As the pair of them ran to school, Trevor found himself wondering about the traffic jam that he and Usagi were passing by on their way to class this morning. He'd never seen traffic this bad before, and even as they turned away from the traffic clogging the streets, Trevor found himself wondering what could have happened. He wondered if there was an accident, or if it was something that Nephrite or Zoisite had done.

He'd have probably known sooner if it was either of them, though.

As it turned out, however, there was a police checkpoint that was keeping traffic from going as fast as it otherwise would have.

"That's strange," he said, looking at the barricades that had been set up in the middle of the street.

"Yeah, I wonder what's going on?" Usagi said, as the pair of them continued on their way to school.

Before either he or Usagi could begin to speculate about what might be going on – what might have brought all of these police and their barricades to this street in Juban – the pair of them ran into Naru-san. She seemed down about something, posture listless and eyes staring forward at nothing in particular; he and Usagi shared a speaking glance, before taking up positions on either side of her, both offering what comfort they could.

"What's wrong. Naru-chan?" Usagi asked, as Trevor himself reached out to lay a gentle hand on her right shoulder as the three of them continued on their way to school for the morning; Naru-san didn't say anything.

"Come on, we should get to school before we're late," he said, as Naru-san leaned into the arm he'd draped around her shoulders to help hold her up.

He hoped she was going to be all right, but there was no real way of telling; not unless she decided to talk to them about it, anyway.

When he, Usagi, and Naru-san all made it to school for the day, Trevor settled down at his desk, keeping an eye on Naru-san in between working on his own schoolwork. Umino-san showed up, and it turned out that he actually knew why the police-checkpoint they'd all passed had been set up in the first place. Apparently, the First Princess of some place called the Kingdom of Diamonds had come to Juban, and the Police were just one more part of the security that she and her family had brought with them; they were going to be holding some kind of a celebration tonight at their embassy, as well as revealing some kind of treasure that they'd brought from their kingdom.

Naru-san, whose mother owned the OSA-P jewelry store and had hence received a special invitation to the celebration, offered to tell him and Usagi about everything that happened during the celebration. Usagi, for her part, seemed more than a little distressed to be missing the celebration, and for a long moment Trevor wished that he could comfort her. Still, he'd have time to talk to her once their first break came around.

~SM~

Sighing as she headed outside with Trevor-nii and Naru-chan, Usagi couldn't help wondering about the party Naru-chan had been talking about. She wondered what it would be like to go there; what kind of food they'd have, what kind of people would be there, what they would all be doing while they were there, and just what kind of treasure they were going to be revealing at the party. She didn't have much time to wonder about that kind of thing, though, since the next thing she knew she, Naru-chan, and Trevor-nii had been knocked off their feet.

Before she could even climb back to her feet, Usagi found herself watching in terror as Zoisite stomped on Trevor-nii's neck until he stopped moving, grabbed him by his hair, and then vanished with only a cruel smile on his face.

Shaking all over, Usagi forced herself back to her feet, staring hopelessly at the spot where her older brother had been laying before Zoisite took him away. Naru-chan didn't seem to have seen what had happened to Trevor-nii, since she just seemed to be confused about everything. She was a bit worried once she realized that Trevor-nii was gone, but no one else seemed to have noticed what had happened.

At least, no one who seemed to be willing to say anything, anyway.

~SM~

Dragging the troublesome schoolboy across the room where that arrogant Nephrite spent so much time, Zoisite gagged the brat, lashed him to a pair of sturdy pillars, then pulled off that black jacket of his and threw it to the floor. Calling up one of the youma who served under him, Zoisite grabbed a thorned whip out of her hand, and applied it firmly and vigorously to the schoolboy's chest and lower torso.

Grinning as he heard the schoolboy screaming into the gag, saw those muddy brown eyes of his wide with fear, Zoisite laughed.

"Did you really think I'd let you get away, after you and those Sailor Guardians of yours nearly damaged one of my beautiful hands?!"

Continuing, until he'd torn the schoolboy's white undershirt to ribbons and soaked it in the brat's blood, Zoisite made his way over to the panting, weakly writhing form of the schoolboy they'd been chasing for so long. Pulling off the shredded undershirt, he grabbed the black uniform jacket he'd previously pulled from the schoolboy, letting fresh blood drip down onto it.

"What are you doing, Zoisite?" Nephrite's arrogant voice demanded.

His hand clenched briefly in the schoolboy's short hair, annoyed to find Nephrite showing up so quickly.

"Don't you have another mission from Queen Beryl?" he snapped, stepping slightly away from the schoolboy he'd captured, even as blood continued dripping down onto his black jacket.

"As a matter of fact, I do," Nephrite said, eyes narrowing in clear distain. "However, I asked what you were doing here. Your task was to capture the schoolboy, and it's beginning to look like you intend to kill him."

