[FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 6 [Dark/Comedy]

[Paul Durant]

   Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and the DARK.MATTER
setting was written by Wolfgang Baur and Monte Cook. I own neither of
these things, and expect that if either of those last two people
Google their own names they are going to be incredibly confused.



* * * * *



   As little as they may like it and as little sense as it makes, the
Senshi have school today. Things are returning to normal in the Juuban
district and while that doesn't mean there are no monsters attacking,
it does mean everyone is ignoring them. Rei, Minako, Usagi, Ami,
Mamoru, and Chibi-Usa all left the Hikawa Shrine operating on five
hours or less of sleep. Haruka and Michiru, however, got to sleep in
and meander on out to the bus stop after a full night's rest; having
one's school explode three times in a 24-hour period has its perks.


   "I still don't trust her." Haruka played with her collar, trying to
work out the crease she'd made when she slept on it last night. "You
saw how easily she gave up the Chalice, and it's not like that was
what caused Sailor Saturn to arrive, or the Pharaoh to be stopped. If
it's taken control of Pluto the way it did the others, all it has to
do is threaten to hurt her and Sailor Moon will open the gates of Hell
herself."


   "She's still a kid," said Michiru. Her hair was matted and lopsided
and she was trying not to notice it until she could get back home and
in her own bathroom. "She doesn't want to acknowledge that she can't
save everyone all the time. And we don't have to trust her fully, but
there's no reason we can't make use of her as a resource."  She
stopped to roll her neck back and forth and hear the bones crackle.
"As long as we don't give her the opportunity to do something idiotic
like that again, anyway."


   Haruka sighed, shifted her weight from her tiptoes to her heels and
back. "I know, I know. It's just something about her makes me want to
punch her, you know? That way she acts like, like 'of course the
easiest answer to arrive at is the correct one! I'd rather everyone on
Earth be killed than me have to compromise my middle-school vision of
morality!' And then we're the bad guys for not having our heads off in
the clouds."


   "Wow, somebody's cranky this morning." Haruka rolled her eyes at
Michiru and scoffed. "Besides, you can't really hold too much of that
against her. She is the reincarnated princess of a beautiful magical
kingdom on the moon, you'd expect a certain level of childish idealism
from someone with that background."


   Haruka looked around the street for any sign of the bus they were
waiting for. "Okay, this bus isn't going to come. After all we've
done, I don't think a little walk is going to hurt us too much."


   "And I was just saying to myself that I needed more pointless,
impatient exercise."


   The day was brisk but not cold, the winter air clean and crisp. The
two lovers did not dawdle, but did not rush, there was not a whole lot
they could hurry up and do. They continued their conversation, less to
convey information and more to keep each other's mind off what was
happening and they feared they couldn't stop.


   "Yeah, well, for the whole 'beautiful moon kingdom' thing, I
wouldn't say the ref's made his call on that one just yet. Setsuna
still hasn't explained to me how they have a Sailor Pluto when Pluto
wasn't discovered until, what, 1920? Or how they knew that Uranus and
Neptune would be the Roman gods of the sea and sky before Rome existed
to come up with those myths. Or how you and me were even supposed to
have kingdoms on planets made out of gas."


   "You haven't guessed?" Michiru half-smiled. "The answers are time
travel, time travel, and..." she spread her fingers out and waved them
back and forth, "...maaagic!"


   Haruka chuckled in spite of herself. "Well, now we know why they
never made a 'Trivial Pursuit: Silver Millennium Edition', there were
only the three possible answers to everything."


   "What's the third?"


   Haruka stopped dead in her tracks. "Is that..." She squinted, then
broke into a sprint. "It IS! It's my CAR!"


   In front of them, parallel-parked between a Hyundai and a Volvo,
its left front wheel riding over the curb, was the canary-yellow 1967
Toyota 2000GT open-top.


   "Haruka! WAIT!" called Michiru, and she jumped after her lover to
stop her before she reached the car. She caught Haruka by the neck and
didn't take her to the ground, but stopped her advance. "Cars aren't
dogs that find their way home. Someone left this here. It could have a
tracking device... or a bomb."


   "I know, I know that!" said Haruka, shrugging off Michiru's hold.
"Did you think I was going to just jump in and do donuts in the middle
of the street?" She paused and couldn't suppress a smile. "I'm just
happy to know that, whatever else, whoever took it at least didn't
wreck it up."


   "Because that would be like defacing a national treasure."


   "Exactly."


   Haruka leaned over the door and inspected the car's interior.
"Okay, someone left some plastic shrinkwrap, a sock, and... a rifle
bullet on the floor in the backseat... but everything  on the
dashboard and steering column are intact, so if they put anything in,
it wasn't through there..." She paused, hand on her chin, then pulled
the hood release lever. The hood opened up, nothing exploded.


   Haruka walked around the car to inspect its open front end. "Okay,
I don't see any foreign objects attached to anything... let me get a
closer look. She leaned in over the engine block, examined it a few
moments, then inhaled deeply through her nose, visibly relishing the
scent of oil and gasoline.


   "You know, Haruka, if you aren't careful I might get the idea you
love that car more than me."


   Haruka patted the radiator like it was an infant to be consoled.
"There there, baby. Don't listen to her. She's just jealous."


* * * SAILOR.MOON: DOUBLE EXPOSURE


CHAPTER 6: DOUBLE TAKE * * *


HIKAWA SHRINE GUEST ROOM
TOKYO, JAPAN MONDAY FEBRUARY 21, 1995 9:58 AM


   Nadine pulled the pillow out from underneath her head and threw it
at Itohiro Nakami's head, he swatted it away easily. "Good freaking
morning to you too, Nakami!"


   Phil raised his head and looked around, despite the fact he was
blindfolded. "Buh? Nakami here?"


   Nadine saw Nakami put his hands on his hips and roll his eyes, but
the Nakami Hotaru saw didn't have the visible pupils required for such
a gesture. "Yeah, he's here, and he's brought all his people skills
with him."


   "Good. Tell 'im I hate him." With that, Phil's face fell back down
into the pillow like a twenty-pound ball of lead.


   "Nakami, Phil says he hates you."


   Nakami let out an exasperated sigh. "Yeah, I heard him! What the
Hell have you people been doing down here, people are saying there's
attacks going on, some kind of sickness that makes people crazy,
terrorists or monsters or terrorist monsters, they almost diverted my
flight to Okinawa! And what is up with all these lights?"


   Nadine looked at the lamp behind her and winced at the bright
light. "Tomoe Hotaru collects antique lamps, we don't have the money
for floodlights," she yawned so wide she thought she would unhinge her
jaw, "and there may be people around here who can walk through
shadows. I'd love to see your better plan."


   Nakami looked to Nadine like he was going to say something else,
but thought better of it. Hotaru doesn't know how to read alien body
language. "Tomoe Hotaru, the girl... is she safe?"


   "No, she's with us." Nadine pointed behind her. "That's Sailor
Saturn right over there."


   Nakami paused. "Who's... Sailor Saturn?"


   Nadine cocked an eyebrow. "Tomoe Hotaru is. The girl? You know, the
thirteen-year-old you wanted us to recruit because she can heal with a
touch and do, like, badass kung-fu flips with a magic scythe?"


   Hotaru was still too surprised at the alien in the room to be
surprised by the fact Nadine used the word 'recruit' and not
'dissect'. Nakami blinked several times and put on an expression of
supreme disbelief. "Donna told me that the girl encountered a demon
named Isci ba Fan and that she was able to shake off his control.
Where is this magic scythe stuff coming from?"


   "From Saturn? I guess?" Now Nadine was confused too. "Wait, you're
telling me you didn't know about this?"


   "How could I possibly know about this? All I knew was that she
resisted the attacks of the most powerful psionic entity on the
planet, nobody ever told me about anything else!"


   "We all figured that that was some clue to tell you that she was a
magical space warrior!" She sat up now, waving her hands for emphasis.
"It makes sense to tell us to recruit a magical space warrior! You
seriously were going to tell us to hire a thirteen-year-old girl that
you DIDN'T know came with magic powers?"


   "She fought off Isci ba Fan's mental assault! That's more than
enough to say she's exemplary!"


   "Who in the hell is Isci ba Fan? And how did you know she..." Here
Donna turned around to point at Hotaru for emphasis, and saw her eyes
were open. "Oh. You're awake. Tomoe Hotaru, this is Itohiro Nakami,
Director of the Hoffmann Institute. Itohiro Nakami, this is Tomoe
Hotaru, Sailor of the, uh, Saturn."


   "That isn't his name," said Hotaru. "He's trying to fool you. He's
an alien."


   Nakami looked shocked and took a step back. "Why did you --" He cut
himself off, then started again in a more even tone. "Is there
anywhere I could speak to Tomoe-san in private?"


   "Oh come off it, Nakami, everyone at the Institute knows you're an
alien already." Nadine rolled her eyes. "You don't need to keep
pretending when we're around."


   Nakami blinked and was, for several seconds, at a loss for words.
Finally he stepped into the room and slid the door closed behind him,
as if that would insulate the noise. "How did you know?" he whispered.


   "Let's see. You've got the patents to, what, five different
technologies used in every American home and yet we're always broke
because you have absolutely no idea what they are worth when you sell
the licenses off?"


   Phil spoke, his voice half-muffled by the pillow. "You say you're
from Japan and yet the only way you can get us a safe house is to call
ahead and tell some old man we're shooting a TV special here?"


   Bill rose his finger in the air but didn't get up. "You listen to
nothing but Vivaldi and yet you've never insulted another person's
taste in music." He let his hand drop to his chest. "Human beings
don't act like that."


   "Nobody ever sees you eat, you wear the same clothes every day and
yet you never can have anything in your pockets, your sweat smells
like magnesium and peaches..." Nadine had six fingers extended,
counting the items of the list. "Oh! And as we can smell here, you can
cannonball entire bottles of Smirnoff without flinching and you do it
often enough that you must think it impresses us instead of making
people think you're a drunkard. Should we go on?"


