[FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 11 [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.



* * * * *



   Beams of golden sunlight passed through the picture window that
took up an entire wall of Haruka and Michiru's bedroom, split into
horizontal little slats by the miniblinds. They shone on the tiny
flecks of dust, hair and skin swirling through the air, they shone on
the deep pile carpet, they shone on a bed whose size has not yet even
been named by mankind, and they shone right into Dr. Nadine Neary's
eyes. She knew, deep down, that she needed to get up, and promptly did
so twenty minutes later.


   She heart the faint strings of a violin on the air and smelled
indistinct, breakfast-y smells coming from the kitchen, and figured
she should get something before it was all wolfed down. That, and get
something for her head; it was absolutely killing her.


   The first thing she saw upon walking out of the bedroom was Donna
wearing a low-collared burgundy shirt with a green ribbon unevenly
tied on the front and a pleated, plaid skirt, sipping from a mug that
said 'Tokyo Philharmonic'. "Morning, Nadine," she said as if she
dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl all the time, "How'd you sleep?"


   "Ugh... awful. What time is it? Why didn't you guys wake me up for
my shift?"


   "It's only like seven, seven-thirty." She took a long, slurping
drink and visibly relished every droplet. "And Bill took your turn. He
said you needed your sleep."


   Nadine cocked an eyebrow. "Bill got hit with an axe and then got
piledrivered by a cell-phone demon."


   "Yeah, well..." Donna looked around as if she were making sure she
wouldn't be overheard, even though she was clearly making sure Bill
could hear her. "I think whichever one drives the race cars is on
amphetamines, and Bill got into their medicine cabinet."


   "Those were caffeine pills!" he called back from the kitchen. "It
wasn't any different from drinking a pot of coffee!"


   "He's very defensive," Donna whispered, and Nadine just rolled her
eyes.


   The kitchen, Nadine noticed, was bigger than her dorm in college
had been. Bill and Philip were in white dress shirts and slacks, Bill
was cooking up some French toast while Philip sat at the table reading
the paper. "Gooood morning Nadine," said Bill, with way too much cheer
for a man who'd been axed, bludgeoned, arrested, and got at most five
hours of sleep.


   "So I take it Haruka and Michiru never showed?"


   "Nope," said Bill. "Pulled the batteries out of all the remotes and
stereos and stuff I didn't want to touch with my bare hands, and it
turned out to be for nothing." He shook his head. "It's a damn shame."


   "So would I be correct in assuming that you and Phil there are
wearing women's clothing?"


   Philip raised a finger. "They're A WOMAN's clothing. But they are
not 'women's clothing'. Bill and I agree this is a very, very
important distinction."


   Bill passed a plate of toast back to the three of them. "Okay, so
everyone's up, what are we going to do today once we loot this place?"


   Philip rubbed his temples. "Uh, okay. There's a horrible alien
demon beyond space and comprehension about to gnaw his way into
reality and kill everyone."


   "And that would be bad."


   "Yes, Donna. That would be bad. Can we be serious for a moment?" He
took a bite of his breakfast, not bothering to use a fork. "Okay, so,
we know there are nine Sailor Senshi. The ones for the planets out to
Saturn are nice, normal people, assuming they weren't acting for you
two, and then Uranus and Neptune are incredibly rich murderous
assholes and nobody knows what Pluto is up to. They've been
collectively fighting off Isci ba Fan and his minions so far, and
assuming that there wasn't another mineral in hiding somewhere, all
the minions and intermediaries are dead."


   "And Nakami said he hated controlling things directly, so he got
some new minions." Nadine paused to swallow a pair of Excedrin and
washed them down with half a glass of OJ. "That's where the kinori
come in. They're his new Death Breakers or whatever they were called."


   "Yeah, and when me and Bill saw 'em, the Senshi were shooting
lasers and fireballs and all kinds of crap at them and it wasn't doing
much, but bullets were only slightly less effective than usual. So
either the Senshi for planets inside the asteroid belt really suck, or
they have some kind of magic ward on them. And their nest is big
enough to produce a blackscale."


   "Tomoe's notes talked about a large quantity of evil material
underneath the city. If the kinori dug into it when they were making
their next, they could all be hopped up on elemental evil right now."
Phil sighed. "Okay, so, we have Sailor Senshi, we have lizards, we
have bulletproof household-object demons. We have two guys acting like
they're in the FBI, but I'm guessing are not, because they are named
after Muppets. They seem to want to hurt us and Hotaru but leave the
Senshi alone. Nakami is by now probably in 'Area Gojuuchi' or
somewhere so the government can find out as much as they can about
him..."


   Bill raised his hand. "Question."


   "It's Japanese for 'fifty-one'. I don't know what Japan's version
of Area 51 would be."


   Nadine shook her head. "I speak Japanese and I didn't get it."


   "Anyway. Mind-reading shadow FBI agents, evil lizards, Sailor
Senshi. Hotaru is around somewhere, but we don't know where she would
go since her house and the shrine we stayed at are both undoubtedly
being monitored by the police. She could have gone to the house of
another Senshi, but since we don't know who any of them ARE, that
doesn't help us."


   "We know about how old they are. We could look at school yearbooks
or something, see if me and Donna recognize anyone."


   "Yes, Bill," said Donna as she rolled her eyes, "and we'd be
arrested for being child molesters if we tried to get them."


   "We're already fugitives from the law." Phil paused with his hand
on his chin. "But thank God, the news doesn't have anything about the
attack or our escape in it. Maybe they didn't put an APB out on us. Or
maybe that asteroid thing worked."


   "Oh, and by the way," said Bill as he sat down at the table
himself, "If any of you like Juno more than your current asteroid,
I'll trade. Just, throwing it out there."


   "Anyway? Can I finish? The government already knows about Sailor
Moon and company, because they brief the cops about her. And there's
no way they let a kinori nest under Tokyo exist without someone
knowing something about it. If there's another daimon attack, the
Sailor Senshi will show up, and if we're there we can meet back up
with them. Until then, we need to perform some information-gathering."


   Nadine rubbed her temples and asked out of the blue, "Do any of you
know who someone named 'Hangaku' is?"


   "No, why?"


   "Because I had this dream... I dunno, I've never had a vision, but
it kinda feels like a vision. She was this girl, and she looked like
Hotaru does when she does the transform thing, in a dress, only she
was missing some fingers and her neck was all messed up. She was
talking to someone in a white evening gown... like a, oh, I know, it
was Serenity, she was talking to Princess Serenity. And they didn't
know I was there... I don't think I was supposed to be seeing it."


   "Like you were a servant girl who snuck in on the Princess or
something?" Bill asked.


   "No, like I was wearing my lab coat and the half of the room I was
standing in was a dream about vaccinating monkeys so they don't turn
into the Incredible Hulk, and over there it's the Silver Millennium. I
think I got the dream-vision equivalent of watching a scrambled cable
channel."


* * * SAILOR.MOON: DOUBLE EXPOSURE


CHAPTER 11: DOUBLE BLIND * * *


APARTMENT OF CHIBA MAMORU
TOKYO, JAPAN TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1995, 7:08 AM


   Itohiro Nakami sat up, still groggy, and rubbed his head. Most of
his mental faculties were still asleep, and his vision was blurry. He
belched, yawned, scratched his back, stood up to go find a shot of
Jack, and that's when he realized that he was in someone unfamiliar's
bedroom, he had slept on top of a pile of socks, and four teenaged
Japanese girls were staring at him. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and
didn't even consider throwing his illusion back on. The girls all
continued to stare at him and he waved meekly. "Uh... Hello?"


   "Is he up?" called a younger girl's voice from behind them. "You're
not staring at him, are you?"


   "No!" said the two blondes in unison, and then kept right on
staring at him.


