[FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 10 [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.



* * * * *



   Nobody could see her and she couldn't see anything, but Mizuno
Ami's eyes still went wide when the car came to a stop. She was locked
in the trunk at the time, in pitch darkness, her hands bound and mouth
gagged, inhaling the odors of potting soil and machine oil that had
soaked into the upholstery. She'd been captured as Sailor Mercury, but
had de-transformed almost immediately afterwards, hoping with her
gloves off she'd have a bit more room to wiggle out of the wrist tie
or, failing that, take off her communicator watch and transform back
into Sailor Mercury -- she probably would be able to get out a
half-intelligible transformation phrase even through a bandanna in her
mouth -- and banish the plastic binding back to wherever her normal
clothes went when she transformed, leaving her ready to fight as soon
as the trunk opened up.


   But she didn't expect the trip to be so short, and she hadn't done
anything yet. She wasn't quite worried about her secret identity as
Sailor Mercury being revealed because her captor was telepathic
anyway, she was more worried about the fact that she was
un-transformed and thus with no magical protection against bullets,
unable to change back for at least another five minutes, still with
her hands tied behind her back. She had thought the man needed to be
able to see someone to read their minds, but now it looked like she'd
overestimated, he'd read her thoughts of escape, and now he'd pulled
over to cut them off. That, or the location he was taking her to was
practically in spitting distance of the Hikawa shrine.


   She heard muffled speech coming from outside, and squinted when the
trunk opened up. The light coming in from the streetlights wasn't
bright, but it was more than she had in the pitch-black trunk, and it
was enough for her to see two men in identical black hats, sunglasses,
overcoats and ties. She knew that one was Waldorf and one was Statler,
but she couldn't tell which was which. She stared up at both of them,
eyes adjusting to the light, they stared back at her for ten seconds
before the one on the right wordlessly shut the trunk again.


   "Are you on PCP?" the first one asked, in the same tone one would
ask 'Did you watch the game last night?'


   "What the hell are you on about? Remember this was your idea, and
that's what I asked you when I heard it."


   "No, no, this was not my idea. I think I would remember if I said
to you 'Hey, do you know what would be a good plan? If you tie up
Sailor Mercury and haul her over here like a bag of peat moss!'"


   "No, that's not what you said. Rewind the goddamned tape.
Yesterday, I told you about Mystery Saturn Bitch, and that I couldn't
read her, and it hurt like holy balls when she shot her energy-ball at
me? And then we tailed her and it turned out she was holed up with all
the Sailor Senshi and since we haven't seen a Saturn or a Pluto,
Sailor Saturn was probably her? And then you said that if they can
find and turn on us, we'd want a Senshi of our own to counter them,
and you thought Sailor Mercury would resist conversion the least, is
ANY of this ringing a bell or am I taking crazy pills all of a
sudden?"


   "No, no, no. What I said was, 'if the Sailor Senshi find out about
us, they could come after us, and it would be nice to have one of them
on our side. I think I can work Ami the easiest.'"


   "Yeah, and now here's Ami. I already charged up the kuro-whatever
upstairs, take her up and work her over."


   "I meant I could sway her with an argument, you jackass!" The man
-- it had to be Statler -- slammed his fist down on the car. "She's
the smart one, I was going to point out how stupid the whole magic
space kingdom was, and slowly get her questioning everything she
believed in, and then build her back up as someone friendly to our
cause! I wanted a fifth columnist, not a brainwashed minion like that
Dendeemion, or whoever!"


   "Well excuse me that you don't communicate well, I can't read YOUR
mind. If you'll recall, we were perfectly fine with leaving the Senshi
alone until I got shot, and all of a sudden YOU think we've got to
drop everything and make sure we have a Senshi of our own in case they
find us. So I get shot, AGAIN, to get us one, and now you're bitching
because you weren't clear enough about what you wanted. And a fifth
columnist is stupid anyway, not like she can undermine them when the
battle plan is always 'do whatever the hell Sailor Moon is thinking of
at the moment.' You just wanted to look mysterious and cool."


   "Oh, you knew exactly what I meant, I don't have to read you to
know that. You've always got to undermine whatever I'm doing. As soon
as I make a plan you've got to swoop in and do it better because
Kakyuu forbid I actually accomplish something that was my idea!"


   "I'm undermining you, huh? And, so, what do you call you coming in
and taking all the guys I convinced were under orders from the FBI off
and replacing them with actual cops, actual cops with a chain of
command that people might listen to when they say an FBI agent was
giving them strange orders? That's perfectly fine, that you bring in
people who are more likely to blab, but I get us a Senshi and now I'm
undermining you. I thought you were a gardhyi, not a whiny bitch."


   Statler started to respond, but paused, listening to someone
talking that Ami couldn't make out. "It's none of your business,
that's what, you keep walking!"


   Another pause, and then Waldorf cut in with "She's cheating on you,
okay? When you go to work, Fukuda Tamiko is... I'm sorry, when you go
to SCHOOL, those night classes Tuesdays and Thursday, she's getting
plowed by a guy named Shinobu down the hall. Yeah, the cop. She's only
going out with you because your family's rich. ...Oh, you don't know
him, huh? Check her purse, buddy, she's got the key to his apartment,
5G. Yeah, you're welcome!"


   The car shifted downward, Ami guessed they were both leaning on it.
"Damn, look at her go. That is never not going to be hilarious to me."


   "What gets me is they're always so surprised. Have they not been
paying attention at all?"


   "If ever we needed proof these people don't need to see the stars,
that's it. They keep putting their hands on that stove, over and
over." He paused and sighed. "So what are we going to with Mercury
here?"


   "Well, we can't just throw her back and say 'sorry about the
mixup'. She'll be easy to brainwash anyway. I mean, if it worked on
that Mamoru guy, no way a meek woman like her is going to resist it.
We can probably knock it out in like a day."


   "So then what?"


   "Then we have out own Senshi to boss around and shoot ice balls at
things, that's what." He paused, made a groan of contemplation. "And,
I dunno, I guess you could undermine someone else. There has to be
another Senshi you can work on for a fifth columnist."


   "Eh, Jupiter feels like she's not valued enough on the team, I
could do something with that."


   "See? You can work on Jupiter. Appealing to her petty emotions will
probably work better than an appeal to logic anyway, and if it
doesn't, now we have a backup plan, and if it DOES work, we still have
a walking, talking computer-brain to help us with all the shit in this
city that isn't Senshi-related."


   "All right, all right. But you stay away from her until I'm done,
okay? It's a delicate, sensitive procedure."


   "Hands off, I promise, won't even go near her. We are going to have
to do something about Mystery Saturn Bitch, though. And the little
pink one, Usagi Small Lady Hoojamawhatever. You know I read her today
and she's a time traveler from like five hundred years in the future
or something?"


   "No shit? We're gonna need to get on that before she starts
blabbing on about stardrives and maser rifles and gives people ideas."


   "Well, she is pretty damn young, she probably doesn't understand
how... Wait, nobody's looking, let's take her up now. Game face on."


   The trunk popped open again and the two men in black were standing
in almost the same places they were before, staring at her inscrutably
behind their black glasses, expressions stony. "Come with us,
Ami-chan," said Statler. "It's time you..." He stopped and hissed
through his gritted teeth. "...shit."


* * * SAILOR.MOON: DOUBLE EXPOSURE


CHAPTER 10: DOUBLE CROSS * * *


TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE HEADQUARTERS
KASUMIGASEKI, TOKYO, JAPAN MONDAY FEBRUARY 21, 1995 8:09 PM


   Sailor Moon charged through the double doors leading into the lobby
of Tokyo police headquarters. The lobby was a strange trapezoidal
shape, to fit in the corner of the wedge-shaped plot of land
overlooked by a balcony from each of the second and third floors.
There was a reception desk in the middle of the room, which had just
been cracked in half, and a glass wall separating the lobby from the
offices, which Sailor Moon had just blasted a daimon through before it
turned back into a lawn chair.


   "I am the beautiful warrior of love and justice, Sailor Moon!" she
called, striking a pose. "And in the name of the Moon, I will punish
you!"


   She usually said that to herald her presence, but this time she
thought she'd need to say it so they'd recognize her. Her hair was let
down, she was wearing a camo T-shirt over her distinctive collar and
bow, though she left the pants outside as it was hard to run in them.
She didn't look like Sailor Moon at all, save for the Moon Rod, the
skirt, and the fact she'd just destroyed a youma.


   There were screams, crashes, and sounds of broken glass as men in
suits fled, screaming, from the daimon attack. She heard a warbling
voice from the offices yell "Hey, we got a Sailor Moon over here!" She
spotted the blue face of another daimon before it ducked back behind a
corner and ran after it, meaning not to let it get away, she skidded
to a halt and barely missed being impaled when something shoved a
spear around the corner at her. There were two more of the
kinori-lizards, holding spears, waiting for her.


   She didn't have enough room to get off another Moon Spiral Heart
Attack without getting speared halfway through it, and ran off to the
doorway with the two lizards waddling after her. She looked back and
saw she didn't get nearly enough distance between them, but she did
get them next to a window, so that when the first kinori attacked
Tuxedo Kamen could break through it and slap the attack away with his
cane. She knew he was here, she'd rode the bus here with him, but
still her heart raced every time he came to her rescue.


   "Stop, evildoer!" he said in a voice full of noble chivalry. "How
dare you--" he ducked underneath a thrusting attack from this first
kinori the left his top hat on the tip of the spear, "--attempt to
destroy--" he spun out of the path of the second kinori's attack and
kicked him in the cheek with the heel of his dress shoe, "--this
cornerstone of law and order!" He extended his cane into the first
kinori's chest and pinned him to the floor. "It's unforgivable!"


   Tuxedo Kamen barely caught a glimpse of a blue daimon peeking
around the corner and extending his hand before a pressurized jet of
water hit him in the chest and sent him tumbling to the floor. "Ha! I
GOT you that time, everybody saw it!" the daimon crowed as it ducked
back behind cover. The two kinori leapt at Kamen, he kicked one out of
the air but the second one managed to spear him in the shoulder.
Sailor Moon smacked him in the head with the Moon Rod, she didn't do
much damage, but she distracted it long enough for Kamen to smack him
away with the cane.


   He winced at the pain, but rose to his feet anyway. He pushed the
two kinori back with thrusts from his extending cane until he had
enough time to reach into his suit coat and throw a fan of enchanted
roses in their direction. One took it in the leg and one in the
stomach; Kamen fell back to brace for a counterattack, and the two
kinori ran as fast as they could in the other direction. They may have
been awkward and waddling, but they could really haul ass when they
were fleeing something. Moon and Kamen nodded at each other, broke in
different directions, and circled around to catch the water-daimon.
That made two down.


*


   "You know, this entire farce has got us out of jail at least seven
times," said Bill, using a word he'd just learned, "and I am just
flabbergasted every time it actually works."


   "Well, 'Free Bird' is at least good for two things," Donna said as
she handcuffed one of the guards -- his English name tag said 'Itsuki'
-- to the bed. "Getting hillbillies to hold up their cigarette
lighters, and springing us out of jail. I'm not sure why it works, but
why change a classic? I just wish they kept Nakami with us, Free Bird
doesn't work when you're breaking into a secret Area 51 containment
cell." She pulled the radios off the two guards' belts and gave them a
listen to make sure they hadn't had a chance to make a call; all she
could hear was static.


   "Uhh, about that," said the other guard she'd cuffed, a 'Shinobu'.
"When they catch you again, could you, uh, not tell them how you
escaped? Because if our supervisors heard..."


   "Oh, oh, right, right." Donna took the keys, radios, and other
equipment out of the cell and slid the bars closed. "I'm just trying
to break us out, not ruin you guys's careers." She locked the door and
gave it an experimental tug. "If you tell them I smuggled in a set of
collapsible lockpicks that I used to break out and a tube of knockout
gas I used to overpower you, nobody's gonna contradict you."


   By now the Mugen students were making an enormous ruckus, some of
them terrified and some of them elated at the prospect of a jailbreak,
and Shinobu had to yell over them to be heard. "That would be for the
best, thank you!"