   "Okay, okay, I get it, keep your voices down!" Nakami hissed. "The
illusion was good enough to get me on a plane over here so let's not
all go ruining it now!" Hotaru couldn't believe nobody mentioned the
obvious, that he was a little grey man with a big oblong head and huge
black oval eyes.


   Nakami paused and rubbed his temples, then looked at Hotaru. "Okay.
I am an alien. And apparently not as good at hiding as a human as I
thought. But I'm the good kind of alien, the kind of alien that helps
people who are being hurt by the bad kinds of aliens, and who teaches
the Raytheon corporation how to make a microwave oven. And I need to
talk to you because I think we need your help, okay?"


   Hotaru almost asked 'What do you need my help for?' even though she
was fully aware of the answer, old habits die hard.


* * *


   Mizuno Ami is the first one to extoll the virtues of school
attendance but even she wonders if this is a little much. They'd
skipped school on Thursday, because if they didn't the Silence would
have come and killed them all. And now as far as they were aware it
was still coming, and here she was sitting in science class. There
wasn't a whole lot they could do today -- their only lead was in the
subway tunnels and that had to wait until late at night when less
trains were running so they could explore them. Nobody knew where to
find fake FBI agents, and the two previous sites of Death Buster
activity were as picked over as a skeleton in the desert. Still, even
if they couldn't actively do anything today, maybe they should have
been getting some sleep so they could do something tonight. Too late
to change their minds now, though.


   Ami stifled a yawn, tried to keep it so her classmates couldn't
detect it, and failed. She tried not to think about the Pharaoh lest
she drive herself mad by going in circles in her head over and over
again. She struggled to keep her eyes open, to get them to focus on
the blackboard. She tried to concentrate on the lesson, on what the
teacher was saying, but soon the words were washing around her like a
river around a pebble.


   "Saturn is composed primarily of hydrogen gas, though its core is
solid material. The rings, made of fine particles of ice and rock,
were discovered in the 1600 by astronomer Galileo Galilei but were
thought to be solid sheets of material until 1859, when James Clerk
Maxwell mathematically proved that solid rings that size would tear
themselves apart..." Saturn's rings can tear you apart, too, in fact
they can tear the entire Earth apart if they have to, but they only
will if the Earth goes bad. Saturn's core is a tiny thirteen-year-old
rock now, but its core used to be a nasty little ball of what those in
the know call 'ankoku busshitsu' named the Mistress Nine, which is
appropriate because the next place it took over was Pluto, the ninth
planet in the solar system. Johannes Kepler was the first to observe
the girl in the castle on Saturn who's all alone because everyone's
afraid of her, which he named with some German word that probably has
forty syllables like 'Das Gleckenshurg... eimen...
effenfraumenlibzit... wersterschaur... aurutauru... hotaru... hotaru-
hotaru-bo-baru-banana-fanna-fo-faru-me-mi-mo-maru'...


   "Mizuno-san, might you be able to help the class out?"


   Ami's head snapped upward, her eyes went wide, and she half-shouted
"Nine point five-eight astronomical units!"


   Everyone in the classroom stared at her. Everyone except Minako and
Usagi, who were asleep as well and had the good fortune not to be
called on yet. A few people giggled.


   "Okay, that's..." the teacher paused, looking off to the side as he
tried to recall a fact from the depths of his memory, "...the orbital
length of... Saturn, I think? But the question was 'who succeeded
Leonid Brezhnev for control of the USSR?'"


   "Oh." Ami's face turned beet red and she tried to shrink into her
chair. This wasn't science class any more, this was World History.
She'd been asleep for a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes. Why
didn't someone wake her up between classes? "Oh. Uh... Nikita
Khrushchev?"


   "Close! Khrushchev came before Brezhnev. It was Yuri Andropov,
actually, that I was looking for. Mizuno-san, will you step outside
with me?"


   For the briefest, most fleeting moment, Ami wished the Silence
would come and she would not have to face her teacher's admonishment.
When it didn't, she walked out into the hallway to face her
punishment. "I'm so sorry, Yoshi-sensei," she began as soon as the
door closed, hoping that maybe a visible display of contrition would
net her a lighter sentence. "That was very disrespectful of me, and I
can't tell you how much I regret it..."


   The teacher sighed. "Mizuno-san, you know you're my star pupil.
You're always the brightest, most dedicated student in there and I can
see how much your commitment to your schooling rubs off on your
friends."


   Ami winced. "Yes, I know, and I know how much it must have
disappointed you and I promise that in the future I will work harder
to live up to that standard..."


   "You can calm down, you know, I'm not going to make you stand out
here with the buckets of water or anything like that." He reached for
his pocket to get a cigarette then remembered his wife threw them all
out. "I wanted to tell you that it's okay for you to miss school once
in a while if you're not well enough to learn. Toudai isn't going to
reject a student with your credentials because she called in sick one
day. Your friend Kino-san called in sick today and the school didn't
send the jack-booted thugs to break down her door. I'd rather you be
at home getting some rest than here not learning anything anyway. That
sound reasonable?"


   Ami nodded. "I guess... I guess I have been under a lot of stress
lately." Boy, if that wasn't the Understatement Of The Silver
Millennium.


   "I figured. Look, why don't I just send you down to the clinic for
a little while, have the nurse check you out, maybe just lay down for
a bit. If after a while you're feeling better, come back to class. If
not, call your mother and ask for a ride home."


   Ami nodded and started to go back inside to get her things, but the
teacher stopped her. "Oh, and one more thing. Don't wake up Tsukino-
san and Aino-san while you're in there, because as soon as they wake
up on their own I am going to send them out here to carry buckets full
of water."


*


   When Ami arrived at the school nurse's station, the lights were
dimmed and the room nearly empty. A kindergartener was asleep on one
of the cots, but the high-backed swivel chair behind the nurse's desk
was empty and there was nobody else to be seen. A yellow Post-It note
on the desk read "Back in 3 min! -K" and Ami placed her teacher's note
next to it, then fell onto the nearest bed as if it had its own
gravity well. Yoshi-sensei was such a great teacher, Ami thought, one
that cared so much more for actual learning and knowledge than rote
adherence to method. She would have felt guilty about leaving Usagi
and Minako twisting in the wind like that, but right now she didn't
think her brain had the energy to adequately process guilt.


   Sleep was swiftly falling over her like a warm blanket when she
heard the nurse's swivel chair turn around. "So... you must be...
Mizuno Ami, it says on this note. Hello, Ami-chan." The voice was low,
confident, a bit snide. Ami rolled onto her back to see who it was and
she hated the fact he was not letting her sleep more than anything
else about his actions.


   He was, of course, a man in a black overcoat and black pants,
wearing a black fedora hat inside and black sunglasses in a darkened
room. He was sitting in the nurse's chair, leaning as far back as he
could with his feet up on the nurse's desk. In one hand he held the
note Ami's teacher had written, in the other he had a lollipop he'd
taken from the jar on the nurse's desk. The hands that held these
items had two thumbs each. He moved his head slightly to indicate he
was looking her over. "You look like Hell, Ami-chan. Late night, I
take it?"


   Ami wanted to say something defiant, something snappy to come back
with, but all she had was "...Yeah."


   "You girls up late talking about dolls and boys and glitter and
unicorns and all that other bullshit you girls are supposed to be
talking about? Or were you up late talking to your new friends at the
Hoffmann Institute?"


   Ami's head started to list downwards, she snapped it back up. "What
do you care? Is the FBI coming to Japan as truant officers?"


   The man in black laughed. "Oh, Ami-chan. Ami-chan, Ami-chan, Ami-
chan. We here at the 'FBI' don't care whether or not you're going to
school. We care when you start hanging around with people like miss
Donna... KIMberly... Truitt... that you have no business hanging
around with. Those Hoffmann Institute people are bad news and if you
don't think we know something about bad news you're going to be
sorely, sorely mistaken."


   Ami shook her head a bit and wondered if she was dreaming. "What? I
don't know who the Hoffmann Institute or what 'Donna KIMberly Truitt'
is. Are you menacing the right person?"


   He smiled and in the faint light Ami could see his mouth had too
many teeth. "You don't, do you? Oh, this is a lot better than we
expected. I thought I was going to have to wash a pack of lies out of
your head." He steepled his fingers.  "Well, I have to anyway, it's
just a smaller pack."


   From the side of the room the kindergartener's voice came up.
"Where's Keiko-san? Where'd Nurse Keiko-san go?"


   The man in black let out a noise that was half sigh, half growl.
"Somebody locked her keys in her car along with her lunch. What the
hell do you want?"


   "My tummy hurts! I want Nurse Keiko-San to give me some medicine!"
Ami slipped her hand into her pocket and wrapped it around her
transformation pen. She wondered how fast she could become Sailor
Mercury if the man made a threatening move on her or the kid.


   The man in black opened up some drawers in the desk and didn't look
inside them. "Oh no, it looks like we're all out of tummy medicine!
Why don't you just lay down and be very very quiet and then wish your
tummyache away." The kid sniffled as if he was about to cry, and the
man in black growled his frustration and hastily followed it up with,
"Or, how about I have some lollipops here, would six or seven of those
quiet you up?"


   The kid momentarily considered that and decided they would. After
he'd picked out seven yellow (the best flavor) sugar-free store-brand
lollipops, he went happily back over to his bed to wait for his mother
to pick him up. "Kids," said the man in black with gesture in the
child's direction. "You've got to love them, right? I suppose YOU
would, anyway. Oh, and good call on not bringing out the power pen, I
could have taken you down well before you were done."


   "Who are you and what do you want with me?" Ami wished this was a
dream, not so much so that it wouldn't be real as so she could be
asleep right now.


   "Isn't it obvious? I'm one of those Men in Black you hear so much
about." He smiled, wide, insincere. "And after I told you to stay away
from the Hoffmann Institute, there's just one other thing I wanted to
ask you for now. Do you think the planet Mercury ever had an
atmosphere that could support life?"


   Behind him, the doorknob turned and the door opened, revealing a
woman in a white nurse's uniform holding a set of keys, a bento box,
and a twisted-out coat hanger. "Pleasant dreams," whispered the man in
black to Ami, and he kicked the desk to spin himself in the chair;
after it came around to face Ami again he was gone.