   "Stop starin' at him. Not polite." mumbled the shape on the bed
that Nakami only just now realized was a person.


   A short little girl with pink hair and red eyes elbowed her way
past the others. "You'll have to excuse them, Nakami-san. They've
never seen a fraal before."


   "Oh. That's understandable, I guess?" His voice cracked with panic.
"Where the Hell am I and who are all of you people and how did I get
here and how do you know what a fraal is and how do you know my name?"


   "Uhh," the girl held out her fingers to count off her responses,
"You're in Mamoru's apartment, that's Mamoru, these are Usagi, Makoto,
Minako, and Rei and I'm Chibi-Usa, we took you here after you passed
out in the police station, Hotaru told us, and Hotaru told us." Hotaru
didn't actually tell Chibi-Usa what a fraal was, but she figured that
explaining how she really knew would take forever.


   "Uh, okay?" His appearance shimmered and he looked human again.
"That doesn't explain a lot of what I, did you say Hotaru was here?"


   "She's in the living room," Mamoru said into his pillow, "Go in
there and let me sleep."


   And they did. The living room was spacious considering it was in
Tokyo but not really set up for company; a blue-haired woman slept on
the couch and a blonde slept on the floor below her. Hotaru leaned
against the far wall, in the Sailor Saturn costume from last night,
holding her weapon ready. There were dark circles under her eyes.


   "Okay, that's, uh, one more question. Hotaru, what are you doing
here?"


   "I'm standing watch to make sure nobody can warp in here while
we're asleep." She yawned. "I couldn't sleep. I've been up since
four." She seemed slightly ashamed. "We all had to stay in one place
after we got out of police headquarters... we don't know if there are
more of the shadow-men around to pick us off."


   "I remember, Takaji locked me in the interrogation room, and then
you and somebody else cut the door open... Who was that?"


   "Me!" Chibi-Usa raised her hand, then bowed. "Sailor Chibi-Moon, at
your service. It's hard to recognize me when I've got it on."


   "Chibi-Usa!" Usagi said, shocked. "That's your secret identity!"


   "He's an alien, odango, and he's on our team!" Chibi-Usa stuck out
her tongue, and Usagi stuck out hers right back. "And, he's telepathic
so if he really wanted he could read your mind anyway."


   "Oh. Uh, right." To tell the truth, Usagi was a little glad they
could skip the whole mistrust, 'are you my ally or aren't you' phase
they were still going through with the Outers. "Uh, I'm Sailor Moon,
that's Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are on the couch, on
the bed in there is Tuxedo Kamen, and you know Saturn."


   Nakami bowed hesitantly. "Itohiro Nakami, Director of the Hoffmann
Institute. You all are the magic space princesses, right?"


   Minako laughed nervously. "Something like that?"


   "Soo... that's uh, good, I guess?" Nakami looked around, not really
sure how to approach this new development of waking up with the Planet
Princess Parade, and figuring he didn't get nearly enough sleep to do
so. "Uh, I don't suppose there's any liquor around here?"


   They all stared at him in disbelief for several seconds. And then
as he stood in an unfamiliar apartment surrounded by strange young
Japanese girls with magic powers who had seen his true form and who he
just asked for booze... Itohiro Nakami, the alien dissenter secretly
living on Earth, the one who once had to explain to the governor of
Washington that what had happened in Spokane was a 'freak surveying
accident', the one who was briefly 'married' to a mentally ill Ziljir
in order to prevent her from bombing his headquarters off the face of
the Earth, whose favorite movie is 'Howard the Duck' and who has
mentioned this in mixed company, knew that the next few hours would be
the most awkward of his life.


*


   A shot of alcohol from the first aid kit was enough to wake Nakami
up, and Chibi-Usa seemed to go along with his explanation that it was
a stimulant, so at least they didn't think he was a drunkard. Over
breakfast, Usagi and Rei filled him in, and if he thought Hotaru gave
him the whole story, this was an entire epic saga. The Silver
Millennium, the Dark Kingdom, the two aliens, the Black Moon, time
travel, whole shebang. When they finished, he had one thing to say.


   "Well, I feel like a jackass." He thought back to what Takaji had
told him, angrily, multiple times. "I'm sorry, Hotaru."


   "Why does that make you want to apologize?" asked Hotaru, looking
up from an already-soggy bowl of cereal.


   "I came down here and made you a job offer because I'm an idiot and
didn't think that you already had a team that had things well in hand,
and I guess I wasn't willing to hear it. It's... insulting, is what it
is, to even think you'd consider it."


   "Oh. That." She stirred the bowl around with her spoon. "I'd
forgotten all about that." She hadn't, it was still bugging her from
some corner of her brain and she could not figure out why. "And we're
not all a team anyway. I just showed up and I haven't even done
anything, and Haruka-san and Michiru-san are only here because they
don't know anything we don't and don't want to miss out on anything,
they'll go solo as soon as they have something we don't."


   Everyone looked over at Haruka and she narrowed her eyes before
taking a slow, deliberate bite of an Eggo, chewed, and swallowed
without looking away from them. "All of you are terrible at your jobs.
I don't see why that's my fault."


   "You're all good enough, as far as I can see. If it's true and
since you're already magic princesses I don't see why not. You had
ancient demons, alien infiltrators, and terrorists from the future a
year and a half apart, and, and I never even heard about it and Tokyo
is still standing. You're... goddamned amazing."


   Usagi hadn't really thought bout it in those terms, but yeah, she
WAS damn good, wasn't she?


   "I mean, the Hoffmann Institute is a nationwide organization, I've
got thousands of employees... and I guess when Takaji told me he was
going to leave you alone to do your thing, I didn't know..."


   "You thought all of them were as depressed and dysfunctional as
me," Hotaru said.


   "No, I thought you were as dysfunctional as Bill, Donna, Philip,
and Nadine. Kunimatsu Takaji said that he was keeping his hands off
and letting you deal with all this stuff, and, I guess I didn't put it
together that you could handle it, and here my people come in trying
to make everything better and screwing things up. Nadine was in tears
because she thought she was the only person who'd be around for you."


   "I'm sorry that I made her go through that."


   Chibi-Usa looked at Hotaru meaningfully. "See? People want to be
your friend!"


   "I'm sorry, Hotaru, but the way you talked... I guess they, we,
thought you didn't have any. God, we're not doing anything useful
here, I should just stay out of your way."


   Chibi-Usa's need to cheer up everyone she came into contact with
kicked in. "Don't feel bad! I mean, your guys found Hotaru and kept
her safe, right? And they figured out how to make that magnimawhatever
that can keep the Isci ba Pharaoh away, and they fought off those
lizard things. And that's when we can use magic and you all can't,
which is really like cheating."


   "Magnima..." Nakami gestured to the device sitting on a table in
the living room. "That thing? I thought that was a hot dog
rotisserie."


   "It's the... magnetized, repulsor, no, the..." Makoto paused, then
her and Rei said in unison, "Rotating magnetic resonance disruptor."
Makoto added, "The thing they blew up on Thursday and it turned off
all the magic for a couple days. If we can find Ami-chan again, or
your guys, then we can make a bunch of them and just keep the Pharaoh
sealed out until we can make a more permanent solution. Do you know
how to blow this one, in case we need to use it?"


   Nakami blinked and looked dismayed. "That's not going to work. If
that's the device they used, and what happened on Thursday is the
effect you need, you, you can't reproduce that. They threw that thing
into a Fader."


   "So, why did that work, and can we do it ourselves?"


   "About a quadrillion volts of electricity had to run through that
device to produce that effect."


   "Oh." Makoto blinked. "I don't think I have that much. That's bad."


   "That is really, really bad," agreed Minako. "Because that was
kinda our plan."


   "But you said Kunimatsu Takaji was talking about us, right?" asked
Rei. "The head of the NPA, he knows about us and he says he lets us do
our thing?"


