered, becoming a kind of window on a great silvery space. ChibiUsa looked closely, but at first she saw only an expanse of nearly unbroken grey featurelessness, empty except for countless widely-scattered points of light. Then some of those points came closer, growing into silver spheres whose outer surfaces faded to reveal what was inside.

In one sphere, she saw a realm similar in mood to Elysium, a happy, peaceful place full of light and life. Here, however, there were a great many people, all of them dwelling happily in cities of incredible beauty that made the Princess think longingly of her distant home. Instead of the simple, arboreal splendor of Elysium, the people in this dream-realm surrounded themselves with the equal beauty of the things not found in nature, the things that humans created to brighten or explain their lives. ChibiUsa saw fantastic art and cunning devices of science; she heard the words of brilliant thinkers and gifted actors; and around them swirled the ethereal chords of a beautiful symphony.

That dream slipped away, and ChibiUsa found herself seeing a realm whose beautiful landscape was marred with places of darkness, the lairs of deadly beasts and evil beings. But this place was also beautiful in its way, for great forces stood arrayed against the darkness; armies of heroic warriors guarded the land, venturing forth on quests whose toil, pains, and terrors only made the final victory sweeter. In this place, ChibiUsa saw brave knights and wise wizards, good-hearted scoundrels and pious defenders of a thousand faiths. Here, even a lowly farmboy or an ordinary schoolgirl might suddenly be caught up in a great adventure, a crusade against the darkness. Sometimes the heroes won and returned home, their tasks accomplished, their role played and done. Sometimes even the greatest heroes failed, falling into the darkness and never returning, and yet these were also triumphs of a sort, for where one hero fell, another would rise to the challenge, called on by the stories of their predecessors and the spark of adventure.

And then ChibiUsa was seeing another dream-realm, where the people all seemed to walk in pairs. Some danced together, and others sat side-by-side at ease. For some of them, the sky was bright and sunny, and for others, the moon and stars shone. There were old couples and young, there were some that started out as couples and were soon joined by children, and there were couples that separated, yet remained linked over great distances, even when one or both of them paired with another. Here, ChibiUsa realized, was a dream of love and romance, a world where everyone had that special someone who completed them, or challenged them, or gave them whatever it was that they needed most to be happy, and who received the same from them.

Helios showed her a dozen different realms in all, and as he had said, each of them differed from the rest in some important way. Each of these tremendous dreams was based around some concept, an idea that shaped and defined everything within it. For Elysium, that concept was purity—purity of form, purity of intent, purity of essence. For the realm of cities, the dream was imagination and achievement, and in the land of heroes and villains, it was adventure, and the courage to seek it. And then there was the dream of love. The more dreams that ChibiUsa saw, the clearer the importance of their central themes became.

She noticed something else as well. Though different from Elysium, the first few dreams were still beautiful in their own special ways, but as the line of dream-realms continued, the worlds ChibiUsa saw became harder and less wondrous. One dream was dominated by the notion of material wealth, and had an equal share of generous philanthropists and cold-hearted misers, and another of the realms was a place of solitude, inhabited by people who had the freedom to do whatever they wished, but who were so few and so widely scattered that they must almost never meet. The outer surfaces of these realms and those nearest them lacked the bright sheen of the earlier ones, and were instead a duller grey; beyond them, ChibiUsa saw that the color continued to dim, until on the very edge of her sight, she beheld an ominous black stain. It was tremendously distant, but it made ChibiUsa shiver.

"Helios... that dark spot..."

"It is the border," the young guardian said in a firm voice. "Beyond it lies the domain of nightmares, where Nehelenia and her minions were once imprisoned. It is one of the things I wanted you to see tonight. Look closely at the wall, and at the mists around it."

ChibiUsa did that, not without some reluctance as, in accordance with her will, the distant image drew much, much closer than could be considered comfortable. She understood from lessons with her father that the Astral Plane was shaped by all the aspects of the human mind and heart, dark as much as light. Just as every emotion had its equal and opposite, every dream-borne object or creature had its terrible, nightmare-spawned counterpart. Some wandered the mists freely, but most were drawn into the impenetrable black void far below. It was death and madness and worse for any living mind that entered.