"What would you care?" Zoisite snapped, folding his arms as he kicked the schoolboy's blood soaked black coat up into his hands again. "Queen Beryl's going to kill him anyway."

"Yes, after she drains the last of his energy," Nephrite said, sounding as annoyingly high-handed as he ever had. "If he dies before Queen Beryl manages to harvest his energy, I highly doubt you'll survive her punishment."

Growling deep in his throat, Zoisite turned on his heel to exit the building; to leave the schoolboy's blood stained jacket out where the Sailor Guardians would see it, so they would know how deeply they had failed the boy who followed in their wake.

~SM~

She'd been the one to call the other Sailor Senshi to Rei-chan's shrine, and even the fact that Mamoru-baka had come there too didn't mean as much as the fact that she'd been forced to watch Zoisite drag Trevor-nii away from one of the places where she'd actually felt safe, and she hadn't even been able to do anything about that.

"So, they're even invading our school now," Ami-chan said, shuddering. "I didn't think the Dark Kingdom would go that far."

"It might just be that Zoisite went rogue," Rei-chan said, narrowing her eyes. "He did try to kidnap Trevor-kun right out of the hands of those two youma last time."

"It is beginning to sound like Zoisite and Nephrite are rivals, if not actively working against each other," Mamoru-baka said. "Either way, we're going to have to split our forces to deal with this: the Dark Kingdom is clearly going to send someone after that treasure that the Kingdom of Diamonds is planning to reveal tonight."

"Yes, that's true," Luna-sensei said. "There's also the matter of just how we're going to spit up our forces, too."

"I'm going after Trevor-nii," she said, standing up before anyone else could say anything more.

"Of course, Usagi-chan, we won't stop you," Rei-chan said, patting her on the right shoulder. "We just have to decide who'd going to go with you."

"I think I should go with her," Mamoru-baka, of all people, said standing up next to her. "It sounds like Trevor-kohai was injured when Zoisite kidnapped him, and I'm the only other person here who can heal him if he needs it."

Huffing a sigh, knowing that she couldn't really argue with what Mamoru-baka was saying but not particularly happy about it, Usagi turned her attention back to Luna-sensei and the other two Sailor Senshi.

"Yeah, I think Ami-chan and I should see what's going on with that treasure from the Kingdom of Diamonds, while you and Mamoru-kun go help Trevor-kun," Rei-chan said, standing with the rest of them.

"Thank you, everyone," Usagi said, smiling at all the rest of her friends; even Mamoru-baka, since even he wasn't being nearly as much of a jerk as he'd been all the other times she'd been forced to work with him. I just hope we're not too late.

"Trevor-kun will be all right, Usagi-chan," Mamoru-baka said, and Usagi realized that she'd actually said that last part, instead of just thinking it the way she'd been trying to do. "He's strong."

"I know," she said, trying to put on a brave face, for all that she was scared of what might be happening to Trevor-nii while they were all making plans to rescue him. "Thank you."

~SM~

With that arrogant Nephrite gone, Zoisite took the bloodied black jacket that he'd taken off the schoolboy and returned to one of the previous battlefields where the Sailor Guardians had fought. The exact one where the three of them had previously clashed, in fact: the one where he would have been able to take possession of the schoolboy, if not for the interference of Nephrite's own idiotic youma. The jacket, then, would be his reminder of their failure.

When he returned to the mansion that Nephrite had been using to shelter himself from the Sailor Guardians while he was conducting his various failed operations, Zoisite stopped short as he found his beloved Kunzite standing before the pillars where he'd tied the schoolboy up so that he wouldn't have the chance to escape before Zoisite delivered him to Queen Beryl.

"I'm impressed," Kunzite said, a warm smile on his lovely face. "You've done very well for yourself, Zoisite."

"I'm so glad you think so, Master Kunzite," he said, feeling his face warm up, even as he made his way over to lay his head on Master Kunzite's left arm.

The schoolboy's chin was cradled in his right, and he seemed to have been examining him. Master Kunzite had always been curious, even about things outside the Dark Kingdom. Smiling as Master Kunzite kissed him gently on the top of his head, Zoisite turned to look up at him when Master Kunzite hummed softly in thought.

"What is it, Master Kunzite?" he asked.

"It seems rather interesting, how much this boy resembles Jadeite, don't you think?" Master Kunzite asked, looking back up at the schoolboy for a long moment, before turning his beautiful, pale eyes back to look at Zoisite again.

"I guess," he said, smiling softly as he leaned into Master Kunzite's embrace.

Zoisite supposed that he could see it, though the schoolboy did have darker skin and far darker hair than Jadeite possessed. As Master Kunzite took the schoolboy down from where Zoisite had restrained him, Zoisite recoiled as he saw the hideous scarring all over the schoolboy's back.

~SM~

"I'm impressed he managed to survive such injuries," he found himself saying, running his right hand over the mottled burn scars – what seemed to be the aftermath of charring – covering the entirety of the schoolboy's back.

