The knowledge that, for all the power Queen Beryl had given them, he and Ikaros had not yet managed to retake the Silver Crystal from Sailor Moon or to defeat the Sailor Guardians as a whole, could not be anything less than infuriating. Still, Endymion was determined to find at least some way to defeat the Sailor Guardians, not only because Queen Beryl wished for them to be destroyed, but because they were a threat to Ikaros. And Sailor Moon herself was clearly the most determined, and the most directly threatening.

With all of that in mind, Endymion turned his attention back to Ikaros' training; if nothing else, he was going to make sure that the scholar would be able to protect himself, the next time they clashed with the Sailor Guardians.

~SM~

As she made her way down to the living room for another weekend morning – another morning without Trevor-nii back home – Usagi sighed as she found herself watching figure skating with Mina-chan in an effort to take her mind off of everything that had happened. Everything that was still happening, really.

"Cheer up, Usagi-chan," Mina-chan said, smiling brightly. "We'll get Mamoru-kun and Trevor-kun back again."

"I hope so," she muttered, trying to force her attention back to the pair skating on the TV.

She couldn't remember much about either of them, but Usagi would have been the first to admit that she wasn't paying all that much attention in the first place. The feel of a paw on her right knee brought Usagi's attention to the happily resting forms of Luna-sensei and Artemis-sensei, both of them loosely curled up and purring. The both of them started talking about how much the people who had lived in the Moon Kingdom enjoyed figure skating.

Artemis-sensei also mentioned how good Princess Serenity was at figure skating, and Usagi smiled softly at the thought of how hard the both of them were working to try to cheer her up; Usagi was just sorry that it wasn't working, but she tried as hard as she could to smile, all the same.

~SM~

When he and Endymion had met up with the DD Girls again, Ikaros found himself more than a little surprised to be introduced to a new pair of youma. Naturally, Endymion was the one who took charge of handling them, leaving Ikaros to wonder just what all of this was all, ultimately, in service of. He understood that Queen Beryl desired the return of the Silver Crystal after Sailor Moon had stolen it from her, but he still didn't understand why she was so determined to attack Sailor Moon to get it.

Even in spite of the attack that she had made on him – the attack that he couldn't seem to remember, and Endymion didn't seem to want to forget – Sailor Moon still seemed to be a reasonable sort of person, even if he didn't fully understand the sadness in her eyes every time the pair of them met. And, sometimes Ikaros found himself wondering just why they only met in combat to begin with. Still, Ikaros knew better than to bring those kinds of things up.

Endymion was too concerned with Ikaros' own wellbeing to take things like that into account, and Queen Beryl was far too determined to have her property back to consider any other ideas.

~SM~

When the fire of them went back to the Hikawa Shrine again, Makoto found herself wondering again just how Usagi-chan was doing. The other girl seemed just as cheerful as ever, but Makoto also knew that Usagi was just the kind of person who didn't want people to worry about her and so would naturally try to make it seem like she was doing fine, if not feeling as good as she usually did. So, Makoto promised herself that she would try as hard as she could, both to make sure that Usagi-chan really was doing all right, and to help the younger girl recover.

And Makoto also knew that the best way to help Usagi-chan recover from the loss of her brother and Mamoru-kun was to help get them back.

Moving to stand at Usagi-chan's side, Makoto put her right hand on Usagi-chan's shoulder, smiling widely to bring the other girl's spirits up.

"We'll find a way to bring them home, Usagi-chan," she said, as the pair of them made their way into the inner, more heavily-warded areas of the shrine grounds.

"Yeah," Usagi-chan said, smiling in the same kind of way that Makoto had seen so many times in the mirror, those times after she'd just had her heart broken. "I know we will."

Patting Usagi-chan's shoulder, Makoto sighed softly as they all made their way into the building. There was clearly a lot more that she was going to have to do, to make Usagi-chan feel better and keep her from falling into the same, deep pits of misery that Makoto had found herself in, just after those times when she'd had her heart broken. Talking with Kunzite-kun and the three other men they'd rescued from the Dark Kingdom, she found that the four of them had been going over their own ideas to help rescue Mamoru-kun from Beryl and the Dark Kingdom.

Trevor-kun seemed to be kind of an afterthought to them, though since the four of them had barely met him – and even then, he'd only been a target to any of them – Makoto didn't think any less of them for it, and it didn't seem like Usagi-chan did, either.

~SM~

She'd been making a round of the warded areas of the shrine, checking to make sure that the wards she and Grandpa had created and put up together were still working properly, and also to see if there were any improvements that the two of them could make. Some way to not only keep the Dark Kingdom from spying on them or teleporting youma in to attack them, but to find a way to determine where the Dark Kingdom might attack next before they did.