* * *


   The questioning didn't start right away. They'd eaten some
breakfast, Phil made excuses about why they had no cameras or
microphones. Hotaru took some painkillers for the soreness, and they
helped, but not enough. Bill and Donna were sent out to 'do recon'
which they all understood to mean 'get out of our hair for a while'.
They inspected the grounds to make sure nobody could listen in on
them, and then Hotaru began her interview.


   She left nothing out this time, as the embarrassing parts they
already knew and the unlikely parts were being told to an alien and a
person who was punched in the face by Bigfoot. The lab accident that
killed her mother and would have killed her. Her father's Faustian
deal with the Pharaoh 90 and the malignant being that had lived within
her ever since. The Messiah of Silence, the Talismans, Mistress Nine,
Sailor Moon, Chibi-Usa, Pure Heart Crystals, the Witches' betrayals
and decreasing numbers, the thralls at the Mugen school, the daimon
eggs, the Holy Grail, her realization as Sailor Saturn, her power to
end the world, her attempt at noble sacrifice, all of it.


   When she was done, 'Nakami' the alien looked at her for a few
moments with an expression she couldn't read. Eventually he said, "I
know you're telling me the truth, because my people have seen these
daimons and the heart crystals and you becoming a sailor-suited
warrior maiden and all that. But I feel like I'm hearing a sequel to a
movie when I never saw the first one."


   "What do you mean?"


   Phil spoke up from behind him. "Okay, so, you're 'Sailor Saturn'.
And that makes you the 'Soldier of Ruin and Birth' and all that, but,
why does it? Did someone give you your powers and decide you looked
like a 'ruin and birth' kind of person, or is it genetic, or what?"


   Hotaru stopped and thought, and felt a bit embarrassed. She'd
already known about this stuff, somewhat, without anyone having to
tell her and for a moment she'd assumed everyone else would too. She
wondered if she was going crazy, the answer was probably yes. "I
inherited them... but it isn't genetic, I don't think. There used to
be a kingdom called the Silver Millennium, long long ago, and it
spanned all across the solar system."


   She didn't know why she paused and gave them an opening to say
'that's stupid!' or 'no there wasn't!' but she did anyway. "And the
capital of the kingdom was on the Moon, and it was ruled by Queen
Serenity." She paused, an image of Serenity's face flashed into her
mind unbidden even though she had never seen it. "She was... beautiful
and wise. And she loved everyone."


   She shook the image off. "And every planet had a princess on it,
who was also its guardian. They were the Sailor Senshi, and they were
the ones that the Queen trusted enough to give her power. They were
all wise and graceful and," and she nearly choked on the last word,
"perfect. The Princesses of each planet had a job to do that the Queen
trusted them with. I think that Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter were
the bodyguards of the Princess of the Moon, Sailor Moon. Neptune and
Uranus guarded the kingdom from threats from outside the solar system.
Pluto guarded the gates of time. And Princess Saturn didn't guard
anything."


   Her eyes started to water. "Saturn's job was to kill planets that
she thought had become corrupt. All she had to do was drop her scythe
and everyone would die. Men, women, children, animals, plants,
everything had to die if she thought the planet would breed more
evil."


   Nadine wanted to say something consoling but couldn't really think
of how. "That... that sounds like an awful responsibility for someone
to have."


   Hotaru's eyes were red and tears ran down her cheeks but she wasn't
going to start sobbing, at least until she finished. "And that's who I
am now. Usagi's the reincarnation of the perfect and beautiful and
loving Princess of the Moon. And I'm Sailor Saturn. I'm the one whose
job it is to murder everyone on Earth. Not someone else in my body.
That's who I'm reincarnated from. That's what my soul is." Her
shoulders shook and her chin quivered; this was depressing to think
about in the abstract but to actually assemble it all together and say
it out loud it struck her again with full force how horrible and
repugnant she really was. "It's who I am."


* * *


   Usagi and Minako stood side-by side in the hallway with wooden
poles across their shoulders that each had a bucket of water at both
ends. Minako grumbled and shifted her stance around to try and keep
her balance, but Usagi had discovered quite a few tardy entrances ago
that if she twisted her arms and locked her spine in just the right
position, she could sleep standing up and still keep her balance. And
Ami said that she didn't take learning seriously!


   Usagi's wrist started beeping an approximation of a telephone ring.
"Usagi-chan." Minako whispered, trying to get her attention. "Usagi!"


   "Yeah, Finna-chan," Usagi half-mumbled, half-slurred. "I know the
rhodium thingy's out of the whatsit. It's beeping at me. Me 'n Mamoru
are busy kissing, you go fix it?"


   "No, Usagi-chan, your watch. Your communicator watch is beeping at
you!"


   "Well then just tell Chris Hale I'll call him back! Lighthouse in't
going anywhere for 'nother... two days, I got his nummer..."


   Minako growled in frustration and edged over to Usagi, then very
carefully hiked up her arms so she could reach Usagi's watch without
tipping her wooden beam too far to the side. She tapped the 'Respond'
button on the side; she couldn't see the screen but she heard Chibi-
Usa's voice. "Hey! Dumpling-head, where are you! This is important!"


   "Usagi-chan can't come to the watch right now," said Minako,
carefully turning around so she could look into the screen. "What do
you need, Chibi-Usa-chan?"


   "Minako, is that you? Listen, I found Luna! Artemis, too!"


   Minako edged sideways until at last she was looking into Usagi's
watch and could see Chibi-Usa's face. "Artemis? Where have they been
this whole time?"


   Artemis's white head poked into the frame and covered Chibi-Usa's
face, she squealed when the tip of his tail tickled her nose. "We
don't know," he said, "We lost a period of like three days there. You
were going off to the Mugen school and then the next thing I know it's
Sunday and Luna and I are in animal shelter, reeking of garbage!"


   Minako looked left and right down the hallway, hoping there was
nobody watching; she honestly didn't know what this would look like to
an outside observer. "Our powers didn't work for about the same amount
of time... maybe you stopped being a magic cat and became a regular
cat for a while?"


   "That's not important right now!" said Luna's voice, and she jumped
on Chibi-Usa'a arm to put her face in front of Artemis's, the image of
her was so close-up her nose must have been a millimeter from the
camera. "Chibi-Usa-chan told us about the daimon attacks yesterday and
we think there may be another wave starting! We can't tell how many
for certain, there's some kind of interference, but we know there's a
concentration of energy near the Crown game center, and it may not
have attacked yet. If you and Sailor Moon get down there quickly, you
may be able to track it back to where the daimons are coming from. You
go now -- we'll call up Ami-san and Rei-san to meet you over there!"


   "Roger that, we are on our way!" Chibi-Usa sneezed, the cats fell
out of the image, and the transmission ended. After a moment's
deliberation, Minako jumped upward with her bucket next to Usagi's
face, when she landed the water splashed upward right into her nose.
She sputtered and staggered backwards a few steps, but came to a rest
against the wall before she fell all the way. "Time to get up, odango,
there's daimons afoot!"


   Usagi shook off the last of her dream, then laid the buckets on the
ground. "Wow... I was really out of it, wasn't I?"


   "You're telling me. Were you and Mamoru sexy physicists again?"


   "No, no, sexy spaceship captain this time."


* * *


   Donna felt remarkably good considering the fact she got shot last
night. Better than before she got shot, really. Sure, she was sore,
she couldn't bend over and she had to bite her lip to keep herself
from yelping if someone poked her in the stomach, but that wasn't too
bad considering. Hotaru's magic healing hands didn't bring her back to
full health but they'd certainly put her well on her way towards it.
And the pain left over was more than cancelled out by the fact she'd
actually taken a shower and shaved her legs today and wasn't wearing
clothes she'd had on since Wednesday. She was wearing some of Bill's
clothes, some faded and torn blue jeans and black T-shirt with an
angry eagle and the phrase "DON'T TREAD ON ME" silkscreened on the
front of it, both of which were too big for her, but at least these
clothes were clean.


   Phil and Nakami had told them to go "do some recon" and not said
where or how they were supposed to do it when neither one of them
spoke Japanese. It was obvious they meant "We want you two to go away
because we want to talk to Hotaru without you bickering with each
other", but as long as they didn't actually say it, Donna could
pretend they didn't mean it and keep her dignity intact. Bill and her
wandered around on foot for a little while until they found the
arcade, which seemed a good a place as any to do fake recon.


   "Sonic BOOM! Sonic BOOM! Sonic BOOM! Sonic BOOM!"


   Bill tapped the buttons and wiggled the control stick as if his
input was doing something. "Yeah, that's right. You just keep doing
that gay-ass move over and over again. No, really, go ahead."


   "Sonic BOOM! Sonic BOOM! Sonic BOOM!"


   "Oh, you want a little cheese with that whine? The game's called
'Street Fighter', not 'Street Let's-All-Be-Pals-And-Go-Easy-On-Each-
Other.' You shouldn't bring the ball if you can't... bring... the
game!" Donna grinned at how easy it was to rile him up.


   "Sonic BOOM! Sonic BOOM!"


   "I'd bring the game, if the stupid game would... rrrgh... let me
get up... or do SOMETHING!"


   "Sonic BOOM! Player 2 wins! PERFECT!"


   Bill slapped at the buttons in frustration. "Bah, this game is
bullshit. Let's play something that the game will actually let me
play."


   "Oh, I'd love to, Bill, but shouldn't we start walking back? Nadine
had to go and lose our car and now it'll take us forever to get
around."


   Bill scoffed. "Okay, one, that's bullshit, we're not supposed to
back for hours, you just don't want to play something you can't cheese
through. And second, she did not 'lose our car'. It was an open top
with a push-button ignition and we had to park it on the curb.
Somebody stole it from us and there's not a whole lot we could do
about that."


   Donna shook her head. "Bill, don't you get it? This is Tokyo.
People don't just 'steal' cars in Tokyo."


   "You just 'steal' cars in Tokyo."