   "Yes. He's... why the hell am I worrying about keeping his secret,
he's an alien like me, the whole LDP is full of alien conspirators. He
says they could try and kill daimons and stuff but if they ignore it
you'll take care of it."


   "Oh." Rei's voice cracked. "Well, I think I know where we can go to
next."


* * *


   Meioh Setsuna stood half-submerged in a soapy underground pool, the
large chamber bathed in cool blue light from an unknown source. The
nest used the stream here to collect water and bathe in, but when the
Gate-Keeper used it everyone else cleared out. She was naked, not that
it mattered, face shrouded in preternatural shadow, scrubbing her
already red and bleeding arms.


   Near her, standing in the same place he had been for the past
twenty minutes while patiently waiting to be addressed, was Kher-Aya,
the blackscale leader of the kinori nest. He didn't know if he should
be looking away, or looking at her, and eventually decided to stare at
a point about a meter away from her as she engaged in her
obsessive-compulsive bathing ritual.


   "How long are you going to stand there without saying anything,
Kher-Aya?" she said as she came to the edge of the pool. "If you have
information to offer that is more important than my futile attempts at
cleanliness, I would not appreciate the delay. Time is more important.
And if you don't have new information to offer, give me your knife."


   The kinori swallowed nervously and shuffled his taloned feet, but
then pulled the knife out of the harness on his chest and passed it to
her handle-first. If she was going to kill him, she was going to kill
him, and failing to follow the order might inspire her to do it.


   Without a smile or wink, not that Kher-Aya could see anyway, she
took the blade in one hand and wrapped a length of her hair around the
other, then used the knife to start sawing it off. "You were hesitant
to give me your weapon because you're under the impression I am going
to kill you for your failure last night at police headquarters. You
are mistaken."


   "Gate-Keeper, please, I am sorry, it won't happen again--"


   "Your objective was successful. You verified that there was no
kinori held prisoner there and no kinori was taken alive. The fact
that you encountered Sailor Moon and failed to kill her is immaterial.
Daimons can be manufactured at will and you have many more warriors at
your disposal." She winced as she cut off another rope of long, green
hair. "I am not angry."


   "Uh, good? I was told that when messenger told you last night you
shattered his neck."


   "Well. I am certainly not happy, but I am not angry." Another
fistful of hair chopped off, half her head now reduced to uneven green
clumps. "I am curious to know how for such a small mission, you lost
twelve daimons and seventeen warriors, when you were supposed to
present such immediate and overwhelming force no resistance was
possible."


   "Daimons, not following orders, acting irrationally. Had the wrong
building to search. And, did not expect Sailor Moon to--"


   "I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS!" Setsuna shouted, then cleared
her throat. "I should not have to tell you this. Sailor Moon appears
every time. This is a pattern that is very, very easily discerned. by
any organism with even the SLIGHTEST, the SLIGHTEST HINT of reasoning
capacity. At all points in the future, if I order you to do something,
you are to assume that I expect Sailor Moon to interfere."


   Kher-Aya hadn't really encountered Sailor Moon many times and
didn't have a basis to draw that conclusion from, but knew better than
to say so.


   "At least, we can know we have made it back to where we began.
Minus, of course, some daimons and warriors." She took a deep,
cleansing breath. "We will take what we have learned from this
experience and alter our behavior accordingly, because to perform the
same actions over and over would be insanity."


   "Yes, Gate-Keeper."


   "I am a purely rational and logical individual, Kher-Aya. I
recognize that which advances my cause, and that which... hello,
what's this?" Behind her in the water, she saw a small reptile,
slightly larger than a basketball, with fins for arms and legs and a
long, curved neck that slightly resembled a giraffe's. A cryptoplesid,
an animal much like a pygmy plesiosaur, that inhabited the
subterranean waterways. It had floated up behind her while she was
speaking and was now bending its little neck over to experimentally
nibble on the strands of green hair floating behind her. Setsuna
watched it wordlessly as it munched on a few strands, looked up to her
with big glistening eyes as if for approval or guidance, then put its
nose back down into the water.


   Then she wrapped her hand around the animals neck, lifted it, and
smashed it repeatedly against the stone floor. Without a grimace,
without a scream or a growl, she pounded its body into the rock,
letting its pained and surprised squeaks echo throughout the cavern.
Kher-Aya winced and blood spattered off of it onto the floor, the
water, Setsuna's body, as its bones broke and skin ruptured. Finally
the broken body came free of the shattered neck as she was lifting it
over her head, sending it tumbling end over end like a blood-spurting
football into the back of the cavern. She flung the neck after it,
inhaled deeply, and submerged herself in the water to wash off the
blood. When she came back out, she batted the remaining hair from her
face and continued, "I recognize that which advances my cause and that
which holds it back, and striking out at my subordinates is the
latter."


   It took absolutely every atom, every lepton of self-control Isci ba
Fan had not to go on a bloody killing spree and butcher everything in
this nest with his, her, or anyone else's bare hands. He had to put up
with it for now because he needed subordinates to ensure his arrival
would not be thwarted again. He was capable of performing these duties
by himself, of course, but there was still the slim but real chance
that Sailor Moon could pull some freak magic grail laser out of her
ass and banish him. He needed warm meat-shields in between her and him
until he could shatter the barrier holding him back, shred her
consciousness from her body, and leave her an immaterial quivering
husk of suffering.


   And though his subordinates were of course wretchedly,
infuriatingly incompetent in every single task they undertook, he
would not scream, or threaten them, or kill one to make the others
know he was angry. Compared to the control it took not to butcher them
all, the additional effort to not merely abuse and torture them was
minuscule He had seen firsthand what happened when an organization
such as this was run with fear and mistrust and backbiting no matter
how much it was deserved: they made stupid mistakes, got locked into
nonfunctioning behavior patterns, and in general failed at whatever
they did to an even greater extent than every thing on this blighted
ball of incompetence usually failed in everything they did.


   If the 'Witches 5' had actually combined their insignificant
intellects together and focused on the goal, instead of sabotaging
each other's efforts, maybe he wouldn't have to be talking to
underground lizards right now. And though he had not been involved in
Queen Beryl's efforts save for nosing around to see if she had a
usable portal, he knew that if she'd even waited five minutes before
killing or imprisoning her lieutenants, Sailor Moon would already be
dead, the Death Busters could have easily killed anything Beryl had at
her disposal, and he would have surged into reality utterly unopposed.
No, Isci ba Fan was not stupid, and would not make stupid, stupid
mistakes like they did. His white-hot, shrieking rage and bottomless
loathing could remain hidden until he was prepared to unleash them in
full, because Isci ba Fan... does not... make stupid mistakes.


   "Uh... Gate-Keeper?" Kher-Aya shuddered. "Are you, okay, or should
I come back?"


   "What?" Setsuna's attention snapped back to reality. "No, no, I am
perfectly fine. Now, what we have learned from our experiences is that
the large, mindless daimons follow orders perfectly but are unsuitable
to work unsupervised, and the small, independent daimons can adapt to
new situations but are poor at obeying commands. Since we are rational
we will take this knowledge and alter our behavior accordingly." She
cut off another length of hair, her uneven hairstyle now looked like a
shrub undergoing chemotherapy, but all that matters was it would be
out of her way. "Recall any teams that are on the surface, if there
are any. We will hold back and fortify, manufacture the large daimons
for defense and the independent daimons will do something that does
not require orders and coordination."


   "At once, Gate-Keeper."


* * *


   Dr. Philip Akens sat at a hardwood table in the National Diet
Library, glancing between three hardbound books, pausing to mark down
notes of his own on which pages to photocopy. Finally, he was in his
element.