Looking at the barrier, ChibiUsa realized with horror that it was *moving.* Rather than the smooth, immeasurably vast black wall that her father had warned her of, this was a shifting, writhing surface of things that were—in every sense of the words—the stuff of nightmares. They lashed out at the formless mists nearby, absorbing motes and wisps of the grey ether, and reaching hungrily towards the dream-spheres far above.

Reaching for her.

The princess shuddered and pulled her gaze away from the window, which Helios promptly sealed, shutting out the grey expanse of the astral, the twinkling dreams, and the black nightmares all together.

"I'm sorry," Helios apologized, reaching forward to touch the side of ChibiUsa's head with his long horse's nose. "But you needed to see that to understand."

"Understand what?" ChibiUsa asked. "Helios, what's going on? Why was it moving?"

"The events of the past few months have been having a profound impact on the Astral Plane, Princess. Dreams, nightmares, and mists have all grown increasingly active. This sort of thing happens whenever there is a particularly large degree of emotional unrest on Earth, but this time is different, and dangerous."

"How?"

With a soft flash of golden light from his crystalline horn, Helios created an image of Earth in the air. A grey mist surrounded the entire surface, light and slow-moving in some places such as the open oceans, but thick and swirling in many others that ChibiUsa knew to be the sites of cities. Where the motions were more intense, it was possible to see that the mist actually moved through a narrow envelope that mimicked the shape of the ground below, and when the globe rotated to bring Japan into view, the space above and around Tokyo was so thick with grey that the city itself could hardly be seen. What caught ChibiUsa's attention were the bright lines leading into and out of the grey overimage; they twisted and bent and *almost* connected in a way that couldn't possibly have been representing roads.

"The ley lines?" she asked in a stunned voice. "But how's that possible? Nobody can *see* them..."

"Not consciously, no, but there are other layers of the mind. Few humans can access them directly, but all perceive things that the waking mind overlooks or misinterprets. And even if people cannot see magic or do not understand how it works, many of them still believe in it. That's really all that's required."

ChibiUsa looked from Helios to the globe, and back. "Helios, if the ley lines are being reflected astrally, can they be tapped the same way?"

The guardian nodded. "Yes, they can. In its purest form, magic is the potential to be or do anything, as long as it is given proper shape and force by a command. And a command is nothing but a thought, a desire."

"A dream," ChibiUsa said quietly. "Then, if a dream comes into contact with these astral ley lines..."

On cue, a small silver sphere drifted down towards the image of Earth and touched the network of silvery lines. There was a flash of light and color, and a small portion of Tokyo was suddenly visible. Not because the astral energies around it had been dispersed, but because they had become a perfect reflection of the reality. In there, among the buildings, a small silver object was moving around.

"It has happened before," Helios said somberly, "in places with much lower levels of magic and far fewer inhabitants than Tokyo now possesses. It's one of the things I'm sworn to prevent, by collecting the living dreams and guiding them to their proper places, but even I need some time to track the dreams down. If the astral Earth remains this active, sooner or later, dreams are going to cross over before I can find them. Once they do, they'll be beyond my reach."

"What do you mean? You can still come to Earth, can't you?"

"No," Helios sighed, "I'm afraid I can't just now. The energy of the Golden Crystal nourishes dreams, and taking it into the physical world would only intensify the image of the astral Earth and make it easier for the dreams to come across."

"Oh. Then... if what you're describing starts to happen... you won't be able to help us?"

A smile appeared on the guardian's face. "I didn't say that, Princess. There are a few things I can do to aid you. Hold out your hands."

Although puzzled by the request, ChibiUsa complied and lifted her arms. Helios lowered his head, and his horn glowed anew, sending forth a golden mist that spread in all directions. Eight small white rings appeared on ChibiUsa's fingers, each band inset with a single diamond-shaped stone of sparkling golden crystal. To ChibiUsa, the rings felt so different from the material of her dress or the grass beneath her that she was sure they would still be on her hands when she woke up.