He hadn't expected to find such strength in the child that Queen Beryl had been hunting unsuccessfully for so long, and yet perhaps it was that very strength that had allowed him to live free from the Dark Kingdom for such a long time. Yes, it was clear that living under the Sailor Guardians' protection had aided him in that, but Kunzite still found himself curious as to just how well the schoolboy would have been able to survive it. He also wondered just how the schoolboy would survive under the Dark Kingdom.

It was possible that the schoolboy would manage to survive, even with his energy steadily being drained as Queen Beryl intended to do, and Kunzite wondered what would happen in that case.

~SM~

With the information that Rei-chan had given to them from her fire-reading, he and Usagi-chan had been able to locate the mansion deep in the forested hills beyond the very edges of the built-up sections of Juuban. Seeing it in Rei-chan's fire had been strange enough, but finding it sitting in the middle of a dark forest, on a hill that he hadn't realized had even existed before he'd found himself climbing it, was even stranger.

"This place is scary," Usagi said, as the pair of them continued on their way through the forest, closing in on the old mansion where Rei-chan had managed to locate Trevor-kohai. "I hope Trevor-nii's all right."

"I'm sure he'll be fine," he said, as the pair of them continued on their way through the dark forest, up to the door of what merely seemed to be an empty mansion.

Mamoru had a bad feeling himself, as he and Usagi-chan made their way up to the double-doors of the mansion, but since he didn't want to give Usagi-chan any more reasons to panic than she clearly thought she already had. He had a feeling that Trevor-kohai would have been doing just the same if it had been him out here with her. Mamoru had had to bite down on his tongue a few times, when he'd found himself about to say something that would have probably gotten the both of them into an argument.

Without Trevor-kohai present to smooth over any friction in their interactions, Mamoru needed to handle those kind of things himself; it wasn't easy, but he was trying, and he was determined to do better than he ever had.

When the pair of them kicked down the front doors of the mansion, inevitably drawing the attention of whoever was currently inside, Mamoru quickly found himself forced to duck as something fast and bright went blasting over his head.

"Zoisite, go!"

~SM~

Throwing herself forward as soon as she'd caught sight of Trevor-nii, Usagi almost didn't see Zoisite at all, but he tried to pull Trevor-nii away before she'd even landed.

"Get away from him!"

"Zoi!" Zoisite shouted back, blasting a wave of what seemed to be sakura petals at her.

Usagi leaped sideways out of the way, even as she caught sight of Trevor-nii beginning to wake up. His jacket and undershirt were both missing, and Usagi forced the thoughts of what Zoisite or Nephrite might have been doing to him while they'd held him prisoner in this scary mansion out of her mind. When Trevor-nii managed to transform into Golden Kamen again, slicing through whatever had been tied over his mouth with one of the yellow roses that he'd used so many times before, Usagi sighed in relief as the pair of them stood next to each other.

She didn't have time to do much more than that, not with Zoisite and someone else named Kunzite attacking them, but with Trevor-nii back at her side, and even Mamoru-baka to help her, Usagi felt a lot better about everything that was going on. Once the three of them had managed to retreat from the scary mansion where Zoisite had taken Trevor-nii when he'd captured her older brother just that morning, Usagi leaned into Trevor-nii's right side as Mamoru-baka contacted the other Sailor Senshi.

"Tuxedo Kamen, how did things go?" Rei-chan asked, as soon as Mamoru-baka had activated the communicator Ami-chan had given him.

"Sailor Moon and I managed to rescue Golden Kamen," he said, and she and Trevor-nii both made their way over to where he was standing. "What happened with you and Sailor Mercury?"

"We managed to stop Nephrite from stealing the Royal Treasure of the Diamond Kingdom, but it doesn't seem like it has anything to do with the Moon Princess or the Silver Crystal," Rei-chan said, looking like she was thinking hard about everything that had just happened to her and Ami-chan. "At least, Luna-sensei didn't seem to recognize it."

"I guess we'll have to talk to her about that ourselves, when we get back," Usagi said, making her way over to where Tuxedo Kamen was standing.

"Yeah," Rei-chan said, nodding. "We'll meet up at the usual place to talk."

"Right," she, Trevor-nii, and Mamoru-baka all said together, as Rei-chan disconnected and the three of them hurried away from the mansion where Trevor-nii had been held captive for nearly the whole day.

She was glad that she'd been able to rescue Trevor-nii, even if she had been forced to work with Mamoru-baka to do it.

~SM~

It was troublesome, but even with a mere two Sailor Guardians working against him, he hadn't been able to complete his mission. Still, it seemed as though the treasure he and the Sailor Guardians had been pursuing had not been the legendary Silver Crystal that their two sides were searching for. Queen Beryl would hardly be pleased when he reported back to her, so Nephrite figured he might as well get things over with.

Teleporting back to the Dark Kingdom, Nephrite could only hope that he would survive Queen Beryl's fury once again.