   Donna rolled her eyes and privately wondered where the hell she was
even going with that line of conversation.


   "Anyway, we already bought a bunch of tokens, no use letting them
go to waste. You wanna try beating 'Virtua Cop' on one quarter again?"


   Since that was a game where Bill couldn't directly beat her, she
nodded. "Okay, okay, baby wants his Virtua Cop. Gimme a second though,
this place is making my asthma act up." The fact she would make him
wait on her and thus establish she was the one who decided how things
got done was an added perk.


   She stepped outside for a bit of fresh air. It was a nice day,
crisp, cloudless. People walked past her in both directions on the
sidewalk, none of them in any great rush. If she was the kind of
person into picnics, this would be good weather for one.


   She started to reach for her pocket and then paused. She'd never
see any of these people again and her respiratory problems weren't
exactly a CIA-protected state secret, but for some reason she didn't
feel like she should pull out an inhaler and start puffing away while
total strangers were watching. That was something fat kids did in gym
class. With a few surreptitious glances around, and walked her way
over to an alley by the arcade and ducked into it. That's be better.
Not that she had anything to be ashamed of, of course, but, you
know... people watching... better to just avoid it.


   She pulled the inhaler out of her pocket and heard something else
fall to the floor, almost inaudible. She patted her pocket, realized
what it was , and turned to grab it but it had bounced into a pile of
trash. She muttered and crouched downward to look for it, wincing.
Ordinarily she wouldn't, but it was her magnetic card scrambler, the
one from the CIA that opened any electronic lock with a keycard
reader. Not only was it an invaluable asset she couldn't replace, but
it was the single most badass super-spy leather catsuit blow-
cigarette-smoke-on-the-laser-tripwires femme fatale 'steal the
McGuffin from the two male leads right under their noses at the end of
the movie' piece of equipment she had. She loved that damn thing, more
than several members of her family.


*


   Sailor Moon, Mercury, Mars, and Venus walked two by two down the
sidewalk, alternating between 'combat ready stance' and 'walking in a
way that passersby don't think we are totally crazy stance'. People
were milling about in their cars and on the sidewalks as usual, and if
there was a youma in the area they at least would have left and
started milling around somewhere else.


   "It looks close by," said Sailor Mercury with her hand once again
on that invaluable visor, "but the energy signature isn't weak,
it's... indistinct. And there's some other stuff I can't quite
pinpoint in the area, I don't know if it's caused by the dark matter
or not."


   "If it's indistinct, maybe it hasn't found an object to merge
with," said Mars. "Maybe there's nothing sharp or pointy or hazardous
enough around here."


   "That's a possibility, although I don't know why... oh, there it
goes, I think it just locked in."


   They heard a scream from a nearby alleyway, but not even those of
them who are learning English were taught enough to understand the
foul expletives used. A woman came flying out of the alleyway as if
she'd been thrown, her too-large T-shirt and jeans flapping in the
air, her long dark hair splayed out behind her. She hit the sidewalk
with a loud, dull THUD and grimaced, clutching her stomach with both
arms.


   A second later, her assailant emerged. She was the same body type
as the woman on the sidewalk, and had the same long black hair, but
her skin was pink instead of white, her ears pointed, her mouth
fanged, and of course on her left shoulder there was a black five-
pointed star. She wore tight black leather pants and a skintight black
tank top that showed off her sculpted-but-not-chiseled abs. Wrapped
around her shoulder was a length of rope and a grappling hook, and
from her right fingertips up to her neck there stretched a thick,
featureless black line. On her forehead was a pair of what appeared to
be night-vision goggles. She was looking at the woman on the floor,
shaking her head, circling around her. It was clearly a daimon, but
one of the older models, made out of a target's treasured possession
instead of something that was dangerous, only five or so feet tall and
walking like it wasn't running a bad program. Already people started
fleeing from the sight of her.


   Venus and Moon both raised their hands and pointed at the daimon,
but Usagi opened her mouth just a half-second faster. "Halt, evildoer!
I am the beautiful warrior of love and justice, Sailor Moon! And in
the name of the Moon, I will punish you!"


   The daimon's head snapped to face them and she snarled, her
expression angry and also afraid. "What, so you think you can just
JUDGE me now?" she said with the hint of an English-speaker's accent,
"All of a sudden you're freaking BETTER than me? Who the Hell are you?
You're nobody, that's who!"


* * *


   Nadine knew it was inappropriate and they didn't know each other
that well but God damn after Hotaru had said her inescapable purpose
was mass murder Nadine thought she needed a hug. She kneeled down to
where Hotaru was sitting, hesitated a moment, then wrapped her arms
around the young girl's shoulders. Hotaru didn't push her away but she
didn't return the embrace either, just waited for her to let go. After
a few moments of clutching her and gently patting her on the back, she
did.


   "I'm not going to tell you you're wrong," said 'Nakami' the thin
grey alien, "Because by this point I know there's more strange stuff
out in the world than I'll ever be able to fully grasp. I don't know
anything about a Silver Millennium, but I can tell you what I do know.


   "My people call themselves the 'Fraal'." That visibly caught
Hotaru's interest, but she didn't speak. "And a few thousand years
ago, my ancestors left their home planet to colonize another one. But
something went wrong, their wormhole drive malfunctioned and they
wound up in your... well, our solar system. And to fix it they needed
a very rare element that did not exist here." A pause. "I don't think
they recorded anything about the planets other than Earth being
occupied. Maybe they came afterward. As they approached the only
habitable planet, they found something waiting for them in space. A
demon that they named Isci ba Fan, which means 'The Silent One' in our
language. He had almost no physical form, and from what little
information they could gather from him he was apparently in that state
because he had tried hundreds of years before to teleport himself
across the galaxy, but when he arrived he found that only a small part
of his intelligence made it to his destination, and the rest of his
mind and body were trapped in an empty plane of existence parallel to
this one. And he was still a threat to us because he is the most
powerful psionic entity the Fraal have ever encountered. My species
are telepaths, you see, and we know a lot about the powers of the
mind. That's how I can walk down the street without people seeing what
I am, I put up a telepathic illusion."


   "It's an illusion?" asked Phil. "We all thought you were some kind
of shapeshifter."


   "And everyone else at the Institute can go on thinking that, okay?"
He turned back to Hotaru. "Skilled Fraal mindwalkers can lift things
with their minds, they can read thoughts, they can assault a person's
psyche directly and they can turn away the attacks of other
mindwalkers. And when they met Isci ba Fan, his psionic power was so
great it made theirs seem like tennis balls and tissue paper. He could
possess people, control their minds directly and make them carry out
his will. The only way to tell was if someone tried to read his
thoughts, they would be utterly silent. That's how he got his name."


   At least how THEY arrived at his name, Hotaru thought.


   "He immediately attacked the crew of the Fraal motherships and set
about using them to see if he could find a way to get all the way back
in our reality. The Fraal couldn't stop him. He had no physical form
to damage or restrain. He swatted aside the mental attacks of every
single Fraal telepath on the ship with ease. Destroy his host, and he
moved to another one. He could only directly posess one at a time, but
some people think he may have been able to shear off tiny pieces of
himself to act as independent, though far less powerful, entities. It
still took many of us to destroy each one of these shards, but he
didn't seem to make too many. Eventually they thought he was so
dangerous and so resilient that the only way to kill him was to
overload the dark fusion reactor on the ship he was occupying. It
exploded with hundreds of gigatons of force, it killed everyone on
board..."


   "But you couldn't kill him. He survived."


   "But he survived. And when the remaining Fraal mothership landed on
the moon, he followed them. He didn't attack as openly because he had
decided the Fraal didn't have the means to free him, and he enjoyed
lurking in the shadows, preying on them, sampling their fear. And when
the Fraal sent their scout ships out to Earth to explore the life
there, Isci ba Fan followed them. Every single Fraal knows the story
of Isci ba Fan, and almost all of them tell themselves it's a myth to
frighten children into obeying their authority figures, but we all
know better. He is real, and he is powerful, and there is nothing we
can do to stop him. We're like ants to him.


   "He's..." said Hotaru but she couldn't find a word in English or
Japanese to encompass the extent of his power, his malice, and his
loathing.


   "Our only solace is how little he likes to actually posess the
minds of living things -- we are so far beneath him he thinks it
defiles him. That's why we think he uses others, has them work to
bring him into the world. He appears to be immortal and would rather
spend centuries waiting than touch our minds any more than he has to."


   Phil spoke up. "It would make sense, then. Dr. Tomoe was working to
summon Isci ba Fan, and maybe the Fader we found came in by mistake,
or coincidence. He was trying to bring something great and terrible
into the world, he needed a lot of power to do it. He said there was a
great mass of evil material underneath the city, which is why he chose
to work here..."


   Nakami turned back to him. "Evil material? Does that mean there's a
dark matter gateway under the city?"


   "What? Oh, no no no," said Phil as he shook his head, then switched
to English to explain. "I mean, the phrase 'ankoku busshistu' can
literally mean 'dark matter', but it's really more like 'material of
darkness' or 'evil material'. If it was the scientific term, it would
be in katakana and pronounced 'daaku materu'. If there was an actual
dark matter gateway underneath Tokyo, I think we'd see a lot more
evidence of supernatural phenomena than even this."


   Hotaru had only heard the phrase 'ankoku busshistu' when her father
and Kaolinite were talking about it, so she had no reason to correct
him.


   Nakami shook his head. "I suppose if I say I'm Japanese I should
learn more about the language than I do." He sighed, though Hotaru
couldn't see where his nostrils were.


   "Anyway. From his notes it looked like he needed, in addition to a
power source, an anchor point. A living locus that would serve as a
beacon and that the 'Pharaoh', as he called it, could pull itself
towards because it had an existing sympathy . A piece of itself that
had grown and matured in this world." Phil looked down and off to the
side. "We... think that was you."