"I can find you easily enough now, Princess," Helios said, "but it would be best if I spoke to the other Senshi all at once, and it could take a long time for me to find them all. If you give one of these to each of your friends to wear to sleep tomorrow night, I'll be able to bring all of you to Elysium quickly."

ChibiUsa took a moment to look at the rings, then closed her hands and nodded. "I'll tell them." The golden glow was fading now, and she looked up.

And stopped.

As had happened before, Pegasus had disappeared back into the light of the crystal. Helios remained, unchanged from ChibiUsa's memories. In fact, kneeling on the ground as she was allowed her to look up at him from almost the same angle that she always had before.

Smiling gently, Helios held out his hands to assist ChibiUsa up from the ground. Years of training in etiquette took over, causing the princess to accept the gentlemanly offer almost on instinct. She attempted not to dwell on how smooth and warm Helios's hands were as they closed lightly around her fingers. She struggled to ignore the fact that the end result of his helping her to her feet was the two of them standing close together, holding hands. She tried very hard not to stare into his eyes, so very deep, so very close to her own. She fought valiantly to hold back the warm, rosy blush threatening to spread across her face.

This battle was being lost on all four fronts, but the effort had to count for something. Whatever that might have been, though, ChibiUsa was at a loss to say; her mind felt fuzzy in a way that had nothing to do with being asleep. The last two times—the ONLY two times—she'd stood with Helios like this, he had kissed her...

The memory of those moments and the accompanying list of reasons as to why she did *not* want to kiss Helios right now hit ChibiUsa like an Aqua Illusion, jolting her brain out of its haze.

"Helios," she began in a soft voice.

"Princess," he said, at the same moment. They both blinked, looked at one another, and then laughed, more than the little mishap was really worth. Somewhere in the midst of it, their hands parted and they stepped back from each other.

"I... should be going," ChibiUsa said, smiling nervously.

"The night is passing," Helios agreed, his expression almost perfectly matching hers.

"Alright, then." The princess dipped into a graceful curtsey. "I will see you again tonight, Helios."

"I look forward to it, your highness," the guardian replied, left hand crossed over his chest as he bowed in return.

"Aw, come on!" Tigerseye's voice suddenly called out. The princess and the priest both started and whirled around, spotting the entire Trio at the edge of the temple's clearing. Hawkseye was glancing skywards while Fisheye glared at Tiger, who ignored both of his companions and encouragingly added, "You can both do better than that!"

ChibiUsa covered her flaming face with both hands, so she missed the blush of consternation that passed across Helios's features, as well as the disciplinary smack-to-the-head which Fisheye dealt out to the annoying Tiger.

"Ow! What the heck was that for, Fish?!"

"Will you just shut up, Tiger? Honestly, we'd all be better off if that mug of yours came with a muzzle..."

"MUZZLE?! If there's anybody around here who needs a muzzle, it's you, buster!"

"And just what do you mean by that?" Fisheye demanded crossly.

"Oh, puh-leaze. That falsetto isn't fooling anybody, Fish. And I'd rather rake my claws across a blackboard than listen to that awful screech you call a laugh."

The precise identity of Fisheye's original species was a little uncertain, but if the way the knife-thrower's face swelled up in anger was any indication, blowfish seemed likely.

"Now, now," Hawkseye said, trying to defuse the situation. "Come on, you guys. Tiger, you know Fish didn't mean it with that muzzle crack, even if you do talk too much... and Fish, there's nothing wrong with having a high-pitched voice..."

The other two were on him in a flash, with the intensity of piranhas on meat. Several Elysian animals poked their heads out of the trees and the bushes to see what all the ruckus was about, while Helios shook his head in dismay and ChibiUsa sweatdropped.

"I think I should go now," the princess said.

"That would probably be best," Helios agreed. They smiled at one another, and ChibiUsa waved with one hand as her dream-form began to fade.

"Good luck," she mouthed silently, with a final glance at the whirling dustball that was the feuding Trio. Then she was gone. Helios stood there for a time, just looking at the space where the alizarin-eyed princess had been.