   Donna kissed the back of her knuckles and threw up the 'V for
Victory' sign, then slapped the cell keys into Nadine's hand and left
down the hallway to drop off the other things at the now-empty
security desk. Bill, Philip, and the two Mugen students they shared a
cell with lined up at the door as Nadine searched for the key. When
she slid it open Bill nearly bowled her over in is rush to get out of
the confining stone jail cell and into the confining stone jail
hallway. Behind him, Philip was shaking his head and making the 'cut
off' gesture; when he walked out, she shut the door behind him. The
two men still in there were taken aback, and as he took the keys from
Nadine and locked them back in, he bowed, apologized, said "I'll
explain, just a moment."


   He whistled once, clapped his hands, and pointed at himself, even
though most everyone couldn't see him. "Okay, everyone, listen up!" he
said as the noise calmed down. "Uh, what you need to know is that the
rumors about the Mugen Academy are true, they were training witches
there, Dr. Suoichi Tomoe was their ringleader, and he was probably
trying to destroy the world. And all of you have been having blackouts
because they can use you to carry out their orders, so, we can't let
you out just yet."


   They erupted into a cacophony of disbelief. "What? You mean we're
stuck here? You're insane! There's no such thing as witches! What if
they make us kill each other? I didn't have any blackouts! Why can't
you let us out anyway? What will the government do to us if they think
we're bewitched..."


   "Let me finish! Okay, everyone here is bewitched, and you'd be
dangerous if we let you out. I know a few of you got the living
daylights beaten out of them by my friends here because you were
trying to suck brains out of people."


   "Hearts," Nadine corrected.


   "Whatever. The point is right now we don't know if you could be
controlled again, so you're safest in here. Now the police probably
know you're innocent too, and don't want you out for the same reason,
but unless they've killed, like, half of the population for knowing
too much, you'll be fine once you get out. We've gotta break out of
here so we can kill the thing they were summoning, and once we do
that, you're in the clear, nothing else will be able to use the spell
on you. You'll be in here for probably two, three more days at most.
Now we've kind of got a time limit to escape here, but I wanted to
make sure that everyone knew what was going on, okay? You hear that,
you two? They didn't help us, we didn't help them, no criminal
charges, they just need to be here a few more days until we kill the
alien demon that can control their minds. Is everyone clear?"


   They were silent for ten full seconds, then erupted into panicked
screams. Philip started to say something else, but Bill dragged him
down to the desk, where upon rounding the corner they saw a man in a
black suit and tie with dark glasses and an insufferably smug grin,
flanked by two more officers with shotguns, one of whom had his weapon
levelled at Donna's head. "Nice try, jackass," he smirked.


   "What? Phil said, finger in his ear to block out the sound of the
students yelling.


   "I SAID, NICE..." he said as loud as he could while retaining his
haughty tone, then just growled in frustration. He pointed at the
second cop, nodded back to the unruly prisoners, and said "Shut them
up, would you?" The cop worked the pump-action on his shotgun and the
room became silent. "There, that's better. I said, 'Nice try,
jackass'."


   "Oh. Lovely."


   "And I heard how they escaped, too!" he shouted to Itsuki and
Shinobu. "You two should be ashamed of yourselves!"


   "Oh. Great." Donna said, rolling her eyes, and with not nearly
enough concern for the fact a gun was levelled at her head. "Which one
are you? Are you Ralph the Dog or Swedish Chef or Snuffleupagus or
some other asshole?"


   "And can we skip this next part where you throw out the little
missives of sneering contempt and show off your cool powers because we
already did that with your friends." Philip and Nadine edged away from
the other two.


   "What?" The man in the suit took off his glasses and slid them into
his pocket; his eyes were a perfectly normal purple shade. "Are you
hopped up on goofballs and seeing Muppets or something?"


   "Fine, who are you?" she asked, stressing the 'you'.


   "Since you asked so nicely, I'm the man who's going to be the next
head of the NPA after he sends the five of you to prison for the rest
of your lives." He flashed a sharky grin that looked to have slithered
straight out of Wall Street circa 1988. "I was worried the Americans
might make a case to extradite you, but this little stunt here will
ensure you stay where I can get at you."


   "How great for you..." Bill winced as he heard a large crashing
noise from somewhere else in the building, winced a little further and
closed one eye when he heard the smaller 'whump' following it, and
curled back his lips when he heard the remote 'pop' of gunfire. "...I
don't want to ask what that was, because then it's going to get worse,
isn't it?"


   The man in the suit nodded repeatedly, his composure visibly
deteriorating and held out a finger. "Could you hang on for just one
second?" he said to nobody in particular, and vaulted over the
security desk to duck and cover underneath it. The second cop saw
that, nodded, and walked down to the end of the hallway to hide
underneath one of the cots.


   The remaining cop looked around, very confused, and the Hoffmann
agents were all dreading the same thing. "Oh, we know what this is,"
Bill muttered.


*


   "Not right!" Kher-Aya shouted, waving his shotgun at the two men he
had cowering under a desk. "Should be more here. This is offices, not
the police! And you!" He pointed at U-Kigumoko, she gritted her teeth
and her neck quivered. "Why are you reading budgets to see where the
prisoner is?"


   She slapped the stack of papers she was riffling through against
the wall, causing them to drift everywhere. "Well, maybe if you could
read a MAP, you'd have brought us to the police station instead of
Nakatomi Plaza!"


   "You drove here! You couldn't figure it out!"


   "You gave me an address and I went to it! Don't you get snippy with
me, lizard!" She turned down the hall to talk to the two daimons
turning over chairs and desks to find a missing kinori POW; one was a
red, puffy thing with boxing gloves for hands and one was a
blue-skinned off-model Sailor Venus. "You guys back me up on this,
don't you?"


   "Shut up! I hear-- Oh for the love of Sobek!" He spun on a footclaw
and fired off a shell at the stairwell, blowing Tuxedo Kamen's hat off
and sending him crashing into Sailor Moon behind him. "Them again!
Quick, make cover!" The other kinori with him pulled out desks and
tables to make an impromptu fort, Sailor Blue Venus jogged over to
them with her breasts heaving ridiculously with every step. "And you!"
He pointed at U-Kigumoko, "Get to first floor, seal their escape!"


   "I'll seal your goddamn escape, you scaly piece of shit," she
grumbled as she walked to the balcony. She leapt off the edge and even
stuck the landing, it hurt like crazy and nobody was watching but she
felt like she had to.


   Kamen found his feet first and held back Sailor Moon from advancing
further. "They've set up a defense. We'll have to be careful." He
paused, and in Mamoru Chiba's normal voice he asked "Can you still
throw your tiara?"


   "I didn't forget how to, it just doesn't work very well any more.
Why?"


   He crept up to the edge of the stairs, as high as he could go
without exposing himself to fire. "When I tell you to, I want you
to... wait, I think someone's coming."


   "Stupid goddamn lizard thinks he's hot shit," mumbled U-Kigumoko as
she made her way to the stairs. Who put the damn lizard who thinks
he's the Terminator in charge, huh? A bunch of other stupid lizards,
that's who. Lizards don't get to give her orders. And hell, for that
matter, who decided to put the Master in charge? She didn't give a
shit about what he was doing, it's not like he was BETTER than her or
anything, what gave him the right to boss her around? She sure as hell
didn't need any Master. In fact, screw the Master. Screw him and the
lizards and all the other goofballs.


   She arrived at the landing just before the third floor, and saw a
surprised Sailor Moon looking back at her. "You know what, Sailor
Moon?" U-Kigumoko put one hand on her hip. "I'm just going to--"


   the Moon Spiral Heart Attack that struck her directly in the face
cut off that sentence, and any others she was planning on making.


*


   "So, you go to all this trouble, you hire the engineers, you hide
the funding and you get the land and you build an Eiffel Tower so you
can install a secret mass driver under it. Okay. And then, a spaceship
shows up, and you just sit there and let it abduct people!"


   Kunimatsu Takaji rubbed his eyes, or at least the small area his
hands could cover. "You don't even know how mass drivers work, do you?
Now you're just pissing with me just to piss with me. I'm not going to
shoot a nine hundred kilogram spike of solid tungsten at twenty times
the speed of sound into a spaceship that's hovering like TEN METERS
OFF THE SKYLINE. You're seriously telling me you're going to bathe
Japan in shrapnel to stop it from abducting someone. You are
absolutely unbelievable."


   "If you can't shoot down a UFO with your Tokyo Tower cannon,"
Nakami said in the most patronizing voice his lungs were capable of
producing, "then maybe you should try and invest in a system that
can!"


   Takaji cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. "WE ALREADY
DID. HER NAME IS SAILOR MOON. WHY ARE YOU NOT GETTING THIS."


   "Because you--"


   "No. Shut up, okay? Just, just shut up." Takaji rubbed his temples,
which were closer to the chin on his fraal skull. "God, can you hear
yourself? It's nothing but bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, every single
time you open your mouth." He held up both his hands as if they were
two tiny grey puppets, and opened his fingers to make them 'talk' in
time with his mocking, squeaky speech. "'Oh, you can't use Sailor
Moon! Oh, you can't hide the youma so Sailor Moon's job is easier! Oh,
you can't bail out the banks! Oh, you can't ignore the earthquake! Oh,
you can't build a mass driver! Oh, you can't not use the mass driver!
You gotta give me a second chance on Atlantis! You gotta do this, you
gotta do that, hurf, durf, a hurfa durfa doo!' I have been in here for
a couple hours and I want to jump underneath a bus! I cannot imagine
what your staff feels like. You're like a five year old in a loincloth
and a tie, but you don't have the excuse of being cute."


   Behind him, the door swung open, and the security officer peeked
his head in. "Sir, I know you said not to be disturbed, but there's a
serious..." His eyes went wide as he processed what they saw. On one
end of the table was Itohiro Nakami, a haggard looking man with a
stained tie, and on the other end of the table was Kunimatsu Takaji, a
little grey alien with big almond eyes wearing a kimono. They looked
at each other for ten seconds solid, frozen in fear, before Takaji has
the presence of mind to bring his human illusion back up. The air
around him flickered and darkened and in a second his tiny fraal body
was replaced with a stern human in a dark suit.


   Takaji held a slim hope he could talk his way out of this, but as
soon as he opened his mouth, Officer Toshiyuki Kosugi bolted, running
down the hall and screaming at the top of his lungs.


   "Damn it, I am going to have to catch him..." Takaji spun around
and shoved the table into Nakami, it didn't travel very far. "You're
staying in here!" he shouted as he made a run for the door. "And when
I get back, I am going to sell your ass to the Fox network!"


*


   Screams, then more muffled gunshots from above. Donna nodded at the
cop pointing his gun at her head. "Uh, someone tell him to put that
down? I think both of us just got much bigger problems."


   "He speaks English." Philip nodded. "I recognize you. You were with
the man in black to serve the arrest at the Hikawa shrine earlier
today. Minori?"


   "Yeah. It was only a few hours ago." His weapon didn't move, but
his head did, to glance down at his commanding officer, hiding under a
desk. "What are these bigger problems you're talking about?" The man
in the suit was quivering slightly, but for the most part he was just
drumming his hands on his knees as if he were waiting for a bus that
stopped at this particular desk.


   Another scream, and what sounded like a burst of electricity.
"Daimons are what she's talking about," Philip said, his voice grave.
"Monsters. Your friend and that jerk are freaking out because
apparently that's what most people do when they get near them. He's
not going to remember any of this happened. I don't know how many
other people will either."


   "You must think I'm pretty stupid..."


   "Wait, you think there's a youma?" called a voice from down the
hall. It was Shinobu, overhearing their conversation. "Because Itsuki
just went under the bed and when I say anything to him he says 'Yeah,
gimme another five minutes,' and don't youma have the power to cloud
men's minds?"


   "I don't know what a youma is," Philip continued. "But a daimon is
a monster that looks like a really brightly-colored woman in a silly
theme costume, with dangerous powers that's almost impossible to kill.


   "Yeah, that sounds like a youma!" Shinobu yelled. They... Look, can
someone just unlock me and bring me up? They already caught you
anyway."