   "But what is most important here is that you fought it off. A piece
of Isci ba Fan was possessing you, a powerful and mature one, and you
threw off its control yourself. The most powerful Fraal mindwalkers
couldn't free themselves without three or four others helping. The
only explanation I can give is... it must have been possessing you so
long, from such a young age, but not trying to actively take control
until the end... that as you grew up your mind was able to adapt to it
and build up an immunity. You can see right through the illusion I'm
putting out; Phil can't do that and he's been trained in how to see
through illusions. If I tried to read your mind right now I imagine
I'd find it silent too, and not because you're being possessed, but
because you've built up an immunity to it."


   She looked away from him. "Or it's because that's one of Sailor
Saturn's powers, not something I have."


   "Maybe." He nodded. "I don't know what a Sailor Saturn can and
can't do. What I do know is that you're one of, probably the most psi-
resistant person on Earth. And that means you can go places and do
things others can't. I started the Hoffmann Institute to help
understand and protect people from things like aliens, psychics,
demons, wizards, and stranger things besides. When me or one of my
agents finds someone that can fight the supernatural, we ask them if
they want to join us. And we don't have a lot of money and our
equipment is either secondhand or stolen and we don't always win but
if nobody else is willing to do this, we're going to because someone
needs to do it.


   "There are things that prey on people that you can stop. Tomoe-
san... People, more than you think, can read minds or lift objects
telekinetically or alter people's memories or control their behavior,
and not all of them are responsible with it. They hurt people, and I
think you'd be able to save people from them. There's a demon older
than the Pyramids here on Earth and you can resist his attacks. That's
all I knew about you when I decided I had to come out here and meet
you in person. I don't know anything about a Sailor Saturn or Sailor
Moon or Holy Grails or Silver Millennia or anything like that and as
far as I am concerned anything more you can do is just an added bonus
that doesn't factor into my decision.


   "I want you to come back to America with us and join my
organization. I want to make you an agent of the Hoffmann Institute,
like Philip and Nadine are. You could even be on the same team as
them, if you'd like. And I know that you just met me and I know you're
young but still I think that you can do a lot of good for a lot of
people. Maybe you don't know it yet, or you don't believe it, but I
do: You are exactly who the Hoffmann Institute needs."


   Hotaru chewed on her lip. It was a patently stupid proposal, she
only wondered how she should turn it down. She was 13 years old, for
God's sake. And she didn't want to see 14 no matter how often she was
told the capacity to kill everyone on Earth didn't make her evil. And
she didn't know, wasn't friends with these people, she'd only been
following along as the path of least resistance. And the alien, who
she didn't know, thought she could do great things and he would only
be disappointed when he put his trust into her and inevitably she
failed it. And her only friend in the world lived here in Tokyo and
couldn't follow her. And his Hoffmann Institute weren't the only
people willing to defend the innocent from strange horrors because
that's what the Sailor Senshi did, and they were far more noble, far
more pure, far more loving, and far better at it. If she was to be a
part of any team, it would be Sailor Moon's.


   Wouldn't she?


* * *


   The pink-skinned daimon rolled her head from side to side, cracking
her neck. She had her legs spread, one in front of the other, and
hopped lightly from foot to foot like a boxer preparing for the bell.
"So how about if you think you're such hot shit you put your magic
where your mouth is, huh? Any of you still wanna prove you're better
than U-Kigumoko?"


   Only Mercury got that reference, and she didn't get it until later.


   Mercury and Venus broke formation and spread out to the street and
opposite sidewalk; the people around them were running off and
screaming until they got about three blocks away and then acting as if
nothing was out of the ordinary, cars were diverting out of their
paths before they passed in front of the Crown arcade. Mercury might
be able to see how far they went, if everyone was out of danger, but
her visor was now showing nothing but static. She knew there were at
least two people still here -- the dark-haired woman was trying to
bring her ankle to her hand without leaning forward or sitting up, but
making no effort to run, and for a moment she saw a red-haired man
with an unkempt beard and a dark green Army surplus jacked duck his
head out of the Crown, curse, and duck back in. He matched the
description they had of one of the 'FBI' agents who had Hotaru, this
could be no coincidence.


   Mars swung her hand in a wide circle, her fingertip tracing out a
ring of fire. When U-Kigumoko saw this she grinned and hopped upward,
though less than a foot. "Burning MANDALA!" shouted Mars, and pointed
her outstretched finger at the daimon; the ring of fire broke into
several burning projectiles that streaked toward their target leaving
zig-zagging afterimages in Mercury's eyes. The daimon, before she
landed, rotated her body and kicked the wall with both feet, sending
her flying into the street and out of the path of the flaming
projectiles. They continued down the sidewalk, streaking right over
the dark-haired woman's face, but collided with a wall before they
could hit another target. U-kigumoko hit the asphalt with her shoulder
and rolled, coming to a stop with her feet and fingertips touching the
ground.


   "Holy crap," she said in a voice equal measures disbelief and
desperation, "You've got multiple-shot fire balls and you STILL
managed to miss me? You're horrible at this, absolutely horrible!"


   Sailor Moon went for the Moon Rod, and U-Kigumoko's eyes went for
Sailor Moon's hand, and she took off in a sprint to stop Moon's
attack. Venus's Crescent Beam crackled right behind the daimon, an
attack apparently slower than light that needed to be led against a
moving target. Mercury aimed ahead of the daimon to fire the Shine
Aqua Illusion, but the moment she was halfway through the word
"Illusion" -- and Sailor Moon was on the word "Spiral" -- it dropped
to the asphalt feet outward and went into a full-on baseball slide.
Mercury's attack went clear over it's head and before Sailor Moon
could get her attack off the daimon was kicking the legs out from
under her and then batting her away as she fell. The daimon rolled
back to her feet in that same fingers-on-the-street pose as before,
Sailor Moon hit the asphalt with a yelp and her arms flailing.


   "So who wants to say they're going to punish me now, huh?" said the
daimon, her eyes wide. "Since none of you can FIGHT, does anyone still
want to tell me how they're BETTER than me? Maybe next you can tell me
how your fashion sense is bet--"


   "Sic semper TYRANNIS!" came a voice from behind them, there was a
gunshot, and the daimon's head snapped back as if someone had yanked
an invisible string on her scalp. It was the fake FBI agent, the red-
headed man, holding a silver-plated revolver and leaning around the
doorway of the Crown arcade for cover.


   The daimon pulled her head back down, face twisted by hate. The
left lens of the 'night vision goggles' she wore on her forehead was
deformed and bruised a yellow color. "What the hell do you think, you
think you're proving something by ambushing me? You think that means
you can beat me? You think you gang up on me eight or nine to one and
then you get to, what, dance around about how great you are for being
better than U-Kigumoko?"


   "I am starting to miss being called a 'Sailor Brat,'" Venus
muttered.


   The man with the revolver fired three more times in quick
succession but the best he did was to graze the daimon's thigh. The
dark-haired woman laying on the sidewalk had pulled her leg up to
reach her arms and had pulled up her pants leg to reveal an ankle
holster, from which she pulled out a pistol of her own, a bulky silver
semi-automatic.


   Mars took a step back and started to move her hands to invoke
another attack, but she couldn't even get a syllable of the invocation
out before U-Kigumoko jumped at her, arm outstretched, and slammed her
palm into Mars's face. The daimon tried to  push Mars downward and
pie-face her into the asphalt but Mars regained her senses too
quickly, grabbing the daimon's arm and yanking it towards her to fling
her out of the daimon's grip. She hit the street facedown, Mars
stumbled and broke a heel when her feet hit the ground but after a few
steps she managed to hold her footing. The daimon was starting to roll
to her feet before she even finished falling, getting ready to kick
herself back off the street, shouting "You must think you're some
pretty hot shit, huh? You keep laughing, because I'm going to stuff
you in a mailbox!"


   "Donna! Kneecap it!" shouted the red-haired man in English, "Don't
let it get back up!" The four Senshi were going to blast the daimon to
pieces as it got up anyway, but when they heard someone start talking
they all hesitated for a split-second before they determined if what
was being said should change their course of action. Gunshots rang out
on the empty street in stereo and the daimon flinched, but didn't lose
its balance; and when the first of the Senshi's attacks went off, she
was already in a crouched position that let her roll forward to dodge
the Crescent Beam by a nanometer, kick herself to the left to evade a
Shine Aqua Illusion that froze off about six inches of her hair, break
into a zig-zagging run to avoid a storm of Burning Mandala fireballs
that singed the hairs off her arm, then run at the brick wall with a
Moon Spiral Heart Attack trailing right behind her, do no less than a
damn Wuxia wall-jump to backflip over most of the storm of magic
energy, and then stick the landing as she came down. She was screaming
in pain and her left arm and leg were smoking in several places where
the attack collided with her, but she did stick the landing, and even
though she was a crazy and evil (and unstable) daimon that still was
worth a fair amount of points.


   She made a motion like she was actually biting the scream in half
as it came out of her throat and swallowed. "Are you... you always
this pathetic or are you putting... on a show for me? You've got...
got all that firepower and still none of you can connect with
anything!" The daimon crouched and looked to be making a run for
Mercury, but she grabbed a broken chunk of brick blasted free by
Sailor Moon's attack and after two steps she rolled to the side and
flung the brick at Moon's head, it caught her in the shoulder and she
accidentally let go of the Moon Rod. She looked downward to grab it
with her other hand before it touched the ground, and that's why she
didn't see the daimon's foot before it connected with her right
temple. Moon staggered to the left, clutching where she'd been kicked,
U-Kigumoko followed up with a few punches to the stomach and then a
snap kick to the chest.


   She seemed surprised and displeased when the attack just caused
Moon to fall backwards a few steps instead of, presumably, flying back
a few blocks and tearing out a furrow in the street. Not wanting to
stand there and get shot, the daimon stepped forward to grab Moon's
wrist and twist it behind her back in a hammerlock. She probably would
have started mocking them again too, now that she had a human shield
in front of her, but as she opened her mouth she was cut off by the
distinctive noise of a long-stemmed rose becoming embedded in
concrete. Everyone present traced the flower's path back to its point
of origin and saw Tuxedo Kamen standing atop a building, cape
billowing in the wind, looking incredibly heroic and majestic.