Rei was just glad – as glad as she could be, at least – that the Dark Kingdom seemed to be focusing their attention in Juuban, since at least gave them a smaller area to keep an eye out for attacks in.

Once she'd finished making her rounds of the Hikawa Shrine's grounds, Rei ducked back into the heaviest-warded building, smiling softly as she caught sight of the rest of the Sailor Senshi. She was glad to see that the rest of the Sailor Senshi had clearly seen that Usagi-chan wasn't feeling nearly as good as she was trying to make them all think, and all of them were each trying to make her feel better in their own unique ways.

"How are things on the outside?" Kunzite-kun asked, nearly as soon as Rei had made her way back inside the building.

"The wards are holding up well, but there might be some improvements that can be made," Rei said, settling herself down at the table where the rest of the Sailor Senshi and Kunzite-kun and his other three friends were seated around.

"What kind of improvements did you have in mind?" Nephrite-kun asked.

However, before anyone could say so much as another word, the sound of the bells that she and Grandpa had set to go off when forces from the Dark Kingdom launched one of their attacks started going off. Blowing out a breath that even she wasn't quite sure was a sigh or a laugh, Rei stood up with the other Sailor Senshi and began making her way out of the building and then out to the shrine grounds as a whole. The sound of the bells was getting louder, and as the nine of them emerged from the building, Rei found herself confronting the sight of a youma that looked eerily like a white-feathered owl woman.

The sight of another youma, this one resembling some kind of firebird – in the same way that the first had resembled a strange owl – drew Rei's attention quickly, and she quickly transformed alongside the rest of the Sailor Senshi.

"Don't worry," Rei said, catching sight of the expression on Usagi-chan's face. "You'll be all right, and we will find a way to get them back."

"I just wish we could do it sooner, Rei-chan," Usagi-chan said, looking up at the two youma attacking them, even as she pulled out the Moon Stick and looked at it for a moment.

~SM~

As he and Endymion moved closer to the compound that the Sailor Guardians had fortified for their own use, Ikaros found himself wondering if either of the youma that had volunteered for this mission would have the chance to return to the Dark Kingdom again. Yes, the DD Girls had personally recommended the pair of them for this very mission, but Ikaros still found himself wondering. He still found himself worrying.

The Sailor Guardians, as curious as Ikaros had often found himself about them, were still avowed and dangerous enemies of the Dark Kingdom and all of the youma who served them.

Glancing over at Endymion, as the pair of them searched for a way to enter the compound, Ikaros found the other man pausing for a long moment to study the markings on the wall in front of them. The Sailor Guardians had been drawn off by the pair of youma who had either volunteered or been volunteered for this mission, and Ikaros forced his attention away from the thoughts of what might have been happening to them. He had to focus; Endymion would have told him that he had to focus, if he hadn't already been so focused on his own part of their mission.

The sound of footsteps, quickly approaching from far closer and from a different direction than the pair of youma who had come to this place alongside him and Endymion, drew Ikaros' attention to the group of four men approaching. The one standing to the right of the man standing at the forefront of the group seemed to want to speak, but the seeming leader of the group quickly hushed him, and the four of them moved to attack.

Ikaros quickly found himself under attack from both the long-haired and the short-haired blonds in the group, though he couldn't help but notice that neither of them seemed any more eager for this battle than Ikaros had been finding himself. Though the veritable cloud of energized, pink petals swirling around the three of them, Ikaros caught sight of Endymion and the pair of men fighting him. Neither of them seemed to me any more eager to fight than the blonds that Ikaros had found himself set against.

He wondered again why that was, and was once again forced to set his curiosity aside as he and the two blonds clashed again.

~SM~

Endymion could see it, the way that Ikaros' hesitation had become more and more pronounced the longer the battle they had been forced into dragged on. And, when Sailor Moon herself tried to intervene, that hesitation and clear uncertainty only became more pronounced. The look of clear satisfaction on Sailor Moon's face, as she prepared that strange and terrible weapon of hers, brought a brief snarl to his face even as Endymion pulled Ikaros back and through a portal that led the two of them back to Beryl's throne room again.

Sending Ikaros back to his quarters, Endymion turned to speak with Queen Beryl. He might not have fully trusted the woman, but it was becoming more and more obvious that something Sailor Moon had done to Ikaros was still affecting the scholar.

"Yes, it truly does seem that the boy is in need of reassurance," Queen Beryl said, once he'd managed to explain what he'd seen, and what it seemed to mean. "Leave him to me, Endymion."

"Thank you," Endymion allowed himself to say, as Queen Beryl reached out to clasp his right shoulder.