   In unison, Philip, Donna, and Bill said "Not it." Nadine rolled her
eyes, took two sets of keys, and went to free Shinobu.


   "But, uh, yeah." Shinobu rubbed his wrist. "I think you're talking
about youma. I've only seen Sailor Moon kill a couple, but they tell
you about them if you're ever going to have a beat in Juuban."


   "They also tell us we're not supposed to talk about it!"


   "Well they already know, I don't see what it hurts! I mean, damn,
Minori, you really think it'll matter?"


   "Yeah, we know about them. They work for something called Pharaoh
90. Sailor Saturn is the one who can kill them, and if one is here,
then either it's come to suck out people's hearts, or it thinks Sailor
Saturn got arrested with us and it wants to kill her. Either way, it's
probably going to check down here and unless one of you is hiding a
Glaive in his pants..."


   "Wait, there's a Sailor Saturn? Because, like I said, I saw Sailor
Moon kill a couple of those things when I was on the beat, and other
people have seen other planets, and there might have been a Pluto
once, but nobody's ever seen a Saturn." Minori looked at Shinobu as if
he'd just admitted to... well, to being a grown man with an interest
in Sailor Moon, really.


   "There used to be a Sailor Saturn," Nadine muttered.


   "There still is a Sailor Saturn," Bill corrected. "The herald of
catastrophe. Soldier of ruin and rebirth. And we're on her team. We
run with Sailor Saturn. You guys are taking orders from a shadowy
psychic asshole FBI Man in Black with too many thumbs, and underneath
that a complete prick, so whose team are you on?"


   "So, then... does that mean, thaaat... you're on the Sailor Team
too? Or, like, what?"


   "Why do--"


   "As a matter of fact, we are," Philip cut Donna off. "Sailor Juno,
Sailor Vesta, Sailor Ceres, and Sailor Pallas." He waited, then when
nobody recognized them, added "The four major asteroids." He himself
had learned that fact a few weeks ago from an episode of 'Jeopardy!'
and figured there was no chance there would ever be an actual Senshi
who wanted to use the same name.


   Shinobu squinted and acted like he was giving that statement a
great deal of consideration, far more than it deserved. "...No you
aren't."


   "If there's a freaky colorful monster up there tearing things up
and we kill it, can you tell your boss that we are and that's why we
escaped? Because daimons indicate we're the least of your problems?"


   Minori considered it for a moment, heard another crash from
upstairs, and lowered his weapon. "Kill it first, then we'll see."


   "All right then," Donna said, dusting off her hands. "Ceres, what
was it, asteroid? Yeah. Ceres asteroid power, make the hell up."


* * *


   The room the two Men in Black took her to was familiar, but it took
Ami a second to realize why. She had been here once before, but there
were vines growing on the outside of the building; this was Ail and
Ann's apartment complex and she was pretty sure they took her to Ail
and Ann's apartment, though the decor had changed. Stacks of
newspapers took the place of furniture in most places. Three small
televisions, stacked in a pyramid, showed three different news
channels. Light came from unshaded bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The
room was not ill-kept, however, every stack of paper was perfectly
squared away, nothing was left on the floor, nothing was stained, no
dishes were in the sink, the only thing on the counter was a humming,
pulsing black crystal emitting a nacreous cloud of shadow.  In the
center of the living area was a wooden chair and a coil of bright
purple climbing rope. Waldorf and Statler appeared to keep house in a
manner both fastidious and totally insane.


   "Okay, Ami-chan," Statler said as he pushed her into the room and
closed the door behind them. "I'm sure you want to get home, so, let's
try and get through this as quickly as possible, okay? If you
cooperate it will be a lot easier." His voice was so syrupy and so
false she thought it was more aspartame than saccharine. She knew he
could read her mind, there was no way he could think this sudden turn
to kindness would work, but even as she thought that he didn't react.
Waldorf glanced up at her, stifled a laugh, and went back to reading
the mail.


   Statler removed her watch and took the pen out of her pocket.
"Okay, now, Ami-chan, I'm going to take off this gag. Just to show
that you can trust me." She had no idea how he would ever, possibly,
think that statement was true. "Now, don't do anything that would make
me regret it, okay?"


   He untied the bandanna and pulled it away from her face, regarding
the wad of spit that had soaked into it with disgust. He and Ami
looked at each other in silence for five seconds, and though he had to
know what she was going to do, she did it anyway. "HELP! FOR THE LOVE
OF GOD SOMEBODY HELP ME I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED CALL THE POLICE!" She
charged for the window at the far wall, hoping she could break it open
with her shoulder, only to be tripped by Waldorf and sent facefirst
into the floor, coming to a stop right in front of the chair.


   "Also, the room is silenced, so nobody would hear if I shot you
four times in the chest right now," Waldorf deadpanned.


   "Ami-chan, why did you do that?" Statler shook his head in a
not-quite-perfect replica of how humans express disappointment. "I
wanted to show I trusted you and you violated that!"


   "No you didn't!" Ami laughed in panic and disbelief. "What are you
DOING? What's WRONG with you? You can't, you can't, can't can't just
throw me in a car and kidnap me and show me the chair you're going to
tie me to and then say I'll trust you!" She tried to push herself
back, away from them, but her socks just slid around on the floor.
"Who are you, what, what do you want? Why do you think the Sailor
Senshi will attack you?" It was obvious why, because the two of them
were made of pure evil, but she was flailing around in blind terror,
trying to find some magical theoretical combination of sounds that she
could give him that would prevent what was going to happen next.


   "Oh, don't worry about that. They probably won't anyway. You don't
have to worry about having to fight your little friends, okay? We're
just being extra-cautious." His voice was like a condescending
pediatrician.


   "Then what do you need me for at all? You could let me go and I
wouldn't tell them anything. Forget this whole thing ever, ever even
happened. Please..." Her voice cracked. She was dimly aware, in the
back of her mind, that she shouldn't be trying to make such a bargain
with the forces of evil, that she couldn't call mulligans on evil
plans. What was going to happen next scared her so deeply and so
completely she couldn't care. "...please, please just forget this ever
happened."


   Waldorf handed Statler something and whispered in his ear. Statler
nodded, and said, "Ami-chan, there's no reason to be frightened! Here,
I got you a gift, just to show you can trust me." He walked to her,
crouched, leaned over her. His body had no odor to it, gave off no
heat. He pulled out the object Waldorf had given him, a ring set with
a large sapphire; when the light hit it just right it looked like
there was a lightning bolt running down the center. When he opened his
mouth to talk, in his grating faux-sugary tone, she could see he had
two rows of teeth. "See? We got this just for you, as a present. We
can't be all bad, can we?"


   She stared up at him, transfixed in horror. There was no way he
thought she would believe it. Why would he even be saying these
things, just to mock her, humiliate her, scare her even more deeply?
Why bother when he could read her mind? He knew he could change it
anyway. But if he thought it really could work...


   "You..." she whispered, "you don't even know what trust is, do
you?"


   He clapped his hands on his knees and exhaled. "Eh, I tried." Then
he reached out and before she could evade him grabbed her by the
collar with a two-thumbed hand. "Help me tie her down, okay?" She
struggled, tried to squirm away, kicked at them with frenetic
intensity to try and free herself, but they knew every direction she
was going to move in as she thought of it, there was no way out. They
bound her to the chair and she started to hyperventilate, her palms
started to sweat, her jaw quivered. Waldorf took the crystal, a
hexagonal thing that looked like the ones the Dark Kingdom had used,
and set it floating in front of her face. She turned away as far as
her head would go but her eyes were drawn to the horrible thing and
the shadowy corona that spread to envelop her, by no supernatural pull
but by the same force that compels a deer to stare into a pair of
headlights right before it gets crushed by a van.


   She started screaming again, at first pleas for help and rescue,
and then desperate and incoherent shrieks of terror. Even as the
crystal enveloped her in darkness, she could see what was happening in
front of her; Waldorf had turned three televisions on and turned up
the volume to drown her out, and Statler was eating a plate of raw
hamburger with chopsticks. She'd had nightmares about this ever since
what happened to Mamoru, and more after what happened to Chibi-Usa.
Dreams that left her clutching her pillow like she was trying to tear
it in half, panting, soaked in sweat. Or worse, the dreams where she'd
wake up totally unable to move, control of her own body totally stolen
away.


   Dreams where someone swooped in under cover of darkness and took
her away, and opened up the working of her mind and soul and rewrote
it to their liking and there was nothing at all she could do about it,
and by the end she'd been made into someone entirely different, turned
against all she ever loved and made to feel as if it was her idea, her
free will was obliterated and replaced with a script and she couldn't
even TELL because the part of her that would know had been forcibly
extracted along with everything else that made her her and there
wouldn't be any magic Moon healing for her this time because this was
for good and she would be worse than dead because everything about
Mizuno Ami would be annihilated and beyond dead and NOTHING could save
her and NOTHING could bring her back because there wasn't anything TO
bring back because they weren't replacing her they shredded her to
pieces and reassembled her all wrong but nobody could ever find a way
to put her back together and she'd forced into a twisted mockery of
thought and existence FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER.


   And now she was tied to a chair, unable to move, staring down a
thrumming black crystal, and it was happening to her for real. Every
nightmare came flooding back and still couldn't compare to the horror
of the real thing. And the two men in black were so blase, casual, the
most terrifying thing she could ever have imagined was happening to
her and they weren't cringing and regretting it, they weren't laughing
and relishing in her pain, they were watching TV and drinking soda.
Her thoughts were just a device that they could take apart and reshape
as they desired, as if her mind were a computer and they were killing
time while Windows reformatted. She kept screaming, but nobody heard
her. Nobody ever, ever heard her.


* * *


   "They're trying to get at us from below while we try to break their
defense," Tuxedo Kamen said. "We will have to be quick to avoid being
caught in a pincer."


   Sailor Moon bent over and picked up the white keycard descrambler
the slain daimon had turned into. "Huh. You know, that daimon didn't
look anything like this. Wonder what it is?" She turned it over in her
hand. "I bet it belongs to that woman. They looked pretty similar."


   "Sailor Moon! The battle?"


   "Oh! Right, right." She slid the card into the small pocket in her
skirt and nodded at Kamen attentively. "I hurl the tiara up there in
an arc, then you come in while they're being smacked around." She
rubbed her hands together, pulled off the tiara and gave it a spin,
getting back her old technique. "Moon... Tiara... Action!"


   She lobbed the tiara in an arc up through the doorway, when she
heard the first lizard squeal, Kamen jumped up and prepared to throw
his rose. His hand didn't make it out of his jacket before someone on
the floor shouted "Venus Crescent BEAM!" and he took a bright orange
laser to the gut. He buckled over, took a second "Venus Crescent
BEAM!" to the shoulder, and a spray of shotgun pellets. Moon grabbed
his cape and dragged him out of the line of fire before he could take
another hit; he was stunned and bleeding in several places.


   "Tuxedo Kamen! Tuxedo Kamen, are you okay?" She shook him by the
shoulders, and his head lolled around, eyes made halfhearted attempts
to open, but he would need a few seconds to get together. She heard
heavy footfalls echoing from several floors above, and after a moment,
the soft clacking of foot-claws. The blackscale kinori stood in the
doorway, glistening in the harsh light of the fluorescent, shotgun
across his shoulder.


   "Sailor Moon!" he barked. "Think we forgot? Think kinori forgot
Silver -- HA! -- Millennium? Master will make the surface world pay.
And I am going to make you suffer!"


   The blackscale fired at her, knocking her back into the wall, and
instantly leapt at her. He landed on her chest, raked her across the
face with the claws of one hand as he flip-cocked his weapon with the
other. She screamed and grabbed at the wound, but she also managed to
duck and roll away, Kher-Aya's shotgun blast churning up nothing but a
storm of plaster dust. She smacked him across the snout with the Moon
Rod as she rose to her feet, and he grunted, but she didn't have
Makoto's arms and the Rod wasn't made for bludgeoning and he
retaliated by smacking her across the jaw with the gun. She shouted in
pain, and her tooth went flying out of her jaw and bouncing down the
stairs.


   "No warrior, are you?" He laughed. "Some great leader! Can't fight
without your magic and minions!" He punched her in the stomach with
his tiny clawed hand.