   Tuxedo Kamen wasn't really sure what this creature was made out of
or what specific type of activity it was corrupting, so he decided to
go with one of his 'generic' speeches that could apply to any of the
daimons. "One who would damage the pure heart of a young girl, you
cannot be forgiven!"


   "What the hell makes you think you're in any position to be
offering me forgiveness?" Venus sighed and covered her face with her
palm, and Moon visibly rolled her eyes.


   "Hey, uh, I can't understand what the guy in the hat is saying,"
said the dark-haired woman, in English, while still lying on her back
on the sidewalk. "Is he with you or it?" She tried to train her weapon
on him, but it was a real funny angle to aim at if she couldn't move
her torso.


   "That's Tuxedo Kamen, he's with us," replied Venus, her accent
British by way of Japan. "Are you two with the FBI?"


   "Not any more," said a voice from right behind Venus's ear. She
yelped, stepped forward, spun around and saw the red-headed man
loading the last bullet into his revolver as if nothing was unusual.
"We're going to say NSA from now on, because apparently FBI is taken."
He nodded his head toward Moon and the others. "So you're all Sailor
Something-or-others, I take it?"


   "Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars." Venus sounded like she was going to
add something, but stopped, and they watched the daimon for several
more seconds. She was still talking, really unloading on Tuxedo Kamen,
and still using Moon as a human shield. Moon was looking less like
someone in fear of her own life and more like someone who is getting
bored and her arm is getting tired.


   "Bill," said 'Donna,' "Why did you shout 'Sic Semper Tyrannis' when
you shot that thing? Did you think it's some kind of pink chick Abe
Lincoln?"


   "It's Latin," said 'Bill,' as he spun the cylinder and snapped it
back into place. "it means 'Thus Always To Tyrants.' I think it's a
good slogan to have. And, you know, everyone's yelling out some phrase
before their attacks, and... I thought it looked fun, I wanted to try
it out."


   "Actually," corrected Venus, "The phrase is 'Sic Semper
Tyrannosaurus.'"


* * *


   Hotaru swirled the tip of her transformation pen around in the koi
pond, watching the ripples distort her reflection. Beneath the surface
she saw four of the koi, congregated around her hand, staring at it.
Their fishy eyes were wide and unblinking, their mouths hanging open
and closing as if the water was something to be chewed, and Hotaru
thought for a moment that the fish were gazing in terror. Their eyes
were wide, locked on the pen she was swirling in the water, and their
mouths were agape in shock. 'What is this horrible thing reaching down
from the heavens,' they were saying in fish-language, 'and what
horrible doom shall it bring to our pond?'


   She pulled the pen out of the water and wiped it off on the leg of
her pants. The fish watched the space it had been in for a couple
seconds, then resumed attending to fish business. In seconds they'd
forgotten about the threat she posed to them, but at least for a while
they were afraid. So that established they were smarter than most
people around here.


   She'd tried telling them why they wanted nothing to do with her and
they didn't care. They obviously didn't believe her, as if a magic
kingdom on the moon reincarnating its princesses as magical warriors
in modern-day Tokyo was totally plausible but one of them having the
power to destroy the world was just impossible. They never came out
and said it, but it was obvious. They told her they didn't care about
that, and they meant for her to take it as "We accept you for who you
are, now please say yes so we can leave," but in truth it was just
more "This thing would make me uncomfortable, so I pretend it doesn't
exist."


   They didn't understand. How could they? Creatures like her were so
horrible as to be totally outside the realm of anyone's experience,
even people who work for aliens and get punched by Bigfoot. And the
alien didn't know anything about the Silver Millennium, even though
his mothership had been parked on the Moon. He'd been closer than
Hotaru could ever be and he'd no idea what kind of heart-rending
beauty had been upon that spot. It was gone and dead, everything, and
now she was in a world that had no place for her twice over.


   They told her to go out and get some air, see what Hino-san was
making for lunch, get some time to think. She heard them arguing with
each other in the distance. Of course they didn't actually leave her,
Hotaru could still see Nadine out of the corner of her eye, peeking
her head around a corner. Every time Hotaru turned around, Nadine
ducked back out of sight. She knew why she was being watched, of
course. They thought that if she was left alone for two minutes she'd
transform into Sailor Saturn and slice her own head off with the
Silence Glaive. And the thought was tempting -- Hotaru doubted anyone
could stop her if she tried -- but she knew she couldn't. If she
killed herself out of the blue, then her only friend in the world
would be devastated, consumed with thoughts of what more she could
have done to save her, unable to see the catastrophe she would avert
with her suicide. If she got another opportunity to sacrifice herself,
Chibi-Usa would still be sad, but she'd see it as something noble, the
ultimate proof of the good in Hotaru's heart, and then she'd be able
to feel happy when she thought of her friend.


   Chibi-Usa was young, loving, naive to think that any good lived in
her, and Hotaru couldn't bear to crush her spirit by taking that away.
No, better to die later, ribbons of pure elemental death slicing
through her body as they destroyed the Pharaoh who would end the
world. Or be impaled and flayed alive by the Pharaoh in order to give
the others enough time to seal and destroy him. Or leap in front of a
bullet meant for someone else, someone with a heart and a future,
someone who deserved to live. She'd caused enough suffering, and the
point of her death would be to prevent more of it, not cause it. And
the Pharaoh was her responsibility, a beast summoned by and for her
own malevolence, unable to come to the world without her body to serve
as its beacon. And it had said it was ancient when the Fraal fostered
the lunar kingdom from which she drew her power. And the Fraal were
the big-headed grey aliens. And the big-headed grey alien said that
Saturn had never been inhabited by any kind of life.


   The Pharaoh was probably lying, though.


   The hair on the back of Hotaru's neck stood up about half a second
before she saw a man's face reflected in the water, standing behind
her. He was a middle-aged man, the hair on his temples greying, the
skin of his cheeks craggy and pockmarked. He was wearing a blue
policeman's cap, and when he put his hand on Hotaru's shoulder she had
to bite her tongue to keep herself from screaming.


   "Tomoe Hotaru-san?" he asked, his voice low and regretful. Hotaru
nodded without turning around. "Miss, could you please come with me?
Don't make a scene like your friends are."


   Hotaru turned and with horror realized that Nadine was no longer
watching her, and the noises she heard had gone from 'having an
argument' to 'resisting arrest'. Nakami, Philip, and Nadine were all
being pushed toward the entrance of the shrine, wrists bound behind
them -- Nakami's were bound with a plastic zip-tie, his wrists were
probably too small for handcuffs. They were demanding to be taken to
the American embassy, demanding to know what the charges were, even as
behind them a pair of crime-scene technicians were carrying an M16, a
Mosin-Nagant, and two Ziploc bags full of ammo. Four cop cars were
parked at the entrance. When did they arrive? How long were they here,
while Hotaru was too lost in thought to hear them? She was so stupid
to have let this happen...


   "Yeah, Hotaru-chan. Wouldn't want to go making a scene like your
friends at the Institute, would we?" The voice came from behind her,
and when she turned around she saw exactly what she thought she would
see: a man in all-black with sunglasses and too many thumbs... only it
wasn't the one from before. His voice was off slightly, his nose
broader, his lips slightly more pale. He was holding an orange and
once Hotaru had turned to face him, he took a loud bite of it without
bothering to take off the peel.


   "Agent Statler!" said the policeman with a yelp. "I'm, I'm sorry
sir, you startled me."


   "Her too, by the looks of it," he said around half-chewed chunks of
orange. "Or perhaps she's upset by the fact she couldn't hide from us
forever." He swallowed noiselessly. "I hear she can be very coy with
her emotions like that."


   "Sir?" asked the middle-aged cop, but he didn't let go of her
shoulder, not yet.


   "Just keep her away from... sharp objects and you should be fine,
Tadaka-san." He took another bite from the orange, on the opposite
side of the first. "Now if the two of you would excuse me, I have
another arrest to make uptown." He glanced at the ground by where
Hotaru was sitting. "Oh, and don't forget your pen, Hotaru-chan.
You're soon going to have a great deal of time to catch up on your
correspondence." He chuckled and walked away, after a few steps
casually flinging the rest of his orange at Nakami's head as he got
into the car. Hotaru's and the cop's eyes both followed the orange as
it flew toward its target, and when their eyes flicked back to 'Agent
Statler' he was gone. Hotaru heard a car start.


   Hotaru slowly, carefully reached for her transformation pen,
waiting for the cop to tell her to stop. He didn't. Why would
'Statler' have her arrested and then tell her to take her magic pen?
He could just be mocking her, or...


   Or he doesn't know what the pen does. Because he can't read her
thoughts like he could the others. Because she's Sailor Saturn, or
because her brain's been sparring with the Mistress Nine for years for
practice, but for some reason he didn't know exactly what she could
do. And if he was giving the police orders, they didn't know what she
could do.


   The policeman apologized as he locked a handcuff onto her left
wrist, and it slid easily off of her before he could place the other
side. "Hold on," he said, "I have some of those plastic zip-things in
my pocket..." and Hotaru had already come up with a plan. Later on
she'd be able to come up with the reasoning behind the plan, that
Nadine could not recognize Sailor Saturn as Hotaru without being told,
that Usagi and Sailor Moon looked identical but nobody ever seemed to
notice. She would come up with that well after she actually did it. At
that point all she knew was that the cop expected her to be
cooperative, and he'd let go of her shoulder to look for the zip-ties
in his pocket, and she was running like a bat out of Hell with her
hand closed in a white-knuckle grip around the pen.


   She hated running track in school because, among other things, she
was always embarrassed to be the last one still on the track, slowly
plodding around the oval and stopping to catch her breath when
everyone else had finished their run three minutes ago. Ironically,
this was the time her classmates tolerated her the most, as when the
class was waiting on her to finish all of the other students got to
goof off in the bleachers. She was young, light, and not strong but
certainly lithe, her problem had always been one of endurance. She
couldn't run the entire fifty-meter dash without stopping to breathe,
and that was the shortest one they had. Hotaru always thought that
maybe, if they had a twenty-five meter dash, she might just be able to
reach the goal in the same time as everyone else and then collapse at
the finish line.