   Nearby, Bill Wheeler flipped through newspapers written in a
language he didn't understand, looking for a photo or police sketch of
one of them, or a picture of police headquarters attacked by monsters,
or something. Nadine had already read them, but he felt like a jackass
just sitting there and looking over Philip's shoulder at stuff he
couldn't understand. He was totally out of his element.


   He folded up the newspaper and instead concentrated on the nearby
TV, showing news reports at once notch above 'Mute'. He couldn't
understand this either, but if he saw a brightly-colored monster, they
knew there were more daimons afoot. So he watched the TV for a few
minutes until he got agitated and went back to the paper.


   "Bored?" Philip whispered.


   "A little bit, yeah. Are you almost done?"


   "This is my thing, Bill. I don't get impatient with you when you
fight the monster, don't get impatient with me when I'm finding out
where and how to fight it."


   "What are you doing anyway, going to look up 'kinori' in the phone
book?"


   "No..." He made another notation and closed one of the books.
"Donna and Nadine are snooping around for any kind of restricted area,
but I'd wager that we're going to find everything we need as a matter
of public record, once we know what it is we're looking for."


   "Don't think I'm going to say this often, but explain that to me
because it's my least boring option."


   "Uhhh, okay?" Phil shrugged. "The government has a network of
secret tunnels under Tokyo. Kinori live in secret caves under Tokyo.
Kinori work for the bad guy. Find the kinori nest, find the bad guy or
how to get to him."


   "And how are we going to do that in the library if this is secret
government stuff?"


   "Because they're lazy and there's a bunch of books out about
exploring the secret tunnels and they just count on everyone thinking
only crazies believe it, and the fact there's nothing to do down
there, to keep people out." He flipped to the next page, then back,
then back and forth a few times comparing numbers. "Since the tunnels
are never used, my guess is they dug into the main kinori cavern and
then stopped. Find out when they stopped digging, which we can do by
looking at their yearly budgets, and find out how fast they were
digging, we can find the point in Tokyo under which the tunnel network
and the kinori caverns intersect." He threaded his fingers together
like two gears meshing. "Simple."


   "And if you can't figure out when they stop or where, and we can't
find Hotaru before shit starts to go down?"


   "Then we're going to be completely screwed, so stop distracting
me." Philip reached into the pile of books on the floor next to him
and passed one to Bill. "If you're bored, here's a book of yamato-e
paintings, stop and tell me if you see a white lizard standing on its
feet."


* * *


   There was what Hotaru recognized as a flurry of activity and
planning in the apartment, but it felt calm. Not calm as in tranquil,
serene; calm as in what precedes the storm.


   The kinori -- or the t'sa, as Chibi-Usa kept calling them -- lived
somewhere underground, and Minako had found out that the tunnel
network was a lot bigger than she thought. They would have to find out
through other means how to find their nest and with it the Pharaoh.
Rei thought she might have a way in on that front, in her father, and
she only waited for Minako, Usagi, and Makoto to come back from
school. They were the only ones that had gone, because they could stay
in a group. Mamoru, Rei, or Chibi-Usa could be picked off on their
own, and Haruka and Michiru had no school to return to. They agonized
over the decision to go to school, but eventually they decided on it
lest they drive themselves insane with fruitless worrying. They had
the communicator watches if anything happened.


   Rei, Haruka and Mamoru were filling out a supply list, having the
rare advantage of being able to prepare ahead of time, and were
discussing the relative merits of night-vision goggles versus chemical
break-lights for the pitch-dark kinori caverns. Sailor Neptune was
fruitlessly trying to scry with her mirror, and Hotaru was sitting on
the couch, trying not to nod off, flanked by Nakami and Chibi-Usa.


   Chibi-Usa got a message last night in her dreams, from the first
Princess Saturn, a woman named Hangaku. Hotaru was in trouble, she
said, and she has to know people care, she has to know how special and
wonderful she is. It was Chibi-Usa's mission and she was not about to
take it lightly. If Sailor Saturn was the only one who could stop the
Pharaoh -- and she was going to do it and stay alive afterwards --
then what did it matter if they found him if she was in no condition
to do it?


   "Hotaru-chan? What's wrong?"


   "Hm? Oh, no, no, it's nothing. I'm just tired." Hotaru sighed,
knowing nobody believed it, then turned to Nakami. She saw him as an
alien in a tie sitting on the couch, she had to take the others' word
for it that he looked human. "Nakami-san, you said you didn't know of
any other planets in the solar system ever being inhabited, right?"


   "Uh, no, not that I'm aware of. When the mothership arrived they
would have scanned every planet for signs of habitation, but they
didn't find anything. But, if they were unoccupied and they destroyed
them on the way out, the ship wouldn't have found them. And this was
thousands of years ago, the records are probably gone."


   "Oh." She drummed her fingers on her thigh. "Do you know of
anything like the Silver Millennium, that the fraal were involved in?"
Chibi-Usa briefly considered interrupting, but thought better of it.


   "Uhhh... Well, yes and no. The closest I can think of is... well,
no point in keeping this secret given who I'm talking to, was
Atlantis."


   "Wait, wait, wait." Mamoru held up his hands as he overheard the
other conversation. "Atlantis is real?"


   Everyone else in the room stared at him. "Mamoru-san..." said Rei,
"Your on-again, off-again girlfriend is a reincarnated princess from
the moon, and Chibi-Usa-chan there is your daughter from the future."


   "I was working under the assumption that Atlantis was real and
would somehow try to kill us all," added Michiru.


   "I wouldn't worry about that. Atlantis was a disasterpiece of epic
proportions." He saw that everyone was looking to him for more, turned
around on the couch, and got situated. "Okay, now, like I said, this
happened thousands of years ago, so it could be distorted from what
originally occurred, but, this is a story that gets told pretty
often... in, heated political arguments. There's two major political
parties of the fraal, there's the Ahotti, the reactionaries who want
everything to be the way it is and hold back progress, and there's the
Iltan, and we believe we should share our technology with humankind
and it'll be better for all of us. Atlantis was the Iltan's idea, and
since it failed, the Ahotti have been in power ever since.


   "Okay, so, the fraal mothership arrived here in about 6000 BC, and
they landed on an island with highly-advanced -- you know, for the
time -- inhabitants that called themselves Atlanteans. The fraal lived
with the Atlanteans for a while, but the Ahotti were in power then,
and they didn't help the Atlanteans to advance, they mostly learned
bits and pieces of magic from kinori sorcerers. Then, about a thousand
years afterward, some crazy kind of alien demon invades from these
mysterious stones, fraal and kinori Atlanteans fight it off together,
the Iltan say this proves the Atlanteans can be trusted with our
advanced technology, and the kinori say the same thing for their
magic."


   "And then they went mad with power and tried to conquer the world,"
said Haruka.


   "Moooore like they thought they were the kings of all creation
already and saw no need to advance themselves, or do any work, or
really do anything but sit around in fancy robes, or taunt the Greeks
and Egyptians with all the cool stuff they had and weren't giving to
anyone. We thought that together we'd be able to advance
technologically faster than on our own, but their culture completely
stagnated. They refused to trade with anyone and they had to endure
constant defensive wars as everyone tried to get at their advanced
technology and magic. They warred with each other, constantly, over
the most petty homeowners-association politics you can imagine.
Eventually one of their own citizens, disgusted with how lazy and
hedonistic the culture was, got fed up and destroyed the telluric
generator powering it all, blowing the entire island to smithereens."


   "So all of our technological developments throughout history have
come from aliens?" asked Hotaru, eyes wide. "That's scary."