   "Sailor Moon will always be able to fight, because her friends are
always at her side!" Kher-Aya turned around just in time to see Tuxedo
Kamen, his tuxedo ripped and streaked with blood, throw a rose at him;
with preternatural speed, Kher-Aya lifted his weapon just in time to
catch the rose in the barrel.


   "That. Was stupid." he snarled, and pulled the trigger, sending out
a flurry of rose petals and sending Kamen into the wall, hard, before
he hit the stairs, harder. Kher-Aya flipped the shotgun again, only to
send it flying, clattering down the gap between the stairwells, when
Sailor Moon kneed him in the elbow. "My gun!" He instinctively went to
the handrail to try to grab it, and that's when Moon slammed him in
the back of the head with the Moon Rod as hard as she could and sent
him, squealing, over the edge. She didn't peek over the edge; if she
did, she would have seen him catch the handrail on the second floor
for a second, lowering his momentum enough to hit the first floor
mostly unharmed.


   She slapped the call button on her watch as she rushed to Kamen's
side. "Sailor Venus?" she shouted. "Where are you, this is Sailor
Moon, I heard you somewhere, Tuxedo Kamen is hurt!"


   "Gonna need... a couple minutes..." Kamen moaned.


   Moon heard a voice that sounded nothing at all like Sailor Venus,
from the third floor, shout "I'm right here, Sailor Moon! Where are
you?"


   In a few seconds another figure appeared in the doorway and the
first thing Moon thought was that it was a daimon cosplaying Sailor
Venus. Blue skin, malformed ribbon, a full foot taller than Venus, no
earrings, and gargantuan breasts straight out of a Sailor Moon otaku's
fantasy. Moon stammered for a second, at a loss, and Daimon-Venus said
"Oh, is that where you were?" As Moon got the presence of mind to pull
out the Moon Rod, Daimon-Venus turned around and shouted "It's okay,
guys! It's Sailor Moon, she's on our side! Stand down and all that!"


   Moon blinked and held the Moon Rod in midair, not really sure what
that just meant. "Oh no!" Daimon-Venus said with an amazing level of
overemotion, "What happened to Tuxedo Kamen?" She bounded down the
stairway, breasts heaving in a way that Moon was pretty sure violated
the laws of physics. When the daimon leaned in close to her, hugged
her, and kissed her on the cheek, she estimated it was the single most
awkward moment of her life. But the daimon pulled away instead of
trying to crush her, and her cheek didn't burn or start siphoning
energy out of her. "Hey, how'd you lose a tooth?"


   "Uhhh... the black lizard knocked it out?" She rubbed her jaw.
"Right in the same place as before, I'll have to go find that tooth
again..."


   "Who, Kher-Aya?" Daimon-Venus waved her hands dismissively. "Oh, no
no no. I mean, he's a jerk and all, but why would he attack you? We're
on the same team!" She gave Moon another inappropriate hug. "We're all
the good guys!"


   Moon blinked, but she actually was starting to get it. Daimons were
made from stuff, and someone made a daimon from something that looked
like Sailor Venus, like a UFO catcher doll or one of those little
plastic figurines, so now they had a daimon that thought it was Sailor
Venus. That could be good, right? "Yes, we are the good guys!" Moon
responded. "Why are we here again?"


   "Oh, I don't know, they don't tell me much. Just follow the kinori
around while they look for something and get shot if anyone has a gun.
And watch out for Senshi, they're dangerous!" She nodded at Sailor
Moon "So keep an eye out."


   Kamen opened his eyes again, his Senshi powers giving him the
ability to absorb far more punishment than he really would have liked.
"Uhh..." he looked up at daimon.


   Moon answered his unspoken question. "This is Sailor Venus,
remember? He hit his head." Daimon-Venus nodded sagely and even that
made her breasts shake, it was absolutely ridiculous.


   "Oh. Okay?" Kamen, still a little groggy, made a pass over himself
with his healing powers to clean up the bruises and contusions. He
felt better, but he was still sore, and it's likely hurt just as much
as before if he got hit again, which he would.


   "Hey, you should have said something before!" She poked Kamen.
"That's probably why we always announce who we are to the enemy, so we
don't shoot each other." Her elongated ears perked up, and they heard
claws clacking again, and turned to see Kher-Aya coming up the stairs,
fuming. "Hi, Kher-Aya, look who I found! They can help us look for the
thing!"


   Kher-Aya emitted a noise that wasn't in a language any of them
spoke but was certainly the foulest curse he knew and shot Sailor Moon
again, she collapsed like she was made of lead.


*


   Four Hoffmann Institute agents crept up the stairs and through the
hallways of the police station, trying to find a daimon before it
found them.


   "Phil, I never thought I would ask you this," Bill whispered, "but
why did you say we could kill a demon? Usually, I say that kind of
thing, and you sigh and give me that look that says you hate God for
testing you so."


   "Hey, we're on the clock now. I'm Sailor Pallas."


   "Damn, I wanted Pallas. That was the dude from 'The Raven', right?"


   "Not the same Pallas."


   "It still sounds cool."


   "And I figure from what Donna said, how badly the daimon got hurt
when she hit it with a car, we can kill this stuff without magic. It
just takes longer to heap on enough punishment."


   "And by 'we' you mean me and Donna."


   "And by 'we' I mean you and Donna do most of the work, and Nadine
and I find heavy things and throw them. I think we are on the clock
here, we can't afford to sit out. We need to get rid of this thing
before one of the Sailor Senshi shows up to kill it."


   "Why?" Bill looked around to make sure the cops weren't listening
to him, but they were too busy listening to the reverberating 'thump'
noises that seemed to be coming from further upstairs. "Me and Donna
met up with Sailor Moon and her whole crew there, we think they're all
right. Their guy, Tuxy-Man, had healing hands like Hotaru did, I
woulda bled to death otherwise."


   "Well, maybe you met Sailor Moon. Nadine and I met Uranus and
Neptune, and they're not so friendly. We know they're after Hotaru, we
know they want to kill her, they know we're involved with her, and
they shoot magic balls of death at people they don't like. If they
come in here to kill a daimon and they find out we're here, they might
very well blow the doors off the holding cells and take us back to
wherever evil Sailor Senshi torture people for information."


   "So you think we tell the cops we can kill the daimon, they let us
up, and we run like hell."


   "No, we're going to kill it. We're not going to leave a monster
rampaging around."


   "Good, because if you didn't say that, I was gonna."


   "We'll hang back until either Moon or Uranus shows up, and if it's
Uranus, we get the hell out of here through the parking garage."


   They crept up another staircase. The sounds were getting louder,
and they could now pick out speech, though the gunfire had stopped.
Bill tapped Nadine on the shoulder. "Hey. Phil told me he called
Pallas, you wanna be Vesta or Juno?"


   She didn't even look at him. "I don't care."


   "...Hotaru's going to be fine. You'll see her again."


   "And how the hell do you know that?"


   "She's a survivor."


   "Damn it, no she isn't!" Nadine shouted, and everyone froze and
looked at her. "No, she isn't," she whispered. "That's just something
people say about anyone regardless of who they are. She's not a
survivor. She is a scared, lonely, depressed, hurt little girl who
can't stand her own life. She needs someone to be there for her and
keep her safe from herself and she doesn't have that. Don't you tell
me she's a survivor. She doesn't want to survive."


   "Yeah." He sighed. "I know. And I shouldn't say she'll be fine
because she isn't fine now. She's scared and alone and depressed and
hurt and she doesn't wanna keep going, but she will. She won't let
herself do otherwise because she just knows she's not allowed to stop.
I know I'm not supposed to be the smart one here, but, just trust me
on this. I said she was a soldier and I meant it. She'll hate it but
she won't stop until this whole thing is over. And then you'll be
there for her."


   "I just hope I'll be enough. Poor girl has been through so much..."


   "But you love her, right?"


   Nadine was a bit taken aback. "Uh... yeah. I do. I love her. It's
weird to say it like that. I just met her."


   He put his hand on her shoulder. "Then I think she really will be
okay."


   She smiled, at first she tried to hide it, but she decided not to
bother. "You sound like some sappy Disney movie, but, fine. I'll be
Vesta, then."


   He snapped his fingers. "Damn, I was hoping you'd be Juno. I don't
wanna be the one named after the capital of Alaska."


*


   The blue Daimon-Venus gasped in shock. Several buckshot pellets
were embedded in her shin, looking like she'd tripped in a driveway,
but that's not what had shocked her. She stood up over Sailor Moon's
dazed form and pointed at Kher-Aya in Sailor Venus's trademark
'admonish evildoers' pose. "How dare you shoot a pure and innocent
girl like Sailor Moon? How dare you attack my friend!"


   Kher-Aya flip-cocked his gun again. He'd reloaded downstairs, but
he was still getting low on ammo. "What in the hell are you babbling
about, daimon?"


   "I am the Pretty Soldier, Sailor Venus! And in the name of Venus, I
will punish YOU!" She spread her feet over two different stairs to
brace herself to fire. "Venus Crescent BEAM!"


   A streak of golden light erupted from the daimon's fingertips and
struck the kinori square in the center of his forehead, dissipating
with no visible effect. His eye twitched, he ground his teeth, and
there were a lot of teeth there to grind. "I would like it," he said
matter-of-factly, "if I had just ONE minion -- just one! -- whom I
could TELL to do something, and they would DO it in the manner I
prescribed."


   Daimon-Venus frowned. "So you can ward off my magic? Unlucky for
you, I know Krav Maga! En Garde!" Tuxedo Kamen knew that not only did
the real Venus not know Krav Maga, but that the thing this daimon was
doing looked nothing like it, but he wasn't going to correct her.


   "Just do what I say! Like minions are supposed to do!" Kher-Aya
spun out of the way of a kick and smacked Daimon-Venus across the
knees with his tail. "Not get distracted or think they're a Senshi or
decide someone forgot to mention a clause..." He bounced backwards and
balanced on his tail for a second to avoid a sweep kick, then smashed
her across the nose with his gun. "...that they should actually
coordinate so they don't just stand there and get shot down!" She
threw a punch, but she had to lean forward too far to strike at his
head and he easily grabbed her wrist, rolled backward, and sent her
somersaulting over him into the wall. "WHY DOES EVERYONE BUT ME IN
THIS HORRID CESSPIT HAVE TO BE SO DAMNABLY INCOMPETENT!"


   He stood over Daimon-Venus, panting. She was upside-down and on her
back against the wall, but she looked none the worse for wear, her
nose wasn't even bleeding. And she had managed to spin Kher-Aya around
so his back was now facing Kamen. The roses wouldn't work, he'd proven
that, but being smashed across the back of the head might... His chest
hurt, his breathing was tight, and his left arm wasn't as responsive
as it should have been, but he rose to his feet. He applied his
healing power to himself as Usagi as quickly as he could, gauged the
right length to extend his cane in mid swing, and as soon as
Daimon-Venus found her feet again he plastered the kinori across the
back of the head. He let out a "WARK!" of surprise and went tumbling,
end over end, down half a flight of stairs; when he came to a stop he
screamed in a mixture of one part pain to three parts incoherent rage.


   Daimon-Venus gasped and pointed at Kamen, ignoring the kinori on
the stairs. "How dare you attack such a wise, respected pillar of the
kinori community!"


   "Oh... no."


   "Venus Crescent BEAM!" The laser caught him in the shoulder and
though it didn't have the force to knock him down, he had the good
sense to do down anyway.


   Another silhouette in the doorway. A kinori, and then, another.
"What going on?" the one on the left clucked. "We still hang back?"


   Sailor Moon looked down at the Moon Rod, then up at the daimon
menacing Tuxedo Kamen, then over to the two kinori who had just
appeared, and came to a decision. She scrambled up the stairway on her
hands and knees, directly toward the one with the gun, and winced in
anticipation when she saw it raise its hands to fire.


   The bullet flattened on her right above the eyebrow and the force
left her feeling like someone was trying to twist her head off like
the cap on a soda bottle. Daimon-Venus stopped in her tracks, pointed
at the kinori, and shouted "How dare you shoot a pure and innocent
girl!"