   She's not too good at eyeballing distances, but she figured that
tool shed she spotted, nestled in the trees out behind the shrine, was
about thirty meters from her starting point. There's no way she'd get
there with enough of a lead, no way she could get there at all. She
didn't dare look behind her, because she knew if she did she would see
the policeman running at her, less than a meter away. Or training his
gun on her head. Her breath was already labored, her footfalls heavy,
each step felt like it added another iron weight to her chest, and it
hurt to inhale, much less to speak. But speak she did, one word for
each breath. "Saturn... Planet... Po.... Power... Make..." She said
'Make' about five steps too early, and she wondered how far apart the
magic words could be. Without daring to look behind her she reached
the open door of the tool shed and the inviting darkness inside. She
took one step inside and tripped over a non-functioning leafblower
left on the ground, as she fell the last word of the incantation
escaped her lips as a hoarse whisper, "...up..."


   Grumbling to himself about the horrible state of today's youth,
Officer Tadaka jogged down the path he'd seen the fleeing girl take.
Why couldn't she have just cooperated? The police had all the exits
covered, she had to know that, resisting arrest just makes it worse on
her. He ducked his head into the tool shed as he passed it and saw a
girl, perhaps 14 or 15, with violet hair and eyes and wearing an
ornate school uniform. It had to be the grand-daughter of the
shrinekeeper, Agent Statler had mentioned something about how he had a
granddaughter with dark purple hair who went to a private school with
its own hours and thus may or may not be at the shrine even on a
school day. Rei, that's what her name was.


   'Rei' was lying on the ground, visibly dazed, in a heap of mulch
and potting soil that spilled out from several ruptured bags stacked
by the wall of the shed. Several on the bottom had been torn when
someone ran into them, but two on the top appeared to have been neatly
sliced open. 'Rei' was covering her mouth and holding her breath,
trying not to inhale the dust swirling around.


   "Did a girl in a black outfit do this to you?" 'Rei' nodded and
pointed off to her left, and the officer gave her a little salute.
"Much obliged, Rei-san."


   "Don't mention it," Hotaru rasped. She held her breath until the
policeman had enough time to get a few meters away, then lapsed into a
coughing fit.



---




* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* B O N U S   C O N T E N T *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

ARTIFACTS OF THE SAILOR SENSHI:


SILENCE GLAIVE: The Silence Glaive is the weapon given to Sailor
Saturn to symbolize and empower her duties to cleanse worlds. It is a
polearm roughly five feet in length, with the head comprising about a
foot of it. The blade has one large, crescent-shaped head, and one
short, straight head, roughly forming the shape of a "G" together. The
weapon is nearly weightless, its head nearly as sharp as a
monofilament blade, and even if it is broken it returns to normal when
Sailor Saturn next transforms. Likely due to the fear it would be
stolen and abused, it vanishes when no part of Saturn's body or
clothing is touching it.


The weapon does d8w/3d4+1w/d4+3m Low Impact damage, using the Melee
Weapons -- Blade skill, with a base accuracy of -2.


 > Finesse Weapon: The Glaive is so light that anyone can comfortably
wield it, and its tip so sharp that the wielder need not place any
substantial force behind a swing in order to deal damage. The wielder
may choose to use his or her DEX as the base stat to add the Melee
Weapons -- Blade skill to, rather than STR, and compute attacks based
on that. The wielder suffers no penalties to melee damage for a low
STR, nor receives any bonus for a high STR.


 > Star Cleaver: The Silence Glaive is so sharp, in fact, that it can
cleave through dense, hardened material as easily as it can flesh.
Though the weapon is not truly monomolecular and it can be slowed or
stopped when chopping through an item, it is still mostly limited by
the wielder's ability to swing it and the target's ability to dodge
it. The damage from the Silence Glaive has no intensity and never
upgrades or downgrades regardless of the toughness of the target.
Sailor Saturn could, theoretically, destroy a Super-Heavy toughness
warship by hacking at it with the Glaive, provided she had an
environmental suit, some amphetamines to stay awake, around 3 or 4
days to kill, and none of the warship's weapons could aim low enough
to hit her, and nobody else in an enviro-suit came out of the hole she
was cutting to throw her off the hull, and nobody waited until she
jumped in to saw through the interior decks and shot her with a mass
rifle.


 > Infamous Artifact: The Glaive is said to have the power to scourge
all life from the planet, at a cost of destroying its owner as well.
Whether or not it does is unclear (and up to the Gamemaster's
decision), it's irrelevant to its reputation -- it is a very
distinctive weapon and it portends very bad things. Those well-versed
in arcane lore, and there are more of those than you would think,
would recognize the weapon and take the kind of measures to to destroy
its owner that you might take if you saw someone who could end the
world.




THE STONEBURNERS' LEGACY: A mysterious artifact inherited by Sailor
Yellow Sky, this device is believed to be proof that the mysterious
chlorine-breathing race referred to as the "Stoneburners" by Yellow
Sky's current colonists practiced Planetary Sorcery before, or perhaps
in parallel to, the development of the nightmarish bio-engineering and
dimensional-warping technologies that their ruins are now known for.
The device is a sphere of a semi-porous greenish-black material about
10 cm in diameter that orbits around Sailor Yellow Sky's left arm with
no visible means of propulsion or support. Unlike the other artifacts
here, The Stoneburners' Legacy is a Flaw, rather than a Perk; Sailor
Yellow Sky does not know how to turn it off or make it go away and it
is active whether or not she is in Senshi form, though only visible
when she is transformed.


 > Regenerator: The device is capable of regenerating wounds Sailor
Yellow Sky has suffered in Senshi or normal form. Each round the
regeneration is active, the user heals 1 stun, wound, and mortal
durability. The regeneration activates the instant the user receives
any damage, whether or not she wants it to, whether or not she's taken
any wounds or mortal that need to be regenerated. The device has a
total of 9 rounds of regeneration to be used per day.


 > Kinetic Dispersal: The device uses something akin to an ablative
force field to defend its bearer against impact. Unlike most personal
force fields, this field can protect from low-velocity damaging
impacts as well as high-velocity ones. It doesn't prevent others from
touching her, but it will prevent someone from slapping her, or poke
her with a pencil -- anything that causes "damage", even if it would
be 0 points, activates the shield. The shield stops up to 4 points of
damage from any Low Impact or High Impact attack, to a total of 20
points per day.


 > Leech: The Stoneburners' Legacy device is powered by biological
energy, not an internal power source. Of course, it can't take power
from its wearer, that might impede the Senshi's function. Instead, it
draws power from the people around it. Each time one of the device's
powers is used -- each time the kinetic dispersal is activated, even
for 0 damage, and each round regeneration is active -- someone in the
area takes 3 Wound damage. The energy is taken from friendly targets
over hostiles, close targets over far, and undamaged targets over
wounded ones. It cannot drain energy from someone more than 10 meters
away, or from someone who would be reduced to half or fewer Wounds by
the drain. The user has no control over who this drains and it never,
ever goes for who she'd want. If there are no drainable targets within
10 meters, the device fails to function.


When the device activates while the user is in Senshi form, a bolt of
purplish-black electricity arcs from the sphere to the person drained.
When activated in civilian form, the drained target has no visual
indication but still feels like he's been stabbed in the gut.


 > Decreased Ability: Of course, to power the hovering and orbiting,
the device needs to drain power from something. It reduces its user's
STR score by 1, because Senshi usually don't need to use physical
strength. And if they do, well, that's too bad.




GARNET ORB: The head of the Garnet Staff, weapon and Talisman of
Sailor Pluto, Guardian of the Gates of Time. The Garnet Orb is an
artifact that appears as a sphere of semi-opaque garnet roughly 15
centimeters in diameter. It is generally placed in a bowl-like setting
atop a staff resembling a six-foot key , with a heart-shaped head
holding the orb in place. It controls and channels the power of the
Gates of Time, but the powers of the Gates usable only by the Garnet
Orb are counted as being powers of the Orb. The staff into which it is
set is often used as a focus for other magical attacks but has no
particular application as a weapon on its own.


 > Time Travel: The main application of the Staff is its use as a key
to unlock the Gates of Time. There is no limit on the length of time
one may travel forwards and backwards, and it is not especially
stressful or taxing -- Small Lady Serenity treats time travel as
something mundane as a stroll in the park. However, there are some
restrictions on travel that must be noted. First, travel between two
points can only occur if the Dark Tide at the current time and
intended destination are both high enough to support time travel --
there is no hard and fast measure for this, but it should be fairly
high. And since the Gate is not a stable time gateway and must re-find
destination points, there is a "recharge time" associated with its
use. No individual or group can enter or leave through the Gate within
121 hours of any group entering or leaving the Gate. A group that
leaves cannot immediately return and must wait 121 hours, and a group
cannot return to any time within 121 hours, before or after, the time
it left. A group can leave a time they are visiting early if the time
gate was locked open for them, but as this requires large amounts of
energy and theoretically allows


 > Temporal Freeze: Referred to as a Guardian of Time's "most
forbidden ability", the Garnet Orb is capable of actually freezing the
flow of time. This requires no roll, and the user as well as any
targets within sensory range he or she designates are able to move and
speak freely while time is frozen, and all other things are stopped
between seconds and can perceive nothing of the characters moving and
acting. Attacks can be made on frozen targets, but as they are slowed
down and frozen before hitting the target they are no more effective
than usual. The amount of strain this puts on the user's body is
immense and the tidal forces of being stretched out between multiple
points in time work to shred them apart. For every round this power is
in use, the user receives 1 Mortal damage. As an average adult human
has 5 Mortal durability and a round is 12 seconds, the limit on this
is generally to keep it under 60 seconds. Once the time-freeze ends,
either by the artifact's user willingly ending it or being torn to
bloody shreds by paraspatial pressures, time resumes flowing as
normal, and anything that moved around or was in some way changed
during the freeze appears to onlookers as if it was changed in the
blink of an eye.