"It's done," he said at last. "They'll be here as you asked."

A woman had appeared to Helios's right. Half a head shorter than the guardian, she had such perfectly white skin and was so impossibly slender that she seemed to be formed of whispers and moonlight. Pale silvery locks fell lightly about her shoulders and down her back, the ends waving in the Elysian breeze along with the loose folds of her grey robe, which looked as if it just might weigh more than its owner. The woman's eyes had no color between the dark pupils and the clear whites except for the kind of bright sheen one finds on a crystal or in a single drop of water.

"Thank you, Helios," she said, as one delicate hand came to rest upon the young man's shoulder. "I know how difficult this was—and will be—for you."

"It's alright, milady. I can survive some discomfort over the letter of my oaths, as long as I'm able to obey the spirit of them."

"And it doesn't hurt that you can see your little princess again in the bargain, does it?" she asked with an arch smile, eyes glowing with affectionate humor. Helios blushed again, and his companion chuckled. "Ah, well. I always knew you'd leave me for a younger woman. Now," she continued briskly, linking her arm with his, "let's get your friends settled down and put them to work. Elysium will have to look its best for tonight; it's not often that we play host to living goddesses."

When ChibiUsa regained a measure of consciousness, the first thing she noticed was the cool, hard metal of the rings. She'd turned at some point in her sleep so that her head half-rested on one hand, and the stones of the rings on that hand were pressing into her cheek. It didn't really hurt -whatever the gems were made of, their edges seemed smooth and blunted—but it was hardly comfortable, and she was already sitting up with a disgruntled groan before she remembered what the rings were. She held out one hand at gazed at it sleepy-eyed, smiling in the dimness of the bedroom. Next to her, Usagi was still snoozing, and Luna as well.

"Did you have a nice dream?" a voice that sounded like Ami's asked in a glum tone.

"Guh?" Looking around, ChibiUsa saw an angry little blue-eyed girl in fluffy pajamas sitting next to the bed, hunched forward with her chin resting on her hands and her face screwed into a pouty expression. "Caly? What's wrong?"

"Hmmph," the Nereid said. "Rei's big dumb raven made me look like an idiot by hiding around the house all day yesterday without my noticing, and now *you* go traipsing off into the Astral Plane without telling anyone and come back wearing things that absolutely *burn* with psychic energy. Meanwhile, some juvenile female member of a species that I don't recognize—but am assuming to be dryad—wanders through the Dimension Door and tucks herself into bed with Mako-chan." In a moody voice, she added, "I hate it when people think of things before I do."

ChibiUsa blinked sleepily. "You said what?"

_…_…_

SAILOR SAYS:

(It is nighttime in Makoto's apartment. Nobody is around except for the tree, the flowers, and the little dryad-girl, who is watching the tree that is her brother-self. The tree begins to 'speak', rustling and creaking and making the occasional sharp scratching click by striking branches together, and the dryad listens intently, nodding every now and then and humming thoughtfully after particularly intense bouts of sound. When the tree finishes, the dryad gets a look of profound amazement on her face and then grins, applauding in admiration. Her tree rustles again, giving off a sense of not-so-humble acceptance of the praise.)

(The camera pans left, revealing that Artemis—as Arthur—and Haruka have been watching the entire thing. Haruka glances at her companion, who is nodding sagely, as if the rattling tree had just divulged one of the great secrets of the cosmos.)

Haruka: Don't even *try* to pretend that you understood that.

(Fade to black.)

18/06/03

What's this? Helios with another woman? Ooooh, he must die...

As it happens, THIS time I at least have a partial good reason for the delay. I spent a couple of weeks writing up the first chapters in a "short" Escaflowne-fic that's been taking up space in my mind for some time now. It'll be up on when it's complete, if anyone's interested.

Imminent if not sooner:
—Who's the mystery woman?;
—How much trouble can Artemis and Haruka get into together?; and
—I promise and swear, Mamoru is going to appear for one episode VERY soon.