*


   "That's the youma," said Shinobu.


   "That's a daimon," said Philip.


   "And that's two kinori with it," said Donna. "Oh, by the way, we
didn't get a chance to tell you, but the kinori and the Pharaoh I'm
guessing are on the same team now."


   "I gathered."


   Two white-scale kinori with handguns were flanking a daimon, the
size of an adolescent girl, with a pink carapace adorned with glittery
Hello Kitty stickers, holding one hand to her ear and talking loudly
as she moved from office to office and flipped over desks. One of the
kinori had a rose stem sticking out of his eye, and he picked at it
whenever the other two weren't looking.


   "Looks to be about half the size of the other ones we saw."


   "Me and B-- uh, Juno saw another one this size before. Oh, if we
see one that looks like a pink me with night vision goggles, that's
made out of my little card scrambler, I want it back."


   Shinobu held up his hand. "You don't have to keep using the names.
We know there's no such thing as Sailor Ceres, you got let out because
you have fought these things before and that's more experience than
us."


   "I'm going to keep saying Sailor Ceres anyway, because it's fun.
Buzzkill."


   The three invaders hadn't noticed them yet, and were too busy
talking with each other to really look. "Why look under desks?" one of
them clucked. "Prisoner not gonna be there."


   "Uh-huh? No, get out. He didn't! Oh, hang on sweetie." The daimon
paused her conversation with her unseen partner and turned to the
kinori. "I'm being thorough, okay? So, like, how about you shut your
beak or your snout or your whatever it is you have, and you let me
work?"


   "Not thorough! Wasting time! This place is big!"


   "Yeah, and I'm gonna run through all of it, all right? And maybe,
like, maybe your little dude got out and he hid under a desk so they
wouldn't find him, you ever think of that?"


   "He would hear us and come out! Not wait for us to turn over hiding
place!"


   "And... and maybe you should shut up, okay?" She looked up and
touched her hand to her ear. "What? Yeah, I'm still here."


   "Who you talking to?"


   Minori returned to the group, with another nervous-looking officer
who had an armload of tools. "Hey. This is Officer Kaname. His radio
doesn't work either."


   Bill rubbed his hands together. "Yeah, yeah, whatever, did you hit
up the evidence locker like I told you to?"


   "We got you the high-power cutting implements you asked for, but
I'm not giving you back your rifle. You're lucky enough we let you out
and are giving you a rotary saw. An illegal sniper rifle is where I
draw the line."


   "Hey! That rifle is my legal property and my arrest was unlawful. I
expect it returned."


   "Well you're not getting it, make do with the rotary saw or start
shooting pixie dust out of your hands, 'Sailor Juno'!"


   "Children, children!" Philip put out his arms and made a 'simmer
down' gesture. "Control yourselves."


   Kaname looked down at the load in his hands. "We also have a power
drill, a motorized hedge clipper, aaand some extension cords."


   Philip blinked. "We have to plug this stuff in?"


   Donna rolled her eyes and pointed between herself and Bill. "No, WE
have to plug this stuff in." Pause. "Wait, we have to plug this stuff
in?"


   "It's not my fault nobody committed a crime where a gas-powered
chainsaw was evidence, you're lucky we have this much on hand!"


   "Whatever, whatever! Gimme one of those cords." Donna peeked round
the corner; the daimon and kinori were nowhere to be seen, but she
heard them from another office. "Okay, the kinori can be taken out
with gunfire, but you're better off at close range. Vesta and
what's-your-face," she pointed at Minori, "come with me with the
drill. Juno, you plug in the saw over here. I'm gonna try and garrote
one of them with the cord, you guys take a few shots at them when I do
and we'll see if we can split them up."


   "...I'll give you twenty bucks if I can be Ceres and you get to be
Juno."


   Donna was already gone, around the corner. They sat there, Bill
holding the saw, waiting for an indicator it was time to attack, and
they didn't have to wait long.


   "Should go back! Tell others this here!" said the one without the
stem in his eye.


   "Tuh!" rejoined the daimon. "They can figure it out themselves. Not
like it's hidden or anything."


   "Why don't you CALL one and tell him?"


   "Because? I'm talking to Keiko?"


   "You don't know anyone named GACK--" Donna yanked the lizard around
the corner, pulling them both out of sight, and Shinobu squeezed off
three shots before he got out of the way and let the 'professionals'
do their work.


   "What? Oh no you did not -- I'll have to call you back Keiko,
someone just shot me! Click!" The daimon actually said the word
'click' before mincing in the direction of the shot, short little
steps as if she were wearing high heels. The remaining kinori ducked
into the office they'd just left. "You get back here!" the daimon
cried, insulted. "You do not just shoot Ino-Kia and run away!"


   Bill didn't understand what it was saying, but he could get a vague
idea that it wasn't happy. It was even less happy when it walked into
view and he swung a rotary saw at its exposed pink neck. The gyroscope
effect of the spinning blade threw off his aim, and he only managed to
connect with her shoulder; a plume of yellow sparks sprayed out of the
contact site, accompanied by an ear-splitting grinding sound,
punctuated occasionally with the 'TINGG!' of a sawtooth flying off.


   Ino-Kia, and everyone who understood Japanese got that one, grabbed
at his wrist and he pulled away rather than let her get a hold on him.
Bill looked at the blade, it was warped, dented, dulled, and missing
teeth. Then he looked at her shoulder, there was a cut about half an
inch deep going into it, seeping yellow fluid. "Damn," he muttered.
"That has got to be a hell of a scythe."


   "Oh. My God. Keiko, you are not going to believe what just
happened," the daimon said, turning to Bill, not acknowledging the
fact that she'd already 'hung up'. "This guy just tried to come at me
with a power tool." She spun out of the way of his next swing and
elbowed him in the solar plexus as one fluid motion, never really
looking at him. "I know, right? Do people still DO that, or does this
guy think he's Captain Supermarket, or what?" She punched him in the
stomach and swept his legs out from under him, letting his ass meet
the carpet, and kicked him once for good measure. "Ooh, you should see
his hair, too. It's like Christophe threw up on him."


   The rose-stem kinori poked its head out of the office, clucking out
a call to its comrade in its native tongue. It had only been a second,
but they were right next to each other when they heard gunfire, so
they-- and now there was a gun in his face, held by the human woman
they'd attacked with the daimon earlier today. It put its claws up,
slowly, the way humans did to indicate surrender. "Hey, this one
surrendered!" she called to her comrades. "Do we have any of those
plastic--" here she turned to look down the hall, seeing to her dismay
the daimon was NOT dead, right before the kinori slapped the gun out
of her hand, raked up the inside of her arm with its claws, and
smacked her in the legs with its tail.


   Kinori claws aren't large or fearsome, really comparable to
especially large human fingernails, but being raked by fingernails
still hurts when you aren't expecting it. "Damn it!" Donna shouted.
"Never believe the goddamn lizards!" The kinori dove to the side to
grab Donna's gun, and Donna dove forward to grab the kinori's gun, and
they both rolled into a crouched firing stance, facing each other. The
kinori's gun wasn't made for his hands, and it took him a moment to
aim; enough time for Nadine to kick him in the back of the neck and
send him sprawling for Minori to finish off.


   Philip growled at the plug on the hedge trimmers -- it wouldn't fit
in the outlet without an adapter, and the daimon was kicking the
living Hell out of Bill. He pointed at Shinobu and ordered, "You, get
the shotgun ready," and to Kaname, "Grab something heavy and follow
me." Then with a sigh, knowing how much shit he was going to catch for
it, he grabbed a swivel chair, held it out in front of him, and
charged at the daimon full-bore.


   He hit her square in the back and pushed her forward, tripping her
up on her own ankles. She placed out her hands to break her fall and
avoid kissing the floor, landing in more of a sit-up position. "Ow!
Keiko, they're ganging up on me now! No, not like that, get your mind
out of the gutter girl! No, it's no problem, they're a bunch of
losers." She rolled over onto her back, got ready to spring back up to
her feet, and got a computer monitor smashed in her face.


   "Lizards are down!" Donna crowed. She checked the safety on one of
the two pistols she was holding and tossed it to Bill. "We found
these, we're keeping them."


   "You can go on telling yourself that," Shinobu retorted.


   "Argue... later!" Philip said, lugging a mini-fire safe. He let it
go on the daimon's head, it pushed her down but had no more visible
impact on her flesh than a chunk of Styrofoam. "Monster now!"


   "Yeah, yeah, now they're just throwing crap on me. No, not like
crap crap, like junk and stuff. Hold on, I'll ask." The daimon's hand
shot out and snagged Philip's ankle, then yanked him down to meet her.
"Keiko wants to know if you guys... Shut up, I'm saying it, quit
giggling! ...if you guys are professional idiots or just gifted
amateurs?" She rolled over him, broken glass and plastic falling off
her face, planting an elbow on his chest and putting all her weight on
it as she rose to her feet.


   "Hey!" Nadine shouted, standing with one hand on her hip, Donna and
Kaname nowhere in sight. "Don't talk to Sailor Ceres like that!"


   "The other girl was Sailor Ceres," Shinobu corrected. "He's Sailor
Pallas."


   "Like I said, don't talk to Sailor Pallas like that!"


   "You're totally not gonna believe this." Ino-Kia giggled. "They got
little code names for themselves! And they don't even remember what
they are! I know, what is this, the third grade? Yeah, just like
that!"


   Philip managed to right himself, and at that point Nadine screamed,
"RUN! Run like hell!" turned, and did just that, right on the heels of
Shinobu. Philip and Bill broke off in the other direction, and Ino-Kia
glanced between them, swore, and ran after Nadine.


   "Yeah, yeah, they're running away. Yes, I'm chasing them, duh! I'm
gonna get the one with the bowl cut first." The daimon rounded one
corner, then another, gaining on her target, then when she came upon
the stairs down to the first floor, an extension cord that Shinobu and
Nadine had easily walked over was pulled tight right at shin-level.
She tripped on the cord and went sailing forwards into the staircase,
flailing and squawking like a duck in an eight-year-old's arms. She
hit the first riser with her teeth, and though they didn't break they
did bend inward. She rolled downward, smacking her elbows and knees
and chin and chest all into each other and into every other part. When
she came to a stop at the bottom, she was scraped, bleeding more
yellow fluid from several minor cuts, and letting out an ultraviolet
streak of profanity that would have melted 'Keiko's' phone, if she
existed.


   "I cannot BELIEVE she fell for that," said Shinobu. "We could have
done that."


   "Yeah, it looks like that to a layman." Donna couldn't believe the
daimon fell for that either, but wasn't about to let on.


   "Okay, seriously? I am starting to get pissed off now." Above her,
Nadine leaned over the guardrail and dropped a potted plant into her
face. "I'm, ptth, ptth--" she spat dirt out of her mouth, "I am not
EVEN playing any more."


   "Somebody go get the guys, I'm gonna keep finding crap to drop on
her," Donna said, "and Vesta, you go plug in this drill."


   Ino-Kia swatted potting soil off of her face and hair, spitting
even after there was nothing left in her mouth. "Dirt! Dropped a
potted plant on me!" She grabbed the frond and felt it before tossing
it off of her. "No, it's real. They probably rented it." Just as she
started to get up, another rented fan palm came crashing down on her,
and all she could say was "Damn it! Stop DOING that! How many of those
plants do you have up there?"


   Nadine walked back towards the stairs, drill in hand, only to have
it yanked out of her hand. "Uh, Ceres? Problem. This thing will only
go 25 feet, I can't get back to the stairs. And you broke the other
one strangling the lizard."


   Donna glared at Kaname as he handed her the fire safe. "You
couldn't get a cordless drill?"


   "We didn't have a cordless drill!"


   "Well, just go down the back stairs..." She dropped the fire safe
and imagined it would whistle on the way down like in the Looney Tunes
cartoons. "I'll keep 'er pinned here and... Crap, she got up!" She
pulled the gun out of her waistband and flicked off the safety. "Go
around, we'll meet down there!" She cursed herself as she descended,
wondering why the hell she hadn't looked down before dropping the
safe.