 > Teleportation & Clairvoyance: Sailor Pluto is allegedly to never
leave the Gates of Time, however she and Queen Serenity knew it would
happen anyway. Regardless of the fact that Pluto left the Gate to help
Small Lady, and to find Sailor Saturn and destroy Pharaoh 90, there's
no bathroom and nothing to eat at the Gate. The next best thing is
rapid recall to the Gates, which the Orb can provide. If the user is
away from the Gates, she can be teleported back to them regardless of
distance, but cannot bring any more than she has on her person. While
away, the Orb also allows the user to mentally monitor the Gate as
with ESP -- Clairvoyance, though there's no sound and the angle of the
image cannot be changed.


 > Compulsory Behavior: Even though the Guardian of Time can leave the
Gate if necessary, and in fact could probably leave it quite often and
still have it totally guarded, she does not. Because it's her by god
DUTY to remain at the Gate, watching, making sure no interlopers
enter. The owner of the Orb is compelled to remain at the Gates at all
times and may only leave them by passing a WIL feat check at a +1
penalty. Checks may also be called for for extended amounts of time
away from the Gate, and cannot be rerolled if failed.




SPACE SWORD: Though the Space Sword is one of the three Talismans, a
magic item passed down to Sailor Uranus from the days of the Silver
Millennium, it is quite explainable in scientific terms. It is the
magical approximation of a Progress Level 8 star sword -- quite
advanced even for the Silver Millennium, and it is unknown where they
acquired the design. The Space Sword generates a complicated phased
magnetic field, using magic instead of superconductors, and fills the
magnetic area with white-hot plasma, a thin filament from the heart of
a star. When the magnetic field is breached, as when touched, the heat
and energy within cause great damage to anything it contacts. Though
the plasma never actually touches the target, as it vanishes back to
whence it was conjured from while the field is breached, the residue
it leaves is still capable of inflicting great damage. The owner may
also, at a command, summon a piece of metal instead of a plasma
filament and use the object as a normal sword, this is usually done
when there is a danger of someone else touching it.


 > Star-Fury Attack: The Space Sword does d6+1w/2d6w/d4+3m Energy
damage of Good intensity using the Melee Weapons -- Powered skill. An
enterprising and clever Adept with an applicable form of Matter or
Energy Control may wish to fling some superheated air out of the
magnetic field and into an opponent; resolve this as you would a
thrown attack, using the applicable Matter/Energy Control skill in
place of Athletics -- Throw and using WIL rather than STR to determine
range.




TOUCH OF THE STAR-MAKER: A rarity among Senshi artifacts, the Touch of
the Star-Maker was created by its current wielder in a fusion of
arcane Planetary Sorcery powers and contemporary Gravity Age
technology. It appears as a black glove of unknown, nonreflective
material, elbow-length, with brushed steel rings hovering around each
knuckle with no visible means of support.


Its wielder is the Senshi guardian of the planet Bazaar, capital of
the Rigunmor Star Consortium, one of the thirteen stellar nations
recognized by the 2472 Treaty of Concord. Though his title is
technically "Sailor Bazaar", he prefers to go by the moniker "The
Star-Maker". The form of this artifact has nothing to do with his
function, it was made as a glove because "The Star-Maker" originally
wanted to name the artifact "The Invisible Hand of the Market". The
Executive Guilder said that was over the line, thankfully. Nobody
could take "Sailor Invisible Hand" seriously.


 > Virtual Matter Creation: People get the Star Consortium all wrong.
They're not about greed... well, okay, they're about greed. But
they're not about taking things from others, they're about finding
people the things they need. And, the Star-Maker figured, the Senshi
guardian of the Star Consortium's capital should exemplify this: he'll
find what's needed out of thin air. The Star-Maker can conjure up to
100kg of virtual material in any shape he so desires -- there is no
restriction as to the shape or material they can be constructed from,
but they cannot have electronic or mechanical components. Creating
this matter takes 1 round per 20kg of material. Created material lasts
a maximum of 1 hour per day, regardless of the quantity in use --
create 1kg of matter and it will disappear in one hour and no further
summoning will be possible for the rest of the day. For every 10
minutes the virtual matter is in use, the user takes 1 stun point.


This cannot be used to create food, water, or other consumables, as
they vanish after an hour whether or not they've been eaten, but it
can be used to provide a variety of useful tools. Bridge gaps, shield
against attacks, seal hull breaches, climb a ladder out of a pit, pull
a sword on a foe... all sorts of useful things. What the Star-Maker
won't do, however, is trade away any of these things for actual money,
as that is fraud and the Consortium does not support fraud. He has
been known to rent them.


 > Star Transceiver: Of course, commerce is really about
communication. What use is having what someone needs if you've no way
to tell him about it? Even the faster than light communication of the
drivewave places an 11-hour delay on any communication, making
conversation impossible. The Star-Maker, however, can speak to any
person he's met within a 50-light-year radius and conduct a normal
conversation as if they were merely on another continent of the same
planet. An Awareness -- Intuition check is required to get the psionic
lock to the target, and conversation is limited to a total of 10
minutes per day, the device's user receiving 1 stun damage per minute.


 > Energy Cost: The device's powers take Stun points to use, as noted
above.




DEEP AQUA MIRROR: One of the three Talismans, this device passed down
to Sailor Neptune allows the user to scry the truth in multiple ways.
The device resembles a mundane hand mirror, 10cm x 15cm, of golden-
yellow material with an aquamarine back etched with the symbol of
Neptune. As the Outer Senshi were said to combat threats from outside
the solar system, the ownership of the Space Sword and Deep Aqua
Mirror suggests a dynamic wherein Sailor Uranus leads the conventional
military in direct conflict, while Sailor Neptune's subordinates
perform reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering, perhaps also
serving as internal security or perhaps leaving this duty to Sailor
Saturn. Like the Garnet Orb / Staff, it can be used as a focus for
magical attacks but has no capability to attack on its own.


 > Find Weakness: The bearer of the Mirror is likely to find herself
in combat fairly often, and the scrying power of the Mirror is just as
useful here as it is in preparation before the fight. The user of the
device may attempt an Awareness -- Intuition check while thinking of a
specific enemy, this enemy may be anywhere, but if he's not within
sensory range the check has a +2 penalty. An Ordinary success allows
the user of the Mirror to be aware of any special weaknesses the
target has, as well as his defensive capabilities, Durability, etc...
Essentially, the character (and player) get any information on the
opponent's character sheet that relates to his physical capabilities,
and not mental state, motivation, knowledge etc. On a Good success,
the user as well as anyone who can see into the mirror at the time it
is used get a -1 step bonus on any skill checks made to directly
attack the opponent within the next 24 hours. On an Amazing success,
this bonus increases to -2. Use of this takes 1 action and after it is
performed the user may act normally for the rest of the round.


 > Scrying: The Mirror can be used to gaze at distant locations,
forewarning, and thus forearming, its wielder. The bearer of the Aqua
Mirror can, once per hour, use the ESP -- Clairvoyance skill as if she
had 1 rank in it by looking into the Mirror and clearly imagining the
area she wishes to observe. Note that this doesn't have to be an area
she has ever seen before, she merely has to imagine what she thinks it
looks like -- and that usually looks nothing like the real thing, once
she sees it.


 > Mental Instability: Unfortunately, the Mirror's scrying abilities
come with side effects. The Mirror's holder does not become more
perceptive... but she thinks she does, in and out of Senshi form,
spotting subtle cues of derision and betrayal coming from the people
around her. Most of the time they're minor and easily written off as
being from other sources, but they do add up. Once per adventure or
once per month, the Aqua Mirror's owner must make a Resolve -- Mental
Resolve check to avoid a bout of paranoia. On a Good or Amazing
success, the hero suffers no ill effects; on an Ordinary success, the
hero becomes suspicious of everyone around her for d4 says, suffering
a +1 penalty to the use of all INT, WIL and PER-based skills. On a
Failure, the penalty is +2 and the duration is 2d4 days, and on a
Critical Failure, the character is incapacitated by raging paranoia
for d4 weeks.




MERCURY COMPUTER: An advanced computer enhanced with divination and
scrying magics of the Silver Millennium to make an approximation of a
quantum computer, the Mercury Computer is used by Sailor Mercury to
provide tactical and strategic information to the rest of the Sailor
Senshi. The user-interface device resembles a palm-top computer, or
one of those "Wizard" day-planners, with the modified symbol of the
planet Mercury on the case. The display device is a translucent blue
visor that extends over the eyes by tapping an earring, this allows
full battlefield visibility while still conveying useful information.
The user-interface device often thought of as the "Mercury Computer"
is not the computer itself, however -- the Mercury Computer itself is
buried underground in Argentina and communicates with the keyboard and
visor via teleportation magics approximating a wireless connection.


 > Find Weakness: The Mercury Computer's visor has the same ability to
Find Weakness as the Deep Aqua Mirror, as noted above, although the
bonuses to attacks against a target can be conferred to another by
relaying the information to them if they can't see the visor. The
skill governing this ability is Knowledge -- Computer Operation
instead of Awareness -- Intuition.


 > Analysis: The Visor's scanning equipment and the Computer's quantum
computing power allow it to analyze, locate, and categorize energy
signatures with near-perfect accuracy. Thermal, electric, bioelectric,
sonic, psionic, and several types of magical energy can be analyzed,
displayed, mapped, and collated. To increase the range of the scanning
ability, some precision was sacrificed; a Knowledge -- Computer
Operation check must be made to use this ability with a cumulative +1
penalty for every 50m of distance between the user and the target of
the scan; failure indicates inaccurate or unusable results.




SILVER CRYSTAL: The Silver Crystal or "Ginzuishou" is the heart of
power held by Queen Serenity. It is said to have the power to raise
the dead, reshape reality, cloud and control minds, stop warship-
caliber attacks dead in their tracks, and perhaps other things as
well. Its use for any purpose, peaceful or hostile, was declared a war
crime in 2312 by the Treaty of Earth that ended the First Galactic War
and created the Union of Sol.


The Silver Crystal's massive scope of powers make it inappropriate for
any player character in nearly any campaign, and are so great as to
defy categorization in any rules system.
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