   "No, no, the Ahotti were pretty thorough in picking up all the
pieces from Atlantis. We give out stuff, but few and far between  -- I
did it a few times so I could have the patents, so I could get some
money from them, but they were things you were close to developing
anyway. Most of it has been you guys, and the Ahotti claiming credit
because they didn't have to give the technology to you. And nowadays
you have computers and electronics more advanced than what we make."
Hotaru saw him run a hand over his bald head, everyone else saw it go
through his hair. "We're really not a tenth as influential as we like
to think or you like to give us credit for. Most of our effort is
spent on petty bickering and infighting within or between parties, and
even the ones working to control the US government don't have anywhere
near complete control, because they need to navigate the same web of
bureaucracy, corruption, and incompetence as anyone. Honestly, if the
Ahotti decided to cut ties with the LDP, I imagine the Ahotti would
come out of the bargain far worse. So, uh, I know about a
super-advanced fallen ancient civilization, but nothing like the
Silver Millennium."


   And everyone was eager to drop the line of conversation after that.
"Yeah, anyway," said Mamoru, "we have a battle to prepare for. Okay,
so, I know the Space Sword will cut through them, is there any way you
can shut off the light source for..." and they began planning once
again.


   "Why don't you go join them?" asked Chibi-Usa. "You've got to know
something that can help. You know more about t'sa than I do, right?"


   "I'm an administrator, not a general, and if I was a good
administrator the Hoffmann Institute wouldn't be running a constant
budget deficit. Isci ba Fan is about a trillion times more serious
than anything I've ever dealt with, and honestly the thought of
confronting him makes me want to crap myself."


   "But this is what you guys do, right? We're in, you know, the same
business, kinda. We can use your help!"


   "No, no it isn't. You had terrorists from the future with their own
fully-functional space cruiser seeding the city with
nigh-indestructible demons capable of draining human energy and
mind-controlling entire packs of people, led by a hideous space
phantom that wants nothing less than the destruction of all life on
Earth. You're lucky, because if Wisephantom showed up in Memphis,
Tennessee, everyone would be dead right now! You know who comes from
the future that the Institute fights? Sandmen. Cyborgs from the future
who want to convert all of humanity into cyborgs like them with little
nanite injections, only their injections cost 15 million in materials,
and they can't actually mind-control people since nanites don't work
like that, so they never end up changing anyone since they're never
sure it's going to be worth the money, or if the person is just gonna
get super-strength and speed and just run off without joining their
cause. They're idiots, incompetents and assholes. We combat government
conspiracies marked by idiots, incompetents and assholes. No destiny,
no fate, no magic warriors. We don't have any part of this world here
and you should thank God or Queen Serenity or whoever for that."


   Hotaru's eyes went wide and she thought she could hear an actual
clicking noise coming from inside her head. "But it is, now. You
brought your business over here, or, or something. Senshi don't fight
kinoris, they fight magic monsters." She stood up and looked back at
the others. "Magic doesn't work on them very well, right? What were
you going to do about that?"


   "Me, you, and Haruka-san have weapons that can harm them,
Minako-san's chain might work, Ami-san's attack can slow them if we
can find her again."


   "And Nakami-san, when your people have to kill kinori, what do they
use?"


   "Uh, we try not to let them get in melee range, when we did it in
Manhattan we used 10-gauge shotguns with rifled slugs, and
flamethrowers for support. Headlamps instead of night vision goggles,
but that was a budget issue, and grenades to clear defensive
emplacements. You've got better, and you've done better, without any
of that."


   "Write it down." Hotaru held out her hand and couldn't stop it from
shaking. "Shotguns are legal in Japan, right? For hunters? We might be
able to get those. And, and we can make explosives. Because his guys
could do it and they don't have to be a magic anything."


   "I don't know if I can handle a shotgun," Haruka said, "but it
would be stupid of me not to try because I insisted on adhering to a
certain code of behavior."


   "Okay, but," Rei said, "We still need to figure out what we do when
we get there, if the Pharaoh is there."


   "I have no idea. Standard Hoffmann Institute protocol in this
situation, absent any other information and assuming it can't be
safely detained, would be douse whatever it is in gasoline and set it
on fire. I doubt that will help."


   "We have been through this. Hotaru is going to destroy it. She's
the only one with the power to do that."


   "No. No, no we don't." Hotaru was smiling with her eyes if not her
mouth. "We don't even know I can do that, right? I mean, I was, or, or
Saturn was supposed to be so powerful she can destroy a planet, but
they never tested it, because we still have all of them. How did they
know it worked? Maybe they just wanted--"


   Haruka reared up to slap her across the mouth but once more stopped
at the last second. "Stop. You're just going to end up hurting
yourself and everyone around you worse. I know what you're thinking,
you heard all of that about Atlantis, and you thought maybe the Silver
Millennium was just like them, a bunch of egotistical windbags more
talk than action who couldn't actually put together enough power to
destroy a planet, and you'd be off the hook. I don't even believe the
Silver Millennium existed and it does not matter. You're Sailor Saturn
and that's not something you can find a way to weasel out of. You
can't fight your destiny, you can't cheat your destiny, you can't
outrun your destiny and God damn it I have tried."


   "You can't talk to her like that!" squealed Chibi-Usa.


   "As opposed to what? Lying to her like you? Shutting my eyes and
covering my ears and chanting everything will be okay like Sailor
Moon? I'm not going to sit here and let her build herself up to be let
down even more when she has to do what she has to do. If she tries to
get out of that destiny everyone is going to die, whether you or I
like it or not. Pretending otherwise is irresponsible and dangerous."
She scoffed and turned around. "I don't want to hear any sugary speech
you have to offer me in defense. Michiru and I are getting another
car, and yes, we're coming back here, as little as we like it, because
that is how things work."


* * *


   "I was wondering when you would get up. It's like one in the
afternoon, I intended to do things today other than watch Ami," said
Statler.


   "You get shot as many times as I did and you get to criticize my
sleeping habits, ass," Waldorf shot back. He gestured to Ami, still
tied to the chair. "Anything I should know about?"


   "About what we expected, panic, fear, panic, fear, hate, more
panic, complete terror, praying for death, et cetera, et cetera. Up
until about an hour ago, and then it's all 'CHHHHHHHHHHKKKKKKK'," he
said, imitating television static.


   "I told you it would be easy." Waldorf leaned over and forced Ami's
eye open; the surface was clouding over with white. "I thought she was
going to get crazy mind control eyes, but solid white works too. See,
her kind goes easy. It was easy enough for Queen Beryllium to do, we
won't have a problem."


   "Well, you take watch. I'm gonna go look for Makoto, shouldn't be
too hard to find."


   Ami looked from one to the other and back. She didn't know how
she'd fallen asleep, she was too terrified to sleep and could not let
her defenses down... but she fell asleep anyway, for how long she did
not know. There had been no progress or change. Her body felt like she
was moving and staying still at the same time, like she'd been at the
amusement park and was now trying to sleep and it was still under the
impression she was riding a roller coaster. Her mind was, of course,
gripped in complete terror. She couldn't scream any more, not that
they would care. Statler shadow-stepped out rather than open the door
and let sound escape.


   Waldorf had checked her eyes, they were changing color. They were
going to turn her into one of them, or at least something close enough
to them to obey their edicts. It couldn't be long now, after they'd
let her stew in her own paralytic terror, to swoop in and rob her of
her free will and everything that made her human. She was about to be
spiritually murdered and there was nothing she could do about it.


   And then she realized something, and she felt like an idiot for not
realizing it sooner. It had all just come together, but she should
have known the entire time. There was nothing to be afraid of here,
nothing at all.


* * *


   Kunimatsu Takaji tapped the button on his desk. "Kimiko-san? Send
Hino-san in." He leaned back in his chair and massaged his temples.
Today was not a good day and it would only get worse.