   She hit the first floor, rounded the corner, and immediately got
clotheslined across the throat by the daimon's outstretched arm. "Ha,
got 'er! Oh, that looks like it hurts, too."


   Donna swept at the daimon's legs, she hopped out of the way. The
daimon stomped at Donna, she rolled back to her feet. They traded
quick exploratory blows, then Ino-Kia grabbed Donna's wrist with one
hand and with her other hand, drove the base of her palm into Donna's
nose. Blood sprayed all over the walls, the carpet, and the two of
them. "Ha! Oh, yeah, just like you said, blood EVERYWHERE! That's
great!"


   Donna grabbed her face with both hands, trying to staunch the blood
loss. "That shit HURTS!" she shouted, and with her blood-slicked
fingers she grabbed the daimon's wrist and bent it back much further
than even daimon joints were meant to go.


   "Ow, ow, okay, lemme go, ow, ow, ow, ow!" the daimon shouted, and
Donna guessed the meaning even though she didn't speak Japanese. She
twisted the daimon's arm around behind her, spat blood on the back of
her neck, and shoved her forward, dropping her head in an open
doorway. Blood dribbling off of her chin and smearing on her palms,
she slammed the door again and again into the daimon's head,
splintering the wood in a depression the shape of her head.


   "OW! No, I don't know, she just OW! went like totally ax-crazy OW!
on me! You OW! said she was supposed to OW! scream and pass out OW! or
die or something, not OW! go totally batshit OW! batshit locOW!" The
door broke around the daimon's head, and Donna stepped back to give
Bill room to beat the daimon with a floor lamp a few times. She
grabbed it and tossed it to the side, he stepped back, and the two of
them emptied their guns into her, and threw the empty weapons at her
for good measure. She caught one, flung it back at Bill, and nailed
him in the forehead.


   The daimon wheezed and spat out a mouthful of bright yellow blood.
The punishment she had been given was clearly accumulating on her now,
she was covered in bruises, cuts, and lesions. "I hate you guys..."
she said. She tried to rise to her feet but her wrist slipped in a
pool of swirled yellow and red blood. "I hate you guys so goddamn
much."


   Bill and Donna were panting almost as bad as Ino-Kia was, Donna
holding an ice pack to her nose, and Phil felt kind winded just
looking at them. "If Nadine... can't kill that thing with a drill..."
Bill gasped for air, "we're gonna... gonna have to call in an
airstrike or something."


   "It took Uranus and Neptune three shots to kill one of these." Phil
nodded at the daimon. "Bigger than this one. Mother of God they must
be like human Howitzers!"


   "Hey... Hey, guys... This is Ino-Kia," she said to nobody in the
room. She started to crawl forward on her hands, slowly, grabbing at
Donna's legs and missing by a mile."I was on the fourth floor... There
was one of those... like, those gerbil tube bridges there... and
there's like a whole other building that..." Donna calmly walked
backwards to stay out of the daimon's reach, and the daimon kept
crawling toward her. "You know, I think it's where we're supposed to
be looking for, you know, the thing... and there's some assholes over
here and I'd appreciate it if you tore their arms off and beat them to
death with 'em. Okay? Okay. Bai bai. Click."


   "Either she's talking to her imaginary friend again," Phil
translated, "Or there are more of these nearby and she called in
reinforcements. I would have told you to stop her if we even could."


   "...hate you guys..."


   "And she hates us."


   Donna wiped more blood off her face. "Yeah, well, we hate her too."


   "I found an outlet!" Nadine called, holding the power drill
proudly. Donna nodded and stepped on the daimon's back to pin her
down. Nadine saw the pool of yellow blood and the crawling, wounded,
hateful creature, winced, and knelt over. It was a monster, clearly
evil, clearly enjoyed causing pain, and if it wasn't killed while
weakened it would probably regenerate back into a ball of bulletproof
terror, and Hotaru and Sailor Moon and whoever all the others are
could kill them and it was clearly right... but, she still couldn't
put a drill to a humanoid creature's head and bore into it. So Philip
did it for her while she and Donna closed their eyes and Bill closed
one. The creature died and its mass vanished, Donna's foot was
suddenly in midair and when it fell she crushed the pink Hello Kitty
cell phone the daimon reverted back to. Around them, the pools of
yellow blood started to smoke as they dissolved.


   "And..." Philip looked up to Shinobu and Minori, "That's how that
gets done."


   The radios on the cops' belts flared to life. "...ficer Tsukihito,
I don't know if anyone can hear me, the metropolitan police
headquarters are under attack, it's, there's some kind of monsters,
most of the people here are behaving unusually, they appear immune to
gunfire, I've barricaded myself in on the eighth floor of the
offices..."


   "Tsukihito, this is Minori, we've just killed one of those things
over at the station, Have the monsters moved recently?"


   "Minori? Man, I'm glad to hear someone, the radios were all out for
what felt like forever and everyone is gone! And I don't know if
they're moving, I can't see them, but I don't hear them moving around
any more."


   Shinobu puffed his cheeks and blew. "Well, that was nice... think
you can do that a few more times? If we help out more?"


   "Oh sweet mother of God no."


   Upstairs, they heard stomping noises. "Okay, okay, let me catch my
breath, think of a plan..." Donna said, wiping he blood off again.
"Maybe if we set up some kind of ambush..." They heard daimons
descending, and without saying a word all started to walk towards the
back and the stairs down to the parking garage.


   "Maybe we could electrocute them or something, maybe that would
work?" Nadine asked


   "I dunno, maybe? Me and Donna didn't see any Senshi with electrical
attacks, so I dunno."


   "Jupiter's the one with lightning, she uses Sparkling Wide
Pressure." Minori glanced around and coughed. "Or, so I heard."


   They were on the first floor and though they couldn't see the front
lobby they could faintly hear it echoing off the walls. They could
hear it when a daimon said "Stairs are for losers, losers!" and
shortly afterward the WHUMP associated with a daimon jumping off a
balcony into a first-floor lobby.


   "Okay, okay, electricity. Have to shock a whole bunch of daimons.
If it will work without being magic."


   "And if we leave they go down into the holding cells and puree all
the high school kids." Nadine shook her head. "We're gonna die, aren't
we?"


   "No, we can pull this one out..." said Donna, trailing off to hear
the sounds of combat. A strike, a dodge, a blast, and a demise.


   And then, faint but distinct: "The herald of a new age, I am Sailor
Uranus!"


   And after that: "And I am Sailor Neptune, appearing elegantly."


   Philip and Shinobu looked at each other. "We need to get the hell
up out of here," Phil said. "Uranus and Neptune are here. They fight
daimons, and that's good. Remember what I said about human Howitzers
and how they want to kill us?"


   Nadine continued. "And how you know there's bigger stuff in play
here than weapons charges and you've got bigger problems than us as
proven by Miss Cell Phone?"


   Shinobu nodded. "Yeah, an honor to work with you, Asteroid Senshi,
and I look forward to explaining your awesome Senshi powers to my
supervisors as well as all of the exciting doujinshi Minori will
undoubtedly draw of you and your wacky adventures with the Actual
Senshi, but we've got a building full of monsters, you're not getting
that rifle back, and we're getting the hell out of here!" And at that
all of them, even Bill, ran down the stairs.


*


   Sailor Moon slurped her paper cone of water, slowly, never taking
an eye off the kinori sitting in front of her. Its lips weren't really
suited to drinking out of a cup, so it had to awkwardly flip upwards
and splash the contents into his mouth, but while he did this he kept
at least one eye on Sailor Moon and Chiba Mamoru next to her, laying
on a table, at all times.


   In the fracas, Mamoru had taken a really nasty hit from the
boxing-daimon (named, appropriately, Boxing) that knocked him out of
both his Tuxedo Kamen transformation and consciousness in general. He
could transform back and heal himself, he'd only been out for a few
minutes, but they had to wait out the 'recharge' time you had to go
through to change back into a Senshi. And they were drinking water
from the water cooler that a daimon Sailor Venus had dragged over to
them, and staring at a kinori but making no aggressive move.


   "You feeling okay, dude?" Daimon-Venus asked of Mamoru. He nodded
weakly and she continued pacing around the floor. Moon had been
worried that even if the daimon wasn't trying to kill them with
lasers, she would kill them with love and medical malpractice like
'Nurse Minako', but so far she'd been patient to let Moon deal with
it.


   It was weird, Usagi thought, that a daimon could think it was a
Sailor Senshi, and that there was absolutely no inner conflict. She
liked Sailor Moon, she liked the kinori and the daimons, and the way
she resolved this was the that last person to attack either one of
them was the evildoer, simple as that. Which was why she was in the
room as a kinori and they weren't attacking each other, because as
soon as one of them made an attack, D-Venus would kick the hell out of
them. Moon knew she and Mamoru couldn't beat a kinori, so she had to
tell D-Venus to stay here and patrol. Moon wasn't about to start
summoning youma and wearing an evil red dress and driving a hatchback,
but she had to admit this daimon was pretty nice even if she did act
kinda like a mental patient, and wondered if the others would object
to keeping her around.


   "Ooh!" D-Venus cooed at no visible stimulus. "Oh, you guys hear
that?" Moon and the kinori both shook their heads. "Oh, turns out
we're in the wrong building, they got a gerbil tube on the next floor
to go over there, and that's where we're all supposed to be." She
pointed to the kinori, and then to Mamoru. "Can you keep an eye on him
while me and Sailor Moon head next door?"


   The kinori nodded and grinned, and Sailor Moon spoke out. "No! He's
getting worse, I think. He... needs a nurse."


   "Oh! Well, did we bring any nurses with us?"


   "Of course!" Moon nodded and smiled. "Sailor Venus, you're an RN!"


   Mamoru glared at her.


   "Of course I am!" D-Venus smacked her head. "That was ditzy of me.
Okay, we'll stay here, and you," she pointed at the kinori, "go next
door. We'll catch up!"


   Sailor Moon waved to the kinori as he left.


*


   Twenty-nine seconds after the four Hoffmann agents fled to the
garage, Hotaru and Sailor Chibi-Moon arrived at the front door of the
station. The two of them saw Uranus and Neptune and gasped in unison,
but didn't turn around fast enough to avoid Uranus and Neptune seeing
them. Hotaru held out her Glaive and Chibi-Moon took a defensive
stance, Uranus readied her Sword and Neptune her Mirror. They stared
at each other in a tense stand-off, neither willing to move until
Sailor Uranus got shot in the back of the head.


   She whirled around to see who had fired and Neptune addressed the
two flatly. "Let's just agree that whatever it is that we will do to
each other, we will do it when we're not overrun by daimons."


   Chibi-Moon looked to Hotaru, who nodded sluggishly, and the two
Outer Senshi leapt to the second floor from a standing start. There
were five daimons here, and at least twelve kinori, and the two Outer
Senshi were in rare form, Uranus slashing the magic-resistant kinori
to pieces with her Space Sword and Neptune damaging daimons and
providing suppressing fire.


   Hotaru and Chibi-Moon crept forward with nowhere near the speed of
Uranus and Neptune. Chibi-Moon lead them and Hotaru followed, looking
mostly at her feet. They found a hallway sprayed in blood, both normal
red human blood and smoking yellow blood, but not much else as they
investigated the area. Hotaru was lethargic and had to be prompted to
do most things, and Chibi-Usa knew exactly why -- she was wired and
anxious and paranoid for the same reason.


When they got to the interrogation rooms, one of the doors was
rattling while someone on the other side said "Let me out! What's
going on there?" Hotaru sighed deeply, but she didn't have to be
prodded to slice the doorknob away and let the door spill open.


   Inside was what Chibi-Moon saw as a weary-looking man in a rumpled
shirt, stained tie, and black plastic glasses, and Hotaru saw as a
short grey alien with a big head and big eyes and the same stained
tie. "Nakami?"


   He looked between the two costumed girls, confused. "Have we met
before?"


   Chibi-Moon started to say something, probably to keep their secret
identity secret, but Hotaru cut her off. "Yes we did. I'm Hotaru.
Sailor Saturn."


   He squinted. "What? I... ohhh, ohhh, I think I see it. Hotaru,
you're okay? Nadine is going to be very happy to see you. She was
worried."


   "I'm... sorry."


   "Don't be sorry, she..." He rubbed his forehead. "Can I continue
this in a bit? I have to pass out now." And at that his eyes shut and
he toppled forward, his human illusion melting before Chibi-Moon's
eyes. Hotaru dropped the Glaive against the wall and grabbed his head
before it hit the ground.


   "How do you know a fraal?" Chibi-Moon wondered aloud.


*


   "This car is magic," Bill said, caressing the leather interior of
the 2000GT.


   "You know, at this point in the chop-busting procedure," said Donna
underneath an ice pack, "I would say you are stupid and this belonged
to a cop. But screw it, I have seen magic cell-phone demons and magic
schoolgirls, this is a magic car."


   "And it handles great, too," Philip said from behind the wheel.


   "The car finds those who are in need of a quick getaway, spirits
them to freedom, and then whoosh!" Bill fanned his hands beside his
face. "It flies off to the next imperiled soul. The legend... of
Magicar."


   "Coming in summer '96. A Steven Spielberg production. No children
under thirteen admitted without parent, guardian, or Sailor Senshi."
Phil said in his best 'fine print' voice.


   "Well, it looks like someone tried to ground the magic car." Nadine
leaned forward and dug out a long metal object. "See? The Club. Keys
are still in it." She examined the keyring and turned over several
rubber keychains: two car shapes with the phone numbers of garages on
them, a turquoise violin advertising the Tokyo Philharmonic, a boot
with the order number for an Italian restaurant, and a beige oval that
really caught her interest. "Huh. 'If found, please return to Tenoh
Haruka and Kaiou Michiru,' and then there's an address."


   "Damn it!" Donna punched the back of the seat.


   "What, what'd I do?"


   "The people who own this car have names now, and they probably just
got it back at the police station, and she feels bad taking their
stuff."


   "...shut up, Bill."


   "So what?" Philip shrugged. "This car is easily identifiable
anyway, we have to get rid of it. We'll stash it somewhere, go to the
address on the keychain... it's actually pretty close. We'll show up
and tell them where we put it, say we FOUND it, and then we run like
hell. I'm driving in random directions right now, it's not as if we
have anywhere else to go."


   "That seems like a bunch of hassle and a bunch of risk to alleviate
Donna's conscience," Bill said.


   "Well, we've already established this is a magic car. You remember
those folk tales where Zeus takes the form of a filthy beggar and asks
a rich king for money..."


   "And the guy says no and then Zeus throws off the disguise and
smites the piss out of him?"


   "Yeah. I remember those too. We already have magical princesses,
magic space kingdoms, witches, and demon summoners, I think we ought
to play by the magical rules." He shifted in his seat as he took a
U-turn, to point towards Haruka and Michiru's apartment building. "For
safety's sake."


* * *


   The daimons and kinori had been cleared away, and the Sailor Senshi
now squared off on the helipad on top of the building, though Tuxedo
Kamen couldn't quite recall how they got up there. One daimon had
escaped; Sailor Moon told Daimon-Venus that they'd found what they
were looking for, and the impostor Senshi had given her a hug and
vanished off into the night to fight crime. Moon didn't know if she
should tell the others, or if she'd even see the daimon again, but
she's pretty sure she did the right thing.


   Uranus and Neptune stood at each other's side, Talisman's drawn.
Hotaru stood in front of them, gaze averted, point of her Glaive stuck
in the landing tarmac. Chibi-Moon stood in front of her, arms spread
and lip quivering in defiance, and to either side were Sailor Moon and
Tuxedo Kamen. Kamen was cradling the unconscious Itohiro Nakami like
an infant.


   "Sailor Saturn," said Uranus.


   "The Soldier of Ruin," said Neptune.


   Hotaru wished she had some powerful and enigmatic rejoinder, but
she didn't, and she was in no condition to think of one. All she could
say was "...yeah."


   "You're not going to hurt her!" Chibi-Moon shouted. "She's our
friend, that's all that matters!"


   "Chibi-Usa... don't, you don't need..."


   Michiru inhaled slowly and set her jaw as if she were about to say
something painful. "...you're right. We're not going to hurt her."


   "You're not?" Moon said happily.


   "No they're not," said Hotaru, and she looked up from the floor and
into Haruka's eyes. "I said I was the only one who can save the world
from the Silent One. If they kill me now, I can't die to defeat him."


   "Yes." Uranus looked away, unable to meet Hotaru's gaze and lie to
her. "Yes, that's why."


   Neptune saw Moon open her mouth to start an entire idealistic
argument they didn't need and cut her off. "But whatever our reason
is, we'll have to work together, and will have a chance to argue
later."


   "Good. Look in your mirror, tell me where Ami is."


   "Saturn..." Moon asked, "what happened to Ami?"


   "They took her!" She slapped at the air and the Glaive vanished
without her touching it. "One of the Men in Black took her. Statler or
Waldorf. I couldn't stop him, he could just ignore everything we hit
him with, he could blink around wherever he wanted."


   Without a threat to her friend to focus on, the floodgates opened
up and Chibi-Moon's panic spilled out. "He, he bound her up and he
said he was taking her to an evil crystal and he was going to make her
evil too, like he didn't care if we knew because we couldn't stop him!
And anytime we hit him it just went right through him and there wasn't
anything we could do!" She ran to Moon's legs and held on to them
fast, tears streaming from her cheeks.


   "Men in Black?" Uranus didn't recognize that as part of any kind of
prophecy, and the fact that the surface of Neptune's mirror was a
uniform black when she tried to scry on Ami's location didn't help.


   "I saw him before! I knew they were after me! I saw what they could
do!" Hotaru fell backward and sat down, wrapping her arms around her
legs. Her Sailor Saturn costume flickered and fell from her like
shredded wrapping paper, showing her plain black clothes underneath.
"He could read minds and teleport and I didn't say anything! This is
my fault!"


   "Hotaru! This isn't your--"


   "Don't!" Hotaru cut Moon off, sobbing. "Don't tell me it's not my
fault! I should have told you something and I didn't, I should have
let you all know you were in danger and I didn't and you didn't do
anything to prevent it because I was stupid, and I put Ami and
Chibi-Usa in danger just by being there without more backup because I
knew he would, would come for me and anyone with me!" She choked up a
little. "I shouldn't have even stayed at the shrine!"


   Uranus knelt in front of her and reared back her hand to slap the
girl across the face, but found she couldn't, and grabbed Hotaru's
cheeks, yanking them to force her to make eye contact. Moon moved to
stop her, but Neptune warned her away. "It doesn't matter if it's your
fault!" Uranus barked. "It happened and the only thing we care about
is what happens next. Don't tell me how you screwed up, tell me how
you're not going to screw up again, and that's going to be how we find
Ami. Okay?"


   Hotaru nodded.


   "Okay. Now, stand up." Uranus let go and stood herself. "Did he say
where he took her?"


   "Back to 'his place'. He said he had an 'evil crystal', but that
was all."


   "There are a lot of those," Moon said to some dismay.


   "And what do you know about them? How do they use the abilities you
said?"


   Hotaru looked off to the side and bobbed back and forth, thinking.
"I think they can step into one shadow and out of another, I don't
know how far. They can read minds, but, one at a time, and not mine,
and they don't like me because of it. And if they see an attack coming
it just goes right through them."


   "So if they were surrounded they couldn't use their abilities
effectively?" Hotaru nodded. "So if we remain in large groups we
should be fine." She nodded again. "And when we sleep tonight we
should do so in a group and keep people awake as watch in case one
comes by to abduct us in our sleep. Correct?"


   "Yeah. That's what we should have done."


   "So that's what we will do. And if we keep pursuing the Pharaoh, we
will find Ami as well. And since that's what we're going to do, it
does not matter if we cannot find her, we know she will be brought to
us."


   "And then we can make her better like you did to me, right?" asked
Chibi-Moon.


   "I see no reason why we wouldn't try to recover her." Hotaru and
Chibi-Moon didn't exactly look elated, but they looked a bit happier,
and Uranus nodded to Moon as if to say 'see, this is how people
accomplish their goals using things other than blind unthinking
idealism.'


   "Venus, Mars and Jupiter are underground right now, so we can't use
the communicators, but when they come out where should we meet?"


   "Well..." Neptune sighed like she knew she was about to say
something she was going to regret, "our apartment has a lot of space
we don't even use, if it means the safety of the mission..."


   "No!" Uranus said. "We can't go back to our place yet. My keychain
was in the car when the daimon stole it and that has our address on
it, remember? The Death Busters probably have it staked out right
now."


   "We can stay with me," Kamen said, "I have some room I don't use.
If someone doesn't mind sleeping on a cot in the kitchen."


   "Good," said Haruka, "Now we know at least we have somewhere to
sleep." She looked down from Kamen's face to what he was holding.
"Now, what's with the sleeping alien?"


* * *


   "Why does finding anything in Tokyo have to be such a pain in the
ass?" Bill muttered as the four of them walked out of the elevator.


   "Because they don't have street names," Nadine said, "I thought we
went through this."


   "Yeah, I was still wondering why they did that."


   They came to a stop outside the apartment they were seeking, and
Philip shushed them. "Okay. We're here. We don't know this was their
car, or if they stole it like us, so, I am going to ask them what kind
of car they own in my most authoritative voice. This is a really,
really nice building, with very wealthy, very high-class people that
are miles above all of us, and I'm going to have to ask that you two,"
he pointed at Bill and Donna, "not say anything, and stay out of sight
unless something goes wrong. Got it?"


   "Got it."


   "Okay." Phil rapped his knuckles on the door, then noticed the
apartment actually had a doorbell and pressed that. After another
thirty seconds, he pressed it again, and again after another wait.


   "Looks like nobody's home."


   "No, no, I think I hear something..." He pressed his ear to the
door, then rapped on it again and called out in Japanese, "Kaiou-san?
Tenou-san? Are you in there, is everything all right?" No response,
and Phil started fiddling with the keys. "I'm going in there, I hear
someone, I don't want little old lady Kaiou-slash-Zeus dying of a
heart attack on the kitchen floor while I walk away... here we go!"


   The door swung open, he flicked on the lights, and whistled. "This
place is gargantuan..." he said, "Oh, I think that noise was the TV...
aaaand everyone get in here anyway."


   "Wait, what's going on, why are we going into these people's
apartme-- oh my God this place really is gargantuan." Nadine whistled.
"This place would cost a fortune in Boise, they have to be laying out
like a hundred grand a week!"


   The four of them filed in the the vast, palatial living room. Phil
closed the door behind them, then pulled a framed photo off a
bookshelf that he could see from the door and presented it to Nadine.
"Do you recognize these two people?"


   Nadine scrutinized the picture, squinted, lifted a pair of
imaginary glasses. "Uh, a woman with greenish-blue hair, a blonde
dude, and they're leaning on a yellow car that I gather is the
'magicar'. I'm guessing she is either Michiru or Haruka, and then he's
her boyfriend?"


   "Oh, right, right, you wouldn't see the... Okay, what if I told you
they were both women..."


   "I'd ask if there were such a thing as 'drag kings' and suggest
Blondie was one of the greats," Bill interjected.


   "...because that is Sailor Neptune and that is Sailor Uranus. And
yes Bill, there are such things as drag kings. Get your mind out of
Idaho for a while."


   "Where, I don't... Oh. Oh!" She handed the picture back to Philip;
Bill and Donna had never seen Uranus or Neptune face to face and so
had to take his word for it. "I see it now. But how do..." Philip
grinned, and she punched him in the arm. "Yeah, well, I'm glad I went
to that wedding, you know!"


   "So this apartment... is owned by people trying to kill Hotaru. The
human Howitzers. And we're standing in it why?" asked Donna.


   "Because it's not owned by Uranus and Neptune, it's owned by
Michiru and Haruka. As in they turn it off before they come in here."


   "And one of us is going to be waiting by the door with a sock full
of batteries when they come in?" Donna giggled. "Philip Montgomery
Akens, you magnificent bastard!"


   "I was going to say 'confront, disarm, subdue, and interrogate,'
but if you can find that many batteries, sure."