   "Yes, Kunimatsu-san, thank you for seeing me so qui--"


   "Sit down in the chair and don't say a Goddamn word unless I ask
you a question." Hino Takashi quickly took a seat while Takaji poured
two shot glasses full of sake from a bottle sitting underneath his
desk, paused, and drank them both. He did it more to illustrate the
state of mind he was in, if he wanted something that affected him the
way sake did a human he would be doing shots of antifreeze, though
that would take some explaining to justify to Takashi. "I am in an
absolute world of shit today and I really, really don't have time for
pleasantries. You know what happened at police headquarters last
night?"


   "Some prisoners escaped, last I heard. Some kind of flaw in the
electrical system?"


   "The answer to that question was 'no' because you do not know what
happened. What happened was it was assaulted by a massive force of
youma, who were apparently looking for something in particular. I have
NO idea how we've actually managed to keep a lid on this story. I just
hope some idol singer dies in the middle of a freaky sex act before my
ability to hold this media blackout together totally gives out. There
were at least twenty, and a bunch were of a species nobody has ever
seen before. I don't have to tell you how bad that is." Takaji also
didn't have to tell Takashi that that 'new species' wasn't a youma at
all, because that was immaterial by this point. Finding out how the
hell kinori got underneath the city was going to be a whole other
matter.


   Takashi could guess. The pattern followed so far had been one
monster, one monster, one monster, maybe two monsters, Senshi go off
elsewhere to kill whoever is responsible, come back and repeat the
cycle. Youma didn't attack civilian, non-Senshi assets and they didn't
attack en masse. "Is there anything I can do to help, sir?"


   "If there wasn't I would not have called in you in here, would I? I
have been ducking calls all day from the Prime Minister, the members
of the Diet who know about youma, the members of the Diet who don't,
LDP hatchet men, and every other asshole with my phone number and
they're all demanding to know what's going on and I can't give them an
answer because I don't know myself." Anger and fear were rising in his
voice in equal measure. "You know that arrest you were bitching to me
about yesterday?"


   "Yes, sir, I do."


   "Well, I looked into it yesterday, and like you said, the FBI
wasn't involved. I traced it up to three captains, each of whom
thought one of the other two told him there was going to be FBI
assistance in a counterterrorism case. Two agents, named Waldorf and
Statler." He paused and looked at Takashi expectantly.


   "Uh, I'm sorry sir, I don't recognize those names. Are they on the
terrorism watch list?"


   "Waldorf and Statler are Muppets. They're the two old guys who sit
on the balcony and heckle the rest of the show. The 'FBI' guys were
being cute with us. One of them went to Public Security Intelligence
and one of them went to the NPA and they've been bossing around
government agents like they own the place, seizing and suppressing
information on their own without ever letting us in on the loop. And
the people they arrested at your shrine? Two more of them were found,
with Sailor Moon, at the aftermath of a youma attack. The four of them
were the ones who escaped the holding cells, after they beat another
youma to death with a light stand, a fire safe, and a power drill.
They claimed to be Sailor Juno, Vesta, Ceres, and Pallas, and claimed
that the two FBI agents were some kind of mind-reading shadow
creatures."


   "So they said anything to get out of jail and took advantage of a
youma attack to do it. We know youma can be killed by normal means
since that one that was trying to drain the life of people on the
subway platform fell off and got run over."


   "Except, the member of their group the fake FBI men DIDN'T catch
was one Tomoe Hotaru."


   Takashi sat up. "As in the daughter of crazy warlock scientist
Tomoe Suoichi?" Takaji nodded. "The one who was either going to
destroy the world or turn out to be the last Senshi, and since we're
all still here that leaves the one option?"


   "The very same. And the reports from the police officers working
under Statler? They say he acted incredibly unusual but nobody
reported anything because he liked to threaten them with their
deepest, hidden fears if they made waves."


   "So you think there's youma infiltrating the government and they
used us to disable Senshi support personnel."


   Takaji shook his head. "No, no, they aren't Senshi support
personnel like Osaka or the cats. They work for the Hoffmann
Institute, an American anti-paranormal outfit. Their leader came down
here to try and poach a Senshi for his own ranks. But we can assume
they are working together for the moment and whatever is trying to
detain the Senshi and them is one of the Senshi's foes. I want to know
how long this infiltration has been going on and how we're going to
stop it. I can't exactly tell everyone that IAB is sweeping them all
to see if they're crazy demons from another dimension, and I have no
way of dealing with them anyway. And I can't let it get out that I let
the police get infiltrated in this way, either, to the public OR to
anyone who already knows demons exist."


   Takashi sighed. "And you called me here so I could cash in the chip
with my daughter, tell her we know, and have her send the rest of the
Senshi in to clean house. Sir, I really don't know if that's wise."


   "No, what is unwise is if people find out what's been going on
behind my back before I have an answer for it. Someone is going to
take the fall for this regardless, and it had better not be me."


   "It's just, my daughter and I aren't on the best of terms, and it's
possible she won't even relay the message out of spite towards me. I
will try."


   "You had damn well better. Because if I go down for this I don't go
lightly. I am going to take more people with me than a Palestinian
suicide bomber."


   Takashi sighed, steepled his hands in front of his face, and then
pointed to the sake bottle. "Give me some of that, I'm going to need
it." He messily poured himself a glass, splashing half of it into his
lap. "What are you going to do about the media, sir?"


   He waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, I figure, I'll say it was Aum
Shinri Kyo again, and say we have the mastermind in custody, and show
them one of the Mugen people. That should keep the hounds at bay for a
little while."


* * *


   The four of them met at the photocopy machines to compare notes,
figuratively and literally. "What'd you guys find?" asked Bill, while
Philip worked two copiers at once. "Secret chamber of forbidden
knowledge?"


   "No, no, nothing like that," Donna said. "They have to keep the
good stuff all somewhere else. No, we were looking through the
research journals."


   "Yes, apparently..." Nadine said as she pulled a paper out of the
middle of the stack she was holding, "Going crazy and trying to end
the world didn't stop Dr. Tomoe from publishing research papers. He
seems to work a lot with the same five people... Kuromine Kaori,
Hanyuu Mimi, Teruno Ruru, Bidou Yui, and Arimura Yuko." She looked
away and snapped her fingers a few times. "And I could swear I have
heard that last name before."


   "Probably the Witches Five," Philip said. "Hotaru mentioned
something about a Kaori being in on it, and apparently the students at
Mugen suspected 'Professor Arimura' was a witch."


   "Well, I figured I could see what else they had their names on and
see if we could get any info from them that may not have been in that
one box of Dr. Tomoe's notes. So I looked them all up here, and they
cover a very wide range of fields."


   Bill shrugged. "You want to diversify out when you assemble your
evil superteam, because someone is going to have your one weakness
anyway."


   "Kaori was another physicist, like Dr. Tomoe, Mimi was string
theory without a lot of string experiments, Ruru was into genetics and
botany and named a species of plant, and Yui was on the cutting edge
of nanorobotics. Yuko published no papers herself, but she does hold
three patents, one for some kind of EM amplification device, one for a
fuel-injection system, and one for a specific vanadium alloy that's
really good at heat dissipation."


   "Hell of a brain trust." Bill rubbed the back of his head and
looked slightly embarrassed. "I barely graduated high school. I feel
like we're totally, totally outclassed by everyone here."


   "Well, these bitches all died, and we're still alive," said Donna.
"So who's the smart one now?"


   "Probably still them," Bill muttered.


   "And they were clearly in it for love of science alone, because Dr.
Tomoe had ungodly scads of money." Philip paused to slide another note
into the copy machine and flip to a new page in the book. "When I was
looking up financial records, I saw he didn't just serve as Mugen's
headmaster, he owned the entire building, the land, everything. That
plot of land alone had to be worth millions upon millions. The Tokyo
Bay land reclamation project? His idea. I'd bet dollars to
doughnuts..." He flipped the book around and hit 'scan' again,
"...that the foreign investment capital he drummed up was his own
money put through dummy corporations. He probably was in with the
Bildebergers."


   "Damn, you've been a busy bee," said Donna. "Where did you find all
this stuff?"


   "Oh, newspapers, financial periodicals, public bids on government
contracts, budget reports, that kind of stuff." He shrugged and
smiled. "This is my thing, after all. Anyway, most of that isn't
useful to us now that Dr. Tomoe is dead and the school is a smoking
crater. But what IS useful is that the building was built to his
exacting specifications, including an unusual position on the road
grid that ended up taking up twice as much real estate as it would if
it was placed like all the other buildings. Big, useless shaft down
the middle that looks like the kind of thing you gather energy in. And
cold-riveted girders with cores of pure selenium. Where have we seen
that kind of construction before?"


   "So he built the school to gather energy, and put it directly on
top of the big evil booger that the kinori are all hopped up on now.
And, he did the land reclamation thing because said booger was out
underneath the bay and he couldn't build on top of it."


   "That's the theory I'm working from right now, Bill. And if we find
the 'booger', we're going to find Isci ba Fan."


   "And then we..." Donna looked at him expectantly, "...what, throw a
can of gasoline at it and set it on fire?"


   "Well, I hadn't got that far. I still have to find where the kinori
cavern intersects the tunnel network; Dr. Tomoe wasn't working with
the kinori, so he most likely didn't dig down to meet them himself. I
need to run off some seismic reports from the 70's and these analyses
of the groundwater, and then we can go collate this, and hopefully
come up with a plan, or find Hotaru and hope she came up with a plan
that doesn't involve dying."


   "Last I checked, Phil, your PhD was in linguistics and mine was in
medicine," said Nadine. "That sounds like something a geologist would
need to decipher."


   "Which is why we're going back to Haruka and Michiru's apartment,
to run up their long distance bill."


* * *


   "Don't listen to Haruka-san," said Chibi-Usa once they were sitting
on the edge of Mamoru's bed, far enough away they couldn't be heard
talking but still close enough for assistance. "She can't see the good
in anything, she doesn't know what she's talking about."


   "Yeah. She has, I don't know, a martyr complex or something. I just
don't know if she's right anyway." Hotaru sighed. "I know I've told
you this before. I'm just boring you."


   "No, no, I want to talk. I'm your friend and I want to see you be
happy. You have lots of friends, and all of us want to see you be
happy! I wish you could see that."


   "I know. And it's sweet. But it's not like I can just decide to be
happy. I've tried 'just putting a smile on' and I only feel worse for
living a lie." She flopped onto her back and stared at the ceiling.
"I'm sorry you got involved with me, Chibi-Usa. I'm not going to be
the friend you deserve and I'm only going to end up hurting you."


   "No you're not! Nothing that you did would ever hurt me." She
paused and thought for a few seconds. "Well, unless you like kicked me
or punched me or something, but that's not the same kind of hurt. And
you have plenty of reasons to be happy! Nobody who has friends should
ever be sad, because friends make everything better, right?"


   "You're the only friend I have, Chibi-Usa-chan. And I don't
think..." She sat back up suddenly. "No, we've done this. What's it
like to be a princess?"


   Chibi-Usa blinked a few times as her brain changed gears. "Uh, it's
nice? I mean, I haven't seen a lot of it, and I'm learning how to be
one, but I know it's what I want to be. A lot of people respect and
look up to me, and I can make a lot of people's days just a bit
brighter." She giggled. "Plus, I have a gigantic bedroom and have all
kinds of dresses and toys and I can hold huge parties and I live in an
awesome crystal citadel. It's a lot of fun!"


   "Yeah..." Hotaru looked down and fidgeted with her hands. "It
sounds like it. You probably wouldn't know firsthand, because, you are
one, but I think almost every young girl wants to be a princess. I
know I did."


   "And now, you are! Kinda."


   "I had it all laid out in my head. I wasn't going to be any old
kind of princess, I was going to be a tsarina kind of princess. I
didn't really know that much about them, just saw a few pictures, and
I built up this image in my head. I would wear these, these rich
opulent furs, and it'd be in the far north and I wouldn't have to go
outside a lot anyway, and I'd have a little sun umbrella for when I
did. I'd be married to a square-jawed war hero who tended to my every
need, but of course I wouldn't need as much because the princess
doesn't need to have blood drawn or her lung function tested or get an
injection or have her back rubbed with some kind of goop every week,
and I wouldn't get winded running down the stairs either. And we'd
live in this huge palace, with a great ballroom with one of those
gigantic double staircases for the royalty to make dramatic entrances
from. And we would hold a huge masquerade ball while there was a
driving snowstorm outside, and nobody would know who anyone else was,
but me and my husband would always find each other because our bond of
love was that strong, and then we'd get up on the balcony and address
our loving subjects, and my husband would pull out his calvary saber
and he'd bellow about how great our nation was, and everyone would
cheer, and I'd lean in on his arm and rub my face against it, and his
tailors would make him special uniforms where the left arm was plush
satin for me to nuzzle on, just for when I did that."


   "That sounds really nice, Hotaru!"


   "Then, I actually found some books about the tsars, and the
Romanovs, and I read about how the dynasty ended. Their people got fed
up with how richly they were living while they let the peasants
starve, and so they revolted, and they rounded up the whole family and
had them executed. Their teenage princess daughter, they thought she
might have escaped, but it turns out she died with the rest of them.
And, I knew I should still have my fantasy but I just couldn't do it
anymore. Because every time at the end of the ball a bunch of armed
men break in because I've been a bad ruler."


   "That's... awful. But, but it doesn't mean that's going to happen
to you!"


   Hotaru sighed. "It was my fault really. Most people, the first
thing they know about the Russian tsars is how the Romanovs got
executed."


   "I didn't know that." Chibi-Usa's history education started with
July 20, 1969 and moved forward from there, and she never paid much
attention anyway.


   "It's not like, I think, I can't be a princess because then
Bolsheviks will come in and kill me. I don't want to be a princess any
more. It's a responsibility. You have to be a ruler, a stateswoman,
and every single thing you do has some kind of symbolism to it.
Everyone is watching you all the time and all of their expectations
are crushing you and if you screw up or your family screws up people
are miserable. I didn't want that on my shoulders, because, I knew I'd
screw up.


   "And now... I find out Dad was setting me up to end the world, and
most of what he did for most of my life was all to make that happen.
and most of the people I knew were in on it. And then I'm also a
reincarnated Princess of Saturn who can wipe out all life on the
planet. And I have to die to kill the thing that I helped summon, only
maybe I don't but even if I do I'm still going to be a magic warrior
who can blow up the planet, and I have to defend it, and nobody asked
me, and I'm too dangerous to keep around, and... it's too much for me.
I can't do it. I can't keep going."


   "It was a lot for Usa-ko and the rest, too, but I know you're
strong enough. Right?" Chibi-Usa looked into Hotaru's eyes and smiled,
but when she did not receive one back, she squared her jaw. "No, that
wasn't a question. I KNOW you have it in you, Hotaru-chan. Because if
you didn't then you wouldn't BE Saturn. You, you just sit there and
you're so sad all the time and you don't want to even be alive and you
think that you're a terrible person and it's tearing our hearts out to
see you hurting like this! How can I tell you that you're a good
person and we all love you so you'll listen?" She grabbed Hotaru
around the midsection and shook her for emphasis. "Why can't you see
it, Hotaru? How can I let you be happy?"


   Two impulses warred inside Hotaru. She knew Chibi-Usa didn't
understand that it was more complicated than just that, but she knew
she wanted Chibi-Usa to be happy now, and that won out. She returned
her friend's hug and softly stroked her hair. "Thank you, Chibi-Usa. I
wouldn't be anything without you."


   "Yes you would, Hotaru. Yes you would!"