   "Plus," Bill called from the kitchen, "If they don't show up, we
trash their apartment. They wanna kill a little girl, they don't
deserve to get their damage deposit back. Who wants sandwiches, I am
going to raid the HELL out this fridge."



---



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


   There are Senshi of planets, warriors and guardians of their
population and their power. The hearts of stars burn with similar
power, but as yet none have come close enough to harness it without
being incinerated. A black hole Senshi would theoretically possess
magical power hundreds of thousands of times greater then Sailor Moon,
but as the magical energy originates inside the singularity it would
be unable to escape the black hole's gravitational pull, leaving a
Senshi whose transformation sequence would last until the heat death
of the universe; constantly approaching completion without ever
reaching it. The power of dark matter is harnessed by any practitioner
of magic, or anything that passes through a dark matter gateway, or at
Progress Level 7 or greater anyone using a dark matter reactor or
stardrive.


   The most recent WMAP observations have indicates that 4% of the
universe is ordinary matter, such as planets, stars, black holes, and
clouds of hydrogen or helium. 22% of the universe is dark matter. 74%
is dark energy, a vast power source, the cause of the universe's
expansion, totally unguarded, free to be tapped by the practitioners
of the dark arts and the forces of chaos.


NEW ARCANE MAGIC FE SKILL: ENTROPOMANCY

Name                    Stat:  Cost
Entropomancy                   13
> Ex Timor Ex Nihilo    PER    6
> Wrack                 WIL    3
> Anchor of Disarray    INT    5
> Futility of Effort    WIL    4
> Spatial Stagnation    INT    5
> Annul the Soul        PER    6
> Deaf Eye              PER    3


   Entropomancy is a school of magic that harnesses dark energy to
affect the world. Its spells focus on chaos, decay, and destruction.
The 'Voynich Manuscript' and 'Eighth Testament of Zoicite', the
seminal texts on the subject, both speak of "the decapitated queen
upon an empty throne in the cold, dead kingdom [the Eighth Testament
uses the phrase 'dark kingdom'], eyeless and mindless of the treasures
of decay in her empty vault." Entropomancy is always phrased as power
stolen from a dead or inattentive ruler, something the user has no
right to possess but seizes anyway; nobody, not even the authors, is
really sure why.


   Entropomancy uses an additional power source beyond FX Energy
Points: Life Energy Points (LEP), drained from other sentient living
creatures. Each spell except Drain Energy requires a sacrifice of LEP;
a Marginal sacrifice is 1 point, an Ordinary sacrifice is 3 points, a
Good sacrifice is 7 points, and an Amazing sacrifice is 15 points.
Offering a sacrifice greater than what is required gives a cumulative
-1 bonus to the skill check, a sacrifice less than required gives a
cumulative +3 penalty. Entropomancy practitioners can hold a number of
stored LEP equal to three times their Achievement rank, or spend it
directly from a nearby friendly youma or Dark Locus.


   An Entropomancer may find that he has too many stored LEP and not
enough energy to spend them with, or find that the skill he needs for
the task is outside Entropomancy's purview. Once per round as a normal
action, an Entropomancer may attempt a PER feat check to convert
stored LEP to either FX or Psionic energy points, his choice. On an
O/G/A success, he gains 2/2/3 energy and loses 5/3/3 LEP. On a
Failure, he loses 3 LEP to no effect.


   Entropomancy gives unique insight to other reality-bending
abilities; a character who has Entropomancy may choose another FX or
psionic broad skill he has, he purchases all skills under that broad
skill for 1 fewer skill point.


EX TIMOR EX NIHILO (cost 6, PER)
1 FX Energy Point + Good sacrifice
This skill cannot be used untrained.

This skill functions exactly as detailed in "Chapter 9: Double
Header".



WRACK (cost 3, WIL)
1 FX Energy Point + no sacrifice

Wrack is the basic skill of Entropomancy, and the simplest means of
gathering LEP to power other Entropomancy skills, Wrack forcefully
steals the life force of other organic sentients. It has a range of
10/20/40. Against targets with no FX or Psionic energy pool, the
attack deals d4+1s/d4+2s/d6+2s, and for every 3 Stun damage inflicted,
cumulatively, the user gains 1 LEP. Against Adepts, Mindwalkers, or FX
or Psionic talents, the attack takes 2/3/4 FX or Psionic energy points
(a victim who has both chooses one to be drained) and changes them
directly to LEP.

(X) Increased Effect: At rank 4, the stun damage inflicted becomes
d4+2s/d6+2s/d8+2s. At rank 7, the energy drain becomes 3/4/5. At rank
10, the stun damage becomes 2d4+2s/2d6+2s/2d8+2s.



ANCHOR OF DISARRAY (cost 5, INT)
1 FX Energy Point + Ordinary sacrifice
This skill cannot be used untrained.

Not simply another means of gathering life energy, the Anchor of
Disarray sows chaos and turmoil among humanity and corrupts places
meant sacred. Anchor of Disarray converts a leypoint, also known as a
Crystal Point or Feng Shui Site, into a Dark Locus. Finding a leypoint
to corrode is not difficult, they're actually quite common wherever
humans or other sentients regularly travel. Finding a leypoint of
sufficient quality to be called a Crystal Point or Feng Shui Site,
however, is a bit more difficult.

To find a leypoint, make a Lore -- Occult Lore check and an
Investigate -- Search check, taking the lower quality result as the
quality of the leypoint discovered. If one check fails and one
succeeds, the result is a Marginal leypoint; if both fail, no leypoint
is discovered. This search, unassisted, takes about 12 hours. In a
pinch, an unshielded dark matter reactor always functions as a
Marginal leypoint.

Every leypoint has an associated penalty to the skill check to convert
it, more powerful leypoints are harder to convert. Conversion takes
ten minutes but cannot be interrupted. Dark Loci are empowered,
literally, by chaos and strife: a Dark Locus fills with one LEP for
every five stun or two wounds, and two LEP for each mortal damage
inflicted by and on normal human beings within the Dark Locus's area
of effect. Damage inflicted by or on people with Psionic or FX Energy
pools does not count, nor does violence directly instigated by the
Entropomancer.

To facilitate the charging of a Dark Locus, normal (no FX or psionics)
humans within the area of a Dark Locus of Ordinary or better quality
gain the Temper flaw as long as they remain in the area. The flaw is
at 2 points for Ordinary, 4 points for Good, and 6 points for an
Amazing Locus. People already possessing the Temper flaw have it
upgraded, but never past 6 points. While the Entropomancer is within
the area of effect, he may spend LEP directly from the Dark Locus as
if it were his own.

The Dark Locus can be dispelled by anyone with any FX or Psionic
talent and three minutes to spare without any special training, so it
is a good idea to keep them guarded.

LEYPOINT / DARK LOCUS QUALITY CHART

Quality    Difficulty    Capacity    Radius(m)*
Marginal           +0          20           12
Ordinary           +1          40           24
Good               +3          80           48
Amazing            +5         160           96


*Increase Radius by 50% when the Locus has half of its LEP capacity
filled, and double it when it is filled to capacity.



FUTILITY OF EFFORT (cost 4, WIL)
1 FX Energy Point + Marginal sacrifice
This skill cannot be used untrained.

All action is futile, all efforts doomed to failure at the inevitable
hand of time and decay. Accomplishment is an illusion, destruction the
only constant. Morose, and also the means by which Entropomancers
defend from attack. This elemental, fundamental futility is harnessed
to doom any effort made against them.

This skill's effect lasts for ten minutes per activation, and
increases all the user's resistance modifiers by +1/+2/+3, making it
more difficult for any skills to be used against him.

(X) Increased Effect: At rank 4, the duration extends to 20 minutes.
At rank 6, the resistance modifier bonus becomes +2/+3/+4. At rank 8,
the duration extends to an hour, and at rank 12, the bonus increases
again to +3/+4/+5.



SPATIAL STAGNATION (cost 5, INT)
2 FX Energy Points + Ordinary sacrifice
This skill cannot be used untrained.

The wise and spiritual say that one is all and all is one, that all
places and things are unified. The Entropomancers see this as proof
that change, improvement, and motion are impossible, as you're never
truly going anywhere.

On using this skill, the Entropomancer marks the point he's standing
on. Once in the next 24 hours/72 hours/week (O/G/A) or until he uses
the skill again, he may willingly recall himself to the marked point,
appearing to flicker and vanish from the place he previously occupied
and reappear the place marked. But he didn't really vanish or return
anywhere, he's never really moved anywhere.

(>) Additional Marks: At rank 6, the user can keep two points marked
at once. At rank 12, he can manage four.



ANNUL THE SOUL (cost 6, PER)
1 FX Energy Point + Amazing sacrifice
This skill cannot be used untrained.

Mind control is an easy and dull task. Thoughts and emotions exist as
chemical transmitters in the brain, and direct manipulation of these
creates the desired response in the subject. Mesmerism, Illusion,
several Faith skills, and even the gardhyi Shadow FX all attempt to
control the mind, but the Entropomancer realizes that even though the
soul is not a part of the mind, it is still energy, and can still be
manipulated.

This skill requires a complex skill check; the sacrifice need only be
paid once but the FX point must be paid every time. It is affected by
the target's WIL resistance modifier, but that can be increased or
decreased based on the victim's physical and mental condition. The
number of successes required is equal to the victim's PER score. Each
roll represents six hours of enigmatic taunting, evil laughter, and
emotional manipulation that requires complete and unfettered access to
the victim.

While someone is under the effect of this spell, they are utterly what
their master wants them to be. They agree with them about everything
and every course of action as if they had arrived at that position
through their own rational course of thought. The victim obeys the
master's every command without the need for a skill check, but carries
these commands out to the spirit, not foolishly to the letter. They
will act independently and intelligently in order to make sure their
master's desires are met, in the way a normal but loyal friend and
ally would. If their master orders the victim to love them, the love
they feel is as genuine as any they ever have; if ordered to hate,
they truly and honestly despise that person. In short, there are no
mental loopholes, hindrances, weaknesses, or peccadilloes from the
control process.

Of course, for all their talk about how easy it is to alter the energy
of the soul, Entropomancers don't often talk about how damn hard the
soul pushes to snap back to its original position. Every week, the
Entropomancer maintaining the spell must pay an amount of LEP equal to
the victim's PER score times the number of weeks they have been
controlled -- for a victim with a 10 PER, pay 10 on the first week, 20
the second, 30 the third, etc. If this amount is not paid on time, the
victim is entitled to a Resolve -- Mental Resolve check to break free
every hour until the check succeeds or the full amount is paid. If the
check does succeed, the victim is completely aware of what was done
with him and is going to be INCREDIBLY pissed.



DEAF EYE (Cost 3, PER)
1 FX Energy Point + Marginal sacrifice
This skill cannot be used untrained.

Life is a sham and existence a joke. The Entropomancer sees that, but
not everyone else does, and sometimes it's a good idea to avoid
letting "everyone else" see you doing things that would result in them
coming after you with golf clubs and sawed-off pool cues. Or, if you
can't hide, convince people that what you're doing is as meaningless
as everything else in their existences.

Deaf Eye is used simultaneously with other FX or Psionic skills. When
used, it creates a reaction similar to the Taioron Reaction provoked
by a youma: people who see the FX skill being used will either not
notice it, or conclude that it's nothing to worry or care or talk
about. Individuals with FX or Psionic energy are never affected;
player characters are never affected (come on, it wouldn't be fun);
normal humans who would be entitled to resist the Taioron Reaction may
make an Awareness -- Intuition check to evade the spell's effects. The
spell confers a +0/+1/+2 (O/G/A) step penalty to this check, and each
level of sacrifice above Marginal adds another +1 step penalty instead
of giving a bonus to the Deaf Eye skill roll.

An affected individual can be made to see the masked effect if shown
individually, but not if addressed as a group. An unaffected
individual won't get a crowd of affected ones to suddenly see
something by standing on the hood of a car and shouting "Look over
there! It's a big dome covered in red goo-chicks!" but she could take
someone aside, point at said dome and say "Hey, don't you notice
something over there?"

(X) Increased Effect: At level 6, the penalty to the Awareness --
Intuition check is +1/+2/+3. At level 12, it becomes +2/+3/+4.
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