---



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


   T.E.S. PERIGEE


   Owned and commanded by Ruben 'Rubeus' Zavarjelos, the Black Moon's
flagship 'Perigee' terrorized the Sol system as well as nearby Alpha
Centauri, Sirius, and Upsilon Andromedae for decades. The Black Moon
exploited Queen Serenity's known distaste for large standing armies,
and the need to devote all such forces to the front lines of the
Second Galactic War, in order to perpetuate a string of brutal
hit-and-run attacks against the heart of Solar territory, framing
every case in which she fortified a planet's defenses as evidence of
the tyrannical lusts of a power-mad Queen.


   Originally a 'Starburst'-class luxury liner, Rubeus claimed the
Perigee from its previous owner after he staged a hijacking of the
liner during a dinner party held on board and he pyrokinetically
incinerated the ship's captain. The Perigee was then taken to a Black
Moon outpost on the asteroid Chiron for refitting. The ship was
painted black to suit the organization's name and to be harder to see
against the darkness of space, and the crystalline spines around the
ship's hull were fitted with lasers, missiles, and jammers;
camouflaging the real weapon systems among the nonfunctional spikes
and making the real ones harder to target and disable.


   Most of the luxury facilities were gutted, though the
holoprojectors were retained on most decks in order to make the ship
appear larger from within. The reason this luxury liner was stolen,
the rare (and commercially inviable) psychoportive transport system,
allowed the Black Moon to jump between any decks of the ship without
needing to cross the intervening space, and many decks of the ship do
not even physically connect in order to provide more room for
cloaking, detection, and weapons systems. The psychoportive system
also allows teleportation of objects or daimons from one area affected
by a dark matter gateway (or unshielded reactor) to another,
incredibly useful for deployment of guerilla forces.


   For all the space-saving benefits of the psychoportive system,
there are good reasons it never caught on commercially. It requires
enormous quantities of power, and if the reactor becomes damaged and
power output drops, then it becomes impossible to walk from one area
of the ship to another. The dark matter reactor is unshielded, placed
in one of the largest, emptiest rooms on the ship, and overclocked
beyond any sane or rational standard -- physical damage will cause it
to go critical before anyone but the most skilled Mechalus engineer
could intervene.


   *Unshielded Reactor: The dense and powerful dark matter reaction
gives all Mindwalkers, FX Adepts, and Talents who are  accustomed with
the power field a -2 step bonus to the use of all FX and Psionic
skills while on board, and the interior of the ship counts as being
near a dark matter gateway. The ship is considered an R2 environment
with "moderate" radiation, even though it is not gamma radiation per
se. Characters must make a Constitution feat check for radiation
poisoning for every week they spend on board unprotected; the ship's
hull does not mitigate this, but chemical supplements can ward off the
radiation's effects. If Reactor C is damaged and no successful damage
check is made, no matter how severe the damage, it suffers a critical
damage effect in the Marginal phase of the next round.


   *Psychoportive System: Because all areas of the ship are instantly
accessible, systems can be placed very efficiently and the effective
Durability used for building the starship is increased by 20%. If
power is cut to the system, passage between any two rooms of the ship
becomes impossible. Generally, during a starfall, the crew assembles
in the crew quarters with enough supplies to feed and entertain them
for five days and shuts off the psychoportive system to devote all the
power to the stardrive.


CREW ROSTER:


Captain
 - Ruben 'Rubeus' Zavarjelos

Gunners
 - Kimiko 'Karaberas' Ayakashi
 - Chikayo 'Cooan' Ayakashi
 - Shen 'Spineh' Ping
 - Torio 'Topai' Ihara

Droid Technician / Chief Engineer
 - Siegfried 'Safir' Demando

Engineers / Technicians
 - Yoshiro 'Ohpir' Fujiwara
 - Tatyana 'Tormarin' Barsukov
 - Amalio 'Amuthysto' Navarro
 - Ivanna 'Ivori' Katchora

Navigator
 - Marcus Demando (highest ranking Black Moon officer)

Communications / Sensor Operator
 - Esmerelda 'Esmeraude' Carballo

Computer Tech
 - Kyung-Hwa 'Quartiz' Tea

Ship's Doctor
 - Rebecca 'Beruche' Ayakashi

Quartermaster
 - Tazu 'Petz' Ayakashi

Deckhand
 - Jeff 'Pyrite' Stillman


"Perigee"
Durability: 20s / 20w / 10m / 5c
Hull Points: 80 (104)
Toughness: Lt
Target: +1 step
Maneuverability: 3
Power: Two Dark Matter mass reactors and one overclocked, unshielded,
incredibly unsafe mass reactor providing a total of 56 power factors.
    Two accumulators capable of storing up to 20 power factors.
Engine: Twin Gravitic Induction engines providing acceleration of 4
Megameters per phase
FTL Drive: Stardrive capable of making 10 LY starfall.
Armor: Heavy Cerametal providing d8 / d8 / d8 armor value.
Defenses: Stealth Shield giving +3 penalty to missiles, sensors
attempting to target this ship.
    Stardrive Scrambler giving a +4 penalty to sensors determining
this ship's starfall destination.
    Repair Bots giving -3 bonus to Damage Control checks.
Crew: Quarters for 18, life support given by Autosupport system,
6-seat command deck. 100 cubic meters of cargo space with crucifixes
to hold 6 prisoners. Onboard droid workshop.
Computer/Communication: Good-quality computer core with dedicated
sensor control system. Mass detectors providing 360-degree coverage to
a range of 10/30/50 at a +1 penalty, mounted spectroanalyzer, laser-
and mass-based communication transceivers.
Weapons Systems:
Dual-Mounted Tractor Beam: Front arc, 100 Hull of towing capacity,
2/4/8 range, -1 acc, 5 power factors each.
Dual-Mounted RF Spike: Front arc, En/* 3d4s/3d6s/2d4w, 1/2/3 range, -2
acc, 6 shots, 6 power factors each.
Gauss Gun: Front arc, HI/M d6+1w/d6+2m/d4+1c 2/4/6 range, +2 acc, 6
power factors.
8 Plasma Missile Racks: Sponson-mounted, 4 for each fire arc, En/L
d6+3w/d8+3w/d6+2m, -3 acc, 64 missiles, 1 power factor each.


COMPARTMENT (Roll)
System         - (Hull Points/Power Factors)


FORWARD  (8-10):
Tractor Beam   - (3/10)
RF Spike       - (4/12)
Gauss Gun      - (8/6)
Workshop       - (2/1)
SD Scrambler   - (1/1)
Laser Comm.    - (1/1)
Spectroanalyzer- (1/1)


FORWARD CENTER (3-4):
Cargo Hold     - (3/0)
Mass Reactor C - (4/+28)
Crew Quarters A- (2/0)
Computer Core  - (1/1)
Sensor Control - (1/0)
Mass Comm.     - (1/0)
Autosupport    - (2/2)


PORT    (11-14):
Missile Rack A - (2/1)
Missile Rack B - (2/1)
Missile Rack C - (2/1)
Missile Rack D - (2/1)
Mass Detector A- (1/1)
Accumulator A  - (1/*)


STARBOARD (15+):
Missile Rack E - (2/1)
Missile Rack F - (2/1)
Missile Rack G - (2/1)
Missile Rack H - (2/1)
Mass Detector B- (1/1)
Accumulator B  - (1/*)


AFT CENTER (<3):
Stardrive      - (4/12)
Mass Reactor B - (4/+14)
Crew Quarters B- (4/0)
Command Deck   - (2/0)
Stealth Shield - (2/2)
Repair Bots    - (4/4)
Psychoportation- (2/10)


AFT       (5-7):
Grav. Engine A - (8/8)
Grav. Engine B - (8/8)
Mass Reactor A - (4/+14)